There are many great quotes by famous people on why we don't need religion, but where are all the quotes from different religious groups on why we need religion?

April 13, 2009 5:49 PM

There are many great quotes by famous people on why we don't need religion, but where are all the quotes from different religious groups on why we need religion?

For example, if you were to gather a bunch of different people for and against religion in a room, what quotes would the "For" side come back with?

Against
======
“Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

For
===
??

I am strictly looking for quotes/authors/links only. No discussions please; this is not a chat, don't want this deleted.
 

posted by querty to religion & philosophy (11 comments total)

G.K. Chesterton said When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything. He pretty much spent all of his time formulating bon mots about the folly of unbelief, so googling for quotes should yield a goldmine.
posted by moxiedoll at 5:57 PM on April 13

Wikiquote seems to have a few attributed to Mohandas Gandhi, which I could infer just from the localized context that they are "for" religion.

One of those listed: "Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal."
posted by CancerMan at 6:04 PM on April 13

Here are a couple from C.S. Lewis, but without the larger context, they don't have the same effect as the pithy atheist quotations.

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

--Mere Christianity

"If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes...it cuts its own throat."

--A Christian Reply to Professor Price
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:11 PM on April 13

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
C.S. Lewis

A collection of theistic quotes along the lines you are seeking is here.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 6:20 PM on April 13

C. S. Lewis.

G. K. Chesterton.

Those are the two most likely candidates I can think of off the top of my head.

I think you'll find that the kinds of people who wind up in quote books have been less and less explicit about their religion as the last century wore on. Unfortunately for your purposes, that's about the first time that it became apparent that there could actually exist a Western culture apart from Christianity. Sure, the eighteenth-century philosophes talked a brave game, but they represented a tiny minority of opinion; cultural elites continued to at least pay lip service to Christianity for most of the nineteenth century. It was really only after WWI in Europe and the 1960s in the US that there was a widespread, culturally-acceptable notion that Christianity was no longer critical to society.

As a result, the kind of pithy sayings you're looking for have been made far more frequently by atheists than by theists. As suggested here, satire and snark are usually the tools of intellectual/cultural/political/institutional minorities. Entrenched majorities tend to not be all that funny, and though Christianity has arguably lost that status, it tries not to act like it a lot of the time.
posted by valkyryn at 6:24 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]

Er... Religious books and manuscripts? Er... sayings of prophets, clerics, followers and theologians? This should come to mind immediately.
posted by parmanparman at 6:25 PM on April 13

To clarify, when you say you're looking for quotes/authors/links only, I get that you want these to be attributed to someone and not just MeFi people's own ideas. But do you want only quotes -- quick, pithy sorts of things -- or are you looking for any famous person arguing for why we need religion, even if it's more of an essay or other? I can't quite tell from the question if you're looking for quotes to use for something, or if you're asking more to hear the arguments.

I could give you quite a few examples of the latter, but like valkyryn notes, there seems to be less of the quick quotes on the theist side. I'm drawing a complete blank for general quotes.
posted by Nattie at 6:39 PM on April 13

Abdul Baha said "Religion without science is superstition, science without religion is materialism."
posted by unixrat at 7:56 PM on April 13

How about Albert Schweizer? (See also The Albert Schweizer Page.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:15 PM on April 13

"Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected; they must be replaced. Where there is no replacement, the mind will revert to familiar structures at times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat."

-Carol P. Christ, Why Women Need the Goddess

“Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow, because science must always test and measure, and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable.”

-Starhawk
posted by overglow at 11:25 PM on April 13

"An atheist can't stand behind their assertion that God doesn't exist." - Kirk Cameron
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:51 AM on April 14