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Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

by Daniel C. Dennett (Allen Lane 2006)

Kim Sterelny in the American Scientist worries "that Dennett is too hopeful that religious readers will be open to his arguments" (see The Complete Review for references to this and other reviews). I suspect that Sterenly is right to worry. Dennett argues strongly that we need to understand religion ("Few forces in the world are as potent as religion") and that this is can be done through scientific study of its history and psychology; but some disagree. Leon Wieseltier, writing in The New York Times Book Review, accuses Dennett of scientism and reductionism:

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.
…
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.

and Adam Kirsch in The New York Sun writes of:

… complete failure to recognize the existential demand of religion. … At the heart of organized religion, whether one accepts or rejects it, is the truth that metaphysical experience is part of human life. Any adequate account of religion must start from this phenomenological fact.

Perhaps we should clarify the meaning of some of these terms:

• Scientism: Pejorative term for the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other enquiry (The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy).
• Reductionism: Often derogatory the practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation. (The Concise Oxford English Dictionary).
• Metaphysical: Transcending physical matter or the laws of nature (The Concise Oxford English Dictionary).
• Supervenience: A kind of dependency relation. One set of properties is supervenient on a second set when they are so related that there could not be a difference in the first without there being a difference in the second, though there could be a difference in the second with no difference in the first. It has been argued that mental properties are supervenient upon, rather than nomically identical with or related to, physical properties (O. R. Jones in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy).

So can human experience transcend physical matter or the laws of nature as Adam Kirsch would have it? Professor Leiter of the University of Texas refutes this in his reply to Leon Wieseltier:

But "the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical" is not a "superstition," but a reasonable methodological posture to adopt based on the actual evidence, that is, based on the actual, expanding success of the sciences, and especially, the special sciences, during the last hundred years.

Scientists, particularly physical scientists, are frequently accused of reductionism – they seem to be saying that if they knew how the fundamental particles of matter behaved then everything would follow, including the behaviour of the human brain. This attitude is a gross oversimplification. Very complex behaviour emerges from assemblies of numbers of simple components interacting according to simple rules. Chess has only a few basic rules governing the movement of the pieces on the board, yet untold numbers of books have been written on strategies of play. Human behaviour, controlled by an assembly of neurons, is far more complex. Generally we cannot make much progress in deducing the assemblies' emergent rules of behaviour from rules governing the components, but we can say that the emergent rules are supervenient on those of the components (ie they depend on them in the sense defined above) so that the existence of a functioning brain is a prerequisite for the existence of a thinking self.

Only religion claims exemption from scientific explanation (and maybe the irrational beliefs usually collected under the title "New Age", but even these often claim pseudo-scientific justifications). In all other walks of life we look for a rational cause. If someone shows abnormal behaviour, we look for the cause – it may be some defect, disease or chemical response of the brain, or it may be due to some past experience – although a few of the religious may still believe in possession by the Devil. Dennet asks "What was the psychological and cultural soil in which it [religion] first took root? how did it evolve? Is it the product of blind evolutionary instinct or of rational choice?" Surely the historical development of religion is relevant to an understanding of its present forms.

Dennett worries about the religious right, the believers in the "End Days", who have political influence in the USA and are "dangerously out of touch with reality", and "how we should deal with the excesses of religious upbringing and the recruitment of terrorists"? His answer is "that we gently but firmly educate the people of the world, so that they can make truly informed choices about their lives". Although desirable, this seems to me Utopian – who are the "we" with influence to educate the world? The education of children is of particular importance but is a topic of particular ethical and political sensitivity. Perhaps we can start by trying to influence the citizens of our own country.

Gordon Peckham