I have always marveled that so many religions exact such revenge against dissenters. It only weakens the appeal of their faith and contradicts any claims they might have made that 'all religions are basically the same.'

When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?'

The game is played not to protect the rules; rather, the rules are made to protect the game. That.

The end result is spirituality without dogma, religion without God, argument without substance, rationalization without rationality, and tranquillity by transfer of funds from the seeker’s bank account to the company that makes the best offer of nirvana, at the same time producing dogmatism about relativism in matters of ultimate meaning.

Truth cannot be sacrificed at the alter of a pretended tolerance. All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true.

Marriage brings together not just a man and his wife but their children and their struggles. To suddenly drop the partner who has carried that load with you along life’s journey for all these years for someone with no strings or worries attached is cruel. Marriage is not a commercial enterprise in which you replace a car you have tired of with another one.

If the loss of shame was the child of secularization, the loss of reason is the child of pluralization.

Opinions are preferences amid options. Convictions are woven into one’s conscience.

Young dreams may be wild ones, but they are never corrected by ridiculing them. They must be steered by a loving voice that has earned the right to be heard, not one enforced by means of power. This is a very difficult lesson for parents to learn. And as cultures lose their restraining power, there will be greater need for mutual love and respect between parents and children if a relationship of trust is to be built, rather than banking on authority because of position.

The radically changed behavior of the disciples after the resurrection is the best evidence of the resurrection,” declares Thomas C. Oden of Drew University. “Some hypothesis is necessary to make plausible the transformation of the disciples from grieving followers of a crucified messiah to those whose resurrection preaching turned the world upside down. That change could not have happened, according to the church’s testimony, without the risen Lord.