Some sobering thoughts, and a warning to Daniel Dennett, from John Derbyshire:

Science is…a fragile thing, and might easily be lost. (The same applies to math. Readers of, ahem, my forthcoming book will learn about a key development in mathematical thinking that was discovered in ancient Alexandria, then lost, then rediscovered 1300 years later.) It is my belief in this fact that makes me so defensive of science, and so hostile to obscurantist thinking, under which heading I include both Left Creationists like Wieseltier and Right Creationists like the “intelligent design” crowd. They are playing with fire. So, by their absurd provocations, are the village atheists like Dennett. If we lose science (again?), we shall be plunged back into a world far less comfortable, far darker and crueller, than this one. If the LCs and the RCs join forces, they might just possibly bring on that world… if the Islamofascists don’t beat them to it.

The natural tendency of human beings is to think religiously. Science and math are deeply unnatural activities, favored by only a scant few, who could easily be rounded up and dispatched by a mob of more normal human beings. Scientistic triumphalism of the Dennett variety is therefore foolish. An attitude of respectful humility by the more-scientifically inclined towards the more-religiously inclined is not only intellectually proper (at any rate to those of us non-Dennettians who think that religious belief is intellectually respectable, and that the reality of human nature should be faced honestly), it is prudent.