Quotes About Dogma

Whereas in Europe new ideas were forced to compete against other doctrines and attitudes, with the results that people tended towards healthy skepticism about claims to absolute truth, and a climate of pluralism developed, In Russia there was a cultural void. The censor forbade all political expression, so that when ideas were introduced there they easily assumed the status of holy dogma, a panacea for all the world's ills, beyond questioning or indeed the need to test them in real life.

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

When it comes to essential things, no one is tolerant.

It was a question of steering Christian dogma between the Scylla of pantheism and the Charybdis of materialism and its logical conclusion, scepticism.

Faith in our time can seem like signing on the dotted line of a prefab doctrine composed of absurdities.

The greatest heresy is not to believe in witchcraft" (haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum

At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of doctrines — how support for a false dogma can become politically mandatory, and how overwhelming contrary evidence only makes such dogmas stronger and more extreme.

History may always become a kind of evasion of the search for truth. It is always possible to hide behind history so as to affirm nothing on one's own account...Ultimately, the skeptical historian no longer searches for anything, and the dogmatic philosopher has nothing but enemies or students but never friends.

Once you've condoned faith in general, you've condoned any crazy shit done because of faith.

hence the conclusion is frequently implied and often explicitly drawn that the Puritans looked upon philosophy as a sensual indulgence, upon classical authors as contemptible heathens, upon science as a work of the Devil and a hindrance to faith. Neither the friends nor the foes of the Puritans have shown much interest in their intellects, for it has been assumed that the Puritan mind was too weighted down by the load of dogma to be worth considering in and for itself.

Ah well, I suppose that's the problem with trying to make others follow your own beliefs: what starts out as spiritual ardor too often becomes arrogance and bigotry.

Another religious fanatic to whom facts and reality took second place to dogma.

He'd learned long ago that logic and facts never meant anything to true believers—of anything.