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 enlarge | Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £10.99
Buy New: £7.69
You Save: £3.30 (30%)
Media: Paperback
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0141017775
EAN: 9780141017778
ASIN: 0141017775
Publication Date: March 29, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 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.
 Intriguing read October 2, 2007
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
This was the first of Dennett's books I've read, and will certainly be reading more. Having read Dawkins, Harris etc I didn't expect another author to have anything dramatically new to say. I was wrong. Dennett's book is somewhat akin to Dawkins's God Delusion, but without the overbearing focus on Gods existance.
It is a treatise on religion from a biological and scientific (evolutionary) stanpoint, questioning how and why religions evolved.
Dennett, though an atheist himself, seeks not to attack religion, rather to explain it. He shows a trully questioning approach - he provides lists and explanations of the kinds of questions we should be asking, providing some answers to these, and leaving others open to the reader.
Hopefully those of a religious disposition will be able to find this work more palatable than Dawkins's work. It is certainly less confrontational to their beliefs. An ardently and unquestioningly religious person would find it to be objectionable, no doubt, as they would any such questioning of the absoluteness of their beliefs regardless of the handling. Still, if ones faith is trully strong enough then surely one should be able to face and ackowledge the questioning of that without considering it blasphemous. In any case, a book is unlikely to ever change anyone's views unless unless their very week to start with, but Dennett knows that. People that will find this book most interesting are those that want to know more, especially something new, not just the same old atheism vs. theism squablle, about religion and its relationship with science.
The book is certainly an easy read at all levels. Perhaps slightly more demanding than Dawkins; though Dawkins does tend to dumb things down a little too much perhaps. There good insights thoughout, and the depth of research behind it is sound, and the writer does not pretend to have the answer to every question.
This is the worthwhile contribution to this field and a good companion to the related wors of Harris, Dawkins etc
 Dennet Builts on an Old Idea and Forgets His Evolution... September 27, 2007
12 out of 59 found this review helpful
Whether many may disagree, Evolutionary theory is the best scientific approach we humans have devised so far in order to comprehend and explain our existence. I also have Dennet's older book, Consciousness Explained, which (although speculative in many points) was much more solidly built on scientific facts. This one, in most part, is not.
I strongly agree with putting religion to scrutiny - especially scientific one. (Fine chance to weed out all the New Age, astrology & crystals mumbo-jumbo claiming a scientific basis). However, the scientific approach cuts both ways: either one accepts its truths or not. Manipulating scientific facts and mixing them with speculations does not lead to solid conclusions.
FACT: since over 90% of humans follow some religion (Dennet fans please remember that there are more than 5 billion people besides North Americans) this can only mean that there is a survival or reproductive advantage in being religious. In other words, Evolution decided that it was advantageous for humans to be religious.
The proposition of memes (Dawkins, 1976) may be a usefull tool in order to approach cultural phenomena as genetic traits.
FACT: although useful, memes never have been proven to be more than a useful abstraction - similar to Freud's id, ego and super-ego, very useful for psychoanalysis but can anyone please point to me the brain locus of the ego?
Nevertheless, Dennet builds almost his entire argumentative structure on this "ideas propagating even by harming their hosts, just like viruses" basis. Very weak under any light. Not to mention that he consciously seems to ignore the fact that they may benefit an equal (at least) number of people. Hence: the "Spell" may not necessarily be the negative thing he implies.
September 11th seems to have precipitated an undiscriminating untireligious wind sweeping across America. The attackers were all Muslim fanatics (I am sure that the fact that they had to endure CIA-backed authoritative regimes in their home-country had nothing to do with it), so now all religions are bad JuJu.
As usual, leave it to militant intellectuals to throw out the baby with the bath-water...
Not likely to break the spell! July 14, 2007
34 out of 48 found this review helpful
Professor Dennett is a philosopher and an expert on consciousness who writes from the perspective of a Darwinian. He is an atheist and calls himself a "bright," an unfortunate coinage from the redoubtable Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine. I say unfortunate because those who do not identify themselves similarly might feel that they should be thought of as--shall we say--less than bright. Such self-designating and flattering terminology, however agreeable to those using it, only serves to isolate them from others--but perhaps that is the point.
Putting that aside, I also need to put aside another of Dennett's mostly irrelevant preoccupations in this otherwise carefully considered and nearly exhaustive examination of religion, namely that of the power of memes. Coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), a meme is, on the one hand, a fancy word for "idea" and the results of ideas, and on the other hand, a kind of cultural gene or virus that replicates itself through the activities of living things, especially humans. Here's the way Dennett expresses it: "The idea of memes promises...to unify under a single perspective such diverse cultural phenomena as deliberate, foresighted scientific and cultural inventions (memetic engineering), such authorless productions as folklore, and even such unwittingly redesigned phenomena as languages and social customs themselves." (p. 355)
In other words, Dennett believes the term "meme" can be extremely useful by helping us to understand cultural evolution. And, yes, religion can be seen as a meme. However I think his purpose in this book would have been better served if he had narrowed his focus and concentrated exclusively on religion as a natural phenomenon.
And it is that, and Dennett makes a convincing case for scientists to respect something so natural to humans. What he doesn't do is make the case for an end to religion. What he wants is for those in our various religions to have the courage to openly examine their beliefs, tenets and practices and the effect they have on society as a whole. The question, is religion a good or a bad thing? is asked throughout the book, both explicitly and implicitly; however for the life of me I am not sure what Dennett's answer was!--although I can guess. At any rate, its clear that he believes if such an examination were conducted there would be fewer true believers in the world and less pain and suffering.
But religion is not going to go away because religion and humans are as intermixed as the yoke and white of a scrambled egg. For most people a religion is like a thought in your mind. You cannot long be without one. Dennett doesn't care for this idea, I suspect, since he declares that his beliefs do not constitute a religion. A "religion" is a way of life. Tracing the derivation in Webster's International Dictionary (the venerable and highly respected Second Edition) one has to wade through several hundred words before arriving at "8b Acceptance and devotion to such an ideal as a standard for one's own life." For the most part Dennett is using earlier, more exclusive definitions. Of course some people do not have a religion since they live willy-nilly, from one impulse to the next without much foresight or appreciation for past events. But such people are in the minority; indeed they are, in a sense, children.
Dennett calls the reader's attention to the evils and dangers of religion at length while at the same time giving religion its due as a sometime force for good in this world. But much of the good that religion does is seen by Dennett as the result of something like a placebo effect, and would benefit humankind regardless of the "truth" of the religion. He acknowledges studies that show that "regular churchgoers live longer, are less likely to have heart attacks, and so forth...," but adds that many of us "haven't stopped to consider how independent [these results]...are from whether or not any religious beliefs are true." (p. 272) Yes, it would be better--and such a day may come--when our religious beliefs are more in line with reality than they are today, taken as most of them are from the primitive science and psychology of long ago.
Religion also has utility, Dennett allows, because it strengthens people psychologically in some circumstances by giving them resolution and confidence, regardless of the fact that their confidence is based on nothing real. (p. 178) Sometimes any plan or belief--even one that is clearly wrong--is better than no plan or belief. Religion may also help people by creating or strengthening "bonds of trust that permit groups of individuals to act together much more effectively." (p. 178)
Dennett does not add at this point, but very well might have, that the cohesiveness of the tribe under the spell of a charismatic leader of the endemic religion strengthens the tribe in warfare. Indeed my contention is that this is the major reason that those of us living today have a built-in propensity to believe without evidence, because those that didn't died out because they were defeated by tribes that got their warriors to die for the cause in the name of their God. Dennett doesn't explore this path--although he does mention it--probably because he finds "group selection" troublesome.
I wish I had the space to go into more of the many interesting points that Dennett makes or to quibble with some of his conclusions. The book is fascinating and--even though Dennett, as usual, is intent on leaving nothing out--it is readable and lively, more so than some of his other books.
 Fascinating, entertaining, intellectually stimulating July 1, 2007
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
Dan Dennett has the happy knack of being both deeply challenging and highly entertaining at the same time. In the hands of another author (such as the estimable Professor Dawkins at mach 2 enthusiasm level) the ideas presented here could have been dense, difficult and rambling. Dennett achieves an excellent balance between levity and depth. This works particularly well when, as is sometimes his wont, he ambles gently and humourously through a concept, with asides and considerable wit, only to come very sharply and acidly to a devastating point. He also has a knack of being fastidious in his fairness and even-handedness, even to the most wretched and misguided of targets, but occasionally - and thus devastatingly - utterly crushing to a select few of the truly witless and dangerous (ideas or people).
Highly recommended. There are no answers here, but well - that's about it for God then.
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