Wieseltier's going down!

As a former book review editor, I can only wonder where The New York Times came up with Sam Tanenhaus, its book review editor, the guy who mistakes reviewers incapable of anything more than ranting slurs for those who offer actual, thoughtful criticism - as I mentioned in this earlier post. Several other bloggers have caught onto Leon Wieseltier's review of Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett - including Lindsay Beyerstein and coturnix at Majikthise, the Mad Scientist at The Daily Trascript (of RNA), and Brian Leiter at Leiter Reports.

The Mad Scientist hits it on the head:

Wieseltier attacks Dennett's reasoning by reasoning that reason can't be used to study religion. What the bloody hell??? In other words, please don't ask rational questions.

That sums it up pretty well: it's really a choice not of what to believe, but how to believe: to rely on emotional or spiritual feelings to decide what is true, or to accept as truth only that which is supported by objective observation and rational analysis. To pursue a reasoned critique of Dennett would only be giving in to Dennett's commitment to reason - whereas Wieseltier's preference for emotionally discerned "truth" leads him to believe the only criticism needed is a huffing, puffing appeal to emotion.

Turning to Dennett's book, without having read it yet (soon...), it would be ridiculous with all we know at this point, not to investigate the potential evolutionary origins of the widespread human impulses to religious belief and the collection of behaviors that make up religion.