Belief Quotes

“Faith and reason are not, as many seem to be arguing today, mutually exclusive. They never have been. The letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament defines faith as ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of the things not seen.”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith

“...to apply scientific arguments to the question of God's existence, as if this were somehow a showstopper, is committing a category error.”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith

“…to apply scientific arguments to the question of God’s existence, as if this were somehow a showstopper, is committing a category error”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith

“But there is, alas, no doubt that we are becoming a vocabulary-deprived nation—nay, planet. Words have been dropping off all through this century, but the loss increased radically in the sixties with the immorality of “limited vocabulary.”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith – Dr. Francis Collins' Definitive Reader on Rationality

“When we proclaim that someone is subhuman, we not only remove for them the possibility of change and repentance, we also remove from them moral responsibility.”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith – Dr. Francis Collins' Definitive Reader on Rationality

“What, to use Noble Laureate Wigner's classic phrase, accounts for the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics'?”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith

“Faith and reason are not, as many seem to be arguing today, mutually exclusive. They never have been. The letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament defines faith as 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of the things not seen.”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith

“an essay in the Human Rights Reader, Rorty suggested that the basis for human rights is not rationality or moral law but “what Baier calls ‘a progress of sentiments.’…It is the result of what I have been calling ‘sentimental education.’”17 So the basis for morality, in Rorty’s view, is “sentiment.” We are back to preferences and tastes. But whose sentiments? Rorty’s? A Nazi’s? Or someone else’s?”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith – Dr. Francis Collins' Definitive Reader on Rationality

“For it is impossible to conceive that ever bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce matter. Let us suppose any parcel of matter eternal, great or small, we shall find it, in itself, able to produce nothing. For example: let us suppose the matter of the next pebble we meet with eternal, closely united, and the parts firmly at rest together; if there were no other being in the world, must it not eternally remain so, a dead inactive lump? Is it possible to conceive it can add motion to itself, being purely”
― Francis S. Collins, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith – Dr. Francis Collins' Definitive Reader on Rationality