Quotes about theism

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.

Theology is never any help it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.

Our big mistake in modern intellectualism is first and foremost its lack of nuance. We have made science synonymous with atheism - a presupposed conception and yet, another means to non sequiturs - and therefore, to a number of enthusiasts determined to go the further, anti-theism. Hereby let us observe that science has long served best and should be, if none other, the one discipline, if at all possible, free of potential ideology, pro-religious or anti-religious, and/or biased presupposition i

It is not that men become too intelligent for God,' says the Apologist, 'but rather they become too arrogant for intelligence.

...the naive forms of Christian moral motivation - bare threats of hell and the bribery of heaven - stunt moral growth by ensuring believers remain emotional children, never achieving the cognitive moral development of adults. Psychologists have established that mature adults are moral not because of bare threats and bribes (that stage of moral development typifies children, not adults), but because they care about the effects their behavior has on themselves and others.

I do not regard the limits of the past and present as the limits of humanity of the future

[This philosophy] … is antagonistic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman

[T]he present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original[.]

[L]et it be remembered that atheism … is the secret of religion … ; religion … in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion accessory of mine. Especially when you place your hands in the prayer positions. Matter of fact, I urge all my followers to forgo nail polish permanently and replace it with expertly applied soot. The nonexistent gods above will ignore our prayers better this way.

God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.

What is it that makes a person insist passionately on the existence of metaphysical realities that can be neither demonstrated nor refuted? (176)

No one disputes that seeming order can come out of the application of simple rules. But who wrote the rules?

Even the devils are theists. I am of all people one of the least qualified to judge, but I do believe that some atheists are closer to God than are some theists. With Him, it is better to be distant in the mind but near in the heart than it is to be distant in the heart but near in the mind.

Many people are not conforming with theism, but they are comfortable with spiritualism.

Not one of you reflects, that you ought know your Gods before you worship them.

[I do not believe] in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.

I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light.

If she had some level of theism, we might have a shared theological root from which I could shape holy words.

All that stuff about Father Earth, it's just stories to explain what's wrong with the world. Like those weird cults that crop up from time to time. I heard of one that asks an old man in the sky to keep them alive every time they go to sleep. People need to believe there's more to the world than there is.

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts.

[Mindfulness] is not concerned with anything transcendent or divine. It serves as an antidote to theism, a cure for sentimental piety, a scalpel for excising the tumor of metaphysical belief. (130)

The reason the very concept of God has become at once so impoverished, so thoroughly mythical, and ultimately so incredible for so many modern persons is not because of all the interesting things we have learned over the past few centuries, but because of all the vital things we have forgotten.

No man will say, "There is no God" 'till he is so hardened in sin that it hasbecome his interest that there should be none to call him to account.

If heaven really exists: then, technically, living is an activity that believers keep themselves busy with — while they wait for their death.

Intellect, at its best, can make you agnostic. Being theist or atheist is still a matter of choice.

If you invoke faith as justification for your belief, you must accept the same from others. And every person who retreats to faith bears a measure of responsibility for every act of hate and violence justified by it.

A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question -- not as to whether the Bib

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.

Since science is essentially objective, involving the study of how things actually are, "materialism" would therefore seem to be its antithesis, since its starting point is the desire to impose upon the natural world a particular and limited way of looking at it.

So much enthusiasm about the non-existence of God is somewhat bewildering, as no one appears to be nearly as excited about a similar absence of belief in unicorns, vampires, werewolves, astrology, nation-building, or the Labor Theory of Value. Nor is anyone dedicating much of their time to writing books and giving speeches at universities and conferences with the avowed goal of convincing others not to believe in them either.

Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There's just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs.

Naturalism is the view that the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalism doesn't come right out and say there's nothing beyond nature. Rather, it says that nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what happens in nature. Naturalism's answer to theism is not atheism but benign neglect. People are welcome to believe in God, though not a God who makes a difference in the natural order.

Certainly my work is negative, destructive; but … only in relation to the unhuman, not to the human[.]

[T]here is no distinction between the predicates of the divine and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between the divine and human subject … [T]he predicates are not accidents, but express the essence of the subject … [T]he essence of religion … conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as divine relations[.]

I by no means say … God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is nothing, … . I only show that they are not that which the illusions of theology make them[.]

[T]hese days illusion only is scared, truth profane. … [S]acredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to highest degree of sacredness. Religion has disappeared, … for it has been substituted … the appearance of religion[.]

Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. They thrive on servility and shrink before independence. They feed upon worship as kings do upon flattery. That is why the cry of gods at all times is “Worship us or we perish.” A dethroned monarch may retain some of his human dignity while driving a taxi for a living. But a god without his thunderbolt is a poor object.

In a society where women are truly equal to men, a kid bred by a theist mother and an atheist father is born an agnostic. In a patriarchal society, the kid is automatically an atheist.

Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.

Prior to Flew, major apologies for atheism were those of Enlightenment thinkers (David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche).Major philosophers of Flew’s generation who were atheists: W. V. O. Quine and Gilbert Ryle. But none took the step of developing book-length arguments to support their personal beliefs.In later years, atheist philosophers who critically examined and rejected the traditional arguments for God’s existence: Paul Edwards, Wallace Matson, Kai Nie

If there's a god, it knows exactly what it would take to convince me and has refused to provide it. In fact, it has gone to great lengths to hide any evidence of its existence. That doesn't seem like a deity that wants to be worshiped to me.

Religion is a non-alcoholic man's alcohol. Alcohol is a non-religious man's religion.

The existence of a limit to science is, however, made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things – questions such as “How did everything begin?” “What are we all here for?” “What is the point of living?

Both theism and evolutionary naturalism are attempts to understand ourselves from the outside

But if they are shown to be, and are the works not of men but of God, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognize the Master Who did them?

the origin of wickedness is the cliff upon which theism, just as much as pantheism, is wrecked; for both imply optimism. However, evil and sin, both in their terrible magnitude, cannot be disavowed; indeed, because of the promised punishments for the latter, the former is only further increased. Whence all this, in a world that is either itself a God or the well-intentioned work of a God?

The agnostic does not simply say, "l do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know, -- he demonstrates that you do not know, and he drives you from the field of fact -- he drives you from the realm of reason -- he drives you from the light, into the darkness of conjecture -- into the world of dreams and shadows,

Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

Why, these men would destroy the Bible on evidence that would not convict a habitual criminal of a misdemeanor. They found a tooth in a sand pit in Nebraska with no other bones about it, and from that one tooth decided that it was the remains of the missing link. They have queer ideas about age too. They find a fossil and when they are asked how old it is they say they can't tell without knowing what rock it was in, and when they are asked how old the rock is they say they can't tell unless they

I see the gods—the names, images, stories—as the poetic encapsulation of our human experience, our relationship with the ineffable forces that shape human life. While this makes the gods no thing, it does not make them nothing. I see the gods as representing very real, powerful, even dangerous forces. I believe the gods are real. It doesn’t matter what we call them or don’t call them. They are real and dangerous, and we will contend with them. This for me is the message of the Bacchae. - M. J. L

I do not find theism any more credible than materialism as a comprehensive world view. My interest is in the territory between them.