Just for kicks I'm going to put up several quotes. The subject, as you will see is religion. Don't let that bother you. I'm not out to debate the statements made by the authors of the quotes, they just happened to be on my mind recently. Play the game. Try not to cheat by googling them and guess who said them.
1. I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.
2. The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
3. The priests of different religious sects dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.
4. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect to religion seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
5. Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. (I find this one funny - religion being subject to natural selection - /sidebar)
6. I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover, if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city, and don't wonder why he hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin, and I'm not saying they will. But if they do, just remember you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, then don't ask for his help, because he might not be there.
7. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man - living in the sky - who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever 'til the end of time...But He loves you!
8. There is in every village a torch - the teacher: and an extinguisher - the clergyman.
9. Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
10. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?" Instead they say "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.