Daniel Dennett - Can Religion Be Explained Without God?
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- Опубліковано 18 кві 2024
- To honor Daniel Dennett's immense contributors to the world of philosophy, we're posting a bonus interview today in his memory.
Watch all videos featuring Dan Dennett on our website: bit.ly/3DeIzoG
Religion without God? Most people believe that God exists and religion is God’s revelation. But some say religion, particularly the organization of religion into institutions, needs nothing supernatural to begin, develop and multiply. In other words, religion without God can flourish because personal psychology and group sociology drive religion.
Daniel Dennett was an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist. He was most recently Professor Emeritus at Tufts University.
Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
RIP. May you and your invaluable contributions to modern philosophy be long remembered.
Such a loss.
It will only be remembered by minds who recognise patterns like RICHARD E BELLMAN
I get the RIP, but the rest is BS
@@kavorka8855 true virtuous religious behavior, sitting in a random video about some recently deceased man to undermine some positive last sentiments... you are a class act, your religion really showed you morality didnt it!
@@cheapbruh9778 you're being silly, reread my comment
Dennett was an author of some of the best books I´ve read. Great humour, great person.
Now, the reason för religious beliefs is simple, it is the fear of death. Religious persons do not admit that when you die, you do not longer exists. They find all kinds of elaborate explanations, there is a soul which continues to live in heaven - that is if you have behaved.
An atheist i.e an honest person knows that you live for a while and then you go back to the status you had before you were born.
I just learned that Dennett passed away today. He was a profound philosopher that I greatly enjoyed. I've been working the past six months on an animated video, and he is one of the 10 animated characters along with Sabine Hossenfelder, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Edward Witten, Richard Dawkins, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, J.K. Rowling, Marcelle Hanselaar, and the Pope.
I'll include a dedication to Dennett at the beginning.
Can't wait to see it
Dang! Thanks for sharing, this is a sad day.
RIP, Dr. Dennett.
Oh, no.
Respect to the departed soul....
Rest in oblivion Mr Denett thanks for breaking down religion for the rest of us
Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe will build it back up when you're ready.
@@justinotherpatriot1744 Chris Langan's?
@@user-ws8lf6it1y that's the one
No such thing as oblivion. I used to believe that was the case Until I had out of body experiences through meditation and now I realise I was incorrect about consciousness. It IS somewhat infinite.
@@Dion_MustardI had an out of body during Vipassana the first time I meditate, I’ve seen lights and came back with a message of profound gratitude towards existence. I think that God is the Existence itself.
Rest in peace Dan. The world is poorer without you❤
Jesus is the prince of peace.
If atheists don't have the prince of peace during their life, they don't have peace after death.
@@user-fq9ij4we4r nonsense. We can’t know what happens after death, and neither can you. Just because some bronze age tribes made up stories about an afterlife doesn’t make it true.
If he is an Atheist, how could he not rest in peace? How could he be any better off than a speck of dust. And maybe that's the way it is .
@@daylightwall5300
Nonsense.
We can know what happens after death.
Even I can know and so can you.
@@user-fq9ij4we4r how can you know?
RIP. Fortunate to attend his lecture in Boston...🙏🏼... grateful for your intellectual courage...
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. ― Robert Jastrow
@@sven888whatever
@@chamicels That is true for whatever is still one.
Oh ! Dan dennet gone 😢.
Am so sad to hear this.
Such a legend
R.I.P, Daniel Dennett ❤
Dan Dennett will surely be missed farewell Sir…
Love u Dan dennett.
Deeply saddened that u are no more. U are my top intellectual hero. A foremost philosopher and thinker of modern age. Ur name and work will live forever.
One of the biggest influences in my life. Your work is amazing and we will make sure it keeps being alive. Thank you for your contribution to the world and, personally, to my life.
Also, how amazing is Robert's reactions to Dan in this interview. So cute
I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Mr. Dennett over the years, and I'll miss his perspective on life's most profound mysteries. Goodbye sir and thank you.
RIP sir
I haven't watched Closer to Truth recently, I should watch it more often. It is an incredibly interesting channel.
Rest in peace mr. Dennett!
And I've thought about the usefulness of religion. There are many ways and levels to think about it but if you look at the individual level.
Religion gives a structure, a set of rules to live by. Humans are a creature of habit and having to set up all of that structure yourself can be exhausting. Religion gives a sense of purpose, it gives you comfort thinking that a father like figure cares for you and gives you guidance and support, it gives you an explanation for what is dark and unknown. So you don't have to worry about it. And it gives a sense of community, a community of like minded individuals meeting each other once/twice times a week or more, giving you the feeling that you're not alone.
In a way, I sometimes wish I could've been a believer given the reasons I've pointed out above. But I just can't believe in something without evidence. I will keep searching for my own meaning and purpose, my own sense of community. without having to turn to a supernatural being.
Short answer: Easily.
God is a symbolic character in the dramas we create about our own desires and fears. Religion is a language by which we communicate our values throughout society and between generations. Children understand personalities more readily than they grasp philosophical concepts, so we personify abstractions in the form of heroes and deities.
Lol ok
religion is only helpful for a shallow minded corrupt person who needs "rules" to guide them.
decent intelligent people are guided by feelings and reason.
In 1980 I knew an 80 year old man who went to the same church for 40 years. When I asked him about belief in God, he said, "I am an atheist. I like the teaching. I like the people." He passed on, but I still think of him as the finest Christian I have met.
A Christian is a person who follows & obeys ... God (Father, Son & Spirit) ... of the Bible, Israel & Jerusalem.
@@abelincoln.2064 Where do atheists go after death?
Perhaps the Man just felt comfortable within the environment, Is there anything wrong with that? No of course not…
@@abelincoln.2064 Where do atheists go after death?
He might have been a Christian by deeds, if not by creed. It's possible to be Christian by culture but not by religion, even for an atheist.
Beautiful man, Dan Dennett! Great philosopher, great human being! 👍🏼RIP Dan!
I'm a huge fan of Daniel Dennet. For me he advanced the topic of atheism and the analysis of religion.
Yes. A in the word A-theism means ONE as in Alpha & Omega. So ATHEISM means ONE GOD/ONE SELF/ONE YUNIVERSE/ONE COSMOS. Love ya brother.
@@sven888 Atypical definition.
@@redwatch. Brilliant!!! And yes!!! Love you brother. Have a good week.
Thank you for everything, Dan.
Goodbye Daniel! 😢 What a great guy!!
Great person and thinker. This is splendid interview. He passed away just under watching this.
God bless you Dennett
I'm thankful we were on earth school together. I survived Catholic school in part because our paths crossed.
As I dips me lid to a giant, that walked amongst us mere mortals... RIP Professor Dennett. 😔
The parallels between religion and instinctive needs or even pure mechanical side effects like 'it happened because it could' are missing something fundamental at the core of most religions : that of transcendance. From as far back as we can trace the origins of religion we can see the experience of transcendence being played out. Shamanism is about transcendence, mushrooms or crocodile ceremonies are about transcendence. A crucial aspect of our human nature is and has always been the search for transcendence (right back to cave paintings and prehistoric statuettes showing examples of Shamanism). What is transcendence? It is a search for another world, a different level of consciousness and in modern religions, a connection with the spiritual world or with God. The experience of transcendance is not about feeling good about yourself and the environment but to seek an understanding of it. It's not simplistic in a biological sense but complex in its attempt to find connections and understanding. It leads towards patterns and symbols and, like languages, it both creates and reveal reality.
I think you're right. Not just in shamanism, all religion was (before corrupted by power) about seeking an understanding of reality. Shamanism is about going all the way on that quest for understanding. That deep desire to understand is what drives us, whether we're scientists or shamans.
RIP Daniel Dennett
R.I.P He was a brave philosopher!!!
It is a means of control.
I agree. It is not about the veracity of your religious claim, it is about the behavior that those beliefs have engendered over the ages. Practical religious intuition is over 50,000 years in terms of first egalitarian societies and then eventually priest and shaman-led belief systems. Individual and to a lesser extent group behavior is based on agency assumptions and the dangers and benefits of those agencies. The agents need not exist in reality, Mr. Dennett was spot on. Billions of modern religious adherents are still supposing that the shadows on the cave walls are real. This reminds me of "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins.
This fellow spoke in parables all the way about biology, sheep, and Shepherd.
RIP Dr. Dennett
We are TEO as in T-he E-ternal O-one. No worries. Just keep on loving!
R.I.P.
I have to be hated by others, but good to myself. I am happy with that result.
Why do you have to be hated? That seems unnecessary. Peace!
Brilliant man ❤️ RIP
I like Dennett, but I just can’t understand why he doesn’t recognize that atheism can also be understood as a meme. And if we consider that far more people have been religious than atheist, then it suggests that atheism is the wild meme rather than the concept of religion as a whole.
There are atheistic arguments but they’re not a system of belief. Give evidence of a particular god. Go. No? Nothing? Hence atheism. It isn’t complicated.
I don't want to speak for Dennett here, but I can guess that he would agree with you about atheism as a meme. But you also have to count the fact that there have been lowercase a atheists as long as there has been religion. Skepticism is older than any one religious belief system.
@Paine137 atheists waiting for a peer reviewd scientific study after their partner say "i love you"😂
@@BrunoCardoso-dp3bd Loved ones demonstrate love in actions, not only in words. Reliable relationships are built on expressions of love, which is why symbolic vows can’t sustain a relationship alone.
Atheism is not the end of human spirituality, it is the beginning.
It is amazing what lengths a great mind will go to try to convince itself that it is not wrong.
Brilliant 👏 Bravo
RIP. Had a way of always forcing people to think :)
I hope the scholars and the researchers take up the project Dennett suggests here
The actual scientific answers to the questions of the origins of the universe, the evolution of man, and the fundamental nature of the cosmos involve things like wave equations and quantum electrodynamics and molecular biology that very few non-scientists can ever hope to understand and that if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we accept the incredibly complex scientific phenomena in physics, astronomy, and biology through the process of belief, not through reason. When Richard Fenyman wrote, 'I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics,' he was including himself which is disconcerting given how many books he wrote on that very subject. The fact is that it takes years of dedicated study before scientific truth in its truest, mathematical and symbolic forms can be understood. The rest of us rely on experts to explain it, someone who has seen and understood the truth and can dumb it down for us in a language we can understand. And therein lies the big problem for science and scientists. For most people, science is really a matter of trusting the expert who tells it to us and believing what they tell us. Trust and belief. Faith. Not understanding. How can we understand science, if we can't understand the language of science? 'We don't learn science by doing science, we learn science by reading and memorizing. The same way we learn history. Do you really know what an atom is, or that a Higgs boson is a rather important thing, or did you simply accept they were what someone told you they were?'
.
Just look at Nutritional Science as an Example.
1. Eat breakfast vs skip breakfast
2. eggs are healthy vs eggs are not healthy
3. Cow's Milk is healthy, rich in calcium vs Cow's Milk is unhealthy , can't absorb calcium
4. Avoid eating Fats , Eat less Fats vs Eat more Fats (Ketogenic Diet)
5. Take multivitamin supplements vs Multivitamin supplements are useless
Hi Closer To Truth, I do think this definition of religion is adequate, there is always a great difficulty in defining anything that has no material form or existence, it makes it something beyond precise definition. Very much the same applies to the god delusion as well, that too is something that lacks any empirical evidence upon which to s=-establish identity and definition.
What remains is to try to establish a reasonable systematic framework for intelligent discussion, in terms that do not insist on the formal identification of realites, just the relationships between the basic ideas that are involved, ideas that do not themselves demand any real 'proof' or evidence.
On that basis I am happy to talk about the cultural and intellectual aspects of religion and it seems to me that since there is no reliable evidence that any gods actually exist but very clearly religion play a major part in many people's lives the identifiable nature of the basic concepts are valid. This then speaks to the ways and means and manners of 'thinking', here it seems we are on very loose ground, it would appear that several slightly differing neurological processes are in play, that emotions imagination and 'reason' play into human consciousness in ways that we are not likely to ever come to terms with!. That alone does not close all the doors on debate, I think that the ri=ole that desire and imagination play in our lives is what promotes the adoption of faith and belief systems that actually lack any rational foundation, they can then be applied as an uncritical basis for all sorts of ritual and doctrine that bypass the need for any critical rational thinking which is slow and difficult and cannot produce the comfort of certainty. All of us have this capacity for cognitive delusion, where we insist that what we choose to believe is 'true', none of us are very good at separating fantasy from reality, in part at least because our powers of observation and perception are distorted by our emotions and imagination. Our dreams are usually more vivid and exciting than the realities of daily life.
It has occurred to me that this peculiarity could be an inherited genetic attribute because rational thinking is so slow and difficult but also in the benign environment that produced us is rarely if ever required.
Cheers, Richard.
ECOLOGY, DISTANCE, AND USEFULNESS.
He was very incisive on “consciousness”. Getting rid of God is easy. You should do it before you start to shave. Getting rid of consciousness, the fall-back defence of the supernaturalist, is more painstaking. He was very patient and affable. Hard to imagine the world without him.
Yes
Great 😃
Rest in peace❤
Well finally a segment i have no issues with. Religions as simply a creation of our many human cultures. That just happens to provide validation for the existence of their ruling classes.
He knows the secret now, that consciousness is eternal.
I used to be a skeptic UNTIL I started having what is called Out of Body Experiences and through these experiences it confirmed to me that awareness is "non-local" and now this great man knows this, finally.
Rest in Peace sir
It is definitely enhanced
Relition should be judged on the universal rule that our beliefs and nature go hand in hand. If a belief has a bad effect on your nature then it's wrong. If it has a good effect on your character then the belief is right. It's also important to understand that the way a belief is worded doesn't constitute the beleif but the understanding of the belief is what affects your nature.
FINALLY
I FOUND A PLACE.
rest in peace
Rest in Peace Daniel Dennett
RIP Dr. Dennett.
religion for community to focus on and experience God?
So sad to hear he passed. RIP
another sad loss of a distinguished thinker... Dennet's wisdom has always been a beacon of light for many of us... may the other doors of existence open up to welcome such a graceful mind...
In response to the question, can contemporary religions be explained without God? From my point of view, the answer is yes, and the reason for the positive answer to the question of the form of performance and its effect on the behavior of the world of humanity is only for the direction of the movement of living, and perhaps, God can be explained without religions, because the role of God who rules the planet is in addition to helping humanity. It is in the direction of the movement of living, but it is the movement of all beings, including human beings, and it is nothing but the unique and eternal living air that surrounds the earth, which itself is immersed in the unique and eternal life of another.
R.I.P
Rest in peace Mr Dennet
A brave and beautiful mind. You certainly made this monkey a little bit smarter. Thank you and Farewell Dan Dennett 🧠
To the great lights of reason. May they shine on in the memories of we who carry the torch further 🤍
Rest in peace sir.
Well, maybe YOU define religion as belief in a supernatural agent... but when things get messy, I like to return to first principles and ask "what did this word mean before it degenerated in the hands of the ignorant?" That's always a good start.
re = again often used in our language family as a reinforcement. You can double your effort, or make it stronger by REdoubling it. "re" is often used this way in the Indo-European family.
lig = attach think of "ligament", a tissue that attaches bones to each other. Or "ligature", a device to attach a reed to a mouthpiece. Or "legato", wherein musical pitches are connected.
So, you see, the term "religion" came about to denote a fierce dedication to something. One's religion could be an art or science, if that's their life's major dedication. People have ancient texts that prescribe how people can best protect person and property, how they can best interact with one another etc. Buddhism does that, but it texts don't involve the supernatural. It's still a firm dedication. People whose venerated texts are derived from Abraham's vision of God have a supernatural religion, but that doesn't mean that religion per se involves the supernatural. LISTEN. PARSE. THINK. DO SOME HOMEWORK. BE HONEST.
Poor use of language is like a lie -- when you utter it often enough, it starts to appear to be true. This is the technique of scoundrels -- notably preachers and politicians . Fie on such a practice.
Sorry I didn't watch beyond 0:36, but any person who's so loose with language doesn't merit my attention. His effort and intent might even be in [what he thinks is[ service to humanity, but I'm old, and haven't enough time left to spend listening to foolish things.
He had the voice of a young man.
Religion is to keep the minority of naturally intelligent from overthrowing the caste/gold/hierarchy. Period. The ruler is divine, and half diety, so in direct lineage/connection to the all powerful that can punish past human experience.
It's called Banc Law. God is the billboard, or curtain the Wizard of Oz hides behind.
This narrative fits perfectly with the existence of God. If there is a God, you would expect him to design the evolutionary process and, thus, human nature in such a way that it would be evolutionarily or otherwise beneficial to humans, thus drawing us closer to him in this intrinsic way. What atheists who see the benefits of religion, such as Dr. Dennett and Richard Dawkins, who recently acknowledged his fondness of the Christian culture, miss, as far as I am concerned as an ex-atheist, is that it is very hard to have ideas spread without substance behind them. If someone said the tree was talking to them, people's natural behavior would be to deem that person crazy. However, if multiple people then hear the tree talk, then due to the impossibility of mass hallucinations, we'd expect them to start believing that the tree talks and, therefore, start communicating with the tree. As more and more people find out that they can talk to the tree, they start talking to the tree. The only difference is that a talking tree wouldn't have extremely consequential implications on the way people live their lives, unlike an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent God, who is the alpha and the omega of existence - a maximally great being - would.
Yessssssssssss!
Religions make a lot more rational sense when you realise 'God' can be equated to 'idealised collective belief'. The concept was just personified to make it easier to communicate to the masses.
Correct me if I'm wrong: many religions without a god, right? Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism are some.
All of them view human beings as fallen and flawed
@@longcastle4863 They are.
Except that in Buddhism, many of the followers do worship the Buddha as a living Bodhisattva. We can argue that it goes against the Buddha's teachings, but there has always been a Buddhist pantheon of Bodhisattvas and heavenly (and not so heavenly) realms. Jains worship Devas, and Sikhs believe in one, eternal God and in rebirth and karma. So, while it's not necessary to believe in any kind of god or deity in those and other religions, many of the adherents of those religions do believe in a supernatural force of some sort.
Before watching… Here’s my two cents…
If you were to ask 100 unrelated people/theists on their “death bed” for a detailed description of God, I’ll wager you’d get 100 significantly different answers…. Yet most “denominations” insist that they have THE ONE AND ONLY answer for everyone…
That being said, my relationship with a higher power is something I’ll willingly share with anyone who wants to discuss it in person, without expectations. Concurrently, I find it easier to envision a God without a religion, rather than a religious organization without a God…
“Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”
-Matthew 15:14 KJV
Most people forget the first part of this verse when remembering it but I find it to be the most haunting part of it having once been an atheist.
As long as birth and death is relevant God is relevant.
God is relevant as long as you need to eat, poop, sleep, reproduce become immune to illness and defy death and become self reliant self existing and eternal.
To deny God you will have to become god which is out of question.😊
DD is my main pal......REB R OOT.
RIP 😢
DD: well I define religion as belief in a supernature agent or agents whose approval is to be sought now once I've defined religion then there are some things which look like they may be their religions that don't meet the definition 0:46 ... 18:00 ❤what kind of next steps do you think would be productive for Human Society to make to understand religions? ❤👉Well I think first of all we have to do what Socrates always told us to do real that's what we don't know the fact is we don't know a lot that we think we know about religion uh I'm saying I don't know it I'm saying nobody knows and we Jolly well should try to find out using good old scientific methods uh we can't just rely on our good intentions and good intentions aren't enough and we can't rely on tradition history tradition isn't good enough let's find out next makes religions tick how they attract people and then we'll have some idea of how to how to build on that there's a lot of people who've tried to reform their religions in the last say 100 years some of those reforms were disastrous why? their intentions were fine they didn't understand the nature of this sort of organism that they're trying to fix um so doesn't matter whether you think religions should go extinct or should become stronger you should try to understand how they work their their physiology if ou like their ecology now if you look at religion now you see hugely different from what it was 100 years ago which was hugely different from what it was a thousand years ago what's religion going to be in 10 years it probably will evolved as much in the next 10 or 20 years as it has in the last 100 I'd like to be part of a planned attempt to channel that evolution of religion down paths that are socially useful.
For an atheist, it would be more logical to say "lies forever nowhere and for no reason".
It’s the same non-existence as before.
Always liked him, not strident or offensive.
He seemed young to be dying.
Soon as you say “mysterious “ or “ not explained “ here comes sir god of the gaps ….
Is there a God? God is both One and Self-Existent (A God = One God)
Why does God veil himself as manifoldnes: So not to be alone (Genesis 2:18)
What is the purpose of God for this veiling business: Love. (John 13:34-35)
Someone said that there's no room in the theory of evolution for the spirit world.
Yaeh, it is very simple,
Two plus Two, is equal to Four,
Everything else, is Religion.
I’m far more interested in God without religion than in religion without God. The former is spirituality, the latter is something like communism or fascism.
I don't like to go to churches .....
👍👍
"Religion is an excuse to stop thinking."
Any ideology is.
The current days show us that it's people without religious views who stop thinking, thinking for instance that a man can have a baby, such things.
Islamic golden age:
I thought he was Santa Claus.
"Religion is an extremely important part of the way people think about this world" -- Jeez, theists. As a lifelong atheist, I find that statement offensive and insulting.
Well, may Dan Rest in Peace.
Now he might know for sure whether there is God or not.
Or if Thetan levels are real.
Scientology is the way. The ONE true religion.
I suppose he either knows the truth now or he no longer is. Either way, he will be missed.
His mind lives on for sure.
Religion csn definitely be explained without god; we can just do it much more fully now than we could decades or centuries ago. From the biological side I'd point you, dear reader, to a UA-cam video of an old Robert Sapolsky video on "the biological underpinnings of religiosity." On the more concrete side I'd point you to the honest scholarship out there on the historicity, sociology, and textual analysis of ancient texts that expose religion not as proof of divine influence, but more accurately as a deeply human experience that has evolved in accordance with how our species has progressed. This is why most major religions concern themselves with what happens "after life" - because here in this reality, their core tenets are easily exposed as fairy tales.
religion loyalty to one God?
RIP. A big loss. Today, more than ever, we need more people like Dan Dennett to counter the anti-science religious bollocks.
Science does not, cannot, and never will be able to explain the origins of life, the universe. All science is based on physics. Concerning physics, something cant arise from nothing, there can't be a first cause. It's beyond obvious that there is something... outside of science... that is responsible for the universe, something incomprehensible to some. They cover their ears and stomp on the floor... closed-minded naive people like you will never get it. You think your mockery and insults are clever....lol.
I guarantee God can be explained without religion.
Oof. This is not the first time I've heard on UA-cam of the death of somebody I greatly respected.
religion to develop free will?
All actions/movements/moments are the Life force of Creation
Creation/Judaism on the rise.
"Mosaism" alert !