What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives.
DANIEL DENNETTThe idea that God is a worthy recipient of our gratitude for the blessings of life but should not be held accountable for the disasters is a transparently disingenuous innovation of the theologians.
More Daniel Dennett Quotes
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There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.
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There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
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The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy, but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences.
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In the beginning, there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing has so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all.
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Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
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A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.
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No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
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It’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.
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There are no good reasons to believe in god.
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It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
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Philosophers 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.
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The earth has grown a nervous system, and it’s us.
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Now that mobile phones and the internet have altered the epistemic selective landscape in a revolutionary way, every religious organisation must scramble to evolve defences or become extinct.
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I think that what one can see from a Darwinian account is how the addition of culture in our species turns us into a very special sort of animal, an animal that can be a moral agent in a way that no other animal can be.
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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
DANIEL DENNETT