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Rakuen Reviews: Breaking the Spell (and a mini poll)
15 years ago
General
I finished Daniel Dennett's book on religion, Breaking the Spell, recently. It starts by saying that religion is a very important part of society and has a huge ability to affect people. For this reason he says that it is irresponsible not to try study and understand religion. At the same time he makes the case that religion can be seen as a natural phenomenon and that it is capable of being studied scientifically, even if that might make people uncomfortable.
In the next part he shows how religion could arise without being deliberately designed. He supports the idea of memes and cultural evolution that Dawkins proposed and that functions the same way as biological evolution. He says that the origin of religion probably lies in humans' tendency to attribute intention to objects (theory of mind). Basically when we interact with people we assume that they are acting with intentions, perfectly reasonable, but we are susceptible to erroneously applying the same assumptions to inanimate objects. This leads people to see things like natural disasters as the Earth being angry and so people might make offerings to the rain in order to appease it and make it act more favourably. This can even be seen in day to day life where someone might yell at a computer when something goes wrong, or encourage your car when it struggles to start on a cold morning.
The next interesting idea to be brought up was that of belief in belief. Even if someone doesn't believe in something, god in this case, they might believe that believing in god is a state to which you should aspire. This means that people will want to believe in god even if their belief in god actually wavers. This obviously could lead to some problems, if someone admires people who believe in god and thinks that the right thing to do is believe in god but can't actually bring themselves to believe in god. In any case I found belief in belief a very interesting concept. Coming off of that was that people who believe belief is good don't want the belief criticised and so, apart from perhaps rules against blasphemy, make religions themselves so confusing that even believers don't know what they are believing. If there isn't a well-defined belief then there isn't a way to show that it is wrong. On the other hand this means some people say that since religion offers no testable hypothesis or even a coherent idea of god that there is no possible evidence to support a god.
In the last part of the book, Dennett says that if you want to look at religion you need to first get through a number of barriers opposing that investigation. People might want to know whether religion is good for us or not, but people will be opposed to the question itself. People don't choose a religion because it is good for them but for various other reasons. Dennett points out that he liked when researchers showed that drinking moderate amounts of wine was good for you, not because he drank wine because it was good for him but because he liked drinking wine in the first place and now it was shown to be good as well. He also criticises the idea of religion as a source of moral guidance, in fact calling it demeaning. Once again when you someone says religion is their source of morality you do have to get nervous that that person is saying that without the threat of punishment or reward they would be out there killing and raping. In the process of studying religion surveys often are used but he does make a point that they are not necessarily accurate as people for whom religion is a small aspect of their life won't actually bother to fill it out.
Finally he proposes that children are taught about as many religions as possible. He acknowledges that it might feel bad telling a parent what they can and can't teach to their children but it's not excusable to encourage ignorance. In his discussion he brings up some other hard questions, such as whether isolated people should be brought into society. It isn't right to treat them as some sort of zoo but even when they don't want our knowledge should the parents in those societies be able to make such a decision for their children.
Overall I wasn't a huge fan of the book but it did contain some good concepts, the discussion about attributing intentions and belief in belief.
What should I read next?
Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
Eulalia! by Brian Jacques
The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann
Assasin's Creed Brotherhood by Oliver Bowden
I'll be posting a small review as well.
In the next part he shows how religion could arise without being deliberately designed. He supports the idea of memes and cultural evolution that Dawkins proposed and that functions the same way as biological evolution. He says that the origin of religion probably lies in humans' tendency to attribute intention to objects (theory of mind). Basically when we interact with people we assume that they are acting with intentions, perfectly reasonable, but we are susceptible to erroneously applying the same assumptions to inanimate objects. This leads people to see things like natural disasters as the Earth being angry and so people might make offerings to the rain in order to appease it and make it act more favourably. This can even be seen in day to day life where someone might yell at a computer when something goes wrong, or encourage your car when it struggles to start on a cold morning.
The next interesting idea to be brought up was that of belief in belief. Even if someone doesn't believe in something, god in this case, they might believe that believing in god is a state to which you should aspire. This means that people will want to believe in god even if their belief in god actually wavers. This obviously could lead to some problems, if someone admires people who believe in god and thinks that the right thing to do is believe in god but can't actually bring themselves to believe in god. In any case I found belief in belief a very interesting concept. Coming off of that was that people who believe belief is good don't want the belief criticised and so, apart from perhaps rules against blasphemy, make religions themselves so confusing that even believers don't know what they are believing. If there isn't a well-defined belief then there isn't a way to show that it is wrong. On the other hand this means some people say that since religion offers no testable hypothesis or even a coherent idea of god that there is no possible evidence to support a god.
In the last part of the book, Dennett says that if you want to look at religion you need to first get through a number of barriers opposing that investigation. People might want to know whether religion is good for us or not, but people will be opposed to the question itself. People don't choose a religion because it is good for them but for various other reasons. Dennett points out that he liked when researchers showed that drinking moderate amounts of wine was good for you, not because he drank wine because it was good for him but because he liked drinking wine in the first place and now it was shown to be good as well. He also criticises the idea of religion as a source of moral guidance, in fact calling it demeaning. Once again when you someone says religion is their source of morality you do have to get nervous that that person is saying that without the threat of punishment or reward they would be out there killing and raping. In the process of studying religion surveys often are used but he does make a point that they are not necessarily accurate as people for whom religion is a small aspect of their life won't actually bother to fill it out.
Finally he proposes that children are taught about as many religions as possible. He acknowledges that it might feel bad telling a parent what they can and can't teach to their children but it's not excusable to encourage ignorance. In his discussion he brings up some other hard questions, such as whether isolated people should be brought into society. It isn't right to treat them as some sort of zoo but even when they don't want our knowledge should the parents in those societies be able to make such a decision for their children.
Overall I wasn't a huge fan of the book but it did contain some good concepts, the discussion about attributing intentions and belief in belief.
What should I read next?
Brisingr by Christopher Paolini
Eulalia! by Brian Jacques
The Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann
Assasin's Creed Brotherhood by Oliver Bowden
I'll be posting a small review as well.
If you think it'll be interesting to read then go ahead. I preferred a different one of his books, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. It's not on religion but does touch on it. It's about how evolution is like an algorithm that can be applied to a lot more than just biology.