1) Dennett’s definition of religion: p. 10.

 

2) He says that there is a taboo prohibiting a scientific study of religion. Is there? And he makes one of his central claims on the bottom of p. 14: “It is high time ...” The taboo is restated clearly on p. 17, beginning of section 4.

 

3) On p. 17-18 he mentions a possible objection to undertaking this study. Studying the phenomenon may undermine it. And on p. 19 he says that he will defend his decision to proceed. What does he say in defense? The best I can find in this section is the analogy on the bottom of p. 20. But that hardly helps. Maybe it will be like that, but maybe it will be bad. (He realizes this.) Does he present anywhere in these chapters a reason to think that studying it will not undermine it? {See discussion of Wieseltier -(5) below.}

 

4) Ch. 2, section 1: Can Science Study Religion? His answer is clearly yes. But does he defend this? Is there any reason at all to think that it can’t?

 

5) Section 2: should science study religion? 5 hypotheses about the future of religion. So, we should study it. ??

 

6) Wieseltier:

 

See quotations from handout distributed in class.

 

#1) ¶1: The two sentences may seem like obvious truths (?), but there is obscurity.

 

#2) W accuses Dennett of “scientism”. See W’s definition of this. Maybe the charge is true. But it’s irrelevant to this book. Dennett has argued that science should seek to explain religion. There is no good reason for bringing up the more general thesis. An alternative view: everything that we can understand, we can understand through science.

 

#3) This is the idea that psychological matters, such as religious belief, can be explained through broadly evolutionary methods. Many people, including many biologists, share W’s disdain for this sort of theorizing.

 

#4) Seems fair. Dennett does do a lot of self-promotion here.

 

#5) Key thing here is “deflation of religion.”. W. seems to see “explaining” as “deflating.” Cf., explanations of other phenomena: love, art, etc. Dennett does discuss protectionism. It is the view that religion should not be studied scientifically. He discusses this on p. 14-15. “It’s too important for us to remain ignorant about it.” As Orr’s review makes clear there are two related ideas Dennett combats: a taboo against studying religion, and the fear that studying it will ruin it.

            See Ch. 2, Section 3: Analogy to music. Two themes emerge: Dennett seemed at first to be proposing to study why we have religions. But now he’s talking about “whether it is good for us”. This is a different matter. So maybe studying religion is “deflating” not because explaining the causes “explains away” but because it makes religion less valuable. This leads to:

            Section 4 of Ch. 2 in Dennett returns to the issue of whether it is good to study religion. A simple argument against is stated on the top of p. 45.

 

1. Religion provides net benefits to humankind.

2. These benefits are unlikely to withstand a scientific study of religion.

3. So, we should not undertake a scientific study of religion.

 

He says: (1) is unproven (and can’t be proven until the study is done); (2) - he says that there are no cases in which this has happened. He mentions dissection, sex, race. A comment: you don’t need a study of the origins of religious belief to assess its consequences. The study of whether religion is “good for us” will involve claims about what constitutes human good. This raises hard issues. Is this a scientific question? Many will say “no”. We’ll return to this sort of topic next time. But for now: whether eating meat is good for you is a scientific question (right?) Why think the question about religious belief differs?

 

#6) See p. 21 in Dennett.

 

#7) Is this fair? If you want to understand why people believe, then study the causes of belief. for that project, truth does not matter.

 

#8) Cf. Orr, who makes clear that Dennett says that his theory is not established, and mentions rival accounts. Again, W is setting up phoney alternatives - either established science or extravagant speculation. There is a middle ground.

 

#9) “You cannot disprove a mistake ...” This passage is revealing, and important. A few points: a) W. is right - you cannot disprove the belief that P unless you disprove P. b) But what he goes on to say suggests attributing to Dennett the view that there is another way - by finding its origins. c) It would be a mistake to reason: “The cause of your belief that P is C. Therefore, C is false.” d) Dennett surely never says this. (In fact, this attribution is inconsistent with the charge made in (7). The stuff about “Dennett does not believe in reason” is just junk. e) But compare letter from Maudlin (read in class). *Sometimes* but not always, exposing the causes of a belief undermines its rationality. Give examples.

 

#10) What’s the issue here? What is “independence of reason”? Independent of what?

 

#11) Notice what happens. a) D. says that we have an ability to “transcend our genetic imperatives.” b) Dennett says this is a biological fact. c) And so W. says it follows that we are not “independent of biology.” And so D. has taken back what he said in (a). This is seriously wrong. The claim in (a) is, I think, a claim about our ability to do things other than our biological tendencies would lead us to do. That we have this ability is based in our biology. But just what we do with that ability is not completely determined by biology alone.

 

#12) This is important. Is trust in science a “naturalist superstition”? Some pick science, some pick something else. It’s all just preference. Or is there something on which this preference is based? It’s not clear to me what W is saying. But all our discussion of induction and inference to the best explanation is crucial here.

 

#13) This is an important theme: is W. saying that we should take religious statements as metaphor, etc.?

 

#14) Cf. Orr, who, five paragraphs from the end, invokes a distinction between physics and metaphysics.

 

Conclusions: You can legitimately complain about the self-congratulatory tone of Dennett’s writing. You can have doubts about the merits of the evolutionary account of religious belief that he prefers. You can legitimately complain that he seems not entirely consistent about whether he is explaining the causes of religious belief or showing it to be false. But he seems on safe ground in thinking that a scientific study of religion is possible and that there are at least good grounds for undertaking such a study. And (I think) there are no good grounds for putting religious claims in some special category that exempts them from the usual standards for rational assessment.