Some people consider the practice of love and compassion is only related to religious practice and if they are not interested in religion they neglect these inner values. But love and compassion are qualities that human beings require just to live together.
I believe it is in the national interest that government stand side-by-side with people of faith who work to change lives for the better. I understand in the past, some in government have said government cannot stand side-by-side with people of faith. Let me put it more bluntly, government can't spend money on religious programs simply because there's a rabbi on the board, cross on the wall, or a crescent on the door. I viewed this as not only bad social policy - because policy by-passed the great works of compassion and healing that take place - I viewed it as discrimination.
I have observed that religious practice is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness itself. I have also suggested that, whether a person practices religion or not, the spiritual qualities of love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, humility and so on are indispensable.
The man who contemplates the universe with his eyes wide open is the man with the greatest amount of natural piety; not in the religious sense, but in the sense of an intimate harmony with things.
Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition.
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.
To read in the Bible, as the word of God himself, that "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, ["] and to preach there-from that, "In the sweat of other mans faces shalt thou eat bread," to my mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincerity.
When the Jews were being persecuted by the Nazis in 1944 we passed the War Refugee Act, which focused on rescuing Jews, a religious group. But if the religious group is the subject of the persecution based on their religion, it's perfectly OK for a First Amendment-bound society to emphasize their rescue, just as it is perfectly OK to emphasize the fact that many, if not all of the perpetrators of Islamic terrorism, come from countries with a history of supporting terrorism.
So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: “Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is.” Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.
Protestantism came and gave a great blow to the religious and ritualistic rhythm of the year, in human life. Non-conformity almostfinished the deed.... Mankind has got to get back to the rhythm of the cosmos, and the permanence of marriage.
I am of the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from a deep religious feeling, and that without such feeling they would not be fruitful.
If you find examples of humanism which are anti-religious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it has never found anything to replace what it has destroyed.