Quotes About Dogma

Proofs of the "truth" always start from the center of one's own religion and work outward. The result is a biased way of thinking which we are brought up to accept from childhood. Nevertheless generations lived and still do live in the conviction that they possess the "truth.

The secular bullies believe they have an exclusive patent on scientific knowledge.

It is easy to see what is heresy today, but who can tell what will be heresy tomorrow.

Many have quarreled about religion that never practiced it

As I am a seeker of truth, I refuse to believe in every bit of dogma as a fact.

I don't really like the word 'religion.' To me, that's like rules and regulations and paying money to send up prayers. That kind of all weirds me out, honestly.

Religion is something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away. And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.

In religion, precise truth has almost no currency. True believers will kill and destroy to defend their inaccurate beliefs.

Christianity is such a silly religion.

Perhaps I should have seen that fanatic gleam, the quick response to a phrase, the magic sound of figures: Fifth Column, Third Force, Seventh Day. I might have saved us all a lot of trouble . . .

As long as there is a Church, there will be little Torquemadas

Beware of formulas. If there's a God, he's not a God of formulas.

Perhaps as sects multiply, belief diminishes.

just your bodies and there is no such thing as the soul, or if you do believe that the soul exists then you often do so blindly, according to religious dogmas rather than personal inquiry. You

I have an allergy to dogma, including my own.

The Arabs have a God, the Jews have another, and the Catholics have another! And they're all fighting to maintain that they worship the one real God. Idiots!

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems.

If someone tells you that pleasure is wrong and tolerance is weakness, and that you must follow this or that dogma blindly in obedience, and if you are told this is that only right road toward the idealized good, then most likely you are dealing with a fanatic. If you are told to kill for the sake of peace, you are dealing with someone who does not understand peace or justice. If you are told to give up your free will, you are dealing with a fanatic!

All religions are pieced together out of elements which seem so at odds with reason that any intelligence laughs at them.

What distinguishes a totalitarian ideology is its utterly insular quality. It purports to explain the entire world and everything in it.

Religions always and everywhere insist upon the argument from authority. You should do this or that because the Pope or the Koran or the local priest says you should. For centuries most of the world convinced itself that the only reason people act morally is because of instruction, that in effect without superstition there can be no ethical behaviour.

Religion was all about the proper practices:

if the faithful stop believing in dogma, stop relying on the church for absolute guidance, then it is all over.