It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it - Thomas Pynchon
It also became apparent to him that numerous neuroses spring from a disregard for this fundamental characteristic of the psyche [religion], especially during the second half of life - Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Flamingo edition 1989, p12
I'm not against religion in the sense that I feel I can't tolerate it, but I think written into the rubric of religion is the certainty of its own truth. And since there are 6,000 religions currently on the face of the earth, they can't all be right. And only the secular spirit can guarantee those freedoms and it's the secular spirit that they contest - Ian McEwan http://www.amazon.com/The-Believer-Book-Writers-Talking/dp/1932416943/?…
I'm a neuroscientist and also an atheist, but I'm not an anti-theist." "Nor do I believe that science...can somehow persuade people that religion is nonsense." "For the vast majority of people, religion is a way of life. It is about community and music, place and food, comfort and emotional support. It is, like all of human culture and experience, a function of our peculiar neurobiology, and we should try to appreciate it as such - Michael Graziano, http://bigthink.com/idea_feed_items/2852
For atheists, everything in the world is enough and every day is holy - Penn Jillette http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/24/penn-jillette-every-d…
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble - Joseph Campbell
Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all - Joan D. Chittister
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytising zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas - Aldous Huxley
And what if we've picked the wrong religion? Every week we're just making God madder and madder? - Homer Simpson
Fascinating In Our Time episode on Gnosticism, The Gnostics divided the universe into two domains: the visible world and the spiritual one. They believed that a special sort of knowledge, or gnosis, would enable them to escape the evils of the physical world and allow them access to the higher spiritual realm. The Gnostics were regarded as heretics by many of the Christian Church Fathers, but their influence was important in defining the course of early Christianity. A major archaeological discovery in Egypt in the 1940s, when a large cache of Gnostic texts were found buried in an earthenware jar at Nag Hammadi, enabled scholars to learn considerably more about their beliefs.