In a recent review in the New York Times of Daniel Dennett’s latest book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Edward Rothstein succinctly sums of one of the books main ideas:

People will sacrifice their interests, their health, their reason, their family, all in service to an idea [religion] "that has lodged in their brains." That idea, he argues, is like a virus or a worm, and it inspires bizarre forms of behavior in order to propagate itself. Islam, he points out, means "submission," and submission is what religious believers practice. In Mr. Dennett's view, they do so despite all evidence, and in thrall to biological and social forces they barely comprehend.

Rothstein goes on, somewhat pedantically, to define this intentionally provocative comparison as iconoclasm and dig up its metaphorical resonances in medieval practices of destroying religious icons. This is all quite clever and well done, but I think there are more important lessons to learn from Dennett’s comparison.

Aggressive secularists who hold this view really need to examine how useful it is as rhetorical weapon in the cultural war of ideas. Portraying otherwise decent, ethical people who happen to be religious as “infected” with some sort of mental virus is simply unproductive. Secularists must acknowledge that religious belief—irrational though it may be—can coexist within one mind with scientific rationality. Indeed, this is more often the case than not. As logically incoherent as this seems to the coolly rational secularist, it is the current state of affairs and must be dealt with.

When arguing against religion’s role in the public sphere, people like Dennett would do better by appealing to a more broadly expansive notion of reason, one that doesn’t condescendingly paint religious people as mental defects. What is gained tactically in the debate more than makes up for what is lost in principle. Besides, if Dennett really believes religion is like a virus, it’s not as if he’s going to convince the believers anyway.