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 the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and prize-winning author of the influential Darwin's Dangerous Idea and 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 Natural Phenomenon, asks why. In conversation with Robert Thurman, Jey Tsong 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 why it 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 not anti-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

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 see are 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

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 of naturalism. 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.

Dennett

0:08:11
Here's another case. Toxoplasma Gandia is a parasite that lives in mice, for instance. 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

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? How many 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

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 thirty years 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

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. We have 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

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 magnificently designed 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

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 almost nothing 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

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.

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 few questions? 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

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 missionary setting, 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

"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

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's originally 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

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

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 makes you 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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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 and we 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.

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

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

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

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 the music. 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

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.

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 and finished? 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.

Thurman

0:52:56
Right, OK, and since there is nothing in the world that we have ever discovered 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!

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

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 of spooky. 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.

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.

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 the brain 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

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

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 that doesn'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.

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

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 alive? I certainly feel very fortunate to be here. Thurman lucky to be

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Dennett

1:11:11
I think that you're just playing with words. I don't know people who are more engaged 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?

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

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 racist nineteenth 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?

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 nature into 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 reconnect 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

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 a pretty 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

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...

Dennett

1:21:40
I find that view that you're presenting *perhaps* coherent, I can't see any obvious 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,

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

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

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, moral people 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.