Edward Feser Quotes
In their condescending assumption that belief in God could only be the product of wishful thinking, stupidity, ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty; in their corresponding refusal seriously to consider the possibility that that belief might be true and the arguments for it sound; and in their glib supposition that the only rational considerations relevant to the question are “scientific” ones, rather than philosophical; in all of these attitudes, Flew’s critics manifest the quintessential mindset of modern secularism. And insofar as its self-satisfied a priori dismissal of outsiders as benighted, and of defectors as wicked or mad, insulates it from ever having to deal with serious criticism, it is a mindset that echoes the closed-minded prejudice and irrationality it typically attributes to religious believers themselves.
Quotes to Explore
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I just knew that God wasn't there. He was a man on a throne in Heaven, so he was easy to forget.
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I had a father and mother, who were devout and feared God. Our Lord also helped me with His grace. All this would have been enough to make me good, if I had not been so wicked.
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A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
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I like the guys who wrote their own stuff and were able to perform it, like Seth Rogen. He popped off so young. When he did 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin,' and he was a co-producer on the movie, I was like, 'Oh my God: that's exactly what I want to do.'
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Sometimes I pray when I really feel like I need God to help me with something, and sometimes we just have conversations. We just kick it.
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As often as you fail, get up and try again. God will never let you down, so long as you don't let Him down, and so long as you make the effort.
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Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.
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The spirit of the gospel is optimistic; it trusts in God and looks on the bright side of things. The opposite or pessimistic spirit drags men down and away from God, looks on the dark side, murmurs, complains, and is slow to yield obedience.
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Things happen for a reason, and the only thing you can do is at night time get on your knees and ask God for forgiveness for anything that you did that you didn't feel was right.
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Who made these laws? That's what I want to know. So that's why I wear two crosses now. I call it double cross. I believe in God-not religion.
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People are drawn to preaching that is passionate and offered with conviction. Passion comes when the preacher has spent significant time with the text, and when God has spoken through the text in a way that addresses the preacher's life first.
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Abraham was the first to teach the Unity of God, to establish the faith, to cause it to remain among coming generations, and to win his fellow-men to his doctrine; as Scripture says of him: 'I know him, that he will command,' &c. (Gen. xviii. 19)
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Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.
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At last the god cometh! The air runs over with splendor; The fire leaps high on the altar; Melodious thunders shake the ground. Hark to the Delphic responses! Hark! it is the god!
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If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as plentiful as blackberries.
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Knowledge is not happiness, and science But an exchange of ignorance for that Which is another kind of ignorance.
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What's interesting is, in the months leading up to this, I was probably at the lowest ebb in my life. I was feeling just teenage angst. I didn't know if I wanted to continue living - that kind of despair. I was praying to a God I didn't know was listening.
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I do not believe in a God who maliciously or arbitrarily interferes in the personal affairs of mankind. My religion consists of an humble admiration for the vast power which manifests itself in that small part of the universe which our poor, weak minds can grasp!
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There were eleven of us. Each more different than the next. All with the same mindset. Things weren't the way they were meant to be. It was our job to make things right. We were the soldiers of Halla. It was time for us to take it back.
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Something I didn't even know was on my bucket list has been achieved. I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner with Martha Stewart. I vow to follow the gospel of her teachings and do my very best in the remarkably less glamorous kitchen of my own home... without the luxury of magically appearing prep bowls filled by a staff of sous chefs.
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Interstate highways dull the reality of place and distance almost as effectively as jetliners do: I loathe their scary monotony.
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Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
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There is no escape if love is not there
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In their condescending assumption that belief in God could only be the product of wishful thinking, stupidity, ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty; in their corresponding refusal seriously to consider the possibility that that belief might be true and the arguments for it sound; and in their glib supposition that the only rational considerations relevant to the question are “scientific” ones, rather than philosophical; in all of these attitudes, Flew’s critics manifest the quintessential mindset of modern secularism. And insofar as its self-satisfied a priori dismissal of outsiders as benighted, and of defectors as wicked or mad, insulates it from ever having to deal with serious criticism, it is a mindset that echoes the closed-minded prejudice and irrationality it typically attributes to religious believers themselves.
