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 DennettRead
Religions have depended on the relative isolation and ignorance of their flocks, forever and this is all breaking down.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Religions thrive on the ignorance of their followers, which is now being challenged by awareness and knowledge.
In this quote, Daniel Dennett reflects on how religions have traditionally relied on the naivety and isolation of their followers to maintain authority and control. However, as information becomes more accessible and awareness spreads, the structures that support blind faith are being questioned and disrupted, leading to a profound transformation in how individuals relate to religion and belief systems.
Themes
ReligionIgnoranceAwarenessKnowledgeControlTransformation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the relationship between science and religion, this quote could illustrate the evolving perception of faith.
More from Daniel Dennett
All quotes βPhilosophers 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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Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
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The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.
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Some philosophers can't bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don't go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
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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.
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No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.
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I am not a snob; it is simply that I am not interested with what most people have to say, or what they want to do β mostly with my time.
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People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.
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I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination.
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Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.
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