| About this site |
| About us |
| Our beliefs |
| Your first visit? |
| Contact us |
| External links |
| Good books |
| Visitor essays |
| Our forum |
| New essays |
| Other site features |
| Buy a CD |
| Vital notes |
| Spiritual/ethics |
| Spirituality |
| Morality/ethics |
| Absolute truth |
| Peace/conflict |
| Attaining peace |
| Religious tolerance |
| Religious hatred |
| Religious conflict |
| Religious violence |
| Laws and news |
| Religious laws |
| Religious news |
|
|
 | 'Freedom Fox' : "Annihilating abortuaries is our purest form of worship." He/she is a member of the Army of God, a fundamentalist Christian group which supports the principle of abortion clinic violence, but does not engage in direct action. |
Art:
| Laura Schmidt, "To remind people of myths is to remind people of truth, and art is very capable of that." |
Agnosticism & Atheism:
| Anon:
| ||||
| Francis Bacon: "Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished. But religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men." | ||||
| Annie Besant, in "The Gospel of Atheism:" "[N]o philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism." | ||||
| G.K. Chesterton (1922): "If there were no God, there would be no atheists." from: Where All Roads Lead. | ||||
| Albert Einstein: "I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in Nature." | ||||
| Katharine Hepburn: "I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people." | ||||
| Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, (1723-1789: "If we look back at the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them; and that custom, respect and tyranny support them, in order to make the blindness of man serve their own interest. If the ignorance of nature gave birth to Gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them." | ||||
| Darrell Lambert, an ex-Boy scout, who was expelled as being unfit for scouting because he is not a theist. "I think the only power higher than myself is the power of all of us combined. The interactions we do affect each others' lives. We're all in symbiosis with each other. But other than that, there's no higher power governing what I do." | ||||
| James Morrow: "There are no atheists in foxholes' isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes." | ||||
| Pope John Paul II: "An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason's ability to know the truth, which alone satisfies the human heart's restless quest for meaning." | ||||
| Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 1981-DEC-30 "The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and Atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening." | ||||
| Harun Yahya, Turkish philosopher, "Atheism, which people have tried to for hundreds of years as 'the ways of reason and science,' is proving to be mere irrationality and ignorance." |
Atonement:
This is often referred to as the central tenet of Christianity:
| Julie M. Hopkins: "It is morally abhorrent to claim that God the Father demanded the self-sacrifice of his only Son to balance the scales of justice...A god who punished through pain, despair and violent death is not a god of love, but a sadist and despot." | ||||
| Robert Lowry: "What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus; What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus." From a late 19th century hymn: "Nothing but the Blood." | ||||
| Michael Martin: "All of the historically important theories of the Atonement have serious problems. In particular, they either fail to explain why God sacrificed his son for the salvation of sinners or else make the sacrifice seem arbitrary." | ||||
| St. Paul: "For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." Romans 5:10; King James Version | ||||
| Edward Santella, Amazon.com book reviewer: "...what sort of god requires his son to die to redeem others' guilt? What sort of son would submit? What sort of human being feels redeemed by such a death? Does this theology twist god into being an abuser? When a woman is sent back to her abusing husband who then kills her, how many murderers are there?" 1 | ||||
| William W. Sasser: "There have been several theories of the Atonement developed; some by God-fearing upright men and others by servants of Satan himself." | ||||
| John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop:
| ||||
| Vincent Taylor: "The atonement is accomplished in the work of Christ, whose suffering is vicarious, representative and sacrificial in character; it is on behalf of men [sic], in their name, and for the purpose of their approach to God." | ||||
| Ralph Wilson: "All [6 atonement theories] have elements of truth in them but some are inadequate to stand alone." |
Sponsored link:
Bible:
| Robert Green Ingersoll: "Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning." | ||||
| Martin Luther: "Moses' law cannot be valid simply and completely in all respects for us. We have to take into consideration the character and ways of our land when we want to make or apply laws or rules, because our rules and laws are based on the character of our land and its ways and not on those of the land of Moses, just as Moses' laws are based on the ways and character of his people and not those of ours." Martin Luther's Works, Volume 46, p. 291. | ||||
| Vaughn Roste:
| ||||
| Brian Robertson: "... the Bible, taken as a whole, is not the story of God's changing attitude, but is a story - warts and all - of the human attempt to better understand that which we call God." | ||||
| John Shelby Spong:
|
Bigotry:
| Pat Robertson, in an interview with Molly Ivins in 1993: "Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history." | ||||||||
| Paraphrased exchange on a discussion board:
| ||||||||
| Sydney Smith: "Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out." | ||||||||
| Henry David Thoreau: "It is never too late to give up your prejudices." | ||||||||
| George Washington, in response to a speech by Moses Seixas (1744-1809) referring to past persecutions of the Jews and the new nation's commitment to religious liberty: "...the government of the United States...gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance...." George W Bush, quoted Washington's words in a speech at the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2002." 2 |
Blasphemy:
| George Bernard Shaw: "All great truths begin as blasphemies." |
References used:
- From a review of Rita Nakashima Brock & Rebecca Ann Parker, "Proverbs of Ashes : Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us," Beacon Press, (2002). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
- "To Bigotry No Sanction," Library of Congress, at: http://www.loc.gov/
- Stephen G. Post, in "Works of Love," a newsletter from the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, 2003-OCT-21. Dr. Post is its president.
- "Bishop Spong Q and A," 2006-JUL-26.
- J.S. Spong, "Dallas, Texas: A new vision," A new Christianity for a new world, 2006-OCT-18. Bishop Spong described an event at a gay pride parade where "... a group of Bible-wielding counter demonstrators ... with voices screaming and faces contorted by anger promised us the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah."
|
Home page > Religious Info > Quotes > here |
|
or Home page > Spiritual menu > Quotes > here |
Copyright © 1996 to 2007 by Ontario
Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Copyrights for the individual quotations held by their creators
Last updated: 2007-JAUL-08
Compiled by: B.A. Robinson
|
|
