Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.

You ever noticed how people who believe in Creationism look really un-evolved? You ever noticed that? Eyes real close together, eyebrow ridges, big furry hands and feet. “I believe God created me in one day”....

The German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had syphilis, said that only a person of deep faith could afford the luxury of religious skepticism. Humanists, by and large educated, comfortably middle-class persons with rewarding lives...

There’s an old, frequently-used definition of insanity, which is “performing the same action over and over, expecting different results.”… Now, I’m no doctor, but I am on TV. And in my professional opinion, George Bush...

This isn’t the work of our people, Delilah. It’s a corruption of power. The gods are neutral, good and evil manifests in the deeds of mortals.”Or, just maybe– The power is our own and the...

New Rule: If an Evangelical tries to use Halloween to pimp Jesus to kids, they get to egg his house. On Halloween, the president of the American Family Association urged his flock to hand out...

Don’t fret, boy. I’m not so foolish as to ridicule the myths and legends of other people. For countless generations, people, no matter where they’re from, have been trying to understand this world of ours.

the gods seldomgivebut so quicklytake.

If you’ve got a religious belief that withers in the face of observations of the natural world, you ought to rethink your beliefs – rethinking the world isn’t an option.

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this woman? […] Will they feel what she felt in her life, will their memories have flickering...

Theologians are to look to the _beyond_-community–– _beyond_ nationality; skin-color, gender; sexual orientation, citizenship, religious affiliation––because God, the Divine, who is the primary frame of reference for theologians, is for, with, in, among those individual...

When the sun shall be folded up; and when the stars shall fall; and when the mountains shall be made to pass away; and when the camels ten months gone with young shall be neglected;...

Religion is about hospitality and responsibility, and about neighbor/enemy-love-as-self-love in a Christian term that requires one to turn a new _gaze_ onto others––what I call a _cosmopolitan gaze_.

If anything or anyone removes peace from you or inflicts confusion and judgment on you, this thing or person is not of God regardless of whether or not that person or thing has wrapped itself/himself...

There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything.

In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from...

Religion is the servant of the vanishing; science, of the existence! Disappearance belongs to the chaos and the Devil; existence, to the God!

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less...

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and...

Jesus would pray to himself and cry. I often do the same.

Zen has been called the “religion before religion,” which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And that phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven...

Humans are not separate from God, rather, humans are part of the complex system/force we call God. Not acknowledging we are fragments of the complex God is where some religions are dividing you and I,...

The Lord teaches forgiveness, but some things are unforgivable.

[P]eople need to use their intelligence to evaluate what they find to be true and untrue in the Bible. This is how we need to live life generally. Everything we hear and see we need...

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.

Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin. His blood is the great sovereign remedy for sin-sick souls. Live in this, and thou wilt die a conqueror; yea, thou wilt, through...

What if we changed the story that has been peddled to us over thousands of years by those religions that want to control us, that this life is merely a stepping stone to something better...

The cross the preacher had told him about was bloody, not flaming; meek, not militant. It had made him feel awe and wonder, not fear and panic. It had made him want to kneel and...

I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine...

With life as short as a half taken breath, don’t plant anything but love.

In the early days of the December that my father was to die, my younger brother brought me the news that I was a Jew. I was then a transplanted Englishman in America, married, with...

Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. Guilt, fear, sin, doubt. That’s what religion is all about.

At Abraham’s burial, his two most prominent sons, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, scions of rival nations, come together for the first time since they were rent apart nearly three-quarters of...

Johnson is a radical skeptic, insisting, in the best Socratic tradition, that everything be put on the table for examination. By contrast, most skeptics opposed to him are selective skeptics, applying their skepticism to the...

It is my belief that when a child has been robbed of their visionary rights that they gravitate toward religion and spirituality in an effort to regain their Subjective autonomy.

All of the world’s religions have important things to teach us, and they are not as different from each other as some would have you believe.

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

We do not recruit (in the armed forces) on the basis of caste, religion, creed or region…We do not maintain data based on such classifications.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own...

Strange to hear atheists say ‘god’ when having great sex.

Turning an experience about to observe it, results in a lessening of the experience directly proportional to the amount of observation. To think about it is, to some degree, to stop the pleasure, to stop...

I don’t pray because it doesn’t work. Prayer doesn’t fix anything. Bad things happen anyway.

They think virtues are man-made, only exist because they exist, but if no human had ever existed, The Virtues would persist for they hold their being from the very Presence of the Adversary Himself.

Back home, my favorite part of Mass was during communion, when I’d stand at the rail and hold a little gold platter under people’s chins. The pretty girls would line up for communion (I confess...

Besides, these box-checking Christians having such a majority is largely in our favor. Their ubiquity is inversely proportional to their efficacy.

So bring me this man, trembling and shivering from head to foot; let me fall into his arms or down at his knees; he will weep and we shall weep, he will be eloquent and...

Trust becomes the only road home, back to love.

I feel that we should stop wasting our time trying to please the supernatural and concentrate on improving the welfare of human beings. I think that, uh, we should use our energy and our initiative...

Man…who lives in three places – in the past, in the present, and in the future – can be unhappy if one of these three is worthless. Religion has even added a fourth – eternity.

Oh, remember this, the sweetness of religion is incomparably more than all the pleasures of sense.