It is time to begin the examination of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking 2006). Something tells me that this book will make a very big splash indeed. Let's begin with his definition of religions as
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social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. This is, of course, a circuitous way of articulating the idea that a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone.(p. 9)
Since any definition of religion one proffers is bound to contain an element of stipulation, we should perhaps not fault Dennett's definition for failing to accommodate Buddhism which in its pure forms does not avow belief in supernatural agents and yet would appear to count as a religion; nor for failing to accommodate religion as the response of a solitary individual to the transcendent. Let us irenically concede that Dennett's definition is on the right track in that many religions do affirm belief in a supernatural agent.
But what is meant by the crucial term 'supernatural'? The natural, for Dennett, is that which obeys the laws of nature, the laws of physics and biology for instance. (p. 25) The supernatural, therefore, is that which violates these laws. The supernatural is thus the miraculous. (p. 25) So when Dennett says that the participants in a religion avow belief in a supernatural agent, he implies that they avow belief in an agent whose existence and mode of action are miraculous, i.e., in violation of the laws of nature.
But this is seriously problematic. For it is obvious that one who affirms the existence of God need not be affirming the existence of something that violates natural laws. The laws of nature govern the material world. (Or, if you insist, they describe or codify the regularities of the material world.) But God is not a member of the material world, or identical to the material world. (Pantheism is not on the table.) So the laws of nature do not apply to God. But it does not follow that his existence violates these laws unless it is also a law of nature that only material (physical) beings can exist.
Could it be a law of nature that only material beings exist? Equivalently, could it be a law of nature that only nature exists? I say no, but to save keystrokes I won't argue for this (obvious) thesis now. But we should note that if Dennett or anyone thinks that it is a law of nature that only nature (the space-time-matter system) exists, then Dennett's definition rules out the possibility of a supernatural agent. It is surely self-evident that any adequate definition of religion that stipulates that religious believers posit supernatural agents must leave it open whether or not there are any supernatural agents. Otherwise, Dennett's definition of religion would boil down to this:
A social system whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent, i.e, an agent whose existence violates natural laws, the only laws there are.
That would be like defining a theist as one who affirms the existence of a nonexistent being (having certain omni-attributes) and an atheist as one who affirms the nonexistence of of a nonexistent being (having certain omni-attributes). But surely the belief the theist avows is a belief that the omni-qualified being exists. If the theist's belief were of a being that was believed to be nonexistent, then the theist wrould be involved in a sort of performative inconsistency, just as the atheist would be involved in a sort of performative tautology were his belief to be characterized as a belief that a nonexistent omni-qualified being does not exist.
To put it another way, if you want define religion in terms of the beliefs of certain people, then you must characterize those beliefs from the point of view of the believer, and not from a point of view external to the believer.
To say of X that a certain set of laws does not apply to it is not say that X is in violation of those laws. The laws of planetary motion do not apply to abstract object (numbers, Fregean propositions, etc.) but these objects to not violate these laws. On the other hand, the laws of logic do not apply to physical objects -- except insofar as they are described, conceptualized or made the logical subjects of propositions -- but this is not to say that physical objects violate the laws of logic.
To cite another example, the gas laws do not apply to intentional states such as desiring and hoping, but that is not to say that the latter are in violation of the gas laws. Do my thoughts expand in the summer time? They neither expand nor fail to expand: they do not belong to the category of entities for which expansion or the opposite is an 'option.' But that is not to say that my thoughts violate the laws pertaining to expansion and contraction.
Therefore, it is a mistake to say or imply that the existence of a divine agent is supernatural in the sense of being miraculous (natural law violative). Indeed, the divine transcendence insures that God cannot be miraculous in this sense. In plain English, God is not in nature so he cannot violate any law of nature.
It follows that a participant in a religion need not affirm the existence of a supernatural agent in Dennett's sense of 'supernatural.' Dennett's definition is inadequate.
There are two senses of 'supernatural that we need to distinguish, and that Dennett may be conflating. In Dennett's sense, the supernatural is the miraculous, where the miraculous is that which is in violation of physical laws. In the second sense, the supernatural is simply that which is not part of nature, the system of space-time-matter.
God is a supernatural existent in the second sense but not in the first. How can the existence of God violate any law of nature if God is not in nature?
Now let's briefly consider the question whether the action of God must violate natural laws. God can act on nature without intervening in nature. He could sustain it in being without interfering with any of the causal chains that occur in nature. So it is false that God's action must involve the violation of natural laws.
My interim conclusion is that there is something deeply problematic about Dennett's definition. He defines religion in terms of the avowal of belief in supernatural agents. But it turns out that a supernatural agent is one whose existence and mode of action is miraculous, i.e., in violation of natural laws. But surely no sophisticated religionist -- no religionist worth refuting in a 450 page book -- avows belief in the existence of an agent who violates natural laws. The only way the existence of God could violate natural laws would be if God were a part of nature; but that is not what sophisticated theists believe. Dennett's definition is inadequate because it attributes to the religionist beliefs he does not hold. (It is also inadequate because of the conflation of religion with theism, but that is a secondary matter.)
The problem may be due to an equivocation on 'supernatural' as between violative of natural laws and transcendent of the system of space-time-matter.
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All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:
- Dennett Responds to Wieseltier
- An Exchange Between Daniel Dennett and Michael Ruse
- Dennett-Swinburne Exchange on Breaking the Spell
- Belief That, Belief In, Belief in Belief
- Lichtenberg on Dennett
- Dennett on the Deformation of the God Concept
- Burgess-Jackson on Leiter on Wieseltier on Dennett
- Dennett's Scientism Denounced in New York Times Book Review
- Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- Problems with Dennett's Definition of Religion
But I don't think that sort of God is the God that most people - the enormous majority who are not meticulous philosophers - believe in. The God of the Bible is not shy at all about mucking about with causal chains: He smites freely right and left, parts the Red Sea, whips up plagues of locusts, obliterates entire cities with something akin to atomic weapons, turns naturally curious women into pillars of salt, and so forth, with righteous and vengeful enthusiasm. He also is alleged lately to have done a fair bit of biological tinkering, too. People pray to Him constantly, after all, in the specific expectation that he will interfere in their personal causal chains. This is the God, I think, that Dennett is tilting at.
I also think that Dave makes a very good point. It's one that I've been hammering at for a while as well.
But, (I do not have the book) does Dennett actually go into this question? I feel that this is quite important in defining religion - what it actually means 'to believe'.
As for who Dennett is writing for, I'll have to demur until I've read the book. But I know that Dennett is increasingly frustrated, as shown by his ever-more-public posture on the subject, by the simplistic and literalist form that religion often takes in the US - an approach to religion that seems to those who don't share it to wield a disproportionate influence in public policymaking. So he might be writing for those who are exposed to these influences, are open-minded and intelligent enough to be skeptical, but who lack the intellectual tools to examine them in critical depth. I admit that for most of his readers he will be preaching to the choir. Again, I haven't read the book yet, but I expect he does provide good arguments - he's awfully good at that. Bill's objections, so far, only get up to page 25, so I'm curious what his take will be once he gets further along. It would be hard, though, to imagine two more diametrically opposed philosophers than Dennett and Vallicella, so I am not expecting a rave.
Dennett has talked often about belief; he sticks, so far as I have seen, to the philosopher's definition in which "to know" is "to correctly believe".
If it is true (as you affirm later) that natural "laws" are better understood as descriptions of regularities rather than as governing forces, from where do those regularities come? As a theist, I say that God is the creating and sustaining source of those regularities, and that they exist by his will and as an expression of his character. In that case it's not a "violation" if, as an expression of his same character, he suspends those regularities from time to time for his purposes.
The question of where those regularities come from is a vexatiously difficult one (unless, of course, one just says "God did it", in which case, no problem). Some of them seem utterly arbitrary; the value of the fine structure constant is often given as an example. And were many of the fundamental constants of nature to be different by even tiny amounts, we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Yes, it may be that they are explicitly specified by God. It may also be that they take all possible values in different areas of the World (and what might separate those areas is an open question, one that string theorists, for example, are banging away at). Under that model, it is only in those areas where these regularities take particular combinations of values that we would find life arising to discuss the question (and marvelling at the fine-tuning of the World, and invoking God to explain it). So one can imagine a God-less explanation as well. Perhaps Dennett touches on this important question in his book.
That looks to be a non sequitur, Dave. Miracles are at least conceivable. According to the NT, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. If it occurred, that was an event in the nat'l world, and if it occurred, it violated the laws of nature as we understand them: the dead stay dead. But it doesn't follow that our understanding of natural law is incomplete. What follows is that a divine agent has violated or suspended a natural law.
If you say that it makes no sense to speak of a violation of natural law, then you imply that it makes no sense to speak of miracles. But surely it makes sense to speak of miracles. This is so even if there are no miracles.
Of course, miracles are not nomologically possible. But the laws of nature are contingent.
I always appreciate your comments even though we are usually at loggerheads. We should have a beer together someday, at which time we will be at LAGERheads. Two bloggerheads at lager/logger-heads.
Re: your first comment in the stack: Will Dennett be attacking a strawman in the coming 450 pages? If not, then he has to address sophisticated conceptions of deity and not popular simulacra that will be easy to knockdown.
Remember the Seinfeld episode in which Kramer won a martial arts contest? Turned out he beat up a bunch of little kids.
You want God to be empirically detectable? You been hanging around with Yuri Gagarin recently?
What exactly do you think the point is that Dave made, and why do you think it is good?
Good comment! There is a difference between belief in and belief that. I cannot believe in a person wihtout believing that she exists; but I can believe that a person exists without being in him.
I suspect that D means by 'belief in' bellief that. Thus to avow belief in a supernatural agent is to avow belif that such an agent exists.
Religious belief is more than mere belief that. But the Wittgensteinian fideists are wrong to think that religious belief involves no commitments as to how the world is.
I noticed some of his beliefs about what is scientific fact in matters quite apart from religion are at odds with what I have read about those topics, and are beliefs that I would normally think of as characteristic of the "lunatic left".
I'm glad you are reading the book; we can compare notes. Slow going? Dennett is a lively writer. But perceptions differ.
He doesn't quite say that his target is American Christianity; on p. xiii he says that he will focus on Xianity first and Islam and Judaism second. He suggests that he will be giving short shrift to Buddhism and Hinduism.
Your second comment is also very good. Indeed, who is DD writing for if not people like me? I don't reckon he expects Rev. Falwell to slog through it.
Malcolm,
I agree with you that there is too much simple-minded religion out there in the heartland. I cringe when I hear Pat Robertson say that God told him this or that. But there are plenty of evangelicals that reject him.
I agree.
Well, I've just gone out and bought the book. Here's how Dennett, in the introduction, defines his target audience:
"...the curious and conscientious citizens of my native land - as many as possible, not just the academics."
So, not just people like you! In fact, not even primarily people like you, I think. And obviously not the dogmatic, the incurious, the zealots - they are, sadly, beyond reach. You ask:
Sadly, I think that what you call "popular simulacra" and "straw men" are in fact widely held religious views in this country, and I do quite expect that Dennett will address them head on. I shouldn't be at all surprised if, in this book, he directs more fire at the Jerry Falwells of the world the than the C.S. Lewises, because they pose a more clamant problem. But I expect there will be something in there for everyone.You mean Yuri Gagarin the cosmonaut? Has he weighed in on this one? I missed that... Anyway, yes, I knew I was asking for it with that one. But belief in God has to rest on something, and we've agreed, I think, that proof is not available. So we are left with faith, which Dennett clearly hasn't been given, so one can hardly blame him for seeing the whole enterprise as rather benighted. Of course, if you have faith in a God who can have no effect on the causal chains of Nature (not much of a God by most people's lights, I think), your belief has pretty well passed beyond debate or refutation, and it isn't surprising that Dennett isn't going to bother trying. But the God who answers prayers, parts the waters, smites the wicked, creates species ex nihilo, etc. - now that's something we can get our teeth into. It also happens to be the sort of God most Americans believe in, and Dennett would like to give them a few things to think about.
I think it is important to keep in mind what Dennett's goals are here. They are not, for this book at least, academic.
The point I think Dave was making, I think, is something along the lines of "once something has manifested itself in the natural world, then if it happened, it must in some sense be permmitted by nature's laws, and if it seemed to be in violation, then that might just mean that we don't really understand the laws yet." (I hope that is a fair summation, Dave - it's rather late, and I am a bit foggy.)
To put that another way, if laws of nature are violable, then are they really "laws"? This could be a very interesting conversation.
I'd enjoy that beer together very much, Bill. Surely you must have some reason to visit New York one of these days! Crossroads of the world. I'll buy you lunch, and a cold brew to wash it down.
And also conceivable that someone made them up.
Natural law describes regularities that exist in the universe, but there are plenty of things that aren't subject to natural law --at least to any level that we can detect. For example, no physicist could have predicted who would win the Super Bowl just based on natural law.
So suppose you see someone arise from the dead. Is this a violation of natural law? How can it be, when natural law is purely descriptive? If you thought there was a natural law that no one ever arises from the dead, you now have to change that law to say that under some circumstances people do rise from the dead. Under some circumstances bushes burn without being consumed. Under some circumstances the sea will part and produce a dry path.
When you investigate these miraculous phenomena, you may be unable to find any physical causal chain leading to the event in question, but that doesn't make it a violation of natural law. I can't find any physical causal chain leading to the winner of the Super Bowl, but no one thinks that Super Bowl is a miracle (except a few unbalanced sports fans...)
Or perhaps you think that natural law has been violated because the causes of the miracle are not natural but supernatural. But the cause of me typing the letter "T" right there where I just typed it is supernatural also, in the sense that the cause was my will and my will is not a part of nature. If the exercise of my will does not violate the laws of nature, then why should the exercise of God's?
I can't think of any other sense in which a miracle would violate the laws of nature, given that laws of nature are purely descriptive. Am I missing something? Or do you disagree that the laws of nature are purely descriptive?
I'm with you right up to the point where you said that your will is not a part of nature. I consider it likely that we could trace a causal chain as far back as we like from your letter 'T', if we had the tools.
M
One more thing, Bill: I don't in any sense intend my argument to be an argument against the possibility of miracles. I'm only arguing against describing miracles as violations of the laws of nature. I'd rather say that a miracle is a direct intervention by God into the natural world.
For example, the present low entropy state of the universe is also wildly improbable with respect to the 2nd law. That improbabilty is traceable to the even more wildly improbable low entropy of the initial event horizon (the big bang). The initial low entropy is so improbable, that it would be vastly more probable that the universe in its present state had popped into existence one second ago.
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