Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

My focus on America is deliberate; when it comes to contemporary religion, on the other hand, my focus on Christianity first, and Islam and Judaism next, is unintended but unavoidable: I simply do not know enough about other religions to write with any confidence xiii about them. Perhaps I should have devoted several more years to study before writing this book, but since the urgency of the message was borne in on me again and again by current events, I had to settle for the perspectives I had managed to achieve so far.

One of the departures from my previous stylistic practices is that for once I am using endnotes, not footnotes. Usually I deplore this practice, since it obliges the scholarly reader to keep an extra bookmark running while flipping back and forth, but in this instance I decided that a reader-friendly flow for a wider audience was more important than the convenience of scholars. This then let me pack rather more material than usual into rather lengthy endnotes, so the inconvenience has some recompense for those who are up for the extra arguments. In the same spirit, I have pulled four chunks of material meant mainly for academic readers out of the main text and deposited them at the end as appendixes. They are referred to at the point in the text where otherwise they would be chapters or chapter sections.

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Once again, thanks to Tufts University, I have been able to play Tom Sawyer and the whitewashed fence with a remarkably brave and conscientious group of students, mostly undergraduates, who put their own often deeply held religious convictions on the line, reading an early draft in a seminar in the fall of 2004, correcting many errors, and guiding me into their religious worlds with good humor and tolerance for my gaffes and other offenses. If I do manage to find my target audience, their feedback deserves much of the credit. Thank you, Priscilla Alvarez, Jacquelyn Ardam, Mauricio Artinano, Gajanthan Balakaneshan, Alexandra Barker, Lawrence Bluestone, Sara Brauner, Benjamin Brooks, Sean Chisholm, Erika Clampitt, Sarah Dalglish, Kathleen Daniel, Noah Dock, Hannah Ehrlich, Jed Forman, Aaron Goldberg, Gena Gorlin, Joseph Gulezian, Christopher Healey, Eitan Hersh, Joe Keating, Matthew Kibbee, Tucker Lentz, Chris Lintz, Stephen Martin, Juliana McCanney, Akiko Noro, David Polk, Sameer Puri, Marc Raifman, Lucas Recchione, Edward Rossel, Zack Rubin, Ariel Rudolph, Mami Sakamaki, Bryan Salvatore, Kyle Thompson-Westra, and Graedon Zorzi.

Thanks also to my happy team in the Center for Cognitive Studies, the teaching assistants, research assistants, research associate, and program assistant. They commented on student essays, advised students who were upset by the project, advised me; helped me devise, refine, copy, and translate questionnaires; entered and analyzed data; retrieved hundreds of books and articles from libraries and Web sites; helped one another, and helped keep me on track: Avery Archer, Felipe de Brigard, Adam Degen Brown, Richard Griffin, and Teresa Salvato. Thanks as well to Chris Westbury, Diana Raffman, John Roberts, John Symons, and Bill Ramsey for their participation at their universities in our questionnaire project, which is still under way, and to John Kihlstrom, Karel de Pauw, and Marcel Kinsbourne for steering me to valuable reading.

Special thanks to Meera Nanda, whose own brave campaign to bring scientific understanding of religion to her native India was one of the inspirations for this book, and also for its title. See her book Breaking the Spell of Dharma (2002) as well as the more recent Prophets Facing Backwards (2003).

The readers mentioned in the first paragraph include a few who have chosen to remain anonymous. I thank them, and also Ron Barnette, Akeel Bilgrami, Pascal Boyer, Joanna Bryson, Tom Clark, Bo Dahlbom, Richard Denton, Robert Goldstein, Nick Humphrey, Justin Junge, Matt Konig, Will Lowe, Ian Lustick, Suzanne Massey, Rob McCall, Paul Oppenheim, Seymour Papert, Amber Ross, Don Ross, Paul Seabright, Paul Slovak, Dan Sperber, and Sue Stafford. Once again, Terry Zaroff did an outstanding copyediting stint for me, picking up not just stylistic slips but substantive weaknesses as well. Richard Dawkins and Peter Suber are two who provided particularly valuable suggestions in the course of conversations, as did my agent, John Brockman, and his wife, Katinka Matson, but let me also thank, without naming them, the many other people who have taken an interest in this project over the last two years and provided much-appreciated suggestions, advice, and moral support.

Finally, I must once again thank my wife, Susan, who makes every book of mine a duet, not a solo, in ways I could never calculate.

Daniel Dennett

PART I OPENING PANDORA’S BOX

CHAPTER ONE Breaking Which Spell?

1 What’s going on?

And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up.

—Matthew 13:3–4

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If “survival of the fittest” has any validity as a slogan, then the Bible seems a fair candidate for the accolade of the fittest of texts.

—Hugh Pyper, “The Selfish Text: The Bible and Memetics”

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You watch an ant in a meadow, laboriously climbing up a blade of grass, higher and higher until it falls, then climbs again, and again, like Sisyphus rolling his rock, always striving to reach the top. Why is the ant doing this? What benefit is it seeking for itself in this strenuous and unlikely activity? Wrong question, as it turns out. No biological benefit accrues to the ant. It is not trying to get a better view of the territory or seeking food or showing off to a potential mate, for instance. Its brain has been commandeered by a tiny parasite, a lancet fluke (Dicrocelium dendriticum), that needs to get itself into the stomach of a sheep or a cow in order to complete its reproductive cycle. This little brain worm is driving the ant into position to benefit its progeny, not the ant’s. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Similarly manipulative parasites infect fish, and mice, among other species. These hitchhikers cause their hosts to behave in unlikely—even suicidal—ways, all for the benefit of the guest, not the host.¹

Does anything like this ever happen with human beings? Yes indeed. We often find human beings setting aside their personal interests, their health, their chances to have children, and devoting their entire lives to furthering the interests of an idea that has lodged in their brains. The Arabic word islam means “submission,” and every good Muslim bears witness, prays five times a day, gives alms, fasts during Ramadan, and tries to make the pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca, all on behalf of the idea of Allah, and Muhammad, the messenger of Allah. Christians and Jews do likewise, of course, devoting their lives to spreading the Word, making huge sacrifices, suffering bravely, risking their lives for an idea. So do Sikhs and Hindus and Buddhists. And don’t forget the many thousands of secular humanists who have given their lives for Democracy, or Justice, or just plain Truth. There are many ideas to die for.