Violence cannot be religion. And true religion cannot be violent.
Godliness matters, not God.
Let the poor be your god, and your service to them, be your religion.
Have you heard the songs they sing here in Kilanga?” he asked. “They’re very worshipful. It’s a grand way to begin a church service, singing a Congolese hymn to the rainfall on the seed yams. It’s quite easy to move from there to the parable of the mustard seed. Many parts of the Bible make good sense here, if only you change a few words.” He laughed. “And a lot of whole chapters, sure, you just have to throw away.” “Well, it’s every bit God’s word, isn’t it?
Forced indoctrination exacts blind and ignorant obedience.
God' is a title, not a name - so be clearly mindful which (spirit) 'gods' you invite into your soulful experience.
It is not a matter of whether one is biased or not. It is really a question of which bias is the best bias with which to be biased.
God is the creation of human mind in the absence of knowledge.
Human intellect has always evolved by rejecting outdated information in favor of new truths. This is how the species has evolved. In Darwinian terms, a religion that ignores scientific facts and refuses to change its beliefs is like a fish stranded in a slowly drying pond and refusing to flip to deeper water because it doesn't want to believe its world has changed.
Most amazing fact about Science is that it offers you liberty.It gave you freedom to think and go beyond your imagination.It never imposes any restrictions on human thoughts unlike Religion.Religion is limited.There are boundaries in religion that restrict the humanity to think beyond the reality.
Science is based on measurement and inference, which we can all look at with open access to swim in the great ocean of truth and experience things for ourselves, instead of being made to sit on the beach and told stories about the waves and the waters. That is what religion does.
If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don't. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment's additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be. But - and here's an interesting point - for the most part it doesn't want to be much.
The absence of a decisive higher jury has long affected the battle between science and religion.
Everything is Circumstantial.
Deep in the psychological caves of their mental platonic darkness, there is no rainbow colour or light of reason in many areas of their psyche, their inner mind. Instead they have married themselves to a dragon of a creature, so terrible that even Jupiter feared this monstrosity of pompous ignorance. Their hope of the beauty of Cupid is just a lovemaking session in the dark room of ignorance of both science and religion.
The difference between the sacred — be it an object or religious method — and the profane is self explanatory (Durkheim 1965:52-54), so let us move on to magic, which I define as production without labor. Sociology of religion: A critical primer (2015; 9780970491923; pg.9)
Religion is the symbolic and/or ritualized cultural system of knowledge, which informs behavior, that offers one means of surviving this complex thing we call ‘Life.’ Sociology of religion: A critical primer (2015; 9780970491923; pg.101)
Ritual is a habit and/or a compulsion that at least fulfills one of the following functions: (1) to give worship to a particular divine agent; (2) to invoke remembrance of either a past or future religious event; and/or (3) a pseudo-technology that is used to control or change the believer’s environment. Sociology of religion: A critical primer (2015; 9780970491923; pg.101)
According to [Dr. Erich] Fromm, what motivates so many Believers, regardless of religious affiliation, is the image of the Divine, an image that many Believers try to emulate (e.g. Imitatio Christi). Fromm states that within a humanistic religion, “God is the image of man’s [and/or woman’s] higher self, a symbol of what man [or woman] potentially is or ought to become” but “in an authoritarian religion, God becomes the sole possessor” of human’s reason and love. Erich Fromm's contributions to sociological theory (2017; 9780970491947; pg.34)
The answer to the question, 'What should I believe, and why should I believe it?' is generally a scientific one. Believe a proposition because it is well supported by theory and evidence; believe it because it has been experimentally verified; believe it because a generation of smart people have tried their best to falsify it and failed; believe it because it is true (or seems so). This is a norm of cognition as well as the core of any scientific mission statement. As far as our understanding of the world is concerned--there are no facts without values.
