Music is my higher power

If Jesus himself, or Mohammed, or Buddha spoke to me personally and said that women are inferior to men, I would still reject that as false dogma because I know with every ounce of my...

Essentially, almost all humans are born with a fear of the unknown. It casts a pall of anxiety which pushes us into the arms of religions and soothsayers and their made-up answers.

Everything we have, everything we are, is a gift. How can we judge and shame ourselves if this is true?

I wasn’t saying whatever they’re saying I was saying. I’m sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still...

Some religions actually go so far as to label anyone who belongs to a religious sect other than their own a heretic, even though the overall doctrines and impressions of godliness are nearly the same....

When every hope is gone, ‘when helpers fail and comforts flee,’ I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the...

That man who is without religion and mercy should be rejected. A guru without spiritual knowledge should be rejected. The wife with an offensive face should be given up and so should relatives who are...

Every great man is an idol, an oracle of inquiry. Don’t aspire to know the former, but aspire to know the diety in his soul.

Self-observation is the first step of inner unfolding.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth,” the long out-of-print science fiction writer went on.

Everybody is always touting the division between religion and science…. That division is based on a false premise. It simply doesn’t exist. The first sciences developed from a desire to prove the existence of God....

All Abraham’s sons were taught that God would progressively reveal Himself. God’s wholeness has yet to be realized. There will always be gaps in our understanding. Why should we fill those gaps with suspicion, bigotry...

I’m not a Christian, but I have read his book.

God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.

Heresy kicks ass.

That the earth in its course stood still; that a she-ass spoke; that a storm was quieted by a word, we do not believe, and we shall never again believe.

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the...

Amish recognize each others’ horse like we do our friends’ car.

Cosmopolitanism starts from the _singular_ individual rather than the _faceless_ collective

the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

I’m Sorry,’ he says. It’s simple and direct, with none of the nonsense about God calling home an angel too young and who are we to question his mysterious ways.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

If we have a hair trigger on the exclusion gun, shouldn’t it be aimed at those who are using their power to abuse someone who is in a weaker, more vulnerable position?

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient...

There is yet another class that, having found that their own religion not only prevents free thinking but that some of its philosophies are also against some basic social, economic and scientific concepts of life...

I see no reason why church services have to be standard. I’ve discussed this with the man who used to be a pastor here at the Methodist Church in Sebastopol. I told him I saw...

Perhaps even atheism versus theism is an example of this principle that an apparent either/or can really be a both/and. For I suspect that the God you insist does not exist is probably a God...

these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time...

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

The Didache is the earliest known document outside the NT to identify the problem of settled faith communities in conflict with traveling, itinerant preachers and prophets. The Didachist does not doubt the validity of such...

One finds the same basic mythological themes in all the religions of the world, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated, from the North American plains to European forests to Polynesian atolls. The imagery...

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren’t easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of...

As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn’t come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his...

God, Buddha, The Force, Yahweh, the singularity, the unicity point—call it whatever you like—the result is the same. Science and religion support the same truth—pure energy is the father of creation.

God may sometimes laugh at our plans. But if they are based on a Heavenly and eternal perspective, He will always support us. On His timetable, not ours.

What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.

I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it’s been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and...

God forgive me for what I’ve done. God forgive me for what I will do. And God forgive me for what I can’t do because my religion won’t let me

The universe is God’s son.

Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy...

People choose these experiences before birth to learn human lessons of rape.” I asked her about world hunger, sex trafficking, genocide, and torture, and she replied with the same logic. At that moment, I realized...

[I]f the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous; if the basic claims of religion are false, most people...

Other translations may engage the mind, but the King James Version is the Bible of the heart.

Everyone doesn’t need to have the same beliefs, we just need to start believing in everyone.

That’s where thinking started, where thinking stopped, where all her prayers so long ago had dried up. She no longer prayed, nor even dreamed of changing her father. Her dreams now played variations on the...

I prefer a world with many beliefs and religions.It stimulates my faith to keep growing day by day.

Why can’t we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the...