A groundbreaking work addressing the development of religions in terms of memes. But it's 33% appendices, so you might be closer to the end than you realize...

Ya ne var biliyor musunuz?..
Benden her şey olur da inançsız biri olmaz. Yok yani... Adına ne derseniz deyin, benden daha üstün bir güç olduğunu bilmek bana bir şekilde güç veriyor.

Rabbime şükür.

Kitabı tüm gün elimde dolaştırıp ıkına ıkına, atlaya zıplaya okudum işte.
Diyorum, ateizm benlik değil, bünyeme ters. İnanç bunalımı geçirdiğim zaman da hiç düşünmeden elemiştim kendisini.
Hâlâ aynı düşünüyorum.

Perfectly argued and a balanced perspective. What a wonderful read!

How little credit we give our ancestors. And how little we consider our own dogmatisms about what constitutes "rationality" and "logic."

Is it fascinating to anyone else that we suddenly *found* ultimate truth in the past three hundred years? What about the fact that even our scientific understanding of the world was not developed in a vacuum, but has been produced in the language and cultural context of "irrational" societies? If we make our ancestors idiots, why do we accept their linguistic craftsmanship?

Be very careful to ensure that one is talking about the same object in a pluralist scheme. I suspect that Mr. Dennett is not. See Wittgenstein's notes on Frazer's Golden Bough.

Overall, this is an excellent review from Daniel Dennett of the ways in which religions might have emerged as natural phenomena in early humans, and how the pressures of evolution on this new set of social constructs might have then produced many of the traits we see in today's religions.

His argument adds important elements to a pure psychological view of religion, although it certainly starts there. In the early chapters, Dennett argues that humans have what he calls an "intentional stance": that in order to best predict the world, we tend to think of things in the world as rational agents, and figure out the desires, and thus the actions, of that agent. This works brilliantly for other humans, and it works pretty well for the animals that early humans might need to hunt or escape. Thus it's easy for us to see how we might extend the same logic to other things - the weather, diseases, and so forth. From this, we can see how we might have grown to attribute apparently random changes in (say) the weather to an unseen entity behind the weather itself, and to then see the changes in the weather as reflecting true intentions of that entity. If you want to get it to rain, therefore, it makes perfect sense to try and communicate with the entity behind it, and to get the entity to cause it to rain. We attribute "agency" to the weather, and it makes sense then to try and bargain with the agent.

(As I write this, we're in lockdown due to the COVID-19 epidemic, and this desire to treat the disease as an entity with intentions, capricious or malignant though they might be, is very visible in the way many people talk about it.)

From here, Dennett grows the argument. Everything we value, or are fearful of, we value or fear for reasons. This view of the world gives us challenges in everyday living, which early folk religions enabled us to handle, psychologically. Once in the culture, these folk religions were susceptible to the same evolutionary pressures - this time at the level of "memes" that thrive or die out - as humans themselves, only many many times faster that physical evolution. Only the best variants of these beliefs will propagate - and "best" means most successful in meeting our deep psychological and physical needs.

As human societies grew, specialised intercessors to these agents emerged ("shamans", he calls them for convenience). Dennett goes on to suggest that these shamans, and others, had time to become more reflective, and so from these early folk religions, organized religions began to emerge. Sometimes, the simple beliefs in the folk religions were bolstered or even entirely replaced by carefully crafted reasoning. At this point, it might have become necessary to put some of these religious views out of the reach of "gnawing skepticism", as Dennett puts it. This leads to an interesting way of splitting the world:

"This winnowing has the effect of sequestering a special subset of cultural items behind the veil of systematic invulnerability to disproof - a pattern found just about everywhere in human societies. As many have urged, this division into the propositions that are designed to be immune to disconfirmation and all the rest looks like a hypothetical joint at which we could well carve nature. Right here, they suggest, is where (proto-)science and (proto-)religion part company"

Dennett rightly spends a fair while on this point. Is it right that we treat religion, by definition, as "systematically immune to confirmation or disconfirmation? ... No religion lacks these effects, and anything that lacks them is not really a religion, however much it is like a religion in other regards." Dennett rightly points out that this view wasn't shared by the shamans themselves: if they saw they were losing their flock to the shaman down the road, they were quite prepared to take on new approaches and ideas - to evolve. So one of the important features that emerged as folk religion merged and became organized religions was this secrecy and systematic invulnerability to disconfirmation.

Now we see Dennett broaden the view out from the leaders to the groups who also believed. He sees this as in many cases an entirely rational decision to join on the part of individuals, who would see benefits from being part of a group regardless of possible supernatural benefits from the gods themselves. There are also many possible psychological benefits in belief, but there is a darker side as well - tribalism in humans is very often reinforced by conflict, and the tendency of religions to spark conflicts and wars from prehistory to the modern day is terrifying. Of course it could be argued that they were being co-opted by pre-existing power structures, but none the less the features of very many religions do seem to be shaped, and often thrive, on conflict.

At this point, Dennett spends a while talking about "belief in belief". This, he argues, is a very powerful force, in religions and elsewhere, and can completely transform them. For example, he points out that many feel it's important to maintain the belief in democracy, regardless of its flaws. So we tend to play down the flaws and play up the benefits, and in doing so lose track of the logic which may (or may not) support the arguments for its value. Similarly with science - we may believe in science, we may believe that "e=mc2", without knowing (or caring) how it is so. None the less, we believe! And, he argues, the same is true of religions. Even very devout followers may not share identical views on details of doctrine, and many lay believers will turn out to have quite different interpretations of major points. But it doesn't matter - what matters is that they all share the belief in the importance of their beliefs.

Finally, Dennett looks at religions today. He starts to talk about whether religion is, all things considered, a good thing. Is religion good for people, he asks? There is definitely evidence that belonging to religious organisations can improve the morale, and hence the health, of participants. Believers would also argue that the meaning it gives their lives is immeasurably valuable. More specific experiments, for example on the benefits of "intercessory prayer", give mixed results, and include at least one notorious case of academic fraud. Finally, almost all religious people see their religion as the foundation of their morality. On this point, Dennett comments

"I have uncovered no evidence to support the claim that people, religious or not, who don't believe in reward in heaven and/or punishment in hell are more likely to kill, rape, rob, or break their promises than people who do. The prison population in the United States shows Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and others - including those with no religious affiliation - represented about as they are in the general population ... Indeed, the evidence to date support the hypothesis that atheists have the lowest divorce rates in the United States, and born-again Christians the highest."

There is a lot I really liked about this book. The arguments are thorough, carefully constructed, and evidence is sought wherever possible. Some technical material is present in appedices, a couple of which I found useful I am, I should point out, not a religious believer of any creed, although I do think that there is a deep human need (which I feel) for the spiritual, and so I can't comment on how a theist would have felt. I hope they would have been able to read the arguments through to the end, and Dennett I feel does a good job of presenting the best arguments on both sides.

There were a few irritations, for me at least. The very first chapter or two nearly caused me to give up, as Dennett spends an entirely unnecessary (for me) amount of time justifying the whole enterprise. He's also very fond of italics to emphasise key words in his paragraphs, and sometimes this is perhaps too heavy handed. But it's a forgiveable style. Four and a half stars, rounded up to five on final consideration.

This book has attracted many thoughtful and nuanced reviews, written by people with a far better grounding in philosophy than me. Rather than just repeat their points I decided to try something different. While reading Breaking the Spell I kept thinking back to Will and Ariel Durant’s 1965 book The Age of Voltaire, volume nine of their eleven volume Story of Civilization. That book ends with a chapter titled Epilogue in Elysium, which is an imaginary dialog between Voltaire and Pope Benedict XIV. The dialog is ahistorical, containing references to West Germany and the atomic bomb, but its focus is on religion and philosophy, not history, and the points made by both men helped me add context to Daniel Dennett’s book.

What I decided to do was to look at some of the arguments Breaking the Spell made and weave into them parts of Durant’s dialog, because they seemed to address many of the same issues from different perspectives. For instance, Dennett examines religion from a scientific point of view, and then pauses to consider whether there are deeper human needs which religion can address but science cannot. Durant touches on this same question, writing:

BENEDICT. You are mistaken if you think that our birth rate is the secret of our success; something far profounder is involved. Shall I tell you why intelligent people all over the world are returning to religion?
VOLTAIRE. Because they are tired of thinking.
BENEDICT. Not quite. They have discovered that your philosophy has no answer but ignorance and despair. And wise men perceive that all attempts at what your brethren called a natural ethic have failed. You and I probably agree that man is born with individualistic instincts formed in thousands of years of primitive conditions; that his social instincts are relatively weak; and that a strong code of morals and laws is needed to tame this natural anarchist into a normally peaceful citizen. Our theologians called those individualistic instincts original sin, inherited from our “first parents”—that is, from those harassed, lawless men, ever endangered hunters, who had always to be ready to fight and kill for food or mates; who had to be violently acquisitive, and pugnacious, and cruel, because whatever social organization they had was still weak, and they had to depend upon themselves for security in their lives and possessions.

Dennett looks at religion as a meme (a word coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene), and then wonders if perhaps it is something even deeper, a survival trait etched into the genome that was selected for and enhanced over countless generations because it promoted group unity. That is an interesting thought, but it has forced believers to accept a lot of absurdities, and as Voltaire himself said, in another context, “Ceux qui peuvent vous faire croire en des absurdités, peuvent vous faire commettre des atrocités. (Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.)”

BENEDICT. So I feel justified in rejecting materialism, atheism, and determinism. Each of us is a soul. Religion builds on that fact.
VOLTAIRE. Suppose all that; how does it warrant the mass of absurdities that were added, century after century, to the creed of the Church?
BENEDICT. There were many absurdities, I know. Many incredibilities. But the people cry out for them, and in several instances the Church, in accepting such marvels into her creed, yielded to persistent and widespread popular demand. If you take from the people the beliefs we allow them to hold, they will adopt legends and superstitions beyond control. Organized religion does not invent superstition, it checks it. Destroy an organized faith, and it will be replaced by that wilderness of disorderly superstitions that are now arising like maggots in the wounds of Christianity.

Breaking the Spell draws a worthwhile distinction between those who believe in god, those who believe that belief itself has benefits from the point of view of social cohesion, and those who feel an emptiness where belief used to be but cannot bring themselves to accept what reason cries out against, probably an oblique reference to Saint Augustine’s idea that there is a god-shaped hole in the heart of every man.

BENEDICT. Meanwhile consider the spiritual devastation that your propaganda has spread, perhaps more tragic than any ruin of cities. Is not atheism the prelude to a profounder pessimism than believers have ever known? And you, rich and famous, did you not often think of suicide?
VOLTAIRE. Yes. I tried to believe in God, but I confess to you that God meant nothing in my life, and that in my secret heart I too felt a void where my childhood faith had been. But probably this feeling belongs only to individuals and generations in transition; the grandchildren of these pessimists will frolic in the freedom of their lives, and have more happiness than poor Christians darkened with fear of hell.
BENEDICT. That fear played only a minor role in the lives of the great majority of the faithful. What inspired them was the feeling that the agony of death was not a meaningless obscenity but the prelude to a larger life, in which all earthly injustices and cruelties would be righted and healed, and they would be united in happiness and peace with those whom they had loved and lost.

Whatever its origins, religion is so deeply embedded in the human psyche that it would be hard to discard, and perhaps dangerous as well. Many people today live hard lives whose only solace is their belief that something better awaits them beyond this veil of tears.

VOLTAIRE. Tradition, then, is capable of being wrong and oppressive, and an impediment to the advancement of understanding. How can man progress if he is forbidden to question tradition?
BENEDICT. Perhaps we should question progress too, but let us put that problem aside for the present. I believe that we should be allowed to question traditions and institutions, but with care that we do not destroy more than we can build, and with caution that the stone that we dislodge shall not prove to be a necessary support to what we wish to preserve, and always with a modest consciousness that the experience of generations may be wiser than the reason of a transitory individual.
VOLTAIRE. And yet reason is the noblest gift that God has given us.
BENEDICT. No; love is. I do not wish to belittle reason, but it should be the servant of love, not of pride.
VOLTAIRE. I often admitted the frailty of reason, I know that it tends to prove anything suggested by our desires; and my distant friend Diderot wrote somewhere that the truths of feeling are more unshakable than the truths of logical demonstration. The true skeptic will doubt reason too. Perhaps I exaggerated reason because that madman Rousseau exaggerated feeling. To subordinate reason to feeling is, to my mind, more disastrous than to subordinate feeling to reason.

Religion is comfort and strength to many people, and reminded me of the old saying that it makes a good man better, and a bad man worse. But secular society is certainly not lacking in evil men and evil deeds. Sometimes all that our progress does is allow us to kill each other more efficiently. Still, in a slow and halting fashion civilization seems to be moving forward.

BENEDICT. And yet you are so hard to convince! Sometimes I despair of winning back brilliant men like you, whose pens move a million souls for evil or for good. But some of your followers are opening their eyes to the awful reality. The bubble of progress has exploded in a century that has seen more wholesale murder of men and women, more devastation of cities and desolation of hearts, than any other century in history. Progress in knowledge, science, comforts, and power is only progress in means; if there is no improvement in ends, purposes, or desires, progress is a delusion. Reason improves the instrumentalities, but the ends are determined by instincts formed before birth and established before reason can grow.
VOLTAIRE. I still have faith in human intelligence; we shall improve ends as well as means as we become more secure in our lives.

And what of the children? If we take impressionable young people and pound religion into them are we helping or hurting them? There is a (disputed) quote by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, to the effect of “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” Are children harmed by religious education? Does early exposure to it warp their thinking for the rest of their lives, or is it important for their growth as responsible, caring human beings?

BENEDICT. Are children capable of philosophy? Can children reason? Society is based upon morality, morality is based upon character, character is formed in childhood and youth long before reason can be a guide. We must infuse morality into the individual when he is young and malleable; then it may be strong enough to withstand his individualistic impulses, even his individualistic reasoning. I’m afraid you began to think too soon. The intellect is a constitutional individualist, and when it is uncontrolled by morality it can tear a society to pieces.
VOLTAIRE. Some of the finest men of my time found reason a sufficient morality.
BENEDICT. There is no doubt that thousands of people orthodox in faith—even people who attend to all the observances of religion—can become great sinners and passionate criminals. Religion is no infallible cure for crime, it is only a help in the great task of civilizing mankind; we believe that without it men would be far worse than they are.
VOLTAIRE. But that awful doctrine of hell turned God into an ogre more cruel than any despot in history.
BENEDICT. You resent that doctrine, but if you knew men better you would understand that they must be frightened with fears as well as encouraged with hopes. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. When your followers lost that fear they began to deteriorate.

Breaking the Spell is one of those books that I spent a lot of time thinking about, and keep coming back to for context about current events. I was reminded of the self-destructive forces religion can unleash as I read a collection of internet posts from people who refused the Covid vaccine only to die slowly and horribly from the virus, many of them buttressing their decisions with a touching but toxic form of Christian faith: when first hospitalized they told their followers not to worry, that god would save them; then, as they got sicker a note of desperation would creep in: surely god would save his faithful and devoted servant; and finally a sad announcement from the family that heaven had gained a new angel. Daniel Dennett’s book does not provide answers, but it asks the right questions, and those questions can help illuminate our path as we sort out what we believe, why we believe it, and why it matters.

The problem is that there are good spells and then there are bad spells. If only some timely phone call could have interrupted the proceedings at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978, when the lunatic Jim Jones was ordering his hundreds of spellbound followers to commit suicide! If only we could have broken the spell that enticed the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo to release sarin gas in a Tokyo subway, killing a dozen people and injuring thousands more! If only we could figure out some way today to break the spell that lures thousands of poor young Muslim boys into fanatical madrassahs where they are prepared for a life of murderous martyrdom instead of being taught about the modern world, about democracy and history and science! If only we could break the spell that convinces some of our fellow citizens that they are commanded by God to bomb abortion clinics!

Pretty disappointing book. It started off decent, hypothesizing some evolutionary origins of religious thought, and the introduction of the concept of memes, which allowed the development and propagation of religious ideas. However, it didn't add much to that. It was more concerned about disproving supernatural claims about religion itself, rather than explaining religion as such. It's a rather understandable endeavor considering how religion is applied for a significant portion of the population. But nevertheless, it's quite pointless for anyone that isn't a religious fundamentalist.

If the goal of the book was to convince anyone of the possibility of not being a supernatural God, I don't know why Dennett bothered. His most compelling arguments are borrowed from either Sam Harris or Dawkins, if not quoted directly. He offers nothing original with substantial value.

I'm not sure why I expected otherwise, considering it's a rather consistent phenomenon in what some call the "new atheists", but it's quite embarrassing writing a book about religion and not understanding it the slightest. In almost 400 pages, Dennet never even touched on anything philosophical ideas behind specific religious stories. His narrow-mindedness can't see anything but literal claims about the material world. It's not super unreasonable considering that is indeed what many religious people claim, but nevertheless, he should know better.

If you're looking for the typical atheist case around religion, Dawkins or Sam Harris are much better picks. If you're looking for a deeper understanding of religious thought and origin, then this offers very little insight.

Dennett my love

"These are questions worth further investigation." This could be the theme of this book.

So, I've read three of the four books written after Nine Eleven by the "Four Horsemen" of atheism. Of them, only Sam Harris's The End of Faith was published prior to this one. This book takes a different, more dispassionate, tack. It looks at the question of how religion came about and why it persists. Dennett directly addresses believers, asking them to question themselves, and with each question he invites them to step a tiny bit further out of their comfort zone.

In some ways I feel he's a little too accommodating to the other side, but it became clear early on that people like me are not the primary audience of this book. I'd like my xian friends, relatives, and acquaintances to read Sam Harris's book, but that's not likely. But those who are more liberal, who think there are worthy books besides the bible, might be persuaded out of their certainty in their particular faith by these reasoned, quiet questions.

هذا الكتاب ليس كغيره من كتب الإلحاد المعاصر، فهو لم يقدم كتابه كعالم بايولوجيا، ولا كعالم أعصاب، ولا كصحفي سياسي، بل كفيلسوف يحاول فهم طبيعة الدين.

يحاول دينيت أن يوضح لنا، أن الدين ليس خارجا عن المنهجية العلمية لفهمه ودراسته، وأن التسليم بالماورائيات ليست مسلمات، بل هي بداية الطريق للنقاش.

يعتمد دينيت على التحليل الاجتماعي والتطور الدارويني لفهم وتفسير سلوكيات المؤمنين والجماعات الدينية.

الكتاب رائع ويستحق القراءة، وقد ترجمت الدار الليبرالية الكتاب للعربية، يمكن الحصول عليه من موقع نيل والفرات.

This book is a little bit wordy, but one should expect that when they pick up a book written by a philosopher. There are some interesting thoughts in this book but I feel like it could have been a bit shorter.