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Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

Daniel Dennett

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them-especially not from yourself.
DANIEL DENNETT

Goodness Hide Mistake Trick Yourself
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
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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Contribution Destination Philosophy Quite Recognition Talk
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
Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
DANIEL DENNETT

Conscious Human Mystery Survive
There are no good reasons to believe in god.
DANIEL DENNETT

Believe God Goodness Reason
The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dedication Happiness Life Secret Yourself
We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be “informavores”, epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.
DANIEL DENNETT

Decision Future Improvement Live Open World
It is not so much that we, using our brains, spin our yarns, as that our brains, using yarns, spin us.
DANIEL DENNETT

Brain Ourselves
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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Beginning Purpose Reason World
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 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
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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Criticism Feeling Hurt Opportunity Religious Situation Win
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 DENNETT

Imagination Live Mystery Ourselves Philosophy
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
I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love.
DANIEL DENNETT

Love Myself People Rate Thinking

Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

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Darwin’s idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition.

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