Bad Religion has never been about criticizing people who are Christian. But we’ve always been about pointing out the irony and contradictions in Christian theology and the more extreme versions of Christians that seek to challenge modern secularism.
Despite what one might gather from the shrill rantings of the leftist commentariat, for whom religion is a sort of disease, religious difference in the United States has rarely led to serious social strife. That is no small achievement, and one that virtually no other Western democracy can boast.
Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy.
Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences – the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that they’re going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion.
Religion has endured since the dawn of human consciousness precisely because it encompasses so much of being human. No idea has endured so long, gathered up so many disparate needs and wants and feelings, and inspired so many different paths towards understanding it.
I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.
I do not believe in a universal religion any more than I believe in a universal language. My feeling is that people have to make their own religion as they have to make their arts and their parishes, and that they must find their own salvation; the salvation mongers are of not much avail.
Religion is a huge part of our consciousness. I grew up in the Bible Belt, so it’s our mythology. Those are the stories we learn as little kids at Sunday school. I’m not afraid to use the metaphors, because I think the stories are beautiful.
I have the profoundest respect for people who behave in a generous way because of religion. But I come from a country where the misuse of religion has had catastrophic consequences. One must judge people not by what faith they proclaim but by what they do.
People are not wrong in observing Caste. In my view, what is wrong is their religion, which has inculcated this notion of Caste. If this is correct, then obviously the enemy, you must grapple with is not the people who observe Caste, but the Shastras which teach them this religion of Caste.
It is not our sexual preferences, the color of our skin, the language we speak, nor the religion we practice that creates friction, hatred and wars amongst in society. It is our words and the words of our leaders that can create that disparity.
Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don’t really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money.
Muslim women deplore misogyny just as western women do, and they know that Islamic societies also oppress them; why wouldn’t they? But liberation, for them does not encompass destroying their identity, religion, or culture, and many of them want to retain the veil.
History shows the power-grab in every religion once it gets organised. And then it’s people making you do things that you don’t agree with and setting the rules. But it does mean something to me to believe that we are not alone – the human animal is quite a scary thing, left on its own.
All religions worthy of the name are now making great efforts to purify their doctrines and return to their original standpoint, all except Christianity! You surely know that the nineteenth century Christianity is not the religion taught by Christ. Christ’s religion has been changed and corrupted.
I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what’s new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world.
The thing you miss most, when you don’t play and you don’t coach, is the huddle. You miss the huddle. You miss the ability to walk in the room where collectively players are from everywhere. Every race, every religion, every color. It don’t matter, because you’ve got a common goal. You’re trying to be something special as a team.
Tribalism, after all, is part of our evolutionary DNA. The need to identify with a group, to belong and commune with like-minded people is not only biological, it’s what has helped motivate our desire for and devotion to all kinds of important cultural institutions, from organized religion to sports fandom.
I think my politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.
We should pass the U.N.’s Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. At least it will clearly establish whom you view as a terrorist and whom you don’t. We need to delink terrorism from religion – to isolate terrorists who use this interchange of arguments between terrorism and religion.
That’s what I love about Australia: we can do things the way we want to do them, because that’s the way our country is – no matter what culture you come from, you can come to Australia and practise your religion, you can practise your beliefs, and you shouldn’t be judged for it.
I cannot think that when God sent us into the world, he had irreversibly decreed that we should be perpetually miserable in it. If our taking up the Cross imply our bidding adieu to all joy and satisfaction, how is it reconcilable with what Solomon expressly affirms of religion, that ‘her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace?’
