Breaking the spell of religion

THE philosopher Daniel Dennett has been called a “Darwinian fundamentalist”, a sobriquet he bears with pride. His 1995 book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea was an attempt to establish natural selection as the fundamental process that explains adaptive design and function in all organisms, including humans, and that extends beyond biology to ethics, language and meaning. In his new book, Breaking the Spell, Dennett seeks to bring religion within that fold, aiming for “a forthright, scientific, no-holds-barred investigation of religion as one natural phenomenon among many”. This time, though, he is concerned with the natural selection not of genes but memes…