I started this book about a year ago and after reading ~250 pages I realized I hadn’t payed attention at all and thus read it again + I am happy I did

I wavered between 3 and 2 stars, not because it's so terrible, but because it fails to do what it set out to do - show that religion is a natural phenomenon.

Dennett is a philosopher, and claims not to be a biologist. Which is fine. But this book is mostly his philosophical speculations on how religious practices and ideas could come about. He rambles, and meanders; you're never quite sure where he's going or why he just jumped to a new topic. Every now and then is a spark of insight, but hardly anything was backed up by empirical studies.

Also, he doesn't understand the religious. Perhaps he's never been a believer. He constantly falls into the trap of assuming that people choose their religion because of what it can offer them. For the most part, I think people choose their religion and stay with it because they think it's true (actually, for the most part, people are born into their religion and stay with it because, at some not insignificant level, they think it's true, probably due to all sorts of cognitive biases and dissonance). Many evangelical Christians don't like the idea of hell, but they think it's what the Bible teaches (it doesn't), and if it's the truth, they just have to accept it (which is how I feel about there being no life after death, as much as I want it).

I finished this book wanting to find one that actually does break the spell of religion and explain how it evolved as a natural outcome of human interaction.

There's some stiff competition, but this might actually be the most incoherent / badly-argued / terrible book ever published by an actual philosophy professor. There are many brilliant atheistic critiques of religion; this is definitely not one of them.

Dennett is among the nicest scholars I've encountered. He is just eminently reasonable, kind-hearted, and eloquent throughout. The argument he makes in "Breaking the Spell" is almost tamely reasonable: "my central policy recommendation is that we gently, firmly educate the people of the world, so that they can make truly informed choices about their lives." OK, of course, no arguments there, from nearly any quarter.

The bulk of the book is occupied with a much different argument, perhaps an example of this broader philosophy. Dennett wants scientists to embark upon a massive project to understand religions - their origins, their impacts (good and bad), their psychology, sociology, economics, etc - in short, everything about them that can be addressed scientifically. He makes the argument for two reasons: science on religion has been hampered by a sort of veil of politeness, in which it might be considered offensive to take the often overly forward tools of science to something so dear to so many people; and because religion will play such a large role in large-scale future societal issues that we can't afford to not understand it. These arguments are straightforward and compelling and it's hard to imagine anyone even half-way reasonable objecting to them.

Dennett, I'd like to think correctly, goes on to assume that the reservations of his audience have melted away in the face of his overwhelmingly reasonableness. He spend the bulk of the book fleshing out a popularly-oriented review of theories on the evolution and social impacts of religion, making liberal use of the meme concept he finds so useful. While it is primarily a summary of prior research and an identification of the key open questions in the debate, Dennett doesn't hesitate to flesh the picture out with a starting hypothesis: the one he considers the most persuasive.

This is interesting, but not the sort of thing I'd normally go out of my way to read. Yet it was a true joy to read, for many reasons. Dennett is just a really clear thinker, a wonderful writer who has many nice turns of phrase (half the pages I dog-eared are just for some clever way of articulating a thought I've had or might use). His thoughts on science - what it is, why it is, and how it can be used in social and cultural contexts, are particularly clear and exciting.