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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

In the long run I certainly hope information is the cure for fanaticism, but I am afraid information is more the cause than the cure.
DANIEL DENNETT

Afraid Cure Fantasy Hope Information Myself
I think religion for many people is some sort of moral viagra.
DANIEL DENNETT

Moral Myself People Thinking
I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
DANIEL DENNETT

Better Philosophy Question Science Way Yourself
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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Crazy Medical Religious True Yourself
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
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
There is a time for politeness and there is a time when you are obliged to be rude.
DANIEL DENNETT

Behavior Polite Rude Time Yourself
No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.
DANIEL DENNETT

Easy Smart Way Yourself
The mind is the effect, not the cause.
DANIEL DENNETT

Effect Mindset Science
You don’t get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.
DANIEL DENNETT

Advertisement Better Religion Subtract Yourself
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 DENNETT

Moral Ourselves Technology Understand
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
We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn’t admit it.
DANIEL DENNETT

Admit Atheist President
There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.
DANIEL DENNETT

Dedication Illusion People Polite Simplicity
The way evolution always discovers reasons is by retroactive endorsement.
DANIEL DENNETT

Discover Endorsement Evolution Reason
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.
DANIEL DENNETT

Assumption Freedom Lying Philosophy Science
To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
DANIEL DENNETT

Fair Ignorance Learning Myself Process Reading Writing
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.
DANIEL DENNETT

Evolution Internet Organization Phone Revolution Selection
Not a single one of the cells that compose you knows who you are, or cares.
DANIEL DENNETT

Care Knowledge Yourself
Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them – if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix.
DANIEL DENNETT

Clear Detail Mistake Risk Time Yourself
Love is blind, as they say, and because love is blind, it often leads to tragedy: to conflicts in which one love is pitted against another love, and something has to give, with suffering guaranteed in any resolution.
DANIEL DENNETT

Blind Love Resolution Suffering Tragedy
The earth has grown a nervous system, and it’s us.
DANIEL DENNETT

Earth Growth Nervous Ourselves
True, you don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps.
DANIEL DENNETT

Crazy Help Religious Yourself
YES we have a soul but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.
DANIEL DENNETT

Build Ourselves Robot Soul
I’m the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.
DANIEL DENNETT

Color Criticism Deny Experience Myself Pain People Repeat
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
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

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

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

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Popular Authors

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