My poor family. I try to protect them from my work. My parents are very religious, and my brother and sister are very normal. We have an understanding, I think, that what I do isn't quite down their alley.
We should resist the temptation to identify our religious convictions with the platform of a party or the platitudes of favored politicians.
Religious doctrines … are all illusions, they do not admit of proof, and no one can be compelled to consider them as true or to believe in them.
In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.
All major religious traditions carry basically the same message that is love, compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives. " Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them. " This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Labour to grow better under all your afflictions, lest your afflictions grow worse, lest God mingle them with more darkness, bitterness and terror.
I'm more spiritual than I am religious. I don't go to church; I go to the beach.
It's when people begin using their religion as just a way of getting power over other people that scares me. I'm afraid that's what's going on in a lot of cases right now. When people deliberately tell lies, Creationism for instance, and pretend, "Oh, it's not really religion. " I mean they know they're lying, and yet they're the religious people. There's something wrong there.
To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
You know what this is, I suppose. Religious melancholia. Stop while there is time. If you dive, you dive into insanity.
At the bottom of religious persecution is the doctrine of self-defence; that is to say, the defence of the soul. If the founder of Christianity had plainly said: 'It is not necessary to believe in order to be saved; it is only necessary to do, and he who really loves his fellow-men, who is kind, honest, just and charitable, is to be forever blest' - if he had only said that, there would probably have been but little persecution.
The values derived from religious belief will not - and should not - be accepted as part of the public morality unless they are shared by the pluralistic community at large, by consensus.
Doing is a function of the body. Being is a function of the soul. The body is always doing something. Every minute of every day it's up to something. It never stops, it never rests, it's constantly doing something.
If you are honest, you are in the minority; if you are clever, you are in the minority; if you do not believe in any religious craps, you are in the minority! If you are not in the herd, you are in the minority! What a glorious privilege to be in this kind of minorities!
I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry.
Between being praised and persecuted condoned and condemned I might understandably have become bewildered particularly at the brand of ethics sometimes displayed by the staunch defenders of Christianity. But of one thing I am sure: I am sure that I fought not only for what I earnestly believed to be right but for the truest kind of religious freedom intended by the First Amendment the complete separation of church and state.
Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions, and financial ploys are not merely counter-productive but trivial.
Arise my soul, and review your deeds which have preceeded from you. Scrutinize them closely, and shed the rain of your tears, declaring openly to Christ your thoughts and deeds, so that you may be justified.
In the name of religious freedom, relativists have banished religion from the public square. They say they have to destroy public displays of religion in order to protect it. They response has been a culturewide gag order on Christianity in governmental and even commercial circumstances.