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Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Dennett on religion

Thought I'd pass along a link from Prosblogion to an audio file of a discussion with Daniel Dennett on the topic of his latest book, religion as natural phenomena (still on the top of my to-read list). He's joined by Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford. It doesn't get much more academic than this folks...you can almost picture the tweed sport coats and smell the pipe smoke as you listen. Anyway, it's a good program and worth a listen. Matthew's description:

Dennett opens by continuing to promote the bizarre meme that there is a taboo against the scientific study of religion. He then follows up with his Golden Bough like story of primitive beliefs evolving into more abstract and organized religion by way of memes. It would be nice to see Dennett address the literature in the anthropology and sociology of religion that rejects this Golden Bough view as flying in the face of evidence. As H. Allen Orr points out "...the origin and diffusion of religion, like the origin and diffusion of music, laughter, and xenophobia, reside in a largely irretrievable evolutionary past. We know virtually nothing about the religion, if any, practiced by our ancestors on the African savanna hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's far from obvious that explaining unprovable beliefs with unprovable theories constitutes progress"
You could hardly ask for a more able respondent that the Revd Professor Alister McGrath. A lapsed atheist with a D.Phil for research in the natural sciences McGrath later studied for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge. McGrath agrees with Dennett's opening remarks to the effect that people often don't like to have their beliefs examined, but I think that this is to generous for Dennett's particular claim. McGrath pushes hard on Dennett's use of memes and attendant problems of deploying memes. McGrath gets bonus points for a touch of humor.

Also see the post for some links to other interviews and such with Dennett.

Posted by Will at March 29, 2006 01:29 AM in Internet and Blogging