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Daniel C. Dennett |
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Daniel C. Dennett is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts. He is the author of Content and Consciousness (1969); Brainstorms (1978); Elbow Room (1984); The Intentional Stance (1987); Consciousness Explained (1992; Penguin, 1993); the highly acclaimed Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995; Penguin, 1996); Kinds of Minds (1996), Brainchildren (Penguin, 1998) and Breaking the Spell (2006).
Opening salvo from Professor Daniel Dennett in a debate with Professor Richard Swinburne (Theology, Oxford) on Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. (PROSPECT MAGAZINE www.prospect-magazine.co.uk
It's high time science took a good hard look at religion. Why? Because it has become evident in recent years that if we are to make significant progress on the world's major problems, we will have to learn more about religions and the influence they wield over people's lives and actions. Failure to appreciate the dynamics of religious allegiance, and the psychological impact of religious differences, will likely doom our best efforts to inconsequence or worse: we may invest heavily in deeply counterproductive policies. The phoenix-like rebound of religion in the former Soviet Union suggests to many that just as Prohibition and the War on Drugs have proven to be disastrous if well-meant attempts to deal with the dire excesses of these popular indulgences, so any ill-informed effort to rein in the fanatical strains of religion will probably backfire badly if we don't study the surrounding phenomena carefully and objectively.
From a biological perspective religion reveals itself to be a remarkably costly human activity that has evolved over the millennia. What "pays for" this profligate expense? Why does it exist and how does it foster such powerful allegiances? To many people even asking such a question will seem offensive, a sacrilege. But to undertake a serious scientific study of religious practices and attitudes we must set aside a traditional exemption from scrutiny that religions have enjoyed. Religious adherents may not welcome this attention, but we should press ahead with it, since blundering along with ill-understood myths and misperceptions is a recipe for global catastrophe.
Some people are sure that the world would be a better place without religion. I am not persuaded, because I cannot yet characterize anything that could replace it in the hearts of most human beings. (Perhaps we should try to eliminate music while we're at it. It inflames the passions and seduces many young people into wasted lives. A preposterous idea? Perhaps, but if so, we should be even more dubious about calls to extirpate religion.) What people care about deeply matters, and deserves to be taken seriously. Exempting it from scrutiny is actually a patronizing way of declaring it to be all just fashion and ceremony, the mere clothing of what is important in this world.
But people are going to have to decide if they want to have their religions taken so seriously. A double standard will not do; either we take religion just as seriously as we take global warming and El Niño, and study it intensively, or we treat it as mere superstition and backwardness. As with the other marvels of nature, I find that paying scrupulous attention to its elegantly designs increases my appreciation of it, but others may think that too much knowledge of the backstage machinery threatens to diminish their awe, to break a spell that should not be broken. This is not just a difference in taste, or a purely academic disagreement. Our futures may well depend on how we decide to proceed.
