Theist Quotes & Sayings

The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe. — Criss Jami

An Atheist reads "god is nowhere"
but a theist reads "god is now here "
so the whole thing is our piont of view
how we can see the world ... — Jagvir

Theist and atheist: The fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name. — Samuel Butler

I am neither Jew nor Gentile, Mohammedan nor Theist; I am but a member of the human family, and would accept of truth by whomsoever offered
that truth which we can all find, if we will but seek in things, not in words; in nature, not in human imagination; in our own hearts, not in temples made with hands. — Frances Wright

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

God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

We humans, through old habits, and because of the inherent structure of human knowledge have a tendency to make static, definite, and, in a way, absolutistic one-valued statements. But when we fight absolutism, we quite often establish, instead, some other dogma equally silly and harmful. For instance, an active atheist is psycho-logically as unsound as a rabid theist. — Alfred Korzybski

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

It does not matter whether you are a theist or atheist, what matters is sincerity, forgiveness, and compassion. — Dalai Lama

I am a theist. I live life between that "a" and the "t." It's a vast little space. — Kevin Sessums

An atheist is as religious as a theist. — Kedar Joshi

It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist ... I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. — Charles Darwin

I'm always talking to God about whether or not he exists - that's how I know I'm a theist. — Criss Jami

The theist and the scientist are rival interpreters of nature, the one retreats as the other advances. — Joseph McCabe

Atheist's denial of God's existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist's claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God's existence. — Paul Copan

I do not admit that theological points are small points. Theology is only thought applied to religion; and those who prefer a thoughtless religion need not be so very disdainful of others with a more rationalistic taste. The old joke that the Greek sects only differed about a single letter is about the lamest and most illogical joke in the world. An atheist and a theist only differ by a single letter; yet theologians are so subtle as to distinguish definitely between the two. — G.K. Chesterton

Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. What I'm trying to do is develop a language that will enable us to talk about God beyond the, what I think, are sterile categories of theism and atheism. — John Shelby Spong

The theist is persuaded that while nothing that contradicts science is likely to be true, still nothing that stops with science can be the whole truth. — Gordon Allport

Whereas the Agricultural Revolution gave rise to theist religions, the Scientific Revolution gave birth to humanist religions, in which humans replaced gods. — Yuval Noah Harari

The theist can only find meaning by leaving this life for a transcendental world beyond the grave. The human world as he finds it is empty of 'ultimate purpose' and hence meaningless. Theism thus is an attempt to escape from the human condition; it is a pathetic deceit. — Paul Kurtz

Refer me to one atheist who denies the existence of God ... Etymologically, as well as philosophically, an atheist is one without God. That is all the 'A' before 'Theist' really means. — George William Foote

The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it. — Sri Aurobindo

An atheist who is a statist is just another theist. — Stefan Molyneux

The Triunity shown in the Bible manifestly presents a vast and adequate reason for the triune structure of the physical universe. For the reason ought to be in God. The universe ought to reflect God, its Maker and Ground. That should be the reason for the general character of the universe. The structure of the universe ought to reflect the structure or being of God. Any theist will agree with this. Such Triunity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in God presents therefore an adequate original and reason for the exactly similar triunity in the fabric of space, matter and time. Whether one accepts that Triunity or not, one must admit that, in view of the exact likeness, it does present an adequate original for the universal triunity. It gives as a reason for the universal triunity simply this, that the universe mirrors its Creator. It means that the universe is essentially like its God. It declares that the creation reflects the Creator. — Nathan R. Wood

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

I am 95% a theist and 5% an atheist; thus ultimately I am an agnostic. — Kedar Joshi

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

A theist can't empirically prove that God exists but he believes in God because no one can allegedly disprove God's existence. By his logic, you must believe in anything you can't disprove. That means all things are real until disproved
including the tooth fairy, the Loch Ness Monster, Santa Claus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. — G.M. Jackson

Surprisingly now, over a half a century later, time symmetric approaches to electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, gravity, and cosmology might be consonant with the kind of eschatology that a theist such as Pannenberg supports. — Robert John Russell

Even as the apostle Paul described his mission to unbelievers, so it is the primary task of all Christians to reach out to the lost "to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in [Christ]" (Acts 26:18; see also Exodus 19:6; 1 Peter 2:5, 9). If we do not evangelize the lost and make disciples of new converts, nothing else we do for people - no matter how beneficial it seems - is of any eternal consequence. Whether a person is an atheist or a theist, a criminal or a model citizen, sexually promiscuous and perverse or strictly moral and virtuous, a greedy materialist or a gracious philanthropist - if he does not have a saving relationship with Christ, he is going to hell. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

In order for a god to be all-knowing, he must know even the fact of his own omniscience. But can he do this? He may know the totality of facts constituting the world; call this Y. But in order to know that he has mastered Y, he must also know that 'There are no facts unknown to me' - and this is beyond Y.
It seems impossible that a god (or anyone) could ever be sure that nothing exists beyond his ken. It makes no sense to imagine [a god] arriving at this limit, peering beyond it (at what?), and satisfying himself no further facts exist. But without this certainty he cannot be sure of his own omniscience, and so does not know everything.
A theist might argue that his god has created all the facts in existence. But an omniscient god would have to be sure of even this - that he is the sole creator, and that there are no facts unknown to him. And how could he come to this knowledge? — Roland Puccetti

The issue between the atheist and the believer is not whether it makes sense to question ultimate fact, it is rather the question: what fact is ultimate? The atheist's ultimate fact is the universe; the theist's ultimate fact is God.68 — John C. Lennox

The existence of God is neither precluded nor rendered improbable by the existence of evil. Of course, suffering and misfortune may nonetheless constitute a problem for the theist; but the problem is not that his beliefs are logically or probabilistically incompatible. The theist may find a religious problem in evil; in the presence of his own suffering or that of someone near to him he may find it difficult to maintain what he takes to be the proper attitude towards God. Faced with great personal suffering or misfortune, he may be tempted to rebel against God, to shake his fist in God's face, or even to give up belief in God altogether. But this is a problem of a different dimension. Such a
problem calls, not for philosophical enlightenment, but for pastoral care. The Free Will Defense, however, shows that the existence of God is compatible, both logically and probabilistically, with the existence of evil; thus it solves the main philosophical problem of evil. — Alvin Plantinga

Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics. — Bill Gaede

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

Theists and atheists are equally religious. — Kedar Joshi

Intellect, at its best, can make you agnostic. Being theist or atheist is still a matter of choice. — Raheel Farooq

The trick is, after all, obvious. The Theist takes terms that can apply to sentient life alone, and applies them to the universe at large. He talks about means, that is, the deliberate planning to achieve certain ends, and then says that as there are means there must be ends. Having, unperceived, placed the rabbit in the hat, he is able to bring it forth to the admiration of his audience. — Chapman Cohen

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. — Peter Kreeft

The difference between a theist and an atheist is the degree to which God has revealed himself to them. — Eli Of Kittim

I'm an agnosto-theist. — Dan Savage

The Theist tells us that the truth is god exists,
the Atheist tells us that the truth is there is no god,
while the truth tells us we don't know. — Kodai Okuda

The Oracle pursued a logical course of confuting theism, and leaving 'a-theism' the negative result. It did not, in the absurd terms of common religious propaganda, 'deny the existence of God.' It affirmed that God was a term for an existence imagined by man in terms of his own personality and irreducible to any tenable definition. It did not even affirm that 'there are no Gods'; it insisted that the onus of proof as to any God lay with the theist, who could give none compatible with his definitions. — J.M. Robertson

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

The claim 'God does not exist' is just as much a claim to know something as saying 'God does exist,' meaning the atheist needs just as much substantiation for his claim as the theist does for his. — Scott Klusendorf

Sometimes if I am walking down the street and thinking about my panoply of God, Ganesha, Parvati [Ganesha's mother], I say "Lucifer," because he belongs in that panoply. I miss him. That's why I'm a theist. — Kevin Sessums

Properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic. — Robert Flint

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

As a rope is to a mountaineer,
As a candle's flame is to the darkest of caves,
As a current is to a stream,
As a drizzle is to a desert,
As shelter is to the nomad,
As food is to the hungry,
As an oasis is to a weary traveler,
As freedom is to a prisoner,
As faith is to a theist,
Hope is to man. — Chirag Tulsiani

To many of my liberal and atheist friends and colleagues, an explanation for religious beliefs such as what I have presented in this book is tantamount to discounting both its internal validity and its external reality. Many of my conservative and theist friends and colleagues take it this way as well and therefore bristle at the thought that explaining a belief explains it away. This is not necessarily so. Explaining why someone believes in democracy does not explain away democracy; explaining why someone who holds liberal or conservative values within a democracy does not explain away those values. — Michael Shermer

Atheism is the absence of a belief in a god, nothing more. If the theist wishes to draw monumental implications from this lack of belief, he must argue for his claims. — George H. Smith

Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position. — Criss Jami

As a theist I believe that God exists and that God creates. — Phillip E. Johnson

We normally think that theist religions sanctified the great gods. We tend to forget that they sanctified humans, too. Hitherto Homo sapiens had been just one actor in a cast of thousands. In the new theist drama, Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved. — Yuval Noah Harari

Denying the existence of God leads us to preposterous conclusions so that, in the end, the amoral world of the skeptic who simply cannot explain good is worse than the world of the theist who has an explanation for evil. — Ravi Zacharias

When the atheist is told that God is unknowable, he may interpret this claim in one of two ways. He may suppose, first, that the theist has acquired knowledge of a being that, by his own admission, cannot possibly be known; or, second, he may assume that the theist simply does not know what he is talking about. — George H. Smith

Now a theist, he thought he should behave like one, even if it meant him during "the fussy, time-wasting, botheration of it all! the bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing," and, worst of all, the hymns and organ music. — Philip Zaleski

[Reason tells me of the] extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. — Charles Darwin

A scientist is a man who changes his beliefs according to reality; a theist is a man who changes reality to match his beliefs. — Volker Braun

I'm not denying Christ by not being Christian. I'm a theist, which involves expanding on the Christ narrative. — Kevin Sessums

I'm not saying that atheists can't act morally or have moral knowledge. But when I ascribe virtue to an atheist, it's as a theist who sees the atheist as conforming to objective moral values. The atheist, by contrast, has no such basis for morality. And yet all moral judgments require a basis for morality, some standard of right and wrong. — William A. Dembski

These four things then constitute the program, which I have in mind for this society during my ministry. First, to make it a common meeting ground for all men and women, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, theist and atheist, on the single common basis of religious fellowship; second, to make it a fountain of inspiration for ail scientific social betterment; third, to shift the emphasis of thought from the traditional to the scientific, from the theological to the historical, from the irrational to the rational, from the supernatural to the natural; fourth, to hold before the eyes of men the moral ideal and to place behind human endeavor moral motives. If — John H. Dietrich

To call a Christian a theist is roughly equivalent to calling the space shuttle Atlantis a glider. — R.C. Sproul

The ability of the theist to misunderstand a thing is directly proportional to the obviousness of the thing. — Oscar Wilde

Morality may exist in an atheist without any religion, and in a theist with a religion quite unspiritual. — Frances Power Cobbe

The theist must present an intelligible description of god. Until he does so, god makes no more sense than unie; both are cognitively empty, and any attempt at proof is logically absurd. — George H. Smith

Unlike humanity, my mind isn't so frail as to simply climb under gravity and submit to God. — Lionel Suggs

I've got this theory that human beings are innately religious; we have a belief system. It doesn't have to be a theist form, necessarily. But we need a belief system, some framework on which to hang our behavior. — Tana French

I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist.
[Letter to Max Otto] — John Dewey

If one believes in a god, one is a Theist. If one does not believe in a god, then one is an A-theist - he is without that belief. The distinction between atheism and theism is entirely, exclusively, that of whether one has or has not a belief in God. — Chapman Cohen

The atheist generally says (though the bold Dr. Victor Stenger goes a bit further) that the existence of a deity cannot be dis-proved. It can only be found to be entirely lacking in evidence or proof. The theist can opt to be a mere deist, and to say that the magnificence of the natural order strongly implies an ordering force. (This was the view taken, at least in public, by opponents of religion such as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.) But the religious person must go further and say that this creative force is also an intervening one: one that cares for our human affairs and is interested in what we eat and with whom we have sexual relations, as well as in the outcomes of battles and wars. To assert this is quite simply to assert more than any human can possibly claim to know, and thus it falls, and should be discarded, and should have been discarded long ago. — Christopher Hitchens

In a society where women are truly equal to men, a kid bred by a theist mother and an atheist father is born an agnostic. In a patriarchal society, the kid is automatically an atheist. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. — Richard Dawkins