Daniel Dennett on Religion and societal harm

In Breaking the Spell, Dennett argued that religion should be studied scientifically as a natural phenomenon — and that the taboo against such study is itself one of religion's most effective defence mechanisms. By declaring itself sacred and beyond criticism, religion insulates itself from the self-correcting processes that improve science, law, medicine, and every other human institution.

Dennett identified several specific harms that flow from this immunity. Religious institutions resist accountability (enabling the cover-up of abuse), oppose scientific findings that threaten their doctrines (evolution, stem cell research, climate science), and enforce conformity through social pressure and the threat of ostracism or eternal punishment. These harms are not incidental — they are structural features of institutions that claim divine authority.

He was careful to acknowledge that religion also provides benefits — community, meaning, comfort, and the motivation for charitable work. But he argued that these benefits could be provided by secular institutions without the attendant costs. The question is not whether religion has any positive effects but whether those effects require the supernatural claims and authoritarian structures that produce the negative ones.