When I was quite a boy I had a spasm of religion which lasted six weeks... But I never since have swallowed the Christian fable.
If you don't have religious fallibilism, you have immense problems.
Doubt is faith in the main: but faith, on the whole, is doubt; We cannot believe by proof: but could we believe without?
An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with explanation, with conclusions. Nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion.
There's something in every atheist, itching to believe, and something in every believer, itching to doubt.
Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing.
It is known that some victims don't report crimes against their perpetrator. Many fear that they will not be believed. What is less understood is why anyone might expect people to believe they're the victim of a crime in the absence of evidence.
She knew few words and believed in none.
Reincarnation?” He shrugged. “I’ve never seen any evidence that it’s real. But I’ve never seen anything that disproves it either. I believe the afterlife is better than what we have here—and it would take something extraordinary to make someone willing to come back.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
