Već od samog provokativnog naslova nam je jasan cilj knjige, ali ton samog izlaganja je zapanjujuće prijateljski, sa vrlo malo provokacija. Izgleda da je autor zaista iskren kada kaže da je knjiga napisana da bi je čitali i religiozni ljudi. Naravno, on misli na obrazovane i intelektualno poštene ljude, ne na fundamentaliste koji ne prihvataju, na primer, evoluciju života. Knjiga zvuči kao da je napisana prvenstveno njima. Još jedna od glavnih ciljnih grupa su mu budući istraživači.
Da bi uopšte razmatrali natprirodna rešenja moramo najpre da ispitamo i odbacimo prirodne mogućnosti. Denet nam predlaže da, bar za početak, posmatramo religiju kao i sve drugo, kao prirodnu pojavu koja je produkt evolucije koja ne dopušta ništa što, makar u početku, ne donosi nikakvu korist organizmu u biološkom smislu ili makar nastaje kao sporedni produkt neke neposredno korisne osobine. Ima više hipoteza o razlozima za nastanak religije. Denetova hipoteza začetke religije vidi u sećanjima na preminule pretke kojima se pridaju božanska svojstva, kao i čovekovoj sklonosti da pridaje svojstva ličnosti svemu što zavređuje njegovu pažnju. Pošto su nastale, religije su se dalje razvijale uz kulturnu evoluciju kroz razvoj rituala, mitologiju i tržište religijskih ideja. Religija je evoluirala i menjala se u skladu sa ljudskim vrednostima.
Denet eksplicitno kaže da su ideje koje navodi u knjizi daleko od dokazane teorije, ali su proverljive, za razliku od mnogih drugih. To je dobar početak. S druge strane, neproverljive hipoteze nisu ni tačne ni netačne, one su samo - besmislene.
Svakog dana se stvaraju po dve-tri nove religije? Zašto je to tako? Najstarije današnje religije su stare nekoliko hiljada godina. Očigledno je da su sve one dizajnirane i evoluirale iz nekih razloga koji su još uvek nepoznati. Nepoznati su samo zato što se te stvari ne ispituju. Čarolija koja, po Denetu, mora da se razbije, jeste tabu koji zabranjuje kritičko ispitivanje religije. Prvenstvena namera ove knjige nije da da odgovor na pitanje da li bogovi postoje, već samo da razmotri šta je to religija, kako je nastala i čemu služi. Pošto postoje i pozitivne i negativne strane religije, on želi da se ispita koje pretežu. Da li možda postoji nešto drugo, sem religije, što je korisnije ljudima u ovom smislu? Da li će zaista sve propasti ako se religija diskredituje? Gotovo svi vernici misle da postavljanje pitanja o veri ismeva i unižavava njihovu veru. Ali ako postoji granica znanja koju ne smemo da prelazimo, mi moramo biti sigurni da ona postoji, gde je i koji su razlozi za nju. Denet ubedljivo obrazlaže da je zaista vredno istraživati. „Nijedan bog kojeg usrećuje pokazivanje nerazumne ljubavi ne bi bio vredan obožavanja.“
Da bi ljudi koji su na suprotstavljenim stranama mogli da raspravljaju o nečemu, moraju dozvoliti mogućnost da njihovi stavovi koje žele da nametnu nisu a priori ispravni. Takođe, i još važnije, moraju postaviti neki zajednički ideal kako bi imalo smisla raspravljati. Danas više nego ikad, postoje razlozi da shvatimo religiju jer opasnost da fanatici unište svet postaje sve veća. Makar njima je neophodno razbiti čaroliju. A umereni vernici tu takođe nose svoj deo odgovornosti.

This book is written for religious people to start examining the origin of their beliefs from a scientific or naturalistic point of view. It’s not particularly interesting for someone who already takes it for granted that religion is something that comes easily to humans because we grant agency to inanimate objects. Plus it could have given an evolutionary advantage on its own, by increasing group cohesion. Unfortunately I don’t think this incredibly delicately written book will reach the intended audience.

Although he is a member of the group of freethinkers and "new atheists" who are now speaking out in print against religion, Dennet takes a somewhat different approach. He lays out a case for subjecting religious tenets to scientific scrutiny, treating religion as a natural phenomenon that should be investigated with as much detachment and scientific curiosity as the fundamental forces, elementary particles, or chemical/biological processes. Occasionally I wasn't sure if he was arguing for investigation of religious claims (miracles, virgin birth, resurrection, etc.), or investigation of why we believe these things (along the lines of "Born to Believe"). There seemed to be both arguments going on, and they often overlapped.

One other point--I got the feeling a number of times that his arguments were a bit disingenuous...though he urged scientific investigation, his discussion seemed to be intended to reveal why such investigation will actually be fruitless in the case of most religious claims...because there is nothing to investigate. But even though I wasn't entirely convinced of his sincerity, I was entertained and enlightened by his discussion.

Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon takes a unique method in exposing religion’s potential psychological and societal evolutionary origins. I really appreciate it because this is the only one of the four books that I think a religious person really could read and be left contemplating their beliefs and not just thoroughly offended. Dennett spends the first part of the book explaining whether or not it would be appropriate for a non-religious scholar to study the sociological aspects of religion. In his usual levelheaded tone, he says, “I ask just that you try to keep an open mind and refrain from prejudging what I say because I am a godless philosopher, while I similarly do my best to understand you” (21).

Read more: https://sheseeksnonfiction.blog/2018/...

Daniel Dennet presenta a la religion desde un punto de vista mas natural. contrario a las formas en las que filosofos abordan el tema, Dennet plantea estudiar este fenomeno bajo las mismas condiciones de cualquier otro fenomeno natural en la naturleza. la gran mayoria del libro trata de explicar sobre como se pudieron haber originado los primeros sistemas de creencias, como estos pudieron tener alguna influencia en la seleccion natural y su consecuente evolucion hacia sistemas de creencias organizados. una obra mas filosofica, no trata de atacar directamente hacia ningun sistema de creencias. pero desea dejar en claro que estos fenomenos en nuestros dias ya no son de la importancia de la que alguna vez fueron.

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.

In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett hopes to break the spell--not of religious belief, but of the conviction that it is not a fit subject for scientific inquiry. Never the twain shall meet--this is a bad idea according to Dennett. Stephen Jay Gould wrote of "non-overlapping magisteria," of both science and religion as worthy of respect in their own rights, but unbridgeable, the one to the other.

Dennett takes exception to this, maintaining that religion is a fit subject for scientific scrutiny, and in doing so he draws upon evolutionary, anthropological and psychological research on the origin and spread of religion. He speculates as to how a primitive belief in ghosts later became a belief in wind spirits, rain gods, wood nymphs, and leprechauns. According to Dennett, as hunter-gatherers became farmers, as they aggregated into prehistoric villages, a need to protect one's own arose--property, spouse, children, crops, livestock. Richard Dawkins' selfish gene no longer served the common weal. That is, genetic kinship among tribe members was not enough in itself to insure Darwinian cooperation. Shared beliefs rather than DNA enforced proper behavior. People became commanded by an authoritarian but vengeful god to do their duty to others not genetic kin.

This is a tidy explanation, tying all up in a neat bundle, but there are the Neanderthals who were not fit inside. At digs of Neanderthal burial sites, something extraordinary was found, something which provides evidence of Neanderthal practices long before ours became the dominantly successful species. Around the burial site and bones of a beloved individual flowers and trinkets were carefully placed. They are extinct now, the Neanderthals, but could this mean that even they had a sense of the spiritual, a regard for an after life? I can see no other way to understand the findings. So much for Dennett's religion as emergent from the need for duty in communities. Something there is that cannot be packaged as well as he would have it. As Yeats put it, "An aging man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick unless soul clap hands, sing, and louder sing for every tatter in his mortal dress." Religion was informed by spiritual as well as moral needs.

Dennett draws upon the concept of memes--scientifically unverifiable and another Dawkins concept--to explain how primitive beliefs evolved into modern religions. "Every minister in every faith is like a jazz musician keeping traditions alive by playing the beloved standards . . . but mixing familiarity and novelty in just the right proportions to grab the minds and hearts of their hosts." Hosts here is meant to mean the same as an unsuspecting, sometimes insentient host for a virus, a parasite. According to Dennett, people are dumb, unwitting hosts for memes, in this case religious beliefs. I will add, they are also hosts for the vaunted faith in the scientific model as the only true way of understanding the universe.

Sorry, Daniel, but I cannot get there from here. Nor can you. Dennett is playing in a mind-field, one that eventually will explain nothing and sets off duds.

Although I do not have interest or belief in the dogma or doctrine of any religion, I do see all religions as serving a deep, human need. (I think Dennett would agree with me on this while he holds that humankind would be better off without the need.) The need is not served by a flawed scientific paradigm in which the objects of scientific investigation somehow are supposed to provide meaning. (Else, why are they pursued?) I am reminded of Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who famously remarked, “the more we find out about the universe, the more meaningless it all seems.” Meaningless, because science ignores the other magisterium, which at its core--though not always in tenets--points to what we all are, and teaches that fulfillment-meaning cannot be found in the objects of scientific research. John Gray continues for me.

"One cannot make a sharp distinction between natural processes and supernatural agents unless one presupposes a view of the world something like that presented in the biblical creation story, and the distinction is not found in most of the world's religions. For example, in animism - which must rank as the oldest and most universal religion - spirits are seen as part of the natural world.

More fundamentally, it is a mistake to assume that belief is the core of religion. This may seem self-evident to many philosophers, but in fact belief is not very important in most religions. Even within Christianity there are traditions, such as Eastern Orthodoxy, in which it has never been central. For the majority of humankind, religion has always been about practice rather than belief. In fixating on the belief-content of religion, Dennett emulates Christianity at its most rationalistic and dogmatic. Pascal knew better, and understood that faith is not so much the basis of the religious life as a derivative from it. Dennett mocks those who say that life without faith has no meaning as "believers in belief". Yet he displays a zealous faith in unbelief that is far more inimical to doubt, and there is more scepticism in a single line of the Pensees than in the whole of Dennett's leaden tome.

Breaking the Spell approaches its subject with a relentless, simple-minded cleverness that precludes anything like profundity, and much of it seems designed to demonstrate the author's intellectual ingenuity rather than to advance the reader's understanding."

Torn between 3 and 4 stars. Overall I think this is worth a read if you’re interested in exploring religion from a more academic perspective, particularly with a focus on how certain characteristics make religion more likely to spread/ disappear over time. This just scratches the surface on questions of morality and ethical reasoning, so I’d recommend a different book if you want to dig into those topics.

The spirit of this book is essentially “ask questions for others to ponder” so don’t expect any answers. That being said, it is an interesting read.

The tone was mostly casual, with some academic language mixed in that was at times difficult to parse. I also found it a bit odd that although the author claimed to want the book to be inclusive for religious readers, sections addressing them felt a bit disparaging

To preface my remarks here, I think it is important that I note Dennett's definition of religion and its implications. He defines religion as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. Two elements of the definition almost cause me panic as I read them. The first, the fact that any religion is a social system, suggests to me that since one cannot worship a supernatural agent alone, God, a "he" most everywhere you look, is really the collective concept of a group of people who are similarly connected socially and religiously. In a recent Good Reads forum based on Dawkins' The God Delusion, most of the faithful who participated suggested that because so many others believed in God throughout history, their study of "scripture" should not be questioned by me or other participants. Alas, none were willing to address the reasons why their church hung pictures of a Jesus who looked more like a white musician from Seattle than someone from Jesus' home town. This scares me because the faithful have confirmed that their minds are not their own and they have lost the ability to think critically about their beliefs. The other part of the definition that almost leads me to panic, that the participants seek approval from a supernatural agent or agents, means that not only is some vaguely defined and socially reinforced God concept granted greater-than-self status in the minds of the faithful, but the agents' "prophets," to whom enough has been revealed to write a bestseller, are granted God's special favor, and their approval must be sought as well. This scenario is made possible by the aforementioned sacrifice of mind, and enables leaders of any religion you'd care to name to compromise its believers in practically any way.

In Breaking the Spell, Dennett demonstrates faith in people's ability to make clear decisions by suggesting that if school children were to study all of the world's religions, they would learn to think critically and be unwilling to sacrifice this ability for the sake of any supernatural agent or prophet. Should students begin to have thoughts that transcend social/religious paradigms and pressures, no current religious system could survive it, and I think that would be a good thing.

Dr. Dennett's book left a little to be desired. Can science study religion? Interesting topic indeed but Dr. Dennett in many instances took the scenic route to get to his points. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of the book:

Strengths:
1. Interesting topics
2. Introduction of new ideas
3. Well informed and intelligent author
4. Good overall organization of book
5. Makes good overall points
6. The third of three sections was the best part of the book

Weaknesses
1. It wasn't a fun, smooth read
2. Took too long to get to points
3. Too restrained, let loose Dr. Dennett
4. Scientifically shallow
5. Lacked conviction

A mild recommendation. Slightly disappointed. In summary, Dr. Dennett claims that religion should be looked at scientifically and that it is no longer above criticism.

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!

I think I finally figured out that I shouldn’t read books written by philosophers, as this one is. Something author Daniel Bennett said early on finally made sense of it for me - to the effect that philosophy is about asking the right questions in the right order. And so he does, for nearly 400 pages. If I had any affinity at all for the discipline (I don’t), I would probably love the prospect of spending months or years or whatever it takes with this jovial Socrates, who obviously has lots of answers (presumably the right ones, given in the right order) to match his uncanny knowledge of all sorts of natural biological/evolutionary shit (I think that’s the technical term), but my nonfiction tastes run much more to 100-200 pages and please keep it simple for me. So I’d say if philosophy is your thing, you’d probably love this book and give it 5 stars. As for me, I lasted about 75 pages and skimmed the rest, and mostly came away with one terrific, useable idea, which in retrospect I could have gotten from reading the title: if we want new thoughts, we need to break the spell of the old ones, and easier said than doen. For that much, I am grateful. I can use it.