Critique Of Religion Quotes

If freedom once required a secular critique of religion, it can also require a religious critique of the secular. ~ Harvey Cox

It is unclear from any modern critique of religion that anyone is in a position to disprove the reality of religious mystery expressed in the ancients' texts, even if we probe that mystery. Modern affirmations of such faith as well as denials of it are acts of faith. Yet these critiques of religion bring us closer to understanding the human side of divine-human relations. And this is what believers and nonbelievers, believing and unbelieving theologians and historians of religion share: a desire to understand the human side of the equation in religious traditions. ~ Mark S. Smith

Conventional, organized religion, in its most decadent form, is an inert parody of the genuine religious experience as much as modern occult organizations are degenerate parodies of forgotten religions. ~ Zeena Schreck

The nature of pure and genuine religion ... consists in faith, united with a serious fear of God, comprehending a voluntary reverence, and producing legitimate worship agreeable to the injunctions of the law. ~ John Calvin

Make religion attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good. ~ Blaise Pascal

Why should I hate someone on the basis of their religion, when I can take a little time to get to know them and hate them for a myriad of real reasons. ~ Dennis Miller

I think that the scienti?c way of looking at the world, and the humanistic way of looking at the world are complementary. There are important differences which should be preserved, and in trying to do away with those differences we would lose something the same way as if we tried to make all religions one religion or all races one race. There is a cultural diversity that's very valuable, and it's valuable to have different ways of looking at the world. ~ Alan Lightman

What happened at the end of our last story is something called misdirection. It's what happens when you are led to believe that something is true, but in reality it's not true at all. Misdirection happens a lot in real life- especially in politics, history, education, medicine, marketing, science, religion, and the Oprah Winfrey Network. ~ Dav Pilkey

It is this simple. The religion of a computer is to compute - the religion of a scorpion is to sting in the face of danger - the religion of a human is to help other humans. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.

The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.

This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.

Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.

His historical picture closes with the end of the nineteenth century, and with good reason. By that time it seemed that the influence of these mythic, authoritatively anchored forces which can be denoted as religious, had been reduced to a tolerable level in ~ Albert Einstein

No power over the freedom of religion [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution. ~ James Madison

'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 think we killed Ronnie's spirit ... Instead of coming alongside her and supporting her through this, I failed her ... ~ Lynn Dove

Poetry resists academic pretension, just as the mystery of religious faith evaporates on contact with dogma. ~ Patrick White

Where freedom of religion has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy. Where democracy has been overthrown, the spirit of free worship has disappeared. And where religion and democracy have vanished, good faith and reason in international affairs have given way to strident ambition and brute force. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

[The human mind] finds more facility in assenting to the self-existence of an invisible cause possessing infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, than in the self-existence of the universe, visibly destitute of these attributes, and which may be the effect of them. ~ James Madison

My mother once said if you can't handle the fact that your world-view might be entirely inaccurate, you are not worthy of believing in it. ~ Sean J Halford

So far as I personally am concerned I had better state that I feel as little entitled to assert as to deny the existence of what others call God, for I must admit that I just do not know what this word is supposed to mean. I certainly reject every anthropomorphic, personal or animistic interpretation of the term, interpretations through which many people succeed in giving it a meaning. The conception of a man-like or mind-like acting being appears to me rather the product of an arrogant overestimation of the capacities of a man-like mind. [...]
I long hesitated whether to insert this personal note here, but ultimately decided to do so because support by a professed agnostic may help religious people more unhesitatingly to pursue that conclusions that we do share. Perhaps what many people mean in speaking of God is just a personification of that tradition of morals or values that keeps their community alive. ~ Friedrich A. Hayek

Church is not about learning how to be a moral person (though that is what the dominant narrative they hear tells them); it is a place where immoral individuals go in order to receive the grace of God. ~ Jonathan P. Hill

It's not simply that communists are atheists and want to stamp out religion; it's that they cannot tolerate anyone who worships a King who stands above the kings of this world. For that higher allegiance gives a basis for demanding freedom and rights from the earthly king.49 ~ Charles W. Colson

The health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie. ~ David Brin

Our species is angry on a deep level. We know something has been wrong for a long time. We are tired of being thrown the scraps. This is primal, guttural; the scream of an exhausted humanity who will not take no for an answer. ~ Christopher Zzenn Loren

What U See
What U Do Not Want See
What U Do Not See,
Religion of Blue Circle
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Amen
September 28, 2016 ~ Petra Hermans

There can be no doubt that the systematic hostility of the courts to religion has lowered the prestige of religion in the public mind. ~ Robert Bork

We fully support the strikes against terrorist targets, not against the country, not against the culture, not against a religion, but against an enemy of them all. ~ Ricardo Lagos

As a singer, I've had many opportunities to travel, and one thing I've learned is that through my music, I can be accepted by people all over the world. I often wonder why so many of us can't accept people who are different here, in our country? It's just not fair to be prejudiced against those whose race, religion or colour aren't the same as ours. ~ Celine Dion

It's ironic when black non-Muslims say Islam is not a religion that uplifts black people when two of the most celebrated black heroes in recent history were both Muslim; Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. ~ Habeeb Akande

Predatory animals usually devour prey in order to convert flesh into fuel. Most human predators, however, seek power, not food. To destroy or damage something is to take its power. This applies equally to a political movement, a government, a campaign, a career, a marriage, a performance, a fortune, or a religion. To push a pie into the face of the world's richest man is to take his power, if only for a moment. ~ Gavin De Becker

Religion is a subject which, if the believers used the same "reasoning" to address problems at work as they use to defend their beliefs, they'd soon find themselves unemployed. And if they found their child applying that kind of "reasoning" on a homework assignment they'd wonder what the hell was the wrong with their child. ~ Dave Champion

The student of Comparative Religions will be able to perceive the influence of the Hermetic Teachings in every religion worthy of the name... ~ Three Initiates

Religion possesses no solution of the problem of life; rather it makes of the problem a wholly insoluble enigma. Religion neither discovers the problem nor solves it: what it does is to disclose the truth that it cannot be solved. ~ Karl Barth

The story Grandpa told us helped me realize that people cannot be divided into groups by ethnicity, religion, or any other feature, only into groups of good, bad, and indifferent people. ~ Savo Heleta

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. ~ George Washington

Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye Forever doth accompany mankind, Hath look'd on no religion scornfully That men did ever find. ~ Matthew Arnold

Imagine that you're an intelligent extraterrestrial, concerned only with verifiable truths. You discover a species that has divided itself into thousands - no, by now millions - of tribal groups holding an incredible variety of beliefs about the origin of the universe and the way to behave in it. Although many of them have ideas in common, even when there's 99% overlap, the remaining one percent's enough to set them killing and torturing each other, over trivial points of doctrine, utterly meaningless to outsiders. How to account for such irrational behavior? ( ... ) religion was the by-product of fear - a reaction to a mysterious and often hostile universe. For much of human prehistory, it may have been a necessary evil - but why was it so much more evil than necessary - and why did it survive when it was no longer necessary? ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Whenever a religion tightens it's rules, a significant number of people break away and go in search of more freedom in their search for spiritual contact. ~ Paulo Coelho

What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Religion is a byproduct of fear. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch! ~ Terry Pratchett

We must seek the loving-kindness of God in all the breadth and open-air of common life. ~ George A. Smith

Journalism is the closest thing I have to a religion, because I believe deeply in the role and responsibility the journalists have to the people of a self-governing community. ~ Bill Kovach

It is quite true that Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. But of course we now know that Marxism is the crack cocaine of the people. ~ Douglas Wilson

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. ~ James Baldwin

Religon and politics are two of the hardest things to talk about, yet they mean so much to us. ~ Levi Jones

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. ~ William James

Christians have ... identified their opponents, whether Jews, pagans, or heretics, with forces of evil, and so with Satan ... Nor have things improved since. The blood-soaked history of persecution, torture, murder, and destruction perpetrated in the name of religion is difficult to grasp, let alohne summarize, from the slaughter of Christians to the Crusades to the Inquisitiion to the Reformation to the European witchcraze to colonialization to today's bitter coflict in the Middle East. ~ Elaine Pagels

The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. ~ Martin Luther

Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent. ~ H.G.Wells

God gives out good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty, and skill 'graciously'
that is, in a completely unmerited way. He casts them across all humanity, regardless of religious conviction, race, gender, or any other attribute to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world. ~ Timothy Keller