My statement to Harris that his book contains much to admire is specious hyperbole. In The End of Faith, Harris rails against religious fundamentalism, which seems obvious, as well as against religious moderates, which seems...

…better a live bird in the jungle of the body than two stuffed birds on the library table.

I remembered the malangs of Shah Jamal, the dirty, shirtless renouncers with ratty beards and dreads and bare chests covered in necklaces of prayer beads, throwing around their arms in Charlie Manson dances and whipping...

The spiritual energy of our time, as I’ve come to understand it, is not a rejection of the rational disciplines by which we’ve ordered our common life for many decades – law, politics, economics, science....

If opposites attract why is the church trying so hard to mirror the world?

I once had a published written debate with a religious apologist who, after I had argued the standard line that the idea of a loving and merciful deity is inconsistent with the fact of natural...

You’ve been tested.’ He advised me totry and ‘forgive and pardon, and this way seek to become beloved by God’ without my forgivenessbeing tied to the one who wronged me. ‘This is the Divine remedy,’...

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.

Light a candle for the sinners set the world on fire

But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well...

There is much in this vision that will remind you of your mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of...

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.

If others in the same Glass better see ‘Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me: For my Salvation must its Doom receive Not from what others, but what I believe.

Doubt is a first cousin to faith, Ghosh. To have faith, you have to suspend your disbelief.

It portrayed motherhood as the highest position that a woman could achieve. For God had made Mary neither a prophet nor the messiah nor the daughter of God. Nor did God take the form of...

Infuriatingly stupid analysts – especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world – wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were...

He who defends with love will be secure; Heaven will save him, and protect him with love.

Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts, his wishes,...

My God can do it! My God will do it! My God wants to do it! My God has done it!

Co-exist whether you believe in Pistachios or Pasta, Poseidon or the Prophet cause Gods and Religions cannot exist without us.

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There`s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

In light matters–matters of small consequence, like religion and politics and such things–he never acquired a conviction that could survive a disapproving remark from a cat.

(Everyone, I guess, sees their position as the neutral one and everyone else’s position as biassed. I wonder why 177 minutes of the Today programme is completely secular; you feel horribly excluded by 3 minutes...

They did indeed use the AM in religious rituals and AM does have deliriant and hallucinatory effects and more. This would mean not only is it linked to religion and religious social structures in the...

There’s almost always a church youth group at the soup kitchen. I have yet to see an atheists’ youth group. Yeah, I know, religious people don’t have a monopoly on doing good. I’m sure that...

Mormons invented themselves just as other religious and ethnic groups invented themselves. But Mormons did so in such a singularly impressive way that we will probably always remain baffled as to how exactly it happened.

People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil… Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult.

Your way of life is sinful and wrong,” he said fiercely.Thus says a man who admits to worshipping a God who vilifies pleasure, relegates women to roles that are little more than servants and broodmares,...

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and...

I think, well, I’ve had a shit of a life, all things considered. It wasn’t fair. Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead, and my leg hurts all the bloody time… But I think, any God...

the church should just stay out of people’s pants.

In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.

This god of peace and love certainly likes to bathe the land in blood.

The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves.

Finaly, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil....

I believe that God—if he exists at all—is what we want him to be. The true God is unknowable, and so we dress him up in costumes that make him visible to us. Then we...

It’s not the law of religion nor the principles of morality that define our highways and pathways to God; only by the Grace of God are we led and drawn, to God. It is His...

Deities are invented by fallible and finite beings in the hope and desire to create immortal perfection; unfortunately, such deities only reflect their creators and inspire their followers to similar imperfections.

Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares...

Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a licence?

In diesen Jahren hatte ich in Israel keine Menschenseele. Doch solche verborgenen Gerechten erschienen gerade in den Momenten, in denen die Verzweiflung mich unterzukriegen drohte.Ich bin dem einmal nachgegangen. Jeder, der den Krieg überlebte, überlebte...

…religion either produces the very best people or the very worst.

When Frey asked students to draw the creation, the other kids drew animals and Adam and Eve. Caroline covered her paper in black crayon, then held it up to reveal she had punched out holes...

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these...

Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it...

I allowed myself the supernatural, the transcendent, because, I told myself, our love of metaphor is pre-religious, born of our need to express what is inexpressible, our dreams of otherness, of more.

You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and...

Culture, religion, and education, are conspiracies to standardize worldviews.

Conclusive evidence. A recent Scientific American article hailed New Physics as a surer path to Godthan religion itself.