Quotes About Dogma

We know that people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.

Religion leaves no room for human complexity.

Unfortunately, dogmatic, unchanging rules are drunken elephants in the house of crystal that is life.

Twelfth is a brittle fundamentalism that has caused many who came from such a background to eventually grow out of and renounce it.

Theocratic societies governed by priestly castes are usually static and monopolize thought. They insist on orthodox explanations and actively discourage independent and unconventional ideas. Today's beliefs must always be like yesterday's.

I am quite happy to be branded a heretic because throughout history heretics have stood up against dogma based on bigotry.

Nunca o mal é feito tão bem como quando é feito em nome da religião.

Any attempt to fix it in place, to say for instance "this is the final word on what Moby Dick means" robs myth of its creativity and turns its ossified corpse into dogma.

The real conflict was not between Catholics and Protestants as such, Newman thought. Rather the enemy of both was religious Liberalism, whose essence was the denial of dogma and the exaltation of private judgment in matters of belief. Against this, Protestantism, because of its reliance on Scripture alone, provided no defense. The

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to my church as a human being.

People can sometimes become too fundamental and dogmatic regarding pharmaceuticals. Yes, pharmaceuticals are largely developed by "Big Pharma" with profit in mind, but the end result is that they often reduce suffering in the world.

Holy' is a word used to conceal a great deal of nonsense," Blasphet

We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.

Socialism is the triumph of people's prejudices over their reason.

the fellow's got a bee in his bonnet. Thinks God's a secretion of the liver--all right once in a way, but there's no need to keep on about it. There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.

It is the dogma that is the drama -- not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death -- but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe.

But, looking round at the world as it is, it seems to me (I speak as a fool) that youth is all out for dogma, and that if boys and girls grow up imagining that Christianity has no dogma to give them, they'll give themselves over to political dogma or economic dogma in its crudest and most intransigent form.

To her, the beauty of an ordered life was more than a mere phrase; it was a dogma to be preached, a cult to be practised with passion and concentration.

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

Religion doesn't seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That's an idea we're so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it's kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is "Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? Because you're not!

Unfortunately, when we turn to religion, often the churches box us in even more. They tell us that we are inherently flawed, that we need to be forgiven for this sin, this stain that we carry. The first and most important function of religion is to connect you with the mystery of life and the mystery of your own being. When religion fails to do this, it has betrayed its primary mission, and all we are left with is dogma and belief.

A true believer is a danger to humanity.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them.