Quotes About Doctrine

Après l'avoir condamnée, l'Église a fait de la pensée de Thomas d'Aquin sa doctrine officielle. Elle lui a assuré à la fois une gloire sans égale mais l'a aussi enfermée dans une espèce d'enfer dogmatique dont il n'est pas sûr qu'elle soit aujourd'hui sortie.

scripture. Yet a bit of reflection on orthodox Christian theology makes clear that numerous absolutely crucial doctrinal terms are not themselves found in the Bible but were invented or appropriated by the church during the patristic era.

Biblicism, I have said, is impossible. But there are other approaches—including outright liberalism—that I think are even worse.

The point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection.

Christian America" that cares for people before they are born and after they are dead but is only interested in clerical coercion for the years in between

Religion is, after all, more than the belief in a supreme being. It is the cult of that supreme being and the belief that his or her wishes have been made known or can be determined.

believers fight each other over the correct interpretation and even kill members of their own faiths in battles over doctrine. Civilization has been immensely retarded by such arcane interfaith quarrels and could now be destroyed by their modern versions.

Estamos seguros de que se puede vivir una vida ética sin religión. Y de hecho sabemos que el reverso es cierto: que la religión ha ocasionado que innumerables personas no solo no se comporten mejor que otras, sino que se concedan licencias para comportarse de formas que dejarían estupefacto al regente de un burdel o a un genocida.

Hay días en que echo de menos mis antiguas convicciones como si se trataran de un miembro amputado. Pero, en términos generales, me siento mejor y no menos radical; y usted también se sentirá mejor, se lo garantizo, cuando abandone las doctrinas y permita que su mente, libre de cadenas, piense por sí misma.

Every single step toward the clarification of this argument has been opposed root and branch by the clergy.

Pero, en términos generales, me siento mejor y no menos radical; y usted también se sentirá mejor, se lo garantizo, cuando abandone las doctrinas y permita que su mente, libre de cadenas, piense por sí misma.

The Anglican position, stated clearly in the service of ordination and elsewhere, is that we should require no beliefs except what we are persuaded can be solidly based on the Scriptures, but we are free to adopt beliefs and customs that seem consistent with the scriptural witness even though they may not be directly stated.

Nothing fucks up a religion like an intervention from a real God.

No religion is perfect, not after man gets through with it.

Man's principle trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absense of universal gullibility?

Martin Luther was excommunicated in the year Cortés first occupied Tenochtitlán, yet nascent Protestantism and its accompanying debate about religious doctrine would find no receptive audience back in contemporary Castile.

La doctrina significa aquello que hace que el pueblo esté en armonía con su gobernante, de modo que le siga donde sea, sin temer por sus vidas ni a correr cualquier peligro.

With the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, a new American laissez-faire had been officially declared. If lots more incorrect and preposterous assertions circulated in our most massive mass media, that was a price of freedom. If splenetic commentators could now, as never before, keep believers perpetually riled up and feeling the excitement of being in a mob, so be it.

Wherever God is adored, he is adored in virtue of a supernatural doctrine; wherever he is despised, he is despised in the name of nature and reason.

A high place of honor, although doubtless one to be obtained only after enduring the pangs of a prolonged crucifixion, awaits that philosophical biologist, or that philosopher sufficiently acquainted with scientific biology, who subjects the modern doctrine of evolution to a thoroughly critical analysis, with a view to detect and to estimate its metaphysical assumptions.

Wasn't that what religions did? Squint at one another and declare, 'My unprovable belief is better than your unprovable belief. Suck it.

but wasn't that what religions did? Squint at one another and declare, "My unprovable belief is better than your unprovable belief. Suck it.

We're so worried about the legal details of crossing doctrinal t's and dotting sociopolitical i's that we miss the big picture. The love picture. The one thing Jesus was really clear about: LOVE. If we could just get that one thing down, I believe the details would take care of themselves.

bitterest pills for modern man to swallow: the problem of divine sovereignty as it is expressed particularly in the doctrine of predestination.