RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.
Interpretation
Religion is often based on doctrines that influence life decisions and behaviors, regardless of empirical evidence.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell critiques the nature of religion by highlighting how it is constructed on unyielding beliefs that guide people's lives often in defiance of rational evidence. He suggests that religious beliefs are instilled through emotional or authoritarian means rather than through rational, intellectual discourse, thereby shaping human conduct in profound ways.
In practice
In a speech on the importance of critical thinking, one might use this quote to highlight the need for evidence-based beliefs.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God. ... I do not worship matter. I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God. Because of this I salute all remaining matter with reverence, because God has filled it with his grace and power. Through it my salvation has come to me.
If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.
We were good boys, good Presbyterian boys, and loyal and all that; anyway, we were good Presbyterian boys when the weather was doubtful; when it was fair, we did wander a little from the fold.
But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
And when suddenly the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry, uttered the words: βHe has turned roundβ β she comprehended nothing and said softly: βWho?
When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.
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