Quotes About Belief

Religion isn't best understood primarily as a collection of beliefs held by backward people with fear and trembling for most of human history (religion as brainwash). It is rather, among other things, a scriptorium of beleaguered witness, a record of collated information, both fragmentary and sometimes systematic, with which we may feel compelled to reckon as it somehow, across history, reckons with us, an inheritance, if you like, of difficult wisdom.

Some gods deserve atheists.

I myself believe that there will one day be time travel because when we find that something isn't forbidden by the over-arching laws of physics we usually eventually find a technological way of doing it.

the Principle of Mediocrity opposes the pre-Enlightenment arrogance of believing ourselves significant in the world; the Spaceship Earth metaphor opposes the Enlightenment arrogance of aspiring to control the world.

The idea that there could be beings that are to us as we are to animals is a belief in the supernatural.

once the existence of facts was denied then everything was a lie.

Her sanity was perhaps an unwarranted assumption.

Personal faith can be a powerful force for public good.

it could not and would not happen so long as Christians "continued to believe that natural man was totally corrupt, that suffering and subordination were necessary parts of life, and that the only true freedom lay in salvation from the world.

Every week I get letters from people worldwide who feel that the possibilian point of view represents their understanding better than either religion or neo-atheism.

Although I cannot prove this scenario, I know it—and isn't that the ultimate definition of faith? Knowing what we can't know. Seeing what isn't there.

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

What do I consider myself now? A man attempting to be good. In this endeavor I have no use for church and steeple. If another man does, I only wish he finds what he needs.

Isn't a gay Mormon like an oxymoron?' 'Do I look like an oxymoron to you?' 'An oxymormon.

God save us from religion.

Keep working. Keep trying. Keep believing. You still might not make it, but at least you gave it your best shot. If you don't have calluses on your soul, this isn't for you. Take up knitting instead.

Most people seem to believe that not only is it permissible to turn the train down the spur, it is actually required—morally obligatory.

Subjectivism maintains that there are no objective moral truths.

I keep repeating that wherever there is life, there is hope. One day my fate will change.

Faith isn't for the faint of heart. Both courage and naïveté are required. To grasp its art, you must look the other way when all the omens seem to say you will nog get what you desire, so, though it may be a cliché I put my faith in fire.

The way you talk about yourself and your lifeyour storyhas a great deal to do with what shows up in your day-to-day experience. Your thoughts create filters through which you view your life. If you think of yourself as a Victim, you filter all that happens to you through the lens of DDT, and you find plenty of evidence to support that viewpoint. Thats why the orientation you adopt is so important: it exerts a powerful influence on your life direction.

Evangelicals now stand among those who are on easiest terms with the world, for they have lost their capacity for dissent.

God waits on us to admit him so that he can make his love real. That is how so many people think. And this is how much religion outside of Christian faith has thought about God's love, too.