Quotes About Dogma

It should go without saying that these rival belief systems [Judaism, Islam, Christianity] are all equally uncontaminated by evidence.

Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.

Dogma in science really is humiliating when it is recognized as dogma.

The doors leading out of the prison of scriptural literalism simply do not open from the inside.

In the best case, faith leaves otherwise well-intentioned people incapable of thinking rationally about many of their deepest concerns; at worst, it is a continuous source of human violence.

As long as it is acceptable for a person to believe that he knows how God wants everyone on earth to live, we will continue to murder one another on account of our myths.

It is therefore in the very nature of faith to serve as an impediment to further inquiry.

Some say while religious fundamentalists betray reason. Moderates betray faith and reason equally. -Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion(Documentary)

The problem with religion is that it blends this truth so thoroughly with the venom of unreason.

It is time we recognized that the only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us. Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. This spirit of mutual inquiry is the very antithesis of religious faith.

If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of having dispensed with the dogma of faith. If our tribalism is ever to give way to an extended moral identity, our religious beliefs can no longer be sheltered from the tides of genuine inquiry and genuine criticism. It is time we realized that to presume knowledge where one has only pious hope is a species of evil.

men cannot do without dogmatical belief;

We humans, through old habits, and because of the inherent structure of human knowledge have a tendency to make static, definite, and, in a way, absolutistic one-valued statements. But when we fight absolutism, we quite often establish, instead, some other dogma equally silly and harmful. For instance, an active atheist is psycho-logically as unsound as a rabid theist.

IRRELIGION, n. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.

Civilizations have been founded and maintained on theories which refused to obey facts.

Nada tiene que quedarse como está. Si un dogma no funciona, por muy fuerte e inamovible que parezca, siempre puede uno desecharlo y plantear algo distinto.

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

The modern dogma is comfort at any cost.

Atheism, a religion dedicated to its own sense of smug superiority.

Therefore the vast majority of the people who affirm leftist beliefs think of their views as the only way to properly think about life.

Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula does sunlight.

I don't think atheism means one does not believe in a spiritual life. I think it means one does not follow the tenets of the established religions.

For these people religion is the only form of intellectuality.

The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.