I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good. – Mary Douglas
It is only partly true that religion does more harm than good in society. The community makes God into the image it wants, vengeful, or milky sweet, or scrupulously just, and so on. – Mary Douglas
Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside? – Mary Douglas
Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination. – Mary Douglas
Our religion is itself profoundly sad – a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each mans own language – so long as he knows anguish and is a painter. – Charles Baudelaire