Success Quote by John Templeton

Templeton lands a quiet body blow on both religious certainty and secular swagger: the impulse to pin God down in words is framed not as devotion, but as ego. Calling it "self-centered" flips the usual moral hierarchy. The problem isn’t that people try and fail; it’s that they assume their minds are the right-sized container for the infinite. That accusation has bite because it targets a very modern habit - treating belief like a product spec you can compare, optimize, and then evangelize.

The phrasing does a lot of work. "Human beings, as limited as we are" sounds modest, almost gentle, but it’s a setup for a larger rebuke: if our senses and language struggle to describe a thunderstorm or consciousness, what makes us think we can describe divinity with confidence, let alone ownership? Templeton isn’t arguing for atheism or for one creed over another. He’s advocating epistemic humility as a spiritual virtue, which conveniently undermines dogmatism without having to pick a fight with any particular doctrine.

Context matters: Templeton was a businessman and philanthropist who spent his later life funding big-tent conversations about religion and science. That background helps explain the quote’s tactical function. It invites pluralism without sounding relativist, and it makes "mystery" feel like intellectual maturity rather than a cop-out. Subtext: the more loudly someone claims to have mapped God, the more they may be advertising themselves.