church Religion
Religious belief, institutions, and their role in society
format_quote Quotes
"Religion is not primarily a set of beliefs, nor a system of practices, nor a community. These are its expressions. Its essence lies in a certain relationship — to a source of goodness and being that one has not produced oneself and from which one continues to receive."
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View Full Quote"At the heart of every religious act there is something that resembles gratitude — an acknowledgment that what I am and what I have has not been produced by myself, that I exist in a relationship of dependence which is not servitude but recognition."
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View Full Quote"Modernity does not simply challenge religion from outside. It has grown, in large part, from within the religious tradition it now contests. The secularization of the West is not an escape from its Christian heritage but a transformation of it — one that has forgotten its own sources."
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View Full Quote"Religion is not a form of ethics. It is not morality applied to the relationship with God. Ethics deals with what I owe to other human beings; religion deals with what I owe — or rather, receive — from the principle of my existence itself."
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View Full Quote"The ethical life needs a ground that ethics alone cannot provide. What motivates me to be good — not merely to act well — cannot come from a moral law that I give to myself. It requires a relationship to something prior to me and greater than me."
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View Full QuoteView Full Quote"The nature of a civilization is what aggregates around a religion. Our civilization is incapable of building a temple or a tomb. It will be forced to find its fundamental value, or it will decompose. And the great phenomenon of our era is the violence of the Islamic thrust."
View Full Quote"Islam is contrary to the scientific spirit, hostile to progress; it has made the countries it conquered a field closed to the rational cultivation of the mind."
View Full Quote"I studied the Koran a great deal, mainly because of our position vis-à-vis the Muslim population of Algeria and throughout the Near East. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large, there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Mohammed."
View Full Quote"Mohammed brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not only religious doctrines but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories."
auto_stories Books
Book of Exodus
The second book of the Bible, recounting the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt under Moses and the covenant at Mount Sinai. It contains the T...
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A philosophical examination of what religion actually is — its essence, structure, and necessity. Brague asks what distinguishes the religious rela...
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