|
| Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon | 
 enlarge | Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $9.15
You Save: $6.85 (43%)
New (45) Used (17) Collectible (2) from $7.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  152 reviews
Sales Rank: 11768
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0143038338
Dewey Decimal Number: 210
EAN: 9780143038337
ASIN: 0143038338
Publication Date: February 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
 The path forward for scientific study of religion March 22, 2006
83 out of 86 found this review helpful
Dan Dennett essentially plays Toto in "The Wizard of Oz," by peeling back the curtain on the well-meaning but tricky wizard to reveal the embarrasing secret of his power. The wizard exploits human nature in the attempt to help people, similarly to the doctor who knowingly uses placebo treatments when he feels they are the best option. Dennett doesn't assume by any means that we knowingly exploit each other through religion, he also explores the question of how features of human biology might be utilized by human culture through a historical process not specifically guided by human wiles.
The character that does the unmasking is undoubtedly unpopular, which is why it was given to Toto rather than to innocent Dorothy or other likeable humanoid characters. Any surprise that a liberal university professor, professional philosopher, and outspoken atheist should take on the unmasking role?
Neither the sort of academic qualifications Dennett holds nor the theme of piercing the protective veil which enshrines religious belief is anything entirely new in the literature analyzing religion. What is new is the improvement of the tools for accomplishing the task and the improvement of the sort of questions we can ask. Dennett deftly and accessibly reviews the primary themes from a wealth of psychological, anthropological, and biological literature and along the way offers his own interpretation of each theme and identifies the directions he thinks future research should take.
As a result, this is a book that asks more questions than it answers. Its primary goal is to pull back the curtain of mystery with which we have enshrined religious belief, not to suggest final answers to all of the serious questions raised.
Dennett speculates that a critical point in the history of human culture was when we became stewards responsible for cultivating and protecting our own beliefs. Once the power of nurturing and protecting belief had been established, this could have become the basis of self-perpetuating industries, including but not limited to religious institutions.
The idea that units of culture can somehow be responsible for their own survival and reproduction may seem bizarre and at first, but Dennett's version is entirely plausible and consistent with current theories of gene-culture co-evolution. Aspects of human culture may have helped exploit human group behavior, which in turn helped shape the course of human evolution. This idea can potentially make sense of a lot of otherwise scattered social psychology data.
Dennett surveys several different variations on this co-evolutionary and cultural evolutionary theme, and in the end leaves a question mark on the idea of whether religious cultural elements tend to be "mutualists" with their human hosts, or "parasites" exploiting us for their own advantage. The latter idea is strongly implied by the popular metaphor of the "Virus of the Mind" favored by other theorists favorable to the concept Richard Dawkins called the "meme." Dennett is careful to leave the question open, rather than begging it as many other authors have done.
Dennett notably does not assume that such cultural units exploit us to our detriment, he just wants us to take the notion seriously of religion being a natural phenomenon and ask the resulting question of who benefits from its features.
This is a superbly accessible book because Dennett does not assume any foreknowledge of the voluminous literature he summarizes and explains so well and is very clear in his arguments. This book is less dense and scholarly than the bulk of Dennetts' previous work, but is as closely reasoned and well researched as any of it.
I'm pessimistic that Dennett's rhetorical goal will succeed. He seems to want to persuade more academics to take a naturalistic biological study of religion more seriously. I think this may be a long shot, in part because I suspect Dennett's speculation is very close to the truth: we have become zealous stewards and protectors of our most important beliefs, and they help establish our identity. We are legitimately concerned with protecting the wizard. Whether he is what he seems to be or not, he is still doing the job, and for many of us that is more important than knowing what is behind the curtain.
There is also a lingering problem that Dennett clearly recognizes but seems unable to get around, the fact that questioning religious beliefs seems intrinsically disrespectful to believers. In Dennett's terms, this is part of the protective mechanism for belief, but knowing that doesn't make it any less of an obstacle. Even some other well known scientists have bristled a bit at Dennett's treatment of religious belief in published reviews.
The fact that so many people seem honestly surprised that the "Darwin Fish" might be deeply hurtful to many Christians, or that the term "Brights" should seem to be so grossly arrogant rather than just being good clever marketing, seems to reveal a blind spot for the psychology of religion even among such good thinkers as Dennett.
In spite of the difficult obstacles faced, I think the kinds of questions this book asks and the sorts of explanations it emphasizes represent a new stage in scientific study of human culture, and I can only hope it will be taken up by courageous academics willing to pierce the veils of mystery and carefully draw back that curtain.
This book gathers up some of the best thinking in past scientific theories of religion and points the way boldly forward. Let's hope someone has the guts to follow it to knowledge.
 Obviously The Spell Is Too Powerful November 26, 2006
49 out of 64 found this review helpful
Most the people who reviewed this book and rated it a "1" or "2" missed some huge points Dennett clearly makes early in this book.
These reviewers:
1) Are religious.
2) Have not (themselves) studied religions or philosophy of religion, and have NEVER questioned their own faith.
3) Don't want science to investigate religion (or missed the point Dennett makes as to WHY we should).
4) Have minds that were unaffected by the book (their religious beliefs).
[The above is just my opinion, a generalization, but one I'm most certainly convinced of is true to at least 90% of those reviewers]
And they were not persuaded to the least by his logic (assuming they read more than 5 pages before throwing it down in disgust).
It's a shame.
(4/5 because it lacks some explanation in several areas as well as being geared only towards the people mentioned above)
Information Theory March 2, 2006
47 out of 63 found this review helpful
There was an unfortunate and very negative review in the New York Times by Leon Wieseltier, who was clearly out of his depth.
Dennett's excellent work is certainly open to criticism. For starters, he lacks a cogent theory of information. All organisms survive by reducing the cost of information in their environments; even marginal information cost advantages confer significant survival benefits. No organism understands this better than we do. Dennett gets close to this in his discussion of memes, but never quite gets there.
Religions are a simple function of where we are on the information cost curve. Those that improve our position we keep; those that do not collapse. It is not for nothing at most major shifts in religion, like the Reformation, are co-incident with sudden drops in the cost of information.
The challenge for religion today is how to adapt, if it can, to freefalling information costs. If religion in general no longer serves to reduce the cost of information to us of our enviromnent, it is irrlelevant to our survival and has no future. Equally, if it can reduce information costs in the post Internet age and beyond, it will prosper, even if in a form we do not yet recognize.
The question, in short, is whether or not religion has a future on the Moore Curve.
The struggle in Islam is best understood this way. As Harold Innis pointed out half a century ago in his seminal work, "Empire and Communications" (University of Toronto Press) Mohammed, using paper and free trade, slashed the cost of information and unleashed enormous wealth for his followers and Islam grew quickly. But Islam's information cost advantages evaporated centuries ago and today the frustration in the Muslim world is explosive. Our own religious right face the same bleak future and it is not funny.
Lots of thinking-Little Science March 24, 2006
46 out of 69 found this review helpful
It's a good read but the author begins the book by saying that a thorough scientific investigation into religion should be undertaken. The book disapoints in that regard. It is really an intellectual inquiry into "why religion?" The author is a philosopher and writes like a philosopher. He presents his theories and does an excellent job defending them with logical arguments- but that is not science.
He is also a bit condescending to people of faith when he calls non-believers like himself "brights". So are people of faith "dulls"? This is unnecessary and alienates the very people he is trying to reach.
Books by Pascal Boyer, Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker, and other scientists are more illuminating.
 Dennett Not My First Choice April 28, 2006
45 out of 51 found this review helpful
Okay, I confess I like Anglo-American philosophy, even if I am an existentialist to boot. I also confess that Dennett is not one of my favorite Anglo-American philosophers, and this is still another example of why. I thought "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" a tour d'force, while his "Consciousness Explained," "Elbow Room," and "Freedom Evolves" intolerable. If you like what I haven't, then this book may work for you.
I've read over four dozen books on theodicy, natural religion, Christian theology, and other books purporting to examine religion under a microscope. Only two books have ultimately worked: George Smith's "Atheism" and Pacal Boyer's "Religion Explained." I highly recommend both books, as different as they are.
Boyer's book approaches religion from an anthropological perspective, drawing heavily from evolutionary theory. I think Dennett is trying to replicate the success of Boyer's work, without Boyer's concision and narration. Like many Anglo-American philosophers, who pride themselves on brevity and conciseness, few hit their mark. Dennett is one who circumlocutes to extremis, with the revelation, as if needed, that religion can be both useful from an evolutionary perspective, but dreadful when in the hands of ideologues. If this is "news," go at once to Boyer's book. Dennett definitely brings out religion's capacity for malfeasance, but given Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, is anyone still surprised?
Many authors have sought to draw out evolutionary reasons why religion, the Myth of myths, continues to function in modern society. Kwame Appiah in his "Cosmopolitanism" brings it out in Ghana culture, insisting no one decry "their" superstitions, anymore than we decry our own. At some point, we have to insist that if one wants to live by his/her own superstition, then fine, do it, but leave the rest of us alone. Whatever Myth gets you through the day is your business, just don't impose it on the rest of us. The phenomenology of fundamentalism is that it cannot resist being out of power, so it surreptiously enters through the back door. We've seen what it has done to the Middle East, aren't we smart enough to see it on our own frontiers?
That's the raison d'etre of Dennett's work. If any of this is new, then by all means read the newest kid on the block. But Boyer (acclaimed by E. O. Wilson) has already done the heavy work; his explanation of religion from an evolutionary perspective is top notch, without much confusion in explication.
Put the same subject in the hands of an analytic philosopher like Dennett, and yes, the same message comes through, but not the same reasons, much less the same clarity. It's not that Dennett misses the boat, it's that others have already tread the waters and have analyzed the matter extensively. If you can't get enough religion-bashing, then add this to your list. But if you already know religion can be bad for us, why bother?
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
