One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich...

I ended my first book with the words ‘no answer.’ I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?...

Ist der Mensch, der nach dem Gott sich sehnt, nicht vernichtet?

Não sei. Acho que Deus não se rala com quem morre – disse Leo. – Se Deus fez isto, então não precebo porque é que vocês acreditam n’Ele. Porque é que vocês adoram um assassino?

[M]an cannot be wicked without being evil, nor evil without being degraded, nor degraded without being punished, nor punished without being guilty. In short … there is nothing so intrinsically plausible as the theory of...

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

The heart is cooking a pot of food for you. Be patient until it is cooked

The sad thing is that so many people, in the belief that the universe is organized to suit and influence them, are willing to sacrifice even the slight cranial capacity with which evolution has equipped...

Yes, stop your beliefs for a few moments now and then and Be-Life.

Much of the attraction of the cult has to do with the grace of an early and romantic death. George Orwell once observed that if Napoleon Bonaparte had been cut down by a musket ball...

Theology is ignorance with wings.

self” physically from the world (as an unseen entity) alienates the human being from the facts of a sensual world and its realities. In order to have a self, you must provide a story for...

Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over...

We were seekers. You are that which is sought, Joshua. You are the source. The end is divinity, in the beginning is the word. You are the word.

As soon as we got back I ran upstairs and told everyone the story, thus telling everyone the alarm code, thus breaking one of the Ten Commandments when I lied and said I’d keep the...

Arminius, appealing to Lactantius, held that: ‘To recommend faith to others, we must make it the subject of persuasion, and not of compulsion’. He insisted that the true religion from Christ does not deteriorate into...

The good news is that Christ frees us from the need to obnoxiously focus on our goodness, our commitment, and our correctness. Religious has made us obsessive almost beyond endurance. Jesus invited us to a...

And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they’ve lost, forever.

La religion est une insulte à la dignité humaine. Que ce soit avec ou sans elle, il y aura toujours des gens bien qui font de bonnes choses, et des mauvais qui font de mauvaises...

And keep them thinking in terms of ‘being good’ as this is not an end so much as a means to something else —happiness, respect, self-esteem, etc… And whatever their true end is, take it...

It’s better to burn out than fade away,” but these memories could be deceptive.

There will be a solidity to their faith which is very dangerous to our designs and difficult to dissolve. There is a luminosity to it. Just one Christian of that type can dispel years worth...

Last year, we were sued for endorsing religion; this year, we’re being sued for limiting the right to express one’s religion, … We’re tracking a minefield, and this is not what the school district wants...

You don’t change the world by telling it what to do, sitting at home, and telling it what you believe. You believe by throwing yourself into it. Making a leap, getting involved, then waiting, taking...

Today evolution of human intelligence has advanced us to the stage where most of us are too smart to invent new gods but are reluctant to give up the old ones.

If people but knew their own religion, how tolerant they would become, and how free from any grudge against the religion of others.

Religion is a light bulb, created by man to help him to see in the dark.

Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children...

No parent should have to bury a child … No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things.I buried my...

If you want to get anywhere in religion, you got to keep it sweet.

In this walk to freedom, we must, without question obtain hearts of honesty and a tongue of truthfulness.

It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.

No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has...

They could not understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another.

I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the exquisite and exotic...

Spaniards and Americans are not like Europeans, they are not like Orientals, they have something in common, that is they do not need religion or mysticism not to believe in reality as all the world...

belief is the death of intelligence.

Religion is like a pair of shoes…..Find one that fits for you, but don’t make me wear your shoes.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing...

If your religion doesn’t teach you the difference between good and evil, your religion is worse than useless.

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle

Leaving your religion and having to invent your own system of values is a big deal, after all.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.

Once you’ve condoned faith in general, you’ve condoned any crazy shit done because of faith.

It all depends on what people you’re talking about helping. That’s the wonderful think about just about every religion on the planet – they’re all so incredibly selfish.

We need to shed our unearthly and nonsocial and idealistic and romantic and uber-spiritual visions of kingdom and get back to what Jesus meant. By kingdom, Jesus means: God’s Dream Society on earth, spreading out...

Saying of the ProphetUnderstandingSpeak to everyone in accordance with his degree of understanding.

If I told you to wish for good health, you would think I’m ridiculous; but when I exchange the word “wish” for the word “pray”, you believe it can work. That is the disempowering delusion...

The important place held by Jesus among the world’s six hundred million Moslems… and the agreement of both religions about the necessity for surrender to God as the means of salvation, thus makes it comparatively...

In later life I have been sometimes praised, sometimes mocked, for my way of pointing out the mythical elements that seem to me to underlie our apparently ordinary lives. Certainly that cast of mind had...