Quotes & Sayings About Religious Dogma

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another. — Albert Einstein

We are all tricked. We think that religion tells us what to believe; but it doesn't, it is telling us what not to believe. Atheism is not the absence of religion; atheism is the most undiluted form of religion: it tells us not to believe in anything at all. Atheists hate the religious and the religious hate atheists, but this is only a deception! We are all deceived! There is only one boat and we are all in it! All at the same time! — C. JoyBell C.

The liberality of the age, or in other words the weakening of the obstinate prejudice, which makes men unable to see what is before their eyes because it is contrary to their expectations, has caused it to be very commonly admitted that a Deist may be truly religious: but if religion stands for any graces of character and not for mere dogma, the assertion may equally be made of many whose belief is far short of Deism. — Christopher Hitchens

There is, then, the feeling that we live in a time of unusual insecurity. In the past hundred years so many long-established traditions have broken down - traditions of family and social life, of government, of the economic order, and of religious belief. As the years go by, there seem to be fewer and fewer rocks to which we can hold, fewer things which we can regard as absolutely right and true, and fixed for all time. To some this is a welcome release from the restraints of moral, social, and spiritual dogma. To others it is a dangerous and terrifying breach with reason and sanity, tending to plunge human life into hopeless chaos. To most, perhaps, the immediate sense of release has given a brief exhilaration, to be followed by the deepest anxiety. For if all is relative, if life is a torrent without form or goal in whose flood absolutely nothing save change itself can last, it seems to be something in which there is "no future" and thus no hope. — Alan W. Watts

The truth, however, is that the conflict between religion and science is unavoidable. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science. — Sam Harris

I leave pansies, the symbolic flower of freethought, in memory of the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, who stood for equality, education, progress, free ideas and free lives, against the superstition and bigotry of religious dogma. We need men like him today more than ever. His writing still inspires us and challenges the 'better angels' of our nature, when people open their hearts and minds to his simple, honest humanity. Thank goodness he was here. — Bruce Springsteen

Religious creeds are a great obstacle to any full sympathy between the outlook of the scientist and the outlook which religion is so often supposed to require ... The spirit of seeking which animates us refuses to regard any kind of creed as its goal. It would be a shock to come across a university where it was the practice of the students to recite adherence to Newton's laws of motion, to Maxwell's equations and to the electromagnetic theory of light. We should not deplore it the less if our own pet theory happened to be included, or if the list were brought up to date every few years. We should say that the students cannot possibly realise the intention of scientific training if they are taught to look on these results as things to be recited and subscribed to. Science may fall short of its ideal, and although the peril scarcely takes this extreme form, it is not always easy, particularly in popular science, to maintain our stand against creed and dogma. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

What, actually, does it mean to be a tragic figure firmly in the grip of one's daimon? It means to possess great talent, to relentlessly pursue the expression of that talent through the unswerving affirmation of the causa-sui project that alone gives it birth and form. One is consumed by what he must do to express his gift. The passion of his character becomes inseparable from his dogma. Jung says the same thing beautifully when he concludes that Freud "must himself be so profoundly affected by the power of Eros that he actually wished to elevate it into a dogma...like a religious numen."
Eros is precisely the natural energy of the child's organism that will not let him rest, that keeps propelling him forward in a driven way while he fashions the lie of his character-which ironically permits that very drivenness to continue, but now under the illusion of self-control. — Ernest Becker

Blind faith in belief-system, ideologies, doctrine or dogma can never set us free. Only the knowledge of truth can liberate us from the slavery of doctrine, dogmas, blind faiths and religious sects. — Banani Ray

I feel like we need to be aware of the ways we use and misuse religious dogma: whether it takes us deeper into love and inclusion or it separates us. — Sue Monk Kidd

There must be absolute religious liberty, for tyranny and intolerance are as abhorrent in matters intellectual and spiritual as in matters political and material; and more and more we must all realize that conduct is of infinitely greater importance than dogma. — Theodore Roosevelt

A lot of America's success is because we're an open society and haven't brought dogma or religious influence into the American political process. — Jeff Hawkins

Apparently Pope John Paul II and his boys - is that what you call them? - loved one of my songs and thought I was putting spiritual messages in my music. I'm not religious as such. Dogma and I don't get along. — Gloria Estefan

On the other side, Church spokesmen could scarcely become enthusiastic about Planck's deism, which omitted all reference to established religions and had no more doctrinal content than Einstein's Judaism. — J.L. Heilbron

Another religious fanatic to whom facts and reality took second place to dogma. — Peter F. Hamilton

Christendom and heathendom now stand face to face ... At bottom is a violent and irreconcilable quarrel about the nature of God and the nature of an and the ultimate nature of the universe; it is a war of dogma. — Dorothy L. Sayers

The wars around the globe into which religion is woven
violence that over the past two decades has sent many tens of thousands of men, women, and children to terrible deaths in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, India, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the United States
deeply threaten what we have of a human society. Denouncing religion itself is futile. And such simple reactions badly miss the point. It is among the religious believers that the work must be done, within that overwhelming majority who would find common ground in being human and not wanting destruction, if only because their traditions are about so much more. Those traditions contain life-giving possibilities, even if the worst demagogues would try to twist dogma so hard as to wring poison from it. — Gustav Niebuhr

The Cretans' more natural attitudes toward sex would also have had other consequences equally difficult to perceive under the prevailing paradigm, wherein religious dogma often views sex as more sinful than violence. As Hawkes writes, "The Cretans seem to have reduced and diverted their aggressiveness through a free and well-balanced sexual life."33 Along with their enthusiasm for sports and dancing and their creativity and love of life, these liberated attitudes toward sex seem to have contributed to the generally peaceful and harmonious spirit predominant in Cretan life. — Riane Eisler

Individually, the experience of most people was of accelerating impotence and incomprehension. They lived in a world of superstition. They relied on voodoo - charms, fetishes, and crystal balls whose caprices they were helpless to govern, yet without which the conduct of daily life came to a standstill. Faith that the computer would switch on one more time and do as it was asked had more a religious than a rational cast. When the screen went black, the gods were angry. — Lionel Shriver

Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention. — Deepak Chopra

Entheogens (or psychedelics, to be more historically correct) have now been recognized as the mother of our Western ecology and conservation movements, as well as the entire field of transpersonal psychology and our apparent desire to return to some firsthand spiritual and/or mystical understanding of G/d (rather than blindly accepting traditional religious dogma without an experiential basis. — James Oroc

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization. — Sam Harris

The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well be my guest. ...In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the Theory of Evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought, not only to devote Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless, want to believe that each human possess an eternal, individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact. — Yuval Noah Harari

In my 20s, as I began to travel in Europe, I found comfort in religious paintings. Even though my own belief in Catholic dogma had been shaken and weakened, I found that the beauty and the richness of the art still held me. — Colm Toibin

The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is such as to stifle conscience, compassion, and finally every feeling of humanity. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The essence of a religious approach to the world, it seems to me, is to be found, not in the imposition of theological dogma, but in the recognition of what is actually there. — John Barton

Considering how effortlessly religious dogma has become intertwined with political ideology, how can we overcome the clash-of-monotheisms mentality that has so deeply entrenched itself in the modern world? Clearly, education and tolerance are essential. — Reza Aslan

Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. — Freeman Dyson

Sexual distortions carry strong undertones of prejudice - sexism, racism and homophobia - that rob individuals of their individuality. Common stereotypes include "men are all dogs," "women are less interested in sex," "gays are promiscuous," certain races are frigid or hung, and certain sex acts are indulgent, effeminate, or immoral. Other distortions clearly function as tools of organizations or of religious or political figures to shape public opinion through dogma and to control their followers' lives. — Alexandra Katehakis

The somatotype of the cat or any animal from quadruped to biped partially determines the perspective of the creature. The physiology of any given creature will alter its understanding of its environment. A close look then at the physiology of cats and dogs and one biped, in particular, the primate, should give anyone a clear reason for the biological and psychological shaping of religion. This examination of cats, dogs and then other primates, humanity's cousins, in comparison with some religious ideals, will show just how physiological perspectives would and have influenced religious dogma or cat-ma as the case may be. — Leviak B. Kelly

I have always found the hardest mind to change is one that is religious. — Shannon L. Alder

Unlike other religions in the world the Hindu religion does not claim any one prophet; it does not worship any one god; it does not subscribe to any one dogma; it does not believe in any one philosophic concept; it does not follow any one set of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not appear to satisfy the narrow traditional features of any religion or creed. It may broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more. — Deepak Chopra

I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution. — E. O. Wilson

Half the Christian churches of New York are trying to ruin the free public schools in order to replace them by religious dogma. — W.E.B. Du Bois

1.Its a thumb rule- Men who fail in life has only one safe place to vent out their frustration and show their power... their wives
2.people persuading conversions are directly or indirectly threat to humanity. Had somebody not converted grandfather of Jinah, one million people would have not been slaughtered.
3.True friendship is not only thinking of your loss, it's about thinking of your friend's benefit
4.if any social or religious dogma harms any human physically, mentally, emotionally and financially then it is a matter of shame, not pride
5.the time has come when the people of this country(India)need to know "what is not their right — Ajay Yadav

Science discovered long ago that carbon is a source of life. The ashes of my faith have prepared the ground for the planting of seeds that have produced new forms of truth, morality and meaning on my own terms, not according to the dogma laid down by religious ruffians or a vengeful God. If, as believers claim, the word "gospel" means good news, then the good news for me is that there is no gospel, other than what I can define for myself, by observation and conscience. As a journalist and free-thinking human being, I have come not to favor and fear religion, but to face and fight it as an impediment to civilized advancement. — Steve Benson

The Roman Catholic Church and its rituals were so much part of life that, although my parents would often question a small matter of dogma and none of us seemed more religious than anyone else, no one ever questioned the rituals or the basic tenets of belief. — Colm Toibin

In order for one to discover Divine Truth, one must be willing and able to go beyond the religious dogma that divides, rather than unites, humanity. — Jason E. Marshall

It is an interesting observation on today's religious climate that many people now get every bit as steamed up about insisting that 'all religions are just the same' as the older dogmaticians did about insisting on particular formulations and interpretations. The dogma that all dogmas are wrong, the monolithic insistence that all monolithic systems are to be rejected, has taken hold of the popular imagination at a level far beyond rational or logical discourse. — N. T. Wright

Dogma", spelled backwards, is "Am God". When a person allows someone else's dogma to become their God, they have things backwards. — Donald L. Hicks

A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good morning!'
And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning. Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and the worries are not real? They can be unsought and made to vanish. And therefore the morning can ve made to be good. Very well then, it is good. — Christopher Isherwood

What most distinguishes Confucius from other founders is that he inculcated a strict code of ethics, which has been respected ever since, but associated with very little religious dogma, which gave place to complete theological scepticism in the countless generations of Chinese literati who revered his memory and administered the Empire. — Bertrand Russell

History is the record of what human beings have been impelled to do by their ignorance and the enormous bumptiousness that makes them canonize their ignorance as a political or religious dogma — Aldous Huxley

Old religious dogma attempts to convince you that you are on a journey to God, then makes you pay tolls along that roadway. — Steve Maraboli

If our world is regulated by reductionist, narrow, sophomoric versions of Darwin; or reductionist, narrow, sophomoric versions of religious dogma; you end up being childishly anti-scientific, and childishly anti-religious, and you miss the very complex interaction [they share] — Cornel West

Dogma is no substitute for an inner religious experience. — Elizabeth Ann Robinson

I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Were I to enter on that arena, I should only add an unit to the number of Bedlamites.
[Letter to Mathew Carey, 11 November 1816] — Thomas Jefferson

Am I a criminal? The world knows I'm not a criminal. What are they trying to put me in jail for? You've lost common sense in this society because of religious fanaticism and dogma. — Jack Kevorkian

Religious dogma creates a perfect fertilizer for the weeds of hypocrisy. — Steve Maraboli

I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism ... The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. — Saul Alinsky

Religion was created for the goodness of the humanity, but
religious dogma converts a good person to an evil person. — Debasish Mridha

Latitudinarians were "big-tent" Anglicans. The name came from the supposedly wide latitude they were willing to give to unorthodox religious opinions that a more tradition-bound Protestant might see as lax or even blasphemous. They believed Christianity should be a religion of tolerance and "reasonableness" rather than rigid dogma. — Arthur Herman

I'm not religious in the sense that I do not subscribe to any particular set of religious dogma. I don't go to church. I don't read the Bible. But I believe that the word "Spirit" with a capital S points to an ultimate reality which I give my heart to. — Frederick Buechner

Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. — Sam Harris

There are few things more dangerous than inbred religious certainty. — Bart D. Ehrman

Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses ... — Edward Abbey

There are still truths in the Bible and many other ancient texts despite what religions have done to destroy and debase them. Religious dogma and myth have been used very successfully either to suppress understanding or to twist the truth sufficiently to turn something positive into something negative. — David Icke

First off, faith is not about concrete answers, religious absolutes, creeds, or dogma. Faith is about the search for understanding, the raising of important questions, the open honesty of having doubt, and the realization that no one has it all completely right nor does any human, human religious teaching, or theology hold all the answers. — Jarrod Cochran

The decision for complete religious freedom and for separation of church and state in the eyes of the rest of the world was perhaps the most important decision reached in the New World. Everywhere in the western world of the 18th century, church and state were one; and everywhere the state maintained an established church and tried to force conformity to its dogma. — Henry Steele Commager

Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man's biological nature. — Aldous Huxley

I want an avowed atheist in the White House. When time comes to push that button, I want whoever's making the decision to understand that once it's pushed, it's over. Finito. They're not gonna have lunch with Jesus. Won't be deflowering 72 virgins on the great shag carpet of eternity, or reincarnated as a cow. I want someone making that decision who believes life on this Earth isn't just a dress rehearsal for something better
but the only shot we get. — Quentin R. Bufogle

The great march of metal destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is the reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. — G.K. Chesterton

Spiritual but not religious" is an expression of a very human yearning for an opening of mind and heart - a sense of soul and spirit that enhances day-to-day experience instead of tamping it down and channeling it into the narrow confines of stick-and-carrot orthodoxy. It's a rejection of traditional tenets and pieties, of doctrine and dogma and judgment. It resists the usual attempts to pigeonhole, saying, "Spare me your labels." It is, at heart, agnostic. - — Lesley Hazleton

Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs are 'crutches' hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances. — David Marshall Brooks

I always fear dogma. I don't like anything that's dogmatic because it becomes purely religious again and I despise any form of organized religion. — Justin Broadrick

The division into hundreds of countries whose borders and interests are defined by imagined local differences and arbitrary religious dogma, both of which are utterly irrelevant and meaningless on a galactic scale, must surely be addressed if we are to confront global problems such as mutually assured destruction, asteroid threats, climate change, pandemic disease and who knows what else, and flourish beyond the twenty-first century. The very fact that the preceding sentence sounds hopelessly utopian might provide a plausible answer to the Great Silence. — Brian Cox

The equality that we are all entitled to, as citizens of this democracy, can't be avoided by some religious dogma of a President who's is supposed to believe in the notion of separation of church and state. And he frankly doesn't. — Rosie O'Donnell

Then, what is sacrelige [sic]? If it is nothing more than a rebellion against dogma, it is eventually as meaningless as the dogma it defies, and they are both become hounds ranting in the high grass, never see the boar in the thicket. Only a religious person can perpetrate sacrelige: and if its blasphemy reaches the heart of the question; if it investigates deeply enough to unfold, not the pattern, but the materials of the pattern, and the necessity of a pattern; if it questions so deeply that the doubt it arouses is frightening and cannot be dismissed; then it has done its true sacreligious [sic] work, in the service of its adversary: the only service that nihilism can ever perform.
(unused 1949 prefatory note to The Recognitions) — William Gaddis

Here is the woman who had seriously considered taking LSD under the supervision of a medical doctor so she could have "a mind-altering experience," who had read herself straight out of Mormonism and into Eastern religious thought
but refused to replace one dogma with another. — Terry Tempest Williams

I believe in any religion that puts treating people with respect and dignity above ritual and dogma. — Charles F. Glassman

Most religious persons would say that "truth is God", but they can't explain clearly who is God and hold a perspective of truth that is actually a religious dogma. — Daniel Marques

What chiefly concerns and alarms many of us are the problems arising from religious fanaticism. As long as large numbers of militant enthusiasts are persuaded that they alone have access to the truth, and that the rest of us are infidels, we remain under threat. Lord Acton's famous phrase about power can be used of another danger. Dogma tends to corrupt, and absolute dogma corrupts absolutely. — Anthony Storr

For Christian writers, religious faith is not a rebellion against reason, but a revolt against the imprisonment of humanity within the cold walls of a rationalist dogmatism. — Alister E. McGrath

People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction. — Umberto Eco

Poetry resists academic pretension, just as the mystery of religious faith evaporates on contact with dogma. — Patrick White