John Caird Quotes
John Caird was a Scottish theologian, philosopher of religion, and Church of Scotland minister, elder brother of Edward Caird, and from 1873 principal of the University of Glasgow. After a celebrated parish ministry, he produced the most sustained nineteenth-century British defense of Hegelian philosophy of religion in his Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion of 1880 and his posthumously published Gifford Lectures on the Fundamental Ideas of Christianity. The quotes below are attributed to John Caird, organized by topic.
Browse John Caird by topic
John Caird on Death
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“Our coming-to-be is as mysterious as our ceasing-to-be at death. Can we therefore not derive hope because our ignorance about our origin matches our ignorance about our destiny? Cannot life be lived as a challenging and wonderful adventure that has meaning yet to be discovered? (95)”
Ch. 5.
John Caird on God
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Attributed to John Caird:
“The infinite reveals itself only through the finite.”
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Attributed to John Caird:
“Religion is the activity of spirit recognizing itself in God.”
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Attributed to John Caird:
“True theology is reasoned theology.”
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Attributed to John Caird:
“Faith without philosophy is poor; philosophy without faith is hollow.”
John Caird on Justice
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“The materialist critics argue that insuperable difficulties are encountered by the hypothesis that immaterial mental events can act in any way on material structures such as neurons. Such a presumed action is alleged to be incompatible with the conservation laws of physics, in particular of the first law of thermodynamics. This objection would certainly be sustained by nineteenth century physicists, and by neuroscientists and philosophers who are still ideologically in the physics of the nineteenth century, not recognizing the revolution wrought by quantum physicists in the twentieth century.”
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John Caird on Knowledge
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Attributed to John Caird:
“The deepest knowledge is also the deepest love.”
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“I can now rejoice even in the falsification of a cherished theory, because even this is a scientific success.”
As quoted in the Introduction of Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963) by Karl Popper -
“In order that a "self" may exist there must be some continuity of mental experiences and, particularly, continuity bridging gaps of unconsciousness. For example, the continuity of our "self" is resumed after sleep, anaesthesia, and the temporary amnesias of concussion and convulsions.”
As quoted in "Eccles' Model of the Self Controlling Its Brain : The Irrelevance of Dualist-Interactionism" (2003) by Donald E. Watson and Bernard O. Williams -
“I have read a great deal now on the neurological side and much on the anthropological side and on the philosophical side and we have had all these discussions and all the time I have the feeling that something may break. I mean that some little light at the end of the tunnel may be sensed or some flash of insight may come. I of course know very well that there is no guarantee it will come, but I have already got myself into this state of expectancy that something will come to my imagination which has some germ of truth about it in this most difficult field.”
p. 467
John Caird on Life
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“I believe that there is a fundamental mystery in my existence, transcending any biological account of the development of my body (including my brain) with its genetic inheritance and its evolutionary origin. … I cannot believe that this wonderful gift of a conscious existence has no further future, no possibility of another existence under some other unimaginable conditions.”
p. 83
John Caird on Nature
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“I maintain that the human mystery is incredibly demeaned by scientific reductionism, with its claim in promissory materialism to account eventually for all of the spiritual world in terms of patterns of neuronal activity. This belief must be classed as a superstition … we have to recognize that we are spiritual beings with souls existing in a spiritual world as well as material beings with bodies and brains existing in a material world.”
p. 241
John Caird on Time
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“The more we discover scientifically about the brain the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena and the more wonderful do the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a superstition held by dogmatic materialists. It has all the features of a Messianic prophecy, with the promise of a future freed of all problems—a kind of Nirvana for our unfortunate successors.”
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