True love is not: A person’s looks A person’s career or accomplishments Longevity of a relationship Children together Memories made Words spoken or declared Chance meetings you feel are fate Hobbies and interests shared Or, Religious beliefs in c...
I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real humility and at the same time, an absolute belief in one...
Weight (too much or too little) is a by-product. Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life. Even with aching joints, it's not about food. Even with arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure. It's about your desire to flatten your l...
Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions ...
One of the characters in our story, Gavril Ardalionovitch Ivolgin, belonged to the other category; he belonged to the category of "much cleverer" people; though head to toe he was infected with the desire to be original. But this class of person, as ...
I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claim...
With drug use related harms, explanatory models are often presented as predictive tools, even though they ‘are [rarely if ever] predictive of consequent behavior’ or outcomes. Hence, we feel confident in asserting at outset, that prohibition base...
Non-professionals can also misrepresent the personal characteristics, religious beliefs, and appearance, of these therapists, can name-call and otherwise mock them, and can attribute false agendas to them, such as assigning religious motives to secul...
I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim t...
Study so that you are able to meet arguments of your opponents. Equip your ideology with supporting arguments. If you oppose a prevailing belief, if you criticize a great person who is considered to be an incarnation, you will find that your criticis...
We create the world around us based on our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and emotions. Evil, dark forces, dark energy etc. are forms of the “negative” and are all a projections of the self. There is no separation. Once one realizes this, these ener...
Father Dominic Moran: Priest: "I want to know whether your intent is just purely to commit suicide here." Bobby Sands: Bobby Sands: "You want me to argue about the morality of what I'm about to do and whether it's really suicide or not? For one, you'...
Antonio Salieri: [reflecting upon a Mozart score] Astounding! It was actually, it was beyond belief. But they showed no corrections of any kind. Not one. He had simply written down music already finished in his head! Page after page of it as if he we...
It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly wha...
Am I corrupted if I believe that the people who think alike are more admirable and estimable than those who think for themselves? If no one thought differently, then where would our innovations come from? How would we ever advance beyond the status q...
The Book of Mormon proposes a new purpose for America: becoming a realm of righteousness rather than an empire of liberty. Against increasing wealth and inequality, the Book of Mormon advocates the cause of the poor. Against the subjection of the Ind...
Audio of interview - "Savile was not only abusing all children with or without disabilities in group settings or in hospital settings, he was also invoking belief systems, doing rituals, making children believe that he had extra powers and that if th...
Another way to describe the dilemma for religious faith is that pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability. While it is possible to believe in God, one has to work much harder at it because the framework of belief ...
Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, 'Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I am voicing in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.' There is a reason that we refer to leaps-of-faith, because th...
The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is car...
In medieval times, contrary to popular belief, most knights were bandits, mercenaries, lawless brigands, skinners, highwaymen, and thieves. The supposed chivalry of Charlemagne and Roland had as much to do with the majority of medieval knights as the...
