Gods Quotes
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In some ways, though, Judaism was distinctive. All other religions in the empire were polytheistic—acknowledging and worshiping many gods of all sorts and functions: great gods of the state, lesser gods of various locales, gods who oversaw different aspects of human birth, life, and death. Judaism, on the other hand, was monotheistic; Jews insisted on worshiping only the one God of their ancestors, the God who, they maintained, had created this world, controlled this world, and alone provided what was needed for his people. According to Jewish tradition, this one all-powerful God had called Israel to be his special people and had promised to protect and defend them in exchange for their absolute devotion to him and him alone. The Jewish people, it was believed, had a “covenant” with this God, an agreement that they would be uniquely his as he was uniquely theirs. Only this one God was to be worshiped and obeyed; so, too, there was only one Temple, unlike in the polytheistic religions of the day in which, for example, there could be any number of temples to a god like Zeus. To be sure, Jews could worship God anywhere they lived, but they could perform their religious obligations of sacrifice to God only at the Temple in Jerusalem.
Bart Ehrman
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Atheism was an exceedingly rare phenomenon in antiquity: very few people believed there were literally no gods.
The word “atheism” itself, however, simply means “without the gods,” and one could be “without” them while still acknowledging they existed.
...atheism applied more normally to “anyone who rejected or neglected the traditional modes of honoring the gods.”
That is to say, anyone who abjectly refused to participate in the worship of divine beings could be labeled an atheist.
Such a person could expect a good deal of opprobrium and sometimes civil action.
The Christians were often accused of being atheists.
Obviously that was not because they denied the divine realm but because they refused to acknowledge (and act as if) it was inhabited by more than the one being they worshiped and refused to interact with it in traditional ways.
Bart Ehrman
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I do not think that G. H. Hardy was talking nonsense when he insisted that the mathematician was discovering rather than creating, nor was it wholly nonsense for Kepler to exult that he was thinking God's thoughts after him. The world for me is a necessary system, and in the degree to which the thinker can surrender his thought to that system and follow it, he is in a sense participating in that which is timeless or eternal.
Brand Blanshard
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We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.
Honore de Balzac
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Life's extremities can bring God's proximity.
Elaine A. Cannon
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Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
Aristotle
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This is the future. This is where mankind takes its next great step. This is where we become gods.
Adrian Tchaikovsky
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If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: "I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next, every two, then every three days!" and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving.
Epictetus
