Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

You don't have to be an atheist, an agnostic, or any type of believer to engage this book. That's the whole point, in fact. No matter what your belief (and they are all related to belief), subjecting it to scientific scrutiny can be fascinating and revealing, and especially so with this type of academic yet extremely accessible writing.

A beautiful combination of serious purpose and playful joy in the arguments comes through here, and it's infectious. What does NOT come through is any kind of anti-religious agenda, which is easy enough to come by elsewhere and does nothing to advance anyone's cause.

I read most books once or twice, and so I get them from the library instead of purchasing them, but this is a book to own. Dennett provides plenty of food for further thought here, and you will come back to his ideas again and again for just that purpose.

This book has a bit more scholarly depth than the other books by the so called "four horsemen" and requires more careful consideration than the other books simply because of the nature of Dennett's view on religion. He never comes across as attacking religion the way the other three famous recent writers do. Dawkins's book is just as good, but it may be for a different audience. This book has a more philosophical bent.

The purpose of the book is to examine the phenomenon of religion from a scientific perspective in order to see if it can be adequately studied by science. He argues that religion should not be off-limits to scientific inquiry, and I think most people would agree with that assessment. Even intense religious believers, if they truly believe, should think that science would have something to learn from their beliefs. One would think so, but this is often not the case. Believers are more often offended by the inquiry.

He discusses evolutionary theories for why religion may be, and how it possibly evolved into what it is today from the more simple beliefs of primitive peoples. His discussion also touches on morality and meaning of life as it relates to religion...or not.

He thinks that a large portion of religious belief is really just belief in belief, rather than actual belief in a god. This assessment is probably correct because of the stigma associated with nonbelief. He advocates more scientific study of religious belief to get to the truth of why it exists, and that can hardly be criticized.

This is a thoughtful book that should be considered by the religious as well as the nonreligious.

In the God Delusion, Dawkins makes an argument against religion and articulates what he believes to be scientific theories that prove god does not exist. In God Isn't Great, Hitchens gives what reads more like an indictment of organized religion throughout history and spends less time trying to disprove the existence of god (at least as scientifically as Dawkins).

In Breaking the Spell, Dennett spends most of his time articulating arguments that would explain the existence of religion. He does not really attempt to prove or disprove anything, including the existence of god. Rather he states repeatedly that his purpose is to "break the spell" of holding religion on a different level and keeping it immune from rational, scientific inquiry. As Mr. Woolard states before me, Mr. Dennett's central idea is that religion is a very important topic in the world today and is arguably the topic most in need of a rational, open, scientific discussion. This book is an attempt to make some of those rational arguments and foster discussion. Mr. Dennett concedes quite early in the book that that is his intent--to raise important questions and give possible answers that need research, not to provide definitive answers.

Regardless of the fact that definitive answers aren't going to be found in this book, it is worth the read by anyone interested in the subject. Mr. Dennett does a great job of "breaking the spell" and bringing some illuminating arguments regarding the existence of religion and its continued ability to thrive in human society. I would also recommend doing a search of "Daniel Dennett" on youtube for an introduction to some of the arguments he makes in this book.

This is a fantastic book, which really grapples with belief and why people believe what they do. Of the four major works on atheism out there (Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens) this was the most thought provoking and nuanced (although Dawkins was the most forceful and clearest.) Dennett's chapter on the strength of the belief that "a belief in God" is a good thing and therefore people choose to believe in God even if it makes no sense to them is just a magnificent insight, and useful in reading other books that argue for the existence of God. So many arguments are actually arguments about "Why it would be great if God did exist" rather than whether he actually does.

The text can get just a little dense at times, but generally it's pretty easy going for a book as philosophical and thoughtful as this.

This is the third book I've read from the Four Horsemen of atheism, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens. I read Hitchens immediately after this one.

Dennett takes a completely different view on religion. He considers it as a natural phenomenon. He steps carefully, but never shies away from discussing it as he sees it, that is, what does the evidence show us?

This is unlike Harris, who said, "Come on! Why are well still talking about this?" and Dawkins, who says, "These are the facts, if you don't believe me, you're stupid."

Dennett makes it very clear that he isn't out to abolish religion, just to understand it. He is also quite clear that if religion is useful and the analysis would remove that usefulness, then it would be a good argument for not continuing.

He asks how do we study religion scientifically? Should we study religion scientifically? Defense of why we should study it. What current theories tell us. Examples of how religion could have arisen. What it is. What it accomplishes. How it propagates and eventually, where to do from that point.

Of course, Dennett, as a philosopher doesn't really know and is really just giving an overview of what we know now and speculating on how these things might be related. He gives good reasons for all of his conclusion.

Some interesting statements:
- A shark and a dolphin look a lot alike but are completely different species with completely different origins. Islam and Buddhism looks a lot alike to an impartial observer (prayer, temples etc.. etc..) but might be a completely different thing with a completely different origin.

- B.F. Skinner, a behavioral psychologist in 1948 did an experiment where he stimulated pigeons with a random "click" and the drop of a food pellet. After exposure to this, pigeons began assuming that something they were doing was influencing the sound and drop of the pellet and began to do all kinds of weird movements and neck craning and dances etc... Skinner saw it as primitive religion (rain dances, sacrifices to gods etc...)

- "Belief in belief" - it isn't just about believing in God, it's also a lot about believing in the idea of belief. This seems related to the usefulness of religion.

Dennett examines religions from several viewpoints and compares them to well known ideas in genetic evolution:

- sweet tooth idea i.e. why humans' have a sweet tooth, maybe we like the "taste" or religion and it formed in a similar way.

- symbiont (the way we biologically have symbionts like bacteria in our gut, so may religion be a symbiont idea that duplicates itself and survives) - maybe religion evolved as an idea that was useful for us the same way the bacteria is

- sexual selection theory - are religious partners more stable and more sexy?

- economic theories - this is a group selection idea where religion makes a more stable group where the elite are like the top of a pyramid scheme. Economically for a group, and certain members in it, religion is good for their wallets

- Pearl theory - where religion is beautiful for its own sake
and finally

- religion may be a phenomenon or include phenomenon of human culture with no analog in genetic evolution

Overall, the book is well written, has quite a few excellent points and is well researched with many interesting twists and turns. You don't always know where Dennett is going with his analysis, but it is often interesting, even if you don't agree.

I did think that the book was unnecessarily top heavy with meme theory, which Dennett is a huge fan of. He makes his arguments for why he believes that they are worth discussing and several prominent scientists disagree with his use of memes.

I also thought that while the ideas were good, he could have used a more aggressive editor and it could have been written better with fewer words.

It was much more readable than Harris, who was dense and hard to read, but less readable than Dawkins who was very straight forward, well organized and clear. I found that it was far more subtle than the other two though and searched deeper into the phenomenon of religion.

If you want to enjoy a book on religion and God, read Hitchens, which was my favorite of the recent atheist books.