If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that religion may be a flawed creation if a benevolent deity existed.
In this quote, Martin Amis proposes a critical view of religion, implying that if a caring God truly existed, He would not have allowed the creation of religion, which often leads to conflict and division among people. The statement raises questions about the nature of God and the impact of religious belief on humanity, suggesting that it can be more harmful than beneficial.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in society, one might cite this quote to emphasize the negative aspects of religious institutions.
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.
There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. All the time, we find animals doing things that, in our arrogance, we thought were just human.
Social media has emboldened an army of online Islamophobes; in the real world, mosques have been firebombed and politicians line up to condemn Muslim terrorism/clothing/meat/seating arrangements.
I was raised a black child in the South, where you're indoctrinated into a religion that an oppressor gave you.
I believe in the freedom of expression, unequivocally - though, as I have written before, I wish more people would understand that freedom of expression is not freedom from consequence.
Is discord going to show itself while we are still fighting, is the Jew once again worth less than another? Oh, it is sad, very sad, that once more, for the umpteenth time, the old truth is confirmed: What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews.
Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.
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