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I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.

Daniel Dennett

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Daniel Dennett
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: March 28
Cognitive Scientist
Philosopher
Professor
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Daniel Clement Dennett III
Daniel Clement Dennett
Long
Already
Think
Dangerous
Fanaticism
Thinking
Taught
Attacks
People
Religious
Sane
Religion
Extremely
Didn
Deeply
Anything
Otherwise
Even
Obvious

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People ache to believe that we human beings are vastly different from all other species - and they are right! We are different. We are the only species that has an extra medium of design preservation and design communication: culture.
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Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
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Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.
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Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
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In 50 years - or 20 years, or 200 years - our current epistemic horizon (the Big Bang, roughly) may look as parochial as the horizon Newton had to settle for in his day, but no doubt there will still be good questions whose answers elude us.
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