Critical Faith Quotes

Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.

Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.

I fear your faith has been mis- placed—but then, faith usually is.

The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.

Doubt tempers belief with sanity.

Is there any man that thinks in chains like the man who calls himself a free-thinker? Is there any man so credulous as the man who will not believe in the Bible? He swallows a ton of difficulties, and yet complains that we have swallowed an ounce of them. He has much more need of faith of a certain sort than we have, for skepticism has far harder problems than faith.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about.

It’s not God that I do not accept, you understand, it is this world of God’s, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept.

I prefer to think of faith, as Coleridge says of poetry, not as the taking up of belief but as "the willing suspension of disbelief". . . a willingness to be open, to explore, to investigate.

Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.

For God's sake build not your faith upon Tradition, 'tis as rotten as a rotten Post.

On the whole, the Anglican Church gives a question for every answer.

I think religion is a funny thing because, when you see somebody who can really break it down, sometimes it feels foolish what you believe.

To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God.

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

Faith never requires us to crucify our minds or deny our senses.

I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter.

I think religion is as flawed an enterprise as any other human endeavor, but the interests and ambitions of religion are the right interests and ambitions.

Why in God's name should a God be praised if he is only performing his Godly function?

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

I grew up hearing everyone tell me 'God loves you'. I would say big deal, God loves everybody. That don't make me special! That just proves that God ain't got no taste. And, I don't think He does. Thank God! Because He takes the junk of our lives and makes the most beautiful art.

I guess I'm a Holy Spirit maniac. I'm not a religious maniac. I love religion, but I don't like it.

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

In a way, I think religion is to be admired for asking the right questions. I just think it's got the wrong answers.

You are free to reject God. Make sure that you're really rejecting God, not some caricature of God that the church has shown you. But I, one, respect a God who not only allows us to reject Him but includes the arguments we can use against Him in the Bible. I respect that.