Daniel Dennett
cheerful dismantler—consciousness, evolution, religions as natural phenomena to understand
Dennett—often grouped with New Atheism’s public wing—argued religion should be studied like any complex natural-historical phenomenon: beliefs, institutions, costly signaling, cognitive biases, evolutionary affordances. Breaking the Spell framed taboo against inquiry as itself worth interrogation; philosophers debated naturalism’s scope without agreeing on verdict.
Critics heard reductivism; allies heard patience—years of careful philosophy of mind before the trumpet. His humor rankled and disarmed by turns.
Outdeus positions Dennett as a modern interlocutor for secularization’s intellectual form: authority inspected, myth reinterpreted as human craft, pluralism met with curiosity that still presses epistemic standards—companion and foil to Armstrong-style comparative sympathy in the same era’s conversations.