All Quotes By Tag: Religion

“A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds…this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can’t be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics.”

“Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”

“Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you. Amen.”

“If you can show people how to build castles, make sure you do not neglect building and nurturing your own.”

“Are we alone? Over time, you will come up with various answers to that same nagging question. Eventually one day it will occur to you that this endless asking is the answer you have been looking for. The fact that we have an ongoing dialogue with the universe is proof enough that there is “something” out there.”

“Thus we arrive at the singular conclusion that of all the information passed by our cultural assets it is precisely the elements which might be of the greatest importance to us and which have the task of solving the riddles of the universe and of reconciling us to the sufferings of life — it is precisely those elements that are the least well authenticated of any.”

“At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client’s back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the needle turned and said, ‘Jesus is cool, it’s just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.’ This profound, if crass, statement recognizes that the power of the gospel lay in its ability to be a counter-cultural and revolutionary force – not only a story to believe, but a distinctive way of life. The man’s comment prompted me to consider the questions: Am I in some measure complicit in the domestication of Jesus?”

“They knew how to live with nature and get along with nature. They didn’t try too hard to be all men and no animal. That’s the mistake we made when Darwin showed up. We embraced him and Huxley and Freud, all smiles. And then we discovered that Darwin and our religions didn’t mix. Or at least we didn’t think they did. We were fools. We tried to budge Darwin and Huxley and Freud. They wouldn’t move very well. So, like idiots, we tried knocking down religion. We succeeded pretty well. We lost our faith and went around wondering what life was for. If art was no more than a frustrated outflinging of desire, if religion was no more than self-delusion, what good was life? Faith had always given us answer to all things. But it all went down the drain with Freud and Darwin. We were and still are lost people.”

“Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure. ”

“But miracles are not for the asking; they come only when the stern eyes of God droop shut for a moment, and Our Lady takes advantage of His inattention to grant an illicit mercy. God…is an Anglican, whereas Our Lady is of the True Faith; the two of Them have an uneasy relationship, unable to agree on anything, except that if They divorce, the Devil will leap gleefully into the breach.”

“Spirituality is not adopting more beliefs and assumptions but uncovering the best in you.”

“The only thing more dangerous than an idea is a belief. And by dangerous I don’t mean thought-provoking. I mean: might get people killed.”

“When we passed a Catholic church, I recalled, he said, “You think your dad’s a good chemist? They’re turning soda crackers into meat in there. Can your dad do that?”

“I’ll stop eating steak when you stop killing spiders.” Absurdity: comparing cows to spiders. Arachnids are pure evil. They’re like a cigarette manufacturer or a terrorist. They’re organized religion on eight legs.”

“I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God.”