Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

If the point still eludes you, it may help to consider a simpler case of the same phenomenon, my “Quinian Crossword Puzzle.” It is not easy concocting a crossword puzzle with two equally good solutions, but here is one. Which is the real solution? Neither, for I deliberately set out to make it that way. In principle, it is possible to make a higher-dimension crossword puzzle, a Philby, whose whole structure and history and current set of proclivities are equally amenable to two different intentional interpretations. In practice, impossible, but we should not, for that reason, imagine a category of inner facts that would settle any case.

Notes

1 Breaking Which Spell?

1. I discussed the example of Dicrocelium dendriticum in Dennett, 2003c; for more on its fascinating life cycle, see Ridley, 1995, and Sober and Wilson, 1998. For a striking case of a fish parasite, see LoBue and Bell (1993). A parasite of mice, Toxoplasma gondii, will be discussed in more detail in chapter 3. The epigram from Hugh Pyper is found in Blackmore (1999), as well as in Pyper (1998). All references can be found in the bibliography at the end of the book, and in general will be inserted in the text, not footnoted. Notes such as this will be used to expand on the points in the text in ways that may be of interest only to specialists.

2. Why the potential for breeding loyalty was present in dogs but not in cats is itself an interesting chapter of biology, but it would take us far afield. For more on the limits of domestication, see Diamond, 1997.

3. Here are two of the best-known definitions of religion with which to compare mine:

…a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church. [Emil Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life]

(1) A system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. [Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures]

4. These transformations typically happen gradually. Doesn’t there have to have been a Prime Mammal, the first mammal whose mother was not a mammal? Not really. There doesn’t have to be a principled way of drawing the boundary between the therapsids, those descendants of reptiles whose descendants include all the mammals, and the mammals (for a discussion of this perennially puzzling point, see Dennett, Freedom Evolves, 2003c, pp. 126–28). A religion of long standing could turn into a former religion gradually, as its participants gradually shed the doctrines and practices that mark the genuine article. No value judgment is implied by such a description; mammals are former therapsids and birds are former dinosaurs, and none the worse for it. Of course the legal implications of whether or not the boundary had been crossed would have to be settled, but this is a political issue, like the moral status of the octopus, not a theoretical issue.

5. May the Force Be With You! Is Luke Skywalker religious? Think how differentluld react to this incantation if the Force were presented by George Lucas as satanic. The recent popularity of cinematic sagas with fictional religions—The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix offer two other examples—is an interesting phenomenon in its own right. It is hard to imagine such delicate topics being tolerated in earlier times. Our growing self-consciousness about religion and religions is a good thing, I think, for all its excesses. Like science fiction generally, it can open our eyes to other possibilities, and put the actual world in better perspective.