Religion
Aardvark Magazine - Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Scott Atran (in In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, 2002) - Explaining religion is a serious problem for any evolutionary account of human thought and society. Roughly, religion is
(1) a community's costly and hard-to-fake commitment
(2) to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supernatural agents
(3) who master people's existential anxieties, such as death and deception.
All known human societies, past and present, bear the very substantial costs of religion's material, emotional, and cognitive commitments to factually impossible worlds.
Ophelia Benson - We have to respect everyone’s right to hold irrational beliefs, but we do not have to respect the irrational beliefs themselves.
Pascal Boyer (2001) - Reassuring religion, in so far as it exists, is not found in places where life is significantly dangerous or unpleasant, quite the opposite. One of the few religious systems obviously designed to provide a comforting world-view is New Age mysticism [which] appeared and spread in one of the most secure and affluent societies in history.
Steve Bruce - By having just one God instead of a pantheon of deities (who often operated erratically and at cross purposes), and by confining God to creating and ending the world but not interfering much in between, Christianity permitted a scientific attitude to the material world because it assumed the world to be orderly.
Nicolas de Condorcet - Les amis de la vérité sont ceux qui la cherchent et non ceux qui se vantent de l'avoir trouvée.
Jean Daniel - Au vingtième siècle, on a eu des idéologies qui sont devenues des religions, aujourd’hui on a des religions qui deviennent des idéologies.
Terry Eagleton - Societies become truly secular, not when they dispense with religion, but when they are no longer greatly agitated by it.
The Economist - The sectarian fragmentation that makes Lebanon the Arab World's most tolerant society also tends to generate scrappy, paranoid politics as leaders fear that any change may favour rivals.
Richard Feynman - I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.
Peter Frost - Man has made religion in his own image, but religion has returned the favor.
Stephen Hawking (2010) - There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.
Christopher Hitchens - We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.
Christopher Hitchens - We keep being told, 'Respect faith.' Well, I actually don't, because I don't think that lying to children is a respectable occupation.
Christopher Hitchens - Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.
Christopher Hitchens - Mother Teresa was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud. She was not a friend of the poor - as she claimed to be - she was a friend of poverty; preached it as a gift from God, something to be welcomed, along with other kinds of suffering - wasn't interested in alleviating it.
Eric Hoffer - Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Eric Hoffer - Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.
David Hume - Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?
Søren Kierkegaard - The law for the religious is to act in opposition to cleverness.
Martin Luther - The multitude of books is a great evil.
Michel Onfray - Une religion c'est une secte qui a réussi.
George Orwell - Saints should always be judged guilty until proved innocent.
Bertrand Russell - So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Dan Sperber - Religion creates 'relevant mysteries' rather than simple accounts of events.
Jon Stewart - Reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.
Steve Stewart-Williams - Rather than the human brain evolving for God, God evolved for the human brain.
Will Storr - A cult is a status game that’s exclusive; where you’re not allowed to derive status from anywhere else—not your job, or your family or your friends. If only one group is your sole source of status, you’re at risk for highly irrational behaviors.
Supposed Taliban saying - You may have all the watches, but we have all the time.
Traditional - Cuius regio, eius religio.
Traditionnel - Quand un homme parle à Dieu, c'est qu'il est croyant. Si Dieu lui répond, c'est qu'il est schizophrène.
Miguel de Unamuno - Tous les Espagnols suivent le prêtre. Les uns avec un crucifix, les autres avec un gourdin.
Voltaire - Si Dieu nous a faits à son image, nous le lui avons bien rendu.
Voltaire (Lettre à Frédéric II de Prusse, 5 janvier 1767) - Tant qu’il y aura des fripons et des imbéciles, il y aura des religions.
Robert Anton Wilson - Belief is the death of intelligence.
Yiddish saying - If God lived on earth, people would knock out all His windows (original: Az Got volt gelebt oif der erd, volt men im alleh fenster oisgeshlogen).
