#religion

"The five points of yama, together with the five points of niyama, remind us of the Ten Commandments of the Christtian and Jewish faiths, as well as of the ten virtues of Buddhism. In fact, there is no religion without these moral or ethical codes. All spiritual life should be based on these things. They are the foundation stones without which we can never build anything lasting. (127)"

"Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand."

"What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives."

"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing."

"If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments."

"I am now convinced that children should not be subjected to the frightfulness of the Christian religion [...]. If the concept of a father who plots to have his own son put to death is presented to children as beautiful and as worthy of society's admiration, what types of human behavior can be presented to them as reprehensible?"

"The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat."

"You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. Two reasons: First of all, I think he's a good actor, okay? To me, that counts. Second, he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with."

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love."

"When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind."

"The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion...Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too."

"it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists"

"The natural is so awesome that we need not go beyond it."

"religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right... but i am about the process that takes you to the living answer... it will change you from the inside. there are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don't know me at all."

"I am thankful to all the souls, I meet in the journey of life."

"We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis."

"وتجديد الإسلام ليس نقل الدين من مكانه إلى حيث يهوى الناس، بل نقل الناس من نطاق أهوائهم إلى حيث يرضى الله"

"religion is no longer the opium of the people but the vitamin pills of the feeble."

"If Christ taught us anything it is this -- not to let our fear of death keep us from doing the good thing."

"Are we alone? Over time, you will come up with various answers to that same nagging question. Eventually one day it will occur to you that this endless asking is the answer you have been looking for. The fact that we have an ongoing dialogue with the universe is proof enough that there is "something"out there."