Daniel C. Dennett Quote
So Paley was right in saying not just that Design was a wonderful thing to explain, but also that Design took Intelligence. All he missed—and Darwin provided—was the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny and stupid that they didn’t count as intelligence at all, and then distributed through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic process.
Daniel C. Dennett
So Paley was right in saying not just that Design was a wonderful thing to explain, but also that Design took Intelligence. All he missed—and Darwin provided—was the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny and stupid that they didn’t count as intelligence at all, and then distributed through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic process.
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About Daniel C. Dennett
Dennett was the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies and the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dennett was a member of the editorial board for The Rutherford Journal and a co-founder of The Clergy Project.
A vocal atheist and secularist, Dennett has been described as "one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers". He was referred to as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens.