Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
Daniel DennettI don't think there is any religious revival. I think what we are hearing, the furor, is merely the hysterical response of the churches the handwriting on the wall that they are seeing.
Daniel DennettThere's no polite way to say to somebody (religious followers) 'Do you realize you've wasted your life?
Daniel DennettThose who feel guilty contemplating "betraying" the tradition they love by acknowledging their disapproval of elements within it should reflect on the fact that the very tradition to which they are so loyalโthe "eternal" tradition introduced to them in their youthโis in fact the evolved product of many adjustments firmly but delicately made by earlier lovers of the same tradition.
Daniel DennettHighly technical philosophical arguments of the sort many philosophers favor are absent here. That is because I have a prior problem to deal with. I have learned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often fall on deaf ears. I am myself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous and unanswerable but that are often not such much rebutted or even dismissed as simply ignored.
Daniel Dennett