This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
Religion |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
A religion is essentially an attitude to the world as a whole. Thus evolution, for example, may prove as powerful a principle to coordinate men’s beliefs and hopes as God was in the past. Such ideas underlie the various forms of Rationalism, the Ethical movement and scientific Humanism.
Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
My thesis is that what we call 'science' is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition—that of critically discussing the myth. … In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is.
Karl Wilheim Friedrich Schlegel, later Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
Philosophy | Religion | Will |
For me, atheism’s roots are in a sober and modest assessment of where reason and evidence lead us. That means the real enemy is not religion as such, but any kind of system of belief that does not respect these limits on our thinking. For that reason, I want to engage with thoughtful, intelligent believers, and isolate extremists. But if we demonise all religion, such coalitions of the reasonable are not possible. Instead, we are likely to see moderate religious believers join ranks with fundamentalists, the enemies of their enemy, to resist what they see as an attempt to wipe out all forms of religious belief.
Belief | Enemy | Evidence | Means | Reason | Religion | Respect | System | Respect |
Karl Wilheim Friedrich Schlegel, later Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.
Karl Wilheim Friedrich Schlegel, later Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly.
Religion may also be developed as a philosophical system built on axioms. In our time rationalism is used in an absurdly narrow sense …. Rationalism involves not only logical concepts. Churches deviated from religion which had been founded by rational men. The rational principle behind the world is higher then people.
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
There is arguably no more important and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable.
Kerry Thornley, fully Kerry Wendell Thornley, aka Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst or Lord Omar
Organized religion preaches Order and Love but spawns Chaos and Fury. Why?
L. P. Jacks, fully Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
The poet takes us straight into the presence of things. Not by explanation, but by indication; not by exhausting its qualities, but by suggesting its value he gives us the object, raising it from the mire where it lies trodden by the concepts of the understanding, freeing it from the entanglements of all that “the intellect perceives as if constituting its essence.” Thus exhibited, the object itself becomes the meeting-ground of the ages, a centre where millions of minds can enter together into possession of the common secret. It is true that language is here the instrument with which the fetters of language are broken. Words are the shifting detritus of the ages; and as glass is made out of the sand, so the poet makes windows for the soul out of the very substance by which it has been blinded and oppressed. In all great poetry there is a kind of “kenosis” of the understanding, a self-emptying of the tongue. Here language points away from itself to something greater than itself.
Language | Object | Poetry | Soul | Words | Intellect | Value |
My philosophical viewpoint: The world is rational. Human reason can, in principle, be developed more highly (through certain techniques). There are systematic methods for the solution of all problems. There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind. The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived. There is incomparably more knowable a priori that is currently known. The development of human thought since the Renaissance is thoroughly one-dimensional. Reason in mankind will be developed in every direction. Formal rights comprise a real science. Materialism is false. The higher beings are connected to the others by analogy, not by composition. Concepts have an objective existence. There is a scientific (exact) philosophy and theology, which deals with concepts of the highest abstractness; and this is also most highly fruitful for science. Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not.
Mankind | Materialism | Philosophy | Reason | Religion | Rights | Thought | Will | World | Thought |
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
Evolution does not isolate us from the rest of the Kosmos, it unites us with the rest of the Kosmos: the same currents that produced birds from dust and poetry from rocks produce egos from ids and sages from egos.
L. P. Jacks, fully Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
Though science makes no use for poetry, poetry is enriched by science. Poetry “takes up” the scientific vision and re-expresses its truths, but always in forms which compel us to look beyond them to the total object which is telling its own story and standing in its own rights. In this the poet and the philosopher are one. Using language as the lever, they lift thought above the levels where words perplex and retard its flight, and leave it, at last, standing face to face with the object which reveals itself. Would not all we mean by “communication between mind and mind” be provided for if we suppose that common knowledge comes about, not from our explaining things to one another, but from things explaining themselves in the same terms to us all? Accepting the object as its own interpreter, as its own “medium of communication,” do we not begin to understand what is utterly dark on any other view, how it comes to pass that the resulting knowledge is a common possession?
Knowledge | Language | Mind | Object | Poetry | Science | Story | Thought | Vision | Words | Thought | Understand |
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
Within the scientific skeleton of truth, religious meaning attempts to flourish, often by denying the scientific framework itself — rather like sawing off the branch where you cheerily perch. The disgust is mutual because modern science gleefully denies virtually all the basic tenets of religion in general. According to the typical view of modern science, religion is not much more than a holdover from the childhood of humanity, with about as much reality as, say, Santa Claus. Whether the religious claims are more literal (Moses parting the Red Sea) or more mystical (religion invovlves direct spiritual experience) modern science denies them all, simply because there is no credible empirical evidence for any of them.
Childhood | Evidence | Meaning | Mystical | Reality | Religion | Science | Tenets | Parting |
Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
"Throughout history, religion has been the single greatest source of human-caused wars, suffering, and misery. In the name of God, more suffering has been inflicted than by any other manmade cause." I was, of course, using the word "religion" in its sociological meaning, as any belief invested with "ultimate concern," in which case not only Islam, Christianity, and Shintoism are religions, but Marxism, Nazism, and Eco-terrorism are all versions of religions or religiously held beliefs. Seen as such, the opening sentence is obviously true.