An Ego Mind is a destructive mind and a rational mind is a peaceful mind.

The destiny of your soul is not predicated upon acceptance of a specific dogma that happens to be “correct.” A loving God does not dole out eternal condemnation because one has selected the wrong doctrine or misinterpreted scripture. On the contrary, your endeavor to understand God and the nature of the universe is a testament...

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, “My current model” — or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel — “contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised.” In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and...

The dogma of the Ghost in the Machine

Dogma is a defence against the brain’s capacity for free thought based on the fear that such thought might lead to a scary place.

With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the pains of life too hard to bear, I have nothing to do; and, so far as it may be possible,...

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...

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought ‘dogmatic,’ for...

While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly...

While you were busy trying to prove God stands behind you, God was before me lighting the trail, so he could lead us both.

Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

Never hold a belief longer than you can hold your breath.

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, “Is this true?” “Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?” To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition...

Misstraue jedem Politiker, jedem Regierungs- oder Staatschef, der seine Religion zum Instrument macht. Halte Abstand von solchen Politikern, die ihre auf das Jenseits orientierte Religion und ihre diesseitige Politik miteinander vermischen.

The chief trouble with religion has been too much dependence upon names or words. People fail to discriminate. They do not think. Generally people who think for themselves, instead of thinking according to the rules laid down by others, are considered unfaithful to the established order. In that respect I, too, differ with the established...

It is certain that the labors of these early workers in the field of natural knowledge were brought to a standstill by the decay and disruption of the Roman Empire, the consequent disorganisation of society, and the diversion of men’s thoughts from sublunary matters to the problems of the supernatural world suggested by Christian dogma...

Some people live in cages with bars built from their own fears and doubts. Some people live in cages with bars built from other people’s fears and doubts; their parents, their friends, their brothers and sisters, their families. Some people live in cages with bars built from the choices others made for them, the circumstances...

We all know dogmatists who are more concerned about holding their opinions than about investigating their truth. … if they are mistaken, they will never discover it; they have condemned themselves to perpetual error. Human beings (including myself) sometimes use their beliefs for wish-fulfillment. Too often we believe what we want to be true.

Loving, of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice:...

I have always found the hardest mind to change is one that is religious.

If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything is tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence...

You could harbor a man in your bed or your body, play on his nervous system like Paderewski at the keyboard, and not shift his brain one inch out of the concrete of dogma. (p. 5)

Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.

One century’s saint is the next century’s heretic … and one century’s heretic is the next century’s saint. It is as well to think long and calmly before affixing either name to any man.

There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything.

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...

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

Am God”. When a person allows someone else’s dogma to become their God, they have things backwards.

[We need reforms] to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.

For Abelard, the death of Christ on the Cross did not, strictly speaking, redeem man: it only offered him an example of supreme humility, charity, and self-sacrifice. Bernard asserts, against Abelard, that Christ became man precisely in order to redeem mankind from sin, deliver man from the power of the devil, and to become, instead...

There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be...

true.” If he cannot do this by himself, he is obliged to go to someone who can. This may be a priest or a rabbi, or it may be his superior in the party hierarchy, or it may be his professor. In any case, he is obliged to accept the resolution of his problem that...

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 spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the...

Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions...

When the great ship containing the hopes and aspirations of the world, when the great ship freighted with mankind goes down in the night of death, chaos and disaster, I am willing to go down with the ship. I will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of paddling away in some orthodox canoe. I...

People create sins out of nothing and in doing so have enslaved their fellow man! Man is not bound by sin but man is bound by the idea that almost everything he is doing is a sin!

The humanitarian philosophies that have been developed (sometimes under some religious banner and invariably in the face of religious opposition) are human inventions, as the name implies – and our species deserves the credit. I am a devout atheist – nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by...

Its all about perspective, that is how you look at things. Your own thoughts and outlook defines whether an experience, event, situation whatever is good or bad. And your definition determines your response.

The dogma of the impossibility of determining the atomic constitution of substances, which until recently was advocated with such fervor by the most able chemists, is beginning to be abandoned and forgotten; and one can predict that the day is not far in the future when a sufficient collection of facts will permit determination of...

Dogma is the guardian of mystery. The doctrines are spiritually significant in ways that we cannot fathom.

Evidence is of no longer consequence when hope enters the fray, and this is where faith is born—a seemingly abundant commodity certain powerful organizations feed on fervently, if not lavishly.

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

In the search for truth,what you believe matters lessthan how you believe.

As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power. She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being. She has never subjected anyone to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas. She presents herself...

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ,...

In all things in this life, we are told “It’s okay if you don’t make it the first time!”, “It’s fine if you don’t get it right the first time, just try again and again!” We are told this in learning how to ride a bike, in learning how to bake a cake, in solving...

Until the human condition could be resolved it was not safe to acknowledge the different roles men and women played in the journey to enlightenment. Over time it was found that the best way to control prejudices was to prevent acknowledgement of any substantial differences between the sexes. The dogma of politically correct culture emerged.

Its all about perception, that is how you look at. Your own thoughts and outlook defines whether it is good or bad. And your definition determines your response.

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false.All stories about gods and devils, of heavens and hells, as they do not...