Theism Quotes

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.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

Theism is so confused and the sentences in which “God” appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.

When life is so harsh that a man loses all hope in himself, then he raises his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation. Yes, atheism IS a redemptive belief. It is theism that denies man’s own redemptive nature.

Classical philosophical theism maintained the ontological distinction between God and creative world that is necessary for any genuine theism by conceiving them to be of different substances, with particular attributes predicated of each.

We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.

The opposite of theism is not atheism, it’s idolatry

When I hear that a personal friend has fallen into matrimonial courses, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism — a holy sorrow, unmixed with anger.

For good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

[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)

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

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.

There are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views

I don’t endorse deism or interventionist theism. My point is just that evolutionary biology is logically compatible with the former and with some versions of the latter.

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Nothing in our politics is any longer driven or designed by individual humans who have a name and a face; we have sunk from theism into impersonal and depersonalizing deism, a scheme of rule by alien and implacable abstract metaphysical forces.

It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life.

There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. . . It seems as though somebody has fine tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe. . . The impression of design is overwhelming.

Theism tells men that they are the slaves of a God. Atheism assures men that they are the investigators and users of nature.

Atheism is the last word of theism

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.

Modernist discourse […] incorporates semantic devices – such as the labeling of theism as ‘religion’ and naturalism as ‘science’ – that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open.

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism

It turns out that the word atheism means much less than I had thought. It is merely the lack of theism.

Disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but at last it was complete.

Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Secular Humanism is opposed to other religions; it actively rejects, excludes, and attempts to eliminate traditional theism from meaningful participation in the American culture.

In theory I am an agnostic, but pending the appearance of rational evidence I must be classed, practically and provisionally, as an atheist. The chance’s of theism’s truth being to my mind so microscopically small, I would be a pedant and a hypocrite to call myself anything else.

The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.

Christianity is not a mere religion but an experimentally testable science.

Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.

So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.

The struggle against atheism is foremost and of necessity a struggle against the inadequacy of our own theism.

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

The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.

Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.

If one believes in a god, one is a Theist. If one does not believe in a god, then one is an A-theist — he is without that belief. The distinction between atheism and theism is entirely, exclusively, that of whether one has or has not a belief in God.

The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha’s atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah.

I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.

Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies.

It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follows from the advance of science.

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.

I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.

A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.

The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.

It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.

When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it’s very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it.

If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence