Intriguing read - Rated 
This was the first of Dennett's books I've read, and will certainly be reading more. Having read Dawkins, Harris etc I didn't expect another author to have anything dramatically new to say. I was wrong. Dennett's book is somewhat akin to Dawkins's God Delusion, but without the overbearing focus on Gods existance.
It is a treatise on religion from a biological and scientific (evolutionary) stanpoint, questioning how and why religions evolved.
Dennett, though an atheist himself, seeks not to attack religion, rather to explain it. He shows a trully questioning approach - he provides lists and explanations of the kinds of questions we should be asking, providing some answers to these, and leaving others open to the reader.
Hopefully those of a religious disposition will be able to find this work more palatable than Dawkins's work. It is certainly less confrontational to their beliefs. An ardently and unquestioningly religious person would find it to be objectionable, no doubt, as they would any such questioning of the absoluteness of their beliefs regardless of the handling. Still, if ones faith is trully strong enough then surely one should be able to face and ackowledge the questioning of that without considering it blasphemous. In any case, a book is unlikely to ever change anyone's views unless unless their very week to start with, but Dennett knows that. People that will find this book most interesting are those that want to know more, especially something new, not just the same old atheism vs. theism squablle, about religion and its relationship with science.
The book is certainly an easy read at all levels. Perhaps slightly more demanding than Dawkins; though Dawkins does tend to dumb things down a little too much perhaps. There good insights thoughout, and the depth of research behind it is sound, and the writer does not pretend to have the answer to every question.
This is the worthwhile contribution to this field and a good companion to the related wors of Harris, Dawkins etc
Dennet Builts on an Old Idea and Forgets His Evolution... - Rated 
Whether many may disagree, Evolutionary theory is the best scientific approach we humans have devised so far in order to comprehend and explain our existence. I also have Dennet's older book, Consciousness Explained, which (although speculative in many points) was much more solidly built on scientific facts. This one, in most part, is not.
I strongly agree with putting religion to scrutiny - especially scientific one. (Fine chance to weed out all the New Age, astrology & crystals mumbo-jumbo claiming a scientific basis). However, the scientific approach cuts both ways: either one accepts its truths or not. Manipulating scientific facts and mixing them with speculations does not lead to solid conclusions.
FACT: since over 90% of humans follow some religion (Dennet fans please remember that there are more than 5 billion people besides North Americans) this can only mean that there is a survival or reproductive advantage in being religious. In other words, Evolution decided that it was advantageous for humans to be religious.
The proposition of memes (Dawkins, 1976) may be a usefull tool in order to approach cultural phenomena as genetic traits.
FACT: although useful, memes never have been proven to be more than a useful abstraction - similar to Freud's id, ego and super-ego, very useful for psychoanalysis but can anyone please point to me the brain locus of the ego?
Nevertheless, Dennet builds almost his entire argumentative structure on this "ideas propagating even by harming their hosts, just like viruses" basis. Very weak under any light. Not to mention that he consciously seems to ignore the fact that they may benefit an equal (at least) number of people. Hence: the "Spell" may not necessarily be the negative thing he implies.
September 11th seems to have precipitated an undiscriminating untireligious wind sweeping across America. The attackers were all Muslim fanatics (I am sure that the fact that they had to endure CIA-backed authoritative regimes in their home-country had nothing to do with it), so now all religions are bad JuJu.
As usual, leave it to militant intellectuals to throw out the baby with the bath-water...
Not likely to break the spell! - Rated
Professor Dennett is a philosopher and an expert on consciousness who writes from the perspective of a Darwinian. He is an atheist and calls himself a "bright," an unfortunate coinage from the redoubtable Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine. I say unfortunate because those who do not identify themselves similarly might feel that they should be thought of as--shall we say--less than bright. Such self-designating and flattering terminology, however agreeable to those using it, only serves to isolate them from others--but perhaps that is the point.
Putting that aside, I also need to put aside another of Dennett's mostly irrelevant preoccupations in this otherwise carefully considered and nearly exhaustive examination of religion, namely that of the power of memes. Coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), a meme is, on the one hand, a fancy word for "idea" and the results of ideas, and on the other hand, a kind of cultural gene or virus that replicates itself through the activities of living things, especially humans. Here's the way Dennett expresses it: "The idea of memes promises...to unify under a single perspective such diverse cultural phenomena as deliberate, foresighted scientific and cultural inventions (memetic engineering), such authorless productions as folklore, and even such unwittingly redesigned phenomena as languages and social customs themselves." (p. 355)
In other words, Dennett believes the term "meme" can be extremely useful by helping us to understand cultural evolution. And, yes, religion can be seen as a meme. However I think his purpose in this book would have been better served if he had narrowed his focus and concentrated exclusively on religion as a natural phenomenon.
And it is that, and Dennett makes a convincing case for scientists to respect something so natural to humans. What he doesn't do is make the case for an end to religion. What he wants is for those in our various religions to have the courage to openly examine their beliefs, tenets and practices and the effect they have on society as a whole. The question, is religion a good or a bad thing? is asked throughout the book, both explicitly and implicitly; however for the life of me I am not sure what Dennett's answer was!--although I can guess. At any rate, its clear that he believes if such an examination were conducted there would be fewer true believers in the world and less pain and suffering.
But religion is not going to go away because religion and humans are as intermixed as the yoke and white of a scrambled egg. For most people a religion is like a thought in your mind. You cannot long be without one. Dennett doesn't care for this idea, I suspect, since he declares that his beliefs do not constitute a religion. A "religion" is a way of life. Tracing the derivation in Webster's International Dictionary (the venerable and highly respected Second Edition) one has to wade through several hundred words before arriving at "8b Acceptance and devotion to such an ideal as a standard for one's own life." For the most part Dennett is using earlier, more exclusive definitions. Of course some people do not have a religion since they live willy-nilly, from one impulse to the next without much foresight or appreciation for past events. But such people are in the minority; indeed they are, in a sense, children.
Dennett calls the reader's attention to the evils and dangers of religion at length while at the same time giving religion its due as a sometime force for good in this world. But much of the good that religion does is seen by Dennett as the result of something like a placebo effect, and would benefit humankind regardless of the "truth" of the religion. He acknowledges studies that show that "regular churchgoers live longer, are less likely to have heart attacks, and so forth...," but adds that many of us "haven't stopped to consider how independent [these results]...are from whether or not any religious beliefs are true." (p. 272) Yes, it would be better--and such a day may come--when our religious beliefs are more in line with reality than they are today, taken as most of them are from the primitive science and psychology of long ago.
Religion also has utility, Dennett allows, because it strengthens people psychologically in some circumstances by giving them resolution and confidence, regardless of the fact that their confidence is based on nothing real. (p. 178) Sometimes any plan or belief--even one that is clearly wrong--is better than no plan or belief. Religion may also help people by creating or strengthening "bonds of trust that permit groups of individuals to act together much more effectively." (p. 178)
Dennett does not add at this point, but very well might have, that the cohesiveness of the tribe under the spell of a charismatic leader of the endemic religion strengthens the tribe in warfare. Indeed my contention is that this is the major reason that those of us living today have a built-in propensity to believe without evidence, because those that didn't died out because they were defeated by tribes that got their warriors to die for the cause in the name of their God. Dennett doesn't explore this path--although he does mention it--probably because he finds "group selection" troublesome.
I wish I had the space to go into more of the many interesting points that Dennett makes or to quibble with some of his conclusions. The book is fascinating and--even though Dennett, as usual, is intent on leaving nothing out--it is readable and lively, more so than some of his other books.
Explaining Religion: From Obsessional Neurosis to a Peacock's Tail - Rated
Explaining religion from the natural and psychosocial history of mankind is a hanging question ever since Hume assumed in 1757 that common religious ideas might bei closer to sick men's dreams and the boisterous ideas of apes in the shape of men than to any serious rational statement. Since then various concepts have been presented. In 1927 Freud asked in "The Future of an Illusion" what it might be that gets religious teachings an effectiveness independent of rational acceptance. In short his answer was: wishful thinking and fulfilling wishes via roundabout. These old thoughts in the tradition of the Enlightenment stay with us telling part of the truth. The philosophical status of all these explanatory efforts (and of counterefforts to undermine them) was analyzed thoroughly and unsurpassed by Mackie in "The Miracle of Theism" in 1982. From Darwin onwards often costly and wasteful, or seemingly wasteful, religious rituals and cults caught the eye of evolutionary biologists - today more than ever. Daniel Dennett sums up their ideas (see especially p. 82 - 92) and that alone is worth reading the book and can spare you quite a load of others (if you accept losses in detail). A lot of all that is plausible though speculative to a lamentable degree. Nobody really knows which significance we should ascribe to the various pieces in the puzzle of explanation. But Dennett uses this discussion to undermine religious thinking and religious claims of indispensability in a corteous and gentle manner which nevertheless gets more and more insisting as the book continues. He questions religious education and places his hope on children taught independent thinking who might then in reverse lead their parents to abandon obsolete religious world views. Thus our culture might develop in a positive way. Let's hope Dennett will be right. He himself does a good deal to bring it about.
A fun, often light-hearted journey - Rated
I had never read Dennett's work before so this was a new experience for me; I had previously assumed he was a cheap knock-off of Dawkins. I was pleasantly surprised. Dennett's book is very similar to Dawkins's God Delusion, but without the argument against God's existence, and more focused on asking questions than proselytising.
It is written as a first foray into the study of religion from a biological and scientific (evolutionary, especially) viewpoint-- how and why have religions evolved? I enjoyed the inquisitive approach- he mainly provides lists and explanations of what kinds of questions researchers in this field should be asking, although he does provide some potential answers to these, even if he does not seem wedded to them (a good thing).
Moreover, I didn't see the writing as sour or venomous in any way; it is far kinder in tone than Dawkins's work. I suppose a strongly religious (or anti-intellectual) person would find it to be sour and venomous, as they would any such book regardless of the presence/absence of kid gloves in its handling. In fact, I was almost caught off guard by the often playful, even jolly approach. He clearly is enjoying thinking about the approach he outlines and VERY carefully laying out the logic (in proper philosopher's role) behind his arguments and queries. Quite elegant and smooth overall.
It is unlikely to change anyone's views unless they're teetering on the brink (and many are...) but Dennett knows that. People that will find this interesting are those that want to know more (especially something refreshingly new; not just the tired old atheism vs. theism fisticuffs) about religion and its relationship with science and reason. It's an easy read but intellectuals will also find it quite stimulating nonetheless. I'd put it a bit above Dawkins in how much it expects of its readers; Dawkins tends to dumb things down a little further. There are nuggets of insights and unanswered Big Questions there for any reader, and the depth of research behind it shows. I liked the meme-focused perspective, which had its novel parts and some well-reasoned arguments and classifications of ideas.
This will be a classic in the field and bound to inspire deeper inquiries. It would make a great text for a college course. To see a surprisingly different book in the same area, with a less kind approach and a more direct application to modern society and it's woes, try Sam Harris's The End of Faith.
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