Baruch Spinoza Quotes

Campaigning against religion can be socially counter-productive. If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable, many young people raised in a faith-based culture will stick with their religion and be lost to science.

Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical it is pathetic. All religion cannot be true because some of them are so diametrically opposed to each other.

There is no right religion, and no one can prove that there is.

I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it's kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don't know about any others.

The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.

Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy.

If religion comes into the public square, it is as vulnerable as any other human institution to be pelted with produce. Ignorance does not become wisdom just because you gussy it up with the Gospels.

Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth - about others.

There can be no living culture in the world if you cannot criticize its foundations –- the religion. We lack the courage to ask any question about any religious issue. For example, as a Muslim, I cannot say a single word about the Prophet Moses. The Prophet Moses did not say anything to me as a Muslim, whereas the Israeli Jew can criticize Moses and all the prophets in the Torah, and he can even question the divinity of the Torah. We, in Arab society, do not understand the meaning of freedom. We say that freedom means writing an article. Freedom is much deeper than that.

The decision on the Buddhas was made according to Islamic rules. It was not done to insult any particular religion, but once an Islamic order is made, it cannot be changed.

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?

All the better; they do not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord if I did not dread scandal. But since they want it that way, I enter gladly on the path that is opened to me, with the consolation that my departure will be more innocent than was the exodus of the early Hebrews from Egypt.

I have mastered the principles of several religions. They have all shocked me by the violence which I should have to do to my reason to accept the dogmas of any one of them.

There is, in fact, nothing about religious opinions that entitles them to any more respect than other opinions get. On the contrary, they tend to be noticeably silly.

All the drama you see about Christianity or the Catholic religion? People are seeing through that, and there are really authentic people out there with faith.

Every single university student should study philosophy. You need to lead the examined life and question your beliefs. If you don't learn critical thinking, then political debate degenerates into a contest of slogans.

I have taught Philosophy, Religious Studies, English Literature, Cultural Studies, Writing and Publishing Studies, Critical Thinking.

In general, I agree with Socrates that what democracies badly need is the examined life, and we need to think critically about ourselves.

I am an atheist, and I believe that religion should not be in the classrooms; it has to be in the churches. In the classrooms, you have to form citizenship, not people with religious beliefs, that corresponds to the private sphere.

At Chicago I offer a course on Emotion, Reason and the Law that law students just love. But I am not there as a lawyer, my job is to teach philosophy.

Something happens in school sometimes where you're like, 'Oh, I'm not an expert, and I have to defer to people who are.' And it happens not just in school: it happens in religion, too. Defer to the experts. A printing press is a big deal - they got the Bible, and all of a sudden they could read it for themselves.

If you don't have religious fallibilism, you have immense problems.

I never went through a wave of hating Christianity, even though my parents were born-again Christians, and there were a lot of ideas that were being practiced that I think were misguided.

I don't like it when religions take it to the point where they discredit all other religions, because how could one sector of people have figured it out and know that that's it? But I do think that there's so much beauty in a lot of the stories or scriptures.

The first thing you get from the humanities, when they're well taught, is critical thinking. Philosophy in particular can play that role, not just in universities but in schools as well.