James Madison Quotes

As a matter of fact, no one knows that God exists and no one knows that God does not exist. To my mind there is no evidence that God exists - that this world is governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do not pretend to know.

Some theists, observing that all 'effects' need a cause, assert that God is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument wishes to prove.

The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for 
the existence of God.

It is true that you can't prove a negative. However, the existence of God is provable in the same way a building is positive proof that there was a builder.

The purpose of this study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective.

If I were going to construct a God I would furnish him with some ways and qualities and characteristics which the Present One lacks... He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when He could have made him happy with the same effort and He would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.

Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.

Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!

If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.

It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God.

If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just be the world as God.

God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

I have hitherto followed the lines marked out by the Theist in his attempt to prove that there exists a mind behind natural phenomena, and that the universe as we have it is, at least generally, an evidence of a plan designed by this mind. I have also pointed out that the only datum for such a conclusion is the universe we know. We must take that as a starting point. We can get neither behind it nor beyond it. We cannot start with God and deduce the universe from his existence; we must start with the world as we know it, and deduce God from the world.

This god, this one word: I.

The proofs of the existence of God are to such an extent fallen into discredit that they pass for something antiquated, belonging to days gone by.

God and all attributes of God are eternal.

Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.

A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.

My religion teaches me that I should, by my personal conduct, instill into the minds of those who might hold different views the conviction that cow killing is a sin.

What the unpenetrating world call Humanity, is often no more than a weak mind pitying itself.

An important distinction can be made between religion and spirituality. Religion [is] concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition... Spirituality is concerned with qualities of the human spirit, love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, that bring happiness both to self.

[Religion is a] primitive insurance against disaster. ... Originally religion was merely a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the flaws in this life by belief in another.

There is no room for God in a mind that's full of self.

Without the renewed mind, we will distort the Scriptures to avoid their radical commands for self-denial, and love, and purity, and supreme satisfaction in Christ alone.

I take the love of God and self-denial to be the sum of all saving grace and religion.