Quotes About Belief

So when dogmatic atheists assume that science has all the answers, or imagine that it soon will, they are no more immune than the most literal religious fundamentalist to the deceptive enchantment of certainty.

agree that Muhammad took his uncle's hand as the life began to fade from his eyes and urged him to say the shahada, to accept islam and testify that there was no god but God: "Say it, uncle, and then I shall be able to witness for you on the Day of Judgment.

Al-Tabari understood that human truth is always flawed—that realities are multiple and that everyone has some degree of bias. The closest one might come to objectivity would be in the aggregate, which is why he so often concludes a disputed episode with that time-honored phrase "Only God knows for sure.

Because prophetic it definitely was, placing itself explicitly in the tradition of previous prophets from Moses down through the ages to Jesus. "Say: 'We believe in God and in that which has been revealed to us; in what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes of Israel; to Moses and Jesus and the other prophets.

All ancient polytheisms revered one high god above all others.

There was no god but God. There could be no partners with God, no daughters or sons. God was neither begotten nor begetter. What indeed had

If you believe in Omens, the fact that Muhammad was born an orphan is not a good one.

the desert, nobody needed to preach that there was a higher power than the human. Whether you think of it as natural or supernatural—and in the sixth century there was no difference between the two—anyone unaware of it did not survive.

Moral compasses" are often invoked, as though religion always points north. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the graybeards that religion and morality are not synonymous

Where belief tries to expel doubt, faith walks with it, offering no easy answers. Belief insists, while faith hopes and trusts. The one is demanded, the other freely given, and this freedom means that real faith is both difficult and stubborn. It involves an ongoing struggle, a continual questioning of what we think we know, a wrestling with issues and ideas. It goes hand-in-hand with doubt, in a never-ending conversation with it. And sometimes even in conscious defiance of it.

Especially the doubt, which is in many ways essential to real faith.

Where certainty is often a refusal to think, to question, to reason - a refusal to engage in the kind of Socratic dialogue with unbelief that the Quran urges - faith requires an awareness of the possibility of being wrong, which is why it is perhaps best defined in Hebrews 11:1 as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not see.

I am come to set a man at variance with his father,"4 Jesus had said. "If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my follower.

It was as though nobody had considered the possibility that he might die, not even Muhammad himself.

Seeds of doubt, once planted, will grow.

Freddie's attitude was always, 'But you can, don't you see? You can do it. Put your mind to it, you'll see what you can do.' That was one of the loveliest things about him.

If somebody tells us it's rubbish, then our attitude is that the person's misguided, rather than that we are rubbish.

We must judge all teaching by the Word of God.

Jane did believe she was all that,

You asked God to help you, old boy,' she said. 'Why shouldn't I ask the men who have come?

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal.

But there are times, I would argue, when fiction delivers the greater truth.

When you do something out of conviction, my dear, it should be because you believe it's the right thing to do. If you look for approval from everyone, you'll never be able to act.

I'm not saying we'll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure.