Dogma

"Das Dogma ist nicht anderes als ein ausdrückliches Verbot, zu denken."

"Der Dogmatismus ist gänzlich unfähig, zu erklären, was er zu erklären hat, und dies entscheidet über seine Untauglichkeit."

"Die dogmatischen Ansichten der vorigen Jahrhunderte leben dann nur fort in den Vorurtheilen des Volks und in gewissen Disciplinen, die, in dem Bewußtsein ihrer Schwäche, sich gern in Dunkelheit hüllen."

"Die […] Wissenschaft, ursprünglich einmal angetreten gegen kirchlichen Dogmatismus, ist längst selbst zu einem neuen Glaubenssystem verkommen, das von neuen Schriftgelehrten gepredigt und von weiten Teilen der Öffentlichkeit nachgebetet wird."

"Ich fürchte nicht die Stärke des Islam, sondern die Schwäche des Abendlandes. Das Christentum hat teilweise schon abgedankt. Es hat keine verpflichtende Sittenlehre, keine Dogmen mehr."

"In der Kirche kommt es zu keiner „Klärung“ von anstehenden Fragen. Ihre Lehre steht unverrückbar fest. Sie erlaubt kein Hinterfragen, sondern verlangt absolute Unterwerfung unter ihre unhaltbaren Glaubenssätze. Sie erzwingt diese Unterwerfung so rücksichtslos, wie jedes andere totalitäre System in der Welt. Das viel beschworene geschwisterliche Miteinander in der Kirche gibt es nicht."

"In Dogma und Moral der Kirche wie des Papsttums konkretisierte nichts anderes als den Zeitgeist früherer Epochen."

"Rom wollte immer herrschen, und als seine Legionen fielen, sandte es Dogmen in die Provinzen."

"Unser Wahlspruch muss also sein: Reform des Bewusstseins nicht durch Dogmen, sondern durch Analysirung des mystischen sich selbst unklaren Bewusstseins, trete es nun religiös oder politisch auf. Es wird sich dann zeigen, dass die Welt längst den Traum von einer Sache besitzt, von dem sie nur das Bewusstsein besitzen muss, um sie wirklich zu besitzen."

"I predict most authoritarian followers would sail right through this book and compartmentalize, misinterpret, rationalize, and dogmatically deny it had anything to do with them personally. If you tried to force this self-awareness on them, they would probably run away, run away, as fast as they could. So good luck if you passed on this URL to your fascist Uncle George."

"Our most urgent problem just now is how to preserve in a positive and critical form the soul of truth in the two great traditions, classical and Christian, that are crumbling as mere dogma."

"All teaching is dogmatic. Dogma, indeed, means only "a thing taught," and teaching not dogmatic would cease to be teaching and would become discussion and doubt."

"To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil."

"Yes, of course, the Christian has dogmas he must believe in order to be a Christian, but all those dogmas concern love which is the essence. God is love. Where love is, God is. Dogmas and tenets of the Christian faith without love are dead letters, not even worth spelling out."

"Yield not one inch to all the forces which conspire to make you an echo. That is the sin of dogmatism and creeds. Avoid them; they build a fence about the intellect."

"No priestly dogmas, invented on purpose to tame and subdue the rebellious reason of mankind, ever shocked common sense more than the doctrine of the infinitive divisibility of extension, with its consequences; as they are pompously displayed by all geometricians and metaphysicians, with a kind of triumph and exultation. A real quantity, infinitely less than any finite quantity, containing quantities infinitely less than itself, and so on in infinitum; this is an edifice so bold and prodigious, that it is too weighty for any pretended demonstration to support, because it shocks the clearest and most natural principles of human reason."

"Christian dogmatics, it seems to me, must grow out of Christ's activity, and all the more so because Christ did not establish any doctrine; he acted."

"Religion does not mean to surrender to dogmas and religious scriptures or conformity to rituals. But my religion constitutes an abiding faith in the perfect values of truth and the ceaseless attempt to realise them in the inner most part of our nature."

"We can indeed recognize a tremendous difference in manner, but not in principle, between a shaman of the Tunguses and a European prelate: … for, as regards principle, they both belong to one and the same class, namely, the class of those who let their worship of God consist in what in itself can never make man better (in faith in certain statutory dogmas or celebration of certain arbitrary observances). Only those who mean to find the service of God solely in the disposition to good life-conduct distinguish themselves from those others, by virtue of having passed over to a wholly different principle."

"Though Dogma and theology are things intimately related and can never be separated, yet they are never entirely of the same stuff. Dogma is a vast domain which theology will never wholly exploit. There is always infinitely more in Dogma, considered in its concrete totality, that is to say, in the very Object of divine revelation, than in this "human science of revelation", in this product of analysis and rational elaboration which theology always is. The latter, in its very truth, will always—and all the more in that it will always be rationally formulated—be inadequate for Dogma; for it is indeed the explanation of it, but not the fulness. This weakness is congenital. True theology knows that. It does not confuse the orders."

"Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers. To annihilate it or submit it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is to say through political faith, which is a creed."

"What is dogma but the intellectual conception and verbal expression of a divine truth?"

"The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be denied that dogma draws a circle round the mind."

"The word dogma comes from the Greek verb dokein, to seem to be, to appear to be. A dogma, therefore, was something which appeared to be a truth: an opinion about truth, and hence was frequently employed in certain Greek states as signifying the decision, the considered opinion, and therefore the final vote arrived at in a state council or assembly. It was only in later times that the word dogma acquired the meaning which it now has: a doctrine based upon the declaration of an ecumenical council, or perhaps of some other widely recognized churchly authority."

"By propagating the dogma of Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God, the Church contradicts the very sense of the prayer given to us by Jesus Christ himself, "Our Father which art in heaven." And also the words of the Scriptures, "So God created man in his own image." (Genesis 1:27)"

"To be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the dogmas of the church, or with the prejudices and tastes of his contemporaries; so long as he rests content with this position, he is only a φίλαυτος, not a φιλόσοφος. For this title of honor is well and wisely conceived precisely by its stating that one should love the truth earnestly and with one’s whole heart, and thus unconditionally and unreservedly, above all else, and, if need be, in defiance of all else. Now the reason for this is the one previously stated that the intellect has become free, and in this state it does not even know or understand any other interest than that of truth."

"Yesterday a conversation about divinity and faith suggested to me a great, a stupendous idea to the realization of which I feel capable of dedicating my whole life. This is the idea—the founding of a new religion corresponding to the development of mankind: the religion of Christ, but purged of all dogma and mystery, a practical religion, not promising future bliss but realizing bliss on earth."

"The mechanical philosophy is a case of being victimized by metaphor. I choose Descartes and Newton as excellent examples of metaphysicians of mechanism malgré eux, that is to say, as unconscious victims of the metaphor of the great machine. Together they have founded a church, more powerful than that founded by Peter and Paul, whose dogmas are now so entrenched that anyone who tries to reallocate the facts is guilty of more than heresy."

"I really dread serious people. Especially serious, dogmatic people. I regard them as sort of what Reich called the emotional plague. I regard them as very dangerous."