#christianity

For glory befits God because of His majesty,while lowliness befits man because it unites us with God. ↗

— St. Diadochos

#humility #mysticism #religion #religion

Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable--the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars. ↗

— Rodney Stark

#science #religion

On the ethics of war the Quran and the New Testament are worlds apart. Whereas Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, the Quran tells us, 'Whoso commits aggression against you, do you commit aggression against him' (2:194). The New Testament says nothing about how to wage war. The Quran, by contrast, is filled with just-war precepts. Here war is allowed in self-defense (2:190; 22:39), but hell is the punishment for killing other Muslims (4:93), and the execution of prisoners of war is explicitly condemned (47:4). Whether in the abstract is is better to rely on a scripture that regulates war or a scripture that hopes war away is an open question, but no Muslim-majority country has yet dropped an atomic bomb in war. ↗

— Stephen R. Prothero

#ethics #islam #religion #scripture #war

Why, I can't help wondering, is God thought to need such ferocious defence? One might have supposed him amply capable of looking after himself. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#religion #science #religion

All Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist. ↗

— N.T. Wright

#future #religion #religion

Just as the Torah and Bible teach concern for those in distress, the Koran instructs all Muslims to make caring for widows, orphans, and refugees a priority. ↗

— Greg Mortenson

#christianity #islam #jodaisn #koran #religion

The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics. ↗

— Sam Harris

#free-will #god #religion #religion

No egoism is so insufferable as the Christian with regard to his soul. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#christians #egoism #error #hubris #pride

The disobedience if Eve in the Genesis story has been used to justify women's inequality and suffering in many Christian traditions. Thus, what is understood as women's complicity in evil leads much traditional theological reflection on suffering to offer the "consequent admonition to 'grin and bear it' because such is the deserved place of women." Similarly, when Jesus is seen as a divine co-sufferer, the potentially liberating narratives of Jesus as a revolutionary leader who takes the side of the poor and dispossessed can be ignored in favor of religious beliefs more interested in Jesus as a stoic victim. Christ's suffering is inverted and used to justify women's continued suffering in systems of injustice by framing it as redemptive. ↗

— Melissa V. Harris-Perry

#christianity #religion #women #religion

When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. ↗

— Hsin Hsin Ming

#christianity #hate #life #living #love