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(In »Everything is religion«)

The other argument – which we regard as considerably stronger – is traditional religion’s demands for special treatment in the form of a completely unique reverence and respect vis-à-vis other ideological systems. Thus, not infrequently religion regards itself per definition as above every kind of questioning. Aside from the more or less opaque declarations concerning its existence that traditional religion itself chooses to make, it should be under no obligation to explain itself. Criticising religion, or just studying it like any kind of natural and social phenomenon, amounts to desecrating the holy doctrine and offending an entire world of believers. On this theme, the American philosopher Daniel Dennett has written an astute atheist manifesto, Breaking the Spell, where he observes that the Enlightenment is buried and forgotten and that the gradual secularisation of modern society – which could long be observed and which it was thought would soon be complete – is now crumbling away before our very eyes. Religion is more important than ever. But religion evades serious study, Dennett complains: it only allows itself to be enticed into something that has the semblance of a dialogue on its home turf, surrounded by smoke and mirrors, where it uses suggestion to produce murky connections between faith in, for example, the sacred soul’s immortality on the one hand, and on the other hand the believer’s moral refinement. But it never clarifies what these connections actually consist of.