Sports represent a shared vision of how we continue, as individual, team, or community, to experience a happiness or absence of care so intense, so rare, and so fleeting that we associate their experience with...

God has no religion.

When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be...

I believe that life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.

But it was never actually that big a deal. Jenkins didn’t really disbelieve in the Resurrection: he merely questioned the historical veracity of the New Testament narratives. It was mildly interesting: one side saying “I...

We could all use the power of prayer now and then, but it seems to me that the people who are sure they have a direct line to heaven are most often calling collect with...

Fundamentalism’s strident denunciation of its opponents is a sign of its weakness, its dogmatic authoritarianism is a pathological mutation of faith.

From the house of unbeliefto true religionis a single breath;From the world of doubtto certaintyis a single breath;Enjoy this precious single breath,for the harvestof our whole livesis that same one breath.

As the Roman Empire came to its close, all the old gods of the pagan world were seen as demons by the Christians who rose. It was useless to tell them as the centuries passed...

La pensée ne doit jamais se soumettre, ni à un dogme, ni à un parti, ni à une passion, ni à un intérêt, ni à une idée préconçue, ni à quoi que ce soit, si...

Children see God every day; they just don’t call it that. It’s the summer sky painted with cumulus clouds by day and sequined with a million stars by night. It’s the sweet whispers of sweet...

All civilizations at some time have fallen into this total terror, when the mystery of life was a kind of panic only to be assuaged by the spilling of blood.

In order to know who you are you need to know God is.

…evolution is not a religious tenet, to which one swears allegiance or belief as a matter of faith.. It is a factual reality of the empirical world. Just as one would not say ‘I believe...

We pray God would do it our way; we should pray we would do it God’s way!

Theological discourses function in various ways as sites of contestation and resistance, of forming new religious and personal identities, and of building solidarities. Theological discourses that theologians produce, disseminate, and teach in academia are not...

For this reason I tell you: When you pray and ask for something, believe that you have received it, and you will be given whatever you ask for.

Our religion prohibits us from having nuclear arms and our religious leader has prohibited it from the point of view of religious law. It’s a closed road,

For Hell and the foul fiend that rulesGod’s everlasting fiery jails(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,Are senseless stories, idle tales,Dreams, whimseys, and no more.

Dear God.

F-A-I-T-H The Fundamental Authority of Irrefutable Truth that assures confident Hope

I don’t believe in school prayer. I think it’s total nonsense…who is the teacher there that is going to have them pray? And is the teacher going to be Catholic or Mormon or Episcopalian or...

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.

Whether we accept it or not, this will likely be the century that determines what the optimal human population is for our planet. It will come about in one of two ways: Either we decide...

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.

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...