Theist Quotes - Page 4

• I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations mental illness clouds our judgment.

  Adam Hamilton

  Atheist, Struggle, Clouds

  "No, Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason" by Adam Hamilton, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 20, 2012.

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• Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. Confucius cares not for the poverty, squalor and misery of the people of China. Buddha remains undisturbed in his philosophical indifference to the famine and starvation of outraged Hindoos; Jahve continues deaf to the bitter cry of Israel; while Jesus refuses to rise from the dead against his Christians who are butchering each other.

  Emma Goldman

  Christian, Jesus, Philosophical

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

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• Unlike those theists who at least pay lip service to science and scientific method, Johnson is out to convict science of fraud in the court of public opinion.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Scary, Public Opinion, Pay

  Victor J. Stenger (2003). “Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, Pyr Books

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• Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partiy with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy.

  Emma Goldman

  Honesty, Self, Justice

  Essay in the Mother Earth Journal, dwardmac.pitzer.edu. February 1916.

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• I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like William James. He's actually a pragmatist.

  Will Self

  Thinking, Pragmatists, Misreading

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• To call a Christian a theist is roughly equivalent to calling the space shuttle Atlantis a glider.

  R. C. Sproul

  Christian, Space, Calling

  R. C. Sproul (2015). “What We Believe: Understanding and Confessing the Apostles' Creed”, p.43, Baker Books

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• Theists give several 'proofs' of the existence of God. These are really just arguments, because if there were convincing proof just one would suffice.

  Marcel Conche

  Giving, Argument, Proof

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• I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mahomedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family.

  Frances Wright

  Members, Jew, Humans

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of Popular Lectures”, p.148

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• Morality may exist in an atheist without any religion, and in a theist with a religion quite unspiritual.

  Frances Power Cobbe

  Atheist, May, Morality

  Frances Power Cobbe (1855). “An essay on intuitive morals [by F.P. Cobbe] 2 pt”, p.134

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• When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.

  Thomas Huxley

  Christian, Art, Atheist

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays”, p.237, tredition

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• I am 95% a theist and 5% an atheist; thus ultimately I am an agnostic.

  Kedar Joshi

  Atheist, Agnostic

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• Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race.

  Emma Goldman

  Race, Years, Agony

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

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• The ability of the theist to misunderstand a thing is directly proportional to the obviousness of the thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Obviousness, Ability

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• God is a hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof; the onus probandi rests on the theist.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Needs, Proof, Hypothesis

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Illustrated)”, p.1807, Delphi Classics

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• I'm an agnosto-theist. I cross myself on airplanes. I pray when I'm sick. When you're sick I'll keep you in my thoughts; when I'm sick, I'm entreating a higher power.

  Dan Savage

  Airplane, Sick, Praying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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.

  Chapman Cohen

  Data, Mind, Atheism

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• 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.

  Dan Barker

  Religion, Wish, Atheism

  Dan Barker (2009). “Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists”, p.108, Ulysses Press

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• That intense faith in another world, that intense hatred for this world, that intense power of renunciation, that intense faith in God, that intense faith in the immortal soul, is in you. I challenge anyone to give it up. You cannot. You may try to impose upon me by becoming materialists, by talking materialism for a few months, but I know what you are; if I take you by the hand, back you come as good theists as ever were born. How can you change your nature?

  Swami Vivekananda

  Hands, Talking, Giving

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• God loves atheists. The former ones make the most compelling theists because they're so empirically familiar with how atheists think.

  Criss Jami

  Atheist, Thinking, God Love

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.5, Criss Jami

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• When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

  Walter Lippmann

  Men, Humans, Civilized

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.137, Transaction Publishers

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• I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.

  Criss Jami

  Believe, Humble, Men

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.7, Criss Jami

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• Tell me," said the atheist , "Is there a God really?" Said the master, "If you want me to be perfectly honest with you, I will not answer." Later the disciples demanded to know why he had not answered. "Because the question is unanswerable," said the Master. "So you are an atheist?" "Certainly not. The atheist makes the mistake of denying that of which nothing may be said... and the theist makes the mistake of affirming it.

  Anthony de Mello

  Atheist, Mistake, Answers

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• In affirming God to be supreme in all things, the classical theist describes him in a number of ways. He is perfect, loving, good, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, timeless, transcendent, personal, immutable and immanent. But how can this be? Is it really possible to be both eternal and timeless? Immutable and immanent? Personal and at the same time transcendent?

  Alexander Waugh

  Numbers, Perfect, Way

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• An atheist is as religious as a theist.

  Kedar Joshi

  Religious, Atheist, Atheism

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• Judging from the tendency and effect of his arguments, an atheist does not appear positively to refuse that a God may be... His verdict on the doctrine of God is only that it is not proven. It is not that it is disproven. He is but an atheist. He is not an anti-theist.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Atheist, Judging, Atheism

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