DANIEL DENNETT’S RATIONALITY
A Sermon by Dean Scotty McLennan
University Public Worship
Stanford Memorial Church
August 26, 2007
This sermon is the last in my three-part series on “What’s Right About Atheism.” I’ll be
looking at a recent book by Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett entitled Breaking the
Spelli– that is, breaking the spell of religion, which he believes hold much of the world captive to
preposterous and often dangerous irrationality. He subtitles his book Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon and attempts to trace its evolutionary history, with both negative and positive
adaptive value for the human race. He calls for elimination of supernaturalism in religion, which
he believes is the enemy of truth, rational dialogue between people, and ultimately human and
ecological harmony for the earth as a whole. In the end, Dennett’s project has to do with saving
the world, plain and simple. I think it’s critically important that we get on board with him in
much of what he’s recommending.
I knew Dan and had personal conversations with him about religion during the sixteen
years that I was the university chaplain at Tufts in the 1980’s and 90’s. I was particularly
fascinated by his 1991 book, Consciousness Explained, and used to kid him that it proved he was
actually a closet Buddhist. He now identifies himself as a so-called “Bright,” along with a
number of other atheists, a term he prefers to “godless philosopher,” but one which he admits has
made a lot of religious people like me feel that we’re viewed as “not so bright.” It seems to
imply that we’re in fact dim-witted or stupid.ii But Dan Dennett does have one of the great
philosophical minds of our time, and he’s always been friendly to me, so I won’t let any labels
like this get in the way of my admiration of him.
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Dennett is deeply disturbed, to the point of exasperation, by people who unapologetically
take things on blind faith, without subjecting them to logical, scientific and historical
confirmation. First of all, “blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious
expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”iii Second, the victim is the ideal of truth-seeking and
truth-telling.iv Third, blind faith often leads to fanaticism which injures others.v And fourth,
how could any God be worth worshipping possibly be pleased by unreasoning veneration, when
we humans have been given the most advanced brains on the planet and the capability of using
them?vi
Along these lines, my own college chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, used to condemn
blind belief by saying, “It is right to be stabbed by doubt. It’s wrong to require certitude to the
point of blind stupidity. And it is dangerous. If God is like a marine sergeant who has been
handed a bunch of hopeless recruits, then those who believe in such a God will become soldiers
prepared to do almost anything they’re told, no matter what, no matter to whom.”vii Coffin went
on to say that “Christians have to listen to the world as well as to the Word – to science, to
history, to what reason and our own experience tell us. We do not honor the higher truth we find
in Christ by ignoring truths found elsewhere.”viii
Dennett compares religious faith to falling in love.ix (250) “But, sad to say, even if it is
true that nothing could matter more than love, it wouldn’t follow from this that we don’t have
reason to question the things that we, and others, love. Love is blind, as they say, and because
love is blind, it often leads to tragedy.”x He also asks us to imagine loving music more than
anything else: “I [then] should be able to live my life in pursuit of the exaltation of music, the
thing I love most, with all my heart and soul. But that still doesn’t give me the right to force my
children to practice their instruments night and day, or the right to impose musical education on
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everybody in the country of which I am the dictator, or to threaten the lives of those who have no
love of music. If my love of music is so great that I am simply unable to consider its
implications objectively, then this is an unfortunate disability, and others may with good reason
assert the right to act as my surrogate, conscientiously deciding what is best for all, since … I
cannot rationally participate in the assessment of my own behavior and its consequences.”xi
I believe this is what’s happening in today’s gospel lesson from Luke.xii The leader of
the synagogue in which Jesus is teaching is circumvented by Jesus, who in effect becomes his
surrogate. The leader is indignant because Jesus is violating religious law by working on the
Sabbath in curing a woman who’s unable to stand up straight – laying his hands on her and
apparently doing some early chiropractice or perhaps massage. The religious leader’s love of the
Ten Commandments – “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy”xiii -- gets in the way of his
appreciation of Jesus’ humane act in healing a suffering woman. The commandment clearly
states that “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the
Lord your God; you shall not do any work.”xiv As the leader kept saying to the crowd
surrounding Jesus, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and
be cured, and not on the Sabbath day.”xv Yet, Jesus is not a man of blind faith. He’s not a
fundamentalist or a biblical literalist. In fact, he uses logic, common sense, practical experience,
and basic humanity in making his case for ignoring the biblical commandment: “Does not each
of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to give it
water? And ought not this woman…be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”xvi Jesus
could have gone on with his rational argument, referencing other biblical texts – say, something
from the prophetic tradition like the words Richard Duncan read earlier from Isaiah:xvii “Satisfy
the needs of the afflicted, [and] then your light shall rise in the darkness.”xviii
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Dennett has been criticized for not recognizing that he has the kind of faith in science that
religious people have in the dogma of their tradition. For example, he desperately wants people
to understand and accept evolutionary theory: “I believe that their salvation may depend on it!
How so? By opening their eyes to the dangers of pandemics, degradation of the environment,
and loss of biodiversity, and by informing them about some of the foibles of human nature. So
isn’t my belief that belief in evolution is the path to salvation a religion? No; there is a major
difference. We who love evolution do not honor those whose love of evolution prevents them
from thinking clearly and rationally about it! On the contrary, we are particularly critical of
those whose misunderstandings and romantic misstatements of those great ideas mislead
themselves and others. In our view, there is no safe haven for mystery or incomprehensibility.
Yes, there is humility, and awe, and sheer delight, at the glory of the evolutionary landscape, but
it is not accompanied by, or in the service of, a willing (let alone thrilling) abandonment of
reason.”xix
Similarly, Dennett explains that beliefs about the truths of physics, from theories about
gravity to atoms to relativity, is “a place where the rubber meets the road” by comparison to
claimed religious truths. Some religious people may believe that they’ve been made
miraculously invulnerable to arrows or may have given all their belongings away in anticipation
of the imminent End of the World. But beliefs in physics must be relied upon to build bridges
that don’t collapse and to construct spacecraft that can fly people safely to the moon and back.xx
Rationality is critical to human life and its flourishing.
So, where does this leave religion?
Well, for one thing, Dennett reminds us that ”Many
deeply religious people have all along been eager to defend their convictions in the court of
reasonable inquiry and persuasion…Every religion – aside from a negligible scattering of truly
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toxic cults – has a healthy population of ecumenical-minded people who are eager to reach out to
people of other faiths, or no faith at all, and consider the moral quandaries of the world on a
rational basis.”xxi He cites, for example, those who gathered at the Parliament of World
Religions in Barcelona in 2004, carrying on a tradition that goes back to the first Parliament at
the Chicago world’s fair in 1893.xxii
Dennett also reminds us of “the daily actions of religious people [who] have
accomplished uncounted good deeds throughout history, alleviating suffering, feeding the
hungry, caring for the sick. Religions have brought the comfort of belonging and companionship
to many who would otherwise have passed through this life all alone, without glory or adventure.
They have not just provided first aid, in effect, for people in difficulties; they have provided the
means for changing the world in ways that remove those difficulties.”xxiii
Religion may also simply be good for your health. Dennett cites “growing evidence that
many religions have succeeded remarkably well on this score, improving both the health and
morale of their members, quite independently of the good works they may have accomplished to
benefit others… Moreover, the defenders of religion can rightly point to less tangible but more
substantial benefits to their adherents, such as having a meaning for their lives provided!”xxiv
Yet, the central and critical point that Dennett insists upon remains: that religion is the
most prolific source of the “moral certainties” and “absolutes” that zealots depend on. In the
world of religion, “people are dying and killing” in the name of blind faith and unapologetic
irrationality.xxv Science and scientific method, which among other things could lead to medical
advances and ecological solutions, are under fire from scriptural literalists. Supernaturalism is
creating false and dangerous reliance on supposed divine intervention through miracles and
providential events, rather than encouraging human beings to roll up their sleeves and work
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together as stewards of the creation that we ourselves are destroying. All of us -- bright atheists
and committed religionists – need to wake now and hear the earth call (in the words of the next
hymn). We need to give and receive as love shows us how, join with each pilgrim who quests
for the true, give heed to the voices of the suffering, awaken our consciences with justice as our
guide, and work toward a planet transformed by our care.xxvi May it be so!
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NOTES
i
Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York:
Viking, 2006).
ii
Ibid., p. 21.
iii
Ibid., p. 230, quoting Richard Dawkins.
iv
Ibid., p. 203.
v
Ibid., p. 13.
vi
Ibid., p. 298.
vii
William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 157.
viii
Coffin, Credo, p. 145.
ix
Dennett, Breaking the Spell, p. 250.
x
Ibid.,, p. 254.
xi
Ibid.,
xii
Luke 13: 10-17.
xiii
Exodus 20: 8. See also Deuteronomy 5: 12.
xiv
Exodus 20: 9-10. See also Deuteronomy 5: 13-14.
xv
Luke 13: 14.
xvi
Luke 13: 15-16.
xvii
Isaiah 58: 9b-14.
xviii
Isaiah 58: 10.
xix
Dennett, Breaking the Spell, p. 268.
xx
Ibid., p. 233.
xxi
Ibid., p. 297.
xxii
Ibid.
xxiii
Ibid., p. 253.
xxiv
Ibid., pp. 272, 276.
xxv
Ibid., p. 285.
xxvi
Thomas J.S. Mikelson, “Wake, Now, My Senses,” in Singing the Living Tradition (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1993), #298.
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