Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Tim Crane

Quote by Tim Crane

“A lot of humanists treat religion as if it were simply a kind of rival cosmological hypothesis, and that this is all it is. My view is that to the extent that religions are cosmological hypotheses, this is not the only important thing about them, and we - atheists- will never get a proper understanding of what religion is if we focus too much on the cosmology.”

Quote by Tim Crane

Create image

Author

Tim Crane
Tim Crane

Tim Crane is a distinguished philosopher recognized for his contributions to metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. Born on October 17, 1962, he has made significant impacts on the field with his insightful analyses and philosophical inquiries. more

You May Also Like

“I think we waste a lot of time trying to convince other people that we're right. A lot of times we don't actually care what another person thinks, we just want to say what we think. To hear it reflected back to us and that we're okay, to hear that we have been understood and that we're correct - so that we can continue to be who we are in the ways we've been being, and we have nothing to feel bad about and everything is just fine. Even if what we're talking about is, like, police brutality.”

PeopleThinkingTryingCareOkayPoliceConvincePolice Brutality
Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
Create image

“One odd thing about the current debate between religious people and atheists is that the participants don't seem to care that they entirely fail to communicate with the other side. They therefore have no account of why the religious or the atheists believe what they do, except that they are stupid or deluded. I think philosophers should try and make sense of their disputes with their opponents as far as possible without treating them as idiots. This applies to the religious participants in the debate as much as to the atheists.”

PeopleThinkingTryingBelieveCareReligiousFailingStupidAtheistPhilosopherCommunicateDebateIdiotMake SenseOdd
Author:Tim Crane
Create image

“Indifference is the saddest state of being. It's like PTSD - you're not gonna fight, you're not gonna run, you're just frozen there, feeling nothing. It's very easy to have conversations when you're sitting there feeling nothing, to talk about the weather or what you had for lunch, to Instagram what you had for lunch. We're all suffering from trauma. This world is so crazy. How do we feel safe here? I think that's the question everybody's asking, "What do I need to do to feel safe? Like I'm okay?" I don't think there's anything wrong with that.”

ThinkingWorldFeelingsRunningSufferingFightingEasyCrazyOkayTraumaIndifference
Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
Create image

“Sometimes I think I'm a nihilist because it doesn't matter, none of this matters. We're all following the will of some unknowable higher power, probably the stars manipulating our cellular magnets. We think we have all this agency, but do we? Do we really? Can you choose to be brave when you were born a coward? Can we be deprogrammed from the brainwashing that we grew up in? I think we can, but I think we need a lot of help.”

ThinkingSometimesHelpingBraveCowardYou ChooseBe BraveMagnetHigher PowerBrainwashingNihilist
Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
Create image

“Many people like to think that their moral or political enemies are not just wicked or wrong - as if that were not enough - but stupid or idiotic too. We tend to find this attitude too in the contemporary religion debate. It might console those on each side of the debate to think of their opponents in these terms, but if we want to make real progress in understanding what is going on here, this approach cannot help.”

PeopleThinkingRealEnoughHelpingPoliticalUnderstandingTermAttitudeMoralEnemyProgressStupidDebateWickedIdiotic
Author:Tim Crane
Create image