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7a9fa2f
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The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
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christianity
religion
god
yahweh
organized-religion
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Richard Dawkins |
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541101c
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"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?" Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths."
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religion
science
god
cosmology
epistemology
organized-religion
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Carl Sagan |
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d51b882
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...legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' . Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
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religion
separation-of-church-and-state
organized-religion
government
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Thomas Jefferson |
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d46a1f0
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To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries
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religion
organized-religion
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Richard Dawkins |
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3fbd3cc
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Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.
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metaphor
myth
religion
believers
theists
organized-religion
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Joseph Campbell |
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ccf30d6
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I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian.
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religion
inspirational
christian-behavior
organized-religion
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Mahatma Gandhi |
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ec3f999
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God save us from religion.
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inspirational
savior
organized-religion
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David Eddings |
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016ff9a
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The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.
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worship
magistrate
roman-empire
useful
organized-religion
rome
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Edward Gibbon |
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a99fd93
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Nothing in Christianity is original.
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organized-religion
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Dan Brown |
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49b4cc6
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Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh. ...And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion.
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religion
organized-religion
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Dan Brown |
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f0128a0
|
The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.
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religion
organized-religion
atheism
ideas
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Rob Bell |
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2ad828c
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At this gathering [Council of Niceau in 324 AD] many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon -- the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus... until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet... a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal.
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organized-religion
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Dan Brown |
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4ceb9f3
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"It's common knowledge that the "church" is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own."
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religion
clergy
organized-religion
society
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David Eddings |