# Quote — Sheri S. Tepper, Raising The Stones

> “Most of the monotheisms were tribal, pastoral, retributive religions that committed holocausts and built pyramids of skulls and conducted organized murder for a few thousand years, so there were lots of opportunities for one guy’s god to fight some other guy’s god. Each tribal religion claimed that its god was the One True God. Every prophet had his own idea about what that meant, of course, and as a result man was always being jerked around between different people’s ideas of god, depending on who’d won the most recent war, or palace coup, or political battle.
>
> “This meant mankind was always being asked to accept deities foreign to his own nature. I mean, if your prophet was sexually insecure, or if his later interpreters were, that religion demanded celibacy or repression or even hatred of women; if the prophet was a homophobe, he preached persecution of homosexuals; and if he was both lecherous and greedy, he preached polygyny. If he was luxurious, he preached give-me-money-and-God-will-make-you-rich; if he felt put upon he preached God-of-Vengeance, let’s kill the other guy; and no matter how much well-meaning ecumenicists pretended all the gods were one god under different aspects, they weren’t any such thing, because every prophet created God in his own image, to confront his own nightmares.”

- Author: [Sheri S. Tepper](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper.md)
- Book: [Raising The Stones](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/raising-the-stones.md)
- Page: 107
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper#Raising_the_Stones_(1990)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/raising-the-stones/most-of-the

## More from this book

> There is no sin inherent in any mind save the sin of pride in believing one has seen or been taught the absolute truth. The second greatest sin is refusing to search for the truth one must acknowledge one will never absolutely find.

p. 155 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/raising-the-stones/there-is-no-sin.md)

> “It seems to me,” said Spiggy softly, “that when a race of man becomes so anthropocentric it regards other living beings as lesser consumables, it could get to be a habit. It might become easy to include other living creatures with the Gharm. Animals. Children. Women. Entire planet. Perhaps they, too, become consumables, to be used up and thrown away.”

p. 284 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/raising-the-stones/it-seems-to-me-said.md)

> I’ve met the prophet Awateh, and he’s very religious, but he’s also completely off his head. It seems to me religious toleration stops when they intend to kill you or hurt you with it. Africa, that’s my aunt, she always said noninterference was a two-way street.

p. 397 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sheri-s-tepper/raising-the-stones/ive-met-the.md)