Review - Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett
Famous? Or infamous? Such is the dual-edged sword of Dan Dennett's fame. As one of the world's pre-eminent atheist philosophers, he's well-known for his unrelenting make-no-excuses mission to shut down religious opposition to Darwinian evolution. Dennett's style resembles the educated but rife-with-flippancy kind of thorough debates used by Dawkins -- yet takes on more of a lectural tone for educating the masses about the finer points of evolution. You can almost feel the quasi-religious zeal that each uses when pounding the nails into God's coffin, almost like they're fighting a war that's nearly over.
Dan Dennett
Main Thesis / Main Idea:
The idea of complexity emanating from chaos has forever changed the way humanity will view both the universe and its place therein. Despite how dreary and nihilistic taking a hard evolutionary stance can seem from the outside, given its lack of objective meaning, it does allow for hope and a reason to love life.
Ideas Addressed:
--Can there be meaning even without a social structure like religion or organized spirituality?
--If even the simplest organisms known are still quite complex, where did this original complexity come from?
--Can today's religions coincide with evolutionary theory?
--Can we establish where our most basic ancestor came from?
--What are the many controversies surrounding evolutionary theory and are they sound arguments?
--So does evolution truly explain the differentiation and, ultimately, the origin of species? How does evolution work?
Almost all arguments are logical, well-presented and clearly the result of sound research. They're rock solid and anchor Dennett's flow of ideas.
Dennett is famous for a reason. It's books like these.
Revels in the truth.
For lovers of the brazen approach -- a la Dawkins, or Harris.
Dennett sometimes drops minor details about the big picture before immediately providing a segue into more trivial matters of review and repetition. Like casually mentioning that certainly evolution can provide inherent meaning for life, but that first some trivial matters must be introduced and explained...ultimately leading to a complete deviation from the point and never coming back to it. Not that this is always a bad thing.
As a book about Evolution and the Meaning of Life, the meaning of life is sparsely covered and not well-probed. Perhaps because his point is the personal, subjectivity of such a venture.
Where do people get the sordid misconceptions about evolution that fuel arguments in both media and print?
Favorite Quote:
This book is for those who agree that the only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it. (22)
Dennett starts with an unflinching stance on the reality he's facing: the traditional notion of God has no place in this world, or its future.
The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us (all creatures great and small) and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight; that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether. (18)
I have to admit, I'm a little biased in that I agree with him. But I would be remiss to leave out the abject criticisms I gained after taking on Darwin's Dangerous Idea
But before we get right to the point, let's just establish one thing. We're all in agreement -- probably most of you reading this article -- that evolutionary theory is a much better account of our origins than creationist theory and other such magic shows. I take this assumption for granted because most creationists will not read sources that don't support their views, so you're probably not one. Dennett also takes this for granted.
The evidence for evolution pours in, not only from geology, paleontology, biogeography, and anatomy (Darwins chief sources), but of course from molecular biology and every other branch of the life sciences. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant. Inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write. (46)