We think of religion as the symbolic expression of our highest moral ideals; we think of magic as a crude aggregate of superstitio...ns. Religious belief seems to become mere superstitious credulity if we admit any relationship with magic. On the other hand our anthropological and ethnographical material makes it extremely difficult to separate the two fields.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about th...e ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am a Wasp only in the genetic sense; the P does not quite apply. As an Episcopalian I am technically an Anglican Catholic, meani...ng that I have a real feel for theological dottiness untainted by deeper questions of religious belief. I have no religious beliefs to speak of, but I stand four-square with the Highs against the Lows on Latin and incense, and I will go to bat for transubstantiation even though it means nothing to me one way or the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying ...some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be establish...ed, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, be infringed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing... that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction between... our present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think it saves much confusion to regard religion as quite distinct from morality, or the right conduct of life--as having necess...arily nothing to do with these, but as a system of faith and worship, a belief in something extranatural.... Indeed, the most religious people are by no means the most moral. Hence it is that religion so rarely changes the man, or makes him practically any better. Let us keep things separated, religion by itself, and morality by itself. Religion implies a belief in the supernatural; in a personal deity who takes sides with or against us. A man may be pure, noble, virtuous, high-minded, spiritual, and not have a religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to government founded on force. There is not, among the most r...eligious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God's existence, God's ...justice, God's love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »