C. S. Lewis Quotes

I grew up very religious, and I don't have a great relationship with religion.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

I'm not really a fan of organized religion.

In order to have faith, or follow any other organized religion, I'd have to suspend a degree of disbelief.

I am not a great theologian. I know there is a theological concept called invincible ignorance in which a strong enough faith binds you to any facts to the contrary.

It's hard to say, 'I don't believe in God.' I would love to know if God exists. But it's a very difficult thing for me to believe.

Faith is Doubt.

When a man is required to believe certain doctrines, he is not free to think. A creed is to keep the mind from inquiry. Questions lead to doubt, and doubt is the death of faith.

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs.

Revealed religion had no weight with me.

The believer who has never doubted will hardly convert a doubter.

For reasons I can't remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church's beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck.

Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.

I wouldn't like to be a non-believer in anything.

To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.

Faith is never identical with piety.

I hold that religion and faith are two different things.

The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires - and gives rise to - deep feelings of faith.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

There's been some research in cognitive science, I'm told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it's white noise.

It is with this as with religion: one usually believes what he has been taught.