Terence McKenna Quotes

Religion is "so absurd that it comes close to imbecility."

Finding that no religion was based upon facts, but that all of them were in opposition to facts, and could not therefore be true, I began to reflect upon what must be the condition of mankind, trained from infancy to believe in these errors, and to make them the rule of their conduct.

I love religion. I could make up religions all day. I sort of think that in an ideal world I'd like to be a religion designer. I'd like people come up to me and say, I need a religion. I'd go talk to them for a while, and I'd design a religion for them. That would be a great job. There's a need for people like that. Fortunately, seeing that one can't actually do it, I get paid for sort of making them up anyway.

Hinduism is not a codified religion.

Religion, like its votaries, while it exists on earth, must have a body as well as a soul. A religion purely spiritual might suit a being as pure, but men are compound animals; and the body too often lords it over the mind.

I think religion is a funny thing because, when you see somebody who can really break it down, sometimes it feels foolish what you believe.

The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

I don't mind most religious people, I talk to them. I listen to them, you know, banging on. "I prayed very hard and then the fairy came." "Did he? Good. Have a biscuit." I only get annoyed when they try and make me see the fairy. "You have to let the fairy into your heart." Look, I wouldn't let him into my garden, okay? I'd shoot him on sight, if he existed, which he doesn't. Now have another biccie and be quiet, will you please?

Are not all religions strange to those who stand outside of them?

Organized religions by their very natures are misleading.

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an is mute; if you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy sabbath keep, And all the western world believe and sleep.

I hate religion. I think it's a neurological disorder.

Organized religions have all the facets of organized crime, except the compassion of organized crime.

I don't think any religion makes any sense and I think people who are into that are really getting duped, and I don't think Judaism makes any more sense than Christianity, and I don't think Christianity makes any more sense than Scientology. But here's a guy, L. Ron Hubbard, who told all his friends, 'Look, I'm gonna start a religion, 'cause I can't make any money as a science fiction writer.' I mean, he admitted that publicly! At least with Jesus Christ, you can't go talk to the guy.

If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment.

In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I'd have to suspend a degree of disbelief.

As a scientist, I can not help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired.The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me. I don't want to have anything to do with such a God.

I'm very interested in religion and different religions, and I know quite a lot about it. I love gospel music, and I love going to churches, but the one drawback is that I don't actually believe in God. And it is quite a handicap, you know.

Whatever sympathy I feel towards religions, whatever admiration for some of their adherents, whatever historical or biological necessity I see in them, whatever metaphorical truth, I cannot accept them as credible explanations of reality; and they are incredible to me in proportion to the degree that they require my belief in positive human attributes and intervenient powers in their divinities.

The difference between religions and cults is determined by how much real estate is owned.

When I was with the serpent-handlers in Tennessee, it was the most bizarre method of worship I could think of. Yet when you sit with these people, you can kind of see how it makes sense.