Breaking the Spell
Book review by Brendan Fahy
Title: Breaking the Spell
Author: Daniel Dennett
Publisher: Penguin Allen Lane
The central question investigated in Dennett's fine book is whether religion may have developed as a natural phenomenon over thousands of years, and that whilst religion still plays a positive role in the lives of many, it also plays a malign role, and it is necessary to understand the nature of religion to free ourselves of its negative influences. "The great ideas of religion have been holding us human beings enthralled for thousands of years...If we want to understand the nature of religion today, as a natural phenomenon, we have to look not just at what it is today, but at what it used to be." (P 6).
Dennett sees the excesses of fundamentalist Christianity in the United States as requiring to be addressed urgently, and he has aimed his book squarely and unapologetically at US readers. Nevertheless, the book is not thereby any the less relevant to non-US readers.
His modus operandi is to gently and inoffensively to ask powerful questions and then to attempt to answer them. At no point does he ask a reader to suspend any beliefs - merely, for the sake of analysis, to accept that it is reasonable to submit beliefs to analysis. He rejects the assertion that religion is outside of the world and therefore not amenable to analysis, Gould's "non overlapping magisteria". "There may be some... realm of human activity that science can't properly address and religion can, but that does not mean that science cannot or should not study this very fact." (P 30).
He admits to several other aims in writing the book.
"(religion) affects not just our social, political, and economic conflicts, but the very meanings we find in our lives. For many people... nothing matters more than religion... it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about it. That, in a nutshell, is the argument of this book." (P 14).
"Part of my effort in this book is to get you to think and not just feel". (P 329) (Emphasis in the original).
His intent is clear; "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 am trying to do." (P 53).
The book is divided into three parts. Part one sets the scene by considering what religion is, what science can bring to its study, and nominates some tools by which religion can be investigated.
Part two considers how religion may have developed in primitive and tribal societies, how such "folk" religions may have developed into organized religions, the development of secrecy in religion, and of religion's claim to be beyond investigation.
The human fondness for attributing agency to objects or processes is discussed in chapter five. Might not this characteristic have played a part in the origin of some gods?
In chapter eight he discusses the powerful concept of "Belief in Belief" which is the title of the chapter. He argues, persuasively, that many people who claim to believe in a god, may well believe in believing in a god. They may feel, through their upbringing or through the need to adopt societal norms, that it is important to believe in a god, whilst not actually believing in one.
Part three is a discussion of religion today, in the USA. In it he questions what religion has to offer. "Why does it matter what you believe?" (P 264), "Does religion make us moral?" (P 278), "What shall we tell the children?" (P 321).
He closes by pointing out that there are people in the US who hold extreme religious views, who are prepared to act on them, and who are therefore dangerous. He calls on eleven members of the US Congress, whom he names, "...to help the nation protect itself from those who would betray our democracy in pursuit of their religious agendas." (P 339). More generally, he observes that education is the enemy of ignorance and that well educated people will be able to "make truly informed choices about their lives." (P 339).
Religious extremism and activism is growing in many countries, so Dennett's book is relevant far beyond the shores of America.
