#religion

"I hope I never get so old I get religious."

"We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence."

"I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed."

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

"Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow - for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage."

"These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy...walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening."

"Isn't wine prohibited here?"the boy asked. "It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil,"said the alchemist. "It's what comes out of their mouths that is."

"Here's an easy way to figure out if you're in a cult: If you're wondering whether you're in a cult, the answer is yes."

"I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted."

"Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light."

"Jack didn’t fully get Jesus. Audrey tried to explain it, and he could repeat it back to her, word for word, but he still didn’t comprehend most of it. The best he could gather was that Jesus lived long ago, told people to be nice, and they killed him for it. At the end, he asked who was Jesus’ necromancer and if he was in the Bible, then Kaldar couldn’t stop laughing and had to sit down."

"Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it."

"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?"

"In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs."

"They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous."

"The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. . . Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. . . Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves."

"All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry."

"For it is the bitter grief of theology and its blessed task, too, always to have to seek (because it does not clearly have present to it at the time)...always providing that one has the courage to ask questions, to be dissatisfied, to think with the mind and heart one ACTUALLY has, and not with the mind and heart one is SUPPOSED TO have."

"Be careful what you wish for. You never know who will be listening."

"If all men are made in God's reflection, then why do some people continue to acknowledge only what is in their part of the mirror? If every man was created equal and in the image of God, then how can any man claim that one race is better than another?"