Quotes About Theism

think Him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe Him to be the only God. For a long time He did not believe it Himself; in the beginning He was a polytheist; later, His pride and the flattery of His worshippers made Him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He is less powerful than He is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, He is not so much a god as a vain and ignorant demiurge.

Nonbelievers may hear all the notes of science, but without a theistic context and perspective they will not hear the song.

It was tremendously exciting to discover that science was not destroying religion, as people popularly believe, but that it could cast light on theism and Christianity.

Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is.

Jestliže má humanistické náboženství teistické jádro, B?h je symbolem moci ?lovÄ›ka, schopností, které se ?lovÄ›k snaží v životÄ› uskute?nit - není to sym­bol síly a ovládání, symbol moci nad ?lovÄ›kem.

Like god, for example. Believing in a god isn't necessarily the same as believing in a god that intervenes in daily life. That's where most religions defer. They all believe in some kind of supernatural being, but they can't agree in what he does for a living. Does he kill children with typhoid?

Moral judgments are linguistic survivals from the practices of classical theism which have lost the context provided by these practices.

Religion would, in many points, not be comprehended by the ignorant, nor consolatory to them, nor guiding and supporting for them. The doctrines of the Bible are often clothed in the language of strict truth, but in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the practical essentials of the doctrine. A perfectly pure faith, free from all extraneous admixtures, a system of noble theism and lofty morality, would find too little preparation for it in the common mind and heart.

It is widely assumed, contrary to fact, that theism necessarily involves the two assumptions which cannot be squared with the existence of so much suffering, and that therefore, per impossibile, they simply have to be squared with the existence of all this suffering, somehow.

Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. What I'm trying to do is develop a language that will enable us to talk about God beyond the, what I think, are sterile categories of theism and atheism.

A basic presupposition of this book is that the Bible does contain an implicit metaphysical vision of ultimate reality—the reality that is most important, final, highest, and behind everyday appearances. That vision of reality has been called various things such as "biblical theism" and "biblical personalism." Perhaps "biblical personal theism" or "biblical theistic personalism" would be good terms for it.

It is worth remembering that if God created the world and all things in it, he created smallpox, plague, and filariasis.

I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist. [Letter to Max Otto]

We can call the attempt to refute theism by displaying the continuity of belief in God with primitive delusions the method of Anthropological intimidation.

Many an atheist is a believer without knowing it juast as many a believer is an atheist without knowing it. You can sincerely believe there is no God and live as though there is. You can sincerely believe there is a God and live as though there isn't.

I am fascinated in religion and theology and what people believe.

Rather than imagining God as a personlike being "out there," this concept imagines God as the encompassing Spirit in whom everything that is, is. The universe is not separate from God, but in God. Indeed, this is the meaning of the Greek roots of the word "panentheism": pan means "everything," en means "in," and theism comes from the Greek word for "God," theos.

I am a theist. I live life between that "a" and the "t." It's a vast little space.

A Christian theist, while conceding that the argument for God's existence is circular, nevertheless will claim that the argument is sound and persuasive. For he devoutly believes that his position is true, and he believes that it can be clearly recognized as such. He believes that God made men to think in terms of this circularity, rather than in terms of some competing circularity.

While a case can be made for intelligent design, I can't figure out why some Christians are so thrilled about that possibility. First of all, it doesn't prove there's a God. If anything, intelligent design lends support to some form of pantheism that defines God as immanent within nature.

Theist and atheist: The fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.

The difference between theism and new atheist science is the difference between mystery and certainty. Certainty is a relic, an atavism, a husk we ought to have outgrown. Mystery is openness to possibility, even at the scale now implied by physics and cosmology. The primordial human tropism toward mystery may well have provided the impetus for all that we have learned.

Theism produces sloppy ways of thinking because it doesn't necessarily respect reason but instead favors fiction.