Daniel Dennett Quotes

Jewish extremism and Islamic fanaticism fed each other.

We seem to be the victims of religious dogma, both from the Christian Right here and, of course, in the East with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

In every religion, you find the same extremists.

I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.

I am thankful that all the people in the world who absolutely, positively, know what God wants, usually kill mostly each other.

When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it.

All the Abrahamic faiths are marked by violence.

The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.

The tension between the essence of spiritual teachings and the harmful fundamentalism that often arises in the name of religion is an issue that has engaged my mind practically as far back as I can remember.

Over the course of history many religions have fallen victim to violent interpretations.

I would like to regard the Inquisition as an aberration as far as Christian history is concerned. And I think the Taliban would be an aberration as far as contemporary Muslim civilization is concerned

An interesting thing about the religious people who run Iran is that one of their problems with Ahmadinejad, who they thought would be one of their guys because he's so religious, is that he actually has some really nutty ideas about religion. He's too religious. He's too literal. I mean, there are plenty of people in Iran who like Ahmadinejad's religious beliefs, just as there are plenty of Christian fundamentalists in America who like George W. Bush's beliefs. But there are also plenty of people who are very uncomfortable with his overt religiosity.

I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.

A lot of Christian extremism has done a great deal to discredit religion; the main religious traditions have abandoned their own intellectual cultures so drastically that no one has any sense of it other than the fringe.

Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.

I regard Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and all other forms of fundamentalism, as the enemies of God - and I hope you'll quote me on that.

If religious people deny paradise to their opponents or to 'non-believers,' atheists would likewise seek to eliminate 'dangerous' believers with their 'childish' ways and their heads in the clouds.

More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, that is true perversion.

Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundamentalism has been an unmitigated force of benightedness in our history.

As you look at the flow of Muslim fundamentalism, or fundamentalism in various areas and various religions, they all play on the people who have very little.

Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.

We talk about extremist religious fundamentalists at the fringes of society, but today we have extremist religious fundamentalists at the fringes of the Oval Office.

Obstinacy in religious understanding leads to backwardness as in Muslims’, prevalence of violence and intolerance.

We’re not fighting for Christianity but against human fanaticism of all kinds.

I was involved in an extreme or radical religious path from 1984-1989. I carried knives in the name of religious conflict. In point of fact, I felt something missing with the function of religion. I came to question whether Islam had truly commanded me to be exclusive and to isolate myself from other communities. There was a battle inside me…. I left that extremist group since it was impossible for me to survive in an exclusive community. Because Islam supports civilization, it should work for the betterment of human life. On the contrary, religious extremism and intolerance will destroy human civilization.