One may say with one's lips: “I believe that the world was created six thousand years ago;” or, “I believe that Jesus flew away into the skies and is sitting on the right hand of the Father;” or, “God is One, and also Three;” — but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.
But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal.
But in the end all religions point to the same light. In between the light and us, sometimes there are too many rules. The light is here and there are no rules to follow this light.
It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.
Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge.
Let us meet four times a year in a grand temple with music, and thank God for all his gifts. There is one sun. There is one God. Let us have one religion. Then all mankind will be brethren.