De Novo

For [Daniel] Dennett, religions are efforts at doing something science does better - they are rudimentary or abortive theories, or else nonsense. “The proposition that God exists,” he writes severely, “is not even a theory.” But religions do not consist of propositions struggling to become theories….  It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory….From a Darwinian standpoint, the crucial role Dawkins gives to education is puzzling. Human biology has not changed greatly over recorded history, and if religion is hardwired in the species, it is difficult to see how a different kind of education could alter this.

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Religion has not gone away. Repressing it is like repressing sex, a self-defeating enterprise.

– John Gray (the British one, not the American), writing for the Guardian