5 Quotes by Owen J. Flanagan

Many people who say that they are 'spiritual’ but not religious are saying that they are seeking to understand and develop a sense of connection to that which is greater than and more comprehensive than their self.In this manner meaning is sought, possibly found and embodied in one’s life. The spiritual aspirations of such an individual do not, however, involve any theological beliefs. The individual might go to church, but not to worship God.

The worst question to ask is ‘‘What is the meaning of life?’’ There is no single meaning of life.

Someday you will die. Because you are embodied through and through, at that point you will cease to exist. You will not meet death, because, as the sage says, "Where death is I am not; where I am death is not, so we never meet." When you die there will no longer be any self that is you. Use your self while you have it.

We are imperfect information processors, but we can learn about what sorts of false or incorrectly interpreted information lead to incorrect self-assessments (negative or positive) and work to get over the tendency.

In science, even if experience and reason can’t yield a definitive test for some unsolved problem, the rules require trying to gain some explanatory grip by looking to the best intersubjectively confirmed theory in the vicinity, the theory with the best potential resources for making sense of the puzzling phenomena.