Breaking the Spell

by Daniel C. Dennett

  It is sometimes held that such a refusal to submit one’s creed to inquisitive probing is a commendable act of loyalty to one’s religious group, an honorable declaration of faith. You may be among the many people who proudly assert that their religion is more important to them than their loyalty to family or friends or nation—or anything else. “Don’t even think about alternatives!” could be your motto, except that its very articulation would be a self-violation. As we saw in chapter 1, that is one thing you could mean by saying your religion is sacred to you.

  I want to put this attitude in a larger context. Even if you are convinced that your religion is a unique path to truth, you must be curious about why all the other religions are so popular around the world. And if you think it would be a good thing to bring these people—who constitute a majority of the world’s people, whatever religion is yours—to see the truth as you do, then you should see the point of looking intently, as an outsider, at these religions, to “see what makes them tick.” Considering how your own religion looks to an outsider would also be a valuable exercise, wouldn’t it, since understanding how outsiders react to what they discover when they encounter you could hardly fail to improve your effectiveness in carrying your message to others.

  As we look around the troubled world today, we see failed states, ethnic violence, and grotesque injustice arising on all sides, and a question we all have to face is which lifeboats we should strive to keep afloat. Some people believe that the world’s democratic nations are the best hope of the world, that they provide the most secure and reliable—though hardly foolproof—platforms on the planet for improving human welfare and staving off nuclear chaos and genocide. If they capsize, we’re all in deep trouble. Others believe that their transnational religions make better lifeboats, and if they had to choose between the welfare of their religion and the welfare of the nation of which they are citizens, they would unhesitatingly opt in favor of their religion. Perhaps you are among them. Since—if you are reading this book—you almost certainly live in a democratic nation with a principle of freedom of religion, you are then in a delicate position: you are enjoying the security of the democratic lifeboat while withholding your ultimate allegiance to it.

  By availing yourself of the freedom granted you by a nation that honors the freedom of religion, you excuse yourself—as is your right (it’s like “taking the Fifth Amendment” when called to testify in court)—from helping your fellow citizens explore a problem of national and international security of the utmost urgency. You are a free rider, putting your loyalty to your religion ahead of your duty to your fellow citizens. Fortunately for you, there are enough public-spirited citizens to make up the loss and keep the nation intact while you indulge yourself in your faith-based stand “on principle.” In this regard, you are no different from the Shiite or Sunni who says in his heart: Let Iraq perish, if need be, so long as my religious tribe prospers. The main difference (and it is huge) is that the shaky state of Iraq is not (currently) anybody’s idea of a seaworthy lifeboat, whereas the free society in which you live is manifestly the guarantor of such security and freedom as we now enjoy. So you have fewer grounds for withholding your allegiance to the nation and its laws than the Iraqis do.

  For many of us, the price we pay—accepting the rule of secular law—is one of the best bargains on the planet. Those of us who therefore put our first allegiance—critically and tentatively and conditionally—with our secular systems of democracy recognize the wisdom of the principle of freedom of religion, and will defend it even when it interferes seriously with our particular interests. Those with other allegiances who refuse to make this commitment pose a problem—and not just a theoretical problem. In Turkey today, an Islamic party governs with a majority that would enable it to impose Islamic law on the whole nation, but it wisely refrains and even goes so far as to outlaw some practices of radical Muslims as inconsistent with religious liberty for all. The result is fragile, and fraught with problems, but it contrasts dramatically with the situation in Algeria, where violence and insecurity continue to blight the lives of everybody in the wake of a civil war that was triggered in 1990, when it became apparent that democratic elections would put in power an Islamic party intent on throwing away the ladder of democracy and creating a theocracy.

  Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower nominated Charles E. Wilson, then president of General Motors, as his secretary of defense. At the nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Wilson was asked to sell his shares in General Motors, but he objected. When asked if his continued stake in General Motors mightn’t unduly sway his judgment, he replied, “For years, I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.” Some in the press, unsatisfied with this response, stressed only the second half of his response—“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”—and in response to the ensuing furor, Wilson was forced to sell his stock in order to win the nomination. This was a fine object lesson on the importance of being clear about priorities. Even if it were true, other things being equal, that what was good for General Motors was good for the country, people wanted to be clear about where Wilson’s loyalties would lie in the rare event that there was a conflict. Whose benefit would Wilson further in those circumstances? That is what had people upset, and rightly so. They wanted the actual decision-making by the secretary of defense to be directly responsive to the national interest. If decisions reached under those benign circumstances benefited General Motors (and presumably most of them would, if Wilson’s long-held homily is true), that would be just fine, but people were afraid that Wilson had his priorities backward. Imagine the furor that would have been provoked had Wilson said that for years, as a good Methodist, he had believed that what was good for the Methodist Church was good for the country.

  Allegiance to the principles of a free and democratic society only so long as they support the interests of your religion is a start, but we can ask for more. If it is the best you can muster, then fair enough, but you should recognize that the rest of us are right to view you as part of the problem. Is this a fair judgment? This is controversial, and I have deliberately expressed it in stark terms to bring out the contrast. It is a view that deserves to be taken just as seriously as the more traditional, and more obviously biased, insistence that deep respect is due to all such exemptions from scrutiny. A similar impasse often arises during ecumenical attempts to resolve the different perspectives of science and religion, and it puts the scientifically minded discussants in a quandary: how should they respond? The polite tack is to acknowledge profound differences in viewpoint and paper over the cracks with some bland assurances of mutual respect. But this conceals and postpones indefinitely the consideration of an asymmetry: we wouldn’t for one moment pay respectful attention to any scientist who retreated to “If you don’t understand my theory, it’s because you don’t have faith in it!” or “Only official members of my lab have the ability to detect these effects,” or “The contradiction you think you see in my arguments is simply a sign of the limitations of human comprehension. There are some things beyond all understanding.” Any such declaration would be an intolerable abdication of responsibility as a scientific investigator, a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.

  According to Avery Cardinal Dulles (2004), apologetics is “the rational defense of faith,” and in the past it was often supposed to prove rigorously that God exists, that Jesus was divine, was born of a virgin, and so forth, but it fell into disrepute. “Apologetics fell under suspicion for promising more than it could deliver and for manipulating the evidence to support the desired conclusions. It did not always escape the vice that Paul Tillich labeled ‘sacred dishonesty’” [p. 19]. Recognizing this problem, many of the devout have retreated to a less aggressive avowal of their creed, but Cardinal Dull
es regrets this development, and calls for a renewal and reformation of apologetics.

  This withdrawal from controversy, though it seems to be kind and courteous, is insidious. Religion becomes marginalized to the degree that it no longer dares to raise its voice in public…. The reluctance of believers to defend their faith has produced all too many fuzzyminded and listless Christians, who care very little about what is to be believed. [p. 20]

  Dulles urges that “apologetics needs to shift its ground”:

  In a revealed religion such as Christianity, the key question is how God comes to us and opens up a world of meaning not accessible to human investigative powers. The answer, I suggest, is testimony…. Personal testimony calls for an epistemology quite distinct from the scientific, as commonly understood. The scientist treats the datum to be investigated as a passive object to be mastered and brought within the investigator’s intellectual horizons. Interpretations proffered by others are not accepted on authority but are tested by critical probing. But when we proceed by testimony, the situation is very different. The event is an interpersonal encounter, in which the witness plays an active role, making an impact on us. Without in any way compelling us to believe, the witness calls for a free assent that involves personal respect and trust. To reject the message is to withhold confidence in the witness. To accept it is a trusting submission to the witness’s authority. To the extent that we believe, we renounce our autonomy and willingly depend on the judgment of others. [p. 22]

  This candid assessment articulates the free-floating rationale for the “witnessing” move, which deftly eludes the probing of the scientist by making it an affront to question the witness, a bit of impoliteness, and worse. This tactic exploits the widespread desire of people not to offend, a very effective way of disabling the critical apparatus of science. Dulles observes with equal candor that the scientific method does have a drawback, from his proselytizing perspective: “As philosophers or historians we treat the datum as something impersonal to be brought within the compass of our own world of thought. This method is useful for confirming certain doctrines and refuting certain errors, but it rarely leads to conversion” [p. 21]. In other words, use the scientific method when it helps, and use other methods when it doesn’t. There is a name for this practice among scientists. It is known as cherry-picking, and it is a scientific sin.1

  Nobody had to invent the witnessing practice; it just arises, and it works (it works better than the competition, in some circumstances), so it gets replicated. Cardinal Dulles commends the practice, and explains why it works, but is not responsible for it, and the basic rationale of witnessing is not by any means restricted to Catholicism. I vividly remember my great discomfort some years ago when a student of mine from India told me about the miracles she had witnessed her holy man perform during her vacation trip home. She made it indirectly but abundantly clear to me that if I challenged her account, even privately (outside of class), she would be deeply humiliated and dishonored. I mustn’t do that to a student! What to do? When she, raising the stakes, told me about the photograph that she had in her dormitory room, with real honey flowing from the eyes of the guru, I eagerly requested to see for myself and taste the honey, but although she promptly agreed to arrange for me to examine the marvelous object myself, no further invitation to investigate was ever issued. I have often wondered whether she ever brought herself to reflect on what had happened, and if so, what conclusions she reached, but of course politeness bade me to let the matter drop there. Politeness also overwhelms the skeptical instincts of many a target of deliberate con men who know that just a touch of “hurt feelings” can deflect most if not all the questions any reasonable person would want to have answered. A tactic that works can be used deliberately and viciously, but it can also work—sometimes better—in the hands of an innocent enthusiast who would never dream of doing anything duplicitous.

  Cardinal Dulles is interested in getting conversions; and so are scientists. They campaign with vigor and ingenuity for their pet theories. But they are constrained by the rules of science not to engage in practices that would tend to disable the critical faculties of potential hosts for the memes they want to spread. No such rules have yet evolved to govern the practice of religion.

  2 What pays for science?

  The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  What about science itself? What happens when we turn the harsh light of evolutionary theory on itself, for instance, and ask what conspiracy of conditions and payoffs led to its existence? Science in general is a very expensive human activity. What dark cravings might it be satisfying? Might it not have its share of ignoble ancestors, or be driven by embarrassing lusts? The practical benefits that have driven the scientific quest are often there, to be sure, but perhaps just as often science has proceeded by an arguably pathological excess of curiosity—knowledge for its own sake, at whatever cost. Might science turn out to be an irresistible bad habit? It might be. So might religion. Let’s find out, with the scientific study of science itself, an investigation already well under way.

  Why do we do science? Our brains certainly didn’t evolve to do quantum physics or even long division. The standard answer, which may mask important complexities, begins with what we might call our native curiosity drive, which we share with almost all animals, and which focuses our attention on just about anything novel or complex, especially if it is in motion, and more or less compels us to examine it (cautiously). The free-floating rationale of this is obvious: as locomotors, we diminish the risks of damage and enhance our chances of finding what we need by looking where we are going. If we found that trees were also curious, we’d have to rethink this common wisdom, but the famous example of the sea squirt suggests that the principle is safe. The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the ocean looking for a good place to settle. For guidance in this task it needs a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds a suitable rock to cling to for the rest of its life (as a sessile filter-feeder), it no longer needs its nervous system, which it disas sembles and assimilates, a vivid example in support of the hypothesis that curiosity is costly, and when it can’t pay for itself by guiding locomotion, it is abandoned. As the joke has it, this is like tenure for a professor—once you have it, you are free to eat your own brain!

  Curiosity must be tempered by caution, and by thrift as always, so it is not surprising that animals tend to exhibit curiosity only about the most immediately pressing ecological concerns. Herbivores check out the plants in the vicinity, whereas carnivores largely ignore them. Omnivores are busier investigators than herbivores, though both keep an eye out for predators, and so forth. Our closest relatives, the great apes, show a more catholic interest in almost all things, but even chimpanzees born in captivity are remarkably uninterested in all the human speech they hear all around them from the day they are born, ecologically relevant though it surely is to them in their evolutionarily novel circumstances. A human infant’s intense interest in speech sounds may in fact be one of the most important genetic differences between us and chimpanzees. Nobody knows how differently an infant chimpanzee’s brain might develop if it simply had the urge to attend to the torrent of overheard verbal input that its auditory system receives but regularly discards, the way ours discards the rustling of the leaves in the wind. We know of no organ of the body that pays greater homage than the brain does to the maxim “Use it or lose it,” and it is conceivable that a tiny genetic change, turning up the competitive volume, in effect, for the category of speech sounds, might cascade into major anatomical changes in the developing brain.

  It is extremely unlikely that such a small genetic change could be responsible for all the differences between chimpanzee brains and human brains, but there has been time in any case for a whole suite of genetic adjustments to make our brains more language-friendly than chimpanzee brains. Wha
tever the differences are, they mark a major innovation in evolutionary history, because once language evolved we became not just curious but inquisitive: we actually asked questions aloud, in articulated language. Questions became ubiquitous items in our perceptual worlds, and provoked reactions, which provoked more questions, and so forth, snowballing into an accumulation of lore that could be orally transmitted, and eventually written down. On one point at least, the Darwinian and Biblical accounts of how we got here agree: in the beginning was the Word.

  But it was a long time before this accumulation of lore, of both wisdom and superstition, history and myth, practical facts and frozen lies, came to look at all like science. It was neither systematic nor self-conscious about its methods. It had not yet paid much attention to itself. This reflexive move, giving us the science of science, the history of history, the philosophy of philosophy, the logic of logic, and so forth, is one of the great enabling strokes of human civilization, refining the ore obtained by millennia of informal curiosity into the purified metal of investigation. Can you “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”? Not without defying the law of gravity, but you can do something almost as good: you can use your existing, imperfect, ill-understood methods of inquiry to refine those very methods, pitting good ideas against better ideas, and using your current sense of what counts for a good idea as your temporary, defeasible guide to improvement. In this regard it is like the strategy, when moving to a foreign country, of picking a few informants and trusting them—until you learn otherwise. If you have really bad luck with your initial choices, you may end up almost helplessly misinformed and victimized. If your informants are somewhat reliable, on the other hand, you can soon discover some of the limits of their reliability and begin making targeted adjustments. It isn’t logically guaranteed to work, but so what? It is much more likely to work than flipping a coin, and the odds get better over time.