Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it?
More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.
As J. B. S. Haldane said when asked what evidence might contradict evolution, 'Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.
The truly adult view [...] is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.
Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.
The fact that we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of something does not put existence and non-existence on an even footing.
most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, without first immersing ourselves in books of Pastafarian theology etc.
I seek the Will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also.
Schizoaffective disorder is a big mental mash-up of a disease. It combines just about every disorder, from depression, delusions, and paranoia to mania, schizophrenia and hallucinations. My mother bounced between all of these regularly while raising ...
We keep electing council members for appearance sake, it doesn’t mean anything, and it is just a show for the people, so that they may sleep well at night with their delusion of peace.
All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion.
You cannot stare evil in the face; it has no face. It has no body, no bones, no blood. Any attempt to describe it ends in glibness and self-delusion.
Correct the blunders on your face made through self-delusion – this would be far more fitting than to want to teach me, which is just as if a sow trying to teach Minerva.
Mortals live but their souls are little more than raw energy coursing through flesh. When they die that energy is broken down and returned to the cosmos. There is no heaven, and no hell. Only delusion.
In East Asia generally, the notion of a Supreme Being, so essential to Western religions, is replaced by that of a , an impersonal perfection from which beings including man are separated only by delusion.
The victim mindset produces a delusion of fault and blame that blinds you from the simple truth of cause and effect.
I think each family has a funhouse logic all its own, and in that distortion,in that delusion, all behavior can seem both perfectly normal and crazy.
We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease.
While liberals are leery of religious fundamentalism in general, they consistently imagine that all religions at their core teach the same thing and teach it equally well. This is one of the many delusions borne of political correctness.
The most common reason we stumble into the delusion of powerlessness is that we're afraid of what other people would do or say or feel if we were to act as we wanted.
The mind is just a delusion not a reality. If the materials are perception of our mind, then why we cannot turn into handsome guys and beautiful ladies without putting a hundred grams of makeup powder?
