Religion Is Man Made Quotes & Sayings

The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other. But since religion has been made into a trade, the practical part has been made to consist of ceremonies performed by men called priests ... By devices of this kind true religion has been banished, and such means have been found out to extract money, even from the pockets of the poor, instead of contributing to their relief. — Thomas Paine

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. — David Cecil

Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels. — Peter Kropotkin

In the Bible, a woman was made from a man. In real life, a man is made from a woman. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I like lime-flavoured yoghurt. The end. There is no religion. It's a man-made fabrication. Once you understand that, you'll be a happier individual. Atheism is as pointless as satanism. — John Lydon

Hardship is a man-made device because man cannot exist without passion. Religion is somewhere between fear and sex. — Jeanette Winterson

A moral judgment of abortion is the usage of a man-made ideology to judge a man-made technology. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Well, every man has a religion; has something in heaven or earth which he will give up everything else for - something which absorbs him - which may be regarded by others as being useless - yet it is his dream, it is his lodestar, it is his master. That, whatever it is, seized upon me, made me its servant, slave - induced me to set aside the other ambitions a trail of glory in the heavens, which I followed, followed with a full heart ... When once I am convinced, I never let go ... — Walt Whitman

The sabbath was made for men. But man now behaves like the Pharisees and insists that he is made for all the things - science , nation , money, religion, schools - which were really made for him. Why? Because he is so little aware of his own interests as a human being that he feels irresistibly tempted to sacrifice himself to these idols. There is no remedy except to become aware of one's interest as a human being , and , having become aware , to learn to act on that awareness. Which means learning to use the self and learning to direct the mind. It's almost wearisome, the way one always comes back to the same point. Wouldn't it be nice , for a change , if there were another way out of our difficulties! A short cut. A method requiring no greater personal effort than recording a vote or ordering some " enemy of society" to be shot. A salvation from outside, like a does of calomel. — Aldous Huxley

Probably one of the most surprising discoveries I've made while studying the Bible is that God does not condone religion. It's a consistent theme throughout scripture. Religion is man's external effort to please God. But God doesn't care about all my efforts to get it right. He wants more, something far greater. — Chris Hodges

The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. — Christopher Hitchens

The rash assertion that "God made man in His own image" is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths. — Arthur C. Clarke

The possibility of an ideal society became impossible from the moment of creation, the moment of the "humanization of man." From that moment on, man has been faced with eternal conflict, disquiet, dissatisfaction, drama. "Get you down, all (you people) with enmity between yourselves" (Quran, 2:36). The ideal society is a monotonous and infinite succession of depersonalized generations which bring forth, produce, consume, and die, and so on to the "wrong" eternity. The fact of creation and of God's interference in the human existence made this "mechanism" impossible and illusory; hence, the fanatic opposition of all utopias to God and religion. So, while prophets of utopia proclaimed society and its interests to be the supreme value, God wanted that role to be man's. He gave freedom in order to make this world a temptation and to affirm man and his soul as the highest value. — Alija Izetbegovic

Although it is undoubtedly true man was created by God;
it is just as true that man was "made" by Satan."
The Milkweed Prophesy; Epitaph of the Apocalypse — Milkweed L. Augustine

Hornig put the block of wood down on the desk, and placed the knife he'd just recently planted into his long time best friend and colleague's throat beside it. "God hates sin, and sinners, but he made us in his image. So He must be a sinner, too, yes? That means He's self loathing and nothing is as dangerous as a man who hates himself. Because if He hates Himself, how could He possibly give a shit about you? — T.W. Grim

If it has been revealed to man that the Almighty made him out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, it is in vain to tell a Christian that man was originally a speck of albumen, and passed through the stages of monads and monkeys, before he attained his present intellectual preeminence. If it be a received truth that the Creator has repeatedly interposed in the government of the universe and displayed his immediate agency in miraculous interpositions, it is an insult to any reader to tell him that the being slumbers on his throne and rules under a "primal arrangement in his counsels," and "by a code of laws of unbending operation. — David Brewster

Their famous attempt to make clothing of fig leaves perfectly illustrates the utter inadequacy of every human device ever conceived to try to cover shame. Human religion, philanthropy, education, self-betterment, self-esteem, and all other attempts at human goodness ultimately fail to provide adequate camouflage for the disgrace and shame of our fallen state. All the man-made remedies combined are no more effective for removing the dishonor of our sin than our first parents' attempts to conceal their nakedness with fig leaves. That's because masking over shame doesn't really deal with the problem of guilt before God. Worst of all, a full atonement for guilt is far outside the possibility of fallen men and women to provide for themselves. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Finally, I want to come to the question of sex. If anything proves that religion is not just man-made but masculine-made, it is the incessant repetition of rules and taboos governing the sexual life. The disease is pervasive, from the weird obsession with virginity and the one-way birth canal through which prophets are "delivered," through the horror of menstrual blood, all the way to the fascinated disgust with homosexuality and the pretended concern with children (who suffer worse at the hands of the faithful than any other group). Male and female genital mutilation; the terrifying of infants with hideous fictions about guilt and hell; the wild prohibition of masturbation: religion will never be able to live down the shame with which it has stained itself for generations in this regard, anymore than it can purge its own guilt for the ruining of formative periods of precious life. — Christopher Hitchens

Religion is man-made to assist in controlling the weak minded individuals because during times of atrocity and despair they feel strength in numbers. — Benito Mussolini

And when you say the policies are what caused this war - American policies - that's not to say that they're wrong. It's not to say that the policies were made by madmen or evil people. It's simply to say that you better understand the motivation of your enemy if you're going to defeat him. And the man who is motivated by a belief that his religion is being attacked by a superpower is much more dangerous than a man who's mad at you because you have women in the workplace. — Michael Scheuer

Maybe the God we see, the God who calls the daily shots, is merely a subGod. Maybe there's a God above this subGod who's busy for a few God minutes with something else, and will be right back; and when he gets back will take the subGod by the ear and say: Now look. Look at that fat man. What did he ever do to you? Wasn't he humble enough? Didn't he endure enough abuse for a thousand men? Weren't the simplest tasks hard? Didn't you sense him craving affection? Were you unaware that his days unraveled as one long bad dream? And maybe as the subGod slinks away, the true God will sweep me up in his arms, saying: My sincere apologies, a mistake has been made. Accept a new birth, as token of my esteem. — George Saunders

I see no good reason why the views given this volume [The Origin of Species] should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, 'as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.' — Charles Darwin

Woman's degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstances. All forms of dogmatic religion should go. The world did without them in the past and can do so again. I cite the great civilizations of China and India. — Theodore Dreiser

Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming. — Vaclav Klaus

Yes, My Son, man is a piece of wood, that can be used for everything, from the moment he's born until the moment he dies, he's always ready to obey, send him there and he goes, tell him to halt and he stops, tell him to turn back and he retreats, whether in peace or in war, man, generally speaking, is the best thing that could have happened to the gods, And the wood from which I'm made, since I'm a man, what use will it be put to, since I'm Your son, You will be the spoon I shall dip into humanity and bring out laden with men who shall believe in the new god I intend to become, Laden with men You will devour, There's no need for Me to devour those who devour themselves. — Jose Saramago

Her religious poetry was surprisingly slender, and as I was eager to know more about her religion, I asked her about this aspect of her poetry. She replied with these lines from Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'
that is all Ye know on eath, and all ye need to know'. Do not ask me to immortalise the great Mystery of Life. I am just a humble worker. For beauty, look to the Pslams, to Isaiah, to St. John of the Cross. How could my poor pen scan such verse? For truth, look to the Gospels
four short accounts of God made Man. There is nothing more to say. — Jennifer Worth

It was really intense for me to start having conversations with God, when according to the man-made laws in my religion - to be homosexual is evil. — Ricky Martin

The moment men begin to care more for education than for religion they begin to care more for ambition than for education. It is no longer a world in which the souls of all are equal before heaven, but a world in which the mind of each is bent on achieving unequal advantage over the other. There begins to be a mere vanity in being educated whether it be self-educated or merely state-educated. Education ought to be a searchlight given to a man to explore everything, but very specially the things most distant from himself. Education tends to be a spotlight; which is centered entirely on himself. Some improvement may be made by turning equally vivid and perhaps vulgar spotlights upon a large number of other people as well. But the only final cure is to turn off the limelight and let him realize the stars. — G.K. Chesterton

Ever since man's first mistake, in the Garden of Eden - he's been afraid of God, hiding from Him. He's so ashamed, and so overcome by guilt, that he can't imagine God would want anything else from him other than to punish him.

And so they tell these stories of an angry God, His judgement and His wrath. They fill their religions with rules and rituals impossible to fulfill. That put distance between us and Him.

But God made us so that He would not be alone. All God really wants man to do is stop running. — Nick Spencer

It is a profound mistake to imagine that Christianity ever intended to dissipate the bewilderment and even the terror, the sense of our own nothingness, which come upon us when we think about the nature of things. It comes to intensify them. Without such sensations there is no religion. Many a man, brought up in the glib profession of some shallow form of Christianity, who comes through reading Astronomy to realize for the first time how majestically indifferent most reality is to man, and who perhaps abandons his religion on that account, may at that moment be having his first genuinely religious experience ... Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. — C.S. Lewis

It's a very different thing, religion and faith. Religion is man-made, it's man-regulated. And faith, you can define God as you wish. But I think they're two different things. — Vera Farmiga

... You see, my dear friend, I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven's gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The problem is this: nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. This demand to fulfill himself, to seek something out there was made imperative because of this self-consciousness in you which occurred somewhere along the line of the evolutionary process. Man separated himself from the totality of nature. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Enter no conflict against fanatics unless you can defuse them. Oppose a religion with another religion only if your proofs (miracles) are irrefutable or if you can mesh in a way that the fanatics accept you as god-inspired. This has long been the barrier to science assuming a mantle of divine revelation. Science is so obviously man-made. Fanatics (and many are fanatic on one subject or another) must know where you stand, but more important, must recognise who whispers in your ear. - Missionaria Protectiva, Primary Teaching. — Frank Herbert

For men's religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure. This is made evident to our lord the king by the scriptures. — Thomas Helwys

Man-made religions find fault with one another, whereas God-made religion is eternally a oneness-song - God-manifestation through human aspiration on earth. — Sri Chinmoy

I was born and raised in the University of Chicago area and had an uneventful middle-class Catholic childhood. I had a heavy Catholic upbringing and Catholicism is terrible - it's the reason there were slaves. Mass every morning at seven o'clock during Lent. It's a totally negative, man-made religion. — Chaka Khan

Don't you know what god is? God is everything and God is nothing; for the perfection created by man cannot be anything other than nothing. They decided to give a name to nothingness, and thereby the made it become something. Like you ... God, who is nothing, can no longer be nothing since he is God. You could be a god for men. They need to give a body to nothingness so that nothingness can be seen and touched-at least with the imagination. — Aldo Palazzeschi

The history of man proves that religion perverts man's concept of life and the universe, and has made him a cringing coward before the blind forces of nature.
If you believe that there is a God; that man was 'created'; that he was forbidden to eat of the fruit of the 'tree of knowledge'; that he disobeyed; that he is a 'fallen angel'; that he is paying the penalty for his 'sins,' then you devote your time praying to appease an angry and jealous God.
If, on the other hand, you believe that the universe is a great mystery; that man is the product of evolution; that he is born without knowledge; that intelligence comes from experience, then you devote your time and energies to improving his condition with the hope of securing a little happiness here for yourself and your fellow man.
That is the difference.
If man was 'created,' then someone made a grievous mistake. — Joseph Lewis

[I]f it be any part of religion to believe that man was made by a good Being, it is more consistent with that faith to believe, that this Being gave all human faculties that they might be cultivated and unfolded, not rooted out and consumed, and that he takes delight in every nearer approach made by his creatures to the ideal conception embodied in them, every increase in any of their capabilities of comprehension, of action, or of enjoyment. — Robert Wright

Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. — Christopher Hitchens

Made to observe the vastness of our world, the greater breadth and depth of stars unfurled, the mind can grasp an order and a plan and ponder the deep question, "Who is man? — Mary Angeline Bell

being attached to any one philosophy or religion
dwelling on moot differences and wanting to fit in
despite the path all are led Home in time
following an alternative pathway is certainly no crime
Krishna, Buddha, Allah or Zohar Kabbalah
devoted nonviolently, one is led to Nirvana
Hindu Sages, Zen Masters or Christian Mystics
many tongues, but identical truth spoken from their lips
mentioning Self or no-self or God is Father or Mother
according to their culture emphasizing one method or another
allness vs. nothingness, meditation vs. prayer
devotion in practice is all you should care
when Truth reveals itself you're beyond all conception
then not a single man-made word will hold any traction — Jarett Sabirsh

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion
several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven ... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste. — Mark Twain

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body. — Ayn Rand

My definition of a true religion is one that does good in the world.
It tries to find ways to help people be themselves. It does not try to shape people to be what we think they should be, then break spiritual or man-made laws to accomplish that. The sign of a good religion is that it helps the people grow to become more godlike, to be capable of more love and mercy
for themselves as well as for others. — Harold Klemp

Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man toward God. These duties are, internally, love and adoration: externally, devotion and obedience; therefore provision should be made for maintaining divine worship as well as education. But each one has a right to entire liberty as to religious opinions, for religion is the relation between God and man; therefore it is not within the reach of human authority. — Gouverneur Morris

For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world - that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up out of His head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again. — C.S. Lewis

But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom, the case assumes an entirely different ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though otherwise indifferent itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the criterion that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible evidence that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this, the supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors. — Thomas Paine

Never blame the man: his hard-pressed
Ancestors formed him: the other anthropoid apes were safe
In the great southern rain-forest and hardly changed
In a million years: but the race of man was made
By shock and agony ...
... a wound was made in the brain
When life became too hard, and has never healed.
It is there that they learned trembling religion and blood-
sacrifice,
It is there that they learned to butcher beasts and to slaughter
men,
And hate the world. — Robinson Jeffers

I believe religion is man-made. — Amar'e Stoudemire

The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When — Ayn Rand

This was borne out again in October 1996 when Pope John Paul II, standing in the context of a train of Catholic thought which stretched back to the Church Fathers said, in essence, "Looks like there's some good evidence for some sort of biological evolution."[22] That is, he said, as so many Catholics have already said, that there is nothing in divine revelation that particularly forbids you to believe that God made Adam from the dust of the earth r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y rather than instantaneously (and used other creatures to somehow assist in the process) so long as you bear in mind that God did, in fact, create man and woman (particularly the soul, which is made directly by God and is not a result of the collision of atoms).

--Making Senses of Scripture — Mark Shea

If the universe is teeming with life other than ours, then this, we are told, makes it quite ridiculous to believe that God should be so concerned with the human race as to 'come down from Heaven' and be made man for its redemption. If, on the other hand, our planet is really unique in harbouring organic life, then this is thought to prove that life is only an accidental by-product in the universe and so again to disprove our religion. We — C.S. Lewis

What sort of man is this, who over and over again, gave numerous details about His death, months before it occurred, and added to each such utterance that on the third day after His decease He would rise again from the dead - and DID RISE, as even the city of Jerusalem soon came to believe? No other founder of a great world religion (or a small one) ever made such statements, or ever came forth from the dead. — Wilbur Moorehead Smith

There isn't any (afterlife), you dingbat! This is it, baby! Enjoy, carefully! Religion is such a medieval idea. Don't get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can't buy any of it. So God made man in His own image? It's just the other way around. Man made God in his own image. It's all about money. — Phyllis Diller

Faith in the supernatural is a desperate wager made by man at the lowest ebb of his fortunes. — George Santayana

Science, which is only another name for truth, now holds religious charlatans, self-deceivers and God agents in a certain degree of check
agents and employees, I mean, of a mythical, medieval, man-made God, anthropomorphic in constitution. — Luther Burbank

Whether religion is man-made is a question for philosophers or theologians. But the forms are man-made. They are a human response to something. As a historian of religions, I am interested in those expressions. — Mircea Eliade

The Bible, of course, for aside from religion there is much to be learned of men and their ways in the Bible. It is also a source of comments made of references and figures of speech. No man could consider himself educated without some knowledge of it. — Louis L'Amour

What Gibbie made of Mr. Sclater's prayers, either in congregational or family devotion, I am at some loss to imagine. Beside his memories of the direct fervid outpouring and appeal of Janet, in which she seemed to talk face to face with God, they must have seemed to him like the utterances of some curiously constructed wooden automaton, doing its best to pray, without any soul to be saved, any weakness to be made strong, any doubt to be cleared, any hunger to be filled. What can be less like religion than the prayers of a man whose religion is his profession, and who, if he were not "in the church," would probably never pray at all? — George MacDonald

Any law that belittles God is man made. — Auliq Ice

Religion is trust, and that trust arose in the beginning from the impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom of nature, and more particularly, by those regularly recurring events, the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by whatever name we choose to call it. — Friedrich Max Muller

Religion, which true policy befriends,
Designed by God to serve man's noblest ends,
Is by that old deceiver's subtle play
Made the chief party in its own decay,
And meets the eagle's destiny, whose breast
Felt the same shaft which his own feathers drest. — Katherine Philips

If God and man are in themselves one, and if religion is the human side of this unity then must this unity be made evident to man in religion, and become in him consciousness and reality. — David Friedrich Strauss