"The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be"
About this Quote
Templeton’s line reads like a quiet rebuke to two familiar modern poses: the swaggering certainty of the true believer and the equally self-satisfied certainty of the debunker. Coming from a businessman - a profession trained to quantify, forecast, and speak in confident projections - the rhetorical move is striking. He borrows the cadence of daily discipline (“we try every day”) and redirects it from profit or performance to epistemic restraint. Humility becomes a practice, not a personality trait.
The intent is to make reverence operational. By insisting on “the correct description,” Templeton positions humility as accuracy, not virtue-signaling. It’s a subtle argument that our language about God is often a mirror for ego: when we claim clarity about divinity, we’re usually advertising membership, authority, or certainty rather than knowledge. His repetition of “we try” matters too. It’s not a confession of weakness; it’s an ethic of iteration, the same mindset that built fortunes and institutions, now applied to spiritual speech.
The subtext leans pluralist. “Divinity” is broader than “God,” roomy enough to include multiple traditions and even uncertainty. In Templeton’s late-20th-century context - when public religion was being politicized and science was often framed as religion’s antagonist - he offers a third lane: open-mindedness as respect for complexity, and ignorance not as a deficit but as a guardrail. The quote flatters no tribe; it asks for a smaller self in a culture that rewards louder answers.
The intent is to make reverence operational. By insisting on “the correct description,” Templeton positions humility as accuracy, not virtue-signaling. It’s a subtle argument that our language about God is often a mirror for ego: when we claim clarity about divinity, we’re usually advertising membership, authority, or certainty rather than knowledge. His repetition of “we try” matters too. It’s not a confession of weakness; it’s an ethic of iteration, the same mindset that built fortunes and institutions, now applied to spiritual speech.
The subtext leans pluralist. “Divinity” is broader than “God,” roomy enough to include multiple traditions and even uncertainty. In Templeton’s late-20th-century context - when public religion was being politicized and science was often framed as religion’s antagonist - he offers a third lane: open-mindedness as respect for complexity, and ignorance not as a deficit but as a guardrail. The quote flatters no tribe; it asks for a smaller self in a culture that rewards louder answers.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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