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Transcription by Rob Hogendoorn
Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Daniel C. Dennett in conversation with Robert Thurman
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2006
Miller Theatre, New York
For a growing number of people, there is nothing more important than
religion. Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, professor and director of theCenter for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and prize-winning
author of the influential Darwin's Dangerous Ideaand other books,takes a hard look at this phenomenon and, drawing on his sure-to-be
controversial new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a NaturalPhenomenon, asks why. In conversation with Robert Thurman, JeyTsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia
University and author of Infinite Life: 7 Virtues for Living Well,Professor Dennett explores the evolution of organized religion and whyit is such a potent force today. Dennett contends that "belief in belief"has fogged any attempt to rationally consider the existence of God and
the relationship between divinity and human need. Yet Dennett is notanti-religion. The gulf between rationalists and adherents of
"intelligent design" is widening daily, and Dennett's provocative goal is
to reach believers and non-believers alike.
Dennett
0:00:00
Well, I'm going to tell you a bit about the book and then Bob and I are going
to have a discussion. I wrote the book because I looked around and thought
about religion. I don't know what is happening in this century, and I wonder
what the outcome will be. What does the future of religion look like in this
century? I just want to share some different scenarios and you tell me which
one *you* think it might be, because I don't know. One possibility is that the
Enlightenment is over many people say so and that religion is just going
to sweep the planet. Who knows which religions it is going to be? Is it going
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to be Islam, or Christianity, or Buddhism. Will one religion simply go to
fixation across the planet? That's one scenario. I think a rather unlikely one,
but it is one to be reckoned with. Then there are those who think that, no,
religion is actually in its deathrows. They say that the current problems we seeare just a late manifestation, and that perhaps even within the lifetimes of our
children the Vatican will become the European museum of Roman
Catholicism, and the Mekka will become Disney's Magic Kingdom of Allah.
Before you dismiss this out of hand you should bear in mind that the ... Sofia
in Istanbull started off as a church, then was a mosque and now it is a
museum. Strange things can happen. Another possibility is that religions
transform themselves into a sort of creedless, moral thebes????: Lots of
pageantry, different colours, different songs, but no real creed. That might be
the sort of thing we can expect in the future. Another possibility is that
religion diminishes in prestige and visibility rather like smoking: "If you gotta
smoke, go ahead and smoke, but don't impose it on others. Find a place
where you can do it without interfering with the rights of others. That's
another possibility - although it seems rather unlikely to me. Yet another
possibility is that Judgment Day arrives. There is a lot of people who think
that that is true. The main point I want to make about this is that all but one
of these at most is wildly wrong, and we don't know which one it is. Which
one is right nobody knows. I don't know, and you don't know. It seems to me
rather important in this 21st Century that we try to get a little better grip on
what religions *are*, so that we get a little bit of sense of what might become
of them in this century.
Dennett
0:04:50
This is my main message: We need to study religionthe way we study global
warming; global economy; global energy resources. It's a very important set of
phenomena. We need to study it with the full panoply of scientific
investigation as a natural phenomenon, which I submit it manifestly is. It may
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also be a supernatural phenomenon. The only way we could ever prove that,
is by studying it as a natural phenomenon and then discovering that there
were parts that we could't make sense of. That after all, that how the Catholic
Church tries to prove a miracle. You start with the feasible assumption ofnaturalism. Our minds, our brains are shaped by language and the rest of
culture, and this can be studied scientifically. Sometimes it helps to make the
familiar strange. So, imagine you are a Martian biologist and that you've come
to this planet and look around. What would you see, and what would
fascinate you? Here's one thing. Who knows what this is? Does anybody know
what this is? I'll tell you what it is. This would certainly fascinate Martian
biologists as they approach the planet. This picture was taken from a satellite.
It is the Kumela ???? gathering of about a million people on the banks of the
river Ganges in 2001. Wow, what a phenomenon! Here's another one that
you'll recognize and yet another. What would fascinate Martian biologists is:
So much energy; so much time and effort; so much human endaevour put
into these amazing ceremonies. What are they for? How did this get started?
How did it originate? Not just how did it originate what is it for *now*?
How does it perpetuate itself? These are important questions. Here's another
thing that might fascinate a Martian biologist, it might fascinate you. You walk
out into a meadow and you see an ant that is climbing up a blade of grass. It
climbs and climbs and it climbs to the top of the blade of grass until it falls.
And it climbs again, spending a lot of energy. What is it doing? What is the
*point* of this? Is it hunting for food? Is it lost? Is it showing off for a mate?
Tremendous effort on the part of this ant. What good accrues to the ant from
all this effort? The answer is: no good at all. None at all, as far as we can tell.
Well then, why is the ant doing it? Is it just a fluke? Yeah, it is. It is just a
fluke. It is a lancet fluke: Dicros ???? dendric??? It is small brainworm, that has
climbed into the ants brain and is driving the ant like an all-terrain vehicle up
to the end of that blade of grass because it needs to get into the belly of a
cow or a sheep to continue its life-cycle. It's sort of like karma, Bob. You
know, reincarnation.
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Dennett
0:08:11
Here's another case. Toxoplasma Gandia is a parasite that lives in mice, forinstance. It has to get into the belly of a cat, to continue its life-cycle. Well, if
you were a parasite in a mouse and you wanted to get into the belly of a cat,
what would you do? You make the mouse extra fearless! It runs out boldly
into the open where it is more likely to be eaten by a cat. There are actually
many examples of host manipulation by parasites; a very interesting part of
biology. So, these are cases where you have a high-jacker that affects the
braind and induces even suicidal behaviour on behalf of a cause other than
one' own genetic fitness. Gosh, that's pretty scary! Does anything like that
ever happen with us? Well, yes. Let me remind you that the Arabic word
"islam" means submission surrender of self-interest to the will of Allah. But
it is not just Islam; Christianity too. This is a photograph of piece of
parchment music manuscript that I have. I found it in a Paris bookstall, fifteen
years ago. It says "?????" It is interesting, by the way, the spelling of "Christus"
has a "Ki-ro" and then an "r". The sribe has made a mistake. He has mixed
Latin and Greek, and added a redundant "r". What that is, is the word of
"God" is the seed, and the sower of the seed is Christ. In other words, these
are ideas to die for. And there's quite a few ideas to die for. Islam is just one.
There is Christianity; Catholicism; many different Christian ideals too. Think of
all the people in the last century who gave their lives, and gave a lot of other
lives, to further the cause of Communism. Democracy is yet another; Justice,
Truth, Freedom. I live in Massachusets. Just to the North of me this is what
the licence plates say: "Live free or die." It's interesting that the moose can't
have that thought. No, we're the only species that does this. Now, a lot of
people have been telling me: "Dan, you shouldn't start off with this scary and
objectionable example of the brainworm. It's so offensive." I beg to differ. If
you think that it is offensive, you haven't thought about it carefully enough.
One of the things that people *glory* in is the fact that they are the willing
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servants of the ideas that have engulfed them; that are more important to
them than their children, their grandchildren their *life*! They are *proud* of
the fact that they are devoting their lives to an idea. It's not like buying a car.
It's not like that at all. Do we have a lot of grandparenst here tonight? Howmany of you think that maximizing your progeny and grandprogeny is the
most important thing in your life? Hands please. Hardly anybody. I mean:
Yeah, grandchildren are really great. I've got one. Wonderful, but it's not the
most important thing in life for anybody. We're the only species that has that
perspective. We have that perspective because of human culture, which has
enabled ideas to spread from mind to mind and so to captivate us, so to
enthrall us that we're prepared to devote our lives to them. That's the way
people usually put it, and I want to point out that *biologists* can make sense
of that too. They can make sense of ideas that captivate human beings, and
that's the first step to understanding what the biological perspective on
religion might be.
Dennett
0:12:44
Human culture is itself one of the fruits on the Tree of Life. I am going to go
very quickly through this. This is the Tree of Life, as seen from above. The
artist who has done this, has put three species right there out of the end of
the eukaryotic branch. It's sort of fun to see who they are: Comprinus, Home
and Sea????, What's that? Homo, that's us, of course. Those are two or our
close relatives: mushrooms and corn. Compared with the rest of the Tree of
Life, we're cousins. The Tree of Life includes among its fruits not just beaver
dam, but Hoover Dam; not just spider webs, but the Internet and Power
Webs; not just birds' nests but poems: Ode to a Nightingale. These are all
artifacts made by living, evolved creatures. And there's a biological
perspective it's not the only perspective, but it is a perspective that you can
take. Even human culture gets underway without any insightful design to
prime the pump. Ideas, not worms, high-jack our brains. Maybe some worms
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too, but it's the ideas that I want to talk about. These are ideas that persuade
us to make many copies of them. The theologian Hugh Piper says that the
Bible is the "fittest" of texts, because it has made so many copies. Interesting.
A word for ideas that replicate is "memes," coined by Richard Dawkins thirtyyears ago in his book "The Selfish Gene." He points out that they are
analogous to genes. They are informational items that replicate. At first they
might seem hugely different. Let's take a simple gene. A virus is not alive, but
it is, basically, a naked gene. More picturesquely, it is a string of nucleotic acid
with attitude. That is to say, it is simply happens to be designed in such a way
that if it gets inside a cell it commandeers the cells copy machinery and
makes more copies of itself. So it goes. It's not smart. It doesn't have a mind.
But it does that. Ideas can do the same thing.
Dennett
0:15:19
I am going to push ahead very swiftly here, because I want to give Bob plenty
of chance to get into the discussion here. In my book, I do not offer a theory
and claim that it is right. I sketch a theory and say: "If this theory is wrong,
and it probably is in many details, replace it with a better theory." I want
people to see what a good scientific theory of religion would look like. What
the resources are that are available to a scientific understanding of religion.
What sort of progress we can make. I don't have the answers, I have
questions. The basic idea, which I developed in a slightly different context,
now has the name HADV, "hyper-active agent detection device," which is just
one of its names. Maybe you witnessed this today. You got a dog dozing by
the fireplace and some snow falls of the eves and lands with a thud outside
the window. And your dog is up, growling, looking around, "Who's there,
who's there?" That's the dogs hyper-active agent detection device. Whenever
there's something surprising or unsettling or confusing or mysterious that
happens, we have an *instinct* yes, an instinct to ask "Who's that, who's
that?" Because it just *might* be an agent. It might be something that has
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beliefs and desires, and it might want *you.* This proclivity in us, with our
language, generates lots of phantoms, ghosts, goblins, things that go
bumping in the night and that might be a talking tree or a god or a
lepricon???? or who knows what. These gradually sort themselves out. Wehave a population of these, that grows, gets passed around. The best ones,
the unforgettable ones, spread. The ones who make it through the
competition for rehearsal space in individual brains are the ones that are
really unforgettable and vivid in various ways. What are these winners for?
They are not for *anything*, necessarily. They are just byproducts of the brains
that we're designed to have. But then, once they're on the scene, they can be
harnassed for all kinds of purposes. What they're for initially is just occupying
the minds they find themselves in.
Dennett
0:17:52
Here's a riddle: What do folk religions have in common with squirrels, rats,
pigeons and barn swallows? The answer is that those are all *wild* species.
They're not domesticated, but they've evolved to live in close harmony with
human beings. They're very cleverly designed by evolution to live in human
company, in close proximity with people. But they're not domesticated and we
don't have to take care of them. They do quite well on their own. The same
thing is true of, say, spoken languages and folk music. This all changes when
things become domesticated. How clever it was of sheep to acquire
shepherds! Very smart move. What they did was to outsource all their
problems: protection from predators; food finding; health maintenance and
all for the cost of a slight loss of free mating. Was that a smart move for
sheep? Well, I don't know. There's hundred of millions of sheep in the world
today the descendants of their nearest wild relatives you could carry off in a
couple of arks, maybe. A huge fitness boost to them. And, of course, their
brains are smaller as a result. Use it or lose it. But, of course, it wasn't the
sheeps cleverness, it was the cleverness of evolution. Sheep are really pretty
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stupid. You have to remember Orville's Second Rule: Evolution is cleverer than
you are. This is *not* intelligent design; it's just that the process of natural
selection discovers again and again and again these brilliant designs. The
same thing has happened with human culture. Religions are magnificentlydesigned artifacts. Most of that design is not the deliberate, intentional design
of any human being. It is the result of the same process going on in culture
that also goes on in the land of genes. When agriculture arrived and animals
became domesticated, so the wild memes of folk religion became
domesticated too. They acquired stewards, who were prepared to devote their
lives to their flourishing, and this changed everything for the same reason
that it changed everything when animal became domesticated. Now, we can
start looking at the use of domesticated God-memes.
Dennett
0:20:35
What are they good for? In the book I go into this in some detail, and I am
going to just allude to a couple of points. They are fantastic decision-helpers.
When you're really puzzled, don't know what to do My Gosh, what shall I
do? ask God and God will tell you. If you squinch just right, you may get a
little help from the priests. This can be a wonderful benefit, even if what God
tells you is as good as a coin flip. Because it may give you the resolution and
the confidence to carry out one plan or another it may just get you off the
dime. Another possibility is that they are placebo effect props. ... I am going
to move on because I want to let Bob talk ... I am not going to talk about the
surrogate police... I am just going to skip ahead... I do want to talk about one
feature of organized religion which I spent a lot of time on in the book, and
that's what I call "belief in belief." Many people believe in God, many people
believe in belief in God. In fact, *more* people believe in belief in God than
believe in God. Because people that believe in God also believe in belief in
God. They think it is a good thing; they wish more people did. But there's also
the people who do not believe in God, who have lost their faith, who still
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believe in belief in God. There's many more of them than there are of the
people who believe in God. This is no accident. It's very hard to figure out,
though, how many more, because organized religions have been designed to
lower a veil over these questions so that you really can't tell. There's almostnothing you can do to demonstrate you belief in God that doesn't also just
demonstrate your belief in belief in God. You pray, you give money to your
church, you *say* you believe in God that's just what you would do if you
believed in belief in God, of course. You can't tell.
Dennett
0:24:36
Another feature, and this is the one that I think bothers me the most I took
this picture on my way up to Maine a few weeks ago: "Good without God
become Zero." Organized religions have established the presumption that
without religion you can't be moral. This is, I think, the greatest con-job that
religions have accomplished. Particularly in this country. Not in Europe. You
can be an atheist and be elected to public office in European countries. Not
in this country. This is an extremely clever design feature of religion because
people *want* to be good. They really do. They want to be good, and they
figure that the only way can really be good is if they're religious. Interesting. I
will give one more little example: I don't know what this sentence means. If
anybody in the room does, please don't say a word. But I believe it's true. I
would bet a large sum of money that it is true, because I asked a trusted
Turkish colleague to give me a true sentence of Turkish and not tell me what
it meant. If anyone wants to bet a thousand bucks with me right now, I bet
that it is a true sentence. I have no idea what it means. OK? How many of you
believe this: E=MC2? How many of you know *really* what it means? Sort of,
but you know it's true. I believe both of these. I have a pretty good idea what
E=MC2 means, I have no idea at all what the Turkish sentence means. I don't
understand it, and I semi-understand E=MC2. With religious formula even the
experts claim not to understand. Why do we put up with this? Because of
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belief in belief.
Dennett
0:25:04
One more question: How many of you believe in ampulex compressa??????
You don't what it is whether to believe it or not. I happen to know what it is
and I believe in it, but I just wanted to point out that if you don't know what
something is you are hardly in a position to believe in it. Religions are
powerful forces in peoples lives. Religions are brilliantly designed. When we
understand their design, we can see better what they might do or should do
to revise their design and to improve them. On that note, thank you for your
attention. It's time for Bob to take over.
Thurman
0:25:39
It was a shock earlier just now, when I discovered that Dan and I were almost
classmates in the same high-school, some years ago and in the future maybe.
Your last remark made me think about a joke that you migh not have heard.
It's a theolgian's joke, actually, that you hear in a place like the American
Academy of Religion. It's a joke where you hear about a preacher that says to
the congregation: "Can anyone tell me what faith is?" Everyone looks quiet,
and then little Johnny, who is in the front row, puts his hand up. So, the
preacher says: "Now, look at that, little Johnny is the one who is going to tell
us what faith is. Do you really know what faith is, little Johnny?" He says: "I
do, preacher! I do!" "So," says the preacher, "tell us what faith is." "Faith,"
Johnny says, "is believing in what you know ain't true."
Dennett
0:26:47
I've heard the punch line, but I've not yet heard the joke.
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Thurman
0:26:48
So, that's what you're after here. I enjoyed it; it's very cheerful and dynamic,
as your books always are. But, maybe you will be bored unless I ask you a fewquestions? What do you think?
Dennett
0:27:03
Sure, ask away.
Thurman
0:27:13
First, I want to praise you in a self-interested way, because this ????? for the
scientific study of religion as a realy crucial, high-priority thing, in this day and
age when religions are threatening the fifth scenario. Some of them because
they think that that should happen, and that they should help God make the
Apocalypse happen the Rapture people which are very much in this country.
Other religions also have their versions of this final things; the return of the
Madi?????; even Buddhists have one, with some of them holding the
Shambala thing. But that's luckily in the 25th century, so we don't have to
worry about it right now.
Dennett
0:27:52
Maybe we should start worrying now.
Thurman
0:27:56
Well, you should worry because your reincarnation will be there, no doubt.
But we'll get to that later. I plan to be like on Mars, maybe. But I totally
agree with you, and at our religious studies department here at Columbia
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it's called Religion and ??? rather than Religious Studies for historical reasons,
but it is a religious studies department we intend to found something called
the Center for the Critical Study of the World Religions. We feel that there's
no academic center for the study of world religions that isn't a missionarysetting, where the religions sit back and say "Well, you're nice too" and
"We're nice," discovering that you can believe the weird things that other
people believe and still be human. I used to have a problem while I was at
Harvard with that, because having been born as a Presbetyrian by familiy,
although it was not a religious family, the apostacy of becoming sort of a
'lazy' Buddhist was not a good idea from the point of view of the Divinity
School there. Anyway, we think there should be a new kind of such center
where moderates in religious traditions, and even liberals and radicals, should
be nurtured as they are not in their own religious institutions to become
more critical of the more fanatical interpretations of the scriptures. So, part of
your text is a creed and a real support for our idea. We welcome you as a
Charter member, and if we ever get funded you will get a fellowship and be
there for a year. If you want to wind up being in New York, of course,
because you might rather want to be on your farm in Maine. That I really
wanted to recommend and praise. But, with that comes a question. It seems
to me as if you feel that there hasn't been a scientific study or theory of
religion up until now. You mention Clifford Geertz, the anthropologist, and
there are sociological theories that are related as well as anthropological
ones. Why is the evolutionary biological account of the development and the
nature of religion the only one that counts as scientific in your view?
Dennett
0:30:10
It's not the only one. But, you've said it yourself, the scholarly study of
religion up till now has not been conducted very often with the proper
attention to method, controls and getting things confirmed carefully. I think
the situation now is rather like the situation that Darwin found when he wrote
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"The Origin of Species." There were thousands of really wonderful scholars,
natural historians, that were experts on plants and animals and fish, you name
it. They had a mountain of excellent lore that was well gathered, and Darwin
was the first to figure out a theory to put it all together. Now, fortunately,they were not themselves ardent Darwinians, because then one would have
had to worry about bias in their data gathering. He harnassed their labours
very well. Now is the time, I think, for theoretical harnassing of the work of
these earlier generations of scholars.
Thurman
0:31:23
That's good, but you are a philosopher. I don't know what the religion
department at Tuft has been doing, but I think religion scholars in general will
take some humbrage ????? at being told that they weren't doing proper
controls, or checking for bias, trying to be objective, exploring things, being
critical. They are doing that. I wasn't saying that they're not doing that,
although there are apologetic scholars as well.
Dennett
0:32:00
Absolutely.
Thurman
0:32:00
But, mostly they're critical and they study religion as a natural phenomenon
though not necessarily through the lens of evolutionary biology. What I was
saying is not that there aren't such scholars, but that they're in an ivory tower.
They're not applying that necessarily in the world. They don't have access.
And in the World Religions Centers that *do* exist in a couple of places, the
religion departments are programs controlled by the Divinity Schools of those
institutions, so that they don't have that critical exchange. That's also where
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the more radical people. Let me give an example. There's an Islamic scholar
I won't mention his name who recently was here and gave some lectures
invited by an institution here. He was almost hired in a couple of
neighbouring universities. He's a very well established theologian. He'soriginally from Sout Africa; he studied in Pakistan at madrasses and in Saudi
Arabia. But, he's very radical. He believes that the veiling of women is not in
the Quran; that Mekka should be open to any serious pilgrim, even when he
or she is not a muslim; he is really radical. He couldn't get jobs in some of
these other schools because some of the local people felt he was not
representing and speaking for their community. Meanwhile he's a scholar
who's been critical and wielding the resources of the tradition to change
some of the idead of the community. That's what we would like to do: shelter
and nurture these people.
Dennett
0:33:35
Fine. I agree.
Thurman
0:33:36
Thank you so much for supporting that. So, you feel that if we could explain
all that by evolutionary biology we would finally *understand* religion?
Dennett
0:33:44
No, I just think that's a part of it. Only part of the book is about evolution,
but that is where I think it has to start. In fact, the main message, of course,
of the evolution part of the book is: 'Don't make the mistake of thinking that
evolution is a one-trick-pony. This isn't about genes. And it isn't about what
religion is good for, what fitness benefit it has brought to human beings.
That's one option. It is not a particularly plausible option. There are other
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theories that have to be looked at. As long as the non-biological community
says, 'Oh yeah, sure, religion is fitness-enhancing somehow,' then they will get
off on the wrong foot.
Thurman
0:34:34
I think it's great to add your perspective. But the other question is who do
you think will read your book, and will it affect religious people and
institutions in a good way? The memes in your book, which I think are
wonderful your humour is good, though some people will think you are
impious probably, for which I congratulate you , but how do they get into
the more radical or rabid elements of our religious institutions?
Dennett
0:35:16
I'm not really hoping that many really rabid religionists will react.
Thurman
0:35:18
Really? Maybe they won't!
Dennett
0:35:23
I hope they will, but I think that that's a relatively forlorn hope. I'm taking
religious people at their word. They say they're reasonable and they say
they're moral. I'm appealing to their morality and reason, and say to them:
'Well, then you should have no trouble with this book. I'm not insulting you.
I'm talking about a level playing field. I'm saying: "You think religion is
wonderful. You may be right; let's look at the evidence. Let's look at the pro,
let's look at the con. Let's understand what's going on here." I have an
example early on which is really not designed for them, but designed for my
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fellow brights, just to give them a sense of why this is so threatening to so
many people. Suppose you picked up The New York Times tomorrow and it
said: 'Studies by scientists at Caltech and Cambridge University show that
music if bad for you.' It turns out that music is bad. It lowers your IQ; it makesyou more likely to commit violent acts; it increases your risk of stroke; who
knows what. I know a lot of people would have the same reaction I would
have, which would be visceral it would be: "Well, this shows that they don't
know anything about music. We're going to have music no matter what. I
don't care if it is *bad* for me. I don't care if it is bad for other people. A
world without music is a world I am not going to live in." That's it, that would
be my visceral reaction. But then, I would think about it and I would realize
that I am so sure that music isn't bad for me or anybody that I am prepared
to study it. Bring it on. Let's study it and we shall see. And *if*, by some
horrible chance, it turns out that music really isn't good for us I want to know.
It seems to me that that's the moral response to this book. And we'll see how
many religious people can muster that response. One of the themes of the
book is that religious allegiance is a kind of love. And one of the most natural
responses to anybody who said "Well, let's subject the object of your love to
a careful examination" is to respond with anger and outrage.
Thurman
0:38:01
Well, yeah, maybe we have to do a careful examination, but not you, I think.
Dennett
0:38:03
Well, let's do it together.
Thurman
0:38:03
They wouldn't like someone else to do it.
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Dennett
0:38:07
Let's join forces; let's find out what makes religion tick.
Thurman
0:38:16
What about *defining* religion in exploring it in terms of 'breaking its spell.'
Dennett
0:38:25
Hang on, I want to say one thing. The title of my book concerns two spells:
one of them is the veil of polite ignorance of religion.
Thurman
0:38:35
The taboo to talk about it, right.
Dennett
0:38:37
That's the spell I want to break. And I do break it. I *want* to break it. But as
for the question of whether I want to break the spell of religion altogether, I
am completely agnostic on that. I have not decided how I feel about that. I
don't know enough. I do not know what we would replace religion with.
Thurman
0:38:55
Well, we have evidence that in the Soviet Union and in China, when they tried
to replace religion they deified the leaders of the society, and they became
really destructive.
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Dennett
0:39:08
That was not, it seems, a good policy.
Thurman
0:39:12
That was a really bad idea.
Dennett
0:39:13
Any more than prohibition, we learned. The war on drugs is another bad idea.
Thurman
0:39:22
What about religion itself? You seem to use 'religion' as if it was coterminous
???? with belief in a creator God. I appreciated you leaving Buddhism out of
the picture entirely, which some people think of as a religion, although but I
don't. As I told you, I think of it as one third religion. Certainly Buddhism does
not believe in a creator God, neither does Confucianism or Daoism. Some
other traditions too believe in multiplicities of gods and things like that. But
that's an old-fashioned definition of religion. Religion defined as the belief in
God was Tyler's definition.
Dennett
0:40:07
My definition is a social system that postulates supernatural agents whose
approval is to be sought.
Thurman
0:40:26
They don't have to be a creator?
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Dennett
0:40:28
No.
Thurman
0:40:34
John Dewey, for example, wished to take the good elements of religion away
from religion and make them possible as an education for people. He had a
plan like that because he came from a fundamentalist background. He saw
that religion was having good effects on some people in some cases. He was
not, obviously, living under the current Republican administration. But the
thought about the dangers of the institution, and how to take that out of
that. But you are not really proposing that, are you?
Dennett
0:41:16
No. In fact, I don't know whether some version of that would be a good idea
or not. I don't think that Dewey had studied religion enough to know, and I
haven't studied it enough to know. What I do think is important that we do
right now, is educate each other a lot more. I've been fascinated by the
reaction to one of my, it seems to me, quite uncontroversial suggestions,
namely that we should have a curriculum on world religions in the public
schools and for home schooling, with *facts* on world religions, and that
parents can teach their kids whatever they want as long as they also teach
this this. This has been called totalitarian by one reviewer.
Thurman
0:42:10
Really? That there's a curriculum on world religions so that students in
schools learn about each other's religion? Just the factual things about them?
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Totalitarian?
Dennett
0:42:18
Totalitarian, yes.
Thurman
0:42:21
Well, you can be happy that you don't have to worry about such a reviewer.
About ten years ago, here at Columbia, when this business was going on in
Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia, I came up with this. I was quite exercised,
because I happened to know someone from the politics of that area. It was
about the possibility of creating a Religion Studies program in Sarajevo
University. They didn't have such a thing. In communist countries the study of
the world religions would be done by scholars in the Atheism Department. So,
they would study the different kins of opiates of the people. They learned the
textures????? and scriptures and so forth, but there was no concept of a
Department of Religious Studies. That's really an American thing. There are
very few European universities that have that. In Eastern Europe, once the
communist lid was taken off, these religions have rearisen in the very
fundamentalist form, unaffected by the last eighty years of communist rule.
That's why the Protocols of Zion are recirculated in Poland and Russia. These
backward things would have no chance if religion was more in dialogue with
modernity. It has not been, because it has been underground. I was shocked
that some people who are trying to ameliorate the conflicts and violence in
those cultures still think that religion is whithering away, so they don't think
that there should be Religion Departments. And then those scholars don't
know what to do: they go to Literature Departments; they have no place to
mobilizethe people in the streets of Sarajevo in one block of Sarajevo you
will have a synagogue, a mosque, a catholic church and an orthodox church,
or maybe even several of them in one block who have lived there for
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decades without killing each other. When the Jews were thrown out of Spain
in 1429, they went to Sarajevo under the Aramens?????, and they were much
more tolerantly looked after. And yet, they never learned about each others
faiths. Therefore demagogues could exploit them to demonize each other andwe saw what happened in Yugoslavia.
Dennett
0:44:52
Indeed.
Thurman
0:44:57
So, it's a very precious thing, and I can't believe that someone would call that
totalitarian. It could be seeded effectively from America to other places if it
survives in America, that is. I'm sure current people in our government think it
is terrible that religious studies are comparatively taught even within our
universities. In fact, in the American Academy of Religion these scholars, who I
hope will read your book and add evolutionary biology more prominently to
their methods and tools in studying, will always discuss in which university
there can be no religious studies. There are certain State Universities, for
example, which will not alllow religious studies departments in the State,
because of the "separation of church and state."
Dennett
0:45:38
Many years ago, when I was at the University of California, back in the sixties,
I was on a state-wide commission that looked at whether there should be a
program in studying religion in the State University. And our group came up
with the conclusion, yes, that was fine as long as it was the objective study of
the different religious traditions their texts, their rituals, their histories. That
was fine. I think our report gathers dust on a shelve somewhere.
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Thurman
0:46:04
Eventually they have founded a department at the University of Santa Barbara,and it looked like what you described.
Dennett
0:46:14
That's where we met, and that's what they eventually did, I guess.
Thurman
0:46:17
But a similar movement in the eighties here in New York State tried to create
a Religion Department in SUNY, Stonebroke?????, and they failed. I happened
to know the person who was working on it. Who made them fail? The
cardinals, the head rabbis, the head protestants the ministers got together
in Albany and blocked it. In Amherst, MA at the University of Massachusets,
where I was for many years, there was no Department of Religion. They tried
to start for twenty years, but the Cardinal of Western Massachusets always
blocked it. He was always on the Board of Regents of the University. The
biggest building community center of UMS, you'll never guess what it is? The
Cardinal Newman Center! So, the people who dislike religious pluralism are
the ones who dislike religious studies.
Dennett
0:47:14
Yes, indeed, and I am suggesting that the first thing we have got to do is to
start educating our citizenry, beginning with the children.
Thurman
0:47:22
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Absolutely. Now, I won't let you off that easy though. You say, on page 268
Can I read from the Scripture?
Dennett
0:47:34
Sure! I'll just check to see if I'm on the same page.
Thurman
0:47:38
So, you are anticipating an objection, saying: You say, "I, too, want the world
to be a better place. This is my reason for wanting people to understand and
accept evolutionary theory (...)" You're a philosopher, though, so how come
that evolutionary theory is real thing for you, even though you could be
doing Nietzsche? You love Nietzsche, I noticed that. "By opening their eyes to
the dangers of pandemics, degradation of the environment, and loss of
biodiversity, and by informing them about some of the foibles of human
nature. So isn't my belief that belief in evolution is the path to salvation a
religion? No; there's a major difference. We who love evolution" so you said
you love it "do not honor those whose love of evolution prevents them
from thinking clearly and rationally about it! On the contrary, we are
particularly critical of those whose misunderstandings and romantic
statements of these great ideas mislead themselves and others. In our view
there is no safe haven for mystery or incomprehensibility. Yes, there is
humility, and awe, and sheer delight" so you really are in delight, but you
are still thinking rationally, not flipping out! at the glory of the evolutionary
landscape, but it is not accompanied by, or in the service of, a willing (let
alone thrilling) abandoment of reason. So I feel a moral imperative to spread
the word of evolution, but evolution is not my religion. I don't have a
religion."
Dennett
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0:49:18
That's right! I don't understand why you can't feel awe and delight and
fascination and love and keep your wits about you at the same time.
Thurman
0:49:34
You can.
Dennett
0:49:36
Good!
Thurman
0:49:37
Well, when you're listening to Mozart you're not really reading Darwin.
Dennett
0:49:48
I *am* listening to Mozart, but you see more in Mozart if you know some
music theory, if you know the history of music, if you understand what's
happening.
Thurman
0:49:55
Sure, but you bracket it at the time, and you let just yourself float away with
Mozart. You said you'd let yourself be challenged viscerally when someones
says that music makes you sick. You said that, right?
Dennett
0:50:11
My appreciation of music was certainly enhanced by my study of music theory
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and harmony and all the rest. And I don't discard that when I listen to music,
it's in the back of my mind and it flavors my perception of the music. And I
think anybody who really loves music should learn how to read music, and
learn what's going on. It enhances, it doesn't diminish the beauty of themusic.
Thurman
0:50:39
OK, now what about your dogma of materialism? Isn't that a religious
dogma?
Dennett
0:50:46
No, certainly not. It's just a working hypothesis.
Thurman
0:50:50
OK, it's awaiting falsification? If a non-material entity presented itself to you,
you would take it seriously?
Dennett
0:50:58
Of course!
Thurman
0:51:04
I won't get into the issue of how it would do that, but you do take it
seriously.
Dennett
0:51:09
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Right now there aren't any serious dualists in the worlds of neuroscience and
cognitive science that I mainly live in.
Thurman
0:51:21
Aren't there people who are called 'interactionists' or something?
Dennett
0:51:21
Now that Sir John Eccles has died, I don't really know if there are.
Thurman
0:51:28
Sometimes when people retire they become dualists, don't they?
Dennett
0:51:34
Sometimes they do.
Thurman
0:51:35
Most of those who are rabid scientific materialists even end alike, saying
"Well, I still believe in something in my private domain that makes me feel
better" and so on. So, in a way, they themselves are split between their
nonrational side and their rational side, right?
Dennett
0:51:50
One of the things that I worked on much more than I worked on religion or,
for that matter, on evolution is materialist studies of consciousness.
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Thurman
0:52:00
Well, I know that, you *explained* it! Was that satisfying to you? Do you think
you really nailed it? It's finished and settled, with Dan Dennett, signed andfinished?
Dennett
0:52:14
No, I think I gave a pretty good sketch, and it's holding up very well. And the
prediction...
Thurman
0:52:14
Didn't consciousness dissolve under analysis? Did it withstand analysis?
Dennett
0:52:24
That's like saying that if you have an explanation of colour and in the end you
don't have any coloured atoms or something you've explained colour *away*.
That's what it *is* to explain colour. Any explanation of consciousness which
still has consciousness in the picture at the end isn't an explanation of
consciousness.
Thurman
0:52:44
I see. So an explanation of something has to destroy what it explains?
Dennett
0:52:50
Not destroy, it has to analyze what it explains into non-questionbegging
terms.
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Thurman
0:52:56
Right, OK, and since there is nothing in the world that we have everdiscovered that can withstand ultimate analysis than therefore consciousness
ends up as nothing?
Dennett
0:53:07
Nonsense.
Thurman
0:53:13
No? But you don't believe you're going to be reborn when you die.
Dennett
0:53:15
That's right, I certainly don't.
Thurman
0:53:17
So *you* do not withstand analysis. You, Daniel Dennett, do not withstand
analysis. In other words, you're going to be reduced to nothing simply
because your blood stops and your hart stops beating, right?
Dennett
0:53:19
That's not analysis. If you actually take me apart, then I'm gone. If you just
take me apart intellectually, if you analyze my parts, and leave me intact then
I'm still here!
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Thurman
0:53:43
Well, you're still here as an illusion, in a way. You think you're here.
Dennett
0:53:48
If you just understand how all my parts work, I'm still here and happy as a
clamp.
Thurman
0:53:55
You said that if you really understand how all the parts work, and would really
explain you, you would have to disappear. If you were still there after we
would have explained you then it wouldn't have been an explanation of Dan
Dennett! You would have to disappear to be fully explained.
Dennett
0:54:02
I have to disappear from the theory. There's a lovely quote by a man named
Borghese, who gets very upset about this. He says: "Daniel Dennett is the
Devil. Dennnet's theory is not that the emperor has no clothes. The clothes
have no emperor! When you look inside, there's no *emperor* in there!" And I
said: Absolutely right! If you still have the emperor in there, you wouldn't
have a theory of consciousness.
Thurman
0:54:50
You wouldn't have a theory of an emperor.
Dennett
0:54:55
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But Borgheses point is... I say, a good theory of consciousness by the way,
the book called "Consciousness Explained" is still available in paperback; if
you bring I'll sign it has to have the following feature: when you got it all
laid out, and you go and look around at that theory it should be sort ofspooky. It should be like walking around in a deserted factory. There's all this
machinery going and there's nobody there! There's nobody home! If you still
got an observer, a witness, a boss in there, you haven't explained
consciousness.
Thurman
0:55:42
You are talking to the Buddhist theory of selflessness. Daniel Dennet, when he
was in Asia and didn't have as good a beard, probably in a previous life...
Dennett
0:55:55
Over the years many people have said to me that basically I'm a Buddhist.
Thurman
0:55:59
I know, they tell all the philosophers that and they all freak out. Especially if
they don't have tenure.
Dennett
0:56:04
I say, I'm a Buddhist without the rigmarole about reincarnation, OK.
Thurman
0:56:08
Don't worry about reincarnation.
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Dennett
0:56:14
Believe me, I don't.
Thurman
0:56:15
I know you don't, but actually maybe you should. But that's not my point. My
point is that, anciently, the self had been dissolved under analysis very
thoroughly, and it's considered a very liberating experience about yourself to
realize that. But yourself as a relational continuum as illusory, even
dreamlike, using the analogies of a relational continuum however
continues. So just because it dissolves under analysis, under what is called
'ultimacy seeking rational cognition' doesn't mean that it doesn't exist
relationally, it means that it doesn't exist ultimately. Consciousness exists
relationally. That analysis doesn't block it from existing superficially.
Dennett
0:57:07
It seems to me that's what I was just saying. I don't *dissolve* when you have
a theory of me. I'm still here. If you actually take me apart then I dissolve. And
when we die, we're taken apart. The information is lost.
Thurman
0:57:08
The coarse parts of you are taken apart; the hardware is gone and the
wetware.
Dennett
0:57:35
Not just the hardware, but the information is gone.
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Thurman
0:57:38
What makes you think that maybe you don't broadcast on radio waves, some
signal of Dennetthood? Like a Dennett fluke that goes to impregnate thebrain of a...
Dennett
0:57:50
The beautiful thing about the fluke is that you can see it, it's real. It's an
unproblematic part of the physical universe. And so are our brains. The
information in our brains can in principle be maintained. I've pointed out that
an implication of my theory of consciousness is that in principle you could
save all that information in some medium, put it on harddisks, and then
resurrect the person at some later time. Just like finding an old
wordprocessing file and bringing it back to life.
Thurman
0:58:32
Do you know where Walt Disney is?
Dennett
0:58:37
I believe he is in a cryonic chamber?
Thurman
0:58:37
He is, underneath Michael Eisner's chair. And they're waiting for the
technology to reboot him. At a lower salary, of course.
Dennett
0:58:49
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Once the information is lost, that's it. You're gone.
Thurman
0:58:56
Well, you said it's possible that it isn't lost. When we were talking before, I
asked you if you insist that our current stage of scientific machinery and
empirical observation has exhausted all degrees of subtlety that exist in the
universe.
Dennett
0:59:19
I insist it hasn't.
Thurman
0:59:23
So there could be more subtle things in the area of charms and quarks and
mezons???, nozons????, doublezons???? and who knows what that we haven't
yet plummed and could be carrying information.
Dennett
0:59:31
Who knows, sure.
Thurman
0:59:32
OK, could be. So therefore, without the need of gross things such as a Dell
computer harddisk, there could be some sort of transmission of the subtler
dimensions of Dennett in some way that we don't now understand, but that
would be physical? I granted you that, because I told you and I'll tell
everybody that I disagree with the Dalai Lama and some Buddhists who insist
that the mind *must* be nonphysical, in other words, what you call dualism. I
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don't agree with that. I see the need for dualism in certain domains as very
important sort of in the area of what you call belief in belief but in the
scientific area I don't see that as necessary and neither does Buddhism.
Buddhism has mind-body nonduality in its deeper areas, definitely. But thatdoesn't mean that you always reduce mind to matter. Sometimes you can
reduce matter to mind usefully for certain settings. You could, because once
they are the same thing, the duality bending the terminology somewhat is
no longer useful. If there's a subtlety in Dennett's consciousness that we have
not analyzed away because we have no words for that subtlety, no machines,
no ways of observing that subtlety, then that kind of subtlety has another
kind of continuity that we cannot necessarily preclude.
Dennett
1:01:05
No, you can't preclude it, but what fascinates, or puzzles me is why you think
it would be so important that this be true. Bertrand Russell has a nice
example: I can't prove that there's no teapot orbiting Saturn.
Dennett
1:01:20
That might be true, but it's not worth worrying about. What fascinates me is
that you think it's important to believe that your...
Thurman
1:01:20
I know, you went through that. But you can't deny it absolutely. You can't be
certain about it, I agree.
Thurman
1:01:42
No, no, no.
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Dennett
1:01:42
I thought were thinking that reincarnation was an important idea?
Thurman
1:01:42
I think it is an important idea in a certain context.
Dennett
1:01:46
Why? Why?
Thurman
1:01:46
???? There's a Buddhist terminological ???? principle that I like to take a
moment to explain to you, and that is that all teachings or theories about
relative reality are only relative.
Thurman
1:02:07
Therefore, they're only valid or invalid in a certain context. All teachings about
ultimate reality are actually completely useless *except* the absolute negation
that there is no capturable ultimate reality, like a refutation of the idea of an
absolute God that creates the world, or any absolute, actually, that's relevant
to the world. In a way, it's a very simple thing: an absolute can't be relative,
so therefore it's irrelevant to the relative. Only that theory has definitive status
in Buddhist philosophy. This basically opens all theorizing about relativity to
being relational and useful in this context or that. The theory of involuntary
rebirth which it is better called than reincarnation, at least for ordinary
people is considered very important in a general ethical level, not in a deep
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metaphysical level.
Dennett
1:02:07
They got to be.
Dennett
1:03:12
Now, I confess I simply can't fathom most of what you just said.
Thurman
1:03:21
That's good!
Dennett
1:03:23
I expect that there's a great deal in what you say, but it's the last bit I want to
ask you about. Why should a *moral* point of view hinge at all on this idea of
rebirth? Why not the life that we lead right now? Aren't we lucky to be
alive? I certainly feel very fortunate to be here.
Thurman
1:03:45
Well, the key is who's alive. Who's alive?
Dennett
1:03:49
Who's alive? I am, you are, we are.
Thurman
1:03:57
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Well, we went through this earlier, if your theory of consciousness is correct,
when the physical apparatus that you *know* about because we have
established that there may be a subtler one that we don't know about
ceases *you*, eternally and permanently, *cease*. That's what you believe.
Thurman
1:04:15
Of course not! You need not be scared, it's like a super escape! Are you
kiddin? It's like "Get me outta here!" Come on: you're healthy, you're happy,
you're a great philosopher, you have a farm, a grandchild. You're happy. So
that doesn't bother you. If you're in agony all the time, you wouldn't know.
That state of annihilation would be seductive. People seek it. Not only
religious people lure us towards it, Jack Kevorkian????? lures them towards it
when they're in a certain state. It's not something to fear. Who's afraid of
nothing?
Dennett
1:04:15
That's right. That doesn't scare me, it doesn't bother me.
Thurman
1:05:04
Exactly. The belief, however, in becoming nothing is considered by all spiritual
people, as well as religious people throughout history, to be a very
destructive belief. Because it gives a person an 'aprs moi la deluge' type of
undergirding. It means, I get out of here no matter what I did with my life.
There's no consequence. In other words, it is the lack of relationality to
everything that is the danger in the belief. Furthermore, there's nothing that I
can do that is really great, that will last. Materialists or humanists will say:
Well, it's my childfren; it's the world after me: it's my legacy and that's
enough. But in our largely materialist dominated society, the industrial society
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of the modern times, does it seem to be enough? Do people seem to care for
their grandchildren enough? Do you know what our president recently said to
Bob Woodward?
Dennett
1:05:04
Exactly.
Dennett
1:06:14
What did he say?
Thurman
1:06:14
He was asked by Woodward if he wasn't little worried about the wars, and the
environment and global warming, the oil industry and all that. Didn't he care
about what his great-grandchildren would think about his legacy? Woodward
actually dared to ask him that, toward the end of his access. Bush said, "I
don't care about that! I'll be dead and I won't be here!
Dennett
1:06:39
Well, did he?
Thurman
1:06:39
That's in Woodward's book. I am not arguing for the *absolute* truth of the
story of rebirth. I don't argue for that, which makes me a little heretical from
the Dalai Lama's side and others. That's the absolute theory. But, I do argue
against the idea that the absolute theory is that at death, Dennett or anybody
will be nothing. And that therefore, right now, if it got too bad for either of
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us: Bang! we would become nothing.
Dennett
1:07:17
I feel like a chiropractor.
Thurman
1:07:22
You do?
Dennett
1:07:22
I want to suggest that you need one. You got a misalignment, which I want to
point out to you. I want to cure you, and I will not have to go put my hands
on you. I am just trying to cure you of this misalignment. You're not alone.
Many, many people suffer from this, and its something that I have been
bothered by for many years. The everyday meaning of materialism, as in
"She's a material girl," "He's so materialistic" means that people who just care
about the materialist slogan "The one who has the most toys when he dies
wins." There's that notion of materialism. Then there's scientific materialism,
which has *nothing* to do with that. But you keep insisting that it does.
Dennett
1:08:23
In your book you talk about "the poisonous snake of materialist nihilism."
Thurman
1:08:23
No, I don't. You misunderstood me.
Thurman
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1:08:32
Yes, but nihilism is your belief that you will become nothing, or that therefore
you essentially *are* nothing.
Dennett
1:08:33
No, nihilism is a belief that nothing matters. I think a lot matters.
Thurman
1:08:47
Well, when you're nothing, nothing will matter. Therefore, since you think that
is your eternal destiny, just on the mere easy act of dying. When it's your
time, Daniel Dennett and his environment will matter, but after that nothing
will matter to Daniel Dennett.
Thurman
1:09:12
Yes, but Daniel Dennett won't know about it or hear about it.
Dennett
1:09:12
But it will matter to others.
Dennett
1:09:15
That's right, but first of all, a doctrine of reincarnation isn't going to help you
with that. Because, let you be reincarnated now, let you have had an infinity
of lives before, you're clueless about them. So, whatever happened in those
lives doesn't matter to you now.
Thurman
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1:09:38
You have. You can get a clue about them. Many people can remember them.
Dennett
1:09:44
But *you* haven't got a clue and you don't seem to be bother you.
Thurman
1:09:50
I do have memories. Certainly.
Thurman
1:09:51
Yes, I have had clues. I was educated in the same way you were, so my left
brain side is such that I haven't had really a lot of clues, but I've had a few
clues.
Dennett
1:09:51
Oh, you do?
Thurman
1:10:05
Yes, absolutely.
Dennett
1:10:05
And did they really deeply matter to you?
Thurman
1:10:05
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Sure, they do not really matter that to me, but they matter as deeply to me as
my present *de facto* situation.
Dennett
1:10:05
How strange.
Dennett
1:10:15
It seems to me that if I were reincarnated as I don't know what, it would be
the luck of the draw whether anything that I had ever done in *this*
incarnation mattered to whoever that was. I just don't see why this is an
interesting idea.
Thurman
1:10:31
Well, if you were a heavy smoker as a teenager or a drug user or something,
and then at the age of sixty or seventy you had serious health problems you
would hardly remember what you did or thought at that earlier age. But if
you knew about it, you would deeply regret that misuse. Therefore, we see a
continuum even in the life that we *can* remember. There are many things in
this life that we cannot remember. You cannot remember many things, many
days probably the majority of the days of your past fifty or sixty years.
Thurman
1:10:31
But you don't deny that they happened to you. You know that they did
happen to you.
Dennett
1:10:31
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I know. Probably just as well.
Thurman
1:11:11
Let me take another tack with this. That nothing matters is precisely the point.
If you really are nothing, all of us, in that we will become nothing as our
permanent state, then that is the basis of the religion of scientism, basically,
and that's what you guys are in the grip of. That's what you really have got to
get released from.
Thurman
1:11:11
They are not really believers. Those people are religious people, they are
immoral, I grant you that, really destructive. We see them around, nowadays.
But it isn't really that they believe in reincarnation. They also do not *really*
believe in rebirth. Because they think, no matter what they do, that there's
some outside absolute that's going to take them out of that cycle and put
them in some permanent paradise. Nowadays I always make it analogous to
the Houston Country Club. It's a kind of paradise that they're going to go to,
forever. They also have a way of withdrawing from the real confrontation of
absolute relationality, total relativity. That's a much more threatening view. Let
me take another tack, let me imagine something, because you're a great
thought experimenter. I know I'm not going to persuade you. And I'm not
even that persuaded myself. I'm not fanatical about this, but I am critical and I
wish you *brights* I don't know though if 'brights' is too fortunate, because
you said you wanted the opposite to mean 'super', but not 'dim' or 'dum', but
that's what people will think.
Dennett
1:11:11
Fair enough.
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Dennett
1:11:11
I think that you're just playing with words. I don't know people who are moreengaged with the worlds problems then many of my scientific friends. And
they don't need a belief in reincarnation to be deeply moral people. In fact, as
you and I know, there's many people who are devout believers and who,
basically, do not lead moral lives.
Dennett
1:13:20
Some people may not know what we are talking about here. Let me explain.
It's not my coinage, but some people out in California decided that we
needed a word for agnostics and atheists and other naturalists. And they said
we should do the same thing the homosexuals did, when they took a
perfectly good word, in that case 'gay,' and they appropriated it. A lot of
people hated it at first, but it took. And it took some time and I think most
people would say, "Very good move, the recoining of the word 'gay.'" People
can come out of the closet and say they're gay. So I came out of the closet,
and said, OK, I'm a *bright*. They chose the word 'bright.' And this gave this
crowd some thrust, and now I get wonderful mail from people all over the
world, saying "Oh, thank you for coming out of the closet."
Thurman
1:14:24
But the opposite is dim or dum.
Dennett
1:14:24
Come on, what's the opposite of gay? Glum?
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Thurman
1:14:24
Yeah. That's right, most of the heterosexuals I know are glum.
Dennett
1:14:30
The opposite of gay, but only since the term was rebaptized, is 'straight.' Nice,
positive word: straight. So's gay: nice, positive word.
Thurman
1:14:38
You want to make the opposite word 'super?'
Dennett
1:14:43
Super! Because the supers believe in the supernatural.
Thurman
1:14:46
If you are going to make the religious people 'super,' then we should also be
accepting of the term 'subs.'
Dennett
1:15:02
No, I mean 'bright' was a term that was chosen. We're a bright, I'm a bright.
I'm out of the closest as a bright. If you don't want to call yourself a bright I
suggest 'super' because the definition is that you believe in something
supernatural and I don't. So, you can be the supers and we can be the
brights. Two happy words.
Thurman
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1:15:17
I want to do one other thing. Darwin is beloved and hated by the people who
hated him and still do because he reveals to human beings their embeddness
in nature, among other things. That they're related to apes, and in a racistnineteenth century that whites were related to blacks and every other colour
that can be thought of. People hated that and they still hate it. In San Diego,
where the fundamentalists have their museum I saw a film of it. In the film,
Adam is a white guy, lying on his side waiting to have a rib taken out to wash
the dishes. He's lying there and he's looking white, and it's 5000 years ago
and you see the Grand Canyon and ????? So, embedded in nature, and we
salute him for that. However, the karma theory, which also is not an absolute
theory but a relational one, had human beings embedded in nature *long*
ago. Darwin still has one place out of nature, which is where you go when
you die. Which is where you could go any time, because when you shoot
yourself there's nothing, and no one will tell you that *nothing* is a part of
nature.
Dennett
1:15:41
Where do carrots go when they die? Are they reincarnated?
Thurman
1:15:54
Don't change the subject. Conservation of energy. No energy is ever lost in
nature. Carrots become digested, they become fertilizer, they don't become
nothing there's a continuum. And don't use the word 'reincarnated.'
Dennett
1:17:21
Are you going to use it?
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Thurman
1:17:21
The point is, Darwin and you and the scientific materialists have given
yourselves as human beings another way out of your embeddedness in natureinto nice, quiet oblivion. All you need to do is die, and you're out of it. That
view, as a dominant view, has made Western culture irresponsible, I argue.
This was predicted in ancient India by people who disagreed on every other
philosophical topic. They said that if the Carvakas, those who were certain of
becoming nothing at death, ever took control of any government of any
society and dominated it, that society would be uniquely destructive of the
environment and everything it was connected to. The main point I want you
to think about if you think it's worth thinking about, is that when you are
essentially nothing there's some aspect of you that is *not* totally embedded
in nature. Therefore, if Darwin's greatness and his breakthrough was to re-
connect human beings to nature in a realistic way there's still something
unrealistic about thinking that your essence, however subtle it may be,
beyond subtle is just nothing.
Dennett
1:18:47
What I think is that you are unintentionally perpetuating a great calumny.
Thurman
1:18:58
Calumny? Oh dear! I thought I was just advancing a meme.
Dennett
1:19:02
Well, you're doing that too. You are perpetuating the idea: spirituality good,
materialism bad. I think this is one of the most pernicious ideas out there. I
spent a little time at the Museum of Modern Art today, and I saw a wonderful
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exhibit this house in Spain, the House of the Retreat of Spirituality. It's
fantastic, this wonderful house that has been built, and it's the house of
Spirituality! Well, it's a great place to be but, of course if they would have
called it the Plutocrats' Play House people would just appreciate that it was apretty cool house. But because they call it the House of Spirituality, now it is
*transcendent*. But this idea that *materialists* can't be spiritual in the sense
that matters is baloney.
Thurman
1:20:07
I didn't think that.
Dennett
1:20:07
Well, it *sounded* like it to me!
Thurman
1:20:12
Well, you're not going to be spiritual when you're nothing. And for a
philosopher like you to misuse language like that. How can something *be*
nothing? What does that mean?
Dennett
1:20:24
Those are your words, not mine.
Thurman
1:20:26
Well, you said you would become nothing when your brain dies.
Dennett
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1:20:32
Just like the carrot, my parts get distributed around in the world. And my
identity no longer exists.
Thurman
1:20:40
So your identity is not part of you?
Dennett
1:20:42
No, that's what I am. I no longer exist. And so what?
Thurman
1:20:48
The one part that doesn't get distributed is your identity then. The one form
of energy or information that does not continue.
Dennett
1:20:59
The energy continues, it does not get dissipated. But the information is lost.
Thurman
1:21:09
I hope so for your sake. If you find that comforting that idea. It *is* a belief,
you can't deny that. And how absolutely you hold the belief would then be
the test of whether your statement here that you have no religion is correct.
Dennett
1:21:34
I just think that I'm not that different from the animals and the vegetables
and other living things on the planet. You apparently think that...
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Dennett
1:21:40
I find that view that you're presenting *perhaps* coherent, I can't see anyobvious incoherence, but for the life of me I don't see why you think it makes
any moral importance. I think that people can lead just as fine, meaningful
moral lives without that belief as with it, and I think a lot of people who
*have* that belief are, basically, self-indulgent. They *think* that by retreating
into a monastery, for instance, and by studying spiritual matters they're being
moral. I don't think that's being moral. I think that's like collecting stamps. It
keeps you out of harms way. It keeps you from doing a lot of bad things, but
aside from that... I mean, Buddhist monks who spend their lives in
contemplation...
Thurman
1:21:40
No, I don't. They all have the same continuity. I've *been* every one of those
animals and so have you in this view.
Thurman
1:22:55
Who spends his life in contemplation? Buddha did? No way! The guy was like
46 years itinerant teacher, teaching everybody who was coming or going.
Dennett
1:22:59
There *are* Buddhist monks...
Thurman
1:22:59
He spend some time on his Graduate Studies, contemplating until he was 35,
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but then he taught steadily for 46 years.
Dennett
1:23:13
There are monks that pretty much...
Thurman
1:23:13
Yes, but they are less capable than him. Possibly, they're causing less trouble
than they would if they were out there, being soldiers in some fanatic's or
materialist's army.
Dennett
1:23:23
That's what I figured. I think that's probably true. It's a fairly harmless way to
spend your life, but it's not particularly moral.
Thurman
1:23:34
It depends on what your view is. It could be moral or immoral, just as you
could be an activist morally and immorally. Those things are not necessarily
concomittant. Anyway, all I am trying to do is suggest to you is one thing: if
everything is interrated and all is relativity, which is the ancient view, then if
you have one element of yourself that has a way out, simply by dying, then
you are giving yourself immunity from that interrelationship. That's all. If you
do that, that has consequences and that affects your ground of being. It
affects the way you are. Just like those religious people who have that God is
telling them what to do it affects the way they are.
Dennett
1:24:21
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Yes, unfortunately.
Thurman
1:24:23
But absolutism could be attached to the idea of an absolute God or an
absolute nothing. In other words, we have seen equally that a fanatic
materialist, like a communist can crash a plane into a building and kill a
bunch of people. And they do not say "Allahuh Akbar!" They're not
expectiong God to reward them. They're just expecting to be annihilated
beyond pain and become nothing. And then the other kind expects to be
taken beyond pain by some absolute force. Both are from a radical relative
point of view equally irrational, and are therefore behaving equally
destructive.
Dennett
1:25:07
Why don't I leave you with that last word.
Thurman
1:25:07
No, you're the author, so you should have the last word. I didn't know you
were my own near classmate. I've admired your work from afar tremendously.
Since you've explained consciousness so thoroughly, if you were the one to
then move the dialogue a little further into a more subtle plane than the
triumphalist thing that we find in E.O. Wilson's "Consilience".... It was a thrill to
have had this conversation.
Dennett
1:25:46
Well, actually, it's time to wrap up this conversation. I'll just reiterate one
thing. I do think we need to study religion carefully. I don't think I have the
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answers. I think I have the questions. I think that it is very important that
people find the courage to speak out and say: "Let's look at this calmly,
coolly, and reasonably. This is unlike my earlier books. This is really a political
book. It is calling for political action, and it is asking the reasonable, moralpeople to join forces to understand the phenomenon of religion better. I do
believe that those people, who are deeply religious, and who are deeply
moral, will want to join in this effort. I welcome them, and if they find that my
book is outrageous or offensive to them, I submit that it is not deliberately
offensive, it is an attempt to level the playing field. Many people are so used
to being approached with awe and reverence for every religious thing they
say and I am not doing that. I am treating their views matter of factly, calmly.
I am prepared to entertain what they have to say, but I am *not* letting them
play the 'faith' card. It doesn't have any role in this political discussion. Thank
you.