Belief in god Quote by Rebecca Goldstein
““how irrelevant the belief in God can be to religious experience—so irrelevant that the emotional structure of religious experiences can be transplanted to completely godless contexts with little of the impact lost—and when he had also, almost as an afterthought, included as an appendix thirty-six arguments for the existence of God, with rebuttals, his claim being that the most thorough demolition of these arguments would make little difference to the felt qualities of religious experience,””
About This Quote
Source Book: The Philosophy of Religion, 2005
Religious experience can exist without belief in God, and arguments for God’s existence don’t alter that experience.
In simple terms: Experiences persist without belief.
Key Takeaway
Separate experience from doctrine.
Themes
religion
experience
skepticism
Mood
inquisitive
open‑minded
Type
theoretical
exploratory
When to use this quote
- personal meditation
- secular rituals
- interfaith dialogue
Key Concepts
philosophy of mind
existentialism
Questions to Reflect On
- What makes religious experience meaningful?
- Can secular practices fulfill similar needs?
A Different Perspective
Arguments may still matter to believers’ identity.
![“...[A] strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: human life is one and all men are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it is…” quote by Howard Thurman](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/889/howard-thurman-11976_hard-core_a-strange-necessity-has-been-laid-upon-m_37987.jpg)
