The earth has grown a nervous system, and it's us. Daniel Dennett More Quotes by Daniel Dennett More Quotes From Daniel Dennett After Darwin, God's role changes from being the designer of all creatures great and small to being the designer of the laws of nature, from which natural selection can unfold, to being perhaps just the chooser of the laws. By the time God's role has been so diminished, he becomes a bit like a constitutional monarch, presiding ceremonially but not having any more work to do. That's a place for God if it makes people comfortable to keep God as the presider over the universe. I suppose that is satisfying for many. Daniel Dennett roleslawpeople The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are. Daniel Dennett mindmistakeart Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down. Daniel Dennett ignoranceforeverreligion When people ask me what philosophy is, I say philosophy is what you do when Daniel Dennett answersphilosophypeople There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly. Daniel Dennett politefollyway 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 doubtwritingpeople I look around the world and see so many wonderful things that I love and enjoy and benefit from, whether it's art or music or clothing or food and all the rest. And I'd like to add a little to that goodness. Daniel Dennett atheismatheistart 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. Daniel Dennett growing-upscarychildren 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 crazyreligiousorder 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 honestyintegrityphilosophy I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers. Daniel Dennett philosopherscientistanswers Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God. Daniel Dennett atheismbelievepeople I listen to all these complaints about rudeness and intemperateness, and the opinion that I come to is that there is no polite way of asking somebody: have you considered the possibility that your entire life has been devoted to a delusion? But that’s a good question to ask. Of course we should ask that question and of course it’s going to offend people. Tough. Daniel Dennett good-questionsaskingpeople Religion is defined as social systems whose participants avow a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. Daniel Dennett agentsapprovalreligion It's this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what's it made of? It's made of neurons. It's made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation. Daniel Dennett robotssoulgiving Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the human species- back to the invention of stone tools and the domestication of fire has been ethically ambiguous. If you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to play. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith seriously as a way of getting to the truth , and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other Daniel Dennett fireplaypeople The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valery once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations. Daniel Dennett expectationsmindpast Homunculi are bogeymen only if they duplicate entire the talents they are rung in to explain. If one can get a team or committee of relatively ignorant, narrow-minded, blind homunculi to produce the intelligent behaviour of the whole, this is progress. Daniel Dennett ignorantteamintelligent If the concept of consciousness were to fall to science, what would happen to our sense of moral agency and free will? If conscious experience were reduced somehow to mere matter in motion, what would happen to our appreciation of love and pain and dreams and joy? If conscious human beings were just animated material objects, how could anything we do to them be right or wrong? Daniel Dennett paindreamappreciation My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there! Daniel Dennett richard-feynmanreligiouslying
