Sheldrake on Dennett

He opens the book with the story of an ant climbing a blade of grass, falling down and climbing up again because "its brain has been commandeered by a tiny parasite, a lancet fluke, that needs to get itself into the stomach of a sheep or cow in order to complete its reproductive cycle." He asks, "Does anything like this ever happen to human beings? Yes indeed. We often find human beings . . . devoting their entire lives to furthering the interests of an idea that has lodged in their brains."

Sometimes Dennett is friendlier to his religious readers, and offers them lengthy justifications for his skeptical approach. He concedes that religion can serve a useful function by bringing out the best in a person. He also cites a series of studies that show that regular churchgoers tend to be healthier, have better morale and live longer than those who do not attend religious services.

Whatever the benefits of religions, Dennett believes that they arise entirely inside human minds. No spiritual realities exist outside us. He also takes it for granted that the mind "is the brain, or, more specifically, a system or organization within the brain that has evolved in much the same way as our immune system or respiratory system or digestive system has evolved . . . by the foresightless process of evolution by natural selection." He assumes what he sets out to prove.

The central message of this book is that religion is a product of evolutionary psychology, based on aspects of human nature favoured by natural selection over many thousands of years. Dennett proposes a variety of theories: First, "sweet tooth" theories. We have evolved a receptor system for sweet things, and in a similar way we might have a "god centre" in our brains. Such a centre might depend on a "mystical gene" that was favoured by natural selection because people with it tended to survive better.

Second, religions might be memes that infect our brains. They are not necessarily parasitic, but could be symbiotic, conferring advantages on those who are infected.

Third, religion might be favoured in sexual selection by females. For example, women might have preferred men who demonstrated sensitivity to music and ceremony, thus spreading genes for religious behaviour within the population.

Fourth, religions may be cultural artifacts, like money. They could have evolved because they make social life more harmonious, secure and efficient. Or else they could have evolved because they enable an elite to prey upon the ill-informed and powerless.

Fifth, religions may be rather like pearls, beautiful byproducts that arose in response to irritants, which then captivated human beings for no good reason.

Read the whole review, it's fun. Hat tip to CJSmith.