Dennett on how religion offers an excuse to stop thinking

Dan Dennett talks about how religions in many cases offers an "goldenplated excuse to stop thinking" and that people have got to stop playing the "faith card" in debates. I think he puts it brilliantly.

The full video is available at google video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...

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  Education

[Gumikrukon]

I love the Lucile argument soooo much !! :D

[Retto Mada]

if you are implying that a higher power saved you, what would you say to the families of the 7 people who died beside you? Why didnt this higher power save them??

[Eddie Hahn]

Interesting-Dennett defends atheism with philosophy, Dawkins with evolution ad harris with Neuro science. And combined or individually they make more logical sense to me than any religious apologist I have ever heard...this is coming from an ex-christian pretty indoctrinated in the faith over the years--

[DoneWithDogma]

You're a moron.

[Bill Sanders]

Dan Dennett is an intolerant bigot and a hypocrite. He cannot be convinced because of HIS blind faith in atheism. He is a dangerous man.

The entire field of apologetics deals with defending the faith. Josh McDowell has written Evidence That Demands a Verdict in 2 volumes. If he really wants to understand, start there.

[loudenblogger]

You don't have to belong to a group: atheists , Christians, Jews, etc. We were designed to think, reason, question. I believe "God" understands this.

[Joseph Stern]

Dennett is too nice to say what Sam Harris does: that we have to apply psychic and moral pressure on those who profess unreasoned beliefs through a certain controlled conversational hostility (what Sam calls "conversational intolerance"). We have to create a powerful social stigma against unsupported belief. Rational dialogue is simply not going to cut it, in my humble opinion.

[zabelicious]

Religion is one of the biggest placebo known to man (delusion is a mental condition isn't it?)... It works at some level for many people who believe in it. I honestly cannot buy into it, therefore I get absolutely nothing from it. My own conscience is what I rely on, that is the only thing that can provide me with peace of mind in a world where violence and fear prevail. Fables just don't cut it and history is a matter of what you want to place the emphasis on. Just be yourself!

[Gnomefro]

And by the way, that is not a metaphor, because Jesus' genealogy in Luke lists Adam's closest ancestor to be God.

[Gnomefro]

Laws of physics OTOH, can be overturned by observation. In fact, one interpretation of your claims could be that you have overturned the law of universal gravitation.

I watched your video btw. You have an impressive ability to cherry pick data and make the wildest extrapolations from what you pick. If you really want to argue for genesis being an accurate account of the evolutionary process... where do you fit in the part where Adam is specially created from dust?

[Gnomefro]

Laws are still just hypotheses forwarded to model empirical data and may actually be less supported than things that are not called laws. For example, the process of evolution is an algorithm that can be proven mathematically to be a generic optimization algorithm(Look up genetic algorithms) we can literally know a lot of its properties with as much certainty as that of the laws of logic.