A review by adamz24
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett
4.0
Dennett establishes the foundations of an empirical program for the study of religion, which requires that he establishes (and he does) reasons for thinking of religion as a natural phenomenon, using meme theory and evolutionary theory to do so. Dennett dispels some of the myths and prejudices surrounding religion and its 'special status' in the eyes of both hardline religious folk and sensitive mutliculturalist academic/leftist sorts. Aside from some pretty minor issues, this is a sophisticated philosophical account of how the discourse surrounding religion functions, and how we might hope to break the spell.
Dennett is an atheist, and although he's been identified as one of the four horsemen of New Atheism, along with Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens, he is, unlike them (Harris is something of a different case than Dawkins and Hitchens, as he was a Philosophy undergrad and is quite careful intellectually), not really a polemicist, although he is a terrific rhetorician. For those of us familiar with Dennett, it's not hard to figure out that he thinks that breaking the spell is the first step toward the death of religion, or at least its more pernicious forms, but the book itself is not an atheistic screed, even if you go beyond Dennett's rhetoric, as it genuinely seeks to establish a way of properly understanding religion and the discourse surrounding it, instead of just yelling at 'the other side' in a pseudo-debate.
Dennett is an atheist, and although he's been identified as one of the four horsemen of New Atheism, along with Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens, he is, unlike them (Harris is something of a different case than Dawkins and Hitchens, as he was a Philosophy undergrad and is quite careful intellectually), not really a polemicist, although he is a terrific rhetorician. For those of us familiar with Dennett, it's not hard to figure out that he thinks that breaking the spell is the first step toward the death of religion, or at least its more pernicious forms, but the book itself is not an atheistic screed, even if you go beyond Dennett's rhetoric, as it genuinely seeks to establish a way of properly understanding religion and the discourse surrounding it, instead of just yelling at 'the other side' in a pseudo-debate.