Quotes About Dogma

There was something pretentious about politics when it was taken to extremes.

Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

If our world is regulated by reductionist, narrow, sophomoric versions of Darwin; or reductionist, narrow, sophomoric versions of religious dogma; you end up being childishly anti-scientific, and childishly anti-religious, and you miss the very complex interaction [they share]

Religion was at it's best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith, rather than living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it, he told me. I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's a great mystery.

Reflecting years later on his spiritual feelings, he said that religion was at its best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. "The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it

The priest knows only one great danger: that is science

The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they thereafter believe in anything. In this century, 'anything' has included Hitler, Stalin and Mao, authors of the great genocidal madnesses of our time.

In modern times we suffer not for our sins - sin having been abolished - but for ideology.

Or as Chesterton put it, "The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they thereafter believe in anything." In this century, "anything" has included Hitler, Stalin and Mao, authors of the great genocidal madnesses of our time.

superstitious slavery" into "credulous piety" and "emotional

Darwin's theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it's been under attack since day one. That's just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we'd still be debating Newton with idiots too.

Buddhism is more a philosophy for living rather than a religion or dogma - it's about being awake, free from illusions and fear, so that compassion and loving kindness permeates all of our relationships.

I have a problem with religion that makes it so, like, 'We are the ones. We are the chosen ones.'

Conservatism is the negation of Ideology.

All prejudice presents itself as piety, propriety.

There is no more terrifying experience for a Christian than to discover he has suddenly become a rationalist.

The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion.

Religion is always an irrational enterprise, no matter how ennobling it may be to the human spirit.

The only interesting thing about religion is how many people it's slaughtered.

Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion.

A dogma will thrive in soil where the truth could not get root.

The thing with Catholicism, the same as all religions, is that it teaches what should be, which seems rather incorrect. This is what should be. Now, if you're taught to live up to a what should be that never existed -- only an occult superstition, no proof of this should be -- then you can sit on a jury and indict easily, you can cast the first stone, you can burn Adolf Eichmann, like that!

Among the lessons taught by the French Revolution there is none sadder or more striking than this, that you may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma.