If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that religion may be a flawed creation if a benevolent deity existed.
In this quote, Martin Amis proposes a critical view of religion, implying that if a caring God truly existed, He would not have allowed the creation of religion, which often leads to conflict and division among people. The statement raises questions about the nature of God and the impact of religious belief on humanity, suggesting that it can be more harmful than beneficial.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in society, one might cite this quote to emphasize the negative aspects of religious institutions.
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.
Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being... ultimate reality is what we call God.
Not one atom can rest until it finds its freedom.
Religion isnβt about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. Itβs about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.
Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
The only humility that is really ours is not that which we try to show before God in prayer, but that which we carry with us, and carry out, in our ordinary conduct; the insignficances of daily life are the importances and the tests of eternity, because they prove what really is the spirit that possesses us.
I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.
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