Dyson on Dennet in NYReview of Books

Freeman Dyson reviews Daniel Dennet’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. He gives what appears to be a fair summary of the book, but takes issue with Dennet’s opinion that religion is harmful and states “I see religion as a precious and ancient part of our human heritage. Dennett sees it as a load of superfluous mental baggage which we should be glad to discard.” Finally after what I found to be a rather weak rejection of the utility of Dennet’s program of scientific investigation of religion, he digresses to a discussion of suicide attacks which I think is more useful than the last part of what he says in response to Dennet.