I think you can be cynical about religion on occasion, and certainly skeptical about the degree to which some people use religion to manipulate other people.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.
It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know.
I think you can judge from somebody's actions a kind of a stability and sense of purpose perhaps created by strong religious roots. I mean, there's a certain patience, a certain discipline, I think, that religion helps you achieve.
In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
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?
Nothing but an imperious intellectual and moral necessity can drive into doubt a religious mind, for it is as though an earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very being quivers and sways under the shock.
I consider myself a religious person. God is something very personal with me and I don't flaunt religion in conversation with others.
I have never been a cynical person.
Someone once told me that religion is like a knife: You can stab someone with it, or you can slice bread with it.
Don't give in to cynicism. It is a toxic spiritual state.