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 DENNETTThe problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.
More Daniel Dennett Quotes
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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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Words are memes that can be pronounced.
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True, 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.
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Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.
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You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!
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I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.
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There’s no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) ‘Do you realize you’ve wasted your life?
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We need to let our children grow up to face the world armed with knowledge, with much more knowledge than we ourselves had at their age. It is scary, but the alternative is worse.
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Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery.
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The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died.
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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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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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True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.
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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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What you can imagine depends on what you know.
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