Top 1200 Criticism Of Religion Quotes & Sayings - Page 16

Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God. These duties are, internally, love and adoration: externally, devotion and obedience; therefore provision should be made for maintaining divine worship as well as education. But each one has a right to entire liberty as to religious opinions, for religion is the relation between God and man; therefore it is not within the reach of human authority.

Religion is here to unite us. It's not here to divide us. If it's dividing us, it's not God's religion, it's something else.

Whenever philosophy has taken into its plan religion, it has ended in skepticism; and whenever religion excludes philosophy, or the spirit of free inquiry, it leads to willful blindness and superstition.

Cujus region, ejus rligio (Whoever's reign, his religion) ... He who owns the country owns the Church, and he that makes your laws for you has the right to make your religion for you.

It seems to me that this debate, whether Islam is a religion of peace or not, really, it's irrelevant for outsiders. It's for Muslims to decide whether it's a religion of peace or not.

To have dominion by religion, is to have dominion over men's souls, thus over their very spiritual life, and to use the Divine things, which are in their religion, as the means

Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get at a man through his own religion and not through yours.

Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.

...it becomes clear that, given our diversity, no single religion satisfies all humanity. ... And since the majority does not practice religion, I am concerned to try to find a way to serve all humanity without appealing to religious faith.

The starting point is the recognition that throughout history, religion has been a cause of bloodshed, and it remains so today. Because religion has contributed to the world's problems, it must develop specific and practical ways to help solve those problems.

Today courts wrongly interpret separation of church and state to mean that religion has no place in the public arena, or that morality derived from religion should not be permitted to shape our laws. Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression. Secularists want to empty the public square of religion and religious-based morality so they can monopolize the shared space of society with their own views. In the process they have made religious believers into second-class citizens.

Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service one can render him.

Politics are wack - it's mostly about the characters instead of the issues, like how religion is about religion instead of spirituality.

Religion is a way to make order from chaos, and I think economics is not dissimilar. In religion and in economics, you're trying to figure out the way we perceive the world and move through it, and that's what I like to learn.

I had a multicultural exposure; that's why I don't believe in a particular religion. I have respect for most because I grew up surrounded by so many. I don't judge people by that, and I feel extremely offended when people categorise based on race, religion, or gender.

Religion is the opium of the people translated from the German Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkessometimes misquoted as opiate of the people.

I think religion is as flawed an enterprise as any other human endeavor, but the interests and ambitions of religion are the right interests and ambitions.

Religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretension to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul.

Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.

If God and man are in themselves one, and if religion is the human side of this unity then must this unity be made evident to man in religion, and become in him consciousness and reality.

Rather than converting people from one organised religion to another organised religion, we should try to convert people from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation and from cruelty to compassion.

What is religion? I want to remove the chaff from the grain. For me it is not what it is for the common people. If you take away certain social customs, they think you have taken away religion. For me it means purifying it.

Religion was quite a thing in our house - we were Baptists. Some Sundays I went to church three times. If there was a talk on missionary work in the afternoon, I could be there all bloody day. But religion took its first big knock after Dad died.

I have always been reasonably leery of religion because there are so many edicts in religion, 'thou shalt not,' or 'thou shalt.' I wanted my world of the future to be clear of that.

The 21st century - and the atheists - needs the presence of religion, just as religion must deal with the real challenges and the thinkers of the day in order to sharpen the conscience and the intelligence of those who study the timeless sacred texts in a spirit of responding to the questions of their time.

That was unfortunate. I should have compared religion with religion and compared Islam not with Trinity College but with Jews, because the number of Jews who have won Nobel Prizes is phenomenally high.

Music does not have colour or religion. If I listen to a song, I don't care about the colour, religion, or country of the singer. It doesn't matter, even if it is in another language, because I love the music.

Some people think that religion is not essential to society. I do not hold this view. I consider the foundation of religion to be essential to the life and practices of a society.

Love is the essence of all religion, mysticism, and philosophy, and for the one who has learned this, love fulfills the purpose of religion, ethics, and philosophy, and the lover is raised above all diversities of faiths and beliefs.

Instead of man to love, we have a man-god to worship . From being the example of devotion, he is its object; the religion of Christ ended with his life , and left us instead but the Christian religion.

Superficial religion consists of merely believing certain truths and doing certain things....such superficial religion is rampant in the world today.

He who possesses science and art, Possesses religion as well; He who possesses neither of these, Had better have religion.

The name of the new religion, said Rumfoord, is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. . . The two chief teachings of this religion are these: Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

Science is like society and trade, in resting at bottom upon a basis of faith. There are some things here, too, that we can not prove, otherwise there would be nothing we can prove. Science is busy with the hither-end of things, not the thither-end. It is a mistake to contrast religion and science in this respect, and to think of religion as taking everything for granted, and science as doing only clean work, and having all the loose ends gathered up and tucked in. We never reach the roots of things in science more than in religion.

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. Religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion.

Science and religion, religion and science, put it as it may, they are the two sides of the same glass, through which we see darkly until these two focus together, reveal the truth.

I think there's a lot of great beliefs in the Buddhist religion, I think there's a lot of great beliefs in the Christian religion, I think there's a lot of great beliefs in no religion. It just depends on how you feel on the inside.

I don't subscribe to organised religion. I've travelled enough to see that adherents of organised religion often attack adherents of other religions.

Real religion should be something that liberates men. But churches don't want free men who can think for themself and find their own divinity within. When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement.

I have a lot of frustration with religion, organized religion, because it's man-made, because it's man-regulated. And it has nothing to do with my relationship with God.

Islam - a religion horribly misrepresented by terrorists, which is like the IRA saying they represented Irish people. Islam is a BEAUTIFUL religion. would make you cry it's so beautiful... and gentle.

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality.

There must be a realm of truth beyond political competence, that's why there must be a separation of churches, but if religion is bad and a bad religion is one that gives an ultimate sanctity to some particular cause.

Never forget that if you leave your law to judges and your religion to bishops, you will presently find yourself without either law or religion.

I would argue that religion comes from a desire to get to the questions of, 'Where do we come from?' and 'How shall we live?' And I would say I don't need religion to answer those questions.

I don't think being a writer who is religious means you have to write about nothing but religion. When I do write about religion, it's to inform the story, not to push a certain agenda.

Science has only two things to contribute to religion: an analysis of the evolutionary, cultural, and psychological basis for believing things that aren't true, and a scientific disproof of some of faith's claims (e.g., Adam and Eve, the Great Flood). Religion has nothing to contribute to science, and science is best off staying as far away from faith as possible. The "constructive dialogue" between science and faith is, in reality, a destructive monologue, with science making all the good points, tearing down religion in the process.

There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: "Let us be friends."

Like, my feelings on religion are starting to morph. I'm still very much an atheist, except that I don't necessarily see religion as being a bad thing. So, that's a weird thing that I'm struggling with that seems to be offending both atheists and people that are religious.

Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages much sooner than savages become civilized by means of religion and civil government.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Man without religion is the creature of circumstances: Religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above them.

How women view religion's role in society is shaped more by their own country's culture and context than one monolithic view that religion is simply bad for women.

Religion should be subject to commonsense appraisal and rational review, as openly discussible as, say, politics, art and the weather. The First Amendment, we should recall, forbids Congress both from establishing laws designating a state religion and from abridging freedom of speech. There is no reason why we should shy away from speaking freely about religion, no reason why it should be thought impolite to debate it, especially when, as so often happens, religious folk bring it up on their own and try to impose it on others.

I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed.

I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people.

The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God.

One or another man, liberated or cursed, suddenly sees-but even this man sees rarely-that all we are is what we aren't, that we fool ourselves about what's true and are wrong about what we conclude is right. And this man, who in a flash sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams up a religion; and the philosophy spreads and the religion propagates, and those who believe in the philosophy begin to wear it as a suit they don't see, and those who believe in the religion put it on as a mask they soon forget.

Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.

You may be Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist or Baptist or Muslim or Mormon or Jewish or Jain, or you have no religion at all. I'm not interested in your religious background. Because God did not create the universe for us to have religion. He came for us to have a relationship with him.