Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Here I find that opinion is divided among those who are already convinced that this would be a good idea, those who are dubious and inclined to doubt that it would be of much value, and those who find the proposal evil—offensive, dangerous, and stupid. Not wanting to preach to the converted, I am particularly concerned to address those who hate this idea, in hopes of persuading them that their repugnance is misplaced. This is a daunting task, like trying to persuade your friend with the cancer symptoms that she really ought to see a doctor now, since her anxiety may be misplaced and the sooner she learns that the sooner she can get on with her life, and if she does have cancer, timely intervention may make all the difference. Friends can get quite annoyed when you interfere with their denial at times like that, but perseverance is called for. Yes, I want to put religion on the examination table. If it is fundamentally benign, as many of its devotees insist, it should emerge just fine; suspicions will be put to rest and we can then concentrate on the few peripheral pathologies that religion, like every other natural phenomenon, falls prey to. If it is not, the sooner we identify the problems clearly the better. Will the inquiry itself generate some discomfort and embarrassment? Almost certainly, but that is a small price to pay. Is there a risk that such an invasive examination will make a healthy religion ill, or even disable it? Of course. There are always risks. Are they worth taking? Perhaps not, but I haven’t yet seen an argument that persuades me of this, and we will soon consider the best of them. The only arguments worth attending to will have to demonstrate that (1) religion provides net benefits to humankind, and (2) these benefits would be unlikely to survive such an investigation. I, for one, fear that if we don’t subject religion to such scrutiny now, and work out together whatever revisions and reforms are called for, we will pass on a legacy of ever more toxic forms of religion to our descendants. I can’t prove that, and those who are dead sure that this will not happen are encouraged to say what supports their conviction, aside from loyalty to their tradition, which goes without saying and doesn’t count for anything here.

In general, knowing more improves your chances of getting what you value. That’s not quite a truth of logic, since uncertainty is not the only factor that can lower the probability of achieving one’s goals. The costs of knowing (such as the cost of coming to know) must be factored in, and these costs may be high, which is why “Wing it!” is sometimes good advice. Suppose there is a limit on how much knowledge about some topic is good for us. If so, then, whenever that limit is reached (if that is possible—the limit may be unreachable for one reason or another), we should prohibit or at least strongly discourage any further seeking of knowledge on that topic, as antisocial activity. This may be a principle that never comes into play, but we don’t know that, and we should certainly accept the principle. It may be, then, that some of our major disagreements in the world today are about whether we’ve reached such a limit. This reflection puts the Islamist² conviction that Western science is a bad thing in a different light: it may not be an ignorant mistake so much as a profoundly different view of where the threshold is. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. We need to consider such possibilities carefully.

3 Might music be bad for you?

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

—Joseph Addison

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Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hale souls out of men’s bodies?

—William Shakespeare

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