Problems arise when (especially) theologians use such metaphorical language without realizing that that is what they are doing, and without even realizing that there is a distinction between metaphor and reality — saying something like: ‘It is not important whether Jesus really fed the five thousand. What matters is what the idea of the story means to us.’ Actually it is important, because millions of devout people do believe the Bible is literally true. Richard Dawkins
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. - Unknown

  2. Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for... - Thomas A. Edison

  3. We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love. - Peter Kreeft

  4. Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company. - Benjamin Franklin Wade

  5. Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. - Alan W. Watts

More Quotes By Richard Dawkins
  1. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see...

  2. After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the...

  3. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired...

  4. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

  5. ...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.

Related Topics