Finding Truth Quotes

“Clearly, Enlightenment thinkers were seeking a God substitute.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Yet church youth groups rarely teach apologetics, majoring instead on games and goodies.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Learning critical thinking is important not only for speaking to people outside the church but also for educating people on the inside”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“But things that are intrinsically good can also become idols—if we allow them to take over any of God’s functions in our lives.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Scientific evidence has shown that “built into the natural development of children’s minds [is] a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose.” Even if a group of children were put “on an island and they raised themselves,” Barrett adds, “I think they would believe in God.” 13 It appears that we have to be educated out of the knowledge of God by secular schools and media.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“We must be committed to turning away from idols and toward God as the ultimate source of truth in every area of life. To avoid being “conformed to this world,” we must “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“The great drama of history is the tug of war between God and humanity. On one hand, God reaches out to humanity to make himself known. On the other hand, humans desperately seek to avoid knowing him. In the words of theologian Thomas K. Johnson, we “can take the account of Adam and Eve hiding from God behind a bush or tree as a metaphor for the history of the human race.” 18”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Why do people suppress the evidence for God? The God described in the Bible goes against the grain of today’s popular notions of spirituality. Many people may be receptive to the idea of a non-personal spiritual force that they can tap into. They might be willing to consider a great pantheistic pool of spirituality of which they are a part. But they are far less comfortable with the concept of a living, active, personal God who knows them, wants to interact with them, and has his own views about what they are doing with their lives.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“A Bíblia não define a fé como uma ação, um salto para algo que não possui fundamento lógico dentro de sua própria visão de mundo – uma mentira útil. Quando Paulo escreve que “andamos por fé e não pelo que vemos” (2Co 5.7), alguns cristãos parecem pensar que ele está falando metaforicamente e que quis dizer “pela fé, não pela razão”. Mas Paulo está falando literalmente e quis dizer “pelo que vemos” mesmo, a visão. Realidades imateriais são invisíveis. Elas não podem ser vistas. A fé é “a convicção de fatos que não se veem” (Hb 11.1). Pode ser necessária tremenda fé para agir com base em realidades que não podemos ver, mas não é uma contradição lógica. Dada a evidência, tais ações podem até mesmo ser eminentemente razoáveis, assim como é razoável para os físicos contar com a realidade de forças e campos que não podem ver.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“É por isso que o filósofo Karl Popper fala do “caráter religioso” das epistemologias do Iluminismo. A autoridade da revelação divina foi simplesmente substituída por outra forma de autoridade, escreve ele. O empirismo baconiano apelou para “a autoridade dos sentidos”, enquanto o racionalismo cartesiano apelou para “a autoridade do intelecto”. No entanto, ambos esperavam encontrar um método que renderia uma verdade que fosse tão certa e universal quanto a revelação divina. Ambos esperavam encontrar um método pelo qual o indivíduo poderia transcender seu limitado nicho no espaço e tempo para chegar ao conhecimento absoluto e divino – o que os filósofos chamam de percepção da realidade através dos olhos de Deus. Como escreve o filósofo John Herman Randall: “eles estavam tentando chegar a esse completo e perfeito entendimento e à explicação do universo que só um Deus poderia ter”. No final, ironicamente, essa busca pelo conhecimento divino estava restrita ao universo minúsculo do eu.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“De acordo com Clouser, o único aspecto compartilhado por todas as religiões é que reconhecem algo como divino – e usam essa palavra para significar a realidade eterna e autoexistente que é a origem de todo o restante. Obviamente, elas não concordam sobre o que se caracteriza como divino; concordam apenas que algo é divino. Nenhum outro fator é verdadeiramente universal entre as religiões.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“Quando alguma parte da criação é absolutizada, tudo é redefinido em seus termos. Os humanos são reformulados à sua imagem.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“Como Paulo diz em Romanos, se você rejeitar o Deus da Bíblia, irá deificar algo dentro da ordem criada. Aqueles que não honram ao Deus transcendente além do cosmos, devem divinizar algum poder ou princípio imanente que pertence ao cosmos.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“Tendemos a associar ídolos a coisas que são proibidas ou intrinsecamente más. Mas coisas que são intrinsecamente boas também podem tornar-se ídolos – se permitirmos que assumam qualquer uma das funções de Deus em nossa vida. “Apenas a confiança e a fé do coração fazem tanto Deus quanto um ídolo”, escreveu Martinho Lutero. “Aquilo em que o seu coração se apega e confia é, digo eu, realmente, o seu Deus.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“No cerne da condição humana, poderíamos dizer, há um pecado epistemológico – a recusa em reconhecer o que pode ser conhecido a respeito de Deus e, então, em responder ou reagir de forma adequada: “Tendo conhecimento de Deus, não o glorificaram como Deus, nem lhe deram graças” (Rm 1.21). Eles se envolveram em cegueira deliberada.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“Tomé não foi persuadido a olhar para dentro, para o seu coração, mas a avaliar provas no mundo externo. Ele, então, fez um compromisso com base em fatos relevantes, não por causa de uma ausência de fatos e certamente não contra eles.”
― Nancy Pearcey, A Busca da Verdade

“We’ve limited Christianity to salvation and sanctification,” he said. But “Christianity is the truth about everything. If you say you have a Christian worldview, that means you see the world through that lens—not just how people get saved and what to stay away from.” 17”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“In today’s pluralistic, multicultural world, no one can survive long on secondhand ideas. Some Christians seem to think the way to avoid being “conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:2) is by avoiding “worldly” ideas. A better strategy is to learn the skills to critically evaluate them.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“The Bible teaches that, without God, people are morally lost. But they are also intellectually lost because they are trying to live within the limits of a worldview that is too cramped and narrow to account for their own humanity. They are forced to place their entire hope for dignity and meaning in an upper-story realm that they themselves regard as irrational and unknowable—nothing but necessary falsehoods.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Ever since Kant, the phrase as if has come to signal truths that people are compelled to hold, even though they cannot account for those truths within their own worldview. They live as if Christianity were true, even though their worldview denies it. Instead of giving up their worldview in the face of contrary facts, they endure a severe mental schizophrenia.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“When we hear people talk about ideas that are false, yet necessary for a humane social order, that is a signal that they have bumped up against the hard edge of a reality that does not fit their worldview. They have stumbled upon the truths of general revelation. And they are seeking to suppress those truths by demoting them to useful fictions.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Reductionism is the key to explaining why idols lead to immoral behavior—why Romans 1 ends with a list of destructive and self-destructive behavior. When we dehumanize people in our thinking, we will eventually mistreat, oppress, abuse, and exploit them in our actions.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“When God gives people up to their idols, the result is always a reductionistic view of humanity—which ultimately unleashes harmful and destructive behavior. When we reduce people to anything less than fully human, we will treat them as less than fully human. When we define God as a something instead of a Someone, we will tend to treat humans as somethings too.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“But Scripture treats the topic of idolatry far more subtly. An idol is anything we want more than God, anything we rely on more than God, anything we look to for greater fulfillment than God. Idolatry is thus the hidden sin driving all other sins. For example, why do we lie? Because we fear the disapproval of people more than we want the approval of God. Or because we value our reputation more than we value our relationship with God. Or we are trying to manipulate someone into giving us something we think we need more than we need God. The more visible sin (lying) is driven by an invisible turn of our hearts toward something other than God as the ultimate source of security and happiness.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Why do idols invariably lead to destructive behavior? What is the connection? The link is that idols always lead to a lower view of human life.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“worldview, the convictions by which we direct our lives.”
― Nancy R. Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“For the early scientists, the image of God was not a dry doctrine to which they gave merely cognitive assent. Nor was it a purely private “faith.” They treated it as a public truth, the epistemological foundation for the entire scientific enterprise. Their goal, they said, was to think God’s thoughts after him. 27 At the time of the scientific revolution, biblical epistemology was the guarantee that the human mind is equipped to gain genuine knowledge of the world.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“Anything we must assume in order to function in the world is part of general revelation. The undeniable facts of experience reflect the created structure of physical nature or human nature, or both.”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“This biblical view has two crucial implications. First, the intelligible order of the universe reflects the mind of the Creator. Second, because God created humans in his image, our minds correspond with that order as well. There is a congruence between the structure of the world and the structure of human cognition—a correlation between subject and object in the act of knowing. As Plantinga writes, “God created both us and our world in such a way that there is a certain fit or match between the world and our cognitive faculties.” 12”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes

“a Christian worldview is not reductionistic. It does not reduce reason to something less than reason, and therefore it does not self-destruct. A Christian epistemology (theory of knowledge) starts with the transcendent Creator, who spoke the entire universe into being with his Word: “And God said” (Gen. 1:3). “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1).”
― Nancy Pearcey, Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes