Dan Dennett recently had emergency surgery for a dissection of the aorta. As Boing Boing reports, his friends were anxious to see what effect, if any, this experience had on his atheism. Dan’s response (which you should read in its entirety) included this:
Yes, I did have an epiphany. I saw with greater clarity than ever before in my life that when I say “Thank goodness!” this is not merely a euphemism for “Thank God!” (We atheists don’t believe that there is any God to thank.) I really do mean thank goodness! There is a lot of goodness in this world, and more goodness every day, and this fantastic human-made fabric of excellence is genuinely responsible for the fact that I am alive today. It is a worthy recipient of the gratitude I feel today, and I want to celebrate that fact here and now.
Beautifully put. Get well soon, Dan.
UPDATE: In a comment, Chris questioned what he called Dan’s “anthropological optimism”. I asked Dan about this; here’s his reply:
Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about goodness during the last two weeks since surgery. In one sense it is just obvious: in every human activity there is some measure of quality control, and practically everybody takes this for granted. In the lowliest marketplace, the good food sells before the bad unless the bad is priced lower. People always care. That’s not moral goodness, just the multitudinous excellences of all things we touch and care about. Is there more goodness every day? In this sense, sure. There’s lots of junk, too, of course, but our standards for what is acceptable keep rising, and we keep taking more and more excellence for granted. What about moral excellence? This depends a lot on infrastructure: no matter how heroic you are personally, you can’t save many lives, or help many people, unless you are part of a huge system of design, manufacture and delivery of whatever you rely on in your good works. But that’s easier and easier every year. See my piece “Information, Technology and the Virtues of Ignorance” (last chapter in Brainchildren) about how we are now actually oppressed by all the can-do that science and technology has imposed on us.