Quotes about Theism

The existence of personal beings constitutes evidence that they were created by a personal God, not by any non-personal cause.

Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct. There is no evidence for his existence, nor is he a matter of ultimate concern. God is not God without universal participation. "Personal God" is a confusing symbol.

For example, it is often said today that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were Deists. Yet, each man in a variety of contexts spoke earnestly of their conviction as Theists—that God was both approachable by man and that God played an ever-active role in the affairs of man.

While a case can be made for intelligent design, I can't figure out why some Christians are so thrilled about that possibility. First of all, it doesn't prove there's a God. If anything, intelligent design lends support to some form of pantheism that defines God as immanent within nature.

Some people think the theists get off easy by offering eternal life, but in my experience it is awfully difficult to reconcile the death of a child with the idea of a loving God. As a Christian, I knew what to say, but I don't think my words made much of a difference. What mattered most was just being there and sharing the hurt.

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. . . Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. . . Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

Perhaps even atheism versus theism is an example of this principle that an apparent either/or can really be a both/and. For I suspect that the God you insist does not exist is probably a God I also insist does not exist; and perhaps the God I maintain does exist is a God you have never denied.

The very basis of the religion of Jesus was a triumphant belief in the real existence of a personal God. And without that belief no type of religion can rightly appeal to Jesus to-day. Jesus was a theist, and rational theism is at the basis of Christianity.

There can only be one God according to these arguments for many reasons. First, the God of the Cosmological argument is infinite48since every finite thing needs a cause. And there cannot be two infinite Beings. For in order for there to be two beings of the same kind, they would have to differ. But two infinite Beings do not differ; they are the same kind of Being, namely, infinite. Second, the theistic God (of the Moral Argument) is absolutely perfect.

So far as we have any information about man, we know that he has always and everywhere been under the influence of dominating ideas. Any one who alleges that he is not can immediately be suspected of having exchanged a known form of belief for a variant which is less known both to himself and to others. Instead of theism he is a devotee of atheism, instead of Dionysus he favours the more modern Mithras, and instead of heaven he seeks paradise on earth.

Appeals to imagined forces and phenomena have been the basis for all the cosmological models proposed to avoid the big bang implications about God. The disproof of these models and the ongoing appeal by nontheists to more and more bizarre unknowns and unknowables seem to reflect the growing strength of the case for theism.

Atheists must make a positive case that only material things exist. That's why instead of debating "Does God exist?" I prefer to debate the question "What better explains reality: atheism or theism?