Breaking the Spell

Dennett om religion. Ur hans nya självbiografi, ”I’ve Been Thinking” (s. 296-297) om hans bok ”Breaking the Spell”.

Religion was born … out of the chance juxtaposition of two important human adaptations with genetic bases: our agent-alarm systems and language. When something startles us, we tend to go into a state of heightened alert, and the question that naturally arises in our anxiety is not “What’s that?” but “Who’s there?” Is some predator or enemy approaching me? Maybe it’s just a dead branch falling in the woods … but just in case, I should be on the lookout for an animate being who is taking an interest in me for one reason or another. This “orientation response” is a common instinct in vertebrates, well investigated in many species; in our species alone, it sets off a churning group inquiry - that’s where language and information-sharing come in - that creates, in every human community ever studied, a menagerie of elusive ghosts … and other creatures of superstition. Only the most vivid and unforgettable fantasies survive in the evolutionary process that ensues. This is protoreligion, populated by synanthropic memes, which evolve to thrive in human company, just the way … barn swallows … do. Over time, some of these synanthropic species become domesticated. This happens .. when we human beings gain some control over their reproduction. These domesticated fantasies can then become our political beasts of burden, harnessed to control populations, keep the peace, and create loyalties that can survive great temptations. Organized religions, then, are the culturally evolved systems of memes that arose naturally out of our innate vigilance and sociality … and we are now in a position to reverse engineer them. With scientific understanding, we have some hope of cleaning them up … Constructive critics of religion have been trying to do this for centuries … but their efforts have been hampered by one of the key adaptions of religion: the taboo against looking too closely at how religions work and why. That is the spell that needs breaking if we are to avoid making terrible mistakes in the near future.