Daniel C. Dennett Won’t Break Religion’s Spell and Here’s Why
The job of the religions is to explain why we should get out of bed each morning.
Daniel C. Dennett is an internationally renowned scholar at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, and he is out to break religion’s “spell.” By this, he means its irrational grip, which causes us to act against our own best interests. Although he acknowledges that religion does some good things, he believes that in general it hurts us. He wants us to weigh its pros and cons in public, allowing no place for it to run for cover. He wants us to see it as it really is.
I agree. The world’s religions are the most powerful forces on earth. Only the severest methods—imprisonment, torture, and death—are able to keep them underground. But as we saw in the former Soviet Union, as soon as the pressure eases they surface with sometimes more power than ever.
For this reason, it would be helpful to have a book that might make it easier for the world’s religions to practice the virtue of humility. I doubt that Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006), by Dennett, is the needed volume. It may actually prompt a defensive reaction that will leave some groups within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the religions Dennett discusses the most—more closed and strident than ever. This volume may strengthen religion’s spell, not break it.
Dennett’s strategy is to offer us a biology of religion that complements the psychologies, sociologies, and anthropologies of religion we already have. It explains step-by-step how the radical monotheism we know today evolved from our primordial “Hyperactive Agent Detection Devices” without any supernatural assistance. His idea is that religion will be exposed, both displayed and discredited, once we understand its humble history.
It puzzles me that Dennett thinks this will help undo religion’s power. My own reaction was, “Hmm, this is interesting. I wonder what other theories say.” Responses such as mine do not usually trigger massive shifts in belief and behavior. Just as most people who go to concerts don’t clamor for detailed accounts of the evolution of music, so most who worship week by week in churches, synagogues, and temples don’t plead for elaborations of the evolutionary relationships between divination and shamanism and such things.
The relative indifference of many to religion’s evolutionary history is not entirely misplaced. The truthfulness of ideas and the healthfulness of practices are not determined by how they developed. They stand or fall on their own merits. Tracing the development of ideas and practices can be an interesting and worthwhile endeavor in and of itself. But our expectations for its practical impact now and in the near future should be modest.
Meanwhile, the world’s religions persist for a simple but profound reason: people calculate that, for them, the benefits outweigh the costs. This is the place where Dennett must strike if he wants to break religion’s spell. He must demonstrate that it takes more than it gives. Once he does this, it will charm us no longer.
Despite his stunning erudition and evident playfulness, I fear that Dennett cannot strike where it counts because he does not seem to appreciate fully what people pay for when they buy religion. At one point, he says that among the authors of books and articles on this subject “the three favorite purposes or reasons d’etre for religion are to comfort us in our suffering and death, to explain things we can’t otherwise explain and to encourage group cooperation in the face of trials and enemies,” or some combination of these. He claims that these are good as far as they go but that they don’t go far enough. “There is so much more to ask about, and so much more to understand.” He’s right.
This is why it surprises me that he settles for a twofold account of the possible practical benefits of religion by William James. On the one hand, “It might make people more effective in their daily lives, healthier, both physically and mentally, more steadfast and composed, more strong-willed against temptation, less tormented by despair, better to able to bear misfortunes without giving up.” On the other hand, “it might make people morally better.” In addition, “it could accomplish both ends, in varying degrees under different circumstances.”
Dennett seems more willing than I am to give religion a passing grade on the first possibility, or at least to suspend judgment until more information is in. “There is growing evidence that many religions have succeeded remarkably well on this score, improving both the health and morale of their members,” he writes. “In most surveys the results are positive, often strongly so.” His conclusion: “The evidence to date on that question is mixed. It [religion] does seem to provide some health benefits, for instance, but it is too early to say if the side effects outweigh the benefits.”
Dennett lumps Judaism, Christianity, and Islam together and treats them as though they are one religion. Because they all descend from Abraham, I agree that in a way this makes sense. Yet I also believe this does not do justice to their many different expressions and the likelihood that some are related more strongly with human flourishing than others.
There is some research as well as anecdotal evidence suggesting that we should take the differences within the three monotheistic religions as seriously as we take the differences among them and between all three of them and irreligion. For example, ten years ago H. G. Koenig, K. I. Pargament and J. Nielson at Duke University reported that “Certain types of RC [religious coping] are more strongly related to better health status than other RC types.” Whether patients viewed God as benevolent or punishing were among the important variables in their study (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Sept. 1998, 513–21).
I think it probable that good research would show that Jewish, Christian, and Islamic people who view God as benevolent have stronger relationships with human flourishing by standards that both Dennett and I can accept than do people in their own religious traditions who view God as arbitrary, capricious, and punitive. Questions as to whether religion correlates with better health are incapable of being answered in the form that Dennett asks them. Some religions do and some religions don’t.
But this still isn’t precise enough. I suggest that credible studies would show that some expressions of each of the religions relate more strongly with well-being than others. The most important question is not whether someone is a believer or non-believer but what kind of a believer and what kind of nonbeliever he or she is.
Just as Dennett is willing to suspend judgment as to whether religion makes us healthier, I am prepared to postpone it on whether it “makes us moral.” In fact, I think it best to postpone this until the Final Judgment!
There are good Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and there are bad ones, and we don’t know for certain who is which. Besides, if we do spot someone who appears obviously bad, those of us who believers are likely to contend that he or she wasn’t the genuine thing in the first place!
We do know several things. One of these is that the basic principles of the moral life do not logically depend on any or all of the religions. The fact that thoughtful people in many times and places have independently come up with something like the Golden Rule, easily establishes this. Another is that whether religion helps or hampers moral living certainly varies from case to case. Still another is that those of us who are Jews, Christians, or Muslims have repeatedly failed to live up to our own ideals, often causing others to suffer intensely and die horribly. Still another is that, contrary to what some of the ancient Greeks apparently thought, to know the right is not always to do it. In this respect, monotheistic moral psychology may be more true to life.
We come closest to my greatest difference with Dennett if we paraphrase Christopher Hitchens and stipulate that human beings are “meaning mapping mammals.” The primary function of the religions is to help us make sense of our lives. It is neither to improve our health nor to make us more moral. It isn’t even to help us explain unusual occurrences. Religion’s primary function is to help us figure out who we are in the overall scheme of things.
Religions are like maps because they inevitably shrink and distort the way things actually are. They are also like maps in that they attempt to convey as accurately as possible what is actually there. So, yes, religions are human creations, but they are not utterly fanciful. Each one has at least a small and often mangled grasp on reality. When this ceases to be the case, they die.
Religions concentrate first of all on the usual passages of life: birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, parenting, illness, and old age and death. They do interpret unusual occurrences, often in ways that are subsequently embarrassing; however, this is not their primary function. The job of the religions is to explain why we should get out of bed each morning.
Here and there Dennett acknowledges this but he doesn’t make enough of it. Most often, he notes the mapping function of the religions, then he hurries on to his insistence that no one has a right to impose a religion on others. He’s right! Religions are supposed to be voluntary experiences. Unless we harm someone else, we should all be free to choose or to create one(s) of our own. But this is not the whole story.
The other part is that, in the aggregate, humans would rather go without food and water until they die than to live as though their lives are without purpose. Dennett can provide an evolutionary explanation; however, this is beside the point. The issue is that here and how, regardless of how they got this way, humans abhor meaninglessness and won’t tolerate it for long. Many proclaim that they would rather die in a religious war than live in a pointless world. We should take them seriously.
Dennett seems not to seem to understand this. It is not as though those he spoofs because of their religious faiths do not know what he and people of his persuasion have to offer. They understand this very well. Some of them from home and abroad have been educated in our best universities. Yet they are turning their backs on what they have learned with loathsome disgust. They do not need to read Breaking the Spell because they’ve heard it all before: “Your life has no ‘end,’ as Aristotle used the term, except what you create yourself. Lots of luck!”
Paul Tillich used to say that religion is the substance of culture and culture is the form of religion, or something like that. We can put it this way: religion is the soul, and culture is the body, and the two are inseparable. We can’t vacate the first and expect the second to flourish.
Dennett leaves me the impression that this is exactly what he is trying to do. He will not succeed. Using his current methods he can make things worse but he can’t make them better. If he doesn’t like the religions we have, he had better get busy devising new ones because the only cure for bad religion is good religion.
Jesus once told a story about a man who banished a demon from his front door only to have several rush in through the back. It will be too bad for us all if this is what Dennett accomplishes.
David Larson teaches in the School of Religion at Loma Linda University.
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Comments
Great piece! It should take under 15 minutes listening to a podcast version of it, which I recommend that you consider doing for this column.
I really appreciated your thoughts too. Dennett is the last of "The Four Horseman" that I need to read.
I agree that pointing out the potential evolution of religious beliefs isn't meaningful to the average Joe. I find it really fascinating though and it continues to confirm my hypothesis that we will never find evidence for God that cannot be otherwise explained. For reasons that I don't understand, either there is no God or God has chosen to remain unprovable by our most logical ways of gaining information.
But that's the way it is and I just have to deal with it. I believe anyway for many of the reasons you discuss above. I am aware of, and tend to agree with, many of the criticisms leveled at religion by atheists but even if it is really flawed, that does not mean it is universally harmful. I have atheists friends who are happy, secure and moral. Religious belief is so soaked into my worldview though that I see little benefit to moving out of my comfort zone. If there is no God, I don't want to know it.
I think that believers do harm attempting to prove God's existence by offering any number of explanations that are all too easily countered by alternative views. It seems that many books by Christian apologists try and show why there "has" to be a God, especially books dealing with science. I think this tendency may be what Dennett is reacting against when he offers evolutionary explanations (my guess not having read his book). Christian apologists wander into areas fraught with peril when they head down that road. It seems pretty pallid though to say, "I believe because I want to." We want to see our beliefs as based on good, clear, strong evidence.
Dave
A good review with some excellent suggestions. I was attracted to R. C. Sproul's thoughts about the dichotomy between religion and theology. Religion being the behavior of man and theology a study of God. The obvious point is one's view of God is a prime factor in the behavior of man.
I like to refer to Christian living as the life style of the forgiven. A life characterized by gratitude and generosity based upon the assurance and acceptance of God.
My dad once sent me to the woodshed to find a stick so he could spank me for something I had done that he and I both knew was rebellious. I went but couldn't find any board without a nail or staple in at least one end. I finally found a small piece of orange crate with a small nail in one end. I brought it back to dad and handed it to him. With tearful voice I cried, "Please don't use the nail end!". Years later dad told me, he was laughing so hard inside, he could hardly paddle me. Dad taught me that God never uses the mail end!!!!! The God, I know is so much like dad, I really want to meet Him face to face. In the meantime, I want to behave just like dad--tough but oh so gentle. Tom
Joselito
Thanks for the response and recommendation. I'm not sure I understand it, however. I guess its time for me to buy an IPod!
Beth
Yes! When Dennett's book first came out, there were many defensive reactions from believers. Even Martin Marty got in on it, to my surprise. But when I finally got to it I did not find it threatening at all. We've had philosophies, psychologies, sociologies of religion, etc. for a long time and have learned a lot from all of them. So why not a biology of religion too? What's the problem?
My view is that even from the standpoint of a wholly secular biology of religion Dennett doesn't fully understand what he is studying. He makes a lot of what he calls the Hyperactive Active Detection Device according to which primordial humans attributed agency to too many things they did not understand. Well, OK. I suppose they did. But so what?
But purely as a matter of description, with me not trying to make any theological points at all, it seems to me that to think of religion as primarily an attempt to explain the perplexing is to miss what religion is about first of all. Its about making meaning out of life.
I agree about not hanging our Christian convictions on any scientific theory. Now and then I hear that maybe "Big Bang" theory is starting to trip. If it falls, what will happen to all the believers who appealed to it to explain Creation? I think religion to stick to what it does best: mapping meaning and promoting values.
Dennett does come across to me as peeved. Aparently many believers have given a hard time for not deferring to religious authorities but requiring good evidence and reasoning. Because that point seems so obvious to me I don't know why he spends page after page expounding it.
No one should believe anything merely on the basis of some authority, unless one has already found it sufficiently reliable that one is prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt in some moment of perplexity. But as soon as possible we should all get back to requiring the evidence and the sound reasoning.
Tom
The more I hear about your father the more impressed I am. Sounds like he was a man of God who was also very much a man of this world. Not pious, honest.
I agree with you on divine grace being the first and last and everything in between.
Many thanks!
Dave
Many students of religion commit a common mistake of identifying religion with partial and aggregate accounts of religious experience as natural phenomena. It's not religion but the forms of religion, the religious culture, they describe. I'm not sure if "mapping meaning and promoting values" captures the essence of religion since, in my view, religion is about the sacred or supernatural.
I confess skepticism about books that end up in the best sellers list. What that tells me is they're best sellers! Nevertheless, I'm interested to hear from a evolutionary biologist what s/he thinks of Dennett's thesis.
My recommendation in regards to this column: Start a Spectrum podcast version of it. Estimated listening time for this particular piece is under 15 minutes.
Joselito
Yes--we have now joined the issue! Great. Dennett's definition makes the supernatural essential and mine intentionally doesn't.
One way to sort this out would be to ask which of the following is a religion:
Marxism
Buddhism
Judaism
Football-ism
Scientism
Postmodernism
Platonism
Americanism
Shinto
Adventism
Thank you!
Dave
This conversation, of course, is not only between the two of us. I confess to not having read any books by the "Four Horsemen" so I'll let others inform us in regards to the content of their polemics.
Based on your "mapping meaning and promoting values" function of religion, I can see why someone would think "All of the above" may be the best answer. I disagree. We're confusing ideology, or just any "ism", with religion. A case can be made for quasi-religious substitutes complete with a world view and a moral philosophy, don't you think? What this proves is humans have an innate religious impulse.
Rudolf Otto (The Idea of the Holy) and Mircea Eliade (The Sacred and the Profane, Myth of the Eternal Return) are two authors who've persuaded me that religion is distinct from philosophy and science. Religious studies is a discipline that's different from the study of religion by the social sciences. While religion may have a social integrative function, its object-matter is the worshipper's experience of the Holy/Infinite.
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/ReligiousS.htm
Is Adventism not a religion but an ideology? a 19th-century American religious subculture that has been exported abroad?
To my non-theologically trained understanding, it seems to me that religion is separate from other "isms" because of the supernatural component. Removing that distinction and still calling something a religion is often done in everyday language but I think it leads to muddying the waters. Religion is different from other ways of mapping meaning because it provides a supernatural element to help provide that meaning. Buddhism is an example that can go either way. It is often practiced as a philosophy in the West but as a religion in the native countries where they often add in supernatural elements.
As an aside I heard a quote that I thought was funny but I'm afraid I can't attribute it.
"Atheism will be a religion when not stamp collecting is a hobby."
Hi Joselito!
Thanks for your comment. How do Otto and Eliade view Theravada Buddhism? Do they regard it as a "religion?"
I do, but I don't see how Dennett can because he ties "religion" so much to the notion of the "supernatural."
That's another big problem, isn't it? The word "supernatural" has come to mean for many "contra-natural" or "anti-natural." That's bsically what it means to Dennett, I think.
But we wouldn't say that a "super athlete" is one who works contrary to the rules of the game. Rather, he or she excells within these rules.
I like what EGW [and sources and helpers, etc.] sometimes says on this: God does not annul or work contrary to the true laws of nature but within them to accomplish the divine purposes. I think this is so much better than what we often find elsewhere. At times in her life she was very much against splitting natural and supernatural.
I, for one, do not think of Football-ism, postmodernism and Platonism--of the sort that is around today--as "religions." For me the key is how comprehensive the movement's claims are.
I don't think even the most ardent football fans think that it is the key that opens all the mysteries of life. I could be wrong about this, however.
It's fun to try to define religion, particluarly because every religion worth the name denies the label, holding that it is more than a "mere" religion; it is THE TRUTH.
In that sense, I think some forms of Marxism are true religions because they presume to know the dialectic of history and where it is going and we had all better join up or be left behind and so forth.
Here is my attempt at a working defintion of "religion:"
"A religion is a comprehensive interpretation of the universe that: (1) pinpoints the lives of individuals and communities in relation to everything else; (2) teaches people what they should value and how they should live, (3) explains where and why they fail and what they can do remedy things; (4) explains how their lives can be improved; (5) and clarifies what is most worthy of adoration or worship."
This is as far as I've gotten so far. Have had it!
I'm not sure how you are splitting the difference between religion and ideology. For Marxism, for example, isn't ideology a kind of deception by which people with power and riches explain to others why it is everybody's interest that things be as they are? Is this the sort of thing you have in mind?
Thanks!
Dave
Beth
"Atheism will be a religion when not stamp collecting is a hobby." (:
Depending on how it is articulated, I think atheism may or may not be a religion.
My effort may be losing one; however, I am trying to contest the idea the term "religion" necessarily includes the idea of the "super-natural." So you've touched on one of the most important differences between me and Dennett.
One reason is that, as I understand it, the root meaning of the word "religion" is "to bind," or "to tie together."
So I think of a religion as something that pulls the entirety of our lives togeher into some meaningful whole.
Another reason is that I think that in our time the word "super-natural" has lost its original and proper meaning.
I have tried to trace the history of this and one of the earliest uses of the term "supernatural" in our sense of "contra or anti-natural" that I know of is in one of Shakespeare's plays. That's relatively recently. Relatively!
If we go further back, I think the term means something that surpasses or exceedes what is normally expected without contradicting it.
But I may be waging a losing battle. After all, words get their true current meanings not from dictionaries but by how people use them.
Thank you! I appreciate your thoughtful comments!
Dave
My understanding of all reality (the whole truth) includes: 1) what is knowable in nature and what we are able to know; and 2) what transcends nature (the supernatural) which we are able to know only indirectly. Needless to say, our knowledge of both #1 and #2 will always be incomplete.
We may illustrate this concept of total reality (the whole truth) as two concentric circles or two distinctly separate circles that may intersect/overlap at a specific point/area. I don't profess originality here so let me suggest for now that the second image may be a better way to describe a working definition of religion. Briefly, the point/area where the two circles intersect is included in what is knowable in nature and what we are able to know (#1). Is this what Dennett means by natural religion? I believe there is more and this is the same point of intersection that #2 includes.
We're in good company with the ancients. Thus, what I've proposed here is nothing new and may be found in one of "the Great Books" collection of western thought. Writes Adler:
"What are the consequences of saying that God [religion] is totally like everything else in nature that we know or are able to know? God would then have to be conceived as corporeal, finite, sensible, mutable, contingent, along with all the other attributes that we ascribe to the natural things we know. But if those attributes are ascribed to God, are they knowable in the same way as other things we know? Can God, for example, be investigated in the manner of the natural sciences where a hypothesis in physics, chemistry, and biology can derive its validity from the outcome of controlled tests and experiments? It is enough merely to ask the question to see that God cannot be known in the same way we know the attributes of other things. So we must rule out as false the proposition that God is totally like everything else in nature."
- Concerning God, Modern Man, and Religion by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
http://radicalacademy.com/adlergodmodernman1.htm
Ideology, for me, is simply a systematic collection of ideas that influence the way people think and behave. Ideologues and power elites may use it to intentionally impose their will on the larger society or community, as in a totalitarian state, but that's not a necessary connotation of ideology. Ideology is not a religion but may be a substitute.
Dave, It seems to me that EGW et al's way of not splitting the natural and the supernatural, that is, by referring to the "true" laws of nature, is question begging. If the "true laws of nature" referred to are moral laws, then that is one thing (and I wouldn't be at all surprised if she meant something like moral laws), but if they are those same laws investigated by science, then I have a hard time taking her remarks on the natural/supernatural seriously.
I'm not sure the parallel between "super athlete" and "supernatural" works. In "super athlete" the "super" is just an intensifier of the "athlete." And to my mind, at least, athleticism necessarily has to do with possessing qualities like strength, endurance, coordination, etc, and only accidentally to do with rule following in case the athlete is engaged in some game or sport. Someone could be a "super athlete" even if they cheated or never entered any competitions or played any games at all. I think of someone who jogs recreationally, for instance. In "supernatural" the "super" is used in a different way. It certainly doesn't intensify the "natural." That would have supernatural events being exceptionally regular and predictable, wouldn't it?
I think maybe your argument with Dennett about the definition of "supernatural" might be just about names. As long as both of you point to the same sort of events or concepts - eg, people rising from the dead or invisible demons and angels - it doesn't really matter what "supernatural" means. If you say that the supernatural event of Jesus' rising from the dead or walking on water does not contradict the laws of nature but merely surpasses our expectations Dennett could just say that passing our expectations so spectacularly and in such a manner is exactly what he means by "contradict."
Dave,
A winner of a conversation. Thanks.
Charles Scriven
Chuck
Thank you!
Josiloto and Tim
I apologize for not responding sooner. Apparently so many commented on other things before I visited the Blog that your observations were no longer listed in "Recent Comments."
Tim
You write: "But if they are those same laws investigated by science, then I have a hard time taking her remarks on the natural/supernatural seriously."
I understand the "laws of nature" to be descriptive, not prescriptive, in the sense that they articulate the state of human knowledge about the way things are at some point moment in human history. Therefore, if someone is truly resurrected, somehow our "laws of nature" need to be revised so as to include this possibility.
Your comments about the "super athlete" strike me as right because the difference between the Creator and created is not merely a matter of degree. It is a difference in kind. This is an exceedingly important point and I thank you for making it.
Our language may be failing us here. I think we need to find some way to articulate the qualitative difference between the Creator and the created without making them necessarily alien to each other and without the "supernatural" being nothing but a temporary spaceholder for the "natural."
I think that from a Christian point of view something has gone seriously wrong if the more we learn about the universe the less faith we have.
It seems to me that it should be the other way around, namely that each new advance in human understanding deepens and widens our faith in God. Advancing knowledge should increase our faith, not decrease it.
This prompts all the questions of theodicy, especially those posed by the predatory nature of our entire ecological order. To me this the greatest of all challenges to genuine faith. But I think we should face it head-on.
More fundamentally, I disagree with Dennett about the role of religion in our lives. Too often religion does try to explain the unusual and very often it fails. But it seems to me that as its first priority religion tries to mark the meaning of natural events like birth and death and everything in between.
Nevertheless, justified opposition to people who would restrict thought or impose their ideas on others appears to be the passion that drives his writing in this book. On this matter, I wholly agree with him.
Joselito
OK, I now understand that you are using "ideology" in a general rather than specifically Marxist fashion. Fine.
I'm tempted to break #s 1 and 2 and reconnect them in a different way.
In #1 I think that I would put what in fact know and in #2 what in principle we could know but as a matter of fact we don't. But this doesn't get it quite right either!
I wonder if it would work to draw a single larger circle representing the whole of reality with a small circle within the large one that symbolizes how little we know about the whole of reality but that we do know some things.
I'm afraid of something you haven't said and this is that we don't merely "see as through a glass darkly" but that we don't at all see what is really there or, worse yet, that there is nothing to be seen.
Thank you!
Dave
Dave,
Steller observation on the inter-relatedness of people and institutions. You encapsulated my current interests in a few lines! Really, the best theologians are ethicists ;)
Dave
I'm not sure I understood your last statement:
'I'm afraid of something you haven't said and this is that we don't merely "see as through a glass darkly" but that we don't at all see what is really there or, worse yet, that there is nothing to be seen.'
Representing total reality with a large circle and drawing a small circle within it to symbolize "what little we know" is fine with me. Two concentric circles, as I explained earlier, was a possible alternative to my two distinct, intersecting circles. The latter just makes it easier, for me at least, to determine the validity of an argument by using the circles to represent my premises. Their point/area of intersection suggests a possible deduction. As far as Adler was concerned, he symbolized transcendence (the supernatural/Infinite) #2 by an arrow pointing to "what is knowable in nature and what we are able to know" or circle #1. For how can we circumscribe transcendent reality?
Joselito
I think I was trying to say that I am happy that you have not taken up those very extreme forms of postomernism that sometimes leave me the impression that we have no contact with the way things actually are or, worse yet, that there is nothing for us to contact. Reality, to this extreme way of thinking, is nothing but a human social construction. However, we draw the circles it seems as though you have not moved in that direction. Looks like I better read Adler!
Thanks!
Dave
William of Ockham and "Ockham's Razor" are interesing as I understannd them in this Joselito.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_Razor
Separate circles, intersecting at a smaller area seem to be Ockham's razor and "special revelation." These are the areas God has made himself knowable.
The problem with me of a smaller circle in a circle may be to make us little God's with the same reasoning capacity as God.I find that problematic...but panentheistic I guess.
Not my area of expertise...if I have one... that I dwell on all day however.
Blessings to you in the Philippines!
pat
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