One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

O world, world when I was younger I thought there was some order governing you and your deeds. But now you seem to be a labyrinth of errors, a frightful desert, a den of wild beasts, a game in which men move in circles?a stony field, a meadow full of serpents, a flowering but barren orchard, a spring of cares, a river of tears, a sea of suffering, a vain hope.

Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silent darkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrors that imagination had mustered. Peering, the mind could see nothing sure, nothing in all human experience to be grasped as certain, except uncertainty itself; nothing but obscurity gendered by a thick haze of theories. Man's science was a mere mist of numbers; his philosophy but a fog of words. His very perception of this rocky grain and all its wonders was but a shifting and a lying apparition. Even oneself, that seeming-central fact, was a mere phantom, so deceptive, that the most honest of men must question his own honesty, so insubstantial that he must even doubt his very existence.

Mathematicians finally developed a financial model to accurately compare apples and oranges. Any two kinds of fruit can be compared, although guavas still cause minor rounding errors.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think?

It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.

All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.

It is important that we forgive ourselves for making mistakes. We need to learn from our errors and move on.

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

From the errors of others a wise man corrects his own.

There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.

The man who cannot endure to have his errors and shortcomings brought to the surface and made known but tries to hide them is unfit to walk the highway of truth.

If you shut the door to all errors truth will be shut out.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

Science in the modern world has many uses its chief use however is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars conquer the deserts eradicate disease tap the ocean depths and encourage the arts and commerce.

Generally speaking the errors in religion are dangerous those in philosophy only ridiculous.

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

I've felt that if you dwell too much on your errors you're dealing in the negativity of things. I don't like that. I'd rather work on the positive reinforcement the things I did well.

The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress with its trials and its errors its successes and its setbacks can never be relaxed and never abandoned.

We are all full of weakness and errors let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.