Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

If somebody wants to put a sticker in this book, saying that it presents a theory, not a fact, I would happily concur. Caution! it should say. Assuming that these propositions are true without further research could lead to calamitous results. But I would insist that we also put the stickers on any books or articles that maintain or presuppose that religion is the lifeboat of the world, which we dare not upset. The proposition that God exists is not even a theory, as we saw in chapter 8. That assertion is so prodigiously ambiguous that it expresses, at best, an unorganized set of dozens or hundreds—or billions—of quite different possible theories, most of them disqualified as theories in any case, because they are systematically immune to confirmation or disconfirmation. The refutable versions of the claim that God exists have life cycles like mayflies, being born and dying within a matter of weeks, if not minutes, as predictions fail to come true. (Every athlete who prays to God for victory in the big game and then wins is happy to thank God for taking his side, and chalks up some “evidence” in favor of his theory of God—but quietly revises his theory of God whenever he loses in spite of his prayers.) Even the secular and nonpartisan proposition that religion in general does more good than harm, either to the individual believer or to society as a whole, has hardly begun to be properly tested, as we saw in chapters 9 and 10.

So here is the only prescription I will make categorically and without reservation: Do more research. There is an alternative, and I am sure it is still hugely appealing to many people: Let’s just close our eyes, trust to tradition, and wing it. Let’s just take it on faith that religion is the key—or one of the keys—to our salvation. How can I quarrel with faith (for heaven’s sake)? Blind faith? Please. Think. This is where we began. My task was to demonstrate that there was enough reason to question the tradition of faith so that you could not in good conscience turn your back on the available or discoverable relevant facts. I am quite prepared to roll up my sleeves and get down to examining the evidence and considering alternative scientific theories of religion, but I think I have already made my case that it would be indefensibly reckless not to do this research.

My survey has highlighted a small fraction of the work that has already been done, using it to tell one of the possible stories of how religion became what it is today, leaving other stories unmentioned. I told what I think is the best current version, but perhaps I have overlooked some contributions that will eventually be recognized retrospectively to be more important. This is a risk that a project like mine takes: if, by drawing attention to one avenue of research, it helps bury some better avenue in oblivion, I will have done a disservice. I am acutely aware of this prospect, so I have shared drafts of this book with researchers who have their own vision of how to make progress in the field. My network of informants inevitably has its own bias, however, and I would like nothing better than for this book to provoke a challenge—a reasoned and evidence-rich scientific challenge—from researchers with opposing viewpoints.¹

I anticipate that one of the challenges will come from those in academia who are unmoved by my discussion of the “academic smoke screen” in chapter 9, and who firmly believe that the only researchers qualified to do the research are those who enter into an exploration of religion with a “proper respect” for the sacred, with a deep commitment to hallowing the traditions if not converting to them. They will want to maintain that the sort of empirical, biology-based inquiries I have championed, what with their mathematical models and use of statistics and the rest, are bound to be woefully superficial, insensitive, and uncomprehending.