Leon Wieseltier lays into Daniel Dennett, and knocks him down to size: "Dennett lives in a world in which you must believe in the grossest biologism or in the grossest theism, in a purely naturalistic understanding of religion or in intelligent design, in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in 19th-century England or in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in the sky.

In his own opinion, Dennett is a hero. He is in the business of emancipation, and he reveres himself for it. 'By asking for an accounting of the pros and cons of religion, I risk getting poked in the nose or worse,' he declares, 'and yet I persist.' Giordano Bruno, with tenure at Tufts! He wonders whether religious people 'will have the intellectual honesty and courage to read this book through.' If you disagree with what Dennett says, it is because you fear what he says. Any opposition to his scientistic deflation of religion he triumphantly dismisses as 'protectionism.' But people who share Dennett's view of the world he calls 'brights.' Brights are not only intellectually better, they are also ethically better. Did you know that 'brights have the lowest divorce rate in the United States, and born-again Christians the highest'? Dennett's own 'sacred values' are 'democracy, justice, life, love and truth.' This rigs things nicely. If you refuse his 'impeccably hardheaded and rational ontology,' then your sacred values must be tyranny, injustice, death, hatred and falsehood. Dennett is the sort of rationalist who gives reason a bad name; and in a new era of American obscurantism, this is not helpful. "

Will Dennett's pimps at Arts and Letters Daily notice?