Self-Identified “Bright” Defends Darwin Against the Religious Right

March 12, 2006

Source: The Observer

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1728920,00.html

On March 12, 2006 The Observer released an interview with Daniel Dennett, a stringent atheist and a philosopher. "Daniel Dennett has something of the look of those seventeenth-century puritan preachers who would talk for hours about the sins of the flesh. The gospel he has spent most of his life spreading, however, has nothing to do with supernatural vengeance; quite the opposite. His full white beard is worn more in homage to Charles Darwin than the Almighty. When I went to see him at the little office in the corner of a quadrangle at Tufts University he has occupied for 30 years, he was examining on his computer screen the cover of his new book, Breaking the Spell. His book seeks to demonstrate that religion, chiefly Christianity, is itself a biologically evolved concept, and one that has outlived its usefulness. In America, these days, that is the most virulent form of fighting talk. Dennett, you might say, has been working up to this. His previous bestselling books, Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Consciousness Explained, established him as America's most important and entertaining philosopher... In writing his book, he says, it was very important to him to get as many believers as possible to read it."