Moral Feelings: recruited to lead plausibility to gods, linked to commitment and solidarity mechanisms; religious morality adds morally competent witness to one’s actions. ibid.
There is indeed a conflict between Science and Religion. ibid.
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are sky-God religions. They are, literally, patriarchal – God is the Omnipotent Father – hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly made delegates. Gore Vidal
According to the Bible, Abraham was the first person to believe in one God. Historically speaking, mankind has preferred to believe in many gods. But for three billion people in the world today – Jews, Christians and Muslims alike – monotheism, the belief in one God, is the cornerstone of their faith. And Abraham is the spiritual father they all have in common. Robert Winston, The Story of God, BBC 2005
It seems to me that all monotheistic religions have their dark side. When you think about all the terrible things that have been done in His name you might well wonder whether one God is one God too many. ibid.
A determination that the government may not endorse a religious message is not a determination that the message itself is harmful, unimportant or undeserving of dissemination. Barbara B Crabb, district judge
Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all ‘faith’ is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: ‘By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.’ It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. ‘Faith’ is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. ‘Faith’ is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence.
But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence.
And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence.
Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters – methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence – such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods – astronomy, geology and history, for instance – they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe?
Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts – whose assertions frequently contradict one another – are in fact sacred? Alan Sokal
The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious – fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance. Thomas Huxley, The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature, 1885
The ... worst sinners, according to Jesus, are ... the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism. Hugh Nibley, Collected Works vol 9 foreword xv-xvi
Some churches at least do the same – We’re going to tell you something unbelievable that you gotta believe ... They alone control Heaven ... You’ve left your brains in the parking lot. John Dominic Crossan
What is wrong with inciting intense dislike of a religion if the activities or teachings of that religion are so outrageous, irrational or abusive of human rights that they deserve to be intensely disliked? Rowan Atkinson
A landmark report that shocked the country: widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children by Catholic-run institutions. Sex, Drugs & Religion news clips, 2010
Over the years charges of sexual abuse have resulted in indictments, convictions or lawsuits against at least sixteen priests from this relatively small diocese. ibid.
That’s been their trick for hundreds of years: they say the word faith and somehow we all have to back off and pretend that what they believe is not destructive. ibid. Bill Maher
Slavery is a very longstanding joyful Christian tradition. ibid. Pastor Deacon Fred Smith
I have sinned against you, my Lord. ibid. Jimmy Swaggart’s confession
What the Internal Revenue Service calls Excessive Compensation: The Bakker’s [Jim & Tammy] raked in at least $10.8. ibid. news report
These folks’ll try to sell you as many planets as they can. ibid. Pastor Deacon Fred
It’s even weird by the standards of other religions. ibid.
There is no devil, so stop blaming your screw-ups on him. ibid. Bill Maher
The Mormons believe in magic underpants – I’m not making that up. ibid. Bill Maher
He [Joseph Smith] was a conman. ibid.
Judge Rutherford: Millions Now Living Will Never Die. ibid. Jehovah Witness US lectures