Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10015 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780143038337
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews

Fascinating how many of these reviews reinforce Dan's thesis
Reading these reviews, it's fascinating how many people attack Dennett for things that aren't in this book.
- "Science can explain everything". But the book isn't about everything: it's about psychology and sociology, which are sciences.
- "Dennett's an atheist". Well, yes, but he acknowledges that religion is pervasive; the book is about trying to understand why people act and think the way they do, not to change what they believe. (Unless you think that to understand religious belief is to destroy it - but you'd better be able to justify that.)
- "Dennett doesn't understand philosophy". A silly accusation to make of a distinguished professor of philosophy. Yes, Dennett dismisses traditional phil.of.relig. for this debate, but that's because it has nothing to say about the phenomenon of belief.
- "Dennett's account of religion is about as reliable as a Nazi's account of Judaism". I don't understand: the definition he uses is remarkably mainstream, and owes a lot to William James.

The comon thread running through these critics is one of taboo: Dennett ought not to be investigating this stuff. Nobody offers an alternative theory, and in that respect the attacks feel a bit like Intelligent Design wedgies. The criticism is not of the idea, but the person. And (of course) nobody tries to justify the taboo.

As I wrote in the review on my blog at geoffarnold.com, the book has three sections:
- a careful definition and justification (over-cautious to an atheist like myself)
- a sample explanatory narrative, synthesizing much of the state of the art in this field, acknowledged to probably be mostly wrong, but comprehensively indicating the areas that future, better researched theories should address
- an optimistic but unconvincing plea for future dialogue.

Overall it is a solid step in the right direction.

The path forward for scientific study of religion
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.

Subject Religion to Scientific Scrutiny

Religion is commonly believed to be a stablizing influence in any society - but is it really? "Why not subject it to scientific scrutiny?" asks Daniel Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. "Maybe it is just another bad habit." History has shown that science - despite wrong turns, egos, politics, jealousy, ambition - has a consistent record of being more correct than any other method of inquiry. Just ask anyone who bets their life on science every time they board a commercial airliner. Unique to religion, a theology's taboo against self-examination is brilliant. Guaranteed to cause controversy, Dennett addresses this issue and presents a plan.

Dennett surveys various theories of religion:

From Scott Atran - Religion is (1) a community's costly and hard-to-fake commitment (2) to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supernatural agent(s) (3) who master peoples' existential anxieties, such as death and deception (4) leading to ritualistic and rhythmic co-ordination of 1, 2, and 3; such as communion. This tendency to invent a supernatural agency is an evolutionary by-product - which involves exaggerated use of everyday cognitive processes - to produce unreal worlds that easily attract attention, are readily memorable, and are subject to cultural transmission, selection, and survival. Add a few hopeful solutions to the problems involving the tragedies of life, and you get religion.

From Pascal Boyer - Every religion has these common features:
(1) A supernatural agent who takes a specific ontologic form (animal, tree, human, etc.)
(2) There is something memorably different about this agent (the animal talks, the tree records conversation, the human is born of a virgin) which is an ontologic violation.
(3) This agent knows strategic information and can use it for or against you.

Fun to read and not as dense as his acclaimed "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," Dennett has addressed this book to the believer, who knows in his heart he is on the right path. "If you are one of these, here is what I hope will be a sobering reflection: have you considered that you are perhaps being irresponsible?...If it [religion] is fundamentally benign, as many of its devotees insist, it should emerge just fine; suspicions will be put to rest and we can then concentrate on the few peripheral pathologies that religions, like every other natural phenomemon, fall prey to."

Dennett clearly thinks God is made in man's image, as opposed to man's being a product of God's creation. In his view, the costs and benefits of religion need to be assayed with the scrupulous objectivity of science, and he outlines a plan to do just that.

I couldn't agree more.