George
Dan Dennett joins Bill Moyers on the Charlie Rose show to talk about his new book ‘Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon’. Dennett is the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. His other books include ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’, ‘Freedom Evolves’, and ‘Consciousness Explained’.
Source
Charlie Rose: Dan Dennett – Breaking the Spell (Part 4 of 6)
Agreed! It's always a pleasure listening to intelligent people having a well reasoned and respectful discussion about a controversial subject. I'm a Dennett fan anyway, but I'm well impressed with Bill Moyers too; his well researched and insightful questioning really tests Dennett to explain the rationale behind his theses. Great stuff!
So true. This is how discussions of faith should take place. Very intelligent men…..
In every political decision FAITH should be on the backburner.
And FAST.
What violence ? the violence of broadening your horizon ?
Yeah, that must be very evil. 🙁
Lets teach children one thing, and never give them the chance to know everyting, and please dont make them think for themselves. 🙁
Thats the way Christian fundies think, and THAT is evil.
WTF? Did we hear the same thing? He's just talking about teaching comparative religion. Mandatory such as English and Math is mandatory to teach in schools.
@furyofbongos I went to a Catholic high school and they had a world religion class you had to take you senior year. Honestly it was taught terribly and many of the religions were misrepresented. But, it was still better than nothing at all. I think it is a good idea. I also would advocate testing criteria so the information being taught about the religions is accurate.
I just wanna say to my American friends that in Britain, the school I went to had a religious education class I took at secondary (middle) school, and we had educational events where we were taught about all major world religions at primary (elementary). I loved it, loved the teachers, probably fondest memories of school was around that time, we just learned about the Torah, the Bible, Hindus, we had a Hare Krishna come and do hand painting, it was all cool, my head didn't explode.
religion is stupid–forcing religion in schools would be awful.
Man, Professor Dennett was just hocking lugies this entire interview.
@jerrydoubleu well, the intent is for them to realize how stupid it is when they learn religions and compare them.
I loved Moyer's indignation at Dennett's suggestion that all religions be taught to children. What an offensive/scary thought to a Christian, a Muslim, or (whatever). They would fight it tooth and nail because to teach religious plurality would destroy all religions. They'd be shown to be fiction. Children would ask how it is that people with so many different and incompatible world views could occupy the same space yet declare to each other one way is right and the rest wrong. Naive arrogance!
@NegaitveHalo Yeah, I was like, "WTF?"
I guess I'm naive, but I was taught about the various religions in world culture and other social science classes, and assumed that everyone else was as well…
The cathedral part might be explained by good architecture…
All Moyers keeps doing is saying 'Oh look how great religion is! How could you question that; how could you not believe?'… I am so frustrated right now.
The composer in question is not John Cage, but John Adams.
"Ohhh, Mr. Moyers – aren't you a nice, old man?" (pats head)
"You were a pretty good boy when Mr. Dennett scared you with his talk of educating children about other religions and science and all that stuff. Here's a cookie. Don't you worry, the Republicans will keep your religion in control of America – and the Democrats will help."
Yes. And I think it has something to do with crazy relics like the body parts of clerics being displayed, the depictions of torturous deaths suffered by martyrs, and the hundreds of innocents who died in the name of erecting those great edifices because some rich guys in Rome said to.
To me it's the incarnation of a Hollywood slasher movie in stone.
Great!