faith system Quotes

I don't understand a belief that there is an invisible being in the sky who watches over us all the time and keeps score and who throws you in a burning pit. I think that's very limiting, very antihuman. It's the way they devised for helping to control people because if they can make you believe in an invisible man who's going to hurt you later, they can make you believe anything!

Christianity is a formula: it is nothing more.

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circustance.

Christianity is such a silly religion.

Some of the greatest Christians I know are people who don't actually have a kind of faith system that they believe in. But, in their activity, the way they conduct themselves, there's a goodness there.

The facts of science are real enough, and so are the techniques that scientists use, and so are the technologies based on them. But the belief system that governs conventional scientific thinking is an act of faith.

I wouldn't burden any decent system of faith by participating in it... I'm not agnostic. Just nonpartisan. Theological Switzerland, that's me.

Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.

I don't believe in religion, for I don't see that your religious people are any better than the rest.

What is religion? I want to remove the chaff from the grain. For me it is not what it is for the common people. If you take away certain social customs, they think you have taken away religion. For me it means purifying it.

When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.

At the heart of every faith system is a bargain: on one side there is the comfort that comes from a narrative that suggests human life has cosmic significance, and on the other a duty to yield to moral commands that can, in the moment, seem rather inconvenient.

The gospel is a reasonable system, and it appeals to men's understanding; it is a matter for thought and consideration, and it appeals to the conscience and reflecting powers.