Quotes About Dogma

The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a knowable quantity with which mortals might efficiently deal, to pigeonhole it once and for all so that we never had to reevaluate it. With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world.

religion is a paramount contributor to human misery. It is not merely the opium of the masses, it is the cyanide.

that no matter how valid, how vital, one's belief system might be, one undermines that system and ultimately negates it when one gets rigid and dogmatic in one's adherence to it.

The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted to it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.

To practice a religion can be lovely, to believe in one is almost always disastrous.

no matter how valid, how vital, one's belief system might be, one undermines that system and ultimately negates it when one gets rigid and dogmatic in one's adherence to it.

Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.

What He really hates is the shit that gets carried out in his name. Wars. Bigotry. Televangelism. - Rufus, Dogma

God help us from those who believe that they are the sole possessors of truth. How we manage at times to agree willingly to become prisoners within our own minds and souls of beliefs and ideas on which we can never be flexible.

Conservatism and passive acceptance... They can't think for themselves. Anything that's too complicated sends their heads reeling. Makes me want to puke.

Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted.

Closing your mind to religion is no different than the close-mindedness that religions can cause.

Of all the things I had learned in my life, nothing was so simple as fanatics imagined.

Much of the appeal of dogma in religion is that it gives its followers rules to follow that rescue them from having to find out who they are and what they really think.

For some, religion is the cement that seals shut their door on the world

By their peculiar "reasoning," too, theologians have sanctioned most of the ills of the ages. They justified the Inquisition, serfdom, and slavery. Theologians of our time defend segregation and the annihilation of one race by the other. They have drifted away from righteousness into an effort to make wrong seem to be right.

Even at their absolute best, religious answers remain authoritarian attempts to instill virtue through inspiring intimidation.

A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time.

If some people want to believe in Jesus, or Mohammed, or Buddha, or their ancestors, who is to say which is right and which wrong? It seems to me that most of the religions in the world are too dogmatic. They preach the 'live and let live' philosophy, but rarely do they practise it.

All empty souls tend to extreme opinion.

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Religion is not removed by removing superstition.

Religion was a riddle to her. Believe this, and only this, because we say so. If you don't you're buying a one-way ticket to everlasting Hell.

Organized religion baffled her, made her vaguely uncomfortable. Each had followers who were so sure they were right, that their way was the only way. And throughout history they'd fought wars and shed oceans of blood to prove it.