“In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.” ThinkingWorldArtDoneReligiousLossDealsModernPaintingReturnEternalLosingDamageCustomsOur WorldSecularModern Art Author:Antoni Tapies
“The modern public school derived from a philosophy of freedom reflected in the First Amendment ... The non-sectarian or secular public school was the means of reconciling freedom in general with religious freedom.” FirstsMeanPhilosophySchoolReligiousAtheismModernPositive AtheismAmendmentsSecularPublic SchoolFirst AmendmentReligious Freedom Author:William J. Brennan
“Modern secular thought has its own dualism: It treats only the physical world as knowable and testable, while locking everything else - mind, spirit, morality, meaning - into the realm of private, subjective feelings. The so-called fact/value split.” WorldMindFactsFeelingsSpiritValuesModernMoralityTreatsRealmsSplitsSecularSubjectiveDualism Author:Nancy Pearcey
“If the decline of Christianity created the modern political zealot - and his crimes - so the evaporation of religious faith among the educated left a vacuum in the minds of Western intellectuals easily filled by secular superstition. There is no other explanation for the credulity with which scientists, accustomed to evaluating evidence, and writers, whose whole function was to study and criticize society, accepted the crudest Stalinist propaganda at its face value. They needed to believe; they wanted to be duped.” IfsMindBelieveWholeWantedFacesPoliticalValuesLeftReligiousChristianityStudyModernCrimeNeededEvidenceScientistFunctionFilledWesternAcceptedEducatedPropagandaExplanationCriticizeDeclineSuperstitionsSecularAccustomedReligious FaithVacuumsCredulityZealotFace ValueEvaporation Author:Paul Johnson
“A lot of secular, modern people claim to be disillusioned whenever they learn that any smart person is religious. That's applicable to Newton as it is to any other religious smart person” PeoplePersonsReligiousModernSmartClaimsSecularNewtonDisillusionedSmart Person Author:Neal Stephenson
“We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.” IfsWorldNeedsMindBelieveRememberModernLessonsKneesRepeatsNonsenseSecular Author:Alain de Botton
“I think Kafka was right when he said that for a modern, secular, nonreligious man, state bureaucracy is the only remaining contact with the dimension of the divine; the impenetrable omnipotence of bureaucracy harbors is divine enjoyment. It is the performance of its very purposelessness that generates an intense enjoyment, ready to reproduce itself forever.” ThinkingMenSaidStatesForeverModernDivineReadyPerformancesIntenseContactEnjoymentDimensionsSecularBureaucracyHarborsOmnipotencePurposelessness Author:Slavoj Žižek
“Just because many modern academics are very secular does not mean that we should ignore those factors in earlier generations - and by that, I don't just mean five or six centuries ago.” ShouldMeanDoeFiveGenerationsModernCenturySixFactorsSecular Author:Philip Jenkins