A God That Could be Real Quotes

“People often ask me, “Do you seriously expect this idea of God to change the world? What about all the fanatics and terrorists?” All I can say is that the only thing that changes the world is an idea that lights our fire at a moment when we are surrounded by dry, dead kindling. Today is that kind of time. Spiritual transformation doesn’t require a majority vote. It doesn’t matter if most people don’t get it. All it takes is a committed minority, because the committed lead culture. The new scientific picture of the universe is a modern revelation. For many the realization that God can be real and is emerging from human aspirations will also be a revelation. That these revelations are both happening now, at so pivotal a moment for our species, is truly grace. They have helped me move into the new universe and feel blessed and awestruck every day, as though I’d moved from a dark basement apartment into a mountain aerie with a hundred-mile view in all directions. I don’t expect millions of people to change their ideas of God overnight, but to those who care about the human future and can see beyond ideology, to those who believe that truth matters, and to those who recognize the potential of humanity but don’t see how to make us rise to that potential, it could make all the difference to discover a God that is real.”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet

“In her intriguing book When God Talks Back, the Stanford anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet

“It’s no longer us against them, where “them” is other people: it’s our species against the laws of nature, and nobody beats the laws of nature. The only winning strategy—the only true spiritual wisdom—is to figure out how to live in harmony with others on the planet that we share.”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet

“Having no spiritual life at all is like never really falling in love. Developing a spiritual bond with a fantasy is like falling in love with someone who will never love you back. But developing a spiritual bond with the real universe is like falling in love with someone who is already in love with you. That’s where God is.”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet

“For the rest of the world population to reach the standard of living of the First World would take the resources of four Earths. We don’t have them. It’s not a political statement but simply math that tells us this trend must change fairly soon. The fate of countless human generations (not to mention millions of species) is riding on what we who are alive now decide to do while humanity still has the resources and ability to solve global problems. So”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet

“We have an obligation to be the self-consciousness of the universe. Only the universe’s self-consciousness, which understands the enormous length of time and the mind-boggling number of improbabilities that were overcome to evolve us, can understand what the universe has already invested in us. Only the self-consciousness of the universe can understand how important it is to protect self-consciousness. Intelligence is something bigger than Earth. In some sense Earth may have to put up with us humans. But we should make it as easy for Earth as we can.”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet

“Exponential growth builds slowly at first, then faster and faster. Unless something redirects it, it hits a limit and crashes. A few cells of green scum doubling in number each day for many months on a pond can be almost unnoticeable until one day the scum covers a quarter of the pond, the next day half the pond, and the next day chokes the whole pond and kills its life. By the time the effects of exponential growth become clearly visible, it may be too late to do anything about it. If business as usual continues, this is the future for us humans, and it will be painful, violent, and immoral by any standards, since we will have known and allowed it to happen anyway.”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet

“The holy grail of science may be to explain the universe without God, but the holy grail of a flourishing scientific civilization must be to find a scientifically accurate understanding of us humans in this universe and express it, live it, and share it so that it inspires and empowers us for the future.”
― Nancy Abrams, A God That Could be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet