Fifteen years later, do the criticisms of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell hold up? Are Dennett’s concepts of religion off base, or has new scholarship vindicated him? In this re-review of sorts, I will address the main critiques discussed above and evaluate whether they, or the book itself, stand the test of time. We’ll review whether Dennett’s call to “break the spell” is so revolutionary, if religions are “memes,” if people believe in religion because they believe that belief is itself a virtue, what Dennett calls “belief in belief,” and what we should do with religion in the modern age. In the final estimation, we’ll find that each of these conclusions is deeply flawed and the reviewers were right to call out Dennett for his mistakes. In closing, I’ll also challenge the oft-heard notion that Dennett is the “nice” one of the group. While he’s certainly the more level-headed of the bunch when comparing his book to say, The God Delusion or The End of Faith, Dennett still displays all the usual hallmarks of mainstream atheism in our culture: smugness, arrogance, condescension, and intolerance. In short, Breaking the Spell isn’t a bad book, but it isn’t much of a good book, either.
Read More