Yes, I'm a materialist. I'm willing to be shown wrong, but that has not happened — yet. And I admit that the reason I'm unable to accept the claims of psychic, occult, and/or supernatural wonders is because I'm locked into a world-view that demands...
Nowadays… deals are transactional rather than personal. Instead of placing your faith in a person, you get lawyers to write safeguards into the contract. This is an historic shift from a trust economy to a risk economy. But trust is not a dispensab...
Jesus' willingness to accommodate Thomas' unbelief is a reminder that God can handle our doubt. And that the rationalist doesn't need to see, touch, or run a lab test in order to believe in the resurrected Christ. Jesus told him, “You believe becau...
Up to now, most atheists have simply criticized religion in various ways, but the point is to dispel it. In A Manual For Creating Atheists, fills that gap, telling the reader how to become a ‘street epistemologist’ with the skills to attack relig...
The Swimmer's Advantage: 1)The goal is measured first by seeing; The distance is accomplished by the strategy of believing that the same set of repetitious acts will get them there. 2)Even when the elements around you are overwhelming, have the confi...
You are not what you have done, but what you have overcome. All the hardships, the mistakes, the rejections, the pain and all the times you questioned why have given birth to the wisdom and strength that will help you shine your light on the world, e...
Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these ...
Father Horvak: What's confusing you this week? Frankie Dunn: Oh, it's the same old "one God-three God" thing. Father Horvak: Frankie, most people figure out by kindergarten it's about faith. Frankie Dunn: Is it sort of like Snap Crackle and Pop, all ...
William of Baskerville: [after finding the secret room of books in the tower] How many more rooms? Ah! How many more books? No one should be forbidden to consult these books freely. Adso of Melk: Perhaps they are thought to be too precious, too fragi...
Dr. Owen Fletcher: Kathryn, you're a rational person. You're a trained psychiatrist. You know the difference between what's real and what's not. Dr. Kathryn Railly: And what we say is the truth is what everybody accepts. Right, Owen? I mean, psychiat...
David St. Hubbins: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem *may* have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being *crushed* by a *dwarf*. Alright? That ten...
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, b...
Keep me rather in this cage, and feed me sparingly, if you dare. Anything that brings me closer to illness and the edge of death makes me more faithful. It is only when you make me suffer that I feel safe and secure. You should never have agreed to b...
It's not that Derek brought me out of that depression I had found myself in, but he helped me pull myself the rest of the way out. he made me want to give this crazy thing we call life my full attention again. Take Chances, love a little, free fall, ...
For more than four hundred years we nurtured the belief (should that, perhaps, be faith?) that evidence-based investigation meeting scientific standards of rigor would reveal the true mechanism of nature. and yet when the mechanisms of nature were re...
Why bother praying? It does not matter if we have developed bad habits in limiting prayer to only asking for things, but prayer is much, much richer than that. By all means let's keep asking God to keep changing us, but let's also give praise and tha...
All my life I'd been a believing Christian. ... But that instant in the ER--the instant Annette [his wife] died--I seemed to feel my religious faith die, too. As I thought more about it in the bleak days and weeks that followed, I decided the Bible h...
What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the p...
I have these secret pangs of shame about being single, like I wasn't good enough to get a husband. Rita reminded me of something I'd told her once, about the five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston. The first ru...
Like infants, when they are born into the world, God's children are not born again in the full possession of their spiritual faculties; and it is well and wisely ordered that it is so. What we win easily, we seldom value sufficiently. The very fact t...
No one should be surprised at the difficulty of faith, if there is some part of his life where he is consciously resisting or disobeying the commandment of Jesus. Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some...
