<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Thus God hides his eternal goodness and mercy under eternal wrath, his righteousness under iniquity. This is the highest degree of faith, to believe him merciful when he saves so few and damns so many, and to believe him righteous when by his own will he makes us necessarily damnable, so that he seems, according to Erasmus, to delight in the torments of the wretched and to be worthy of hatred rather than of love. If, then, I could by any means comprehend how this God can be merciful and just who displays so much wrath and iniquity, there would be no need of faith.</em></p>
On the Bondage of the Will, p. 138
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If God does not exist, one will lose nothing by believing in him, while if he does exist, one will lose everything by not believing.</em></p>
Pensées (3:233), “Of the Necessity of the Wager,” pp. 213-216 – “Pascal’s Wager”
– “Pascal’s Wager”
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">We can also be confident in the ways of Providence, even when they are far from our understanding. Events aren’t moved by blind change and chance. Behind all of life and all of history, there’s a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God. And that hope will never be shaken.</em></p>
address at the 51st annual prayer breakfast, February 6, 2003
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Faith is </em><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">certain</em><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">. It is more certain than all human knowledge, because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem to obscure human reason and experience, but the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.</em></p>
(1:1:157)
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.</em></p>
(1:1:159)
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">[Faith] affects the whole of man’s nature. It commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence; it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and it is crowned with the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.</em></p>
Dawkin’s God, p. 86
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I believe in the traditional doctrine of Torah … No one can reasonably claim to understand how God reveals Himself to man. The very idea of revelation leads us to paradoxes which defy rational explanations … Yet we affirm in faith that we cannot explicate, for our very humanity is at stake. I believe, because I cannot afford not to believe. I believe, as a Jew, in the divinity of Torah, because without God’s Torah I have lost the ground for making my own life intelligible and purposeful.</em></p>
“The State of Jewish Belief: A Symposium,” Commentary 42, No. 2, 1966, p. 89
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">How any man who should inquire and know for himself can content himself with a faith or belief taken upon trust, is to me astonishing. </em></p>
quoted in Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind; which if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything but upon good reason … Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith.</em></p>
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (4:17:24; 4:18:10), pp. 663,669
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">For just as … scoundrels frequently take advantage of the lack of education of gullible people and lead them wherever they wish, so also, this happens among Christians … some do not even want to give or to receive a reason for what they believe, and use such expressions as “Do not ask questions; just believe” and “Thy faith will save thee.” [Others quote the Apostle Paul,] “The wisdom in the world is an evil, and foolishness a good thing” (1 Corinthians (1:25-26)).</em></p>
The True Word, as quoted by Origen in Against Celsus (1:9), p. 12
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">A saying similar to this runs as follows: “Even if you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, I tell you in truth that if you say to this mountain, Be moved into the sea — even that will be possible for you.” It seems to follow that anyone who is unable to move a mountain by following these directions is unworthy to be counted among the faithful. So there you are: not only the ordinary Christians, but even bishops and priests, find themselves excluded on the basis of such a saying.</em></p>
Against the Christians, p. 51
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">All nature is but Art, unknown to thee;</em></p><p><em>All chance, direction which thou cans’t not see;</em></p><p><em>All discord, harmony not understood;</em></p><p><em>All partial evil, universal good.</em></p>
An Essay on Man, Epistle 1
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Accept the fact that you are not omniscient … that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error. In place of your dream of an omniscient automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is acquired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.</em></p>
Atlas Shrugged, p. 1058, in a speech by John Galt
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Faith is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves … for the self-confidence born of experience and skill.</em></p>
The True Believer (section 8), 1951
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Faith is the equation of feeling with knowledge.</em></p>
The Virtue of Selfishness: a new concept of egoism
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">“Heaven help us,” said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another. </em></p>
attributed to, as quoted in Haught, 2000 Years of Disbelief, p. 143
<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident. </em></p>
The Moral Landscape
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