Francis Scott Key Quotes

Isn't all religions curious? If they weren't you wouldn't get anyone to believe them.

Christianity has a built-in defense system: anything that questions a belief, no matter how logical the argument is, is the work of Satan by the very fact that it makes you question a belief. It's a very interesting defense mechanism and the only way to get by it -- and believe me, I was raised Southern Baptist -- is to take massive amounts of mushrooms, sit in a field, and just go, "Show me.".

I've always been a huge fan of apologetics. C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors.

God is an idea that people believe in and I spend time arguing with people that subscribe to that idea(man made idea).

Faith gives new light to the soul, but it does not put our eyes out; and what God hathgivenusinournature could never be intended as a snare to Religion, or engage us to believe a lie.

The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack and defence.

The heart of their [Walsingham Witnesses] religion seemed to lie in disproving the religion of others.

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

... the habit of literature [is] the best defense against believing the half-truths of ideologues and the lies of demagogues.

On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it.

Thou shalt not believe something just because you can explain it.

Belief is a form of infantilism. There is no ground for believing anything.

For my own part, I believe that in dealing with skeptics, and unbelievers, and enemies of the Bible, Christians are too apt to stand only on the defensive. They are too often content with answering this or that little objection, or discussing this or that little difficulty, which is picked out of Scripture and thrown in their teeth. I believe we ought to act on the aggressive far more than we do, and to press home on the adversaries of [Biblical] inspiration the enormous difficulties of their own position.

But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?" I asked, for no good reason. "Is Jorge right?" "Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .

I tend over the years to have developed a certain hesitancy about believing that headlines tell the whole story.

I think what attracts me about the Electric Monk is that it's such an eloquent example of the futility of belief for belief's sake. I mean there's only any point in believing something if it's true.

We need to learn how to give a defense for our belief in Christ without getting defensive.

We do not respect people's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. If my reasons are good enough for believing what I believe, you will helplessly believe what I believe. I will give you my reasons and reasons are contagious. That is what it is to be a rational human being.

There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe.

If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

I believe what Jesus said, but Jesus never said priests couldn't be fools.

Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.

People confuse the word cynicism with the word skepticism. One is “you’re not gonna pay attention to anything, think everything’s screwed up, nothing’s ever gonna work out right”, that’s cynicism. But skepticism is, “you’re presented with evidence and you do your best to draw conclusions based on that”. So, as the saying goes, Bill Nye, do you believe in ghosts? No. However, I would love to see one. Bring it on. I’m open minded to the idea, but the more I look into it in a skeptical frame of thinking, the less likely it seems.

Who knows the origin of religion? Certainly not the one who believes in it. Understanding and belief are quite antagonistic. The man who understands religion does not believe in it, the man who believes in it does not understand it.

I discovered that Christianity does have the resources to meet the challenges posed by competing worldviews after all.