Robert Wright interviews Daniel Dennett (1 of 8)

Very interesting debate about God, evolution, free will, consciousness and death.
Daniel Clement Dennett is a prominent American philosopher whose research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Dennett is also a noted atheist and advocate of the Brights movement.
Robert Wright is an American journalist, scholar, and prize-winning author of best-selling books about science, evolutionary psychology, history, religion, and game theory, including Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, The Moral Animal, and Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information. He is a visiting scholar at The University of Pennsylvania and Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• God
• evolution
• free will
• consciousness
• death
• Dan
• Dennett

[MrJohnboy1984]

It's Santa.

[vernonaicht]

"So what?"? So you wrote a whole book on it. Come of it, Dan.

[SwiftyMcVeigh100]

@SwiftyMcVeigh100

More people who believe in god agree on what he is than disagree. And if you want to talk about "evidence" for a meaning to life, what sort of evidence do you mean?

[BlankVellum]

@SwiftyMcVeigh100 In order to have a meaningful debate about something, you have to have a clear public definition of what that something is. Because God can mean anything to anyone, it is a worthless term when applied across the board. And there is no evidence that there is a meaning to life, other than what you make of it.

[SwiftyMcVeigh100]

So according to dennett anybody who does not behave in a fundamentalist way does not really believe in god?

[SwiftyMcVeigh100]

There are different perspectives on what god is like, just as there are different perspectives on what the meaning of life is. does that mean there is no meaning to life?

[SwiftyMcVeigh100]

Of course you can prove a negative. You can prove there are no married bachelors, you can prove there are no living dinosaurs on the earth. You can prove there is not a teapot orbiting mars.

[PeterVesuwalla]

"So you do believe evolution was kind of headed somewhere."

Yeah. Just like rain is heading down and the Moon is heading 'round the Earth. So he's arguing evolution doesn't contradict deism. Wow. He's really got the New Atheist movement on the ropes; doesn't he!

[Freethinker12341]

@S2Cents k, no he's a moron. he's over his head when it comes to intellect. he thinks hes smarter than he really is lol he has no place making extraordinary claims about the universe like evolution is evidence for a 'higher purpose unfolding". he's a not a scientist, he's not a philosopher, he's a mere journalist.

[S2Cents]

@Freethinker12341 I'd ask you to consider the dictionary definition of a moron, consider real life examples of people that have been considered truly moronic (people with mental handicaps, etc.) , and then take an unbiased look at Wright's books and what says in his interviews and so on.