Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon | Daniel C. Dennett

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon | Daniel C. Dennett | Dennett Does It Again!

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Breaking the Spell...

	Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon Daniel C. Dennett Penguin (Non-Classics), 2007 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 152 reviews view larger image
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A Giant Fight

How's this for a story:

Imagine a giant fight. A giant pillow fight. A giant is battering you back and forth with a giant pillow. Feathers are flying. You can't exactly see. You know you're not really hurt, but he's knocking you half off your feet, you're confused. What's he doing? What in heaven's name is happening? You struggle to regain your senses.

The giant in this case is Daniel C. Dennett, and the big fellow's pillow is his "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon." A staggering book, staggering erudition, staggering research. It's well worth sticking with it.

Dennett does not hesitate to tell you precisely where he stands:
*** He is an atheist. God does not exist.
*** Nature, planet Earth, the cosmos are all material.
*** The supernatural is a fiction of man's devising.
*** Man has no eternal soul. His end is death.
*** Darwinian evolution is a fact, and has broad application.
*** Religion may be emotionally moving and beautiful in aid, music, art, architecture, and ceremony. Nevertheless, it can be dangerous, as all know since 9/11.

Dennett posits that religion is a natural, not a metaphysical, phenomenon. To seek to avoid religion's excesses, he urges all parties to agree to study it scientifically. He hypothesizes that like any other human practice, religion has had an evolutionary development.

"Breaking the Spell" can be tough going, but perilous times demand worldwide focus on the problems that religion engenders. We are engaged in a giant battle, and it's no pillow fight.

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Dennett Does It Again!

I happen to think that Daniel Dennett is one of the most intelligent and insightful people on the planet. In this book he takes a respectful yet incisive look at the roots of religion and its implications for the future if all responsible religious and non-religious people do not get involved in the much needed open minded discourse that must take place if the societies of the world are going to survive the possible tragedies of not having such a discourse. A very salient point that he makes is that moderate religious people are in fact responsible for their not so moderate counterparts. Religion at its most destructive could not exist without tacit acceptance of such fanaticism by the so called moderates. Religions must change from within because outside influences will always be countered by stock dogmatic objections by religious people. Any intelligent open minded person whether they be religious or not will benefit from reading this book.

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Breaking the mystery

Daniel Dennett is one of the most amazing atheist authors out there. This book truly illuminated my mind and got me really thinking about the world. I would reccommend it for anyone recently doubting their faith, or anyone who's deeply immersed in the world of science.

Slow and gentle argument

This book is a very well-thought-out argument in defense of the rational over faith-based reasons for what truly is. I found it gentle, persuasive and easy to read. If you read this and experience any outrage or insult, it is clearly a case for you to resolve in the face of such self-evidence as Dennett illustrates so well. You are necessarily obliged to think and re-read, I'd suggest. A fine work of non-fiction.

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Philosophy at its best

How to break the spell? Dennett knows: don't pretend you have answers and instead ask good questions. Lots of them in sincere response to lots of supposed answers that don't seem like satisfying answers.

I've done this in a non-systematic way and I suspect you may have too but I have never seen it done so well as Dennett does in this book. In the chapter on "Morality and Religion", he even makes this approach explicit in a marvelous statement about what what he says some people have realized is "one of the best secrets of life: let your self go". By which he means, not into any kind of reckless behavior but with a "humble curiousity" in response to the "world's complexity". The paragraph in which he elaborates on that view is, for me, worth by itself reading the book for - but there is so much more insight in this book, it is really a treasure of showing you just how far someone can go if they adopt that attitude. Whether you or I can achieve Dennett's level of effective questioning I don't know but it certainly seems worth a try. In the following chapter "Now What Do We Do?", Dennett proposes alternative schooling for children that would not only address their real needs but also allow a questioning attitude that would challenge religious claims rather than waste student's time on any religious indoctrination.

There's a great deal more in this delightful book but hopefully the above alone will help you realize, as it has me, that Dennett represents cognitive studies at its best.

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