REFLECTIONS

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."
-- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
(1729-1781) German Dramatist

The infliction of cruelty with good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
-- Bertrand Russell

A casual stroll through a mental asylum shows that faith proves nothing.
--- Friedrich Nietzche

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be
changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin
"Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be
counted counts"- Albert Einstein

"When you read or study this book(Battle For God), you will inevitably become aware that fundamentalism has little to do with religious truth. It is rather a security seeking, defense mechanism used by frightened people. Fundamentalism rises out of an inner need for certainty that the world will never provide. That is also why there is such anger in fundamentalism, as well as great hostility toward those who are not by their definition "true believers." The people who have written the most hate-filled letters to me, and almost all of the death threats that I have received, have come from those who define themselves as "Bible based, true believers." That should tell us something about both their fear and about the integrity of their belief system."
Bishop John Spong

Edwin Markham wrote:
"He drew a circle that shut me out --
Heretic, rival, a thing to flout --
But love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in."

Voltaire! a name that excites the admiration of men, the
malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a
clergyman, and you will find that you have made a declaration of
war. Pronounce that name, and from the face of the priest the mask
of meekness will fall, and from the mouth of forgiveness will pour
a Niagara of vituperation and calumny. And yet Voltaire was the
greatest man of his century, and did more to free the human race
than any other of the sons of men.

- Robert Ingersoll

Lucretius stated,

On superstition:
"So powerful is religion at persuading to evil." 1. 101.

On luxuries:
"Hot fevers do not depart your body more quickly
If you toss about on pictured tapestries or rich purple coverlets
Than if you lie sick under a poor man’s blanket." 2. 34-36.

On life without philosophy:
"All life is a struggle in the dark." 2. 54.
"After a while the life of a fool is hell on earth." 3. 1023.

On new truths:
"No fact is so obvious that it does not at first produce wonder,
Nor so wonderful that it does not eventually yield to belief." 2. 1026-27.

On reason:
"Such is the power of reason to overcome inborn vices
That nothing prevents our living a life worthy of gods." 3. 321-22.

``When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether
I was an atheist, a theist or a pantheist, a materialist or an
idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and
reflected, the less ready was the answer. The one thing on which most of
these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from
them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain `gnosis'--had
more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was
quite sure that I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the
problem was insoluble.... So I took thought, and invented what I
conceived to be the appropriate title of `agnostic.' It came into my head as
suggestively antithetic to the `gnostic' of Church history, who professed
to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my
great satisfaction the term took.''
- Thomas Henry Huxley, (Coll. Ess. v. pp. 237-239)

..if by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and
not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid
reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the
people their health, their housing, their schools, their
jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties if that is
what they mean by a 'liberal' then I am proud to be a
liberal.
--President John F Kennedy

Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
--- Albert Einstein

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds
discuss people.
--- Anon

Friendhip like philosophy or art does not have a survival value.
Rather it is one of those things which gives
value to survival.
--- Anon

Religion is sort of like a lift in your shoes. If it makes you feel better, fine. Just don't ask me to wear your shoes.
-- George Carlin

Everything flows and nothing abides;. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters and yet others go ever flowing on. (91, 12)

Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool; the moist dries, the parched becomes moist. (126)

It is in changing that things find repose. (8~)

Heraclitus 540-480 BCE

Physican and psychotherapist Rachel Naomi Remen says,

"The spiritual is not the religious. A religion is a dogma, a set of
beliefs about the spiritual and a set of practices which rise out of
those
beliefs. There are many religions and they tend to be mutually
exclusive.
That is, every religion tends to think that it has dibs on the
spiritual --
that it's 'The Way.' Yet the spiritual is inclusive. It is the
deepest
sense of belonging and participation. One might say that the spiritual
is
that realm of human experience which religion attempts to connect us to
through dogma and practice. Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it
fails.
Religion is a bridge to the spiritual, but the spiritual lies beyond
religion."