breaking the spell...

Daniel C. Dennett has written a book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Here's a snippet of the review by New York Review of Books:

For Dennett, the visions of saints and mystics are worthless as evidence, since they are neither repeatable nor testable. Dennett is examining religion from the outside, following the rules of science. For him, the visions of saints and mystics are only a phenomenon to be explained, like falling in love or hating people of a different skin color, mental conditions that may or may not be considered pathological.

The second section of the book is the longest and contains the core of Dennett's argument. He describes the various stages of the long historical evolution of religion, beginning with primitive tribal myths and rituals, and ending with the market-driven evangelical megachurches of modern America. Looking at these evolutionary processes from the outside, he speculates about ways in which they might be understood scientifically. He explains them tentatively as products of a Darwinian competition between belief systems, in which only the fittest belief systems survive. The fitness of a belief system is defined by its ability to make new converts and retain their loyalty. It has little to do with the biological fitness of its human carriers, and it has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of the beliefs. Read the whole review here

Blame Ron, he emailed me the link!