A Quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton

The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing.  Alas, it is much worse.  He ends up believing anything. — © Gilbert K. Chesterton
The problem of disbelieving in God is not that a man ends up believing nothing. Alas, it is much worse. He ends up believing anything.
By liberty of conscience, we understand not only a mere liberty of the mind, in believing or disbelieving this or that principle or doctrine; but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear of favor of any mortal man, we sin and incur divine wrath.
One of the peculiar sins of the twentieth century which we've developed to a very high level is the sin of credulity. It has been said that when human beings stop believing in God they believe in nothing. The truth is much worse: they believe in anything.
I don't know if God would agree with me, but believing in God is kind of unimportant when compared to believing in yourself. Because if you go with the idea that God gave you a mind and an ability to judge things, then he would want you to believe in yourself and not worry about believing in him. By believing in yourself you will come to the conclusion that will point to something.
More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much.
Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.
Believing in evolution is believing in the unproved, while believing in Christ is believing in the proven.
In what way can a man believing in God cease believing due to his personal vanity? There are only two ways. The man should either begin to think himself a rival of God, or he may begin to believe himself to be God.
When we stop believing in gods we can start believing in their stories, I retort. There are of course no such things as miracles, but if there were and so tomorrow we woke up to find no more believers on earth, no more devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, why then, sure the beauty of the stories would be a thing we could focus on because they wouldn't be dangerous any more, they would become capable of compelling the only belief that leads to truth, that is, the willing, disbelieving of the reader in a well-told tale.
For we are not saved by believing in our own salvation, nor by believing anything whatsoever about ourselves. We are saved by what we believe about the Son of God and His righteousness. The gospel believed saves; not the believing in our own faith.
God never ends anything on a negative; God always ends on a positive.
Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in such a being they had therefore stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire...decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists.
Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.
I started out by believing God for a newer car than the one I was driving. I started out believing God for a nicer apartment than I had. Then I moved up.
I personally don't need to see a story about a person that starts up miserable and ends up worse.
I grew up in San Francisco. And so I'm informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I'm a very ardent patriot.
We're not big on taste. And actually, if you don't pander to undue sensitivities, then it ends up usually not being much of a problem.
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