Quotes about Dogma

Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

For many, religion has to do with what we are allowed to do and not allowed to do. In the end, that doesn't bear fruit.

... what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance.

Too many instances there are of daring men, who by presuming to sound the deep things of religion, have cavilled and argued themselves out of all religion.

Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves.

Truth cannot be sacrificed at the alter of a pretended tolerance. All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true.

The resulting inability or even desire to reason and think through an idea logically is demonstrated by one-liners such as "I'm not into 'isms.

Chinese proverb says, "If you want to know what water is, don't ask the fish." Most Hindus know little about Hinduism's scriptures or its development in dogma. Most Buddhists know little about Buddhism. Religion is much more a culture to most people than it is a carefully thought-through system of truth. Even Islam finds the same ignorance. Dare I say most Christians know very little about the teaching and history of their own beliefs.

Without the undergirding of love, the possessor of any conviction becomes obnoxious, and the dogma believed becomes repulsive to the one who disagrees with it.