Religion: Prof Daniel Dennett investigates the possibility of explaining religion as just one natural phenomenon among many. He wants to know why and how it commands such allegiance and shapes so many lives so strongly.
His discussion is conducted chiefly from an evolutionary perspective, utilising characteristic concepts such as duplication, mutation and competition. Although the account of religion which he sketches is proposed as just a theory he is pretty sure that it is on the right lines.
If we want to understand the nature of religion today as a natural phenomenon we need an account of its origins and he devotes seven of the 11 chapters to this topic. For him, religions are "social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought", and he is interested to find out how such avowals came about. He writes as a philosopher- scientist and unbeliever. But instead of the term atheist he prefers to call himself a "bright", modelled on the highly successful hijacking of the word "gay" by homosexuals.
He argues that with everything we like or value, from sugar and sex to music and religion, behind our reasons for valuing them are evolutionary reasons, free-floating rationales that have been endorsed by natural selection. In the case of religion these came into play as the human mind, "which is the brain", noticed and coped with things that mattered most to the reproductive success of our ancestors. We came to acquire, with increasing complexity, the intentional stance of attributing intentional agency to moving things in the environment such as trees and clouds. This intentional stance facilitated evolutionary route-finding activity through various environmental hazards. It enabled the development of religion from primitive animism via divination, ancestor-worship, and shamanic healing rituals to the public ceremonies and sensory pageantry of folk- religion.
As people became more reflective there followed the domestication of folk-religion into consciously crafted organised religion, made possible and necessary by the emergence of agriculture and larger settlements. The free-floating rationales of folk-religion acquired expert "shepherds" to refine and organise them, much like the domestication of plants and animals.
Organised religion may indeed promote group cohesiveness and be good for the group. But this group cohesiveness can likewise promote organised religion and this may be its principal role. Organised religion "captures" the allegiance of its host, which becomes its rational servant.
When we look at religion from this perspective it is not our fitness that is presumed to be enhanced but its fitness. He leaves open the issue of whether religion thrives by benefiting its host or thrives as a parasite, like Toxoplaasmii gondii, which when it infects rats makes them act recklessly in the presence of cats and is thereby more likely to end up in the cat's stomach, which it must reach in order to breed!
He claims that organised religion, to retain its authority, tends to emphasise belief in belief in God rather than belief in God. Since the religious experts say God is incomprehensible they don't know what they are talking about and must resort to inculcating the value of belief in belief, the value of blind faith. People today believe in belief in a God they don't understand because they think it helps them to lead good lives. But, he points out, such loyalty can also lead to dreadful acts of religious fanaticism. However helpful religious belief may be to some, it is not a pre-condition of morality, as the moral lives of many atheists attests.
In the light of what he has described, and in view of the perilous circumstances prevailing today, he urges greater intellectual interaction between religious believers and contemporary scientists. He urges believers to be as questioning about their beliefs as scientists are about their hypotheses, and indeed to present them in an experimentally verifiable manner which such scientists can address.
THIS IS AN intriguing book. Even those, such as this reviewer, who do not find a purely naturalistic view of religion adequate will find much with which they can agree about the manipulation of religion for non- religious purposes.
However, his approach does seem to involve the difficulty that it requires of religion the sort of empirical verification which,if available, would (by involving God as a component of the world) be evidence of idolatry. He grants that it could be true that God exists as loving Creator while still considering religion as a purely natural phenomenon. But how this might be so is not discussed, and the sort of philosophical arguments which it has traditionally involved are cursorily dismissed. Hence, contrary to his desire, a certain stand-off persists.
The plausibility of a naturalistic interpretation of God as object of religious belief is one matter. But the question of his real existence, the question whether God might be the ultimate explanation of the sense of God, is another matter, and remains a highly significant question. As the philosopher, John Bowker, remarks: "faith and credulity, vision and delusion can only be distinguished provided that in case-studies the issue of ontology is kept alive."
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon By Daniel C Dennett, Allen Lane, 448pp. £25
Patrick Masterson, is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University College Dublin, and former president of the European University Institute, Florence