Colin McGinn Quotes

#1. Brains cause technology, society, art, science, soap operas, sin. A remarkable set of effects for such a small chunk of coagulated atoms.

Colin McGinn

#2. Our treatment of animals, in every department, is deeply and systematically immoral. Becoming a vegetarian is only the most minimal ethical response to the magnitude of the evil.

Colin McGinn

#3. The head spins in theoretical disarray; no explanatory model suggests itself; bizarre ontologies loom. There is a feeling of intense confusion, but no clear idea about where the confusion lies.

Colin McGinn

#4. Once you were just insentient cells, no more aware of anything than your liver is now. Today you are brimming with consciousness. How did you make the grade? What catapulted you into consciousness? There must be some kind of natural process behind this astonishing leap, but this process is obscure.

Colin McGinn

#5. Faith is believing things by definition, which are not justified by reason. If it were justified by reason, it wouldn't be faith. It would just be ordinary belief. It's something you can't prove. That's what faith is, believing something you can't prove.

Colin McGinn

#6. Tolerating somebody else's beliefs is not failing to criticize them. It's not persecuting them for having those beliefs. That is absolutely important. You should not persecute people for their beliefs. It doesn't mean you can't criticize their beliefs.

Colin McGinn

#7. To me the ultimate sin was refusing to listen to reason.

Colin McGinn

#8. Our general repression of matters disgusting prevents us facing up to a serious health problem. If we are the 'god that shits,' then we are in full flight from ourselves. I even wonder whether religion itself and the whole idea of a god is produced by our self-disgust.

Colin McGinn