Has any music ever come as close to lifting the veil as Allegri's Miserere Mei? The sound one hears at time 4:48 (ironically the same number as in a much more modern, and in its own way much sadder work of art) in the video below seems to reach as close to the elusive sublime/divine (take your pick) as one could imagine. Little wonder that legend has Mozart "stealing" this music from the Vatican, after hearing it as a boy in the Sistine Chapel and then writing it down from memory.
Look. Believe what you like in a free society, but I?m afraid you?ve got to recognise yourself as a civil society institution which doesn?t have any more right to privileges and charitable statuses and exemptions from laws than any other civil society organisation - A.C. Grayling http://newhumanist.org.uk/2536?rss=latestarticles#
Most educated people are aware that we're the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun's demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae - Sir Martin Rees
Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic? - Lily Tomlin
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion - Abraham Lincoln
What's the big deal about going to some building every Sunday, I mean, isn't God everywhere? Don't you think the almighty has better things to worry about than where one little guy spends one measly hour of his week? And what if we've picked the wrong religion? Every week we're just making God madder and madder? - all Homer Simpson
What's the big deal about going to some building every Sunday, I mean, isn't God everywhere - Homer Simpson
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further - Richard Dawkins
This world isn't for religious wimps, throw back scientologists or will-o'-the-wisp arrogant achievers, it's for the very brave and very real undercurrent who are only interested in passing the facts down the line in good faith, regardless of the scorn, ridicule and suspicion they endure, and regardless of an increasing danger they face from religious fanatics - Roy Harper http://www.royharper.co.uk/shop/display_page.php?page=diary/entry21
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness - Dalai Lama