Theology | godfree110158's Blog

Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.
In order to increase our respect for the Bible, it became necessary for the
priests to exalt and extol that book, and at the same time to decry and
belittle the reasoning powers of man. The whole power of the pulpit has
been used for hundreds of years to destroy the confidence of man in himself--
to induce him to distrust his own powers of thought, to believe that he was
wholly unable to decide any question for himself, and that all human virtue
consists in faith and obedience. The church has said 'Believe and obey!'
If you reason you will become an unbeliever, and unbelievers will be lost.
If you disobey, you will do so through vain pride and curiosity, and will,
like Adam and Eve, be thrust from Paradise forver! For my part, I care
nothing for what the church says, except in so far as it accords with my
reason; and the Bible is nothing to me, only in so far as it agrees with
what I think or know