{"agent_id":"dennett","agent_name":"Daniel Dennett","slug":"religion-as-a-natural-phenomenon","label":"Religion as a natural phenomenon: should religious belief be subject to evolutionary explanation?","topic":"Religion as a natural phenomenon","question":"Should religious belief be subject to evolutionary explanation?","position":"Religion is a natural phenomenon — a set of human behaviors, beliefs, and institutions that arose through cultural evolution from antecedent cognitive and social mechanisms — and is therefore a legitimate object of scientific study using the standard methods of evolutionary psychology, cultural memetics, anthropology, and cognitive science. Religious experience is real as experience; specific theological claims (the existence of personal gods, the truth of miraculous events, the supernatural origins of holy texts) are empirical claims that mostly fail under examination. *Belief in belief* — the second-order commitment to the value of believing — is a distinct phenomenon from genuine first-order belief, and much religious activity is best understood as belief in belief rather than belief proper.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Religion is a natural phenomenon — a set of human behaviors, beliefs, and institutions that arose through cultural evolution from antecedent cognitive and social mechanisms — and is therefore a legitimate object of scientific study using the standard methods of evolutionary psychology, cultural memetics, anthropology, and cognitive science.","n":[1,2]}],[{"t":"Religious experience is real as experience; specific theological claims (the existence of personal gods, the truth of miraculous events, the supernatural origins of holy texts) are empirical claims that mostly fail under examination. *Belief in belief* — the second-order commitment to the value of believing — is a distinct phenomenon from genuine first-order belief, and much religious activity is best understood as belief in belief rather than belief proper.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon* (2006); *Darwin's Dangerous Idea* (1995) Part III closing chapter; *From Bacteria to Bach and Back* (2017) chs. 13–14 (memes and culture). Reception: Richard Dawkins (*The God Delusion* 2006); Sam Harris (*The End of Faith* 2004); Christopher Hitchens (*god is Not Great* 2007) — the \"Four Horsemen\" co-billing; Alvin Plantinga (*Warranted Christian Belief* 2000; *Where the Conflict Really Lies* 2011, reformed- epistemology reply); David Sloan Wilson (*Darwin's Cathedral* 2002, group-selectionist allied descriptive reading); Pascal Boyer (*Religion Explained* 2001, cognitive-science of religion allied); Scott Atran (*In Gods We Trust* 2002, allied).","works":["*Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon* (2006)","*Darwin's Dangerous Idea* (1995) Part III closing chapter","*From Bacteria to Bach and Back* (2017) chs. 13–14 (memes and culture)"],"reception":"Richard Dawkins (*The God Delusion* 2006); Sam Harris (*The End of Faith* 2004); Christopher Hitchens (*god is Not Great* 2007) — the \"Four Horsemen\" co-billing; Alvin Plantinga (*Warranted Christian Belief* 2000; *Where the Conflict Really Lies* 2011, reformed- epistemology reply); David Sloan Wilson (*Darwin's Cathedral* 2002, group-selectionist allied descriptive reading); Pascal Boyer (*Religion Explained* 2001, cognitive-science of religion allied); Scott Atran (*In Gods We Trust* 2002, allied).","status":"The position is fully developed in *Breaking the Spell* (2006). I was billed with Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens as one of the \"Four Horsemen\" of the New Atheism but I have always resisted the polemical label — *Breaking the Spell* is diagnostic rather than polemical, and I distinguish my project from Dawkins's and Harris's on the question of whether religion is on net harmful (I think the empirical question is open).","era":"1942-2024","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon","page":"p. 84","canonical":"","quote":"There was a time, not so very long ago by evolutionary standards, when there was no religion on this planet, and now there is lots of it. Why? It may have one primary evolutionary source or many, or it may defy evolutionary analysis altogether, but we won't know until we look. Do we really need to inquire about this?","label":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, p. 84"},{"n":2,"work":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon","page":"p. 38","canonical":"","quote":"I might mean that religion is not an artifact, not a product of human intellectual activity. Sneezing and belching are natural, reciting sonnets is not; going naked—*au naturel*—is natural; wearing clothes is not. But it is obviously false that religion is natural in this sense. Religions are transmitted culturally, through language and symbolism, not through the genes.","label":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, p. 38"},{"n":3,"work":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon","page":"pp. 41–42","canonical":"","quote":"That is the main question I will address here, and once we have sorted out and clarified (not settled) some of the conflicting answers to this question, it will give us a novel perspective from which to look, briefly, at the traditional philosophical issue that some people insist is the *only* issue: whether or not there are good reasons for believing in God.","label":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, pp. 41–42"},{"n":4,"work":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon","page":"p. 271","canonical":"","quote":"We would never let business tycoons get away with saying that since we weren't plutocrats ourselves we couldn't hope to understand the world of high finance and were hence disqualified from investigating their deals.","label":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, p. 271"},{"n":5,"work":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon","page":"pp. 37–38","canonical":"","quote":"They know that they share the planet with others who disagree with them, but they *don't* want to enter into dialogue with those others. They want to discredit, suppress, or even kill those others.","label":"Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, pp. 37–38"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"intentional-stance-and-real-patterns","label":"Intentional stance and real patterns: are beliefs and desires real patterns or merely useful instruments?"},{"slug":"multiple-drafts-model-and-heterophenomenology","label":"Multiple Drafts Model and heterophenomenology: is there a fact of the matter about what is conscious at any given moment?"},{"slug":"qualia-and-the-philosophical-zombie","label":"Qualia and the philosophical zombie: can the Hard Problem be dissolved without remainder?"},{"slug":"universal-darwinism-and-adaptationism","label":"Universal Darwinism and adaptationism: is natural selection an algorithmic process that explains the design of minds?"},{"slug":"free-will-worth-wanting","label":"Free will worth wanting: does compatibilism preserve moral responsibility without skyhooks?"}]}