“The fundamental question to be asked about any theological statement is, ‘What is the evidence that makes you think this might be true?’”
Author’s Introduction to John Polkinghorne The Faith of a Physicist
“The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort.”
C.S. Lewis “Christian Apologetics” in The Grand Miracle
In my latest Epoch Times column I reflect for Remembrance Day on the moving ritual of sounding the Last Post at the Menin Gate every single night for 77 years and counting.
“’Can’t you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?’ This is the question on which I have been asked to write, and straight away, before I begin trying to answer it, I have a comment to make. The question sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself, ‘I don’t care whether Christianity is in fact true or not. I’m not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more like what the Christians say than what the materialists say. All I’m interested in is leading a good life. I’m going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I think them helpful.’ Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathize with this state of mind…. Christianity is not a patent medicine.”
C.S. Lewis “Man or Rabbit?” in The Grand Miracle
“It would be no sort of a life if we felt entirely comfortable in it.”
P.J. Kavanaugh, quoted in The Economist May 5, 1990
“It is only the fetish of some economists (e.g., Hirshleifer, 1985) that rejects the idea that one person’s self-interest cannot include the welfare of others.”
W.T. Stanbury in Walter Block and George Lerner, eds., Breaking the Shackles: Deregulating Canadian Industry
“In 1867, Matthew Arnold heard the ‘melancholy, long, withdrawing roar’ of the Sea of Faith.”
Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character
“Search for the perfect church if you will; when you find it, join it, and realize that on that day it becomes something less than perfect.”
Fr. Andrew Greeley quoted by William F. Buckley Jr. in National Review Sept. 15, 1997