Daniel Dennett



February 19, 2006

'Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,' by Daniel C. Dennett

The God Genome

Review by LEON WIESELTIER

THE question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition, one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science to say so. For a sorry instance of present-day scientism, it would be hard to improve on Daniel C. Dennett's book. "Breaking the Spell" is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.

The orthodoxies of evolutionary psychology are all here, its tiresome way of roaming widely but never leaving its house, its legendary curiosity that somehow always discovers the same thing. The excited materialism of American society — I refer not to the American creed of shopping, according to which a person's qualities may be known by a person's brands, but more ominously to the adoption by American culture of biological, economic and technological ways of describing the purposes of human existence — abounds in Dennett's usefully uninhibited pages. And Dennett's book is also a document of the intellectual havoc of our infamous polarization, with its widespread and deeply damaging assumption that the most extreme statement of an idea is its most genuine statement. Dennett lives in a world in which you must believe in the grossest biologism or in the grossest theism, in a purely naturalistic understanding of religion or in intelligent design, in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in 19th-century England or in the omniscience of a white man with a long beard in the sky.

In his own opinion, Dennett is a hero. He is in the business of emancipation, and he reveres himself for it. "By asking for an accounting of the pros and cons of religion, I risk getting poked in the nose or worse," he declares, "and yet I persist." Giordano Bruno, with tenure at Tufts! He wonders whether religious people "will have the intellectual honesty and courage to read this book through." If you disagree with what Dennett says, it is because you fear what he says. Any opposition to his scientistic deflation of religion he triumphantly dismisses as "protectionism." But people who share Dennett's view of the world he calls "brights." Brights are not only intellectually better, they are also ethically better. Did you know that "brights have the lowest divorce rate in the United States, and born-again Christians the highest"? Dennett's own "sacred values" are "democracy, justice, life, love and truth." This rigs things nicely. If you refuse his "impeccably hardheaded and rational ontology," then your sacred values must be tyranny, injustice, death, hatred and falsehood. Dennett is the sort of rationalist who gives reason a bad name; and in a new era of American obscurantism, this is not helpful.

Dennett flatters himself that he is Hume's heir. Hume began "The Natural History of Religion," a short incendiary work that was published in 1757, with this remark: "As every enquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature." These words serve as the epigraph to Dennett's introduction to his own conception of "religion as a natural phenomenon." "Breaking the Spell" proposes to answer Hume's second question, not least as a way of circumventing Hume's first question. Unfortunately, Dennett gives a misleading impression of Hume's reflections on religion. He chooses not to reproduce the words that immediately follow those in which he has just basked: "Happily, the first question, which is the most important, admits of the most obvious, at least, the clearest, solution. The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion."

So was Hume not a bright? I do not mean to be pedantic. Hume deplored religion as a source of illusions and crimes, and renounced its consolations even as he was dying. His God was a very wan god. But his God was still a god; and so his theism is as true or false as any other theism. The truth of religion cannot be proved by showing that a skeptic was in his way a believer, or by any other appeal to authority. There is no intellectually honorable surrogate for rational argument. Dennett's misrepresentation of Hume (and his similar misrepresentation of William James and Thomas Nagel) is noteworthy, therefore, because it illustrates his complacent refusal to acknowledge the dense and vital relations between religion and reason, not only historically but also philosophically.

For Dennett, thinking historically absolves one of thinking philosophically. Is the theistic account of the cosmos true or false? Dennett, amazingly, does not care. "The goal of either proving or disproving God's existence," he concludes, is "not very important." It is history, not philosophy, that will break religion's spell. The story of religion's development will extirpate it. "In order to explain the hold that various religious ideas and practices have on people," he writes, "we need to understand the evolution of the human mind." What follows is, in brief, Dennett's natural history of religion. It begins with the elementary assertion that "everything that moves needs something like a mind, to keep it out of harm's way and help it find the good things." To this end, there arose in very ancient times the evolutionary adaptation that one researcher has called a "hyperactive agent detection device, or HADD." This cognitive skill taught us, or a very early version of us, that we live in a world of other minds — and taught us too well, because it instilled "the urge to treat things — especially frustrating things — as agents with beliefs and desires." This urge is "deeply rooted in human biology," and it results in a "fantasy-generation process" that left us "finding agency wherever anything puzzles or frightens us."

Eventually this animism issued in deities, who were simply the "agents who had access to all the strategic information" that we desperately lacked. "But what good to us is the gods' knowledge if we can't get it from them?" So eventually shamans arose who told us what we wanted to hear from the gods, and did so by means of hypnosis. (Our notion of God is the product of this "hypnotizability-enabler" in our brains, and it may even be that theism is owed to a "gene for heightened hypnotizability," which would be an acceptable version of a "God gene.") To secure these primitive constructs and comforts against oblivion, ritual was invented; and they were further secured by "acts of deceit" that propounded their "systematic invulnerability to disproof." Folk religions became organized religions. The "trade secrets" of the shamans were transmitted to "every priest and minister, every imam and rabbi." Slowly and steadily, these "trade secrets" were given the more comprehensive protection of "belief in belief," the idea that certain convictions are so significant that they must be insulated from the pressures of reason. "The belief that belief in God is so important that it must not be subjected to the risks of disconfirmation or serious criticism," Dennett instructs, "has led the devout to 'save' their beliefs by making them incomprehensible even to themselves." In sum, we were HADD. Here endeth the lesson.

There are a number of things that must be said about this story. The first is that it is only a story. It is not based, in any strict sense, on empirical research. Dennett is "extrapolating back to human prehistory with the aid of biological thinking," nothing more. "Breaking the Spell" is a fairy tale told by evolutionary biology. There is no scientific foundation for its scientistic narrative. Even Dennett admits as much: "I am not at all claiming that this is what science has established about religion. . . . We don't yet know." So all of Dennett's splashy allegiance to evidence and experiment and "generating further testable hypotheses" notwithstanding, what he has written is just an extravagant speculation based upon his hope for what is the case, a pious account of his own atheistic longing.

And why is Dennett so certain that the origins of a thing are the most illuminating features of a thing, or that a thing is forever as primitive as its origins? Has Dennett never seen a flower grow from the dust? Or is it the dust that he sees in a flower? "Breaking the Spell" is a long, hectoring exercise in unexamined originalism. In perhaps the most flattening passage in the book, Dennett surmises that "all our 'intrinsic' values started out as instrumental values," and that this conviction about the primacy of the instrumental is a solemn requirement of science. He remarks that the question cui bono? — who benefits? — "is even more central in evolutionary biology than in the law," and so we must seek the biological utilities of what might otherwise seem like "a gratuitous outlay." An anxiety about the reality of nonbiological meanings troubles Dennett's every page. But it is very hard to envisage the biological utilities of such gratuitous outlays as "The Embarkation for Cythera" and Fermat's theorem and the "Missa Solemnis."

It will be plain that Dennett's approach to religion is contrived to evade religion's substance. He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing mistake. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason. In this profound sense, Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.

Like many biological reductionists, Dennett is sure that he is not a biological reductionist. But the charge is proved as early as the fourth page of his book. Watch closely. "Like other animals," the confused passage begins, "we have built-in desires to reproduce and to do pretty much whatever it takes to achieve this goal." No confusion there, and no offense. It is incontrovertible that we are animals. The sentence continues: "But we also have creeds, and the ability to transcend our genetic imperatives." A sterling observation, and the beginning of humanism. And then more, in the same fine antideterministic vein: "This fact does make us different."

Then suddenly there is this: "But it is itself a biological fact, visible to natural science, and something that requires an explanation from natural science." As the ancient rabbis used to say, have your ears heard what your mouth has spoken? Dennett does not see that he has taken his humanism back. Why is our independence from biology a fact of biology? And if it is a fact of biology, then we are not independent of biology. If our creeds are an expression of our animality, if they require an explanation from natural science, then we have not transcended our genetic imperatives. The human difference, in Dennett's telling, is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind — a doctrine that may quite plausibly be called biological reductionism.

Dennett is unable to imagine a fact about us that is not a biological fact. His book is riddled with translations of emotions and ideas into evo-psychobabble. "It is in the genetic interests of parents . . . to inform — not misinform — their young, so it is efficient (and relatively safe) to trust one's parents." Grief for the death of a loved one is "a major task of cognitive updating: revising all our habits of thought to fit a world with one less familiar intentional system in it." "Marriage rituals and taboos against adultery, clothing and hairstyles, breath fresheners and pornography and condoms and H.I.V. and all the rest" have their "ancient but ongoing source" in the organism's need to thwart parasites. "The phenomenon of romantic love" may be adequately understood by reference to "the unruly marketplace of human mate-finding." And finally, the general rule: "Everything we value — from sugar and sex and money to music and love and religion — we value for reasons. Lying behind, and distinct from, our reasons are evolutionary reasons, free-floating rationales that have been endorsed by natural selection." Never mind the merits of materialism as an analysis of the world. As an attitude to life, it represents a collapse of wisdom. So steer clear of "we materialists" in your dark hours. They cannot fortify you, say, after the funeral of a familiar intentional system.

BEFORE there were naturalist superstitions, there were supernaturalist superstitions. The crudities of religious myth are plentiful, and a sickening amount of savagery has been perpetrated in their name. Yet the excesses of naturalism cannot hide behind the excesses of supernaturalism. Or more to the point, the excesses of naturalism cannot live without the excesses of supernaturalism. Dennett actually prefers folk religion to intellectual religion, because it is nearer to the instinctual mire that enchants him. The move "away from concrete anthropomorphism to ever more abstract and depersonalized concepts," or the increasing philosophical sophistication of religion over the centuries, he views only as "strategic belief-maintenance." He cannot conceive of a thoughtful believer. He writes often, and with great indignation, of religion's strictures against doubts and criticisms, when in fact the religious traditions are replete with doubts and criticisms. Dennett is unacquainted with the distinction between fideism and faith. Like many of the fundamentalists whom he despises, he is a literalist in matters of religion.

But why must we read literally in the realm of religion, when in so many other realms of human expression we read metaphorically, allegorically, symbolically, figuratively, analogically? We see kernels and husks everywhere. There are concepts in many of the fables of faith, philosophical propositions about the nature of the universe. They may be right or they may be wrong, but they are there. Dennett recognizes the uses of faith, but not its reasons. In the end, his repudiation of religion is a repudiation of philosophy, which is also an affair of belief in belief. What this shallow and self-congratulatory book establishes most conclusively is that there are many spells that need to be broken.

Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic.



THE GOD PROJECT

What the science of religion can’t prove.

by H. ALLEN ORR

Issue of 2006-04-03

Posted 2006-03-27

Scientists have championed an astonishing variety of views on religion, ranging from the outright hostile to the deeply devout. Even among evolutionary biologists, whose views might seem the most predictable, matters have been surprisingly complex. Richard Dawkins, the author of “The Selfish Gene” and many other popular books on evolution, has in recent years become something of a professional atheist, arguing that “faith is one of the world’s great evils.” The late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, on the other hand, argued in his book “Rocks of Ages” that science and religion can and should coexist. Science has its proper domain of activity, religion has its domain, and each must refrain from interfering with the other.

The religious opinions of scientists are, of course, a separate matter from a science of religion. And yet, whatever else religion may be, it’s something that happens in the real world in real time. So why not approach it as a natural process? Why not study it scientifically? This is the task that Daniel Dennett sets for himself in his ambitious new book, “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon” (Viking; $25.95). Dennett, a philosopher, is steeped in science, especially evolutionary biology, and he has written several books and articles with a Darwinian focus. In the most popular of them, “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” Dennett proclaimed that natural selection is “the single best idea anyone has ever had” and argued that Darwinism is a universal theory that helps to explain not only the deep history of life but the twists and turns of human cultural change. Given his enthusiasm for all things evolutionary, and given that he calls himself a “godless philosopher,” you might expect “Breaking the Spell” to be an extended exercise in debunking belief. It is not—at least, not ostensibly. Dennett’s approach to religion is reasonably respectful, though a certain bombast breaks through now and then. Writing for a general audience, Dennett insists that he wants to engage religious readers in a rational discussion, not turn them away.

“Breaking the Spell” ranges widely, perhaps too widely. It surveys the state of religion in contemporary America, considers whether believers are happier or more moral than nonbelievers, discusses the rise of modern nondenominational spirituality, and briefly reviews the purported philosophical proofs for the existence of God. But all these topics have been widely discussed, and Dennett has little new to say about them; his real contribution is an accessible account of what might be called the natural history of religion. (Religion, as he provisionally defines it, involves believing in, and seeking the approval of, a supernatural being.) “There was a time,” he writes, “when there was no religion on this planet, and now there is lots of it. Why?” Why did religion appear in the first place? And why did certain religions spread while others sank into obscurity?

To answer these questions, Dennett says, we must confront two spells. The first is the taboo against asking uncomfortable questions about religion. In his view, religion is simply too important to be spared hard questions. Indeed, he argues, religion is among the most powerful forces on earth and, as religiously inspired warfare and acts of terrorism remind us, it is not always benign. The second spell, in Dennett’s account, is one cast by religion itself. Do we risk dimming religion’s numinous glow by the very act of scientific analysis? Will we, out of what Dennett calls a “pathological excess of curiosity,” rob believers of the deepest and most important part of their lives? Dennett is sensitive to this concern and concedes the danger, but he concludes that the chances of undermining religious sensibility are slight. He assures his readers that one can approach religion as a natural phenomenon without, for example, prejudging the question of God’s existence. Indeed, it is entirely possible that a scientific analysis might reveal religious phenomena that can’t be explained by natural means. Dennett maintains that a scientific study of religion does not exclude the possibility that religious beliefs are true. Whether the results of such a study will provide any support for religion is, of course, another matter.

According to Dennett, the earliest stages of religion were likely characterized by speculations about supernatural or quasi-natural beings. These questions arose out of an aspect of human nature we take for granted: the recognition that the world contains not only other bodies but also other minds. We recognize, in other words, that the world includes “agents,” independent minds that possess their own sets of beliefs and desires. This recognition allows us a wide range of cognitive moves and countermoves presumably unavailable to most other species: “I know he thinks that I have a stone in my hand.” The ability to attribute agency is, Dennett says, almost surely an evolutionary adaptation. It is probably encoded genetically in our species (no one taught you that other minds populate the planet), and it plays a key role in everything from fighting (“He doesn’t know that I dropped the stone”) to seduction (“Would you like to see my cave paintings?”). But its appearance during evolution led to an unexpected possibility: attributing agency where no agent exists. Human beings are skilled at positing agents—whispering winds, turnip ghosts, and monsters under the bed—for which the evidence is less than overwhelming, and this tendency might explain why nearly all peoples talk about creatures like elves and goblins. As Dennett acknowledges, however, this tendency falls short of explaining full-blown religion. Elves are the stuff of superstition, not of belief systems attended by elaborate social strictures, rituals, and theologies.

Explaining the emergence of real religion requires a different kind of approach, and here things get complicated. A mind-boggling number of explanations, some biological and some economic, have been introduced over the past decade or so. One was championed by the evolutionary theorist David Sloan Wilson in his 2002 book, “Darwin’s Cathedral.” Wilson suggested that religion is a kind of adaptation that evolved by “multilevel selection.” Most biologists think that evolution is propelled by natural selection at one level only: among competing individuals. A polar bear that was whiter than its peers, say, could sneak up undetected on potential prey more often than darker bears could, and was thus likelier to survive and leave more progeny. Assuming that the difference between whiter and darker bears was due to a difference in genes, the genes for whiter bears would grow more common and those for darker bears less so.

According to Wilson, though, evolution sometimes involves natural selection among competing groups of individuals. Consider “predator inspection” in guppies. If a potential predator approaches a school of guppies, one or two fish may peel away from the group, inspect the intruder, and then (if their luck holds) return to the school, reporting on the danger. Predator inspection is paradoxical. Why would a guppy take on such a risky assignment? Why be an altruist? Group selection provides a possible answer. Predator inspection might evolve not because inspectors leave more progeny than non-inspectors within a group—traditional individual selection—but because groups that include inspectors survive better than groups that don’t. Although Wilson doesn’t think that all evolution involves group selection, he thinks that group selection plays a big enough role that a realistic theory of evolution must allow for both individual and group selection.

Applying this theory to our own species, Wilson argued that religion is an adaptation of human groups in the same way that the heart is an adaptation of human individuals. Religion is, in his account, a collection of beliefs and behaviors that brings people together, coördinates their activities, and, in the end, allows groups to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be impossible. If my group’s religion is better at this than yours, my group and its religion will spread and yours will recede. Wilson suggested, for instance, that the early Christian Church succeeded against all odds because its creed of selflessness provided its adherents with a sort of welfare state. Christians banded together, aiding each other through illness, famine, and war. The resulting biological edge, he thinks, played a part in the unexpected success of this once obscure mystery cult.

In “Breaking the Spell,” Dennett tentatively proposes another theory that, like Wilson’s, involves natural selection with a twist. Under Wilson’s theory, the beneficiaries of natural selection are groups of human beings. Under Dennett’s, the beneficiaries are religious “memes.” A meme, a term introduced by Richard Dawkins, is any idea or practice—any thought, song, or ritual—that can replicate from one brain to another. When you whistle a jingle from a commercial, it’s because the jingle meme has successfully replicated and now resides in a new brain, yours. According to Dennett, memes let us lift Darwinism from its historical base in biology to the realm of human culture. The meme, he says, may underlie cultural evolution in the same way the gene underlies biological evolution. Just as some genes grow more common and others less common, so some memes grow more common (“You’re fired!”) and others less common (“Is that your final answer?”). Dawkins often thought of memes as mental viruses, selfish parasites on human minds; Dennett, by contrast, emphasizes that they can be benign, or even good for their hosts.

Bringing the nascent science of “memetics” to bear on religion, Dennett goes on to argue that religious memes that encourage group solidarity might outcompete memes that are less adept at encouraging solidarity, especially when human survival depends on coöperation. His reasoning is that the success of a coöperative group is great advertising for that group’s memes. To take a secular example, liberal Western ideas like democracy and free markets might spread not because other nations are persuaded by principled arguments in favor of these ideas but because Western nations survive and prosper, which prompts others to emulate them. If you find it hard to believe that the beneficiaries of religion aren’t human beings but the memes they carry, Dennett asks you to consider what Christians themselves claim to value more than their lives: the Word. “Spreading the Word of God is their summum bonum, and if they are called to forgo having children and grandchildren for the sake of spreading the Word, that is the command they will try hard to obey.” Dennett also argues that you can help a religion grow even if you don’t believe in God. People can become conscious stewards of memes they happen to consider benevolent, and, in the case of religion, the result might be a bloodless “belief in belief.” People who aren’t sure about God may nonetheless be sure that religion is good for society and so encourage its spread.

Finally, Dennett describes a recent theory according to which the spread of religions reflects the action not of Charles Darwin’s natural selection but of Adam Smith’s invisible hand. As the rational-choice theorists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke argued in their book “Acts of Faith” (2000), human beings, when confronted with imperfect information, behave in a way that is generally rational. So if you believe (rightly or wrongly) that there is a God, it can be perfectly rational for you to engage in exchange with this well-heeled partner (even if the commodity you most desire can be delivered only post mortem). Stark and Finke are not, then, so much concerned with why people believe in God as with how believers act and why religious institutions spread. Their key claim is that churches mediate the complex exchanges between mortals and their gods. People go to church, in other words, for much the same reason they hire a real-estate agent: when something important is at stake in a complex transaction, it pays to get professional help.

This theory may explain, as a corollary, why a larger percentage of Americans attend church than do, say, Western Europeans. The reason, according to Stark and Finke, is that Americans enjoy a free market in religion. While we have more than a thousand denominations, Europeans often have centrally planned state religions that put barriers in the way of competition and provide little in the way of diverse religious products. “The American religious economy,” Stark and Finke conclude, “surpasses Adam Smith’s wildest dreams about the creative forces of a free market.”

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So what has the science of religion shown? Why did religion appear and why did certain religions spread while others vanished? Surprisingly, Dennett doesn’t claim to know the answers, and he picks no winners among the accounts he surveys, including his own. Scientists, he says, have provided us with a reasonable “family of proto-theories,” but we have little basis for choosing among its members. This conclusion, though disappointing, is, I think, correct. The incipient science of religion faces at least two problems. The first is that some of the theories offered so far, especially the evolutionary ones, invoke processes or entities that are controversial even outside the context of religion. Many evolutionists are skeptical about Wilson’s idea of group selection, for instance, even when considering guppies, much less Jonah and the whale. One reason is that natural selection at the individual level will typically overwhelm selection at the group level: because individuals are born and die faster than groups reproduce or go extinct, evolution will usually move in the direction preferred by individual selection. (The behavior of those guppies can also be explained without group selection, via a theory called reciprocal altruism—a version of “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”)

Similarly, many evolutionary biologists dismiss memes and memetics as little more than pseudoscientific wordplay. For one thing, the analogy between genes and memes is notoriously weak. Genes mutate rarely; memes mutate rapidly. Genes are digital (they’re made of DNA, which is made of four distinct chemicals); memes aren’t. Nor has memetics produced any persuasive explanations of previously unexplained phenomena. Though Dennett maintains that his theory requires only a modest, “sober” version of memes, and though he properly takes to task those enthusiasts who believe that they possess a robust science, his account of religion nonetheless turns on an entity that many scientists don’t believe in. The existence of a God meme is no better established than the existence of God.

Another problem with choosing among the existing theories is empirical, not theoretical. At the moment, we don’t have the data that might allow us to reject one theory and endorse another. The critical question is whether there is hope for progress. Here Dennett seems far too easy on his enterprise. “Breaking the Spell” is rife with claims about the testability of these new theories, and certainly each theory allows some predictions. Stark and Finke’s, in particular, has made, and stood up to, a number of them. But progress will require predictions that are testable in the real world and that also distinguish among the various theories. Just what predictions let us determine whether religion spread by selection among groups of human beings or by selection among the memes these groups happened to carry? Dennett doesn’t say, and it’s hard to imagine what the answer would look like. Near the end of his book, he merely asserts that “getting down to specifics and generating further testable hypotheses is work for the future.” But the origin and diffusion of religion, like the origin and diffusion of music, laughter, and xenophobia, reside in a largely irretrievable evolutionary past. We know virtually nothing about the religion, if any, practiced by our ancestors on the African savanna hundreds of thousands of years ago. It’s far from obvious that explaining unprovable beliefs with unprovable theories constitutes progress.

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Even if a science of religion could reach firm conclusions, what would it mean for religion itself? Exactly what would follow for the faithful? At one extreme, the Dawkinses of the world argue that a scientific accounting of the origin and evolution of religious memes should destroy belief. At the other, the Goulds argue that, because science and religion have separate provinces, no proper scientific finding can touch religion.

Neither of these extremes seems tenable. It would be naïve to deny that science can inform, and sometimes challenge, our view of religion. To take a trivial example, perhaps the earliest finding from the natural history of religion was that different peoples appeal to different gods. Any honest Christian or Jew must admit that, had he been born half a world away, he’d be an honest Hindu or Buddhist. This finding suggests at least some adjustment to more innocent views of the inevitability of one’s faith. But believers often seem happy to make these sorts of adjustments and remain perfectly faithful. For some people, the spell cast by religion seems to have less to do with the particular claims made by a particular tradition than with larger metaphysical claims: the universe has a purpose, God exists, or life is sacred. So the more serious question is whether a science of religion—indeed, whether science in general—can undermine these sorts of beliefs.

Science can certainly undermine particular factual claims made by religion (the universe was created in six days), but it’s far less clear that it can challenge religion’s general metaphysical claims (the universe has a purpose). To insist on this distinction is to recognize what it means for something to be a metaphysical, not a physical, claim. What experiment could prove that the universe has no purpose? To suppose that a kind of physics can demolish a kind of metaphysics is to commit what philosophers call a category mistake. Dennett is right to emphasize that his scientific analysis doesn’t require us to prejudge religion’s metaphysical claims, but that’s only half the story. It doesn’t let us post-judge them, either.

This point is connected to a distinction often made by philosophers of science between “methodological naturalism” (science is a set of approaches to the world in which only naturalistic explanations may be considered) and “metaphysical naturalism” (science describes the ultimate state or meaning of the world). As many philosophers and scientists argue, the first approach doesn’t justify the second. Science, they claim, is not in the business of issuing position papers on metaphysics.

It’s remarkably hard to tell if Dennett would agree with that conclusion. Indeed, this is one of the more frustrating aspects of “Breaking the Spell.” To the religious reader, after all, this is probably the only issue that matters. Dennett’s relative neglect of it is particularly surprising given that some of the scholars he discusses are so unequivocal on the subject. Stark and Finke, for example, state that any conclusion about whether religion is true or false is “beyond science.” They simply hope to study “the relationship between human beings and what they experience as divine,” and science, they say, can “examine any aspect of that relationship except its authenticity.”

Dennett’s apparent reluctance to say what can, and cannot, follow logically from a science of religion would seem to be more than mere oversight. Although Dennett takes great pains early in his book to assure his readers that they needn’t question the validity of religion to join in his analysis, it’s clear that he hopes they will ultimately render a judgment. And it’s equally clear what he hopes that judgment will be. (“Many readers . . . will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that—that’s what I am and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”)

None of this is to say that Dennett’s preferred outcome is wrong. Religious beliefs, including those abstract ones having little relation to any particular tradition, may well be mistaken. But it seems clear that any such conclusion must come from someplace other than science. Of course, even if a line can be drawn between physics and metaphysics, it wouldn’t make all our difficulties disappear. Religion is much more than a collection of transcendental and untestable assertions. It’s also a potent social and political force and, like any such force, it is sometimes prone to excess. The result is the usual roster of ills: intolerance, fanaticism, and, yes, terrorism. But it seems doubtful that solutions to these problems will emerge from anyone’s laboratory.



Supernatural selection

A Tufts philosopher and famed Darwinist wants us to study religion like any other human behavior - as a 'natural phenomenon.' Scientists, meanwhile, may be on the way to explaining how, and why, we got religion.

By Drake Bennett  |  January 29, 2006

WHEN THE philosopher Daniel Dennett was a teenager, he played the backwoods holy man Elijah in his prep school's production of ''Inherit the Wind." ''Bearded, wild-haired, dressed in a tattered burlap smock," Elijah comes down from the hills, on the eve of Bert Cates's trial for teaching evolution, to sell Bibles out of an old vegetable crate. ''Are you an evolutionist? An infidel? A sinner?" Elijah asks an out-of-town newspaperman.

Until he went to graduate school, Dennett claims, the play, famously based on the 1925 Scopes ''monkey trial," was the source of most of what he knew about evolution and natural selection. Today Dennett has a prophet's beard, one corner of which he will sometimes fold into his mouth for a ruminative chew, and he is one of Darwinian theory's foremost promoters. He sees it not just as an explanation for the origin of species, but for the fundamental whys and hows of human habits, beliefs, thinking, and desires. The logic of evolution, Dennett wrote in his 1995 book ''Darwin's Dangerous Idea," is a ''universal acid," it ''eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized worldview."

A month ago, when federal Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design could not be taught in a Pennsylvania school district, scientists and secularists celebrated the decision as a victory not only for the separation of church and state, but of church and science. A few editorials quoted Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould's argument that science, concerned as it is with facts, and religion, concerned with human purposes and values, were ''Non-Overlapping Magisteria," separate sources of authority that could exist in ''respectful noninterference." Judge Jones himself took pains to emphasize that the theory of evolution ''in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator."

Daniel Dennett, however, is no great believer in respectful noninterference, and in his new book, ''Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" (Viking), he argues vehemently against it. Religion, Dennett says, is human behavior, and there are branches of science to study human behavior. ''Whether or not [Gould] was right," Dennett told me in his office at Tufts University, where he is director of the Center for Cognitive Studies, ''and I don't think he was, I'm not making a claim that he would disagree with. I'm not saying that science should do what religion does. I'm saying science should study what religion does."

The argument that religion can be explained as a natural rather than a supernatural phenomenon is not new. The Scottish philosopher David Hume set himself a similar task over 250 years ago. Marx and Freud had their own explanations. Over the years, scholars have enlisted everything from rational choice theory to brain scans in their efforts to trace the origins of faith.

Dennett himself is not a researcher, nor is his book a sustained argument for any one theory. His primary role, as he sees it, is to be as much a standard-bearer as a thinker, introducing the world to the work of scholars who, in sometimes conflicting ways, are setting out to explain the workings of belief.

Dennett opens his book by comparing religion to a parasite. The lancet fluke is a microorganism that, as part of its unlikely life cycle, lodges in the brain of an ant, turning it into a sort of ant zombie that every night crawls to the top of a blade of grass and waits to get eaten by a grazing cow or sheep, in whose liver the lancet fluke can propagate. Dennett is being provocative, but he is also making a point: Certain religious behaviors-abstinence, for example, or martyrdom, or ritually sacrificing livestock in the middle of a famine-can look decidedly, almost inexplicably, irrational both to nonbelievers and behavioral scientists, so much so that it might be worth asking who or what is actually benefiting from them.

Until a few decades ago, the assumption in much social science research was that religion was the product of ignorance: Unfamiliar with the germ theory, primitive tribes believed that vengeful spirits brought disease; lacking an education, the farmboy believed in the virgin birth. In a world of increasing technological and educational advancement, the influential anthropologist Anthony Wallace wrote in 1966, ''the evolutionary future of religion is extinction. Belief in supernatural beings and in supernatural forces that affect nature without obeying nature's laws will erode and become only an interesting historical memory."

In the intervening years, of course, religion has not gone extinct-by most measures the United States is a more religious country than it was 40 years ago-and social scientists have started to take another look at it. Dennett's new book is concerned primarily with this more recent work, in which a new generation of researchers have begun to suggest that religion may be neither a matter of revealed truth nor willed ignorance, but something a bit more complicated.

Several of these new theories enlist Darwin. David Sloan Wilson, a professor of anthropology and biology at Binghamton University, is a leader of the ''functionalist" school. His argument, which borrows from the early French sociologist Emile Durkheim, is simple: Religion evolved because it conferred benefits on believers. In terms of natural selection, human groups that formed religions tended to outcompete those that didn't, surviving longer and propagating more. Calvinism brought social cohesion to 16th-century Geneva, the ''water temple" system on Bali coordinates the island's complex irrigation scheme.

''There are practical benefits that are shortchanged when most people think about religion," Wilson told me. In a way, ''religion is basically providing the kinds of services we always associate with a government."

Rodney Stark, a sociologist at Baylor University, has for years been applying basic economic theory to religious behavior. Wilson describes religion as an evolved behavior, often followed reflexively. For Stark, on the other hand, ''We're thinking beings. People think about these things in the same way we think about getting married, or buying cars." People join and remain in religious communities because for them the benefits-the sense of purpose, support and camaraderie-outweigh the costs. In his model, churches are like corporations, marketing a suite of services and competing for customers. An evolutionary explanation for religion, he says, ''isn't any more necessary than finding a gene for algebra."

But there's a difference between deciding to believe something and actually believing it. A starving person could no doubt make herself feel better by believing she's just eaten, the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has pointed out, but it's probably not something she can convince herself of for long. Plus, as Pinker recently put it to me, cost-benefit analyses involving religion would have to factor in, as a benefit, some form of spiritual satisfaction, but ''the fact that people get some sort of spiritual payoff is exactly the phenomenon we need to explain" in the first place.

As for Wilson, Dennett notes that his theories ''have found very little support." Most evolutionary biologists are suspicious of Wilson's idea of ''group selection," arguing that it makes more sense to understand human and animal behavior in terms of individuals, or, better yet, individual genes, competing for reproductive success-sometimes in a way that benefits the group, sometimes not. By this logic, one should look at the value of religion for the individual. Nicholas Humphrey, a psychologist at the London School of Economics, has suggested that religious conviction might have a placebo effect for believers, helping them fight off diseases to which they might otherwise succumb.

Skeptics of both functionalist and economic explanations point out that neither has much to say about the spiritual aspects of the world's religions. Nearly all religions, for example, have some idea of a soul, and, to some extent, a faith in supernatural beings. But it's unclear what evolutionary purpose these beliefs serve. Plus, as Scott Atran, a cognitive anthropologist and psychologist with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, in Paris, argues, ''Christianity sometimes served the elites, sometimes the downtrodden, depending on what time period and what country. Sometimes it stimulates creativity, sometimes it fosters ignorance." Christianity, in other words, hasn't had any single ''function" over the course of its history.

Atran is one of the leading thinkers putting forward an alternate theory, in which religion is, as Yale psychologist Paul Bloom puts it, ''an accidental byproduct of stuff that is part of human nature." Religion, in this account, didn't arise because it served any purpose, but because the human brain is amenable to certain supernatural ideas. As social animals, we evolved to be acutely sensitive to the intentions of others, so much so that we are prone to see intention and agency where it doesn't exist-in things that go bump in the night or the way tea leaves settle. This makes a certain evolutionary sense: In a prehistoric, pre-scientific society, not paying attention to a rival's (or, for that matter, a mate's) state of mind carried a high cost. Believing in ghosts carried little.

Work by Bloom and other cognitive scientists has emphasized the human preference for intentional rather than merely mechanical explanations. Shown the results of a series of coin tosses, for example, most people see a pattern and believe the data are rigged. Research by the psychologists Deborah Kelemen, of Boston University, and Margaret Evans, of the University of Michigan, suggest that children, no matter what kind of explanation their parents provide them, tend to intuit some being who has created aspects of the world for certain purposes: clouds are ''for raining," mountains ''for climbing," lions ''for to go in the zoo."

If the proponents of the byproduct explanation are right, belief in supernatural beings and forces is likely to persist even in the face of countervailing information. As Bloom wrote in an article last month in The Atlantic Monthly, for most people the problem with natural selection, for example, is not simply that it conflicts with the text of the Bible, but ''that it makes no intuitive sense."

''It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it," he wrote, ''but it will never feel right to us. When we see a complex structure, we see it as the product of beliefs and goals and desires. Our social mode of understanding leaves it difficult for us to make sense of it any other way."

As for Dennett, he thinks the effort to identify any one cause for religion may be reductive. In ''Breaking the Spell" he takes a stab at reconciling rational and pre-rational, individual and group explanations under the umbrella of ''meme" theory. Memes, an invention of the British biologist Richard Dawkins, are gene-like units of culture that proliferate, virus-like, using human minds as carriers: a preference for a certain brand of sneakers, say, or the opening bars of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, or, in Dennett's version, an article of faith like the belief in reincarnation. Dennett is one of the idea's few serious proponents.

Ultimately, though, Dennett just wants people to question religion; he's less concerned with how they do it. ''There are a lot of ill-explored claims made on behalf of religion," he told me. ''Is religion good for your health? The evidence there seems to be yes. Does religion make you more moral? The evidence there seems to be no. The prison population of the United States is not statistically different in its religious makeup from the larger population." (This last claim is also in his book, though goes un-footnoted.)

Dennett, an outspoken atheist, insists in conversation that he is ''genuinely agnostic, not lip-service agnostic, about whether the world would be a better place without religion than it is." Yet his feelings about religion are not hard to determine. ''History gives us many examples of large crowds of deluded people egging one another on down the primrose path to perdition," he writes.

David Sloan Wilson has talked with Dennett at length about evolution and human behavior. ''I have the highest respect for Dan," he says. But Dennett's condescension toward religion-it can seem as if he's a Victorian explorer who has stumbled upon a tribe of self-mutilating animist cannibals-troubles Wilson. ''What evolutionist would make a value statement about the organism that they study, even if it's a horrible organism like the AIDS virus or the great white shark?" To do so distorts science into polemic, and runs the risk of making Dennett sound less like a philosopher and more like a prophet.



Dissecting God

Philosopher Daniel Dennett argues that America is drowning in religion -- and that faith needs to be analyzed with the tools of science.

By Gordy Slack

Feb. 08, 2006 | Daniel C. Dennett is a big man with a big appetite for intellectual fights. A celebrated philosophy professor and the director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, he is best known for his arguments that human consciousness and free will boil down to physical processes. When theologians, New Agers and other philosophers and scientists complain about scientific reductionism -- the effort to reduce everything, including human behavior and spirituality, to material properties -- they are complaining about Dennett. To which he retorts: "'Reductionism' has become a meaningless code word for 'I don't like that theory.'"

In 1995, with "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," Dennett provoked a firestorm of controversy for insisting that Darwin's ideas are a "universal acid" that "eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view." Dennett exposed his own worldview in 2003, when he outed himself in the New York Times as a "bright," a fancy new term for atheist. "We brights don't believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny -- or God," he wrote.

In his new book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," Dennett provokes readers to examine religion as a product of evolution rather than a transcendental force. Research into religion, he says, should be "based on empirical studies with all the controls in place, just like in medicine," and draw from biology, psychology, history and art. "I appreciate that many readers will be profoundly distrustful of the tack I am taking here," he writes. "They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that -- that's what I am, and that's exactly what I am trying to do."

In person, Dennett is imposing. He is tall, bald and barrel-chested, with a great white beard not unlike Darwin's, although Dennett's beard is better trimmed. He spoke to Salon at the Stardust Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, where he was a featured speaker at a meeting of skeptics. For all his professorial seriousness, Dennett is given to geyserlike bursts of enthusiasm that transform him from Leo Tolstoy to Kris Kringle.

What spell are you trying to break?

I'm proposing we break the spell that creates an invisible moat around religion, the one that says, "Science stay away. Don't try to study religion." But if we don't understand religion, we're going to miss our chance to improve the world in the 21st century. Just about every major problem we have interacts with religion: the environment, injustice, discrimination, terrible economic imbalances and potential genocide. In our own country, the religious attitudes of people are clearly interfering with the political discussion. So if we fail to understand why religions have the effects they do on people, we will screw up our efforts to solve these problems.

Why do you say religion interacts with the world's major problems?

Because people decide what to do, and whom to listen to, and what to take seriously, partly on the basis of their religious convictions and practices. So things that might seem reasonable and attractive solutions may not be remotely feasible without a great deal of carefully guided presentation to those who must live with the policies.

Some people would argue that by dissecting religion you are destroying it.

Yes, some people are afraid that if you look too closely you'll break the spell of religion and make it impossible for people to gain whatever benefits come from it. But I've considered the worst-case scenarios and just don't find this to be a persuasive argument. The cat is out of the bag. The confrontation between religious faith and the modern scientific world is underway and it's not going to stop. The question is, Are we going to carefully and conscientiously study the phenomena or close our eyes and put our fingers in our ears and just go on a roller-coaster ride?

Studying religious faith sounds as futile as studying love. You either feel it or you don't.

The relationship that many people have with religion is basically a kind of love. This has to be appreciated and understood and not denied or belittled. One doesn't interfere with a love relationship lightly. But that doesn't mean that it can't be studied closely. Certainly the wave of research on sex, by Kinsey and Masters and Johnson, was deeply upsetting to many people, who thought it was a bizarre intrusion that should never have been made. In retrospect, though, we learned a lot that has helped us. Sex is as wonderful as ever, or maybe even better, because we've dispelled a lot of really painful and harmful myths.

Many people say they experience God deep within themselves. There's nothing you could say that would convince them otherwise.

The question is whether you'd want to. There's no policy that I've recommended that everybody should be utterly disillusioned about everything. Look at Santa Claus. Am I in favor of banishing him? Of course not. But some illusions really do hurt people, either the people holding them or others. If you have a friend who thinks she is talking to her dear departed husband, and she is paying some "trance channeler" her life savings for this illusion, I think we want to say, "No, you're being defrauded." Even if the illusion does give her comfort.

Are you comparing religious faith to a belief in channelers?

Well, right now we say, "Hands off all that is really religious." But what's that? Where do we draw the line between the scam religions and the real ones? I'm not playing philosopher's tricks and asking for impossible definitions. I'm quite prepared for this to be a political process, where we work out the best way to distinguish them. But if you want to reserve for special treatment some particular practices and traditions, you're going to have to say what they are and why they deserve such special treatment.

Don't you think people's faith in God is more important than their faith in Santa Claus?

Yes, that's why the issue of how, and even whether, to approach such questions must be very carefully addressed. I decided that it was important to explore people's faith scientifically, that the risks we run if we don't are much more pressing than the risks we run if we do.

Are you saying a person is better served by relinquishing his faith in search of a more rational truth about the universe?

That's a very good question and I don't claim to have the answer yet. That's why we have to do the research. Then we'll have a good chance of knowing whether people are better served by reason or faith.

If society doesn't get its moral foundation from religion, where will that foundation come from? What will keep us being good to each other, if not rules laid down by God?

Rules that we lay down ourselves. We've been doing this for centuries. There've been revisions about what counts as a sin in God's eyes. It has changed quite a bit since the days of the Old Testament. It has changed because people thought about it hard and could no longer stomach some of the old rules and practices and changed their minds. It became politically obvious that something had to give, and so it has, and will continue to do so. Now we can continue to expand the circle and get more people involved, and do it in a less disingenuous way by excising the myth about how this is God's law. It is our law.

The political consequences of undermining faith are monumental, spurring riots and killings around the world. Are you -- is science -- willing to take responsibility for these deadly outcomes?

We cannot let any group, however devout, blackmail us into silence by their expressions of hurt feelings whenever they feel that we are getting close to the truth. That is what con artists do when their marks begin to get suspicious, and that is what children do when they can't have their way, and it should be beneath the dignity of any religious group to play that card. The responsibility of science is to safeguard the well-being of those it studies and to tell the truth. If people insist on taking themselves out of the arena of reasonable political discourse and mutual examination, they forfeit their right to be heard. There is no excuse for deliberately insulting anybody, but people who insist on putting their sensibilities on a hair trigger demonstrate that they prefer pity to respect.

Does it worry you that American politics under the current administration have become infused with religion?

It does. The separation of church and state is very important and is not as uncontroversial today in the United States as it should be. Around the world we see clear cases of how seriously bad theocracies are. So we certainly have to take steps to preserve the secular foundation of this country. I put my faith in secular, free societies and democracies like the United States.

You have "faith"?

By faith, I don't mean an irrational belief. I've got to leap and secular democracy is the lifeboat I leap to. Somebody else may think, "If I have to choose between my religion and country," I choose religion. We're beseeching people in Iraq not to do that. But what about at home? It's all right to have an allegiance to a religion, but is your allegiance to democracy and a secular state more important than your allegiance to your religion? If the answer is no, then I don't want you in office. I think that's a pretty reasonable test.

How does President Bush do on that test?

His religiosity seems quite sincere, but it may be more of a political display than a real commitment. I hope he's smarter than he seems! I'd rather he be faking than be deadly earnest about his conviction that God tells him what to do.

What evidence do we have of an evolutionary basis for religion?

Nothing persists in the living world without constant renewal. Religions depend on human brains and bodies just as much as language and music and art do. It has been designed by evolution and human religion tinkerers to thrive in the human environment.

Why does religion have such a powerful hold on us?

Our fundamental instinct -- and this really is in our genes -- is that whenever something surprising and novel happens, we say, "Who's there? What do you want?" That's a very good response to have because maybe what that somebody wants is you. Always being on the lookout is a sort of built-in alarm system that flavors everything we do.

In every culture, people are inclined to personify the forces of nature. What do the weather gods want? What does the sun god want? Out of this bias, built into our nervous systems, comes a machine of sorts for generating ghosts and phantoms and gods and goddesses and goblins and imps. That's not religion, that's superstition. But I think that's part of the biological underpinning of religion.

Are you saying God is a product of our biology?

I'm saying that if God does not exist, many of us would believe in him anyway because of the way we have evolved, both genetically and culturally.

How does evolution contradict the idea of God as creator?

Probably as far back as Homo habilus, there was this sense that it takes a big fancy thing to make a less fancy thing. You never get a horseshoe making a blacksmith, never a pot making a potter, always the other way around. The trickle-down-from-on-high theory of creation is extremely natural. It's a way of seeing the world that is probably built right into our genes.

Then along comes Darwin, who simply shows how all of that design work, all of that creation, can be done by a process that has no purpose, no intelligence and no foresight. It is a very strange inversion of reasoning and it's very upsetting to people to see that something that seems so obvious is being denied. Darwin does away with the reason for believing in a divine creator. This doesn't prove there is no divine creator, but if there is one, it -- he -- need not have gone to all that trouble because natural selection on its own would have created all the biological diversity we see.

Some neuroscientists have isolated spiritual impulses, a belief in God, in the brain's limbic system, the seat of emotions. Do you agree with them?

I think the pioneering work on this is, inevitably, too simple to be true. But there may be something to it. In one sense it is obvious. Everything we believe -- like the fact that the Earth goes around the sun and that Sacramento is the capital of California -- has its signature in the brain. So of course if you believe in God, your brain will be somewhat differently arranged -- at the microscopic level! -- than if you don't believe in God. That just follows from the fact that the mind is what the brain does.

Tell us the story from your new book about the ant and the blade of grass.

Suppose you go out in the meadow and you see this ant climbing up a blade of grass and if it falls it climbs again. It's devoting a tremendous amount of energy and persistence to climbing up this blade of grass. What's in it for the ant? Nothing. It's not looking for a mate or showing off or looking for food. Its brain has been invaded by a tiny parasitic worm, a lancet fluke, which has to get into the belly of a sheep or a cow in order to continue its life cycle. It has commandeered the brain of this ant and it's driving it up the blade of grass like an all-terrain vehicle. That's how this tiny lancet fluke does its evolutionary work.

Is religion, then, like a lancet fluke?

The question is, Does anything like that happen to us? The answer is, Well, yes. Not with actual brain worms but with ideas. An idea takes over our brain and gets that person to devote his life to the furtherance of that idea, even at the cost of their own genetics. People forgo having kids, risk their lives, devote their whole lives to the furtherance of an idea, rather than doing what every other species on the planet does -- make more children and grandchildren.

The capacity of human beings to devote their energy, time, safety and health to the stewardship of an idea is itself a biological phenomenon. That's what distinguishes us from all the other species. We're the only species that can set aside our genetic imperatives and say, "That's not that important, I've got more important things in mind." That uniquely human perspective, unknown by any other species, is a gift of cultural selection.

In an interview with Alan Alda, you said the key to being happy is to find something larger than yourself and work for it. What are you working for?

Truth and freedom. These are terrible times and our ability to destroy the planet has never been greater. But if we can educate each other, listen to each other and learn more about each other -- and as long as we can preserve the free-society traditions of informed political discussions -- I think we have some hope.

-- By Gordy Slack



January 22, 2006

Questions for Daniel C. Dennett

The Nonbeliever

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

Q: How could you, as a longtime professor of philosophy at Tufts University, write a book that promotes the idea that religious devotion is a function of biology? Why would you hold a scientist's microscope to something as intangible as belief?

I don't know about you, but I find St. Paul's and St. Peter's pretty physical.

But your new book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," is not about cathedrals. It's about religious belief, which cannot be dissected in a lab as if it were a disease.

That itself is a scientific claim, and I think it is false. Belief can be explained in much the way that cancer can. I think the time has come to shed our taboo that says, "Oh, let's just tiptoe by this, we don't have to study this." People think they know a lot about religion. But they don't know.

So what can you tell us about God?

Certainly the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world - that's a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Yet faith, by definition, means believing in something whose existence cannot be proved scientifically. If we knew for sure that God existed, it would not require a leap of faith to believe in him.

Isn't it interesting that you want to take that leap? Why do you want to take that leap? Why does our craving for God persist? It may be that we need it for something. It may be that we don't need it, and it is left over from something that we used to be. There are lots of biological possibilities.

Didn't religion spring up in its earliest forms in connection with the weather, the desire to make sense of rain and lightning?

We have a built-in, very potent hair-trigger tendency to find agency in things that are not agents, like snow falling off the roof.

There was so much infant mortality in the past, which must have played a large role in encouraging people to believe in an afterlife.

When a person dies, we can't just turn that off. We go on thinking about that person as if that person were still alive. Our inability to turn off our people-seer and our people-hearer naturally turns into our hallucinations of ghosts, our sense that they are still with us.

But they are still with us, through the process of memory.

These aren't just memories.

I take it you do not subscribe to the idea of an everlasting soul, which is part of almost every religion.

Ugh. I certainly don't believe in the soul as an enduring entity. Our brains are made of neurons, and nothing else. Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems. You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.

That strikes me as a very reductive and uninteresting approach to religious feeling.

Love can be studied scientifically, too.

But what's the point of that? Wouldn't it be more worthwhile to spend your time and research money looking for a cure for AIDS?

How about if we study hatred and fear? Don't you think that would be worthwhile?

Traditionally, evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould insisted on keeping a separation between hard science and less knowable realms like religion.

He was the evolutionist laureate of the U.S., and everybody got their Darwin from Steve. The trouble was he gave a rather biased view of evolution. He called me a Darwinian fundamentalist.

Which I imagine was his idea of a put-down, since he thought evolutionists should not apply their theories to religion.

Churches make a great show about the creed, but they don't really care. A lot of the evangelicals don't really care what you believe as long as you say the right thing and do the right thing and put a lot of money in the collection box.

I take it you are not a churchgoer.

No, not really. Sometimes I go to church for the music.

Yes, the church gave us Bach, in addition to some fairly spectacular architecture and painting.

Churches have given us great treasures. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.



Daniel Dennett

Daniel Clement Dennett (born March 28, 1942) is a prominent American philosopher. Dennett's research centers on philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

Biography

Daniel Dennett attended Phillips Exeter Academy then received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) in 1963. In 1965, he received his D.Phil. in philosophy from University of Oxford (Oxford, England), where he studied under the famed philosopher Gilbert Ryle. Dennett is currently (August 2005) the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies (with Ray Jackendoff) at Tufts University (Medford, MA).

Daniel Dennett in Tahiti in 1984

He gave the John Locke Lectures at the University of Oxford in 1983, the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide, Australia, in 1985, and the Tanner Lecture at Michigan in 1986, among many others. In 2001 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize and gave the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris. Tufts is the only university in the United States to have two former Jean Nicod Prize Winners on its faculty (the other being Ray Jackendoff). He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He was the co-founder (1985) and co-director of the Curricular Software Studio at Tufts University, and has helped to design museum exhibits on computers for the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Science in Boston, and the Computer Museum in Boston. He is also an avid sailor.

Dennett is the author of several major books on evolution and consciousness. He is a leading proponent of the theory known by some as Neural Darwinism (see also greedy reductionism). Dennett is also well known for his argument against qualia; he claims that the concept is so confused that it cannot be put to any use or understood in any non-contradictory way, and therefore does not constitute a valid refutation of physicalism. This argument was presented most comprehensively in his book Consciousness Explained.

Philosophical Views

Dennett has remarked in several places (such as "Self-portrait", in Brainchildren) that his overall philosophical project has remained largely the same since his time at Oxford. He is primarily concerned with providing a philosophy of mind which is grounded in and fruitful to empirical research. In his original dissertation, Content and Consciousness, he broke up the problem of explaining the mind into the need for a theory of content and for a theory of consciousness. His approach to this project has also stayed true to this distinction. Just as Content and Consciousness has a bipartite structure, he similarly divided Brainstorms into two sections. He would later collect several essays on content in The Intentional Stance and synthesize his views on consciousness into a unified theory in Consciousness Explained. These volumes respectively form the most extensive development of his views, and he frequently refers back to them in subsequent writings.

While it is abundantly clear that Dennett does not subscribe to a number of categories (such as Cartesian materialism and Dualism), it is less clear which ones he fits into. As Dennett discussed:

[Others] note that my 'avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters' often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless--a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors

— Daniel Dennett, The Message is: There is no Medium

Dennett will self-identify with a few terms. In Consciousness Explained, he admits "I am a sort of 'teleofunctionalist', of course, perhaps the original teleofunctionalist'". He goes on to say, "I am ready to come out of the closet as a sort of verificationalist".

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett's interest in the ability of evolution to explain some of the content-producing features of consciousness is already apparent, and this has since become an integral part of his program. Much of his work in the 1990s has been concerned with fleshing out his previous ideas by addressing the same topics from an evolutionary standpoint, from what distinguishes human minds from animal minds (Kinds of Minds), to how free will is compatible with a naturalist view of the world (Freedom Evolves). His most recent book, Breaking the Spell, is an attempt to subject religious belief to the same treatment, explaining possible evolutionary reasons for the phenomenon of religious groups.

Role in Evolutionary Debate

Dennett's views on evolution are identified as being strongly adaptationist, in line with the views of zoologist Richard Dawkins. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennett showed himself even more willing than Dawkins to defend adaptationism in print, devoting an entire chapter to a criticism of the views of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. This has led to some backlash from Gould and his supporters, who allege that Dennett overstated his claims and misrepresented Gould's. [1]

Partial bibliography

• Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (MIT Press 1981) (ISBN 0262540371)

• Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting (MIT Press 1984) - on free will and determinism (ISBN 0262040778)

• The Mind's I (Bantam, Reissue edition 1985, with Douglas Hofstadter) (ISBN 0553345842)

• Content and Consciousness (Routledge & Kegan Paul Books Ltd; 2nd ed edition January 1986) (ISBN 0710208464)

• The Intentional Stance (MIT Press; reprint edition 1989) (ISBN 0262540533)

• Consciousness Explained (Back Bay Books 1992) (ISBN 0316180661)

• Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition 1996) (ISBN 068482471X)

• Kinds of Minds: Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (Basic Books 1997) (ISBN 0465073514)

• Brainchildren: Essays on Designing Minds (Representation and Mind) (MIT Press 1998) (ISBN 0262041669) - A Collection of Essays 1984-1996

• Freedom Evolves (Viking Press 2003) (ISBN 0670031860)

• Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness (Jean Nicod Lectures) (Bradford Books 2005) (ISBN 0262042258)

• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Penguin Group 2006) (ISBN 067003472X)

Texts on Dennett

• "Dennett: Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception" Matthew Elton (Polity Press, 2003) (ISBN 0745621171)

• Daniel Dennett edited by Andrew Brook and Don Ross (Cambridge University Press 2000) (ISBN 0521008646)

• Dennett's Philosophy: A Comprehensive Assessment edited by Don Ross, Andrew Brook and David Thompson (MIT Press 2000) (ISBN 0262182009)

• Dennett, among others, is discussed in John Brockman's The Third Culture.

• On Dennett John Symons (Wadsworth Publishing Company 2000) (ISBN 053457632X)

• Dennett is mentioned on numerous occasions in David J. Chalmers' The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, as Chalmers discusses his theory (ISBN 0195117891).

Select Quote

The first stable conclusion I reached … was that the only thing brains could do was to approximate the responsivity to meanings that we presuppose in our everyday mentalistic discourse. When mechanical push comes to shove, a brain was always going to do what it was caused to do by current, local, mechanical circumstances, whatever it ought to do, whatever a God's-eye view might reveal about the actual meaning of its current states. But over the long haul, brains could be designed - by evolutionary processes - to do the right thing (from the point of view of meaning) with high reliability. … [B]rains are syntactic engines that can mimic the competence of semantic engines. … The appreciation of meanings - their discrimination and delectation - is central to our vision of consciousness, but this conviction that I, on the inside, deal directly with meanings turns out to be something rather like a benign 'user-illusion.'

— Daniel Dennett, Brainchildren

See also

• Cartesian materialism

• Heterophenomenology

• Multiple drafts theory of consciousness

• List of Jean Nicod Prize laureates

• Memetics

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Daniel Dennett

• Daniel C. Dennett's homepage at Tufts University

• The Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University

• Scientific American Frontiers Profile: Daniel Dennett

• 'The Semantic Engineer'- a biographical essay from The Guardian, April 17, 2004

• Edge/Third Culture: Daniel C. Dennett

• The Philosophers Magazine: Philosopher of the Month, April 2003: Dan Dennett

• Publication List by Daniel Dennett and other Tufts' Center for Cognitive Studies associates

• Searchable bibliography of Dennett's works

• Article about Dennett's naturalistic worldview from the New York Times, July 2003

• Pulling Our Own Strings- Reason magazine interviews Dennett

• ↑ 'Evolution: The pleasures of Pluralism'- Stephen Jay Gould's review of Darwin's Dangerous Idea

• The God Genome - An article by Leon Wieseltier critical of Dennett's beliefs in light of Dennett's latest book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

• Religion and science - A response to Leon Wieseltier by James Brookfield.

• Exchange with philosopher Richard Swinburne on science and religion.

2006-03-23

Breaking Dennett's spell

[pic]Numenware readers are busy people. So here’s a handy, one-paragraph summary of Daniel C. Dennett’s new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, to save you the hours required to plow through its 400 pages and the $25.95 you’d have to spend to buy it:

I’m Daniel Dennett, and I think religion is stupid, and everybody should stop believing in it right now, because I’m real smart and I say so. Besides, it’s just an evolutionary and cultural thing according to some books I read. Don’t get me wrong, though: some of my best friends are religious, and a lot of them are real nice people!

Dennett spends the first chapter talking about an alleged vast conspiracy striving to prevent people like him from looking at religion objectively. That’s odd, given the centuries of research on the topic.

Dennett argues vociferously for a scientific analysis of religion. Which is doubly odd, since he’s obviously made up his mind already. And the only scientific “evidence” he himself quotes is cribbed from people who actually did work on the topic, such as Boyer (earlier post) and Atran (earlier post). He gives a sloppy summary of their work.

Triply odd is what Dennett leaves out of his “daring and important” new book, which is anything about what people experience in religion. He fails to mention, much less categorize or analyze, any transcendental experiences beyond those of the beautiful sunset variety.

Dennett gives short shrift to the biological seat of religious experience—the brain. His treatment of the topic is limited to the mention of one paragraph in Atran’s book. He dismisses D’Aquili and his “AUB” (Absolute Unitary Being) concept with its neural correlates in a single sentence.

The book is desperately in need of a fact checker, an editor, or, preferably, a ghost writer. Dennett is unable to maintain one train of thought for one section, much less an entire chapter. The book is cluttered with distracting soliloquies and asides. He doesn’t understand the concept of a scientific theory, imagining that it becomes a “fact” after it’s “proven”. He calls Jared Diamond a “pioneer who did scientific work on religion.” He refers to “Shinto temples of surreal intricacy and precision” (Shinto has shrines, not temples, and they’re austere in the extreme). He conflates the evolutionary and cultural aspects of the development of religion by treating genes and memes, of which he is much enamored (to the point of including in the book a disconnected appendix in their defense), as equivalent selective mechanisms.

Dennett thinks that a historical account of how religion might have developed is equivalent to understanding what it means—an odd stance for America’s putative leading philosopher.

Dennett waves off criticsm with gratuitous displays of feigned modesty, weak calls for “further inquiry”, and, in the ultimate irony, pre-emptive attacks on those who might disagree—proclaiming some of them infidels unworthy of even casting their eyes on his holy writ.

It’s really too bad. Someone with Dennett’s intellect and clout could have written a book on this timely topic that would really have changed the terms of the discussion. Myopic, slovenly, repetitive, disorganized, and biased, this book disastrously fails to fulfill that promise.

Comment

1. COMING TO THIS POST

FROM UNFOLDING PUZZLE

IT IS SAD TO SEE

THE LACK OF HUMILITY

BEFORE THE MYSTERY

OF SUCH A LEADING WRITER

IN PHILOSOPY AND SCIENCE.

— JACK RICHARDSON    2006-03-25   

2. Mr. Numenware (what’s wrong with old fashioned names?)

While I can agree with some of your criticisms, your tone of anger is misplaced. Social-historical analyisis can never be proven in the way of hard sciences. We can only posit relational constructs that either have hortatory, explanatory value, or do not.

Rather than vehement criticism over the books limits and the author’s hubris, if you are a rationalist rather than a believer you should see his book as a point of departure. I have attempted this on my blog alrodbell. which I recomend to you and your readers

His book raises the question of how Religion can at times be virulent, such as we are seeing in current Islam, and how it can also be conducive to great social betterment, as in the Golden Age of Islam of the eighth century (I think.) Consider his book as a flawed first draft of a vital subject that we all should explore

— Al Rodbell    2006-04-17   



Issue 120 , March 2006

How should we study religion?

by Daniel Dennett

A philosopher and a theologian debate the correct approach to the study of religion

Daniel Dennett is the author of "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" (Penguin). Richard Swinburne is Emeritus Nolloth professor of the Philosophy of the Christian religion, University of Oxford

Dear Richard

5th January 2006

It's high time science took a good hard look at religion. Why? Because it has become evident in recent years that if we are to make progress on the world's major problems, we will have to learn more about religions and the influence they wield over people's lives and actions. Failure to appreciate the dynamics of religious allegiance, and the psychological impact of religious differences, may lead us to invest heavily in counterproductive policies. The phoenix-like rebound of religion in the former Soviet Union suggests to many that just as prohibition and the war on drugs have proved to be disastrous, if well-meant, attempts to deal with the excesses of these popular indulgences, so any ill-informed effort to rein in the fanatical strains of religion will probably backfire badly if we don't study the surrounding phenomena carefully and objectively.

From a biological perspective, religion is a remarkably costly human activity that has evolved over the millennia. What "pays for" this profligate expense? Why does it exist and how does it foster such powerful allegiances? To many people, even asking such a question will seem a sacrilege. But to undertake a serious scientific study of religious practices and attitudes, we must set aside the traditional exemption from scrutiny that religions have enjoyed.

Some people are sure that the world would be a better place without religion. I am not persuaded, because I cannot yet characterise anything that could replace it in the hearts of most human beings. (Perhaps we should try to eliminate music while we're at it. It inflames the passions and seduces many young people into wasted lives.) What people care about deeply deserves to be taken seriously. Exempting religion from scrutiny is actually a patronising way of declaring it to be all just fashion and ceremony.

Either we take religion as seriously as we take global warming and el Niño, and study it intensively, or we treat it as mere superstition and backwardness. As with the other marvels of nature, I find that paying scrupulous attention to its elegant designs increases my appreciation of it, but others may think that too much knowledge of the backstage machinery threatens to diminish their awe, to break a spell that should not be broken. This is not just a difference in taste, or a purely academic disagreement. Our futures may well depend on how we decide to proceed.

Yours

Dan

 

Dear Dan

10th January 2006

You think that religion needs rigorous scientific investigation. I agree, as would most religious people—in Britain, if not the US. I have been doing this for some decades, as have thousands of philosophers, historians and sociologists over the past 3,000 years. Welcome to the club. But you suggest in your new book Breaking the Spell that we should investigate religion "with the presumption that it is an entirely natural phenomenon." Such a presumption needs to be justified. If there is a God, then all regular processes—codified by physics, biology, psychology or whatever—occur because of the sustaining activity of God and so are "supernatural" (even if God never intervenes). So the first thing is to investigate "scientifically" whether or not there is a God.

A scientific theory is rendered probable by its data in so far as 1) if the theory is true, the data will probably occur; 2) if it is false, the data will probably not occur; 3) it is simple; and 4) it fits in with our background knowledge of what happens in other areas of enquiry. But the fourth criterion tends to drop out when we are dealing with a large scientific theory (such as a general theory of all physical phenomena) for which there are few other fields of enquiry. Above all, criterion four drops out when we have a theory such as theism which purports to explain all data: that is, all observable phenomena. The most important of these observable phenomena which theism can explain is that there is a large physical universe, that everything behaves in it in a totally regular way, that the boundary conditions of the universe and the laws of nature are such as to lead to the evolution of human bodies, and that human bodies are connected to conscious lives.

There is not the slightest reason to suppose that these phenomena will occur unless a theory somewhat like theism is true—why should every atom in the universe behave in exactly the same way? (It is of course a "law of nature" that they do; but laws of nature are just the way things behave. They don't explain them.) On the other hand, if there is a God of the traditional kind—omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free and perfectly good—we have every reason to expect that he will bring about the existence of good things; and one especially good thing is the existence of embodied creatures such as ourselves who have a choice between good and evil and can influence the world and each other in various ways. The supposition that there is such a God is a very simple one. For it is the supposition that there exists one "person" (not many persons), who is the simplest kind of person there could be. A person is a being with some power to make a difference to things, some knowledge of what the world is like, and some degree of freedom as to which differences to make. God is postulated as a being in whom there are no limits to these qualities. (Scientists have always preferred theories postulating infinite degrees of qualities to theories postulating large finite degrees, when these are equally compatible with the data.) God’s perfect freedom means that there are no irrational influences deterring him from doing what he sees reason to do, that is what he believes good to do; being omniscient, he will know what is good and so he will be perfectly good. So by scientific criteria the data make it probable that there is a God. Given that, we should investigate religion on the presumption (now established by reason!) that there is a God.

In Breaking the Spell, you are very dismissive of arguments about the existence of God, and devote a mere seven pages to such arguments. The only one to which you give any serious attention is the ontological argument, in which the existence of God is logically derived from his perfection. But this argument is a unique attempt to prove the existence of God; it is a philosopher's quirk and has no connection with the thinking of ordinary believers. You refer the reader to another book of yours—Darwin's Dangerous Idea—which you claim gives more attention to such arguments. You do draw attention there to the fact that the constants of the laws of our universe and the variables of its boundary conditions had to be precisely what they are to within one part in a million million if human life were to evolve. But you go on to suggest that maybe there is an infinite number of universes, each with different laws and different boundary conditions, so that it would have been inevitable that in a few such universes human-type life would emerge. But a supposition that by mere chance there exists an infinite number of such universes, each varying in a precise way from the next, would be totally unscientific—an enormous violation of my criterion three. And if you are to suggest that there is some machine which generates such universes, then the question arises as to why the universe-generating machine is itself of just this kind—why didn't it produce an infinite number of universes all of the same kind? It would have had to be a very special complex universe-generating machine to produce the right spread of universes, and there's no reason why there should be a machine of exactly that kind rather than one of exactly another kind. But, on the other hand, if there is a person in charge of the universe who acts for the sake of the good, then we have plenty of reason to suppose that there would be a universe inhabitable by humans, rather than a chaotic one.

Having bypassed the discussion of this all-important question in Breaking the Spell, your main plea is for investigation of the origins of religion with the aid of biology, psychology and sociology. Given that there is a God, we would expect him to sustain a world where things behave in simple regular ways—for only in this way can finite embodied beings learn how things behave and so use the regularities of nature to make a difference to the world (agriculture, for instance). But we would also expect God to respond differently to the different ways in which we choose to behave, and so sometimes to intervene in the processes which he sustains. So we should investigate the phenomenon of religion on the "presumption" that it is a God-sustained movement in which God occasionally intervenes miraculously. That, I suggest, is the proper scientific approach.

With best wishes

Richard

Dear Richard

13th February 2006

I am proposing that religion should be studied as a natural phenomenon in the sense scientists understand, and therefore the first order of business is not whether or not there is a God, as you insist. As you say, theologians and philosophers have been debating this issue for millennia, but they haven't produced any consensus to show for all that labour, and I wanted to open up new territory. Still, I agree that a book about religion as a natural phenomenon that never got around to considering the evidence for or against the existence of God would surely leave many religionists unsatisfied, which is the only reason I treated the topic at all.

You note that I devote a "mere seven pages" to such arguments, but anybody who is mainly interested in that topic can find references in those pages to my earlier discussions, and those of many others. Let's, briefly, consider what you have to say about those earlier arguments of mine. In Darwin's Dangerous Idea I considered various hypotheses by physicists and cosmologists about multiple universes and I claimed that these hypotheses, still untested, nevertheless nicely undercut the rhetorical question: "Look at the fine-tuning of the constants of nature! What could possibly explain that other than the existence of a foresighted, intelligent God?"

You say these hypotheses violate your criterion three of simplicity, but I utterly disagree. You imagine the hypothesis as positing "some universe-generating machine" and ask why it didn't "produce an infinite number of universes all of the same kind." This question is actually not as embarrassing as you suppose. To speak of a machine suggests design, but no such "machine" is required; in the absence of design, in an infinite time, all possible values would occur. Leonard Susskind, the founder of string theory, recently put it very simply and succinctly: "The same process that forged our universe in a big bang will happen over and over. The mathematics are rickety, but that's what inflation implies: a huge universe with patches that are very different from one another. The bottom line is that we no longer have any good reason to believe that our tiny patch of the universe is representative of the whole thing."

I sketch an account of how first folk religions and then their descendants, the organized religions, evolved out of our instinctual habit of adopting the intentional stance about anything puzzling or startling—our query “Who’s there? What do you want?” a habit that populates our heads with phantom agents, which then compete for rehearsal in our brains, with only the most unforgettable founding lineages. Each elaboration, each new adaptation, has to pay for itself in the evolutionary coin of competitive reproduction—of either genes or memes or both.

You counter my sketch of the evolution of religion with your own: "If there is a God of the traditional kind—omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly free and perfectly good—we have every reason to expect that he will bring about the existence of good things; and one especially good thing is the existence of embodied creatures such as ourselves who have a choice between good and evil and can influence the world and each other in various ways." How convenient! Who could ever imagine anything more wonderful than us? As William James so memorably put it, more than a century ago: "Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism." You imagine a "good creator" God who made sure things were regular enough for us finite beings to understand, so that we could eventually discover agriculture, and even hit upon the idea of the God who was behind it all, and who "occasionally intervenes miraculously."

Presumably this same foresighted creator anticipated the amusement the unbelievers would feel when contemplating the recent declarations by Pat Robertson to the effect that Ariel Sharon's ill health was God intervening to punish him for ceding Gaza. I'm sure you'll tell me that our expectations about what a good creator would want, and do, don't extend to such particulars as these, but why are your expectations any better grounded than mine? You haven't told us what the rules of this game are.

If your hypothesis about the rise of religion is a rival to mine, there ought to be some empirical details on which we differ, something you can explain and I cannot, something you predict that I don't, or something that refutes my sketch. I don't claim to know it is true; on the contrary, I insist that it is just a sketch, presented so that we can have something on the table that we might try to fix, or replace by a better scientific alternative. Do you have any proposals for a better theory?

Yours

Dan

 

Dear Dan

16th January 2006

Some sort of multiverse theory might well be true. My point was that if there is a multiverse, it's a multiverse of a kind which will produce at least one universe which will produce humans. But it's logically possible that there might instead have been other quite different kinds of multiverse, or just one universe, not productive of humans. So why are the most general laws of the multiverse as they are? Why do all particles behave in exactly the same way as each other, so as together ultimately to produce human life? This enormous coincidence in particle behaviour requires explaining. I've got a good theory which explains it; you haven't. And if you are really telling me that the production of humans is not, objectively, a good thing, I find myself wondering if you really mean something so implausible.

The relevance of having good reason for believing that there is a God to your project of explaining the origin of religious practice is as follows. It is an important scientific principle that in assessing the evidence for the causation of some particular phenomenon we should take into account our "background knowledge" by way of general theory about how the world works (criterion four of my previous letter). For example, suppose you are an astronomer investigating some pattern of dots of light in the sky, and you see that the simplest explanation is that these dots are the debris of a star explosion. Then it is right to believe that that they are so caused—unless you have a well-established theory of physics which says that stars can't explode. In the latter case you should adopt a less simple explanation for the dots of light, unless the explosion theory is so simple and so well able to explain many data that you give up your whole theory of physics.

Similarly, if there is good evidence to suppose that there is a God, then there is good evidence to suppose that the processes by which religious practices developed are ones sustained by him, and so—since he is good and so will want occasionally to interact with humans—ones which he may occasionally set aside. Then this background theory will lead us to attribute some event about which we have some historical evidence to the intervening action of God, when given a rival background theory it would be wrong to do this. Now I am inclined to think that since we have so little historical evidence about the early stages of religious practice, any theories about this are pretty speculative. But I don't wish to deny that some of the features to which you draw attention in your book (shamans, and looking for animistic explanations) operated in developing religious practices. But theism also leads me to suppose that God will have intervened from time to time to help humans to be aware of the divine and of what a good God wanted them to do.

My point is, however, crucially relevant when we come to the later period. Consider the origins of Christianity. It is pretty well agreed that the belief of early Christians in the bodily resurrection of Jesus was crucially influential in their commitment to that religion and to its widespread propagation throughout the world. What caused that belief? My view is that the resurrection of Jesus caused the belief in the resurrection of Jesus. You, I suspect, have a different view. There's quite a lot of evidence from witness testimony that Jesus did indeed rise. But if I believed that laws of nature are the ultimate determinants of what happens, I would not believe that Jesus rose, because I know that the laws of nature do not allow humans to come to life again after 36 hours. But as I have good reason to believe that laws of nature only operate as and when God allows them to, and I believe that on this occasion he had good reason to set them aside in order to put his signature on the teaching of Jesus, I have good reason to suppose that Jesus rose.

Our respective background theories rationally determine how we assess the historical evidence. You ask why are my expectations about what a good creator would do better than yours? Well, I give reasons which try to take off from moral views which you might share—say the goodness of parents interacting with their children, and the goodness of people having free choices and responsibility for others. If you agree with me so far, then I try to show what follows for what an omnipotent and perfectly good God would do. If you don't concede my initial moral views, then I appeal to examples where you might see that my moral views are plausible. Our moral understanding thus progresses by what John Rawls called the method of "reflective equilibrium."

That brings me to what you have to say in Breaking the Spell about morality and religion.You suggest that we might investigate scientifically whether religion makes people morally better. The trouble is that the content of morality, and so what it is for someone to be morally good, is affected in part by whether or not there is a God and what he has done. While theists and atheists might agree to quite an extent about what are the necessary truths of morality—that it is good to feed the starving, say, or that parents ought to educate their children—some such necessary truths have different consequences for the theist and for the atheist. Among the necessary truths of morality are, I suggest, that it is good to reverence good people, and obligatory to show gratitude to and please our benefactors. So if we are created by a perfectly good God and sustained in existence by him every moment of our lives, we have an obligation to reverence him greatly and show him gratitude—that is, to worship him and to please him in other ways.

 

Pleasing God will involve obeying any commands which he has given to us. He will issue commands by giving his signature to some teaching, as I believe that he did to the miracle of the resurrection. And God may also in the same way reveal to us necessary moral truths which we are not clever enough to work out for ourselves—about abortion and euthanasia, for example. So again, as with the historical story of religion, so also with whether religion makes us better people, our conclusions will be much affected by whether we have good reason to believe that there is a God and other claims of religion. There's no avoiding those issues.

With best wishes

Richard

 

Dear Richard

21st January 2006

You and I have different ideas about what constitutes a good explanation, and what needs an explanation at all—and this fact itself needs to be acknowledged before we can engage in a constructive discussion. You find it improbable that there would be a multiverse of all physically possible universes, including ours. Is it less improbable than that there would be an omnipotent, benevolent universe-creator? I don't think so, and here Bayesian probability theory gives no leverage, so far as I can see. Both are mind-boggling prospects—but that doesn't give yours the edge. As Philip Morrison observed, the prospect that we are alone in the universe is mind-boggling, but so is its denial, and one of them has to be true. From my perspective, your imaginative attempt at an inference to the best explanation is telling for the one thing it lacks: a single striking prediction. That's why it can't be taken seriously as a contender against a purely secular and materialist theory of cosmic and biological and cultural evolution. Compare: "Wouldn't it be cool if our whole visible universe was actually a sort of zoo exhibit for a race of extraterrestrials who get a kick out of watching us, and there's a super-engineer out there who is in charge, and who signals us every now and then by turning the local laws of nature on and off!" You will have to admit that this is logically possible, but before we have any reason to take it seriously, anyone proposing it would have to describe some telltale signal predicted by the theory. I'll make one up, to show that this is not impossible: my interpretation of what I take the earlier signals to have been leads me to the hypothesis that the super-engineer has planted hints to the effect that we will find his signature ("Kilroy was here") if we drill a hole exactly a mile deep from the summit of Everest. We do, and there it is. Wow. It's not just that I make the prediction, but that I use my theory to make it. Science, including evolutionary biology, offers so many such predictions that they don't strike us as remarkable any more (grab any bird from the air anywhere on earth, and any fish caught in any ocean, and I will tell you some specific similarities and differences you will find in their DNA). Your Christian hypothesis has nothing like that to offer, only retrospective interpretations. It is relatively easy to make such interpretations cohere, and the history of revision of Christian doctrine offers many examples of such improvements—a "just so story" indeed.

I do agree that "the production of human beings" is a wonderful thing, but I suspect that there are other possible beings (in some philosophical sense of "possible" that you and I can accept) that would be still more excellent. So I see no reason to go along with your hypothesis that we're just what to expect from a perfect and omnipotent creator.

Finally, your claim that we need to factor in God's existence or non-existence before we can empirically assess whether religion makes people morally better than they otherwise would be raises a problem, but for you, not for me. I'll grant for the sake of argument that if God exists and commands reverence, then irreverence is morally bad and worship is morally good, but in any reasonable political attempt to achieve global consensus, this claim would have to be leveraged later off the points we can all pretty much agree on at the outset: murder, rape, torture, theft, perjury… are (other things being equal) morally bad. Maybe eating pork, or dancing, or saying God's name is morally forbidden, but persuading us all of any such claim is a task facing those who so believe, not something that they can announce as a fixed point at the outset—since it amounts to unilateral refusal to engage in reasoning from common ground. If God commands you to worship him, then it's your problem to convince the rest of us that we should hear this command as well—and you would dishonour your God (I would think) by refusing to explain why this is so. This leaves you with a stark choice: preach to the converted in your own flock and abdicate responsibility for convincing (not terrorising) the rest of the world to see it your way, or accept that you have to begin from the neutral position that presupposes no God and prove to us that you're right.

I'm all for the latter option, of course. And in the meantime, I note that on the matters of morality on which there is something approaching a global consensus, the evidence to date does not show that adherence to a religion—any religion—has a positive effect on the probability that a person behaves morally.

Yours

Dan

 

Dear Dan

30th January 2006

I don't think that it is in any way important that science should make predictions. What is important is that science should make probable the occurrence of certain phenomena which we observe, when their occurrence would not be probable otherwise. What is unimportant is whether we observe these phenomena before or after we formulate our scientific theory. Newton's theory of mechanics made no new predictions which could be tested for the next 50 years. But it was accepted as an obviously true theory of mechanics because it gave a simple explanation of a vast range of phenomena previously known—movements of planets, movements of moons, behaviour of pendula, behaviour of tides and so on.

Certainly, one can always devise theories which "cohere" (in the sense of "are logically consistent") which will lead one to expect known phenomena; but it is very difficult to devise a simple theory which leads you to expect the known phenomena. If you can, that is very strong evidence that the theory is true. Another example to illustrate this point is a detective story, in which the detective learns all the evidence in the opening chapters, but only solves the crime by finding, in the last chapter, a simple explanation of all that evidence; and when he has got one, he doesn't need a new prediction to render his explanation probable. So the fact that we know the phenomena which I cite as evidence for theism before we consider the theory of theism has no bearing on their evidential force. All that is relevant is how well theism satisfies the criteria which I listed in my first letter. The criterion of simplicity dictates that we should postulate one simple entity responsible for innumerable other entities when these others behave in exactly the same way as each other. It would be absurd to dig up a whole hoard of coins in a Roman villa with exactly the same markings on them, say "What an interesting coincidence!" and leave it at that. We should look for a single cause: that they were all produced in the same mould. If there is one universe or many universes governed by the same general laws, this consists in an enormous number of fundamental particles behaving in exactly the same way as each other. It is deeply unscientific not to look for a simple cause.

If it were the case—and I don't think you have adequate evidence to show this—that serious commitment to a religion has no "positive effect on the probability that a person behaves morally" this would indeed be surprising—since almost all religions put quite a lot of effort into dissuading people from your "murder, rape, torture, theft, perjury." But if this were so, I can think of two possible explanations. The first is that the teaching methods which religions use are counterproductive; and if we learnt that this was so, then of course the methods could be changed to good effect. Alternatively, it might be the case that those more inclined to "murder, rape…" are those who are so aware of their inclinations that they feel a need for a God to forgive them and help them, and so are more open to the claims of religion. (Jesus seems to have thought this—see Luke 7:40-43.) But that is compatible with religion making each person more moral than they would be otherwise. And it does not imply that those whose wrongdoing is less obvious are less in need of God's help and forgiveness. I do of course agree with you that, if I am to persuade you that there is a God, I have to begin from a neutral position that presupposes no God and prove to you that I am right. I'm trying hard!

 

But the same applies in reverse—you have to begin from a neutral position that does not presuppose that there is no God and prove to me that you are right. And, to repeat, my worry about your book is that it advocates investigating the origins and consequences of the practice of religion with an atheistic presupposition. But with the need for rational argument, we are in total agreement.

Best wishes

Richard



Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Feb 14 11:02 AM | 4 comments

Last night Ari and I went to hear Daniel Dennett give a talk at the Miller Theater. Actually, it wasn’t a talk, it was a “conversation” with Robert Thurman, a Columbia professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies. They were discussing Dennett’s new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Dennett briefly summarized his thesis, which is that religion is a phenomenon that has arisen through evolutionary processes and should be studied scientifically as a natural phenomenon so that we can better understand it (and perhaps improve on it, a suggestion that I found rather surprising). He proposed that religion be a required subject in public schools, so that we will gain a better understanding of just what religion is and what different religions believe (and he pointed out that it is often organized religious groups that protest most forcefully against such an idea).

He advanced an explanation of religion in terms of memes, arguing that religions are designed artifacts, products of the same process in culture that goes on in evolution. He cited an idea from Hugh Pyper that humans are endowed with a HADD (hyperactive agent detection device) — the instinct that leads us to look for a “who” or a “why” with beliefs and desires behind every event that we observe.

Our HADDs populate our minds with phantoms and spirits, which compete with each other (as memes) for space in our minds and in our larger cultures. Once they catch on, they become organized religions, “social systems that postulate supernatural agents whose approval is to be sought.”

He notes that these “domesticated god-memes” serve some useful purposes, as decision helpers (“super-duper coin flippers”), placebo effect props, and surrogate police, for instance. But he also cautions that in looking for evolutionary origins for religious belief, we should not always expect religion to confer fitness on its adherents.

Successful religious systems have cleverly promulgated the idea that without religion you can’t be moral, which ensures the survival of religion because people basically want to be good (or be considered good).

. . . Dennett kept returning to a couple of ideas — Why do we need a belief in belief? Why do we need to keep seeking a supernatural force behind the universe — why aren’t natural phenomena enough for us? Why do we feel that we need a continuation of self in order to provide a motivation to be moral?

His explanation is by no means complete; he leaves out any discussion, for instance, of the power and near-universality of the religious experience, as noted elsewhere. Without some acknowledgement of this, his ideas will never get through to people who have experienced deep religious feeling.

Despite their shortcomings, Dennett’s ideas (as usual) had a visceral appeal to me — his approach holds out the promise of a world and a mind that can be explained, and the explanations that he offers are both grounded and wondrous.



Believing in Belief

a book review by Michael Shermer

In a 1997 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons, Lisa Simpson discovers a fossil angel. Suspecting a hoax, she takes a piece of the fossil to the natural history museum where Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (playing himself) analyzes it. The age-old conflict between science and religion then plays out in this ne plus ultra of pop culture. The town evangelical Ned Flanders bemoans: “Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends.” When Gould announces that the test results are “inconclusive,” Reverend Lovejoy boasts: “Well, it appears science has failed again, in front of overwhelming religious evidence.” Marge counsels Lisa’s skepticism with motherly wisdom: “There has to be more to life than just what we see Lisa. Everyone needs something to believe in.” Lisa’s rejoinder is classic skepticism: “It’s not that I don’t have a spiritual side. I just find it hard to believe there’s a dead angel hanging in our garage.” The Scopes-like trial that ensues ends when the judge issues a restraining order: “Religion must stay 500 yards from science at all times.”

This is, in fact, Gould’s conciliatory solution he called NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria)1, and it is the primary target of Tufts University philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in his latest book, Breaking the Spell. All restraining orders are off, as Dennett calls for “a forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many.” The spell to be broken is the taboo that science will render incapable “the life-enriching enchantment of religion itself.”

So sensitive is he to the potential reaction on the part of his readers (which Dennett maintains is the general public, over 90 percent of which believe in God) that the first 55 pages of the book are an apologia for why it is okay for religion to be studied scientifically. Readers familiar with such publications as The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion can skim this section, since the field has been around for over a century. My concern is that religious adherents will take offense at his rationale before they get to the heart of the book, where Dennett really shines. In one passage, for example, he tells believers that their repugnance to science is misdirected, but admits that his attempt to convince them otherwise “is a daunting task, like trying to persuade your friend with the cancer symptoms that she really ought to see a doctor now, since her anxiety may be misplaced and the sooner she learns that the sooner she can get on with her life, and if she does have cancer, timely intervention may make all the difference.” The deeply devout will not take kindly to their beliefs (about either science or religion) being equated with cancer. Or to cigarettes, as in this subsequent passage: “Sure, religion saves lives. So does tobacco — ask those GIs for whom tobacco was an even greater comfort than religion during World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam.”

Breaking the Spell is really written for scientists and scholars who have thought little on the subject of religion as a natural phenomenon. Dennett’s starting point is the “rational choice” theory of religion, proffered by sociologist Rodney Stark and his colleagues, which holds that the beliefs, rituals, customs, commitments, and sacrifices associated with religion are best understood as a form of exchange between believers and gods or God. Where resources and rewards are scarce (e.g., rain for crops) or nonexistent (e.g., immortality) through secular sources, then religion steps in to act as the exchange intermediary.2 To an evolutionist like Dennett, such exchanges demand that we look for a deeper causal vector:

Any such regular expenditure of time and energy has to be balanced by something of ‘value’ obtained, and the ultimate measure of evolutionary ‘value’ is fitness: the capacity to replicate more successfully than the competition does.

What is the value of religion to evolutionary fitness? In two books, I have outlined at least four such values:

1 - mythmaking to explain apparently inexplicable phenomena in the world,

2 - redemption (forgiveness in this life) and resurrection (immortality in the next life),

3 - morality (reinforcement of pro-social behavior and punishment of anti-social behavior), and

4 - sociality (encouragement of within-group amity and between-group enmity).3

Do such values explain religion? We don’t know yet, Dennett admits, but the rest of his book presents a plausible explanation that I summarize as follows.

Humans have brains that are big enough to be both self-aware and aware that others are self-aware. This “theory of mind,” or what Dennett calls “adopting the intentional stance,” leads to a “hyperactive agent detection device” (HADD) that not only alerts us to real dangers, such as poisonous snakes, but also generates false positives, such as believing that rocks and trees are imbued with intentional minds, or spirits. “The memorable nymphs and fairies and goblins and demons that crowd the mythologies of every people are the imaginative offspring of a hyperactive habit of finding agency wherever anything puzzles or frightens us.” This is animism that, in the well-known historical sequence, leads to polytheism and, eventually, monotheism. In other words, God is a false positive generated by our HADD.

Around these animistic entities our ancestors created folk religions, which, between the Neolithic revolution and the rise of cities, evolved into the organized religions we recognize today. During this transition there was competition among the countless god memes (each of whom were believed to control some tiny part of the world), out of which emerged the winner: a single God meme believed to control everything. Concomitant with God’s triumph was a corresponding belief in belief — not just belief in God, but belief in belief in God. This, says Dennett, was the coup de gráce: religion no longer had to depend on uniformity of belief, only uniformity of professing belief.

Through his many provocative books4 Dan Dennett has emerged as the advocatus diablos of science, and his belief in belief concept is his most dangerous idea to date. It is dangerous because it is a two-edged sword that cuts for and against. On the one side, it not only grants believers some elbow room for doubt (as long as you still believe in belief in God), it allows atheists like myself (and Dennett) to profess that I believe in God; that is, I believe in the God that exists in the minds of people who themselves believe in the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent deity. That God is so powerful that He can get believers to bomb abortion clinics and fly planes into buildings.

On the flip side, perspicacious believers may perceive that an ontological trap is being set: belief in belief implies that the God in your head doesn’t actually exist. I predict that in the competitive memescape that is the human mind, the belief in God meme will beat out the belief in belief meme, as much as I would like to believe otherwise.

References & Notes

1. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1999. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballentine.

2. Stark, R. and W. S. Bainbridge. 1987. A Theory of Religion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; Stark, R. 1997. Religion, Deviance, and Social Control. New York: Routledge; Stark, R. and R. Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion.Berkeley: University of California Press.

3. Shermer, Michael. 2004. The Science of Good and Evil. New York: Henry Holt; Shermer, Michael. 2000. How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God. New York: Henry Holt.

4. Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. New York: Little Brown; Dennett, D. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon and Schuster; Dennett, D. 2003. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking.



Michael Shermer On Dennett's “Breaking The Spell”

By Thomas Riggins 02-21-06

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BREAKING THE SPELL: RELIGION AS A NATURAL PHENOMENON by Daniel C. Dennett, Viking, New York, 2006, 464pp., reviewed by Michael Shermer in SCIENCE 27 January 2006.

Dennett claims that his book is a “forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many.” He also claims that such a study will not void “the life-enriching enchantment of religion itself.” Since Shermer tells us the author is an atheist, this seems like a case of wanting to have your Eucharist and eat it too. When we find out that God-belief turns out to be a boo-boo in thinking how do we keep the feeling of “enchantment”?

Dennett thinks the general public, being 90% religious, will resent a scientific approach (if indeed that is what his approach really is) and so he spends the first 55 pages of his book, according to Shermer, talking down to them (Shermer doesn’t quite say this but the implication is there). He thinks “believers” have a “repugnance for science” and so he has taken upon himself the “daunting task” of enlightening them (l’homme moyen sensual.)

Shermer says the book is actually written for “scientists and scholars” who have not given much thought to religion as a “natural phenomenon.” This must be a very small audience, especially since Shermer doesn’t tell us what is meant by “natural.” At any rate, the reviewer tells us that Dennett begins with something called “rational choice theory” as it has been applied to religion by the sociologist Rodney Stark (“Religion, Deviance, and Social Control” 1997, et al.). This is a theory also used by many bourgeois economists. It assumes that people make rational choices based on their perceived interests. The fact that they don’t often actually do this (think of Kansas) has not dampened enthusiasm for the theory.

Shermer explains Stark’s application of the theory thusly (I have boiled it down to get rid of jargon): religion acts as an exchange mechanism between the people and the gods--i.e., people do rituals, etc., for the gods and the gods give the people things they need-- rain, good hunting, victory in war, etc. This theory, by the way, is as old as the hills. It is better put forth by Spinoza.

Dennett takes this theory but “looks for a deeper causal vector.” This, since Dennett is an evolutionist, turns out to be reproductive fitness [as with Catholic priests and Hindu and Buddhist celibate monks perhaps-tr). Dennett says, quoted in the review: “Any such regular expenditure of time and energy [as is done in religion-tr] has to be balanced by something of ‘value’ obtained, and the ultimate measure of evolutionary ‘value’ is fitness: the capacity to replicate more successfully than the competition.” Since there are more Chinese than any other population group, does this mean Marxism is a religion? Why doesn’t the Kama Sutra outsell the Koran or the Bible?

Shermer now asks how is evolutionary fitness enhanced by religion. From this point on I think the discussion becomes confused due to a category mistake. I mean that terms and ideas developed in the biological sciences are transferred mechanically to the social and cultural sciences. What we get is a modern day version of the type of social Darwinism created by Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century.

In answer to his question Shermer lists four “values” that religion provides that promote “evolutionary fitness.” These are 1. “mythmaking to explain apparently inexplicable phenomena in the world.” Why should this make us more fit? How could anything like this be tested? There are many evolutionarily fit systems that have developed without recourse to myths. Some mythical systems are independent of religion (such as the race theories or the current fad of meme theory.) 2. “redemption (forgiveness in this life) and resurrection (immortality in the next life “-- this is too specifically Christian a formulation to be put forth in a general theory about religion since redemption and resurrection are not universal features of religion. 3. “morality (reinforcement of pro-social behavior and punishment of anti-social behavior)”-- again it appears that this value can exist independently of religion and while associated with some religions (though not all) some type of morality seems to be a universal feature of social life even predating conscious formulation of religious ideas. Finally, 4. “sociality (encouragement of within-group amity and between-group enmity”-- this is also a universal features of social grouping with or without religion.

Shermer says Dennett admits we don’t know if religion can be explained by these values, and on the face of it it doesn’t look like they do. While an argument could be made for evolutionary (reproductive) fitness being a benefit of 3 and 4, 1 and 2 don’t seem all that relevant. Regardless of this admission, Shermer maintains the book “presents a plausible explanation” that they do. Shermer presents Dennett’s theory as follows.

As humans attained self-consciousness the mind developed (or brain) a “hyperactive agent detection device” (HADD). This HADD alerted us to real dangers in the world-- scorpions, snakes, etc., but “also generates false positives” and attributes minds and powers to “rocks and trees,” etc. Dennett is quoted: “The memorable nymphs and fairies and goblins and demons that crowd the mythologies of every people are the imaginative offspring of a hyperactive habit of finding agency wherever anything puzzles or frightens us.”

This is of course, as Shermer points out, “animism” which eventually leads to belief in one God, but “God is a false positive generated by our HADD.” Then Shermer says, “our ancestors created folk religions, which, between the Neolithic revolution and the rise of cities, evolved into the organized religions we recognize today.” I hope this is not part of Dennett’s theory. If you were to go back to the end of the Neolithic and the rise of cities, i.e., the commencement of the Bronze Age around 3000 BC or so you would not find any traces that “the organized religions we recognize today” had “evolved.” Buddhism is 2500 years in the future, Christianity won’t appear until the Roman Imperial period ( what is now called “Judaism” was concocted around this time as well). Islam will not appear until the Middle Ages and India is still basically in the grips of a folk religion.

We are told the “God” of today is a “meme” that resulted” from a contest of “countless God memes” in the past. “Meme” theory, which postulates little “mental” entities (analogous to biological genes) which compete to control our “mental DNA” as it were, are themselves the latest example of a HADD which has led to a modern form of animism. Once we enter “memeland” we have left the world of natural phenomena for the world of idealist philosophy and metaphysical speculations and so we take our leave of Shermer’s review at this point. Read this book if it you want to, but 464 pages is a major investment of reading time for many people and it doesn’t look like there is much to it. I should also mentioned that the book is marred by McCarthy like anti-communist comments. If you really want to learn something about the origin of religion read Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, Hegel’s early writings on the positivity of the Christian religion and Engel’s “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.”

Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can reached at pabooks@



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