Faith and Reason Quotes
Different people have very different views about the relationship between faith and reason:
Evidentialists think that faith can be established on the basis of firm evidence.
Pragmatists, like Blaise Pascal, think that faith can’t be founded on evidence but that it can nevertheless be rational because it is in our interests (c.f. Pascal’s Wager).
Fideists think that faith, by its nature, is irrational, that it cannot be supported by reason, but that this reflects the limitations of reason rather than of faith. Sceptics think that faith cannot be supported by reason, and that this shows the limitations of faith. The following quotations are representative of these diverse views.
William K Clifford
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
Richard Dawkins
“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”
Benjamin Franklin
“The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
William James
“Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“Certainty... lurks at the door of faith and threatens to devour it.”
Martin Luther
“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”
Blaise Pascal
“Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.”
Bertrand Russell
“We may define ‘faith’ as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith." We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.”
Paul Tillich
“Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.”
D Elton Trueblood
“Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.”
Mark Twain
“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
Voltaire
“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.”
Hebrews 11:1 (NRSV)
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Book Recommendations
 Paul Helm
Faith and Reason (Oxford Readers)
Oxford University Press (1999)
ISBN: 0192892908
Details at: Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.co.uk
 St Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas’s Shorter Summa: Saint Thomas’s Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica
Sophia Institute Press (2001)
ISBN: 1928832431
Details at: Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.co.uk
 Richard Swinburne
Faith and Reason
Oxford University Press (1984)
ISBN: 0198247257
Details at: Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.co.uk
 C Stephen Evans
Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account
Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source (1998)
ISBN: 080284555X
Details at: Amazon.com Amazon.ca Amazon.co.uk
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