Quotes About Orthodoxy

I was just then going through a healthy reaction from the orthodoxy of my youth religion had become for me not so much a possession as an obsession, which I was trying to throw off, and this iconoclastic tale of an imaginary tribe was the result.

The view was thus declared heretical in 416 CE. Islam, too, denies the validity of original sin and of mankind's inherent sinfulness.

Preservation of orthodoxy seems to emerge as a supreme and contentious problem for all three monotheistic faiths, far more so than for other major world religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism. This may be partly due to the fact that the monotheistic religions are "revealed," that is, they are believed to have existed eternally and preexist the exact moment of revelation to their prophets. There is less room for flexibility on doctrine.

Hold firmly that our faith is identical with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act.

And so the catastrophe of 1929–33 did to the certainties of laissez-faire economics what science did to nineteenth-century religion and what the slaughter of World War I did to old-fashioned patriotism: it knocked out the props. "Everything nailed down is coming loose," people used to say back then: The Depression made business leaders into laughingstocks and transformed economic orthodoxy into so many fairy tales.

Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain.

It is not what we believe, but why we believe it. Moral responsibility lies in diligently weighing the evidence. We must actively doubt; we have to scrutinize our views, not take them on trust. No virtue attached to blindly accepting orthodoxy, however 'venerable'...

I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.

But it seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the product of governing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of common sense.

One may go against convention, but one must keep up tradition.

I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. And the Scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did . . . that we did good to our fellow creatures.

Reason, tradition, speculative conviction, dead orthodoxy, are a girdle of spider-webs. They give way at the first onset. Truth alone, as abiding in the mind in the form of divine knowledge, can give strength or confidence even in the ordinary conflicts of the Christian life, much more in any really "evil day.

biology, with devastating effects."2 Why the resistance? Because the social sciences have been in the grip of an orthodoxy that is scared stiff of biology.

the church has allowed itself to become dangerously polarized into two camps: politicized and privatized views of faith. The problem is, neither view has anything to do with historic Christianity.

As for Africa, its per capita income grew relatively slowly even in the 1960s and t he 1970s (1-2% a year). But since the 1980s, the region has seen a fall in living standards. This record is a damning indictment of the neoliberal orthodoxy, because most of the African economies have been practically run by the IMF and the World Bank over the past quarter of a century.

Now, if it was only Korea that became rich through such 'heretical' policies, the free-market gurus might be able to dismiss it as merely the exception that proves the rule. However, Korea is no exception. As I shall show later, practically all of today's developed countries, including Britain and the US, the supposed homes of the free market and free trade, have become rich on the basis of policy recipes that go against the orthodoxy of neo-liberal economics.

If orthodoxy is impure water, he tells us, neology is liquid manure.

Honestly, orthodoxy concerns me about as much as it concerns your average jackrabbit. I only follow rules that take me where I want to go. If there aren't any rules, I make up my own (and follow them strictly).

One of the hardest lessons to learn in academic life—and for me one of the most disconcerting—is the speed with which a radical insurgency can become orthodoxy. In just a few years a generation of students championing a dangerous new idea are elevated by an initial success into professorships. From these positions of influence they form a powerful network of academic power brokers, which they use to ensure the continuation of the revolution.

The cataclysmic use of money for suburban sprawl, and the concomitant starvation of all those parts of cities that planning orthodoxy stamped as slums, was what our wise men wanted for us; they put in a lot of effort, one way and another, to get it. We got it.

I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate.

Had Elijah Muhammad tried to introduce an orthodox form of Arab-oriented Islam, I doubt if he would have attracted 500 people, but he introduced a form of Islam that would communicate with the people he had to deal with. He was the king to those who had no king, and he was the messiah to those some people thought unworthy of a messiah.

To be labeled a 'science-denier' in 2017 often just means you've upset someone who insists on teaching strict, Darwinian orthodoxy in schools or who advocates particular climate legislation or who supports ethically fraught research on embryos.