All Quotes By Tag: Religion
“To some believers, being on the pill or using a condom is a nonverbal way of telling God to go to hell.”
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“Many millions of pregnancies—many if not most of which have each led to the birth of at least one child—were each used as nothing but a conspicuous means to a secret end called the evasion of abortion.”
“It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.”
“But which one is right? The real gods? The truth?’ I asked.Balthazar smiled gently, as if speaking to a very slow child. ‘That is not for us to judge. Each of us believes what seems true enough to him, and allows others the same luxury. Who can know what happened in the dim dawn of the world? We can barely decide what to have for breakfast without a theological debate – the Nurian law is polite disagreement. We do our best with how the world appears to our own eyes.”
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“The origin of the Form Destroyer is unclear; it is, for instance, not possible to declare whether (one) he was a separate entity from God from the start, uncreated by God but also self-creating, as is God, or (two) whether the Form Destroyer is an aspect of God…”
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“It doesn’t matter which religion I follow as long as long as I am confident in my faith.”
“[Martin] Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.”
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“An aware theist understands that believing in God does not equal the fact of knowing that God exists.”
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“The relationship among faith, knowledge, and belief is suggested by a story involving the famous depth psychologist Carl Jung. In the last year of his life, he was interviewed for a BBC television documentary. The interviewer asked him, “Dr. Jung, do you believe in God?” Jung said, “Believe? I do not believe in God – I know.” The point: the more one knows God, the less faith as belief is involved. But faith as belief still has a role: it can provide a basis for responding even when one does not know for sure, and it can also get one through periods of time in which firsthand experiences of God are lacking.”
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“Resurrection” does not mean resumption of previous existence but entry into a different kind of existence.”
“… rather than God being “out there” in the heights, God is known in the depths of personal experience.”
“One must die to an old way of being in order to enter a new way of being… salvation is resurrection to a new way of being here and now.”
“The castle’s chapel has been remade. The glass-and-gold chandelier still floats in the center of the room, the wires holding it up too thin to be seen by candlelight. All these electric miracles. The windows depicting the angels praising Our Lady have remained intact, as have the panels to Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome. The others—and the enameled paintings in the cupola—have been replaced and reimagined according to the New Scripture. There is the Almighty speaking to the Matriarch Rebecca in the form of a dove. There is the Prophet Deborah proclaiming the Holy Word to the disbelieving people. There—although she protested—is Mother Eve, the symbolic tree behind her, receiving the message from the Heavens and extending her hand filled with lightning. In the center of the cupola is the hand with the all-seeing eye at its heart. That is the symbol of God, Who watches over each of us, and Whose mighty hand is outstretched to both the powerful and the enslaved.”
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“Souls rockin’ pieces around necks, wrists and ankles they only believe in part time and some time. Loud and proud with no get-down.”
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