Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
by Daniel C. Dennett
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Book Summary Information
Author: Daniel C. DennettEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-02-06
ISBN: 0143038338
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Book Review: "A man ought to know his limitations..." *
Summary: 2 Stars
I first read Dennett's Breaking the Spell two years ago, when it first appeared. Since then, I've re-read the whole thing once more, and bits of it several times. I did so under the suspicion that I must've missed something. As a professional philosopher who's taught at the college level for a quarter-century, I know that when an argument comes across as vapid or padded, it ought to be checked several times to make sure a crucial subtlety hasn't been overlooked. But I've come to the conclusion that there's not much to Dennett's book. It has its moments, but they're tediously hard to find in a book that could've easily been cut by at least half.
Dennett, of course, is one of the gang of four--other members are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens--dubbed by "Wired" magazine the "New Atheists." Their brand of atheism is characterized by a militant criticism of all religious beliefs, an uncompromising refusal to distinguish between fundamentalist fringe and moderate religion, a reductionistic reliance on science--especially evolution theory--as foundational, and a rather surprising innocence of the philosophical (much less theological) literature on the God debate. Dennett, the professional philosopher of the lot, sounds so much like Dawkins that one can scarcely tell them apart at times.
Breaking the Spell goes over claims that are now familiar: religion is an evolutionary artifact that may've once had value but isn't necessary any longer. It's nothing more than a toxic meme (Dennett overworks the meme metaphor even more than Dawkins) that refers to no transcendent reality but does a great deal of harm. Thinkers who haven't been infected with the meme are better able to evaluate religion than those who have been infected by it. So-called moderate religionists grant legitimacy to their militant co-believers, and share moral responsibility with them.
Now, all of these claims may be perfectly true. The problem is that Dennett doesn't really argue for them so much as state them in a manner that's so wordy and rambling that one suspects he may've dictated rather than written Breaking the Spell. Let me offer a representative example: his treatment of morality and religion in Chapter 10.
One would've suspected that Dennett would've responded to standard arguments that argue for a necessary connection between religion and morality--e.g., divine command theory or natural law theory--or that he would've focused on the so-called problem of evil (how can a good and powerful God allow innocent suffering?). But instead, quite amazingly, he claims that religion grounds morality on either the authority of religious spokespersons (this is as close as he comes to divine command theory) or the fear of hell and the hope of paradise. In other words, he ignores the long-standing philosophical debate to focus on a Sunday School straw man. And what can be said of Chapter 10 can be said of most of the entire book. It's not surprising that a quick perusal of the book's index and bibliography reveals nearly none of the relevant literature. Dennett, of course, might reply (and has done so elsewhere) that there's nothing in the traditional literature worth taking seriously and that he wants to break fresh ground. Fair enough. But surely he must offer an argument for the first claim and live up to the second.
It's frustrating enough that a philosopher with Dennett's reputation (because he really has done interesting work in philosophy of mind) should publish such a shoddy work. But the frustration level rises when one considers that Dennett either truly doesn't know the general outlines of the debate (much less the finer points) or that he's patronising his readers by presuming that they won't be able to handle a treatise that offers substantive argumentation.
There are so many better texts to read. I'd recomment Michael Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Analysis or the volume he edited, The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Hume's Dialogues, Mill's Three Essays, Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, Plato's Euthyphro: any of these would also be good places to start. But the New Atheists? Not so much.
____
* From The Gospel of Dirty Harry ("Magnum Force")
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