Reasonable Faith Quotes & Sayings

We're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion. This is an issue that divides America. But certainly reasonable people can agree on how to reduce abortions in America. — George W. Bush

The worldview of the Christian faith is simple enough. God has put enough into this world to make faith in him a most reasonable thing. But he has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone. The — Ravi Zacharias

Parents don't have the luxury of being reasonable, not any more than a religious person does. What can make religious people and parents so utterly insufferable is also what makes religion and Parenthood so utterly beautiful: the All or nothing wager. The Faith. — Jonathan Safran Foer

We must not be satisfied to present Christianity as the most reliable position to hold among the competing options available. Rather, the Christian faith is the only reasonable outlook available to men. — Greg L. Bahnsen

The apprentice Christian may not rise so high but, once his heart is governed by Faith, it is reasonable for Faith to draw on his other capacities to support him. Sebond's doctrine of illumination helps us to do so effectively and to draw religious strength from a knowledge of God's creation: [God] has left within these lofty works the impress of his Godhead: only our weakness stops us from discovering it. He tells us himself that he makes manifest his unseen workings through those things which are seen. ('Apology', p. 498) — Michel De Montaigne

Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith. — Sam Harris

Too often we seem to have the idea that submission to Scripture means that we first come to see it as reasonable and then submit to it, but submission means, in part, a willingness to bend the knee in faith to things that are not fully resolved in our mind. — James C. Wilhoit

Nour El Dine felt much more comfortable with the vagabonds, the rabble born to commit sordid offenses. At least you could frighten them. But these disreputable intellectuals were forever breaking down all sense of authority in him. Nour El Dine considered himself a reasonable being; that is, he believed in the existence of the government and in the speeches pronounced by ministers. He had blind faith in the institutions of the civilized world. The attitude of Yeghen and his fellow men always disconcerted him; they appeared not to realize that there was a government. They were not against the government; they simply were not aware of it. — Albert Cossery

I think it's important to promote a culture of life. I think a hospitable society is a society where every being counts and every person matters. I believe the ideal world is one in which every child is protected in law and welcomed to life. I understand there's great differences on this issue of abortion. But I believe reasonable people can come together and put good law in place that will help reduce the number of abortions. — George W. Bush

Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of a lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis fails to become a Christian because of a lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with god. — William Lane Craig

I will tell you that I am a child of this century, a child of disbelief and doubt. I am that today and will remain so until the grave. How much terrible torture this thirst for faith has cost me and costs me even now, which is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I can find against it. And yet, God sends me sometimes instants when I am completely calm; at those instants I love and feel loved by others, and it is at those instances that I have shaped for myself a Credo where everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple, here it is: to believe that nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable, manly and more powerful than Christ. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

That's the great, enduring challenge of our modern times, is it not, to marry faith and reason? So hard--so unreasonable--to root our lives upon a distant wisp of holiness. Faith is grand but impractical: How does one live an eternal idea in a daily way? It's so much easier to be reasonable. Reason is practical, its rewards are immediate, its workings are clear. But alas, reason is blind. Reason, on its own, leads us nowhere, especially in the face of adversity. How do we balance the two, how do we live with both faith and reason? — Yann Martel

In reviewing the most mysterious doctrines of revelation, the ultimate appeal is to reason, not to determine whether she could have discovered these truths; not to declare whether, considered in themselves, they appear probable; but to decide whether it is not more reasonable to believe what God speaks than to confide in our own crude and feeble conceptions. No doctrine can be a proper object of our faith, which is not more reasonable to believe than to reject. — Archibald Alexander

during the latter part of the seventeenth and through the eighteenth centuries, while ordinary churchgoers continued to live in the world of the Bible, intellectuals were more and more controlled by the humanist tradition, so that even those who sought to defend the Christian faith did so on the basis that it was "reasonable," that is to say, that it did not contradict the fundamental humanist assumption. — Lesslie Newbigin

I can well imagine an athiest's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story. — Yann Martel

Reason begets honesty, and honesty, if given its head, begets confidence; so consequently, there is a sort of grand authority in the stances of those who know why they are standing. — Criss Jami

We are blessed with a faith, which calls into action the whole intellectual man; which prescribes a reasonable service; which challenges the investigation of its evidences; and which, in the doctrine of immortality, invests the mind of man with a portion of the dignity of Divine intelligence. — Edward Everett

Grace is the atmosphere created by love that makes faith the only reasonable response — Bill Johnson

But if there is hope, it lies in ordinary working people. When you put it in words it sounds reasonable: it is when you look at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it becomes an act of faith. — Tony Benn

One of my psychoses is that I feel like I can do anything. Actually, I believe anybody can do and make anything, even things that don't exist. The making isn't the hard part; it's having faith. If you do only reasonable things, you'll never start your own business. — Bre Pettis

Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations and in diverse places. Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it. Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past. Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a God inspires you. Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests. After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto. — Gautama Buddha

Faith is not in conflict with reason, nor is it a substitute for reason. Faith chooses the grade of significance or Level of Being at which the search for knowledge and understanding is to aim. There is reasonable faith and there is unreasonable faith. To look for meaning and purpose at the level of inanimate matter would be as unreasonable an act of faith as an attempt to "explain" the masterpieces of human genius as nothing but the outcome of economic interests or sexual frustration. — Ernst F. Schumacher

It must have been then that I began to lose faith in reasonable argument as the sole measure of truth. — Margaret Atwood

Fracking exemplifies the technological wager, by which I mean a gamble or even a faith that we can transform the world in the pursuit of narrowly defined goals and successfully manage the broader unintended consequences that result. In many ways, we are gambling on present innovations. I think that if we are to live with high technology we cannot avoid this wager. The question is whether we can establish conditions to make it a fair and reasonable bet. In the case of fracking, I will argue, these conditions are largely not in place (3). — Adam Briggle

I went into politics thinking that, if I made arguments in good faith, I'd get a hearing. It's a reasonable assumption, but it's wrong. In five and a half years in politics up north, no one really bothered to criticize my ideas, such as they were. It was never my message that was the issue. It was always the messenger. — Michael Ignatieff

Richard Dawkins says he can't be sure God doesn't exist. Well, you know what I do when I'm not sure about something? I go on a big crusade about it and write a bunch of books on the subject. No, wait, that sounds more like what someone with a mental disorder would do. That's one of the crazy things about lots of atheists: They're whole movement is supposed to be about being logical and reasonable, yet they tend to rail against religion is a very mindless way that doesn't seem to serve any more purpose than a tantrum. Perhaps I just don't understand their strong faith in not having faith. — Frank J. Fleming

But I want more. I want reasons to have faith in my faith, to have a reasonable confidence that there is actually truth in what my religion teaches me about God and my relation to God. And that faith has to be based on something within myself that I already trust: it has to be consonant with my experience of the universe and my abilities to reason about that universe. — Guy Consolmagno

The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope and charity. Now ... the first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues. And the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is the fact that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be ... charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. — G.K. Chesterton

Although it should be avoided, you can break promises to people if you have to - because you can explain circumstances and make reasonable justifications and compromises with people. Dogs take you at your word - that's a lot to live up to - and I, for one, do not want to be the kind of person who reneges on a good-faith deal with a dog. — Wade Rouse

We do not teach and practice community of goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord, that all true believers in Christ are of one body (I Cor. 12:13), partakers of one bread (I Cor. 10:17), have one God and one Lord (Eph. 4). Seeing then that they are one, ... it is Christian and reasonable that they also have divine love among them and that one member cares for another, for both the Scriptures and nature teach this. They show mercy and love, as much as is in them. They do not suffer a beggar among them. They have pity on the wants of the saints. They receive the wretched. They take strangers into their houses. They comfort the sad. They lend to the needy. They clothe the naked. They share their bread with the hungry. They do not turn their face from the poor nor do they regard their decrepit limbs and flesh (Isa. 58). This is the kind of brotherhood we teach. — Menno Simons

We live by faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise! - A life that stands as all true lives have stood Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good. — John Greenleaf Whittier

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. — E. O. Wilson

Some say they are not bound by the doctrine which teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing. Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true Church in order to gain eternal salvation. Others finally belittle the reasonable character of the credibility of Christian Faith. These and like errors, it is clear, have crept in among certain of our sons who are deceived by imprudent zeal for souls or by false science. — Pope Pius XII

To say that "the righteous (or just) shall live by faith" does not mean that they live by blind and irresponsible leaps in total absence, or even in defiance, of knowledge. It does not mean that the "just" live in a state of ignorance or stupidity.1 They do on occasion act in specific ways beyond what they know, but only within a framework of knowledge that makes such action reasonable. — Dallas Willard

Have enough faith in the love of God to believe that a short heartfelt prayer is just as good as a long one. Too long a session of prayer usually means that in your heart you really doubt the love of God, and think that a great deal of effort and toil will be necessary to move Him. Pray quietly and sincerely for a reasonable time-and then leave the matter, expecting success. — Emmet Fox

But is Christian faith the place to turn for logic? Is not logic the domain of scholars and philosophers? The British philosopher John Locke condemns this common misconception: "God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational."[2] In other words, Locke recognized that logic existed and people reasoned and used the critical faculties of their minds before any philosopher came along to teach about it. God created logic and reasoning as he created man, and he created it for man, and therefore, we should find it reasonable that God's Word has something to say - if not a lot to say - about logic, rationality, and good judgment. — Joel McDurmon

Catholics have always held that the soul is immeasurably more important than the body. Therefore, one who destroys the faith and grace that are the life of the soul is more guilty than one who merely kills the body. For this reasonable attitude there is surely no reason to apologize. — Diane Moczar

For though I was raised Protestant, my true religion is actually civility. Please note that I do not call my faith "politeness." That's part of it, yes, but I say civility because I believe that good manners are essential to the preservation of humanity - one's own and others' - but only to the extent that that civility is honest and reasonable, not merely the mindless handmaiden of propriety. — Kathleen Rooney

Using the scientific knowledge that we currently possess, we can take simple logical steps, backed by the strongest evidence that we have, to come to the best and most reasonable conclusion that God is the cause of everything - all without ever taking even a single step of blind faith. — Lewis N. Roe

Most reject the more repugnant or indefensible dogmas while still holding onto some core belief. Many believers will proudly describe themselves as "reasonable" or "rational" based on how little of their religion they still embrace versus how much they now reject. I think it's funny when people realize that the less you believe the more reasonable you are, but they stop before they reach the logical conclusion. — Aron Ra

The question is not, who uses faith and who uses reason? Everyone uses both. The question instead should be, who has the most reasonable faith? — J.F. Baldwin

What do you conceive God to be like? Some would say to believe at all in a personal God requires a giant leap of faith - but I am convinced that belief in God is a far more reasonable position than atheism. Nature, the personal experience of literally billions of people, and something innate in the heart of man all testify to the existence of God. — George Sweeting

In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day? — Mikhail Bulgakov

What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy. — Andrew Sullivan

What do you do when you don't know what to do about something?
I talk to Mr. Sugar and my friends. I make lists. I attempt to analyze the situation from the perspective of my "best self" - the one that's generous, reasonable, forgiving, loving, bighearted, and grateful. I think really hard about what I'll wish I did a year from now. I map out the consequences of the various actions I could take. I ask what my motivations are, what my desires are, what my fears are, what I have to lose, and what I have to gain. I move toward the light, even if it's a hard direction in which to move. I trust myself. I keep the faith. I mess up sometimes. — Cheryl Strayed

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy. — Norman Vincent Peale

Won't the awareness God loves us no matter what lead to spiritual laziness and moral laxity? Theoretically, this seems a reasonable fear, but in reality the opposite is true ... The more rooted we are in the love of God, the more generously we will live our faith. — Brennan Manning

The more I read arguments for atheism, the more I am convinced it takes a very strong faith to be an atheist. And atheism seems to me the least reasonable of all faiths. — Corrado Ghinamo

Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person. — Walter Kaufmann

If there be any among those common objects of hatred which I can safely say I doe contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, vertue and religion, the multitude, that numerous piece of monstrosity, which taken asunder seeme men, and the reasonable creatures of God; but confused together, make but one great beast, & a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra; it is no breach of Charity to call these fooles; it is the stile all holy Writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonicall Scripture, and a point of our faith to beleeve so. — Thomas Browne

Love isn't blind. Love is reasonable. God is pure love, but He is also pure reason. If you separate reason from faith you'll end in violence. Either way, if you have a purely rationalistic scheme that is atheistic, for instance Communism was for social justice. Fascism was for the nation-state, which isn't automatically a bad thing. — Francis George

So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. — David Hume

God has put enough into the world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing. But He has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason or observation alone. — Ravi Zacharias

But calm is precisely what is absent from love's classroom. There is simply too much on the line. The "student" isn't merely a passing responsibility; he or she is a lifelong commitment. Failure will ruin existence. No wonder we may be prone to lose control and deliver cack-handed, hasty speeches which bear no faith in the legitimacy or even the nobility of the act of imparting advice. And no wonder, too, if we end up achieving the very opposite of our goals, because increasing levels of humiliation, anger, and threat have seldom hastened anyone's development. Few of us ever grow more reasonable or more insightful about our own characters for having had our self-esteem taken down a notch, our pride wounded, and our ego subjected to a succession of pointed insults. We simply grow defensive and brittle in the face of suggestions which sound like mean-minded and senseless assaults on our nature rather than caring attempts to address troublesome aspects of our personality. Had — Alain De Botton

God put enough into the world to make faith in Him a reasonable thing. But He left enough out to make it impossible to live by reason alone. — Ravi Zacharias

There must necessarily be agreement between a reason coming from God and a revelation coming from God.46 Let us say, then, that faith teaches truths which seem contrary to reason; let us not say that it teaches propositions contrary to reason. The rustic thinks it contrary to reason that the sun should be larger than the earth. But this proposition seems reasonable to the scientist.47 Let us rest assured that apparent incompatibility between faith and reason is similarly reconciled in the infinite wisdom of God. — Etienne Gilson

Since the mind, which was meant to be reasonable and intelligent, has, by dark and inveterate vices, become too weak to adhere joyously to His unchangeable light (or even to bear it) until, by gradual renewal and healing, it is made fit for such happiness, its first need was to be instructed by faith and purified. — Augustine Of Hippo

The silence in the room was deep as the night itself. Biff stood transfixed, lost in his meditations. Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valour. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labour and of those who - one word - love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror. Between the two worlds he was suspended ... suspended between radiance and darkness, between bitter irony and faith ... And would he just stand here like a jittery nanny or would he pull himself together and be reasonable? For after all was he a sensible man or was he not? — Carson McCullers

Ah, a breath of fresh air: reasonable faith!!!"

~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

Religion is scarcely distinguishable from childhood delusions like the "imaginary friend" and the bogeyman under the bed. Unfortunately the God delusion possesses adults. A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence and such delusions ask for trouble because disagreements between incompatible beliefs cannot be settled by reasonable argument. Most religious people are very decent and nice But in a sense they have brought religious extremism on the world by teaching people the virtues of unquestioned faith. — Richard Dawkins

God is The Reasonable One, therefore reason & faith are not antithetical"

~R. Alan Woods [2007] — R. Alan Woods