If nowhere else, the dead live on in our brain cells, not just as memories but as programs--computerlike models compiled over the years capturing how the dearly departed behaved when they were alive. These simulations can be remarkably faithful. In even the craziest dreams the people we know may remain eerily in character, acting as we would expect them to in the real world. Even after the simulation outlasts the simulated, we continue to sense the strong presence of a living being. Sitting beside a gravestone, we might speak and think for a moment that we hear a reply.

In the 21st century, cybernetic metaphors provide a rational grip on what prehistoric people had every reason to think of as ghosts, voices of the dead. And that may have been the beginning of religion. If the deceased was a father or a village elder, it would have been natural to ask for advice--which way to go to find water or the best trails for a hunt. If the answers were not forthcoming, the guiding spirits could be summoned by a shaman. Drop a bundle of sticks onto the ground or heat a clay pot until it cracks: the patterns form a map, a communication from the other side. These random walks the gods prescribed may indeed have formed a sensible strategy. The shamans would gain in stature, the rituals would become liturgies, and centuries later people would fill mosques, cathedrals and synagogues, not really knowing how they got there.

With speculations like these, scientists try to understand what for most of the world's population needs no explanation: why there is this powerful force called religion. It is possible, of course, that the world's faiths are triangulating in on the one true God. But if you forgo that leap, other possibilities arise: Does banding together in groups and acting out certain behaviors confer a reproductive advantage, spreading genes favorable to belief? Or are the seeds of religion more likely to be found among the memes--ideas so powerful that they leap from mind to mind?

In Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, has embarked on another of his seemingly impossible quests. His provocatively titled book Consciousness Explained made a persuasive effort to do just that. More recently, in Freedom Evolves, he took on free will from a Darwinian perspective.

This time he may have assumed the hardest task of all--and not just because of the subject matter. Dennett hopes that this book will be read not just by atheists and agnostics but by the religiously faithful--and that they will come to see the wisdom of analyzing their deepest beliefs scientifically, weeding out the harmful from the good. The spell he hopes to break, he suggests, is not religious belief itself but the conviction that its details are off-limits to scientific inquiry, taboo.

"I appreciate that many readers will be profoundly distrustful of the tack I am taking here," he writes. "They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that--that's what I am, and that's exactly what I am trying to do." This warning comes at the end of a long, two-chapter overture in which Dennett defends the idea that religion is a fit subject for scrutiny. The question is how many of the faithful will follow him that far.

For those who do not need to be persuaded, the main draw here is a sharp synthesis of a library of evolutionary, anthropological and psychological research on the origin and spread of religion. Drawing on thinkers such as Pascal Boyer (whose own book is called Religion Explained) and giving their work his own spin, Dennett speculates how a primitive belief in ghosts might have given rise to wind spirits and rain gods, wood nymphs and leprechauns. The world is a scary place. What else to blame for the unexpected than humanlike beings lurking behind the scenes?

4 Comments

1. 1. ricardo 12:23 PM 8/12/08

   "Religion", in my opinion or "God" subject came out of fear form the unknown. Imagine yourself 3000 years ago with nothing but maybe a piece of animal skin clothing cover and maybe something like a cave. How would you know whats next in matters of climate. Maybe tomorrow thunders or maybe a tornado comes or earthquakes. For us who live close to volcanoes and have seen the overwhelming power of this natural titans, there nothing but to have fear and tremenduos respect to the power of nature. Thats why the incas and mayas people worshiped Mountains. Others worshiped other "Gods". In the end is fear. Once you transcend fear you discover real religion in admiration and awe of being alive and well in this perfect world/nature existence. So religion has meanings and meanings. But the most common one roots from fear, then ego goes over it and confuses everyone with exclusive religions themes like who is the best and who has the real "thruth", the real Bible and all that, etc..
   If you cant appreciate your aliveness right here & right now, is you can aprecciate and live in awe of the perfect nature world we live in, there is no religion to save you. Its all delusions on top of another delussions.
   To prove this, easy. Just check the world we live in now and see all the destruction cause by wanting more & more in a crazy never ending delussion bordering to madness in "normality"...
   How can you really find or see/feel God if you can see the God/magic perfection of a bird, insect, perfect temperature balance of nature?..
   Why men destroy itself and together with the world?because there has been a very bad mind error with "religions" barin washing everybody into beleiveing that God is somewhere out of this world/nature, out of this every day life as it is. In fact, our brains have been badly programmed by this so called religions or "ideas" of God. And let me tell you one more thing. God does exist more than anytime now as we discover more how much we destroy in our madness. God lives nevertheless in every thing animated or inanimated. But for us will always be easier to see God in the living creatures. Its is own presence in front of us wich is so simple and so magnificent at same time that we can perceive because of hindrances programmed into our minds since childs. How sorry I feel when I see parents teaching "religions" disasociating beings from the present and nature which should be the anchor to face God's presence. The way to live God is the way of openness, true freedom and compassion. God cannot live in a closed mind, to me.

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2. 2. AdamsonLittle 01:01 PM 8/15/08

   Has there always been a scientific religion for open minded?
   Some hints:
   Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. Albert Einstein
   
   A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false. P.D. Ouspenski
   
   
   Scientific Religion is complete and unconditional agreement with truthful scientific data if you have any questions contact great philosophers
   
   In an address at Princeton Theological Seminary, Einstein stated categorically that "a legitimate conflict between religion and science cannot exist. Where conflicts do happen, he argued, it's always because of a poor, mistaken understanding of the true nature of either one of these approaches to reality or of both"
   
   Most people just follow their forefathers and prevalent religious practices because there is a strong urge in human beings to conform with the universal order and the religious practices satisfy that urge.
   
   See some common ideas as the Core of All Religions
   http://groups.msn.com/ScientificReligion

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3. 3. eco-steve 08:44 PM 10/12/08

   When early man looked to the 'heavens' he saw stability and recognised laws which governed the movements of the heavenly bodies. When he looked around him he saw chaos and death. He sought answers to everything and believed that everything had a cause. So it is not surprising that he described the ultimate cause and gave it a name : God or Intelligent Design! We can now trace the origin of the Universe to the singularity of the Big Bang. We don't know any ultimate cause because we cannot see any further back. So it would be irrational to name something about which we know nothing. Call this Rational Atheism if you will. I call it intellectual honesty as it based on rational truth.
   

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4. 4. Dov Henis 05:43 AM 6/30/10

   Science vs. Religion
   Again And Again And...
   
   
   A. "Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think by Elaine Howard Ecklund"
   http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/60362/title/Science_vs._Religion_What_Scientists_Really_Think_by_Elaine__Howard_Ecklund
   
   
   B. "Inception And Prevalence Of Western Monotheism"
   http://pulse.yahoo.com/_2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU/blog/articles/53111
   
   Several additional science/religion titles are included in the link
   http://pulse.yahoo.com/_2SF3CJJM5OU6T27OC4MFQSDYEU/blog/articles/53049
   
   some dealing with the role that AAAS has been playing in the science/religion subject...
   
   
   Dov Henis
   
   Life is, by our sensory conception, a virtual reality affair, and religion is a virtual reality tool for going through life.

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