DANIEL C. DENNETT
Philosopher; University Professor, Co-Director, Center for Cognitive
Studies, Tufts University; Author, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a
Natural Phenomenon


The Evaporation of the Powerful Mystique of Religion

"I’m so optimistic that I expect to live to see the evaporation of the
powerful mystique of religion. I think that in about twenty-five years
almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena,
so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the
awe it does today. Of course many people–perhaps a majority of people
in the world–will still cling to their religion with the sort of
passion that can fuel violence and other intolerant and reprehensible
behavior. But the rest of the world will see this behavior for what
it is, and learn to work around it until it subsides, as it surely
will. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we will need every
morsel of this reasonable attitude to deal with such complex global
problems as climate change, fresh water, and economic inequality in an
effective way. It will be touch and go, and in my pessimistic moods I
think Sir Martin Rees may be right: some disaffected religious (or
political) group may unleash a biological or nuclear catastrophe that
forecloses all our good efforts. But I do think we have the resources
and the knowledge to forestall such calamities if we are vigilant.

Recall that only fifty years ago smoking was a high status activity
and it was considered rude to ask somebody to stop smoking in one’s
presence. Today we’ve learned that we shouldn’t make the mistake of
trying to prohibit smoking altogether, and so we still have plenty of
cigarettes and smokers, but we have certainly contained the noxious
aspects within quite acceptable boundaries. Smoking is no longer
cool, and the day will come when religion is, first, a
take-it-or-leave-it choice, and later: no longer cool–except in its
socially valuable forms, where it will be one type of allegiance among
many. Will those descendant institutions still be religions? Or will
religions have thereby morphed themselves into extinction? It all
depends on what you think the key or defining elements of religion
are. Are dinosaurs extinct, or do their lineages live on as birds?

Why am I confident that this will happen? Mainly because of the
asymmetry in the information explosion. With the worldwide spread of
information technology (not just the internet, but cell phones and
portable radios and television), it is no longer feasible for
guardians of religious traditions to protect their young from exposure
to the kinds of facts (and, yes, of course, misinformation and junk of
every genre) that gently, irresistibly undermine the mindsets
requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance. The religious
fervor of today is a last, desperate attempt by our generation to
block the eyes and ears of the coming generations, and it isn’t
working. For every well-publicized victory–the inundation of the Bush
administration with evangelicals, the growing number of home schoolers
in the USA, the rise of radical Islam, the much exaggerated “rebound”
of religion in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to
take the most obvious cases–there are many less dramatic defeats, as
young people quietly walk away from the faith of their parents and
grandparents. That trend will continue, especially when young people
come to know how many of their peers are making this low-profile
choice. Around the world, the category of “not religious” is growing
faster than the Mormons, faster than the evangelicals, faster even
than Islam, whose growth is due almost entirely to fecundity, not
conversion, and is bound to level off soon.

Those who are secular can encourage their own children to drink from
the well of knowledge wherever it leads them, confident that only a
small percentage will rebel against their secular upbringing and turn
to one religion or another. Cults will rise and fall, as they do
today and have done for millennia, but only those that can
metamorphose into socially benign organizations will be able to
flourish. Many religions have already made the transition, quietly
de-emphasizing the irrational elements in their heritages, abandoning
the xenophobic and sexist prohibitions of their quite recent past, and
turning their attention from doctrinal purity to moral effectiveness.
The fact that these adapting religions are scorned as former religions
by the diehard purists shows how brittle the objects of their
desperate allegiance have become. As the world informs itself about
these transitions, those who are devout in the old-fashioned way will
have to work around the clock to provide attractions, distractions—and
guilt trips—to hold the attention and allegiance of their children.
They will not succeed, and it will not be a painless transition.
Families will be torn apart, and generations will accuse each other of
disloyalty and worse: the young will be appalled by their discovery of
the deliberate misrepresentations of their elders, and their elders
will feel abandoned and betrayed by their descendants. We must not
underestimate the anguish that these cultural transformations will
engender, and we should try to anticipate the main effects and be
ready to provide relief and hope for those who are afflicted.

I think the main problem we face today is overreaction, making martyrs
out of people who desperately want to become martyrs. What it will
take is patience, good information, and a steady demand for universal
education about the world’s religions. This will favor the evolution
of avirulent forms of religion, which we can all welcome as continuing
parts of our planet’s cultural heritage. Eventually the truth will set
us free."

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