J > J's Quotes

“Does religious conviction provide a powerful reason for killing? Undeniably it often does. It also often provides the sole compelling reason for refusing to kill, or for being merciful, or for seeking peace; only the profoundest ignorance of history could prevent one from recognizing this. For the truth is that religion and irreligion are cultural variables, but killing is a human constant.”
― David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

“Popular atheism is not a philosophy but a therapy.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss

“But, in fact, materialism is among the most problematic of philosophical standpoints, the most impoverished in its explanatory range, and among the most willful and (for want of a better word) magical in its logic, even if it has been in fashion for a couple of centuries or more.”
― David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss

“What I find most mystifying in the arguments of the authors I have mentioned, and of others like them, is the strange presupposition that a truly secular society would of its nature be more tolerant and less prone to violence than any society shaped by any form of faith. Given that the modern age of secular governance has been the most savagely and sublimely violent period in human history, by a factor (or body count) of incalculable magnitude, it is hard to identify the grounds for their confidence.”
― David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies

“Discretion,” said Fen with great complacency, “is my middle name.”
“I dare say. But very few people use their middle names.”
― Edmund Crispin, Beware of the Trains