Politicizing Biology: Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Part II

In a previous paper we critiqued Daniel Dennett's evolutionary science of religion as expounded in his book Breaking the Spell. In the present paper we wish to follow up on this line of inquiry and discuss in more detail and depth the political and social implications of Dennett's work. The authors find that while Dennett's science of religion and the memetic theory of culture on which it rests are scarcely persuasive as science, they are an effective species of "bio-rhetoric" whose purpose is to defend the status of the sciences and the public supremacy of the "physical stance" on which Dennett thinks they rest. In the conclusion of the paper the authors suggest that Dennett's use of the rhetoric of naturalism and in particular the "science" of memetics has disturbing implications when understood in the context of the post-9/11 world.