All the great mystical religions put a strong emphasis on the redeeming qualities of sex.
Prayer does not change God, it changes us. It deepens insight, increases intuitive perception, expands consciousness. It transforms personality.
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse.
There were many reasons we broke up. There was a religious difference: I'm a Catholic, and she's the devil.
The days of discriminating against religious institutions simply because they are religious must come to an end.
So always, if we look back, concern for face-to-face morality, and its modern emphasis on justice as well, have historically evolved as religious issues.
The ceremonial and religious uses of psychedelics are much older than their recreational uses and abuses. For most of their history, they have been mysterious, dangerous substances and must be treated respectfully.
If a man wishes to have God recognized in the constitution of our country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him remember that hundreds of millions of men, women, and children have been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this god.
My world view has always been that there's just an enormous amount of cultural and religious diversity out there, all of which is really worth taking in.
If you really want to love Jesus, first learn to suffer, because suffering teaches you to love.
Within my own lifetime, I have seen the most ferocious assaults on Christian faith and morals; first on the part of the intellectual community, and then on the part of the government. . . the federal government has not even tried to conceal its hostility to religion.
The typical WW1 soldier was not an intellectual like Ernst Jünger or Wilfred Owen, but was a peasant draftee from Galicia or Bavaria or Sicily, with all the traditional religious ideas. The hothouse atmosphere of war brought everyone into a supernatural-oriented universe of ghosts and apparitions.
I don't think the 911 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.
The US empowered the Shi'a Islamic political groups and marginalised a big part of Iraq who were recognised as Sunni people. It was only to be expected that the next step would be for the sectarian religious dynamics to surface, for one religious group to be fighting another religious group.
There are students whose religious upbringing is going to make them feel uncomfortable in a class where certain kinds of secular ideas are presented. There are students whose ideas about history or sexuality are going to be similarly challenged to question, to affirm or to change those ideas. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be exposed to them; that's why they're at school. That's why they come to university: to be taught how to think well and critically about material that they're being presented with. But it's the teacher who is certified to teach them how to do that.
Our Bodies, Ourselves is the bible for women's health--It has served as a way for women, across ethnic, racial, religious, and geographical boundaries, to start examining their health from a perspective that will bring about change.
Persecution on racial and religious grounds has absolutely no place in a nation given over to liberty.
If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one. But we are a country - USA - that likes to be punitive. We want to restrict. It is a kind of religious fervor run amuck.
Now I realize it's fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we're told we'll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.
I grew up Catholic. I'm not religious now but I would say that I'm a very spiritual person and you're always in search of answers.
