human beings are overshadowed by anxiety because of our divided selves. - Alan Watts

what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God.

If everything, they said, was the creation and the operation of God, the statement had no more logic than “Everything is up.” But, as so often happens, when one tyrant is dethroned, a worse takes his place. The Crackpot Myth was retained without the Potter. The world was still understood as an artifact, but on the model of an automatic machine. The laws of nature were still there, but no lawmaker. According to the deists, the Lord had made this machine and set it going, but then went to sleep or off on a vacation.

The whole history of religion is the history of the failure of preaching. Preaching is moral violence.