withallyourmind.net

I’m sure most of you who visit blogs like this have already heard this story by now, but just in case, I’m going to mention it anyway (and I couldn’t pass up the chance to use a good alliteration). Daniel Dennett has come out with a new book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (I’m sure you can guess the gist of the book). Anyway, it received a very bad review by the New York Times Book Review, as well as by fellow darwinist Michael Ruse. Ruse allowed William Dembski to post the heated email exchange that was had by Ruse and Dennett over the book.
The two highlights are the admirable and worthy critique of Dennett and Dawkins by Ruse (from which we can all learn something):

“I think that you and Richard [Dawkins] are absolute disasters in the fight against intelligent design – we are losing this battle, not the least of which is the two new supreme court justices who are certainly going to vote to let it into classrooms – what we need is not knee-jerk atheism but serious grappling with the issues – neither of you are willing to study Christianity seriously and to engage with the ideas – it is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil, as Richard claims – more than this, we are in a fight, and we need to make allies in the fight, not simply alienate everyone of good will.”

And Dennett’s subsequent statement that Ruse is “being enlisted by the side of darkness,” that the NYTBR is “under the spell of the Darwin dreaders,” and the seeming threat to Ruse: “You may want to try to extricate yourself, since you are certainly losing ground fast in the evolutionary community that I am in touch with.”

Daniel Dennett is coming here to FSU next month to give a philosophy department colloquium. The topic hasn’t been announced, but I hope it’s something to do with his new book.