{"id":286,"date":"2007-11-21T22:19:59","date_gmt":"2007-11-21T22:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/11\/21\/daniel-dennett-ants-terrorism-and-the-awesome-power-of-meme\/"},"modified":"2007-11-21T22:19:59","modified_gmt":"2007-11-21T22:19:59","slug":"daniel-dennett-ants-terrorism-and-the-awesome-power-of-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/11\/21\/daniel-dennett-ants-terrorism-and-the-awesome-power-of-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Dennett: Ants, terrorism and the awesome power of meme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/41lJHyaReFL._PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU02_SS75_.jpg\" \/>Found this wonderful TedTalk on You Tube by Dan Dennett, it summarises some of the ideas that he discusses at length in his new book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon\/dp\/0141017775\/\">Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon<\/a>. I&#8217;ve always enjoyed reading his books. Dennett is a committed atheist, but this does not make him an enemy of the religious. His arguments and analysis are fair and the book&#8217;s purpose valuable and unlike Dawkins, Dennett takes a measured and rigorous approach: he seeks to explain religion rather than attack it. I&#8217;ve been reading his new book for a couple of days now and am thoroughly enjoying it. The Ted Talk below is very short but nevertheless Dennett manages to make some convincing arguments about the nature of <em>ideas<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n<object width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/KzGjEkp772s&#038;rel=1\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/KzGjEkp772s&#038;rel=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" wmode=\"transparent\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Found this wonderful TedTalk on You Tube by Dan Dennett, it summarises some of the ideas that he discusses at length in his new book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. I&#8217;ve always enjoyed reading his books. Dennett &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/2007\/11\/21\/daniel-dennett-ants-terrorism-and-the-awesome-power-of-meme\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2,26],"tags":[228,227,229],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-personal","category-philosophy","tag-breaking_the_spell","tag-daniel_dennett","tag-ted_talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/virtualchaos.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}