The gods too are fond of a joke.

Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should...

I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious–for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can...

‘Shoot the wounded… what we do to people who are the most vulnerable… we ‘shoot the wounded.’ As if they haven’t suffered enough, we add to it by gossiping and treating hurt people like outcasts.”...

I mean, whatWhat if no one’s watchingWhat if when we’re deadWe are just deadI mean, whatWhat if it’s just us down hereWhat if God is just an ideaSomeone put in your head

Some marry because they are in love. Others marry to have sex … without the guilt.

One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them...

Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.

Science tells me God must exist.My mind tells me I’ll never understand God.My heart tells me I’m not meant to. [Vittoria Vetra]

[…] there can be no a priori moral framework in a modern democracy […]

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it he keeps a very small stock of it within.

It was… the Great White God de-throned, I suppose. Because we did, we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw that we...

It’s a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey...

Religions differ only in the form; religions differ only in their methodology.

To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the...

An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny.

I am accountable.I am correctable.I am transformable.Presenting myself a living sacrifice to God. By the love of God.By the word of God.Completely supplied in Christ Jesus.Unto all good works.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or...

Science knows it doesn’t know everything; otherwise, it’d stop. But just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.

Religion became the evil of our society when it started to teach resentment and hate instead of unconditional love and wisdom.

A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have...

Religious people fear hell — Spiritual people have walked thru it.

If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis....

In general, Americans would walk a mile uphill in the rain to avoid pain, unless the walk could be shorter and level and the day sunny, which they’d prefer.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

We’ve spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that’s precisely how we did it —by making it lower case.

To know God, know your heart (conscience). After you know your heart, you will learn to see God in all things. Truth can only be seen by those with Truth in them.

God liking them.” That’s the God they’ve conjured for themselves.

In every French village there is now a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth trying to blow it out, the priest.

Trust is crazy. You are a risky, risky, God. I didn’t sign up to be Amazing Trust Boy, and I did not sign up for Danger God. You’re flatly not safe…

There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.

Christianity enhanced the notion of political and social accountability by providing a new model: that of servant leadership. In ancient Greece and Rome no one would have dreamed of considering political leaders anyone’s servants. The...

The free animalhas its dying always behind itand God in front of it, and its wayis the eternal way, as the spring flowing.Never, not for a moment, do we havepure space before us, where the...

We acquire both the language and religious concepts from our immediate culture – at the same time. A child cannot discriminate between useful survival information and the emotional and psychological manipulations of religion. Once infected,...

Let us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not that the mind is overwhelmed and drowned in body. For the principal attribute of...

Children know by instinct that hell is an absence of love, and they can pick out theirs without missing.

You cannot know how many other miracles one sole miracle begets. She was not a savior. She did not confer salvation. She said we were to be the saviors. She said we know God only...

we left our home forty years ago. Despite the unhappy events we faced there, we left because our faith allowed it, because our belief in the Lord taught us that we would find a new...

Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

What is it about our specific belief in God and His wishes that makes us so angry at the specific beliefs of another? What is it about the teachings of our respective deities that makes...

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wantedTo lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free——The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it...

To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots – it’s biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen...

My mother was a good Catholic — she went to mass twice a week at St. Mary’s in Richmond, but my father was an Orthodox Eclectic.

What are the chances that of all 1.59629 quadrillion square feet of physical land on planet Earth, three major world religions are literally fighting over one single rock?

To stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going on one’s knees and thanking Him.

I have always been resistant to doctrine, and any spirituality I had experienced thus far in my life had been much more abstract and not aligned with any recognized religion. For me, the most trustworthy...

The different religions confused me. Which was the right one? I tried to figure it out but had no success. It worried me. The different Gods – Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Mohammedan – seemed very particular...

God is not a God of confusion, although at times one’s judgment, for a period, may become clouded in the growth process. I stopped fooling myself into thinking that Christ is always for the cool...

As men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they’d leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a...