I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge.  It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress.  No agnostic has ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
--Daniel J. Boorstin

One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it.  The also believed the world was flat.
--Mark Twain

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.  It's nothing to brag about.  And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsesnse that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.
--Bill Maher

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
--Kurt Vonnegut

The most costly of all follies it to believe passionately in the palpably not true.
--H.L. Mencken

An agnostic is an atheist without the courage of his convictions.
--Studs Terkel

I was raised an atheist.  Every Sunday, we went nowhere.  We prayed for nothing.  And all our prayers were answered.
--Heidi Joyce

I didn't hear about these women until today. Perhaps you've already heard. Pussy Riot a Russian punk rock band who performed an anti-Putin song in the "main cathedral" of the Orthodox Church. Now they have been held in "pre-trial detention" for months. It is expected that they will serve years of jail time for the offense, which was, in a word, a sacrilege.

I don't know about you, but if someone did this in my sacred space, I would be offended. I don't mean that Russia's powers that be (government and church in cahoots) should be able to imprison people for years over this sort of behavior. I think not. I personally relish hearing the words Pussy Riot in the news, and am glad that women there feel powerful enough to do this. Putin's continuing reign is a far greater blasphemy than the most raucous of punk rock in a cathedral.

In spite of my sympathies for their causes, I would be totally pissed if somebody made this kind of noise in my sacred place. Blast that crap at the river? Get OUT. I understand anger, and suppression, and the need to eliminate Putin. And I understand the outrage against their methods. Too bad the punishment is so out of proportion with the offense.



Here's the NPR story: http://www.theworld.org/2012/06/anti-putin-punk-rockers-pussy-riot-to-stay-in-jail-await-trial/

This video is intended to inspire people to try yoga, but the music speaks even more loudly for peace. It's a reggae tune, I think by Trevor Hall. Pretty inspiring. =-]
( lyrics to the song: Where's the LoveCollapse )

A teenage girl sued her school to get a prayer taken down from the gym wall, and won. Local Catholics then showed how classy they are when challenged.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/us/rhode-island-city-enraged-over-school-prayer-lawsuit.html?_r=2

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
-- T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets". It appears in the second poem called "East Coker"

In whatever tradition they occur, spiritual practices focuessed on an awareness of interbeing tend to have the intriguing psychological side effect of bringing significant earthly happiness to their most devoted practitioners, almost regardless of external circumstances.
--Martha Stout, Ph.D., in The Sociopath Next Door, p212-213.

I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
--Jesus

The following poem appeared in The Continental Journal on March 11, 1779. It was entitled “On Predestination.”

If all things succeed as already agreed,
And immutable impulses rule us;
To preach and to pray, is but time thrown away,
And our teachers do nothing but fool us.

If we’re driven by fate, either this way or that,
As the carman whips up his horses,
Then no man can stray --- all go the right way,
As the stars that are fix’d in their courses.

But if by free will, we can go or stand still,
As best suits the present occasion;
Then fill up the glass, and confirm him an ass
[He} That depends upon Predestination.