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Atheism, I began to realize, rested on a less-than-satisfactory evidential basis. The arguments that had once seemed bold, decisive, and conclusive increasingly turned out to be circular, tentative, and uncertain.

Alister E. McGrath

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Alister E. McGrath
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More quotes by Alister E. McGrath

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The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation.
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Christianity israrely understood by those outside its bounds. In fact, this is probably one of the greatest tasks confronting the apologist–to rescue Christianity from misunderstandings.
Alister E. McGrath
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The English experience suggested that nobody really doubted the existence of God until theologians tried to prove it.
Alister E. McGrath
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Our desires cannot be, and were never meant to be, satisfied by earthly pleasures alone.
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The true believer is not someone who disengages from this world in order to focus on heaven, but rather the one who tries to make this world more like heaven.
Alister E. McGrath
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The idea of ‘calling' was fundamentally redefined: no longer was it about being called to serve God by leaving the world it was now about serving God in the world
Alister E. McGrath
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Faith is not something that goes against the evidence, it goes beyond it. The evidence is saying to us, 'There is another country. There is something beyond mere reason'.
Alister E. McGrath
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All the important things in life lie beyond reason... and that's just the way things are.
Alister E. McGrath
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The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.
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One of the best introductions to the history and ideas of Calvinism, packed with insight and wisdom.
Alister E. McGrath
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Our present world contains clues...to another world-a world which we can begin to experience now, but will only know in all its fullness at the end of things.
Alister E. McGrath
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A failure to understand something does not mean it is irrational. It may simply mean that it lies on the far side of our limited abilities to take things in and make complete sense of them.
Alister E. McGrath
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Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.
Alister E. McGrath
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Manz, formerly one of Zwingli's closest allies, held that there was no biblical warrant for infant baptism. Refusing to recant his views, he was tied up and drowned in the River Limmat.
Alister E. McGrath
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At Oxford University, the certainties of my atheist faith (and atheism is a faith) began to crumble
Alister E. McGrath
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The most radical question which anyone can be asked is not how much their possessions cost, but whether they have found something of value - that is, something that makes living worthwhile.
Alister E. McGrath
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When the old poets made some virtue their theme, they were not teaching but adoring.
Alister E. McGrath
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Suffering does not call into question the big picture of the Christian faith. It reminds us that we do not see the whole picture, and are thus unable to fit all of the pieces neatly into place.
Alister E. McGrath
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If worldviews or metanarratives can be compared to lenses, which of them brings things into the sharpest focus? This is not an irrational retreat from reason. Rather, it is about grasping a deeper order of things which is more easily accessed by the imagination than by reason.
Alister E. McGrath
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The hallmark of intelligence is not whether one believes in God or not, but the quality of the processes that underlie one’s beliefs.
Alister E. McGrath