Sorry, but I do regard evolutionary psychology, at least as it appears to be practiced in this book, on the same level as the wackos from Yelm. Only more frightening, the evo-psychologists have tenure -- and are far more tempting to the educated.

First, you write that you doubt Dennett's book tries to "disprove religion by hypothesizing about its origins in genetic adaptations." I haven't read the book either, but what else could the title mean? It sounds to me like "The Future of an Illusion."

Second, Wieseltier asks, "If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection?," and you reply, "Clearly, the reason reason works is because it worked." This is the classic reduction of reason to rhetoric. By your account, there is no such thing as reason, only persuasion. Reason is just a fancier way of convincing people you are right.

Wieseltier's point is that science, and evolutionary science in particular, is founded on an understanding of reason as something more than persuasion. If reason were only based on persuasion, then scientific arguments would be placed on the same level as other forms of persuasion -- emotional appeals, for instance, or physical force. This is something science will not accept. But it is the unavoidable result of claiming that reason is only reason because it works. The flipside of Dennettā€™s argument, asking how evolution brought about religion, is to ask how evolution brought about science. But such a task would undermine the scientific project itself, since it would show that reason is dependent on our interests, and science claims to be based on disinterested reason.

This is a confusing and ineffective argument. It works, but it seems backhanded, and fails to confront why so many people find evolutionary explanations of religion so tempting. If 90 percent of the American public believe God had a hand in creation, 9 of the remaining 10 percent believe God couldnā€™t have had a hand in creation because science has shown thatā€™s impossible. The second belief is just as much a jump as the first.

Thereā€™s nothing stopping you from believing, as the 19th century deists believed, that God operates by the means of physical laws. Just as thereā€™s nothing stopping you from believing that the physical laws science has observed will cease to operate tomorrow, and a miracle will occur. Nothing has stronger force today than a historical argument, but Wieseltier is right to point out how fallacious such arguments are. They are based on nothing more than authority, the authority of the past.

Personally, Iā€™m a non-believer, but I at least acknowledge religion as a problem I have not solved. The militantly religious right and the militantly atheist left seem to me equally foolish. Iā€™m all for secularism, but the faith of the atheist, that there cannot possibly be a god, seems just as difficult to me as the faith of the true believer.

The question remains just why some people feel it necessary to believe in religion, despite the evidence. (I write ā€˜despite the evidenceā€™, not ā€˜against reasonā€™. The one thing atheists have on their side is evidence, but that's not enough in the arena of reason). I have no doubt that Wieseltier is interested in this question. As he writes at the end of his article, ā€œDennett cannot conceive of a thoughtful believer. He writes often, and with great indignation, of religion's strictures against doubts and criticisms, when in fact the religious traditions are replete with doubts and criticisms. Dennett is unacquainted with the distinction between fideism and faith.ā€ But the question of why people believe is a philosophical one, a question that must consider both the evidence of biological history as well asindividual, subjective experience.

Now I'm starting to feel like Mike in Swingers when he leaves five too many messages on the girl's answering machine.

For the record, the founding fathers of these United States embraced the age of enlightenment idea that the spirit of creation is as alive today as at any time in the past, and works through orderly processes known as natural laws.

That the experience of belief itself might be subject to scientific enquiry does not trouble believers who accept a rational and constant god, not one of magical personal intervention.

The difference in belief suggests different god-like qualities, where Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin favored the god-like qualities of the creator of natural laws who then constantly applies the laws. The magical religionists believe in the god-like qualities of a creator of laws who breaks those laws at whim, in order to favor the righteous and spank the wicked.

Working within a set does not necessarily negate the outcome of the logic. If we accept the premise that "reason works," and then go on to prove using reason that reason itself is a product of our evolution, we haven't negated the premise. We haven't proven it either. All we've done is state "if this, then that." And I also don't think it's fair to label anyone pursuing such arguments as "militantly athiest left." The basic concept of agnosticism is that: because there isn't sufficient evidence, our default position should be not to believe. But it is also our duty as agnostics to continue to search for philosophical evidence in one way or another.

I agree with you that blind atheism is just as bad as blind theism, and I haven't read the book, but evolutionary science only works if it's all-encompassing. To say that evolution is the reason you have a little finger, but not why you have the ability to recognize your little finger for what it is is absurd.

First, the taking issue: I don't think atheism (at least my brand of atheism) is based on a firm belief that there is no god. Central to atheism (again, for me) is a science-derived belief that believing in something that is not only unconfirmed, but unconfirmable by the most effective means we have yet developed to understand the world is irrational/pointless/etc. I.e., if science can't prove it, it either doesn't exist or there's no point in believing it does exist. The standard arguments against this -- "But love; what of love? How do you know love exists?" -- are missing the point: I know love exists because I feel it and others profess to, just like I know the belief in a god exists, because others profess to. But that's not the same thing as knowing that a god exists.

Atheism doesn't require the kind of leap of faith you refer to, just a belief that something isn't true until it's proved. Science doesn't show that the existence of a god "is impossible," as you insist; it just hasn't proved the existence of a god.

Now the explanation/interpretation: I could see how "The reason reason works is because it worked" could be seen as a circular rhetorical gambit -- "it's true because it's true!" But the way I read that line, she's saying, basically, that science/rationality is true because it works. Which is totally valid -- science is all about reproducibility and large volumes of data, which is why it takes so long for something to become accepted as scientific "fact" (quotes because science never deals in certainty, only high degrees of probability). Example: I can't know with absolute certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow, but based on my own personal experience and millennia of recorded history, it seems highly likely that it will. It's therefore evolutionarily/emotionally/personally useful for me to behave as though that's a known certainty, not to worry about the miniscule probability that it won't happen.

Science (and relatedly, rationality) is an extremely good predictor of things that will happen. For that reason, it "works," because it appears to be true.

Chrisā€”Snap. Still, I think reviewing nonfiction is qualitatively different from reviewing art of any kind.

Charlesā€”Why isn't John my intern? Just kidding. I did review WHAT THE BLEEP on the basis of what it was trying to do. It was trying to wrench quantum physics into the service of Ramtha's crack metaphysics, and it failed.

I think Jerod sufficiently repudiated your misinterpretation of my point about reason. The question of what human interests lie behind the scientific paradigm is hardly unaskedā€”there are entire graduate programs built around it.

I should also note that I'm an agnostic, not an atheist. I think atheism is philosophically untenable; and that at least belief (of some varieties) admits the distance between what reason can prove and where faith can extend.

You've all been very eloquent about this issue. The only thing I would add is that this almost isn't religious for me -- it's just about mystery in general. Part of me doesn't believe (as Dennett has seemed to in the past, and probably still) that evolutionary science is all that's needed to understand the appeal of certain symphonies that remain popular for centuries, and part of me simply doesn't want to believe it.

Put a different way, Jerod, I understand and fully accept that the little finger is a product of evolution (as much as my feeble brain can, anyway; and to Wiggles' point, even the larger truth of evolution is only a very-very high probability). But that's physical evolution. Psychological evolution, I dare say, hasn't been quite so validated as a meaningful method of determining why, for instance, I like R.E.M. but not Joy Division. And my secular soul is very glad for that.

That said, I think you're off here in trying to draw a strong distinction between musical preference and spiritual thoughts. I'd say there are an infinite number of each out there, and they're far harder to pin down and analyze than, say, the number of bones in the hand. That's why biology is knowable to some point but reactions to the arts -- to name only one example -- are much less so. To use your own terms, I don't think that as a "trend in thought or behavior" music appreciation is significantly less or more prevalent than spiritual beliefs. And I'd say they both fall pretty far from the purview of more traditional evolutionary science.

Yeah, I'm kind of just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point. Sorry, this is fun for me.