Steven Pinker Quotes

I am fascinated with religion or things that people believe in and question that. I think it's interesting.

Indeed, in view of its function, religion stands in greater need of a rational foundation of its ultimate principles than even the dogmas of science.

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

I hold that religion and faith are two different things.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

Religion is the solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

Religion enabled society to organise itself to debate goodness, just as Greek drama had once done.

Religion is the root of so much misery in the world, and I've always thought there is lack of criticism against it.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

I love religion and have contemplated going back to school to get a world religion degree.

In the forefront of science, there is not much difference between religion and science. People harbor beliefs. That's what happens when people believe something religiously.

Religion is just mind control.

Religion and philosophy, philosophy and religion - they're two words which are both... different. In spelling.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

Religion and science look at reality differently.

Through some combination of culture and biology, our minds are intuitively receptive to religion.

Religion, in any form, is always interesting to me because of how powerful it is. Not even the religion itself, but to the people that follow it... The effect that it has had on people's minds.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

It is clear that rituals and sacrifices can bring people together, and it may well be that a group that does such things has an advantage over one that does not. But it is not clear why a religion has to be involved. Why are gods, souls, an afterlife, miracles, divine creation of the universe, and so on brought in?