The Village Atheist

...Here Dennett's decision to close his ears to the substantive arguments on either side is the more fundamental flaw in his project...

...To do that, though, Dennett would have to give up the comforting hope that science can answer our deepest questions and return to a more honestly skeptical philosophizing—skeptical in its original sense of seeking, not dismissive...

...Religion, Dennett hypothesizes, might be something like our taste for sugar...

...If being open-minded means questioning our deepest assumptions, a would-be philosopher might have to seek out the most powerful challenges to his or her own starting point...

...No doubt that isn't the whole story, but we would be foolish to shut our ears to it...

...However, neither the political nor the theological consequences that Dennett wants to draw from his science are persuasive...

...Religion must have developed in a similar way, Dennett suggests, perhaps as a combination of our proclivity to attribute intentions to the world and our need to coordinate in groups...

...Without at least putting a little toe in the waters of religious disputation, Dennett leaves himself open to the objection that he cuts the questions we really care about down to the size of his methods...

...But what persecution these supposed atheists face in this skeptical age is beyond me, so perhaps another interpretation is more likely...

...study religion...

...Needless to say, it would be churlish to reject out of hand the prospect of studying religions from the point of view of social science and evolutionary biology...

...Once useful, religion is now an anachronism, a hangover from some more primitive world...

...So somebody following Dennett's motto—question everything!—might even like to have some of these religious types around—and not just as a monument to human folly, as Jefferson suggested, but as a standing challenge to their own certitudes...

...Maybe, then, a philosopher needs the religious types around just to be himself...

...Brights," after all, sounds more like an after-school club for honors students peevish over not being elected to student government than a serious attempt at building a political movement...

...who want to know how we should live...

...John's College, Annapolis...

...These closet brights must be keeping quiet, he asserts, out of cowardice or prudence, and Dennett aims to jolt, or inspire, them out of their stupor...

...The problem, it seems, is that brights, thanks to a combination of bashful modesty and cowardice, have been intimidated by religious types, including Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush...

...Dennett reserves his particular scorn for those who are not wholly persuaded by the claims of religion but do not openly oppose it...

...No longer will scientists allow themselves to be barred from studying religion because of sensitive feelings and political considerations...

...As for the claim that they never convince anyone, we can only say: Try me...

...Of course, the real religious types can speak for themselves, though we're not likely to hear them if we think (like Dennett) that religion is sheer Santa Claus talk...

...Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts, and a noted proponent and popularizer of evolution, calls this nascent movement the "brights," by which Dennett means people who refuse belief in the supernatural, in God, and in the afterlife, people who ask for evidence rather than accept things on faith, self-described rationalists...

...So if he wants to spend his time investigating these things, by all means, have at it, Mr...

...Who wouldn't be interested to know, for example, whether there are biological roots to religion or to irreligion...

...And one doesn't need an extended reading of Tocqueville to figure out that telling your unenlightened brethren that you're bright and they're dull— despite Dennett's protests, it's hard to avoid the inference—isn't exactly a winning strategy in this democratic age...

...Well, they have gone on forever...

...Nor will they let themselves be detained by the substantive arguments that might be made on one side or the other—those arguments never change anyone's mind, Dennett says...

...That's obviously not the same thing as the belief of the believer, but it does point towards genuine, nonutilitarian grounds for a certain openness and even deference to religion—in a formula: no deference, no conversation...

...that is, to be genuinely and deeply reflective...

...Dennett says the arguments about religion have gone on forever, and they never convince anyone anyway...

...Whatever the merit of Dennett's scientific claims, though, it would be hard to overestimate the political naiveté of his proposals...

...By coming out of the closet as a bright, Dennett aims to inspire atheists across the country to follow suit and to become political actors: Out of the closet, brights, and to the barricades...

...There is a real world out there, after all, and it's hardly controversial that every human institution has to survive in a more or less harsh environment...

...Daniel Dennett, a philosopher with a political agenda, thinks so...

...Or whether religious people are more likely to stay married, lead happier lives, and so forth...

...but does that mean that we can now sidestep them...

...He shrinks the aim to get reliable results—a necessary strategy for an academic trying to convince an agency handing out grants of his worthiness, but not so satisfying for the rest of us yokels (can we call ourselves the murkies...

...We developed a taste for sugar at a stage when human beings needed all the energy we could get...

...Unlike other professors with a political agenda, Dennett doesn't agitate for this or that cause—for the Democrats, say, or, less likely, for the Republicans...

...Rather, the more effective means of breaking the spell is proving that religion is something natural, something that evolved—useful for survival once, perhaps, but now no longer...

...Breaking the spell" refers both to the reluctance of scientists (and grant-giving agencies) to support the study of religion and to the spell of religion itself, which Dennett clearly thinks is malarkey...

...But then again, skepticism of that sort doesn't bring in the grant money...

...This boasting rationalist with a political agenda could benefit from a focus group or two...

...And if religion really is like our taste for sweets, then maybe we need something like an FDA for religion, to regulate our intake of religious ideas...

...Now, though, we eat way too much of it and end up with cavities...

...Do they need to have their consciousness raised about their solidarity with each other, perhaps by giving themselves a new name, in the same way that gays did...

...As he revealed in a New York Times op-ed in 2003, his cause is to make professors a political movement as professors...

...And even if it's true that religion, or some religions, arose in the way Dennett sketches, nothing follows about the truth of any particular religion...

...As Breaking the Spell reveals, the effective truth of his stirring rhetoric is a plea for more funding for scientists and philosophers like Dennett to Thomas W. Merrill is a tutor at St...

...We might especially have to regulate how much religion parents can teach their children, as Dennett speculates...