A few science bloggers have referred to Daniel Dennett's new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, and the controversy that is erupting around it. I haven't read the book, but this piece in The Boston Globe gives a very quick sketch of the ideas Dennett covers. It seems that Dennett wants to examine religion as just another natural phenomenon, a suite of behaviors and cognitive states characteristic of our species. In short, Dennett seems to be covering three primary modern hypotheses in regards to why religion seems a ubquitous aspect of our cross-cultural phenotypes:
The functionalist school
The rational choice school
The cognitive school
Unlike many atheists, I've read a lot about religion and theories of religion. In regards to the functionalist school, I've read Darwin's Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson. In the rational choice school I've read most of Rodney Stark's works, including his seminal A ...
