Lauren L

“Destructive beliefs don't hurt the Divine, but they can hurt us, our society, and our world. We have the right to insist that the beliefs we adopt, even about Divinity, be healthy and productive and serve us well.”
― Joyce Higginbotham, Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions

“People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Most world religions also teach that human nature is flawed, and that there is something fundamentally wrong with all human beings that must be corrected in order to reach that religion's idea of salvation or enlightenment. This wrongness may be called original sin or ego or desire or free will... but the existence and overcoming of this inherent wrongness is the basis of the spiritual practices, sacraments, and ethics practiced by their members. ... The concepts of separateness and wrongness are so ingrained in each of us and in our culture that most of us are often not even aware they color our perceptions, life experience, and spiritual growth.”
― River Higginbotham, Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions

“It's not that smart people aren't capable of believing in cultish things; instead, says [Michael] Shermer, it's that smart people are better at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism