Chapter Sixty One: Not Enough

Dear Brethren,

Here are the relevant quotes carefully curated for your immediate reference:

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful

without having to believe that there are

fairies at the bottom of it too?

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide

to the Galaxy

-o0o-

Atheism turns out to be too simple.

If the whole universe has no meaning,

we should never have found out

that it has no meaning . . .

C.S. Lewis

-o0o-

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common

people quiet. Religion is what keeping people

from murdering the rich.

Napoleon Bonaparte

-o0o-

To terrify children with the image of hell,

to consider women an inferior creation --

is that good for the world?

Christopher Hitchens

-o0o-

The legitimate powers of government extend

to such acts only as are injurious to others.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say

there are twenty gods or no god.

It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

-o0o-

When one person suffers from a delusion,

it is called insanity. When many people suffer

from a delusion, it is called a Religion.

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art

of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry

Into Values

-o0o-

The Bible has noble poetry in it . . .

and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity,

and upwards of a thousand lies.

Mark Twain

-o0o-

Science is not only compatible with spirituality;

it is a profound source of spirituality.

When we recognize our place in an immensity

of light-years and in the passage of ages,

when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety

of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of

elation and humility combined, is surely

spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence

of great art or music, or literature, or acts of

exemplary selfless courage such as those of

Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.

The notion that science and spirituality are

somehow mutually exclusive does

a disservice to both.

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World:

Science as a Candle in the Dark

-o0o-

With or without religion, good people can behave

well and bad people can do evil; but for good

people to do evil -- that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg

x----------x

Picture from Pexels.

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