Erwin McManus Quotes

Subtract miracles from Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, or Toaism, and you have essentially the same religion left. Subtract miracles from Christianity, and you have nothing but the cliches and platitudes most American Christians get weekly (and weakly) from their pulpits.

In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I'd have to suspend a degree of disbelief.

The idea that God's mercy is connected to whether or not I shave is ludicrous, and I need to just trust myself, and that, you know, if I'm deserving of God's mercy, I'll get it, regardless of, you know, my beard.

We need no messiah and no sterile conception of a god menacing us with hell and purgatory.

Religion is the best business. It does have many of the same problems as other business. It has to market, manage, account for and handle money, but it has one profound advantage. Religion does not have to deliver in this life.

To be free from evil thoughts is God's best gift.

I don't really like the word 'religion.' To me, that's like rules and regulations and paying money to send up prayers. That kind of all weirds me out, honestly.

The secret of a person's nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it.

In my opinion, most organized religion does neither agentic service nor relational nurturance very well.

I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.

A Buddhist or a good atheist is as acceptable to God as a good Catholic.

Organized religion preaches Order and Love but spawns Chaos and Fury. Why?

I love and respect all religions and philosophies. I see how they get formed, how they grow up, and how powerful they are. But for me to believe in a specific god - no. Because what I believe is that the infinite, the absolute, is a living being and the only one living being that really exists.

I don't necessarily believe in organized religion.

For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.

I'm not really into religion, OK. I saw a lot of things I did not like when I got into organized religion. I think a lot of people abuse it, I think a lot of people use it, I think a lot of people make it what they want. And me, my faith and my relationship with God is very personal. And it's not anybody's damn business how we talk.

In a lot of Indian societies, spirituality has been lost, I think it's still the best way of looking at the world for Indians - better than any organized religion in this country.

Religion is a disease, but a noble disease.

All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.

Religion, born of the earth's need for the disclosing of a god, is related to and co-extensive with not the individual man, but the whole of mankind.

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.

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

If you think about the great religions that have united large parts of humankind, people believe gods are very concrete - there is an angry old man in the sky, and if I do something wrong, he will punish me.

I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.

I believe a personal relationship with God is healthy, but organized religion has potential for danger, in whatever faith.