Daniel Dennett is the new H.G. Wells and Leon Wieseltier is his Chesterton.
Dennett's latest book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon, seems to be an updated version (and narrower) version of Wells' Outline of History in which Wells attempted to explain the events of history with an evolutionary framework (see also the abbreveiated A Short Outline of History). Chesterton responded to Wells' effort with his own 'history' in The Everlasting Man, a work that remains a compelling and entertaining defense of Christianity.
While Dennett's project (as outlined in this review by Leon Wieseltier) sounds eerily similar to Wells', Wieselteir's response is as strikingly Chestertonian (though he may not think this a compliment!). The review opens with a bang:
THE question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition, one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science to say so. For a sorry instance of present-day scientism, it would be hard to improve on Daniel C. Dennett's book. "Breaking the Spell" is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.
It gets better. About agreeing with Dennett, Wieseltier writes:
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