Dennett's Whirlwind Tour through Apologetics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This post is part of a series discussing Daniel Dennett's\u00a0Breaking the Spell. As I said yesterday, most of Dennett's book isn't directed to the question\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/11\/dennetts-whirlwind-tour-through-apologetics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dennett's Whirlwind Tour through Apologetics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post is part of a series discussing Daniel Dennett's\u00a0Breaking the Spell. 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{"id":5769,"date":"2012-11-08T17:56:43","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T22:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=5769"},"modified":"2012-11-08T17:56:43","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T22:56:43","slug":"dennetts-whirlwind-tour-through-apologetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/11\/dennetts-whirlwind-tour-through-apologetics.html","title":{"rendered":"Dennett’s Whirlwind Tour through Apologetics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

This post is part of a series discussing Daniel Dennett\u2019s\u00a0<\/a><\/em>Breaking the Spell<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

As I said yesterday, most of Dennett\u2019s book isn\u2019t directed to the question of whether religious claims are true<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0But in the final chapters, he takes a crack at the question. \u00a0Dennett warns the reader that his discussion is going to be cursory; he\u2019ll lay out his objections and give the reader the citations they need to examine the arguments in detail.<\/p>\n

From beginning to end, this section spans a little more than six pages.<\/p>\n

Like the so vague as to be meaningless discussion of Dennett\u2019s moral philosophy<\/a>, this section frustrates more than it educates, and probably should have been dropped from the book. \u00a0I assume Dennett knows some of the religious arguments in more detail than he discusses, (Aquinas\u2019s first cause argument is dealt with in a paragraph), but his brief discussion is doing his reader a disservice.<\/p>\n

Dennett may be so fluent in apologetics that he can deal with them in shorthand, but his readers are not. \u00a0As Yvain pointed out, Christians in the scholastic tradition sound like they\u2019re using everyday English when they\u2019re actually using technical jargon<\/a> (\u201cimage\u201d \u201ccause\u201d \u201cnecessary\u201d etc). \u00a0This is confusing!<\/p>\n

For Dennett\u2019s lay readers to follow his rebuttal, they\u2019d need a glossary and a quick introduction to what the apologetics are actually saying. \u00a0Dennett doesn\u2019t give them this resource or warn them that this argument is in a foreign language that looks deceptively like English. \u00a0So Dennett\u2019s atheist readers wind up with an inflated sense of their own understanding of this debate and confidence in Dennett\u2019s conclusion. \u00a0That\u2019s authorial malpractice, especially for a skeptic who wants to teach you to think, not just what to believe.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"