Josh McDowell Quotes

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

'Do not touch ontologically' doesn't mean 'are separated by empirically measurable hard edges.'

As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses.

I want to discover a truth for myself that is really true. Whether it's a piece of scientific knowledge, or a philosophical truth.

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.

No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

In the first place a philosophical proposition must be general. It must not deal specially with things on the surface of the earth, or within the solar system, or with any other portion of space and time. . . . This brings us to a second characteristic of philosophical propositions, namely that they must be a priori. A philosophical proposition must be such as can neither be proved nor disproved by empirical evidence. . . . Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, "This is and no mistake.

Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.)

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

The world divides into facts.

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.

They who depend upon manifest observations will philosophize better than those who persist in opinions repugnant to the senses.

As a philosopher, I have a right to ask for a rational explanation of religious faith.

We cannot study the brain, the instrument for fabricating the realities we inhabit, using the mental constructs of the past.

What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul.

All our knowledge originates in opinion.