Religion For Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide To The Uses Of Religion Quotes
"The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true – in terms of being handed down from heaven to the sound of trumpets and supernaturally governed by prophets and celestial beings."
"To save time, and at the risk of losing readers painfully early on in this project, let us bluntly state that of course no religions are true in any God-given sense."
"Attempting to prove the non-existence of God can be an entertaining activity for atheists."
"The premise of this book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling – and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm."
"In a world beset by fundamentalists of both believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts."
"God may be dead, but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions which do not go away when we have been nudged to perceive some scientific inaccuracies in the tale of the seven loaves and fishes."
"Once we cease to feel that we must either prostrate ourselves before them or denigrate them, we are free to discover religions as repositories of a myriad ingenious concepts with which we can try to assuage a few of the most persistent and unattended ills of secular life."
"The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed."
"The strategy outlined in this book will, of course, annoy partisans on both sides of the debate."
"For those interested in the spread and impact of ideas, it is hard not to be mesmerized by examples of the most successful educational and intellectual movements the planet has ever witnessed."
"It hopes to rescue some of what is beautiful, touching and wise from all that no longer seems true."
"In attempting to understand what could have eroded our sense of community, an important role has traditionally been accorded to the privatization of religious belief that occurred in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century."
"Living in gargantuan cities, we tend to be imprisoned within tribal ghettos based on education, class and profession and may come to view the rest of humanity as an enemy rather than as a sympathetic collective we would aspire to join."
"It can be extraordinary and odd to start an impromptu conversation with an unknown person in a public space."
"However, as the congregants in a cathedral start to sing Gloria in Excelsis, we tend to feel that the crowd is nothing like the one we encountered in the shopping malls or the degraded transport hubs outside."
"Appreciating the reasons why we try to acquire status in the first place, the Church establishes conditions under which we can willingly surrender our attachment to class and titles."
"The food was not the most important thing: Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Last Supper, 1311."
"In the seven days of shiva that follow the funeral, there is allowance for a period of cataclysmic confusion."
"We should be allowed to talk gibberish, fasten woollen penises to our coats and set out into the night to party and copulate randomly and joyfully with strangers."
"It was sacred, a parodia sacra, designed to ensure that all the rest of the year things would remain the right way up."
"It should fall to parliaments, police forces, courts and prisons to prevent harm to a citizen’s life or property – but more ambiguous varieties of mischief should remain within the exclusive province of conscience."
"Aware of the inherent complexity of ethical choices, libertarians cannot fail to notice how few issues fall cleanly into unassailable categories of right and wrong."
"To be a parent is inevitably to mediate forcefully in the lives of one’s offspring in the hope that they will some day grow up to be not only law-abiding but also nice."
"Even as they frustrate their children’s immediate wishes, they tend to feel sure that they are guiding them to act in accordance with norms which they would willingly respect if only they were capable of fully developed reason and self-control."
"There is so much that we would like to do but never end up doing and so many ways of behaving that we subscribe to in our hearts but ignore in our day-to-day lives."
"Our downfall lies in our inability to make the most of the freedom that our ancestors painfully secured for us over three centuries."
"Real freedom does not mean being left wholly to one’s own devices; it should be compatible with being harnessed and guided."
"Religions understand this: they know that to sustain goodness, it helps to have an audience."
"The doctrine of Original Sin encourages us to inch towards moral improvement by understanding that the faults we despise in ourselves are inevitable features of the species."
"An adequate evolution of morality from superstition to reason should mean recognizing ourselves as the authors of our own moral commandments."
"It arguably entails a greater feat of the moral imagination to warn against the consequences of making a belittling remark or being sexually aloof."
"The religious perspective on morality suggests that it is in the end a sign of immaturity to object too strenuously to being treated like a child."
"‘The object of universities is not to make skilful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings’—John Stuart Mill."
"Equivalents to the ethical lessons of religion do lie scattered across the cultural canon."
"We have implicitly charged our higher-education system with a dual and possibly contradictory mission: to teach us how to make a living and to teach us how to live."
"Christianity looks at the purpose of education from another angle, because it has an entirely different concept of human nature."
"It is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis... that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life."
"Christianity pictures the mind as a sluggish and fickle organ, easy enough to impress but forever inclined to change its focus and cast its commitments aside."
"The greatest danger they faced was not the oversimplification of concepts but the erosion of interest and support through incomprehension and apathy."
"The methodologies which universities today employ in disseminating culture are fundamentally at odds with the intense, neo-religious ambitions once harboured by lapsed or sceptical Christians."
"We are by no means lacking in material which we might call into service to replace the holy texts; we are simply treating that material in the wrong way."
"A university alive to the true responsibilities of cultural artefacts within a secular age would establish a Department for Relationships, an Institute of Dying and a Centre for Self-Knowledge."
"Christianity has from its beginnings been guided by a simple yet essential observation that has nevertheless never made any impression upon those in charge of secular education: how very easily we forget things."
"St Anthony delivered 10,000 sermons over his lifetime and was able to melt the hearts of the most determined sinners."
"Christianity is focused on helping a part of us that secular language struggles even to name... following Christian terminology, as the soul."
"The redesigned universities of the future would draw upon the same rich catalogue of culture treated by their traditional counterparts, likewise promoting the study of novels, histories, plays and paintings, but they would teach this material with a view to illuminating students’ lives rather than merely prodding at academic goals."
"Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself."
"If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it."
"A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us."
"Flies are so mighty that they can paralyze our minds and eat up our bodies."
"Nothing is surer than that people will be weak."
"Man’s greatness comes from knowing he is wretched."
"Seeking to induct us in a contrary attitude of humility, the Jewish Prayer Book of the United Congregation commends a specific prayer to be said on the occasion of ‘eating a seasonal fruit for the first time in the year’, and another to mark the acquisition of ‘a new garment of significant value’."
"Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who formed man in wisdom and created in him many orifices and cavities."
"It is revealed and known before the throne of Your glory that were one of them to be ruptured or blocked, it would be impossible to survive and stand before You."
"Blessed are You, Lord, Healer of all flesh, who does wondrous deeds."
"For atheists, one of the most consoling texts of the Old Testament should be the Book of Job, which concerns itself with the theme of why bad things happen to good people – a question to which, intriguingly, it refuses to offer up simple, faith-based answers."
"Remove God from this equation and what do we have left? Bellowing humans calling out in vain to an empty sky."
"The gravest problems have no solutions, but it would help never again to have to labour under the illusion that we had been singled out for persecution."
"Religion is above all a symbol of what exceeds us and an education in the advantages of recognizing our paltriness."
"Art is the sensuous presentation of ideas crucial to the health of our souls."
"Christianity was never troubled by the notion of charging art with an educative, therapeutic mission."
"The challenge is to rewrite the agendas for our museums so that art can begin to serve the needs of psychology as effectively as, for centuries, it has served those of theology."
"What if our minds are susceptible to more than just the books we read? What if we are also influenced by the houses, hospitals, and factories around us?"
"In the absence of gods, we still retain ethical beliefs which are in need of being solidified and celebrated."
"Religious architecture can perform a critical function in relation to this egoism, because of its capacity to adjust our impressions of our physical – and as a consequence also our psychological – size, by playing with dimensions, materials, sounds, and sources of illumination."
"To be made to feel small by something mighty, noble, accomplished, and intelligent is to have wisdom presented to us along with a measure of delight."
"It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much."
"A Temple to Reflection would lend structure and legitimacy to moments of solitude."
"There is in the end room in the world for as many different kinds of temple as there are varieties of need."
"Writing books can’t be enough if one wishes to change things. Thinkers must learn to master the power of institutions for their ideas to have any chance of achieving a pervasive influence on the world."
"We cannot be adequately marked by ideas unless, in addition to being delivered through books, lectures, and newspapers, they are also echoed in what we wear, eat, sing, decorate our houses with, and bathe in."
"The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing."
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."