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Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.

Daniel Dennett

You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!
DANIEL DENNETT

Believe Seminar Yourself
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
DANIEL DENNETT

Discover Endorsement Evolution Reason
There may be things that are completely unknowable to us, so we must be careful not to treat the limits of our knowledge as sure guides to the limit of what there is.
DANIEL DENNETT

Care Complete Guide Knowledge Limitation Yourself
The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
DANIEL DENNETT

Goodness Hide Mistake Trick Yourself
Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.
DANIEL DENNETT

Direction Ideas Natural People Tradition
I 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 DENNETT

Myself Religious Respond Revive See Thinking Writing
As every scuba diver knows, panic is your worst enemy: when it hits, your mind starts to thrash and you are likely to do something really stupid and self-destructive.
DANIEL DENNETT

Destruction Enemy Hit Mindset Panic Worst Yourself
The 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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Blessing God Gratitude Ideas Innovation Life Ourselves Worth
The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.
DANIEL DENNETT

Achievement Concern Ethics Mathematics Problem Science System
The mind is the effect, not the cause.
DANIEL DENNETT

Effect Mindset Science
Churches have given us great treasures such as music and architecture. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.
DANIEL DENNETT

Architecture Greatness Harm Music Pay Treasure
Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.
DANIEL DENNETT

Natural Religion Social System
Cost is always an object – the second law of thermodynamics sees to that.
DANIEL DENNETT

Cost Law Object Science See
The haven all memes depend on reaching is the human mind, but a human mind is itself an artifact created when memes restructure a human brain in order to make it a better habitat for memes.
DANIEL DENNETT

Brain Depend Human Mindset Place Reach
If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do.
DANIEL DENNETT

Better Myself Time Yourself
Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible.
DANIEL DENNETT

Competition Consider Mindset Possible

Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.

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Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.

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