Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that religion transforms uncertain beliefs into accepted truths through the influence of institutions and the enduring nature of tradition.
Richard Dawkins points out that religion relies on the establishment of institutions to solidify beliefs that can often be untested or uncertain. Over time, these beliefs can become deeply ingrained in culture and society, reinforcing their status as 'truth' despite a lack of empirical evidence. The passage of time plays a crucial role in this process, as repeated affirmation and institutional support can create a distorted perception of reality where faith-based beliefs are treated as undeniable truths.
In practice
In a lecture on the influence of belief systems in society.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours.
If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.
Capitalism has socialized production. It has brought thousands of people together in the factory and involved them in new social relationships.
There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
As a younger woman, that pressure got me down, but I've made my peace with it. With airbrushing and digital manipulation, fashion can project an unobtainable image that's dangerously unhealthy. I'm excited about the ageing process. I'm more interested in women who aren't perfect. They're more compelling.
You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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