The longer humankind exists, the more it frees itself from superstitions and the simpler the laws of life seem to it.
Our age is the true age of critique.
Religion and legislation are naturally thinking of slipping away from critique. Religion: with the help of its sacredness; legislation: with the help of its superficial grandeur.
But this only excites suspicion against them, and they cannot count on sincere respect because reason respects only that which can withstand its free and public trial.
— Kant
Missionaries are diligently spreading Christianity to India. But can the Christian church give India a more enviable future than her past? Can it give her more mental and spiritual strength than what she already has and what she has had since time immemorial? Does the Christian church have a higher conception of the omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient deity than that of the followers of Brahmin teachings? Is the notion of God who walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, and who had not heard the things they were saying because he had walked some distance away, who had feared an attack on his heavenly stronghold from the builders of some tower, who ate roasted lamb with elders, who was enraged by various trifles and who now and then cursed the unfortunate humans created by him for their mistakes—can the notion of such a God be any way higher compared to the idea of an invisible, omniscient, omnipotent being who manifests his will everywhere in the universe? And the belief in the divinity of Christ, in his embodiment, resurrection and redeeming sacrifice? Is it not blasphemy to entangle the highest and greatest being into the affairs of mortals? If the Hindus must believe in resurrection, then why should they not believe in the incarnation of Krishna or Rama: why should they believe not in them but in Christ? God, however, like it is said in the truly sacred text of humankind, does not have a body and has not been born (John 4) and cannot be incarnated. Teachings about resurrection are no more than tales: the grave has never given back its dead, if they were truly dead. As for redemption, then this teaching contradicts even the most primitive understandings of justice.
— Lucy Mallory
Study everything, put reason in first place.
— Pythagoras
Life consists in our acquiring ever greater truth about our purpose and living in ever greater harmony with that truth. All false religions say that their text contains a ready, complete, perfect truth (the Vedas, the Bible, the Quran) and that there are ways of living in accordance with that truth (faith, sacrifice, prayer, grace). The result is that one need not seek the truth, nor work on improving one’s life. That is terrible.
Do not fear the destruction that reason causes to established traditions. Reason cannot destroy anything without replacing it with the truth. That is its property.
