There Is No Dog Faith Quotes

As she steps out into the light, Bob watches her [Lucy], shivering with devotion. (4.21)

And was this an excuse for him to be rained with curses and loathing from all mankind? Oh no. Because here was the clever bit: Bob had designed the entire race of murderers, martyrs and thugs with a built-in propensity to worship him. (12.38)

That night, Lucy climbed into bed, too agitated to sleep. She thought of talking to God, her God—a benign, all-seeing sort of deity who didn't get too involved with the day-to-day running of life, but who (she imagined) liked to be kept informed—a sort of thoughtful philosophy professor of a God, passing his days in contemplation of the moral complexities of good and evil. (15.13)

Let's face it, he'd [Bob] eked some serious mileage out of the God thing. Getting that old guy to drag his son up a mountain? Cool! Smiting of the firstborn? Yes! Turning the errant into pillars of salt? Fun! Once upon a time it had been all burning bushes, plagues of frogs and partings of the seas, scaring the living daylights out of his creations by booming down in scary voices and handing stone tablets out of the sky. Now he was barely allowed to make a parking space become suddenly available. (16.10)

They [the whales] were the only species with the intelligence to contact him directly, bypassing not only human intervention, but also Bob, for they (quite sensibly) did not believe in him. (28.24)

Bernard wanted very badly to believe that he and God had a single goal, and that the goal involved the eradication of suffering. Not that he believed, exactly, that suffering could be eradicated. But he believed in the process, the desire to make things better. Without human perfectibility as a goal, he could see no purpose to life on earth. (30.2)

The vicar frowned. Something about this young man set the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, and his first impulse was to turn him straight back out into the rain. The muscles in his arms tensed. (30.27)

It is he, not Bob, who cares for this world. Bob is not, and never has been, fit to rule. He is a cog. A boob. A cur. He is no God. If there even is such a thing as God, thinks Mr. B. If there is such a being, it cannot be Bob. (44.14)

He [Mr. B] hesitates, and all at once a realization explodes in his brain like a bomb. He groans, gripping the desk to avoid falling. Why has he never seen it before? The obviousness of it. With purest clarity he realizes that Bob is not the God to whom the multitudes direct their entreaties. […] If there is such a being, it is not the indifferent, underage parent of this world, the thoughtless creator. It is the other, the one who has struggled day after day to make things better, to answer a few prayers, right a few wrongs, who has suffered along with his planet and tried to fix things, in however small a manner, to change a detail here and there for the good of humankind, for the creatures, for all who suffer and long for a better life. No. Bob is not God. He is. (44.19)

Around the world in every place without hope or light, the people stand, faces upturned with wonder. For a brief instant in the long and painful history of the planet, wars stop, blood feuds are forgotten, no one is murdered or desperate or sad. The entire world hesitates, uncertain and amazed. Perhaps, some think, the Red Sea really did part. Perhaps stone tablets truly did come down from the sky. If whales can fly, surely more miracles are possible? Tomorrow another; the day after, another? (46.32)