dogma

plural dogmas · plural dogmata

1. countableuncountableAn authoritative principle, belief or statement of opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true and indisputable, regardless of evidence or without evidence to support it.

   If he has a dogma, i.e. a scientifico-philosophical theory, then he is not any sort of Skeptic, not even an urbane Skeptic.

   2015, Tad Brennan, Ethics and Epistemology in Sextus Empiricus

2. countableuncountableA doctrine (or set of doctrines) relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth authoritatively by a religious organization or leader.

   Near-synonym: creed

   5 more examples

   Holonyms: belief system, cosmology

   In the Catholic Church, new dogmas can only be declared by the pope after the extremely rare procedure ex cathedra to make them part of the official faith.

   According to that Cabaliſticall Dogma: If Abram had not had this Letter [i.e., ה (he)] added unto his Name he had remained fruitleſſe, and without the power of generation: […] So that being ſterill before, he received the power of generation from that meaſure and manſion in the Archetype; and was made conformable unto Binah.

   1658, Thomas Browne, “The Garden of Cyrus. […]. Chapter V.”, in Hydriotaphia, Urne-buriall, […] Together with The Garden of Cyrus, […], London: […] Hen[ry] Brome […], →OCLC, page 192

   Other foreign terms have become so thoroughly Anglicised as to adopt English plurals, and it is sometimes difficult to decide whether the English or the original foreign form is the more correct. None but a pedant would speak of ‘the chori of an opera,’ ‘the croci in a garden,’ or ‘the dogmata of the church;’ […]

   [a. 1881, William B[allantyne] Hodgson, “Noun”, in Errors in the Use of English, Edinburgh: David Douglas, published 1881, part II (Accidence), page 70

   The man who thinks that his religion is the sum-total of the religious dogmas he believes in, who thinks that to live in harmony with the allhood of things it requires only that one subscribe to certain prescribed religious dogmas, in whose mind the means of salvation is simply frequency and fervency of prayer, assiduity and fidelity of attendance on worship, — in the case of that man his so-called religion is just as apt as not to become an actual aid to immorality, for it is not religion at all, but purblind, self-righteous Pharisaism.

   1909, Nicholas Murray Butler, Frank Pierrepont Graves, Charles Alexander Nelson, Educational Review - Volume 37, page 383

   Synonyms: creed