Peter Kreeft Quotes

If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?

...Thomas did not believe the resurrection [John 20:25], and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

The scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

I believe in things that have proof.

Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!

If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.

Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.

I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know. How can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.

Science demands objective factual evidence - proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith.

There's no point of having faith if you have evidence.

Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'

It would be superfluous to receive by faith, things that can be known by natural reason

The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.

Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.

I'm not a religious man... I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science. A humility before the facts. I find that a moving and beautiful thing. And belief in the unknown I find less interesting. I find the known and the knowable interesting enough.

Every theory in philosophy, which is built on pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.

Science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion.

Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?