It is my speculation the notorious Beyond Belief Conference and Dawkins call to make religion illegal are signs secularism could be on the brink of crisis. Ironically, Daniel Dennett unwittingly gives powerful “scientific” reasons why secularism is doomed and why religion (which tends to be ID-friendly) will prevail as the dominant paradigm in human culture. See Evolution is Cruel to Dawkins and Dennett.
Mike Gene said it so well:
And therein may lie the most cruel irony of evolution. While it may make it possible for Richard Dawkins to be intellectually fulfilled, it also means that Dawkins, from an evolutionary perspective, embraces a world view that is maladapted to his biological essence and thus is nothing more than another evolutionary oddity whose lineage is a dead-end.
Thus, Dennett gives “scientific” reasons ID-friendly religion will ultimately prevail over Darwinism. Natural selection apparently favors those who are most inclined to accept ID. The force of Natural Selection is on the side of the Discovery Institute and the Wedge strategy.
I invite the readers to post links to relevant news analyses. Here are some that I found (thanks to some friends and google) which corroborate that Dennett would be correct to expect that ID will prevail if he were willing to follow his thesis to its logical conclusion.
The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics
Review of the book:
Theorists of “secularization” for two centuries have been saying that religion must inevitably decline in the modern world. But much of the world today is as religious as ever. This volume challenges the belief that the modern world is increasingly secular, showing instead that modernization more often strengthens religion.
The idea that secularization is the irreversible wave of the future is still the conventional wisdom in intellectual circles here. They would be bemused, to say the least, at a Dutch relapse into religiosity. But as the authors of a recently published study called De Toekomst van God (The Future of God) point out, organized prayer in the workplace is just one among several pieces of evidence suggesting that Holland is on the threshold of a new era–one we might call the age of “post-secularization.” In their book, Adjiedj Bakas, a professional trend-watcher, and Minne Buwalda, a journalist, argue that Holland is experiencing a fundamental shift in religious orientation: “Throughout Western Europe, and also in Holland, liberal Protestantism is in its death throes. It will be replaced by a new orthodoxy.”
According to Bakas and Buwalda, God is back in Europe’s most
notoriously liberal country.
Tufts [Dennett’s school] mirrors national rise in student religious activities
Students at Tufts and other universities are breaking the stereotype of the secular college student. A recent study conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles indicated that 77 percent of students surveyed said that they pray, while 73 percent say that a religious tradition helped to shape their identity. Recent trends at Tufts point to similar conclusions. Protestant Student Fellowship (PSF) president Vanessa Baehr-Jones said that three years ago, PSF only had one devoted member. It now boasts an e-mail list of up to 150 people.