Thanks to technology, what almost anybody can do has been multiplied a thousandfold, and our moral understanding about what we ought to do hasn’t kept pace.
DANIEL DENNETTThanks to technology, what almost anybody can do has been multiplied a thousandfold, and our moral understanding about what we ought to do hasn’t kept pace.
DANIEL DENNETTReligion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.
DANIEL DENNETTTrue, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don’t have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense in order to do massively crazy things.
DANIEL DENNETTPhilosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about – about what the issues really are – and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
DANIEL DENNETTProblems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
DANIEL DENNETTWe have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn’t admit it.
DANIEL DENNETTDarwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
DANIEL DENNETTWhat you can imagine depends on what you know.
DANIEL DENNETTIt is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
DANIEL DENNETTIt’s a no win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity.
DANIEL DENNETTThere’s no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) ‘Do you realize you’ve wasted your life?
DANIEL DENNETTNo matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
DANIEL DENNETTI don’t think there is any religious revival. I think what we are hearing, the furor, is merely the hysterical response of the churches the handwriting on the wall that they are seeing.
DANIEL DENNETTTrue, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.
DANIEL DENNETTThere are no good reasons to believe in god.
DANIEL DENNETTThe chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
DANIEL DENNETT