"Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetched, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to you..."
- Jennifer Michael Hecht
"Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is."
"How was life before Pop-Tarts, Prozac and padded playgrounds? They ate strudel, took opium and played on the grass."
"[Based upon the message of "nothing new under the sun" in Ecclesiastes,] If nothing ever changes, then God has no plan."
"We are humanity, Kant says. Humanity needs us because we are it. Kant believes in duty and considers remaining alive a primary human duty. For him one is not permitted to “renounce his personality,” a..."
"Jack Miles's wonderful literary reading of the Hebrew Bible as a biography of God offers the insight that after the Book of Job, God never speaks again. God may seem to silence Job, but Job silences G..."
"When They Die We Change Our Minds About Them When they die we change our minds about them. While they live we see the plenty hard they’re trying,to be a star, or nice, or wise, and so we do not quite ..."
"Lucian [of Samosata; 120-190 CE] was trying to make his audience laugh, rather than start a revolution"