Everything that is offered by someone as sacred should be examined critically. Blindly accepting church dogma requires that you abandon reason. The Church of Nature's God has no dogma that you must accept. It begins with no traditions. There is no reason to believe the Church will not borrow traditions from other churches, just as those churches borrowed many of their traditions from other churches that came before. But traditions or ceremonies must always be optional. If reason dictates that a ceremony is the best way to commemorate an occasion, then the members of our fellowship will search and suggest, and if those who want to participate in the ceremony are comfortable, then that is the right ceremony. If it is not, the participants should devise their own ceremony.

Thomas Aquinas, creator of some of the greatest works of dogma of all time, wrote in the Summa Theologica that, "If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections -- if he has any -- against faith." Therein lies perhaps the greatest distinction between Theism and Deism. Theistic faith requires acceptance of faith and the abandonment of reason, whereas Deism rejects the concept of divine revelation; Deistic faith is based on reason.

Accepting dogma means accepting someone else doing your thinking for you. This is not acceptable to a Freethinker or a Deist.

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." Joseph Lewis quoting Lincoln in a 1924 speech in New York