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Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

19 reviews
Sales Rank: 4586

Media: Paperback
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.9

ISBN: 0141017775
EAN: 9780141017778
ASIN: 0141017775

Publication Date: March 29, 2007
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Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

Old questions - still no answers May 30, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

When I was reading the book from Daniel Dennett, a distinguished philosopher and director of Cambridge institute for cognitive studies, I was expecting to get some answers for questions why do humans believe in any deity or superstition.

Questions like:
- Why 80% of the world population so faithful to some kind of religion ?
- How can this be explained by psychology ?
- Is there a specific genetic predisposition for more religious behavior (nature not nurture) ?
- How is religion replacing the parental love with love for God from a specific age (7-years ?) on ?
- Why is rationality suppresses and what happens then in the brain ? (Like a scientists is writing his PhD for geology and study 500 million year old strata and is leaving his office/lab and *thinks* the earth is 6000 years old)

Dan Dennett is very carefully and `politically correct' talking around the problem to avoid offending anybody and is carefully considering the possibility to ask some of this old questions - unfortunately answers I had hoped for are not provided.

1 out of 5 stars

Worrying from the abstracts! April 8, 2008
1 out of 42 found this review helpful

Well, this is no review of the book. I simply haven't read it but the abstract makes me cringe. Just two of the many sentences make me feel uncomfortable in the least.

"but probably more people have died in the valiant attempt to protect sacred places than in the attempt to protect food stores or their children and homes."

Really? probably? No prizes for guessing this is pure speculation. Just say whatever comes into your head perhaps?

Even scarier is, "The great ideas of religion have been holding us human beings entralled for thousands of years, longer than recorded history ..."

I mean, just think about that! How do we know if it is not recorded?

This is one book I won't be ordering.... and do they put the best bits in the "read inside section"?

4 out of 5 stars

Philosophy at its best April 6, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

How to break the spell? Dennett knows: don't pretend you have answers and instead ask good questions. Lots of them in sincere response to lots of supposed answers that don't seem like satisfying answers.

I've done this in a non-systematic way and I suspect you may have too but I have never seen it done so well as Dennett does in this book. In the chapter on "Morality and Religion", he even makes this approach explicit in a marvelous statement about what what he says some people have realized is "one of the best secrets of life: let your self go". By which he means, not into any kind of reckless behavior but with a "humble curiousity" in response to the "world's complexity". The paragraph in which he elaborates on that view is, for me, worth by itself reading the book for - but there is so much more insight in this book, it is really a treasure of showing you just how far someone can go if they adopt that attitude. Whether you or I can achieve Dennett's level of effective questioning I don't know but it certainly seems worth a try. In the following chapter "Now What Do We Do?", Dennett proposes alternative schooling for children that would not only address their real needs but also allow a questioning attitude that would challenge religious claims rather than waste student's time on any religious indoctrination.

There's a great deal more in this delightful book but hopefully the above alone will help you realize, as it has me, that Dennett represents cognitive studies at its best.

2 out of 5 stars

Takes to long to make points March 19, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

Why is Religion here? Is it ever going to go away? This book isn't about answering these complicated questions, but more about why we should ask these questions and how we could go about getting reliable answers.

Dennet's view is that we could examine Religion empiraclly and scientifically. By having some reliable data we would then understand the paradigm more and approach reliable answers to these questions. Religious people should not have a fear about this as if they wish to understand their Religion they should be prepared to examine it. We should then present all findings and not hide anything.

I felt that this honest and objective approach was Dennet's political correct and sensitive way of saying we must really look at Religion more critically. He is certainly not as caustic as Dawkins or Hitchens
and an approach of critizing something that people hold sacred with sensitivity is to be welcomed.

That said, I found that Dennet spent too long making some of his points. Sometimes, I felt he would take 5 pages to make a point that could have been made in half a page. This was either because Dennet was trying to convey to the reader he was being as objective as possible or it was because he needs to hire himself a good editor. Probably a bit of both.

I am not sure if Dennet pushed the buttons in this book. Who is it meant to appeal to? Most atheists I am sure will have already questioned Religion. Intelligent Religious people who don't like to be offended but who are open minded about their beliefs might like it - but how many of them are there? What about someone doing some sociology research and needs some ideas? Perhaps.

I didn't get much of it anyway. A book that described results of some of the studies and experiments Dennet's suggest would certainly be very interesting. But I was kind of hoping this book would be that, not simply saying what we could do and why we should do it. That to me is too obvious.

I also found the writing style too cumbersome. I think Dennet is a far better speaker than writer.

3 out of 5 stars

Interesting January 20, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

As an admirer of Dennett's work on consciousness and as a religious person, I was interested to read this work, where I looked forward to seeing how Dennett would engage with philosophical theology. There's certainly, in my view, an argument to be had in the context of the field of consciousness between the 'believers' and the 'non-believers'. My hope was that Dennett would get the debate going and would be interested to argue respectfully with his theistic peers. That's what it's all about!

I don't know how far this book matched my expectations. I was disappointed by the absence of detailed engagement with sophisticated theistic philosophical positions. On the other hand, I do believe the book will serve a positive purpose of a different kind. At any rate, it will address a kind of reader different from myself. Certainly, the religious dogmatist or fundamentalist will find himself challenged (as, I hope, will the unthinking scientific materialist). That's what consciousness studies, at their best, can do - at least in my experience. They can defy the assumptions of many practicing 'scientists' and 'philosophers' and enable them to engage with deeper, and frankly troubling, questions about the nature of knowledge. But for people who have already past this stage, and aren't really interested in reading through another intemperate critique of fundamentalist religion (there are so many already), this book might not provide what you're looking for.