There is no polite way to suggest to someone that they have devoted their life to a folly. Daniel Dennett More Quotes by Daniel Dennett More Quotes From Daniel Dennett Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion! Daniel Dennett psychologyreligionthinking Go ahead and believe in God , if you like, but don't imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science. Daniel Dennett imaginebeliefbelieve Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. Daniel Dennett mysteryconsciousnesslasts We have had plenty of atheist presidents; they just wouldn't admit it. Daniel Dennett atheistpresidentreligion Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications. Daniel Dennett easierproblemsometimes ... there could be talking bunny rabbits, spiders who write English messages in their webs, and for that matter, melancholy choo-choo trains. There could be, I suppose, but there aren't-so my theory doesn't have to explain them. Daniel Dennett writingtalkingreligion YES we have a soul but it's made of lots of tiny robots Daniel Dennett tinyrobotssoul 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 technologypaceunderstanding You can't get through seminary and come out believing in God! Daniel Dennett believe-in-godbelievereligion The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died Daniel Dennett economicsalternativesanswers 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 competitioncapacitymind The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness - by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come. Daniel Dennett debtthank-godreligion 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 mindbrainorder I'm the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics. Daniel Dennett paincolorthinking 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 purposeworldreligion If the history of resistance to Darwinian thinking is a good measure, we can expect that long into the future, long after every triumph of human thought has been matched or surpassed by 'mere machines,' there will still be thinkers who insist that the human mind works in mysterious ways that no science can comprehend. Daniel Dennett mindlongthinking 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 worst-enemystupidself For more than a century, people have often thought that the conclusion to draw from Darwin's vision is that Homo sapiens, our species - and we're just animals too, we're just mammals - that there is nothing morally special about us. I myself don't think this follows at all from Darwin's vision, but it is certainly the received view in many quarters. Daniel Dennett viewsanimalthinking If I were to give a prize for the single best idea anybody ever had, I'd give it to Darwin for the idea of natural selection - ahead of Newton, ahead of Einstein - because his idea unites the two most disparate features of our universe: the world of purposeless, meaningless matter and motion, particles jostling on the one side, and the world of meaning and purpose, design on the other. Daniel Dennett givingtwoideas 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 phonesreligiousway
