Leon Wieseltier's evisceration of Daniel C. Dennett in last Sunday's NYTBR may well be the most vicious pan to appear in the Review since...well, since Wieseltier went to town on Nicholson Baker in 2004. Granted, Dennett's 2003 "Bright Stuff" manifesto reeked of the sort of smugness that makes even agnostics want to sock atheists in the nose, so it's no surprise that Wieseltier dismisses Dennett as "Giordano Bruno with tenure at Tufts" and "the sort of rationalist who gives reason a bad name." But the review is so vehement that, coupled with memories of the hatchet job on Baker, one almost wonders whether Wiesltier's entertainment value is perceived as rooted in the extreme nature of his smackdowns.

Some scientists on Dennett's side, however, are unimpressed by the fireworks. At Pharyngula, PZ Myers compares reading the review to "watching a beached fish gasp and flounder," concluding, "They just found a guy anxious to posture against the ungodly, with no competence to actually judge the book." Philosopher Brian Leiter's critique attacks Wieseltier's "confident arrogance" in slightly more detail, challenging Wieseltier's challenge of Dennett's characterization of Hume's thoughts on religion, then debating the very nature of philosophical questions.

All this over a book that Jennifer Schuessler, an editor at the Review, described much more calmly in the NYTBR podcast: "Dennett argues that we need to use the powerful tools of Darwinian theory to understand where religion came from, how it works, how it has evolved, whether it's good for us, and if it's not good for us, what we can do to get rid of it."