A Quote by Wendy Kaminer

In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.

Wendy Kaminer

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Authoritarian Cause Faith Forms Frequent Function Gullibility More Questioning Religion Rewards Stupidity

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Wendy Kaminer
American - Lawyer
Born: December 28, 1949

Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest.... But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

Wendy Kaminer

Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.

Wendy Kaminer

Our current tax code is one that was designed by and for the benefit of politicians and lobbyists. It punishes achievement and rewards laziness. It punishes the voting blocks unimportant to politicians, and rewards voting blocks who keep them in office.

Neal Boortz

A faith in culture is as bad as a faith in religion; both expressions imply a turning away from those very things which culture and religion are about. Culture as a collective name for certain very valuable activities is a permissible word; but culture hypostatized, set up on its own, made into a faith, a cause, a banner, a platform, is unendurable. For none of the activities in question cares a straw for that faith or cause. It is like a return to early Semitic religion where names themselves were regarded as powers.

C. S. Lewis

The key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth.

Peter Abelard

The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his Joan of Arc when he said against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable.

Christopher Hitchens

Men accept without questioning that this world is real and important and worthwhile. This is faith. Philosophy is the ongoing questioning of this faith.

Josiah Royce

Too frequent rewards indicate that the general is at the end of his resources; too frequent punishments that he is in acute distress.

Sun Tzu

Often what passes for faith in this world is little more than gullibility.

Joseph B. Wirthlin

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

Harry Browne

Religion should unite all hearts and cause wars and disputes to vanish from the face of the earth; it should give birth to spirituality, and bring light and life to every soul. If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division, it would be better to be without it... Any religion which is not a cause of love and unity is no religion.

Abdu'l-Bahá

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

Albert Einstein

A circus is like a mother in whom one can confide and who rewards and punishes.

Burt Lancaster

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

John Steinbeck

Stupidity assumes two forms, it speaks or is silent. Mute stupidity is bearable.

Honore de Balzac

I am ashamed of some christians because they have so much dependence on Parliment and the law of the land. Much good may Parliment ever do to true religion except by mistake! As to getting the law of the land to touch our religion, we earnestly cry, `Hands off! Leave us alone.' Your Sunday bills and all other forms of the act-of-Parliment religion seem to me to be all wrong. Give us a fair field and no favor, and our faith has no cause to fear. Christ wants no help from Caesar.

Charles Spurgeon

A Quote by Wendy Kaminer

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