Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett (2007)

In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett attempts to engage religious believers in a discussion of the foundations of their belief, and hopes to convince them that religion can fruitfully be made the object of scientific inquiry. Dennett focuses his attention in particular on three potential scientific investigations. First, what is it about human minds and bodies that ensures the persistence of religion in human societies? Second, what were the plausible circumstances of past environments that shaped human minds and bodies in that manner? And third, have our environmental circumstances changed sufficiently so that the biological and cultural adaptations that favored religion—which formerly benefited us—now cause positive harm to our individual and/or collective well-being? Dennett ventures tentative and plausible answers to each of these questions, but he is intellectually honest enough to admit that his speculations could be disconfirmed by the scientific research that he exhorts his fellow academics to perform.

At least purportedly, this book's target audience is composed of religious believers. I don't personally fit the bill, so in order to evaluate whether Dennett satisfactorily met his aims, I had to put myself in the mind of a believer. In particular, I imagined what my mother would say if I placed this book in her hands.

Well, as a general rule, Dennett's tone throughout is quite conciliatory towards believers, though he doesn't seek to hide his own atheism. He doesn't take Christopher Hitchens' path of piling up the corpses in religion's closet (the Crusades, etc.) for all to see. Nor does he follow Richard Dawkins in screeching about how irrational! religious beliefs are, as if that were helping matters. It is refreshing to see someone retire those old saws, and it reflects positively on Dennett's good faith in this project. On the other hand, even Dennett can get quite snippy and antagonistic in short bursts, particularly when he takes direct-address potshots at imagined stubborn believers in his readership. These ripostes are particularly common in the first three chapters, which seems to me to be a tactical error: chasing off potential readers before they have a chance to hear your good points is bad form.

Further, Dennett is perhaps not as careful with his language as would behoove him in this sort of work. There are plenty of places, particularly early on, where he makes a relatively innocuous point in language that can be foreseeably misinterpreted (whether innocently or willfully) in a manner that is either insulting to believers, or easily parried by believers. This is not a project in which I think it would be wise to rely too heavily upon the charitableness of one's audience.

My verdict is that, although it avoids many of the gaffes that left Hitchens and Dawkins preaching mostly to the choir, the early going in Breaking the Spell is still likely to scare off even those believers who might enjoy the rest of the work, which, while admittedly speculative, is worth thinking about seriously. If you find yourself recommending this book to friends who are believers, you may want to suggest that they start with Chapter 4.

I can't recommend this highly enough. This is not an anti-religion screed at all, but comes at the topic of religion as a naturally emerging aspect of humanity in a thoughtful, funny, accessible way. It is "New Atheist" only in that it calls for open questioning and research of religion and its utility (and it's written by an atheist). ( )

Darwin's Dangerous Idea is still my favorite of his, but this one was a good read. Provoked a lot of thought. I hate religion, but I still entertain arguments for their potential benefits and they won't be better defended by an atheist than Dennett offers in this book. I'm glad smart people are willing and able to speak to the issues surrounding unreasonable beliefs. ( )

(posted on my blog: http://davenichols.net/)

From the onset of this book, Dennett offers what amounts to one long argument about whether or not religion should be subjected to rational inquiry. A reasonable question, to be sure, but despite it being a legitimate point of conversation with the reader, Dennett unfortunately aims beyond the reader to a very small subset of people capable of conducting inquiries of this sort. He often asks the reader to consider questioning his/her own views and stances, but it is clear by the end of the book that his entire 'soft rant' is really directed at encouraging further research on the issue.

I like Dan Dennett a lot, and have spent many hours learning from his books, speeches, and insights (Consciousness Explained was one I rated as a 5/5, for example), but I feel like this book was a mediocre use of my time. Granted, I accept that he was preaching to the choir on his central thesis (that we should indeed submit religion to rational inquiry), but the entire book is muddled and largely filler. He ends each chapter with two paragraphs--a summary of that chapter and a preview of the next. Each subsection of each chapter starts with several quotes more-or-less on target, and uses extensive (and large) quotes from other thinkers throughout the book. The entire work quickly begins to feel like a thesis-by-committee, of which Dennett is largely acting as managing editor.

Dennett is a philosopher, so you expect some redundant passages as he hones in on specific points, but often he spends several pages belaboring an argument that (by that point) would have already been accepted or not by the reader. As a bit of frustrated research, I read only every third paragraph in one chapter and jotted down what I felt were his main points. I then reread the entire chapter in full to see if it provided any additional insight. It did not. Dennett uses a lot of filler in this book that should have been condensed or left out entirely.

In parts of the book that deserved better scientific treatment, such as his theories of the origins and evolution of religion (and religious memes), he instead breezes over the details and offers that the necessary research had not yet been done. Gah, frustrating 'insights' from a guy I much respect.

I hate his use of the term 'brights' (as I detest when any other 'bright' uses that term-- it is ridiculous and distracting and forces the reader to swallow a bit of revulsion at what the term insinuates, even when Dennett clearly defines what he means by it).

Having dragged myself through to the end, it is clear in the last chapter that Dennett really was talking past me and instead directing his book at researchers and religious leaders, pleading with them to take up his challenge and start investigating religion's many aspects, both good and bad. Again, I find myself in very broad agreement with Dennett on almost every aspect of his thesis, but his delivery and substance in Breaking leave a lot to be desired. Three stars. Not a horrible introduction to the argument, but not Dennett's best work. ( )

Dennett, one of the '4 horsemen' of new atheism (Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens are the other 3), details the evils of religion. ( )

[Reviewed in my blog at http://www.sea-of-flowers.ca/weblog/s...]

Daniel C. Dennett's 2006 book Breaking the Spell, Religion as a Natural Phenomenon reached the bookstores a few months ahead of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.

Breaking the Spell is reasonably long, at 412 pages after the end notes, well-researched, and current. He doesn't spend much time on philosophical questions about the existence of God or the nature of truth, except to say that there are no convincing arguments that religion should not be studied and its claims to truthiness tested. (He doesn't actually say truthiness). Nor does he spend too much time on the idea, popular in religious studies and the literary humanities, that trashing religion is out of bounds because religion it adds meaning to human life or the argument that studying religion scientifically disrespects feelings. He argues that there is a social benefit gain in demystifying religion. I am not sure about that one. Modern living tends to destroy social connections, leaving people searching for therapies and entertainments to soothe their anxieties.

He doesn't make the conventional atheist arguments about the irrationality of belief, religion as opiate of the masses, religion as mass illusion or delusion, religion as the cause of war and oppression, or religion as the construct of parasitic priests. He appears to regard these arguments as too speculative to explain why religion happens, and probably too stale.

He pays more attention to sociology, like Rodney Stark's use of rational choice theory in the study of successful religions. He pays a lot of attention to the work of linguists and anthropologists Dan Sperber, Scott Atran, and Pascal Boyer. He mentions Jared Diamond a lot and Steven Pinker a few times.

While his main theme is that religion is a natural human activity which can be studied and explained scientifically, he also has some theories. He suggests that human thinking tends to attribute intentionality to natural events, a particular aspect of social living and consciousness, which he calls the intentional stance. He likes to point out that religion, historically has been bound to culture - everyone seems to know the religious stories on the basis of common knowledge, but very few understand the stories or can respond to enquiries. He points out that anthropologists have started to realize that people make things up when they are questioned about their gods.

He also has adopted memes to explain the way that religious stories and ideas perpetuate themselves across cultures and across time. In fact, in dealing with Sperber, Atran and Boyer, he acknowledges that they don't accept memes, but he appropriates and translates their ideas into his own memetic theory of religion and culture.

He tries to persuade by jovial, common sense arguments. He loads his arguments with rhetorical questions, and he seems to be too chatty on some issues. The impression is that he is genuinely thoughtful and making a serious effort to communicate respectfully.

He appears to be writing for Brights, and promoting a Bright perspective. To the extent that he avoids Dawkins' more forceful perspective, he demonstrates a difference in persuasive tactics. Dawkins is determined to beat his foes down with the force of his words. Dennett relies on the sticking power of a cheery presentation of oddly memorable ideas. I would say that he is more tuned to cultural issues than Dawkins, and a more discerning judge of workable memes. ( )

Dr. Dennett is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. As the jacket points out, this is "not an anti-religious screed, but rather an eye-opening exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives, our interactions, and our country." Following Dawkins and others, he explores the foundations and historicity of morality and the continuing reasons for continued bleief in Bronze Age mythologies.

The entire thing could be stated clearly in ten pages. ( )

Not Dennett's best book, but probably his most popular. Its tone is not as provocative (some would say strident) as some of the other recent atheist tomes. And that is (in my opinion) a good thing. However, this doesn't really offer much new information or interesting analysis, unlike many of Dennett's other books.

WRitten for the lay (nonscientist, nonphilosopher), book discusses the Darwinian evolution of religion. Interesting ideas about memes, faith, etc. A bit manic. ( )

I'm very interested in this subject, but the book was a snoozer. I forced my way through 100+ pages before just skimming through the rest of the book. ( )

The conflict between science and religion has undoubtedly had its fiercest battles in the realm of Christendom. It is irrelevant for most Buddhists, for instance, whether the universe was created by a supreme being (or indeed whether such a diety exists at all), and I can recall few Jewish scholars, at least in the mainstream, with a profound antipathy towards the idea of natural selection. Outside of the evangelical/fundamentalist nexis, it seems as though most Americans regard science and religion as separate, rather than conflicting, modes of thought. But one must be careful not to speak too much in generalities.

For my part, I have spent at least 30 years of my life exploring religion and spiritual traditions - from Islam to Eastern Orthodoxy, from Greco-Roman mystery cults to shamanism, and from Zen to Zoroastrianism. I delight in human inventiveness, in the rise and extinction of cosmologies, and in the stillness of contemplative discipline. Many interpret that stillness as the breath of God, because we have been conditioned through centuries of repetition to think in such terms. Unfortunately, despite these beautiful fictions, conditioning and habit are not truth.

In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel C. Dennett laboriously explains such conditioning in terms of evolutionary biology. The little popping sounds you hear are the apopleptic fits running through the neural pathways of those who consider such an explanation as a hideous affront to their cherished beliefs (in his 1991 book, Consciousness Explained, Dennett caused similar consternation by demonstrating that the idea of a center of consciousness, the "soul", if you will, is, alas, illusory). With no strong grounding in evolutionary biology, I take Dennett's argument for what it is- an attempt to explain the origin and processes of religious thinking.

In the latter portion of the book, Dennett (to me, anyway) stands on firmer ground. Here there is a striking critique of why some of us continue to believe in religious systems when all evidence and rational thought point, at best, to agnosticism. Many of us are simply unwilling to cast aside our cultural conditioning in favor of what we believe to be the bottomless abyss of unbelief. Others, like Pascal, opt for the intellectually effete viewpoint that it's best to keep our bases covered for fear of missing out on the rewards of some glorious afterlife. Then there are those who relish the feeling of power that comes from the certainty that they are among God's elect - apparently immune to the hypocrisy inherent in such self-aggrandizement.

My only real complaint in this book is that Dennett takes such pains in the early chapters to appeal to those he will certainly offend. Better, I think, to just say what he means to say and let those who can't stand the heat leave the kitchen. This conciliatory tack seems pretty much abandoned by the end of the book, although Dennett still hopes that his work will stimulate a dialogue between believers and non-believers (the "brights", in Dennett's curious terminology) that will lead to a rational approach to religion. Now that's a leap of faith!

http://tristram.squarespace.com/home/... ( )

Dennett reminds us (and by "us" I mean everyone with a side in the debate between theists and atheists) of the importance of questioning not just the other side, but our side as well, with regard to what we know, what we think we know, how we know it, and how we can know more tomorrow than we do today. If he's not as strident as Dawkins and Harris, he strikes me as a little more grounded than Onfray, whose philosophical take on theism was a little more lit-crit than I'd have liked.

Recommended. ( )

http://www.skepticalchristian.com/br_... ( )

Somebody needed to write this book.
Since I've been harping on this subject for about 20 years, to anyone who will buy me a beer, I think Dennett owes me a couple bucks.

Dan Dennett is who Steven Pinker wishes he was. Well done. Now out in paperback buy it! ( )

For one who knows that religion is dangerous nonsense, Dennett here bends over backwards to be nice to its practitioners while comprehensively describing what is scientifically known about its evolution and nature. A number of reviewers have said that his words will nevertheless fail to penetrate the skulls of those who most need to hear them.

The current resurgence of Christian and Muslim fundamentalism is a source of great worry and puzzlement to secularists (present reviewer included) who thought such beliefs would the wane in the face of a triumphant science. What's perhaps more surprising is how ineffective the kind of Darwinist/Rationalist counter-argument expounded by Richard Dawkins, Francis Wheen or Daniel Dennett is proving against this new strain of belief.

The pre-Socratic Greeks, Shakespeare, Nietzche, Freud all tell us, as if we didn't know already, that we're not primarily rational animals - if we were then belief in God could only be an error or even an illness that could be cured by scientific education, which is what Dennett appears to believe. It's no surprise that many people find this attitude patronising or even threatening. American evangelicals may reject Darwinism but they still drive cars and use the internet. Dennett distinguishes 'belief' from 'belief in belief': the former actually imagines a grey-haired father figure in the sky, while the latter merely thinks that believing in such a figure is a good idea because it makes people behave well. However he shrinks from following this to its conclusion, that religion is often politics in disguise. Running through the history of both Christianity and Islam is a millenarian streak of class revenge, the idea that while the rich might enjoy the privileges of this world, they will burn in hell in the next. US evangelicals rebel against the 1960s liberalism of the East and West Coast Media Elites, whose freedom loving lifestyle happens to coincide with a monopoly on the best-paid jobs; Islamic fundamentalists despair of justice for Palestine and invoke the Wrath of God because the Wraths of Nasserism and Baathism proved corrupt and impotent.

Dennett's brand of rationalism can barely scratch the surface of such passions, and the book disappoints on several levels: its Darwinian theme is too shallow to satisfy, and it's often soft on religion where it should be hardest but patronising where it ought to be understanding. ( )

Interesting discussion of the need for scientific examination into the value of religion. ( )

I can't really cover it better than "oakesspalding" does below, I agree with him.

I am as wary of scientism as a dogma as I am of any other dogma. Dennett’s just too plain angry and convinced that he’s right. I can’t get behind Dawkins’ concept of ‘memes’, either, as being anything but a fancy description of “idea”, and so his repeated invocation of that concept became a bit exhausting. I am also not in favor of the “flavor of the month” designation of “brights” for rationalists/humanists. It’s entirely condescending to my way of thinking, and was distracting.

I really wanted to like that book, (I enjoyed an interview with Dennett about the book that I heard), but ultimately, I think it’s ultimate failure is in absolutely not respecting it’s audience.
It’s Dennett’s magnificent intellect against the world, and I think we’re to be forgiven for passing him by like any other zealot on a soapbox. He’s written better, and I hope he’ll write better
again. ( )

I am an unapologetic fan of Daniel Dennett and as soon as I heard that he was about to come out with a new work on religion--through reading a snarkily unfair interview of him in The New York Times Magazine--I bided my time and then on publication day forced my local Borders to pry one of their six newly arrived copies out of the box just for me. Alas, I found Breaking the Spell to be extremely disappointing--in my view, his weakest work to date.

Perhaps I should declare my “biases." I disagree with most of Dennett’s conclusions on consciousness, evolution (no, I am not a “young-earth creationist" but his true-believer dogmatism on the issue disturbs me) secularism and, of course, politics. But I enjoy his method of argument, his intellectual honesty and his alternately charming and combative style. Most importantly, I completely agree with what I take to be the central thesis of his new book--that we should subject religion and religious views to the same level of intellectual and scientific scrutiny which we would any other subject--a claim, by the way, which puts Dennett not only on the same side as his friends, the atheist and agnostic “brights," but also with many orthodox Catholic and Evangelical Christians (and against “liberal" Christians of most stripes). But the clarity of his central claim cannot hide the fact that the book as a whole is a sort of muddle. Let me divide it into sections:

1. Dennett begins by spending an inordinate amount of words defending his main claim. In my view, this was a tactical mistake. I, and others like me, are already convinced. But for those who believe that a core amount of “fluffiness" in religious discourse is a good thing, and that philosophy or science shouldn’t (or can’t) treat religious issues rationally, I don’t believe a 40 page argument would be any more effective than a 4 page argument in dissuading them. And since the intended audience for his book is (nonacademic) lay people, excess verbiage comes at a cost.

2. In the next few chapters, Dennett puts forth an evolutionary theory of the birth and growth of religion, generally making use of the work of others in the cognitive sciences, biology and anthropology. I am highly skeptical of this sort of project for the usual reasons--the evidence is often weak (and in the case of certain anthropological claims flawed, or wholly false), much of it is untestable or unfalsifiable, and so on. Dennett acknowledges some of the problems but soldiers on by claiming that there is still much work to be done, etc. I don’t mean to be unfair on this but somehow I expected more “meat" from the author of the triumphantly titled Consciousness Explained.

3. Turning to the modern development of religion, Dennett considers the “rational-choice" theories of Rodney Stark and his collaborators. Dennett’s discussion here is right on (in my view, Stark’s work is brilliant), but he will soon neglect some of Stark’s central insights--that “religions" differ enormously in what they offer to (and demand from) their present or potential adherents. These differences extend to the empirical status of their truth claims. Some are indeed vague and fluffy--permanently immune to potential falsification or indeed definitional coherence--but others are clear and hard.

4. It is in the second half of the book that the discussion goes off the rails, descending into a catalog of liberal anti-religious tropes and (what is far worse, for someone with the reputation of Dennett) philosophical and political mush. Dennett suggests that in the transition from primitive to modern religions, we observe a “fuzzification" (my term) of religious claims, insulating them from falsification--from “do this dance and the rain god will make it rain" to “this wine is (temporarily and in some mystical and empirically untestable way) Christ’s blood". But this is misleading at best. Take Mormonism (a “modern" religion if there ever was one). Now Mormonism makes certain falsifiable claims, about for example, the ancient history of North America, and these claims HAVE BEEN FALSIFIED. (There are, with good reason, no reputable Mormon archaeologists.) What really needs explaining by sociologists of religion is why Mormonism has been (and still is) one of the fastest growing religious movements DESPITE the fact that it has been falsified! It is disturbing that once Dennett wanders out of the familiar disciplines of philosophy, biology and anthropology he makes use of sources who are not taken seriously in their own fields (such as Elaine Pagels in Ancient Literature or Samuel Bowles in Economics). The hard headed rationalist who declared that he would evaluate religion objectively now lumps all religions and religious “fanatics" together--Islamic terrorists are rarely mentioned without also citing abortion clinic bombers, Hindu rioters and Jewish settlers, etc. Now, maybe it is useful that all religions and their “extremist" wings should be lumped together in this way (though I would claim that this obscures more than it clarifies) but in any case, this should be ARGUED. (And no, an evolutionary story concerning the rise of generic shamans, doesn’t qualify here.) In the same way, it would misleading for a Martian sociologist to study political philosophies solely by grouping together Nazis and democrats, communists and monarchists, etc. He might dangerously conclude, for example, that the causal root of World War Two was simply a difference in political ideologies, true as far as it goes, but obviously incomplete. In the muddled final chapters, Dennett indulges in some truly goofy liberal polemics such as his claim that if the September 11th terrorists had destroyed the Statue of Liberty (instead of murdering 3,000 innocent people) “I fear that we Americans would have been unable to keep ourselves from indulging in paroxysms of revenge of a sort the world has never seen before." (!) On the other extreme, here is a plea of almost touching naiveté from the third to last page of the book: “Instead of trying to destroy the madrassahs that close the minds of thousands of young Muslim boys, we should create alternative schools--for Muslim boys and girls . . . and let these schools compete openly with the madrassahs for clientele." Now despite the unintentional absurdist and tragic humor here--IF ONLY the governments in question, the mullahs, and the general populace would allow the effective establishment of such alternative schools--one should ask on what grounds, if any, Dennett believes that in such a free competition among memes (ideas), the “good" memes would win out? Hasn’t he already spent much of the earlier part of the book arguing how this hasn’t been (and might not be) the case? Dennett concludes (uncharacteristically for him) with thin gruel indeed: “So, in the end, my central policy recommendation is that we gently, firmly educate the people of the world, so that they can make truly informed choices about their lives." 339 pages of words by one of the leading “brights" and all he can finish with is that? ( )