“Dear Mr. Derbyshire—You are almost certainly traducing Mr. Wieseltier’s position. Having read (or skimmed) a fair number of his essays, I’m reasonably certain he doesn’t particularly care about creation vs. evolution, and probably supports the latter whole-heartedly. He cares most (as he said in the article) about preserving a tradition of liberal, rational faith from what he takes to be fire from both sides, from both secularists and fundamentalists. It was Dennett’s village atheist presuppositions, more than the scientific content of the book, that offended him. You may have run into this position most from Catholics, but there is a respectable parallel Jewish tradition of such thought as well, from Maimonides via elements of the Rabbinic tradition to the Haskalah of Germany and points east, and hence to various liberal Jewish thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries; most of whose names I have sadly forgotten, but of whose existence I am firmly convinced. If there are faults in Wieseltier’s exposition, they owe in part to him having written the same argument dozens of times, and doubtless feeling weary about having to cover the same aground.”
[Derb] Hmmm. That Wieseltier “probably supports [evolution] whole-heartedly” I beg leave to doubt. The typical position of Left Creationists is that they do indeed support evolution, but only up to the point where it collides with the egalitarian, feminist, “anti-racist,” multi-culti dogmas that are much more dear to them than any mere scientific theory. I’d call that “half-hearted” myself. As for Wiesletier preserving a tradition of “liberal, rational faith” — well, I don’t recall much liberality or rationality in his contributions to the Bell Curve debate, nor to his “cultural policeman” intervention in the 1994 controversy about William Cash’s “Jews in Hollywood” piece in the London Spectator.
Still not having read Dennett’s book, it doesn’t seem right to go on devoting so much Corner space to Wieseltier’s review of it, so I’m bailing out here. My sketchy knowledge of Dennett and his work suggests to me that “village atheist” is about right. Dennet belongs to that folorn legion of folk, patron saint the late Bertrand Russell, who believe that if only one could find the right way to show believers how silly and misguided is their belief, they would cast off the shackles of faith with whoops of joy, and convert their churches into chemistry labs. That this is an absurd belief is pointed out in that link I posted the other day–this one–and also in my Sea of Faith column. Religious belief is deepy, rootedly human, unshakeable and ineradicable. Science, by contrast, is an artificial and unnatural activity, which could be stamped out rather easily. Some historians of science think it actually was: that science came up twice in history, first among the Greeks, then disappearing, then coming up again in early-modern Europe. Religion in general, and probably even particular religions, are a thousand times more robust than science.
Science is thus a fragile thing, and might easily be lost. (The same applies to math. Readers of, ahem, my forthcoming book will learn about a key development in mathematical thinking that was discovered in ancient Alexandria, then lost, then rediscovered 1300 years later.) It is my belief in this fact that makes me so defensive of science, and so hostile to obscurantist thinking, under which heading I include both Left Creationists like Wieseltier and Right Creationists like the “intelligent design” crowd. They are playing with fire. So, by their absurd provocations, are the village atheists like Dennett. If we lose science (again?), we shall be plunged back into a world far less comfortable, far darker and crueller, than this one. If the LCs and the RCs join forces, they might just possibly bring on that world… if the Islamofascists don’t beat them to it.
The natural tendency of human beings is to think religiously. Science and math are deeply unnatural activities, favored by only a scant few, who could easily be rounded up and dispatched by a mob of more normal human beings. Scientistic triumphalism of the Dennett variety is therefore foolish. An attitude of respectful humility by the more-scientifically inclined towards the more-religiously inclined is not only intellectually proper (at any rate to those of us non-Dennettians who think that religious belief is intellectually respectable, and that the reality of human nature should be faced honestly), it is prudent.
I feel somewhat the same way about conservatism, another unnatural and unpopular way of thinking….
Aren’t weekends great?