Spotlight On…An End to Religion

Will Anti-Religion Books Be the Next Big Thing?

by Lauren Winner, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 4/19/2006

As pundits and pollsters are endlessly telling us, America is the most religious nation in the Western world. So why are two recent books, both of which challenge the very premise of religion, so hot? Sam Harris's The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the End of Reason (Norton, 2004) and Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking, 2006) provocatively suggest that religion may ultimately be bad for humanity, and that perhaps we oh-so-religious Americans should rethink our easy enthusiasm for faith.

Dennett, director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, examines religion through the lens of evolutionary theory. Noting that in the grand sweep of history, organized religion is a relatively new phenomenon, he argues that religion may have outgrown its usefulness. Harris is even more gauntlet-throwing. It's not rocket science to diagnose the dangers of fundamentalism, he writes; more urgently, we need to also pay attention to the dangers of moderate religion, for pluralistic religious tolerance refuses to acknowledge the real, meaningful differences between religious traditions, and thus often unwittingly underwrites fundamentalist extremism.

Both authors have found readers in unlikely corners. Dennett told RBL he's received a positive response from "thoughtful Christians, Muslims, Jews, who realize that trying to protect religion from scrutiny is patronizing." And the most vituperative criticisms Dennett has received have come not from religious people but from "misguided multi-culturalists--literary types who are afraid of science" and think ideas about culture "have a kind of sanctity" that should shield them from rigorous critique.

If neither Breaking the Spell nor The End of Faith has the gravitas of, say, Thomas Paine's response to Europe's religious wars, both books strike a decidedly post-9/11 chord. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine these books being published, let alone heralded, in the placid 1990s. Harris said that The End of Faith was his "immediate response to the events of September 11, 2001. I began writing it the moment it became clear that our country had been attacked for explicitly religious reasons, and that our attachment to our own religious myths would prevent us from widely acknowledging this fact." Paul Slovak, publisher of Viking, said there's a hunger for books like Dennett's because current events show that "religion can be toxic. We need to be able to recognize that and fix it so our children will live in a better world."

Harris and Dennett are not the first writers to hit it big calling for the end of religion, and they won't be the last: Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are rumored to be working on books that sound the same theme.

Authors and publishers have known for the past decade and more that religion books are big business. In an era in which religion's dangerous excesses are fodder for the nightly news, anti-religion books might now become big business, too.