ABSTRACT
The long and adversarial relationship between Darwinism and theism continues. Not satisfied to explain the nature of living things, evolutionary scientists now aim to explain religion itself. Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained raised a few eyebrows with subtle suggestions that religion is "airy nothing" but a byproduct of evolved human minds. 1 Scott Atran's Tn God's We Trust: The Evolutionanj Landscape of Religion even more directly affronted some religious sensibilities by purporting to explain theistic beliefs as irrational and counterfactual thought propped up by evolved mental capacities.2 Repackaging these same types of arguments, Daniel Dennett has finally managed to gain considerable popular attention for the movement with his recently released Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon? Dennett's book and its apparently lethal implications for religious belief have been discussed on multiple occasions on National Public Radio and in wide-circulation publications such as the New York Times.4
