Daniel Dennett: Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
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- čas přidán 23. 05. 2024
- Professor Daniel C. Dennett, Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, presented his lecture in the Nature of Knowledge series, Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, on March 14, 2006.
RIP Daniel Dennett
Doctor Dennett. You now have all the answers. Pleasant Journey Daniel
@@ghostinthemachine8243wait no way. He just passed away? I just discovered him 2 months ago. Damn. RIP Mr. Dennett
@@tahirrazzaq9494he doesn’t believe in a f-ing afterlife! There’s no “rest” and there’s no “peace” in nothingness… how hypocritical can you get??
@@ghostinthemachine8243
He has NO answers if his lifelong theoretical prattle was true!
Don’t be such a hypocrite - he’s gone to total nothingness… He now understands nothing at all.
It’s a nice future you’ve fallen for, isn’t it? Ignorance and pointless extinction after suffering… Wake up!
Rest in power, Danny Dennett, master of irony. He made the best Santa Claus at the infamous Tufts Christmas parties.
A real Living Philosopher, I Have seen him Lecture in person twice and it was completely exhilarating!
Excellent thinker. It is always a pleasure to listen to him. For me is an inspiration for why I am studying philosophy. I find in him the type of thinker I would like to be one day.
I just watched a recent Dennet discussion on free will, the dude is brilliant
He’s the best lecturer in modern history; having access to his presentations has changed my life.
@@SammyxSweetheart.02 blame the 13th century artist.
Yeah I agree, having internet access can have life-changing effects on some people.
@@Vitusvonatzinger 0
I loved Dr. Daniel Dennett, very sad to hear about his passing, I've would have loved to meet him, he was my absolute favorite, an intellectual giant, a legend, true sage, heard he was also very kind gentle person, huge loss to civilization, I will watch tons of his lectures in the next few days/weeks in his memory, I was distraught to know that my favorite philosopher/intellectual passed away, got some consolation that his lectures will be online and I can watch them over and over again 57:16
Only twelve minutes in and mind blown. How have I missed this? I've watched a lot of his lectures and interviews, but never heard him talk about religion's parallels to selective breeding. Hadn't heard _anyone_ draw that parallel. Fascinating!
I used to think religion was just going to fade out. Long after I’m dead, but oh well.. I see now we have to understand it out of existence. I hope the scholars and researchers take up this project suggested by Dennett
I noticed how his ideas can also explain cults, politics and advertising.
Impossible
*-10%- 43% human cells*
The 10% figure is from an older, faulty study.
But very informative and helpful speech.
Daniel Dennett has made wonderful contributions to philosophy
This talk made me understand the religious process very much. Thank you, Dennet
😅
The mind distorts reality in such a way that the atheist denies the spirit and the believer feels the spirit separated from himself. Then neither of them can perceive the truth in its entirety. The atheist is still just another believer, he believe in science instead of the spirit and the believer needs to pray to a God that he believes is separate from himself for his salvation, for his security, for his comfort... But none of them, neither a believer or the atheist, know how to truly listen without leaving aside their beliefs.
Atheists deny themselves as they are and believers separate themselves by praying to an external God invented by them they believe is superior.
To me this was Dennett's best delivery of this particular talk. Thanks for uploading.
Flipping a coin is a fantastic way to decide what you want between two options. First, assign a face to each option. Second, flip your coin. Third, ignore what the coin says and go with what your gut said while the coin was in the air. In those short moments between the coin being flipped and caught, you got a hunch about which face you wanted to appear.
As Piet Hein put it:
Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping
thank you for uploading
excellent lecture. Dr. Dennett is a great orator!
Great lecture, Watched all of it
dry-ass intro ends at 2.20
great info
2:20
that is 2:20 of my life I will never get back
@@ronaldlogan3525if you’re such an atheist you won’t get any of it “back” soon enough.
Only Christ is real…
@@matthewstokes1608 Interesting how you assume so much.
RIP what a great mind.
“RIP” …?! You hypocrite
@@matthewstokes1608 I mean it is the traditional condolence. I guess i shouldve said rest in thoughts. But it makes me sound stuck up.
Such a brilliant presentation.
Fascinating and brilliant speaker.
Very interesting and informative talk.
i can say that this was very interesting and it really does make a lot of sense. i want to see the whole thing!
I'm sure you understood this, but what he meant by "folk" was "primitive" or "aboriginal". He meant little songs and melodies that tend to be found in cultures that have not yet discovered the formal principles of musical composition, the diatonic scale, modes, chords, and all the paraphernalia of modern music writing (of the kind that Woodie Guthrie relied upon in composing his music). That's the "wild ancestor" of our "domesticated" musical forms. Anyway, cheers.
A great guy, and Breaking the Spell is undoubtedly an amazing book. It is an all-out attack on religion without employing violent or derisory language of any sort. As the title of the book itself suggests, it is an attack without attacking but breaking the spell that religion has over so many people.
Amazing this was 14 years ago. We are going through a transformation and dogma of the religions of the world have been exposed for what they are, lies and methods of controlling people, reducing people and turning one against another. In the future I hope to see people becoming more spiritual and coming together in their love and respect for each other, and uplift those around them.
I think the biological metaphors that Dennett employs are quite accurate. The emergence of a religious meme is a self-propagating entity around which a culture begins to organically define itself. It does not mean that this meme has any basis in fact. His metaphor of the dog looking up and growling in an assumption that a "who" has caused something to happen is correct. It is analogous to asking "who" caused someone to be killed by lightening. In the absence of the scientific method, the drive to explain natural phenomena has often been ascribed to "who" and the repetition of this "who" answer becomes a meme that self-propagates into the realm of religion. This meme, though false, then begins to explain other aspects of the natural world to its acolytes and they build upon it by explaining other aspects of the natural world by the same process. The meme is thus fortified and becomes the accepted doctrine of a people. It gives them peace because they believe these natural phenomena happen for a reason. It gives cohesion to a group and thus fortifies them. But, it does not make the meme true. All memes are like viruses in the way they propagate. Dennett is presenting his own ideas in his lecture and they, courtesy of CZcams, are propagating to become memes that will either flourish or go extinct. The only difference is that religious memes are based on "who caused something to happen" as opposed to the more modern rationale of asking "what is happening and how is it happening" as opposed to looking for an agent. I find his argument compelling and potentially right on the money.
If a meme is imaginary and "has[n't] any basis in fact," then I'd say it explains less than you suggest. If memes are admittedly "false," as you say, why call it an entity, ie existing independently? Even if the ideas "to become memes" were understood to be true it wouldn't follow that they're entities independent of the human mind. So there's less empirical data for memes than there is for real but extraordinary entities that some people encounter. The experience is a fact that the causal reasoning or explanation values more or less. Its power in context is what really matters, whatever the cause may be.
I LOVE Dennett's dad jokes :) they are my favourite thing about his lectures
Is there a second part to this? It seems to cut off at the end...
This lecture needs to come back to the light 😎
There is one light though the lamps are many
Good Evening. You're all very welcome!
I love the Brits.
Love his books, never seen him on video. Now I know what he looks like.
Like Santa Claus
He is the man
Like Darwin
When Dennett talked about “Jesus Christ, God’s Chosen King” it sounded so mythical.
We are not a random occurrence, but an intended creation of our God.
There is more to us than not just atoms; We are not just some brain chemistry, producing sound out of our mouth. Let us admit that we exist. Everything that we have in this life will one day come to an end... our body will return to dust after death. and our spirit returns to the true God who gave it; any hope of future life for that person now rests entirely with God. According to the Bible, in John 17:3, the meaning of life is to know Jesus Christ. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Let us place our faith in God alone so that we would be strong in the Lord and ready to battle against the doubts planted by the enemy. Lord, increase our Faith!
@@loveandfaithfulness4479 You again?
@@loveandfaithfulness4479 Delusion
@Jeheff Hhinkkle
I Could Place hundreds of Quotations that clearly prove that there is a God in heaven, But as God has stated His handy work is seen in His creation, Unless you repent of your unbelief and sin, you will refuse to accept the eternal God’s eyewitness testimony concerning Himself and His creative work in the Word of God. Jesus is the one who reveals the Father to us. If we want to know what the Father is like, all we have to do is look at Jesus. Its not something that you can explain with arguments. Its a gift, its a revelation a person receives when he/she decides to pursue the truth. Faith is a deeply personal thing that only God and you are privy to. Faith only makes sense to the one who hears it. Jesus told Nicodemus that someone only born of flesh possesses merely physical life; but there is a different type of life - the eternal life that God Himself possesses! To possess this spiritual life requires being born again.
John 7:17
"If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority."
@@loveandfaithfulness4479 It's obvious human beings are agents. And agents do not come forth out of such ideas as Darwinism i.e... A Godless and meaningless means of coming about, or existence.
Therefore Its easier for him to say that this is all just a phenomenon. Lol. That's phenomenonal in itself that statement.
Excellent lecture
Only eleven years ago, he stated that after beginning as a Christian Church, then being transformed into an Islamic mosque, Hagia Sophia had eventually become a museum. Unfortunately, it has recently been turned back into a mosque, so adopting it as an example is still valid, but he'll have to place it into another category..
Hence evolution.
this lecture is based on his book of the same name ("breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomenon"). for memes and memetics, first read richard dawkins' "the selfish gene" (where the term was originally introduced, invented by dawkins) - and perhaps "the meme machine" by susan blackmore. another dennett book you might like is "darwin's dangerous idea".
34:00 or thereabouts is the central nugget in this talk.
it's where bullshit starts , does the existence of an "agent detection instinct " implies a non-existence of this agent , this agent must exist , it's a reasonable and intelligent instinct .
@@khemirimonem6001 How much of the video did you actually watch from that point? Because his argument there is more that an account of religion under the hypothesis of naturalism is plausible, rather that your religion of choice is implausible. There may well be arguments for that, but they are separate from the particular point that he is trying to make, here.
@@splatted6201 I watched the whole video , i think he did well in describing some "brilliant " biological behaviors with a remarkable excessive
use of the word "design" , as for his own interpretations and theory ,it's a fiasco.
@@khemirimonem6001 _"I think he did well in describing some "brilliant " biological behaviors"_
That , in the case of the hyperactive agency detection mechanism, are error-prone, and do not always lead to accurate conclusions, especially when used without careful reasoning and comprehensive examination of the relevant evidence.
_"with a remarkable excessive use of the word "design"_
_Your_ opinion, and one focused on surface rhetoric rather than the logical content of his argument. Which, as I have pointed out already, you've failed to accurately grasp. Given that you haven't rebutted my criticism, there, and are shifting to a critique of surface rhetoric, it seems that you do not in fact have a coherent counterargument to Dennett and apparently didn't even understand him on the point that you attempted to criticize.
_"as for his own interpretations and theory ,it's a fiasco."_
If you've watched the entire video, then it's likely that you've not understood it well, and have no good reason for dismissing his argument as a 'fiasco'.
Thank you for the timestamp. This is what I came to this video for.
I like how you put that religion just "knows" and is arrogant. It sure does seem like that to me. I have a copy of The Self Gene" here. I'm renting it now. I think I have 4 or 6 more weeks before it is due. I read all of 8 pages of his book the last time I rented it and feel in love with his book. I'm reading another book now called "Mindsight" by Daniel Siegel . . .he is a neurocientist. I love learning about the brain.
This changes my whole way of looking at religion, truly amazing work
We are not a random occurrence, but an intended creation of our God.
There is more to us than not just atoms; We are not just some brain chemistry, producing sound out of our mouth. Let us admit that we exist. Everything that we have in this life will one day come to an end... our body will return to dust after death. and our spirit returns to the true God who gave it; any hope of future life for that person now rests entirely with God. According to the Bible, in John 17:3, the meaning of life is to know Jesus Christ. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Let us place our faith in God alone so that we would be strong in the Lord and ready to battle against the doubts planted by the enemy. Lord, increase our Faith!
@@loveandfaithfulness4479 prove it.
You need to read more Scriptures. Else you easley sway by every wind of doctrines and philosophies that comes to mold you think away from your creator. God look in scripture and get to know God for your self and not on mankind or his denominations.
@@manwoninchrist1495 I usually don’t trust the opinion’s of people who can barely read and write, but you’ve made such a compelling case, it would be hard to disagree.
@@zoeyraesdad25 thanks. I'm glad I encountered you at a more mature level of understanding where you can tolerate grammatical weakness. We all have weaknesses. But more so I'm glad you have gotten my point. PEACE 😊👍🏽
The best thing in this temporary universe is that nothing is best!
Thank you soo much
RIP 🙏
Daniel Dennett is the best theologian
Well fortunately, an idea's ability to solve problems is not affected by the complete personality it originated in.
That said, I think Dennett has immense appreciation for beauty and preciousness of life, consciousness, nature, human relationships.
*That* said now, who cares? Let's appreciate personalities as they come, interested in all sorts of things.
Oh, I love this guy when he says "nobody knows which one is right, I don't know". So very humble and not asking like a dumb ass saying something other Christians would say like "I know I'm going to heaven, why? The buybull tells me so". When a person says he doesn't know the answer to something like this -it shows maturity. I think DD is my new "hero".
Brilliant :)
words are the vehicle of thought..which is why the saying goes THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK but realize thoughts are emotions so kia tupato!
Yes!
It gets really good at 35 minutes of how a meme is born. . . anyone know if a book of Daniel Dannett on this topic of what the purpose of religion. I'm more of a book person than siting and listening to a video for an hour. . .thankx. . .
My pleasure. 'Haha' about the grammar thing :) I do enjoy an easy-to-digest sentence...
Nice to meet you.
16:05-54: HOLY COW!!! Flying Sphagetti Monster, you are GLORIOUS!
Rest in peace Daniel Dennett i learneð so much from you
I love the irony here, of thinking of Religion as an evolving set of self replicating ideas. I have to recommend this scheme to Ray Comfort, Wendy Wyatt, Pat Robinson, Ken Ham and the many vocal Creationists in the USA!
Thumbs down because the lecture seems to be cut short.
It's pathetic that videos like this one should have 70k views 11 years after posting
People want to be entertained not educated.
Millennials have very short attention spans so they don't bother watching videos more than a few minutes in length .
It really kicks in at around min 35
Rest in peace Daniel
@nerdyharry That's not his job. He's not a motivational speaker. He's a philosopher and his only concern is to try to uncover the truth (without causing any harm.)
As a child from Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia, tropics, Santa never made it to Darwin, Cyclone Tracy 1974 Christmas Day, etc).
I grew up watching the news from 'down south'.
We'd have to turn the volume up on the TV, because of the monsoonal rain on the roof, whilst we watched stories about the drought, with visions of dry sheep/cow carcassses.
'Is there a way to send all our 'too much' water to them down there?' was my sentiment.
It can be engineered.
Make Australia drought proof.
Rip legend 💖
From a behaviourism perspective when pigeons were given rewards at random intervals they would invent behaviours to rationalize the reason for the rewards . I saw this with humans who were given dollar bills from a slot at random time intervals and they would come up with actions to get these rewards.
The logic that explains the peoples behaviour is covered by the joke about the man who wandered around town balling up newspaper and throwing the balls over his shoulder . when asked what he was doing he explained it was to keep tigers away . When he was told that there are no tigers around here he says "See it works
What is gout?
It's not a symbiont, it's an accumulation of what, exactly?
You can't put any weight on your foot. And so you can't move. And the pain makes you bivouac across the room.
And then, a week later, it's 'magically' gone. And then you prance and dance because your feet work again, just like before.
(Gout sufferers have a special dance of renewed ability, once they get it back, that those that don't suffer it would find a bit weird.)
What is gout?
@waytohell2 well that's the point, it doesn't "know" it is acting purely without thought. it does not know the advantage it is receiving, it simply does what natural selection selected for.
Rest in peace 😢
The existence of systems and events doesn't rule out God. The absence rather would.
In my Philosophy of Mind book I was making a lot of side notes in the book about why I disagreed with certain things, but some sections I didn’t even bother because the arguments were so ridiculous. The section with Daniel Dennett doesn’t have a single ink mark anywhere that’s how much his arguments just make you roll your eyes!! It’s just such a counterproductive task to deal with arguments that try to refute basic axioms. That to me is why philosophy is fun but only to a point, it can turn into complete absurdity just for the purpose of some philosophers just to be a contrarian, that’s where I lose interest. To get a feel for where fun philosophy falls into the abyss of absurdity just read Daniel Dennett
Dennett is a great mind, with much insight into so many vast various fields. However, his views on phenomenal consciousness are absurd.
Perhaps the axioms are not quite as axiomatic as you think!
Reading your absurd post was fun. LOL
@@mr.spinoza
Nice refutation. LOL
@@MrDorbel
Perhaps you have an argument? LOL
Hagia Sofia update:
Church
Mosque
Museum
Mosque
5:46 very good point. Other churches may follow. . . .
I wonder if google could create a map of the human "memeome" by merely analyzing all of the text on the web based on the frequencies of the phrases and idioms that define them. Perhaps it's a proprietary index they can't share. It seems like it would be an interesting thing to browse.
It's like Santa telling you he's not real.
You should never enter a debate unless both people are willing to learn something.
36:50
Yes, it's Treebeard.
Rest in peace 🕊️❤
That's one O.G. cuckoo! This is my house lol. All jokes aside Dennett is one of the best on this subject, great upload
Julian Jaynes has the best evolutionary explanation for religion. Dennett is speculating by anthropological analogy. ("Search for causal agents" etc. Really?)
It is very honorable that atheist views of the universe explain things, whilst religion explains nothing
As a highly religious dumbass I grew up as. I couldn't agree with you more
Geez... Be real... It's totally vica-versa. Fer an atheist, everything comes down to things moving around reasonlessly and intentionlessly and unconsciously.
@@entelektuel.yolculuk
That's what makes it so awe inspiring.
@@mr.mcbeavy1443 no not really. people still cannot find satisfaction nor great truths in it
@@entelektuel.yolculuk some people can and do. Others can’t and don’t. Still others likely don’t find satisfaction anywhere.
Religious answers tell amazing stories from which we can learn a lot about people and places and cultures, but ultimately stories are all they really are. Scientific answers, on the other hand, read like an instruction manual: highly detailed, explanatory, and accurate, but clinical and boring as hell to read.
It comes down to what kind of explanations satisfy a person. Some people need to be the star of their eternal story that goes on forever. Some people don’t need to go on forever at all, and would view that as a kind of hell, really. People are just generally fundamentally different in this way.
How beautiful...
The similarity is not only in religion, to surrender to God and obey the word even if it doesn't make sense. In the scientific arena too this exists.
For example scientists discovered that matter, quantum of light is not only "solid" but also a wave. Initially this did not make sense. However they continued to pursue that belief until it was proven to be true. Thus the the double slit experiment.
May be that belief and faith are necessary after some intuition is felt.
umm, no? You yourself used the word "discovered". It was not a belief, but a measureable phenomena. Then other, independent scientist tried to verify or disprove it, and they had similar results. It was not a made up belief. Neither were they obeying anything nor surrendering their will. They weren't pursuing it, if it would be proven false, they would have discredited it.
33:15 is where the video really starts
Religion a thousand years ago could not and can not teach us what it did not understand at that time.
Religion is a natural phenomenon in exactly the same way as crime is a natural phenomenon. Living a better life than everyone else at the crippling expense of everyone else. We don't accept one; why do we accept the other?
I wouldn't go so far as to say that religions have been brilliantly designed. They have been intelligently desinged, though, or at least some of them.
@nerdyharry Listening to orthodox ministers will make you ill. I love hearing the sense & reason from Daniel Dennett, who is one of the cleverest people on earth.For great analysis of the facts about the Bible & other old Writ & comparative religion try also John W. Loftus, Robert M. Price, Dan Barker, Valerie Tarico, Ken Humphreys, Keith Parsons, Ken Pulliam, David Mills, Gary Greenberg, Bart Ehrman, Joseph Wheless, C. Dennis Mckinsey, Richard Carrier, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins
this clip seems to finish abruptly, does anyone know if there is a sequense?
take a shot every time he says “uh”
where's the rest?
hell yes i'd want my daughter to marry a chelsea fan, daniel
It's not an attack on religion, it's an attack on ideas regardless. In fact even on the ideas of Dawkins, Plato, etc.
💛
The ant-parasite connection is not symbiosis but parasitosis. In symbiosis, both parties mutually benefit, but the parallel with religion is hilarious...
Why does it stop so abruptly????
Bacteria are incredibly tiny compared to most human cells; so they only make up a couple pounds of our weight, even though in-population there are 10 times more of them.
I'm not a Martian but I'm stilled impressed and horrified by human stupidity. Spooky...
If idea is the substance of mental evolution, what drives the idea?
The bus driver 'drives' the idea. LOL
@@Andre-bk6jp LOL hehe…. I made this comment 7 years ago. What is funny?
Man designed the Cow, once food had been assured, He designed himself and got himself domesticated.
@waytohell2 knowledge implies being aware of the information, that is not necessary.
RIP sir
2-minute introduction, and although the man may deserve it, skip to 2:20 if you want to start with Mr. Dennett.
52:33 Since religious people tend to have many more children than non-religious, guess what that means for the long-term prospects of religion...
That's probably because smarter people are less likely to have children.
Conner Metz _-smarter-__ educated people are less likely to have children._
FTFY
It's alright, because religious households pretty reliably make atheists too.
_religious households pretty reliably make atheists too._
But not as many as they make religious people.
@mAdmAn948 They got the Idea for inception by lucid dreaming....
The more you read on lucid dreaming the more you will understand it...
The 'totem' is called a 'reality check' and is used to check if you are dreaming or not... Not and original idea from the movie but has been around for ages
54:30 cuckoos do return. they occasionally check if the bird feeds the cuckoo as well and if they find that it doesn't take care of the cuckoo chick they destroy the whole nest. this behaviour has been observed and documented. those birds are in fact bullied into taking care of the chick.
11: 57 is a wonderful way to put religion. .designed to pull us in so to say. . .
the bible has sayings of everlasting life.......that is a very attractive idea to any gene........one very high value meme
How can you describe evolution as "clever" ? evolution is a process, or let's say an idea about a process , a human subjective description of life , how do you define cleverness?
Hello from the past. MacGyver is clever in that he uses something in a new way that it originally wasnt intended for. For example, the ice fish has an enzyme made in its pancreas, originally for digestion, that turns out to be a good antifreeze. Theres no entity doing it, but it is cool.
Look in a dictionary