Last summer, the world-renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett was invited to give two lectures at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. Some of his papers were very well known in my field of study—cognitive science. I drooled at the possibility of hearing him speak and hopefully even meeting him. I had already begun to plan out what I would say if I met him; but my thoughts changed drastically when I read that one of his lectures would cover the topic of his latest book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Until that moment, I had thought that his work was mostly done on “safe” topics, but I realized that the few papers and essays I had read of his had left me in the dark about his recent interest in religion and its theoretical origin in evolutionary processes.

Dennett’s lectures were a month away. Unread on my shelf was one of his most well known books, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, so I decided to wade through the 500-page behemoth. I wanted to see if this older book had anything to say about the “natural phenomenon” of religion. Under the assumption that I would have problems with at least some of his positions, I still expected his book to be of high quality.

I wish I could say that I approached the book with unshaken confidence, but, in truth, I respected this guy, and I couldn’t help thinking “What if….” I was not as confident in my beliefs as Daniel Dennett seemed to be with his, especially when he bluntly said at the end of his first chapter that “there is no future in sacred myth” (sacred myth being one of his all-inclusive descriptors of religion). Who was I to think I knew any better than a brilliant professor? I had heard repeatedly the verse in 1 Corinthians about God choosing “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” (1:27), but I never really understood it. Was it better to be ignorant? How could more knowledge not lead to a greater and truer understanding of the world? Even through my incredulity about Dennett’s claims, I wondered if something he had to say might actually contain a devastating argument I had not heard before—after all, he was a famous philosopher and very sure of himself. The seed of doubt had been planted.

The reason for the word “dangerous” in the book’s title became more apparent when I read: “In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.” The main content of the book is a clear explanation of the mechanisms of evolution and a firebombing of any historical, religious, or theoretical opposition to the theory. Religion in its “traditional” sense is one of the last holdouts that must bow in submission under the evolutionary and scientific framework. Dennett didn’t sugarcoat his words: He said of people who believe in a God who created the universe and upholds it—“that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in.”

Overall, I expected better from the book. Dennett was insightful about evolutionary theory itself, but his comments on religion were sloppy and lacked the philosophical scrutiny one would expect to follow bold claims about the end of religion as the world currently knows it.

His major fault seems to be in his understanding of Christianity itself (the religion about which he focused most of his attacks). He rips apart the straw men of cultural religion with barrel-chested gusto, but the actual biblical truths of Christianity are left unmentioned and untouched. He bases one of his arguments on the fact that because a substantial number of those who have faith in God claim that their faith is “quite beyond reason” he has just as much right to describe God as a ham sandwich, because there are no rules in such a system.

Certainly, he makes a good case against real beliefs and ideas found in the modern church, but the problem comes when he puts all religious people under the same umbrella, thinking that if he has destroyed most of them, he has destroyed them all.

Getting through his book put some meat on my apologetic bones. My ground held firm, based on the knowledge of the sovereign God of the Old and New Testaments and the understanding that His character and His plan affected every part of the world and my life. Even though I wasn’t an expert in philosophy or evolution and couldn’t dispute Dennett fact for fact, those biblical truths were like a spotlight, exposing his intellectual hand waving.

Returning to the same verse in 1 Corinthians, a deeper question remained. Maybe Dennett was not as wise as I thought, but intelligent people certainly have a better chance of understanding the gospel, right? How could there possibly be a correlation between being “foolish” and knowing Christ? That did not seem to bode well for Christianity being intellectually defensible.

I still had the lectures to attend, and I wondered if Dennett would have acquireed any better ammunition since the writing of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

Dennett’s first talk, on an evolutionary explanation of free will, was a bit obtuse for me, not having had time to read his book on the topic. The crowd for his second lecture, on religion, lined the back wall and poured out the doors.

Dennett began with an illustration. He described the behavior of commonly seen ants, which tirelessly climb to the top of a grass blade, and when blown or flicked off determinedly climb up again in an endless cycle. A casual observer may think that the ant’s behavior is strange, but the observer will assume that the ant must have a good reason for acting in such a way. The truth is quite the opposite. The ant has been invaded by a parasite, which is only able to reproduce when inside the stomach of a sheep or cow. The parasite influences the ant so that both it and the ant are in the perfect position to be eaten by the necessary beast.

Dennett related the parasite to religion, and the ant to a person who is the victimized host. To Dennett, not only is religion just an artifact of evolution, but it may not even be beneficial.

Dennett described all ideas as being objects of evolution. For many, evolutionary theory is no longer seen as being a competition between animals: The animal is a discardable host for the fundamental unit of replication, genes. The same, he argues, is true with ideas. They replicate and evolve, moving from simple to complex, using minds and culture as fertilizer for replication.

Needless to say, I sat uncomfortably while most of the audience ate up his words. Dennett lumped all religions together and mocked them (causing hearty laughter from much of the audience), but he also individually mocked Christianity, pointing out that its followers willingly submitted themselves to the will of their God. It was hard for me to know how to react, because I had no intention of defending most of the religious practices and beliefs he mentioned. Nevertheless, I experienced only an emotional discomfort and not an intellectual one: He did not show any progress in his theological intelligence. Dennett called for all religions to submit to scientific scrutiny. Religion, he said, should be studied empirically, because religious behavior is a completely natural phenomenon regardless of whether a supernatural God exists or not.

Here again I saw a major fault in his reasoning. Yes, human behavior can be described scientifically, but does quantifying the actions and brain images of a person explain the person as a whole? The scientific method, by definition, limits the scope of its study. It cannot provide complete knowledge of anything, for instance, detailing how God interacts with and upholds His creation minute by minute. More specifically, then, science cannot seek to explain how humans interact with God, which I would argue to be part of “religious behavior.” Furthermore, is scientific description the most fundamental level of explanation? Science can be used to discover and describe truth in God’s creation, but saying ‘I love you’ is no less true a statement than describing the chemical reactions that constitute that emotion.

Dennett’s first talk was followed by a reception. Well before that evening, I no longer thought that it would be beneficial to chat with him one-to-one. Dennett and I see the world through completely different lenses. In the same way that happiness does not increase with IQ, having the God-given grace to look around the world and see it as it truly is, lost and in need, does not in any way correlate with being “intelligent”—I would go so far as to say that it is more an issue of humility, which can be a difficult virtue for those bloated with knowledge and facts.

I am in Pittsburgh, Pa., now, surrounded by no fewer or less daunting intellectuals. This winter, I had the chance to talk to an unbelieving postdoctoral student of physics. In no way was I able to talk to him about specific theories or equations. What we did talk about was his false hope that physics could eventually provide a frame of reality and give a purpose to life.

I’ve learned a lot lately about how God relates to His creation, and I finally see what Paul meant when he spoke to the Corinthians. The key centers on a statement Paul made a few verses earlier: “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:25). Left to his own finitude, even a super-genius has no chance of understanding or discovering the truths of the universe. From the beginning of history itself, there was not a moment when God did not have to condescend to man so that man could know Him, even in the garden. God is that far above us.

With that context, the rest of what Paul said makes sense: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor. 1:26-27). These verses do not mean that ignorance or foolishness or weakness is a good trait to have. Instead, it means that all humans are equally dead and foolish. For the physics student to know the truth, God would have to condescend just as low as He condescended to me. Only God’s grace allows us to see the world rightly.

While I hope to continue learning about and studying God’s creation, which clearly exhibits His wonders and majesty, I can take comfort in knowing that no amount of scientific knowledge can get past the fact that this is a broken and hurting world, and no quantity of philosophical chatter can hide the signs and evidences of grace.

Maybe the next time I have the chance to meet a famous professor, I’ll hold off on the excitement until I do a bit of digging.