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Religion Explained?
In 2006 Daniel Dennett rebutted Pastor Rick Warren's talk about faith and religion on TED. Below is a recap of Dennett's passionate rebuttal.
In Breaking The Spell, a main thesis of Dennett is to study the evolution of religion as a natural phenomenon, similar to the evolution of language. In 2007, Dennett debated D'Souza. During the debate Dennett presented another one of his main thesis: religions (at least the major world religions) and their pros and cons should be (compulsory) taught in schools.
Based on an article in The Economist it looks like Dennett is finally getting his wish.
"“Explaining Religion”, as the project is known, is the largest-ever scientific study of the subject. It began last September, will run for three years, and involves scholars from 14 universities and a range of disciplines from psychology to economics. And it is merely the latest manifestation of a growing tendency for science to poke its nose into the God business."
Will the Explaining Religion (EXREL) project eventually explain religion? Will it merely explain religion away? How will the Templeton Foundation receive the conclusion of this study? We'll see.
In the meantime, I can see Dennett smiling. The spell is slowly being broken.
March 26, 2008 at 11:32 AM in Religion, Science | Permalink
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Comments
This might seem like hair-splitting, but I think you've misrepresented one of Dennett's points from his lecture. Paraphrasing Dennett, you say, "religions... and their pros and cons should be... taught in schools."
Let's contrast this with what Dennett actually said in the lecture. At 4:46 of the video, Dennett frames his proposal as, "We should have a curriculum on facts about all the religions of the world. About their history, about their creeds, about their texts, their music, their symbolisms, their prohibitions, their requirements, and that this should be presented factually, straight-forwardly, with no particular spin, to all of the children in the country."
Later, at 7:32 he carefully re-emphasizes that his proposed curriculum should not include value judgments: "...facts, facts only - no values, just facts about all the world's religions"
You can't enumerate the pros and cons of various religions without some particular desired goal in mind, and goals follow from making value judgments over a set of possibilities.
It follows then that discussing pros and cons is a value-laden enterprise, which is precisely what Dennett wants to avoid, and which he makes painstakingly clear.
Posted by: Alec | Apr 4, 2008 6:27:39 PM
