WORLD
RELIGIONS

E Unum Pluribus
From the One, many.

"If you cannot see God in all,
you cannot see God at all." --
Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji

"For my mother, organized religion too often dressed
up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty
and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.
This isn’t to say that she provided me with no religious
instruction. In her mind, a working knowledge of the
world’s great religions was a necessary part of any
well-rounded education. In our household the Bible, the
Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside
books of Greek and Norse and African mythology.
On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me
to church, just as she dragged me to the Buddhist temple,
the Chinese New Year celebration, the Shinto shrine, and the
ancient Hawaiian burial sites. But I was made to understand
that such religious samplings required no sustained
commitment on my part. Religion was an expression of
human culture, she would explain, not its wellspring, just
the one of many ways – and not necessarily the best way –
that man attempted to control the unknowable and
understand the deeper truths about our lives.
In sum, my mother viewed religion through the eyes of the
anthropologist she would become; it was a phenomenon
to be treated with a suitable respect, but with suitable
detachment as well." -- Barack Obama

"Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is to trust yourself
to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water,
because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax,
and float. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging
to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic
in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature
of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go,
and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be." -- Alan Watts

"Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s
an invisible man, living in the sky, who watches everything you do,
every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10
things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things
he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and
anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and
scream and cry forever and ever till the end of time. BUT HE LOVES YOU!
He loves you, and he needs money. He always needs money!" -- George Carlin

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in
anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in
anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe
in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in
traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after
observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is
conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." --
Siddhartha Gautama Buddha

 Bahai       Buddhism        Christianity

 

 Confucianism       Hinduism        Islamism

 

 Jainism       Judaism        Shintoism

 

 Sikhism        Sufiism       Taoism       Zoroastrianism

2002 Poll of U.S. Religious Affiliations

Christianity 77%
(Protestantism 52%)
(Roman Catholicism 25%)

None 14%

Eastern (Combined) 7%

Judaism 2%

"What happens when the government gets involved with religion?
In the country of Malaysia, it is now against the law to convert from
Islam to any other religion. And in the earlier days of Christianity, it
was against the law to be anything but Christian." -- Hari Singh

"From a woman all men are born. How then can
any man degrade any woman?" -- Hari Singh

Religion According To George Carlin

The Essence, You Are IT

Americans and Religion

True Perspective

      

Search