3.5, but rounded up to 4. Found it to be a bit of a slog, especially the first half, which had me picking it up and putting it down for months. He presents some interesting ideas here, and chapter 10 is the apex for me. I would consider Dennett firmly in fourth place among the neo-atheist “Four Horsemen,” and would be very interested in a revised edition some 15 years after its first printing. He ultimately is much more optimistic in his outlook relative to the actual 2022 religious/political climate (nightmare?), yet the task of holding religions to a rigorous, objective standard remains as important as ever.

His goal in this book is to break the taboo protecting religion from reasoned examination.
Unlike the other atheist author like Dawkins or Hitchens, Dennett goes to great lengths to maintain a congenial and fair treatment of religion.
This is commendable, but cripples his thesis.
Instead of presenting the ample evidence that religion is bad and does harm, Dennett calls for "further study".
In the end, I felt like he didn't go far enough, but it was a fun ride.

Dennett's overuse (abuse) of parenthesis (like this) makes for a very difficult (and confusing) read.

3.5 stars.

time to break this spell

Good thoughts but at some points quite difficult language.

Bastante bueno, no tan agresivo como Dawkins u Onfray.
Me gustó su premisa (Hay que quitarle el velo a las religiones y atrevernos a estudiarlas desde un punto de vista objetivo).

One of his more enjoyable books and easier to understand than most of his other works.

While I agree with Dennett's approach and conclusions, a more tedious book about the origins and purpose of religion doesn't exist.

While I agree with much of what Dennett has written in this book, I couldn't help myself asking why he bothered to write this at all. He cites Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained and Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion to establish religion as an evolutionary by-product, or "spandrel" per Stephen Jay Gould. A number of the ideas he expounds on here are derived from these two books as well. To cut to the chase, I'd say just to skip this entirely and pick up one of the two aforementioned books (Boyer for a more lay-oriented treatment and Atran for a more academic one). Both offer a more lucid and thorough explanation of "religion as a natural phenomenon."

Dennett spends an inordinate amount of time navel-gazing about what a scientific study of religion would look like but quotes fairly extensively from the literature on the psychology of religion in other sections of the book! What is the point here? He becomes fixated on the strange notion that there is a taboo on studying religion scientifically within academia, which is not at all the case. There is even a journal explicitly called Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTi...) which does not allow theological submissions.

Dennett's memetics fetish comes through here as well, of course. Atran devotes an entire chapter to a refutation of memetics in his book and, needless to say, I found Dennett's response to be superficial and unconvincing. I will give Dennett credit for formulating meme theory in a far more sensible fashion than its other proponents, but I still consider the whole deal to be bordering on, if not outright, pseudoscience.

I am echoing some of the complaints made by Armin W. Geertz in his talk "How Not To Do The Cognitive Science of Religion" (http://www.commongroundgroup.net/wp-c...), though I think Geertz is a bit overly harsh on Dennett and is far more enthusiastic about memes than I am.

"What's the point?" A question I kept asking myself through much of this book, despite being in broad agreement with Dennett.

This gentleman writes like a college freshman. Rambles off on tangents constantly. Spends his first 100 pages re-stating the purpose of the book, while wondering if he should, in fact, write the book.

Breaking the Spell is a very interesting read as it looks at different parts of religion from different perspectives. Dennett appears to be more open to dialog and less aggressive than Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris and while this is somewhat refreshing for me as a reader, it is also a little bit duller although I wonder if the narrator (it was an audiobook) isn't partially responsible for it.

Overall it added some food for though which is always good but I'm still looking for the book that is able to find a good common ground for genuine progressive discussion between atheists and believers. Although it covers a lot of ground and the author tries to establish starting points for such a discussion, it isn't enough. At least not for me.

Pros: Dennett's clear and light-hearted (self-effacing even) style of writing has the ability to bring readers from all walks of life into his theories and examples. He weaves evolutionary theory into several disciplines, and isn't as pedantic as some philosophers writing in the same area(s). In Breaking the Spell, he approaches religion from his standard naturalist worldview and posits the question "Cui bono?" (who benefits?) throughout the work as he attempts to explain the origin and survival of religion in terms of natural selection. Also, he scratches the surface of the doxastic systems required to be religious (paraphrasing 'Believers have to BELIEVE they can believe in the facets of their faith.') which leads to an interesting discussion regarding propositional attitudes towards religious belief.

Cons: Dennett sometimes ruins his charade of neutrality by getting on his atheist stump and preaching (to the choir - for who else will read his work?) which detracts from the arguments and hypotheses he presents. Also, some explanations - while relevant and usually fun - run a little long. The worst offense is the strength (if any) of his arguments is diminished by his lack of conviction to really hammer his solid points home. I suspect he doesn't want to sound dogmatic, or even worse, be quoted and pigeonholed forever by his claims. But then again, his claims are so vague now that he could be erring so far on the side of caution that his work will fail to make a significant impact.

Overall: I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the study of religion. I would not recommend this book to professional philosophers (and I think Dennett intended it to be this way).