Here’s an interesting tidbit I ran across on the web.

Daniel Dennet says:

“If we don’t understand religion, we’re going to miss our chance to improve the world in the 21st century.” http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/94

It’s funny because this is the bio page off of a tape of the talk that Dennett gave at the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design), where he invokes “Orgel’s Second Rule” : “Evolution is cleverer than you are.”

He believes that religion came about through evolution. Apparently, nobody had to understand religion to get us this far. Nobody had to understand it to “create” it, make it “beautiful” (as he relents). But all of a sudden, we have to understand it to do something clever.

Keep in mind that Dennet invests in this “rule”, because he says:

If you understand Orgel’s Second Rule, then you understand why Intelligent Design is basically a hoax.

See, ID is a hoax based on Orgel’s second rule. You can’t understand the real implications of something based on just a precept. A more rational man would say “So you understand why if Orgel’s Second Rule is true, ID is a hoax” if he meant that. No, he means by understanding Orgel, we understand the state of ID. Orgel’s Second Rule (despite being a pretty flimsy ad hoc rule) is a fact in that context.

So Evolution is cleverer than we are. But somehow, not cleverer than Dennett because he thinks he sees what reins have to be siezed to make the evolutionary product of religion run other than its course.

Or do we just have to understand it because we’re going to be graded on it at the end of the 21st century?

I can imagine Evolution showing up and critiquing Dennett about the “flaw” he sees about the state of things.

Who has put wisdom in the innermost being Or given understanding to the mind? Do you give the horse his might? Do you clothe his neck with a mane? Do you make him leap like the locust? His majestic snorting is terrible Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars, Stretching his wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up And makes his nest on high? Will the faultfinder contend with [Evolution]? Let him who reproves [Evolution] answer it.

You see, I think that if evolution is all that is going on, the reverence for “the Creator’s” being more clever than we are is more faithfully carried out by the worshipper than the smartypants, who thinks its time to jump up and grab the reins now. God’s wisdom or Evolution’s cleverness be damned. We can no more turn Evolution into God than we can turn God into Evolution. It’s out of our hands, the yielding to the greater wisdom of “the plan” is the portion of what remains as a practical matter.

It’s not just something compartmentalized into the slapping-down-opponents mode.

What’s untouched is the question: HOW is Evolution cleverer than we are?

Well, I get tired of explaining the logical implications of their worldview to them, but here goes:

What works survives and theories about what might have worked, what should have worked are discarded. Natural selection is not about deciding what species gets The Best Manifest Idea award, it TESTS every variation so that the animals adapted to survive. Eohippus did not die out because the horses thought they saw a flaw in their logic, or didn’t like what they were doing, or thought that they had a fundamental flaw which would jeopardize the entire world. It’s not about getting ideas into a our overtaxed survival-brains of how we’re going to save the species from extinction. It’s about unproductive patterns adapting or dying.

It’s not about any seeing process coming up with a solution at all, but (as we are consistently told) a blind one grinding away the chaff.

But Dennett, I guess, thinks he has a better idea.