Alice McDermott Quotes

If you can believe in God, then you can believe in anything. It's a gang mentality.

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.

Religion is many things, but one of them, surely, is a way for adults to indulge in uncritical hero worship.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

I never found much comfort in overly organized religion of any sort.

To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

The habit of religion is oppressive, an easy way out of thought.

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do.

Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.

Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.

There is something endearing about people who give themselves up completely to their faith. But there is likewise something frightening about such a totality, which also is a feature of Islam.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock.

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business.

Fanatics do not have faith - they have belief. With faith you let go. You trust. Whereas with belief you cling.

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

To Follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.

I am not a great theologian. I know there is a theological concept called invincible ignorance in which a strong enough faith binds you to any facts to the contrary.

When Christians start thinking about Jesus, things start breaking down, they lose their faith. It's perfectly possible to go to church every Sunday and not ask any questions, just because you like it as a way of life. They fear that if they ask questions they'll lose their Christ, the very linchpin of their religion.

As a scientist I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired. As for their prophets, there are as many today as ever before, only now science refuses to let them overstep the bounds of common sense.

In prosecution of his holy purposes, he overlooked every human consideration.

Religious faith, is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, it doesn't matter what, without a whisper of doubt, or a whiff of evidence, and believe so strongly in some cases, that they are prepare to kill and die for it, without the need for further justification.

A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.

I'm not a practice religion freak. I didn't grow up in a religious family, but I have a faith.