Many of us who have advocated scientific examination of religions have experienced forceful push-back by those who are religious. We scientific types don’t always understand that reaction; our attitude is often “We study everything. That’s what we do. It’s better to know than not to know.” Folks who are religious often don’t buy these justifications. They often consider a scientific study of religion to be . . . well, sacrilegious.
In his 2006 book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon [1], Daniel Dennett offers a provocative hypothetical. What is it like to have someone suggest to a believer that religion is bad, not good? The title to the relevant section of Dennett’s book is “Is music bad for you?” It begins on page 40.
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Dennett’s hypothetical is to imagine how you would feel if you read in prominent scientific publication that music was bad for your health (that it was a risk factor for Alzheimer’s and heart disease, and it caused a mood disorder that impaired your judgment; that it was a factor that made you aggressive, xenophobic and weak of will)? Imagine further that the scientists concluded that listening to music made you “40% more likely to suffer serious depression, knocked an average of 10 points off your IQ, and nearly doubled the probability that you would commit an act of violence at some time in your life.” Imagine, further that the scientific experts recommend that people restricted their music and stopped paying for the children to have music lessons. What would you think if you read such an account by prominent scientists? Dennett suggests the following reaction:
Aside from the utter disbelief with which I would greet a report of such “findings,” I can detect in my imagined reactions a visceral defensive surge, along the lines of “so much the worse for [the prominent scientists]! What do they know about music?” And “I don’t care if it is true! Anybody who tries to take away my music had better be prepared for a fight, because a life without music isn’t worth living. I don’t care if it ”hurts me, and I don’t even care if it ‘hurts’ others-we’re going to have music, and that’s all there is to it.”
That is how I would be tempted to respond. I would rather not live in a world without music. “But why?” Someone might ask. “It’s just some silly sawing away and making noise together. It doesn’t feed the hungry or cure cancer or . . .” I answer: “But it brings great comfort and joy to hundreds of millions of people. Sure, there are excesses and controversies, but still, can anybody doubt that music is by and large a good thing?” “Well, yes,” comes the reply. There are religious sects-the Taliban, for instance, but also Puritan sect of yore in Christianity and no doubt others-that have held that music is an evil pastime, a sort of drug to be forbidden
Dennett recognizes that many people react to attacks on their religion the way most of us would react to attacks on music. His suggestion is that we should nonetheless make scientific inquiry into anything so attacked.
Let’s subject religion to the same sort of scientific inquiry that we have done with tobacco and alcohol and, for that matter, music. Let’s find out why people love their religion, and what it’s good for. And we should no more take the existing research to settle the issue then we took the tobacco companies campaigns about the safety of cigarette smoking at face value. .. . if I were told by credible people that music might be harmful to the world, all things considered, I would feel morally bound to examine the evidence as dispassionately as I could. In fact, I would feel guilty about my allegiance to music if I didn’t check it out.
For Dennett, music might be what Marx suggested of religion: “the opiate of the masses, keeping working people in tranquilize subjugation, but it may also be the rallying song of revolution, closing up the ranks and giving heart to all.”
Dennett reminds us that most of the research on music is like most of the research on religion. It takes these subjects for granted. Most research concerns music theory and musical techniques, but does not concerned why we create and enjoy music. The same thing goes for religion. It is a rare theology course, indeed, that questions the allegedly factual foundations on which all religious practice is based. Was there really a Jesus? [3] Can we trust the authenticity of the sacred writings such as the Bible [4]? And it is almost unheard of to foster vigorous skepticism as part of a religious service (though it has been done [5]).
How deep should we delve on the question of why religion exists? According to Dennett, as far as possible:
If someone asks: why does music exist? There is a short answer, and it is true, so far as it goes: it exists because we love it, and hence we’d keep bringing more of it into existence. But why do we love it? Because we find that it is beautiful. But why is it beautiful to us? This is a perfectly good biological question, but it does not yet have a good answer.
The main point of Breaking the Spell is that we should give serious scientific study to all phenomena, including religion, even though many believers might claim that such a study is somehow off-limits. Nothing should off-limits to serious study. As he suggests in his Introduction (page 17) “the fervor of their belief is no substitute for good hard evidence . . . “
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