Quotes about Belief

There are those who mock Jews and Christians who believe God promised the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. But, as noted, even an atheist would have to acknowledge no other people ever established a state there—as Jews have three times—or have claimed it as their own dating back three thousand years.

One of the most important lessons of life—one I believe most people never learn—is that almost everything important is a choice. We choose whether to be happy (or, at the very least whether to act happy), whether to be a hard worker, whether to be honest, whether to be kind, whether to see miracles, and, yes, whether to believe in God (or, at the very least, live as if there is a God).

The God introduced by the Torah began the long journey to belief in human equality—solely as a result of the Torah statement that each of us is created in God's image. Slavery was abolished on a wide scale first in the Western world—by Christians who were rooted in the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible and who specifically cited the Torah doctrine that all humans are created in God's image.

However, one big obstacle to truth-telling is that believers in causes, including good causes, that don't place truth as a central value, will be very tempted to lie on behalf of their cause.

People have too often valued "proper" religious beliefs more than proper moral behavior, and even slaughtered others for not having the right religious beliefs. This is a common occurrence even in our time.

Therefore, there is no issue here of a holy text depicting people being ordered by their God to kill infidels or innocents.

No one can rationally believe doing God's will guarantees one will, for example, never develop cancer or die in an earthquake. If that were the case, we would have to draw the irrational and cruel conclusion that anyone who dies prematurely was being punished by God—or the equally irrational conclusion that all those who live long and healthy lives have lived God-centered lives.

Nothing inspires people to believe in God as much as God-centered people doing good, just as nothing alienates people from belief in God as much as people doing evil in God's name.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People and his lectures.

But answering requests is not the primary role of God, and many people who believe it is will become disappointed and perhaps even alienated from God.

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.

God made nature, and is therefore not natural. This led to the end of the universal human belief in nature gods (such as rain gods). And sure enough, as belief in the Torah's God declines, nature worship seems to be returning.