The talk tonight is in a way overdue.
We've been doing these Seminars About
Long-term Thinking for almost three
years now. And haven't had a single one
about religion. We've had a couple where
religion was referred to, usually
approvingly. Because it is clearly a long
term frame of reference. Most religions
have rights having to do with with birth
with marriage and with death.
And they step right up to generational
issues when lots of other institutions
do not. But this is not what you would
call a sanctimonious version of religion
we'll be looking at tonight. It's a
critique in light of current events.
It's a critique in light of, I suppose, 
current science current
rationality. Sam Harris' book
joins a couple of others that I would
recommend to you: "One True God" by Rodney Stark. The subtitle there is the
historical consequences of monotheism. 
The  philosopher Daniel Dennett has a
book coming out very shortly called "Breaking the Spell."
And we're beginning to see a pretty deep literature
addressing some of the profound issues
of religion through history and in our
time. And that's what we have tonight
with Sam Harris.
It's a pleasure to be here. I want to thank Stewart and
the rest of the Long Now Foundation for inviting me.
I'm going to talk about belief and specifically
what I consider to be the problem of religious belief.
I actually think that how we deal with the
subject of belief how we criticize or
fail to criticize the beliefs of other
human beings at this moment has an
extraordinary significance for the
maintenance of civilization. I think
it could well be the most significant
variable that's in our power to
influence. So I'm going to talk about
belief and I'm gonna say some
pretty unpleasant things about religious
belief. I want to warn you up front that
I'm going to offend some people in this
room. And that's really not the point.
I'm not being deliberately provocative.
I'm simply worried. I'm gonna worry out loud
for the next hour and and try to
make the case to you that we we have no
reason to expect to survive our
religious differences indefinitely.
Our world has been balkanized into separate
moral communities. We have Christians
against Muslims against Jews .
We have most of the human population living
with the idea that the creator of the
universe wrote one of their books. And we
have many such books on hand. They all
make incompatible claims about the
nature of this universe. They make
non-negotiable claims and it is
fundamentally taboo we should recognize
to criticize religious faiths and this
is a taboo. I'm about to break over the
next hour.
First... what do our neighbors believe?
Well 22% of Americans claim to be
certain, literally certain, that Jesus is
going to come down out of the clouds
like a superhero sometime in the next
50 years. 22% claim to be certain about this.
Another 22% think he probably will come
back in the next 50 years. So that's
44% of us who think that the
human experiment is gonna unravel
in their lifetime. And unravel gloriously.
Of course this belief of Jesus's imminent
return is knit together with myriad other beliefs.
It's not an accident that
44% of Americans also believe that the
creator of the universe literally
promised the land of Israel to the Jews.
This was in his capacity as an
omniscient real estate broker.
The idea it should be clear this
is a fantastically maladaptive idea.
This idea that no matter how bad things get
someone's going to come down and wield
his magic powers and rectify all of the
misdeeds that we perpetrate on this
Earth. In fact he's not going to come
down until things get fantastically bad
for us.
So it's actually true to say that something like 
44% of Americans
if they turned on their television sets and
saw that a mushroom cloud had replaced
Jerusalem or San Francisco they would
see a silver lining in this cloud.
Because it would presage that the best thing that is ever
going to happen is about to happen.
(I'm a percussionist as well)
Take another species of belief: we've all
been pummeled with this idea of
"intelligent design". This debate that is raging
in our culture. That is really eroding
the prestige of science and eroding the
prestige of our intellectual culture in
the eyes of the rest of the world. There
really is a problem with society of
intelligent design I can't imagine
anyone in this room has not heard of it.
But briefly it's this is notion that the
machinery of the cell is so complex that
it could not possibly have emerged
through naturalistic processes. So there
has to be a designer. And this designer
while he's rather casually not
named so much now this designer is the
biblical God. Okay they say your
your kids could one day be taught
intelligent design in biology class and
this should trouble all of us. But it is
important to point out that intelligent
design really is a red herring because
depending on what pole you trust
something like 44% or as high as 53
percent as
of a month ago of Americans are
creationists they don't fancy
intelligent design as an explanation for
evolution they don't think evolution
occurred at all they think the universe
is 6,000 years old and that our only
genetic precursors in the natural world
were Adam and Eve just consider for a
minute the fact that something like half
of our neighbors believe that we were
created from dirt and divine breath in a
garden with a talking snake and a
hankering for apples take another belief
that is really this is really a quaint
idea and should be of marginal
significance this idea that this
Catholic dogma that condom use
contraception is somehow unethical I can
assure you that the the computational
powers of the human brain are
insufficient to argue successfully for
this this idea on ethical grounds this
is this is a ludicrous idea but map this
on to sub-saharan Africa where something
like 3 million people every year die
from AIDS you would literally have
Christian ministers preaching the
sinfulness of condom use to people whose
only information about condom use is the
representation of the ministry this is
this is genocide all stupidity and and
yet because of the taboos around
criticizing religious faith we cannot we
cannot treat the Vatican which still
upholds this view still mandates that
this be taught we cannot treat them like
the the criminally negligent
organisation that they are at least on
this subject
we do not respect other people's beliefs
it's important to point this out we on
every other subject we evaluate their
reasons you know if I stood up here and
said the Holocaust never happened you
would be under no burden whatsoever to
respect my beliefs about European
history you know we don't we don't
respect Holocaust deniers Holocaust
deniers don't make it on our boards of
directors they don't become presidents
and universities people who think that
Elvis is still alive and well and living
in middle America don't become
presidents of universities they don't
become senators we don't pass laws
against Elvis worship or Holocaust
denial but we successfully marginalize
these views these views in every other
area of our lives to be highly certain
of something with a very low order of
evidence or or in contradiction to a
mountain of evidence is a sign that
something that's wrong with your mind
it's a sign that you cannot be trusted
and yet on matters of faith we
completely change the rules so what I'm
arguing for you really is that we we
should practice a kind of conversational
and tolerance beliefs let's just pause
for a minute and and think about what a
belief is we are when we believe
something to be true we are making our
best effort to represent reality in our
thoughts this is the difference between
a belief and a hope for instance and
when you when you hope that something is
true you are you are representing this a
possible state of the world but when you
believe that something is true you are
you are really trying to capture reality
as it is in your thoughts now either you
can have either you have good reasons
for what you believe or you don't in
every other area of our lives we demand
good reasons and we become highly
suspicious of people who cannot marshal
good reasons for their core beliefs so
there really is a conflict between
religion and science so this conflict
has been papered over by scientists and
and religious people at almost every
opportunity there really is a conflict
here because it comes down to having
good reasons or bad reasons the every
religion is making claims about the way
the world is everyone is in the business
of describing the way reality is maybe
either Jesus is coming back
or he's not if he comes back out of the
clouds Christianity will stand revealed
as a science that will be the science of
Christianity and every Christian who
wants to will be able to say told you so
here he is
look at his magic powers and and any
scientist in his right mind would be
convinced by a sufficient display of
magic powers these are claims that if
these claims purport to be factual and
yet no less an organization than the
National Academy of Sciences literally
our most prestigious scientific body has
said that there's no conflict between
religion and science because they quote
represent different ways of knowing or
quote ask different questions about the
world this is entirely bogus would you
just try to try to graph this this no
conflict idea on to a real world
decision that take take stem-cell
research for instance no stem cell
research is without a doubt one of the
most promising lines of research in
biology to generate medical therapies
there are scores of conditions that
could well be remediated one of these
days by stem cell research and we are we
are pulling the brakes on this research
and these are and for religious reasons
the fear is the release
fear is that we have to kill embryos
human embryos in order to conduct this
research we have to kill them at a three
to five day stage perhaps that sounds
terrible what what is a a three to five
day or the human embryo well it's a
collection of 150 cells not organized
into a nervous system there's no brain
there's a it's a sphere of cells maybe
150 cells sounds like a lot of cells
well there are a hundred thousand cells
in the brain of a fly flies have brains
flies have neurons very much like our
own if we know anything at all about the
relationship between physical complexity
and the possibility of having an
experience and the possibility of having
interests a we know that more suffering
is visited upon this earth every time we
swat a fly then when we kill a
three-day-old human embryo and yet the
the ethical argument never has to get
made because of the deference we have
for religious faith someone need only
stand in the oval office or on the floor
of the Senate and say you know my faith
teaches me that life starts at the
moment of conception
there are souls in those human embryos
and you cannot one soul can't trump
another you can't sacrifice one soul to
benefit another end of argument well on
the one hand we have these collections
of 150 cells and on the other we have
little girls suffering from diabetes and
full body burns we've got men and women
with Parkinson's disease we have
literally tens of millions of people
suffering terrible torments which could
one day be remediated by this research
okay it I submit to you if you if you
think that the interests of a virtually
microscopic collection of cells if you
had 10 of these in the palm of your hand
right now you would never notice if you
think that the interest of these
organisms may yet Trump the interests of
a little girl with full-body burns you
have had your ethical intuitions blinded
by religious metaphysics no no ethical
argument would get you there no argument
that talked about human suffering and
its and its alleviation would get you
there it's not enough to say that these
these collections of cells are potential
human beings a given genetic engineering
every cell in our body with a nucleus is
a potential human being every time the
president scratches his nose he's
engaged in a holocaust of potential
human beings this is literally so given
the right conditions let's just linger
for a moment I don't want to talk too
much about stem cell research but it
really demonstrates the point that we
never have to have the conversation
because faith Trump's rational argument
on these subjects
just take take them for a moment the
claim that there are souls in this petri
dish that every human blastocyst a
three-day-old embryo is insult ok well
unfortunately embryos at that stage can
split into twins so what happens we have
one soul becoming two souls embryos that
an even later stage confuse back into
climate what's called a chimera a single
individual born of two embryos so do we
have two souls becoming one soul the
this arithmetic of souls doesn't make
much sense so what I'm arguing for you
tonight and what I argue at some length
in my book is either we have good
reasons for what we believe or we don't
and faith is the license that religious
people give one another to keep
believing when reasons fail to keep
believing in the absence of evidence and
this is unacceptable in every other area
of our lives and it's actually
unacceptable even if you take the wrong
religious object I mean just imagine how
a senator would
be perceived if in in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina he said you know we
really have not been praying to Poseidon
enough and that after all is his
jurisdiction that is the sea we're
talking about
he'd just imagine what a lunatic misuse
of the human mind that would appear to
be it's not like someone discovered in
the third century that the biblical God
really really exists and Poseidon he's
just a myth they have exactly the same
status except one has to speak of the
biblical God something like 2 billion
subscribers now in the face of this
rather obvious conflict between
religious fundamentalism certainly and
scientific rationality many of us many
well-meaning well-educated people
especially in the West have created a
kind of accommodation to modernity and
we call it religious moderation now in
my book I say some very critical things
about religious moderation that's
actually been some of the most
controversial aspects of my arguments I
want to I want to say those things now
so you get a taste of my heresy in full
the first thing to concede up front is
that religious moderation is better than
religious fundamentalism it nobody flies
a plane into a building because he's a
religious moderate the religious
moderates are not organizing their lives
around apocalyptic prophecy and this is
a very good thing but religious
moderation has some real liabilities and
the first is that it gives an
extraordinary amount of cover to
religious fundamentalism because it
because moderates also have made it
taboo to criticize religious faith
itself to criticize the basic project of
thinking that you're a Jew or a Muslim
or a Christian of raising your children
to think
believe that they are Jews or Muslims or
Christians because because religious
moderates are still attached to that
that obeisance to to tradition they have
they don't want anything too critical
said about the people who really really
believe in the literal word of their
holy books and this is not serving us at
this point it is even taboo among
religious moderates to notice the
differences among our religions that all
our religions don't teach tolerance and
compassion to the same degree and where
they do teach it they don't teach it
equally well this is the fundamentalist
understand this you know our own
fundamentalist demagogues when when
Muslims start flying planes into our
buildings they say Islam as an evil
religion they don't have a problem that
noticing the differences among religions
moderates are the ones who have given us
these euphemisms this idea that Islam
for instance is a religion of peace
that's been hijacked by extremists and
that Osama bin Laden is is the the
Reverend Jim Jones of the Muslim world
or the David Koresh of the Muslim world
Osama bin Laden is articulating a very
plausible version of Islam that has more
subscribers than we would like to admit
but the doctrines of martyrdom and jihad
are not fringe doctrines in in Islam
this idea that that death in defense of
the faith is the best thing that could
possibly happen to another human being
this really is a deal breaker and this
really is believed by millions of
Muslims
maybe to linger on this point for a
moment because it really is of
excruciating relevance to us at this
point
where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide
bombers I mean if if occupation were
enough if being conquered by an outside
power and being hauled off to jail and
tortured were enough to so deranged a
society that it would form a death cult
like we see brewing in the Muslim world
we should see Tibetan Buddhists blowing
themselves up on Chinese buses we should
see Tibetan Buddhists in thronging in
the streets calling for the deaths of
Chinese non-combatants we do not see
this and and we are we're profoundly
unlikely to see it it's abettin
Buddhists believe a lot of wacky things
about the nature of the universe
they don't believe those wacky things
that you have to believe to form a death
cult it's not that it's impossible that
Buddhism could could inform at this kind
of behavior and actually Zen Buddhism
did to some significant degree and form
the worldview of the kamikaze pilots
during World War two
it's interesting to know it over just as
a Buddhist scholar that that one of the
things then can be criticized for is not
really focusing on compassion to the
degree that other schools of Buddhism do
and there's this whole martial spirit
and tons of martial metaphors in in Zen
Buddhism that lent themselves rather
readily to Japanese nationalism but
there are differences among our
religions we are never by any stretch of
the imagination going to encounter Jain
suicide bombers so Jainism is just it's
a religion of non-violence the more
deranged you become as a Jain by your
religious dog dogmas you will become
less and less violent I mean the really
fundamentalist Jane's wear cheesecloth
over their mouths so they won't inhale
bugs the core of Jainism really is
non-violence but by no stretch of the
imagination can you say that the core of
Islam is non-violence religious
moderates are uniquely ill placed to
concede this
so when the religious moderate sees the
jihadist on the videotape say things
like we love death more than the
infidels love life and then he blows
himself up
it's the religious moderate who was left
thinking no that couldn't be religion I
mean that's not that's propaganda that's
that guy must have lacked economic
opportunities or I mean my only the the
United States are misadventures in the
Middle East must explain that that's not
faith okay
religious moderates don't know what it's
like to be certain of paradise religious
moderates don't know what it's like to
really believe in the god of the Quran
or of the bomb of the the Bible the Old
Testament or new if all you have to do
to satisfy yourself on this subject is
consider the biographies of the nineteen
hijackers who were these guys who woke
up on September 11 and decided to fly
planes into buildings the they were
college educated many of them had PhDs
they were middle class they were they
were not people who had histories
personal histories of political
oppression they were not spending
inordinate amounts of time at a ting for
regime change in the Middle East but
what they were what they were spending
inordinate amount of time doing is
hanging out at their local mosque in
Hamburg talking about the pleasures that
await martyrs in Paradise and the evils
of infidel culture these were true
believers and you can get their
worldview out of the Koran very readily
but we are at war with Islamic
fundamentalism but not terror a
terrorism is a tactic and you know it's
a separate conversation to talk about
what percentage of the Muslim world fits
this description and we're certainly our
policy now is not doing anything but
alienate more Muslims and create more
jihadists but we have an extraordinary
problem because the doctrine of Islam
really a bit we're at war with with
Islamic fundamentalism but the the
fundamental we're only at war with
Islamic fundamentalism because the
fundamentals of Islam really are a
problem and I just want to make clear
that I'm not talking about a race here
I'm not talking about Arabs I'm not
talking about an ethnicity I'm talking
about John Walker Lindh the white guy
from Marin who went to fight with the
Taliban I'm talking about the logical
consequences of ideas one study actually
of known al-qaeda operatives found that
two-thirds of them were college
graduates and middle class well only 52%
of Americans have been to any college
okay this is this is not merely a
problem of Education I don't know how
many more architects and engineers need
to fly planes into our buildings before
we realize this is not merely a problem
of Education our situation is far more
sinister than that it is possible to be
so well educated that you could build a
nuclear bomb and still think you're
going to get the 72 virgins in paradise
another problem with religious
moderation is that it is it represents a
fundamentally unprincipled use of reason
it really is intellectually bankrupt at
least fundamentalists talk about
evidence you ask a fundamentalist why he
believes that Jesus is coming back and
he'll give you a an evidentiary story
he'll give you an argument it's not a
good argument but he'll say things like
the New Testament confirms all of Old
Testament prophecy or all of the
prophecies in the Bible have actually
been come true in history these are not
good reasonable claims but if these were
true if this this was true this would be
an argument for the you know maybe the
Bible is emanating from some omniscient
source okay what do moderates talk about
when you ask them why they believe in
God moderates talk about meaning this
belief gives their lives meaning they
talk about the good consequences of
believing as they do I want you to
appreciate for a moment just what a non
sequitur this is when you transfer to
some other subject some other consoling
proposition this is it's actually
there's an example in my book imagine if
your neighbor claimed to believe that
there was a diamond buried in his
backyard that's the size of a
refrigerator can you ask him why you see
him out on his lawn digging every Sunday
with his family imagine how you would
feel about his mental faculties if he
said well this belief gives my life a
tremendous amount of meaning you know
you don't understand my family and I
really enjoy digging for this on Sundays
and it has a remarkable bonding effect
on us or what if he said I wouldn't want
to live in a universe where there wasn't
a diamond buried in my backyard
it's it's pretty clear that these
responses are inadequate I'm deeply
inadequate they're worse than that they
really are the responses of a madman or
an idiot and it's so easy to see and yet
change the subject to the existence of
God who can hear your prayers who's
looking out for you despite all of the
other devastation we see in the world
going on each day God is protecting you
and your family you change you change
the subject to that proposition and all
bets are off in fact you could not
possibly get elected to office in this
country unless you endorsed that kind of
thinking about the existence of God
another problem with the religious
moderation is that it is it's not only
intellectually bankrupt
it is theologically bankrupt it's not
like a closer look at the books delivers
religious moderation I've got news for
you I've read the books God is not a
moderate and there's nowhere you read
certainly let's just take Christianity
and Judaism for a moment you read the
Old Testament I mean that that is a the
worldview urged upon us the the kind of
society urged upon us is so needlessly
horrible that the truth is most
fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox
Jews can't take God at His Word you
think the killing never stops if you if
you were gonna draw your worldview
you're gonna draw your to-do-list out of
books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy and
Exodus you're gonna make mullah omar of
the Taliban look like Franklin Delano
Roosevelt I mean it is if your children
talk back to you you kill them you kill
homosexuals you keep your neighbors
working on the Sabbath you kill him if a
if a woman's on a virgin on her wedding
night take her to the edge of town and
stone her to death
if you come if you come into a town and
you see someone praying to a foreign god
you kill him you kill his family kill
every man woman and child in the town
you kill wizards you kill mediums you
kill fornicators and kill adulterers but
the list is long and preposterous and
there are actually some groups in this
country that want to return to that
style of life there there's this
movement it's probably not no probably
not well known to you all but the
Christian reconstructionists also known
as dominionists actually just bite the
bullet here and say yeah well that is
what God wants that law has not been
rescinded
and they're right the law is not
rescinded but many Christians are living
with this idea that Jesus somewhere in
him in his ministry fundamentally
repudiated all of Old Testament law
there are a few lines where you can get
Jesus to say something seemingly like
that but there's there's so much else in
the New Testament that ramifies Old
Testament law and these Christian
Reconstructionist by the way are are
amazingly influential that the the level
of activism we see in in the
fundamentals community now has largely
been seeded by them because they another
thing Christian Reconstructionist
believe is that Jesus is not going to
come back until after a millennium of
Christian beatific domination of the
globe so we have to fully establish a
Christian world before Jesus comes back
there in a minority believing this but
but their their energy the energy with
which they have approached that task has
been contagious and they these are not
people believe in this stuff are not
fringe characters in our society there
are people who can get Karl Rove on the
phone who want to practice the worldview
of Leviticus killing homosexuals for
instance
you're just to linger on this point of
what they what Christianity to take a
specific subset actually advocates a
it's it's not an accident that st.
Augustine and st. Thomas Aquinas that
two of the great lights of the Christian
tradition both thought heretics should
be tortured actually Augustine thought
they should be tortured and his argument
for the use of torture actually laid the
foundations for the Inquisition Aquinas
thought they should just be killed
outright these are these are the great
lights of the Christian tradition these
these guys are still taught in every
great book seminar in this country and
and it's important to point out that
this is totally reasonable given certain
rather ludicrous ideas if you but if you
think that the creator of the universe
really wrote this book it's it's insane
not to live by it and living by it gets
you by no accident the kind of life we
saw for five hundred years in medieval
Europe we were burning people alive for
heresy again we look from our perch in
the present we look back on this and we
think well this these people were just
deranged you know this is just a whole
culture plunging into psychopathology
it's really not true it is it just think
about this if your neighbor can say
something to your child that is so
spiritually wayward that it could put
your child in peril for eternity but
literally just drive your child into
eternal torment that person next door is
far more dangerous than a child molester
so really believing this stuff has
consequences and we secularists and
moderates have fundamentally lost touch
with the fact that millions and millions
of people really believe this stuff
the final problem with religious
moderation in my view is that because
most of us most moderates are content to
merely relax their hold on
all of these superstitions and taboos
that are coming to us from these
traditions because it's just because
moderation is just a hewing to these
traditions into these texts into these
dogmas but just kind of relaxing the
literalism and it's believed that that
is good enough in fact that is somehow
necessary and redeeming and we did
that's indispensable for us as a culture
it prevents us from developing rational
creative 21st century alternatives to
religion the search for better
alternatives has stopped because we're
Jews where Christians were Muslims and
all of that is terrifically important
it's important to point out that we
decide what's good in the good book but
we take our ethical intuitions to the
texts and when we read the golden rule
for instance we decide yet that is a
great distillation of our ethical
intuitions do unto others as you would
have them do unto you
okay that's a keeper okay we decide that
if this is the if the Bible is the best
book we have on moral questions you know
if you're a fundamentalist it's the best
book we have because it's literally been
inspired by the Holy Ghost or it's
literally been dictated by the creator
of the universe if you're a moderate is
the best book we have because the the
wisest people and the wisest tradition
that has ever existed has has delivered
us this text if either of those claims
are true well consider consider what
kind of morality falls out of that and
consider a moral question that has been
solved
to everyone's satisfaction consider the
question of slavery slavery was an
abomination we are all we are we are
relieved of a terrible moral burden no
longer practicing slavery Thomas
Jefferson would have been a better man
had he freed his slaves absolutely if
this is the best book we have the Bible
is the best book we have old or new
testament by the way we should be
practicing slavery the creator of the
universe clearly expects us to keep
slaves he simply tells us not to beat
them so badly that we knock out their
eyes or their teeth because then we have
to set them free but he otherwise tells
us how to keep slaves Jesus clearly
expects us to keep slaves
he never repudiates the institution of
slavery he talks about he refers to
slaves in his parables he talks about
slaves being beaten by their masters and
and never puts this into question Paul
in first Timothy admonishes slaves to
serve their masters well and to serve
their Christian masters especially well
so as to partake in their holiness if
this is the best book we have the
abolitionists were on the wrong side of
the argument and it should be no
surprise to no one that the slave
holders of the south for many long years
justified their practices by resort to
the good book
so my argument and really one of the
central conclusions of my book is that
all we have is human conversation all we
have is our own ethical intuitions
exercised in conversation with other
human beings you can either put your
faith in a 21st century conversation
with all of our intellectual resources
available to us or you can put your
faith in some other century's
conversation as enshrined in one of
these books you can put your faith in an
in an Iron Age conversation you take the
Bible or you can put your put your faith
in a seventh century conversation - if
you take the Quran the problem with
faith is that it really is a
conversation stopper it the moment you
faith is a declaration of immunity to
the powers of conversation it is a it is
a a reason why you do not have to give
reasons for what you believe this is
really a problem because when the stakes
are high we have a simple choice between
conversation and violence at the level
of societies we have a choice between
conversation and war
the faith religious faith is the only
area of discourse where immunity to
conversation is considered noble but
it's the only area of our lives where
someone can win points for saying
there's nothing that you could say that
would change my mind I mean just imagine
a medical doctor saying there's nothing
that could be said that will change my
mind that is that claim is synonymous
with saying I'm taking no state of the
world ultimately into account in
believing what I believe there's nothing
that could change about the world
- that would cause me to revise my
beliefs this is it should be clear this
is intrinsically divisive I mean the
only thing that guarantees that our
collaboration with one another is truly
open-ended is our willingness to have
our core beliefs revised through the
power of conversation now that there are
two kinds of conflict born of faith and
and it's mode as a conversation stopper
there there are a lot of people dying in
the name of faith and they're not
explicitly theological grievances being
exercised if you take something like the
violence in Northern Ireland or the the
fragmentation of the former Yugoslavia
these are these are conflicts that that
are when these societies got stressed
they broke along religious lines but
it's not like the Irish we're fighting
over the the the doctrine of the
transubstantiation but still what the
problem is their moral identities were
organized around this this adherence to
a tradition and there are they're
clearly there are other forms of
division in our world there is
nationalism there's tribalism generally
there's racism but but religious faith
is the most articulate layer of human
difference
is really it is really the level at
which you you can learn to demonize
other human beings so there's that
violence and it is it is pervasive in
our world but then there's also the
added violence that is explicitly
theological where people would not
otherwise be behaving this way at all
but for what they believe about God and
this is and jihadism and the the the
daily explosions we see or read about in
the world is the preeminent example here
so my argument really and and the the
the central argument of my book is that
to make religious war unthinkable the
way that things like slavery and
cannibalism seem poised to become to
make it unthinkable we have to undermine
the dogma of faith we have to to
repudiate this idea that beliefs can be
sanctified by something other than
evidence and argument now I've just said
many nasty things about religion this is
this is not to say that religion is
merely a shell game that it's just a
tissue of lies and self-deceptions and
cognitive errors that are designed to
inner us to the threat of death it's it
is that to some significant degree but
it is not merely that there is no doubt
that human beings have spiritual
experiences for lack of a better word I
use these words use words like spiritual
and mystical in my book and have
received much grief from atheists on
this subject but there's no doubt that
there's a wing there's an end of the
spectrum of positive human experience
that very few people explore and that
has traditionally been explored in a
religious content of context and it is
fantastically interesting it should be
of interest to us scientifically and
personally every culture has produced
people who have wandered off into the
desert for 40 days and 40 nights or
spent 20 years in a cave and come out
talking about how human experience our
moment-to-moment experience of the world
can be deliberately transformed through
introspection through meditation through
prayer through through deliberate uses
of attention the problem is that these
claims have always been made in a
religious context and are now in our
world virtually always cluttered with
religious dogma
to a greater and lesser degree the one
in the spirit of violating the taboo of
noticing are the differences among our
religions the wisdom of contemplative
life spiritual mystical wisdom is by no
means been evenly distributed throughout
the world no more so than scientific
insight has been evenly distributed the
East really does have something over the
West when when it comes time to talk
about an empirical non-dogmatic
first-person science of it an approach
to introspection that really delivers
the goods it's not that there have been
extraordinary individuals in the West
there have been the meister eckhart sand
other people who transcended the limits
of their of their doctrine but the
disparity is rather extraordinary
between eastern and western mystical
wisdom it's it's every bit into in my
view it's every bit as as extraordinary
as the difference between Western
Western medicine and Eastern medicine
and maybe there are some conditions for
which Eastern medicine is better but you
know if you have an appendicitis you
better hope you can get to a
western-style hospital and get a Western
strain surgeon to work on you
incidentally if you get do get an
appendicitis you might consider the fact
that you've been intelligently designed
the appendix is proof positive that this
is a bogus idea
so I want I've lost track of time how
are we to have a is anyone keeping the
clock okay
yeah yeah well briefly I just want to
say what I think are the the messages of
our contemplative traditions that we we
can incorporate into our 21st century
worldview that we must incorporate
really because the burden is upon us to
develop a thoroughgoing science of human
happiness and approach to human
happiness that addresses questions of
human happiness at every level
biochemically psychologically
economically politically every level and
one of one necessary level I would argue
is contemplative we have to make sense
of the fact that it's possible to go
into a cave for ten years and be
perfectly happy this is not to say that
that that's a path to happiness for
everybody then no doubt there are people
who go into caves who are completely
deranged or deranged by the experience
but it the one of the core insights of
our contemplative traditions is that
there is something about human
consciousness that can be recognized in
the present moment the very part of you
that is hearing the sound of my voice
there's something that can be recognized
about what it is to be conscious in this
moment that transcends the vagaries of
pleasant and unpleasant experience but
there's a kind of mystical well-being
that we can discover it's interesting to
note that you know solitary going into a
cave solitary confinement is considered
a a punishment even inside a prison for
most people this is what it's like to be
the prisoner of one's thoughts and we in
the West we have a really impoverished
conception of sanity we we think all day
long from the from the moment we were
chased out of bed by our thoughts in the
morning we think think think think think
all day long and very few of us and
certainly very few exemplars in in the
Western tradition have have talked
intelligently about
possibility of not being lost in thought
what would a human mind be like that was
not continuously colored by this this
discursivity and in in the east and in
Buddhism especially they have spent
millennia on this and delivered some
very compelling insights and just to let
this seem like a crazy eruption of
speculative philosophy I just want to
try to tie this down for a second
because there it's I want to make sense
up to you of the claim that it's
possible to there's something to be
glimpsed about the nature of your
consciousness right now that is not
obvious to you and yet is right on the
surface and by analogy I want you to
reflect on the existence of the of the
blind spot the optic blind spot we all
know we have a blind spot in both visual
fields it's it's it results from the
transit of the optic nerve through the
retina of each eye we've all I'm sure
all of you have had it pointed out to
you you draw a spot on a piece of paper
and you move that piece of paper until
the spot disappears and that proves
there is something there's an area in
your visual field that you're not
getting information from though your
visual field seems seamless to you now
most people in this world probably don't
know about the blind spot and most of us
who know about it go for decades without
thinking about it we certainly don't
notice it but it is there to be noticed
to be if you look out across this room
somebody is probably missing a head
it's there to be seen and it takes some
doing to see it there is an analogous
fact about the nature of human
consciousness and and the and the fact
is this consciousness does not feel like
a self it does not feel like what we
take ourselves to be moment to moment
most of our lives that the sense that we
are the thinker of our thoughts the the
experience of our the experiencer of our
experience and most of us feel like we
don't feel identical to our sphere of
experience we feel like we are having an
experience we feel like we're riding
around in our head somewhere behind our
eyes not identical to our body not
identical to the contents of
consciousness this is a kind of
cognitive error that really can be seen
through and it takes some doing it takes
some study it takes some meditation to
you it can take a lot of work but it
holds immense implications for us as a
species and it holds immense
implications for our conception of human
happiness and what is norm normative
human behavior and and finally science
is starting to to turn its attention on
this and now I'm sure many of you know
that that there's a very fruitful
dialogue happening between
neuroscientists and and contemplatives
mostly Buddhist contemplatives but
contemplatively and what it links up to
in neuroscience is this idea that that
our brains really are plastic that we
that there they are there's a
neuroplasticity there that allows the
brain to change itself based on how it
is used the brain is really an
instrument that changes based on how it
is played and positive mental states are
our skills essentially just as you can
learn to play the piano you can learn to
feel differently about other human
beings you can learn to feel compassion
where you otherwise wouldn't and this
this dialogue is just beginning but it's
it's something that it's a dialogue we
need to have completely
trained by religious dogmatism so to
wrap up I just want one way of
summarizing what I've said is that
everyone really is a scientist in that
everyone is making claims about the way
the world is and everyone is a mystic in
the sense that everyone is seeking
happiness in a context that is in some
basic sense hostile to the terms of our
search we are seeking happiness seeking
durable happiness in the context of an
ever-changing experience so what I'm
asking you to imagine is what would it
be like to have a culture where we we
came to terms with this fact where we
came to terms with the reality of death
did this astonishing fact that all of us
are gonna die this is this astonishing
fact that living long enough all of us
will witness the death of everyone we
love maybe if it is possible to find
true well-being in the midst of this
circumstance we should be desperate to
find it and we should be desperate to
use all of our tools all of our 21st
century tools and and articulate these
truths in terms that are not divisive in
terms that are that do not demand belief
in the preposterous so my argument
really is that the endgame for
civilization as we're talking about
long-term thinking the endgame is not
political correctness it is not the mere
toleration of
patent absurdity it really is reason and
reasonableness and an openness to
conversation thank you very much I'll
talk about end times and the question
thank you so the end times
this is seminar sponsored to encourage
long term thinking but it seems as if at
least in the fundamentalist variety of
religion there's a lot of emphasis on
the end times meaning that we're about
to have the end times
we'd have no future can you say anything
about what you've learned about this
idea of the end times yeah yeah well
there's as I said at the beginning
something like forty five forty four
percent of us subscribe to this basic
view that the end is very near it's
somewhere in the next 50 years and it
should be clear that this has
geopolitical consequences this has an
amazing number of people are narrowly
focused on literally one building in the
Middle East and we have the the al-aqsa
mosque built upon the site of the the
old temple and many fundamentalist
Christians and Orthodox Jews Orthodox
Jews think the Messiah will not come
until that mosque is raised and the
temples rebuilt fundamentalist
Christians think Jesus won't come back
until that mosque is raised and the
temple is rebuilt and Muslims the world
over take a an exquisite interest in the
integrity of that mosque is considered
the third holiest site in the Muslim
world it really is not an exaggeration
to say that that if anything happens to
that building the wheels come off I mean
this is it it really could be there's
there's a there's a piece of
architecture that could precipitate
World War three it is considered so
sacred and the Muslims incidentally have
the same kind of eschatology there's
slight differences incidentally Jesus is
going to come back and preach Islam but
this this idea that
the world is gonna end and it is gonna
end in your generation very likely and
that is ending somehow is a good thing
because it is the necessary precursor to
the best thing that that's a very scary
belief and it is it is not a fringe
belief
perhaps you you guys remember this but
Reagan brought Hal Lindsey a religious
lunatic of the first order and Jerry
Falwell a lunatic of the second order
perhaps it in to brief the the Pentagon
on the the implications of Biblical
prophecy for our strategic situation
visa V the Soviet Union okay this is
this is not the and and the current
administration well I you know I'm not a
fan of of the president's I don't think
he we who knows what he believes but he
doesn't strike me as a Pat Robertson
character the fact that Pat Robertson
could even aspire to to launch a
presidential campaign should terrify us
and the fact that people like him and
and Dobson more relevantly at the moment
have the ear of those in power and can
exact concessions from those in power
and we have people like Tom DeLay who
say that they came to into the business
of government to to forward a biblical
worldview these these beliefs are
operative and they are fundamentally
hostile to our creating a durable future
for ourselves now it's true we had a
speaker maybe three speakers ago who
came from a scientific point of view and
it was offering a different kind of
endtime so what do you think of the
faith that a coming technological
singularity will be a buck elliptic
event in the next fifty years you must
be speaking about Ray Kurzweil yes I
have not read his book so I can't really
comment on
that thesis the idea that our
exponential advances in technology could
transform human society in a way that is
presently unthinkable it seems to me
there are good reasons to believe that
and it's what the timeframe in is and
what what transformations are likely
that's that's certainly a subject for
for reasonable debate the issue though
is that there there are many scientific
ideas that are fantastically strange far
even stranger than the idea that
somebody was born of a virgin or is
coming back or that there's a there's a
mission being who can hear your prayers
I mean that those are strange ideas but
you know Martin Rees the the the Royal
astronomer recently wrote that because
this this in this thesis in physics of
inflation this idea that we hit there
could be myriad bubble universes and all
functioning by different laws and that
basically everything that could be tried
has been tried this gets this bequeaths
the notion that you should expect that
there are with this many universes that
there are going to be many many
civilizations far more advanced than our
own and that these super intelligent
beings will have invented computation
and that their computation will be so
powerful that that they'll be able to
simulate whole universes in their
computers and almost by definition these
new these simulated universes will
outnumber real universes and therefore
we should expect to find ourselves in a
simulation rather than in a real
universe now this is a very weird idea
and maybe it's it suggests one thing
that it suggested me is that physics has
now become so rarefied that it's almost
impossible to know when a physicist is
joking
but the important thing to point out is
that there is a difference between
having reasons to believe this and
having no reasons and to end and one
thing we we maintain in scientific
discourse no matter how weird it gets at
the peripheries is an intellectual
honesty where we when we're certain
about something we claim we're certain
when we're not certain we don't claim or
certain and and and the pressure to vet
ideas and to jettison Dogma wherever you
can find it is exquisite in science and
it is non-existent in Orthodox religion
by the way that question was from Mark L
we kind of like to use names here this
is a question from amber if you want to
raise your hand you can from all the
feedback you've received on your book or
in person at a talk like this one what
comment or question has shifted your
perspective the most from what you
originally wrote or said that's that's
interesting question I don't know if
there's one comment one thing that I did
just before the book was published is I
created a website and the the difference
between having done that and not doing
it it was so extraordinary because I've
just had thousands of emails and but for
the website I would have no idea who was
reading the book and what their their
response was and the emails have just
come from the most the craziest range of
people I mean there there are the
ministers in the South still practicing
as ministers but have completely lost
their faith and just can't figure out
what other job they're qualified for
they've written me then they're there
are people who me one thing that's
interesting and this is I didn't have to
write my book to discover this you spend
long enough in academia you discover
this in fact you discover this nowhere
so readily is in a philosophy seminar
people
very rarely change their minds maybe
there you can I can count on one hand
the number of times I've seen someone
undergo a full change of perspective
just fully blown in real time oh my god
I didn't see it that way i repudiate
everything I was talking about a moment
ago no those are like supernova
explosions in the universe rarely happen
and and bearing witness to them and just
seeing how intractable our attachment is
to religious mythology even by by very
smart people I mean I get the same
objections over and over again it's it's
it's really the whole notion of a meme
is very compelling when you see the same
language and the same why why is not
coming to you from very disparate
sources coming reflexively and yeah I
mean that's I don't know if that's
adequate answer that question so have
you changed your mind about anything oh
good question
well I'm open-minded and the one thing
that's come to me that is a doubt that
is creeping in to my discourse on this
subject is I don't know what the
normative response would be to our
situation I'm advocating something I'm
advocating what I've come to call a
conversational intolerance where we
apply the same standards of
reasonableness on on questions about God
and ethics and the afterlife that we
apply on every other subject but I
clearly would not want the President of
the United States to speak the way I
just spoke you know that would be that
would be so inflammatory I'm just just
take the Muslim world as let's say we
completely put our house in order
domestically and the 260 million
Americans who claim to be certain that
they are in they have a relationship
with God change their minds and thought
just the way I thought then we still
have an immense problem how do we speak
reasonably in the face of the religious
polarities in our world and I'm starting
to feel that I might I simply die simply
don't know and I don't know how steep
the the honesty curve should should be
and I and I'm the first to admit that I
am not the face of diplomacy on this
subject and so that I mean that has been
brought home to me it's been hammered
into me over these many months here's a
question from Wayne Welch again if you
want to identify what accounts for the
resurgence of religious literalism
fundamentalism in the US since the era
the Scopes Monkey Trial say since 1920s
yeah it's well there's certainly the
perception that there's a resurgence and
I think there is a there is a political
empowerment even under the current
administration that is appears to be new
I can't untangle just how much
I'm just paying attention to it more and
how much it's always been there but the
as far as what people believe that has
been remarkably stable ever since scopes
the Gallup polling goes back about 70 or
80 years and on questions like do you
think Satan literally exists do you
think Jesus was literally born of a
virgin many many questions the the the
percentages just tick you know within
the margin of error through the decades
it's not like we have suddenly produced
many fundamentalists who weren't there
70 years ago this is a question from I
can't read the writing as maybe Anoa
whatever else can be said about religion
it does provide an emotional component
happiness and hope science does not have
as much emotional impact because we
dismissed emotions as irrational what
can we do to focus a discussion on the
emotional benefits of science instead of
the irrational drawbacks of religion
yeah that's a good question
well the first thing to point out is
that science has just fundamentally not
addressed questions of human happiness
for most of its career now there is a a
conception of positive psychology now
people are asking questions about human
happiness and normative states in
neuroscience and in psychology they're
people doing neuroimaging work on
compassion for instance but this is a
really recent development and therefore
religion has seemed to be the only game
in town all these years even with even
with the steady encroach of a scientific
worldview that that has beaten back
religious ignorance on every other
subject there was a time where you could
you know you have epilepsy really but
nobody knows what epilepsy is so you're
the diagnosis is demonic possession
right well now that's not such a common
diagnosis and we understand that when
when people are having seizures there's
another reason for it there has to be an
analogous breakthrough on questions of
happiness and on questions of spiritual
it's
and it's just you know it's in it's in
the offing because the effort simply has
not been made another another thing I'd
like to to say in address to that
question is that this idea that somehow
our religious affiliations our religious
beliefs are doing a lot of work for us
they're really consoling and they're
underwriting morality in some way this
this is a this is largely disproved by
just a character of belief in Western
Europe I mean Western Europe is there's
almost no resemblance to the United
States in terms of the level of
religious adherence and if you look at
the the the UN indices of societies
health you look at at per capita income
literacy homicide rates rates of other
violent crime every index of a society's
health the most atheist atheistic
societies in the world are the best off
I mean societies like Iceland and Sweden
and Australia and Denmark and the
Netherlands I mean these are these are
in Sweden something like eighty percent
of people claim to be atheists you know
here eighty-three percent claim to
believe that Jesus literally rose from
the dead so the idea that somehow this
belief system is giving us is paying
such great dividends in terms of our
treating one another well in this
society that that is that remains to be
proven that said it is true that if you
really believe that death is only a
parent and you're going to be reunited
with everyone you love after you die
really believing that has consequences
and it takes the sting out of death I
mean it has to if you think that you
just have to wait a few years until you
die and then you're going to see your
kid again and everyone else who you who
you otherwise would be terribly agree
to lose in this life one real problem
with that is that we on the geopolitical
level we want the sting very much in
death I mean we are now confronting
people who have taken the sting out of
death and we have destructive technology
proliferating we have to anticipate a
time where we may have the functional
the psychological equivalent of the
nineteen hijackers as a regime with
long-range nuclear weapons and that is
in that situation you don't want the
sting out of death you want that you
want deterrence you want people who are
afraid to die or otherwise don't are not
eager to die and so anyway so this could
be a long conversation about what
positive virtues perhaps come out of
religious thinking and what the
alternatives are clearly we want
rational alternatives this is a question
from Dorian you can identify yourself if
you want to the news maybe it's a San
Francisco question the New Age scene
especially the psychedelic angle
consisted of people very interested in
technology and science and spirituality
what do you think about this fusion of
spirituality and science and tech well
one way into this is that at the level
of the brain which we're talking about
the fact that our nervous system is
perturb a ball its perturb a ball based
on how we consciously use our attention
its perturb Obul based on ingesting
various compounds that that either act
like neurotransmitters or modulate our
own neurotransmitters and
neuromodulators but this is this is a as
an organism we can intervene in our
experience and and and certain
interventions are normative and really
interesting and worth pursuing
and others carry serious liabilities I
mean one problem but speak specifically
about drugs for instance we have one
word we have this word drug to name this
range of compounds that some of which
bear absolutely no resemblance and their
effects to others the word drug is a
word like religion you know there's a
very different religions and there are
very different drugs and you know like
I'm sure many people in this room I've
had psychedelic experiences that have
been extraordinarily useful and there's
also something about psychedelics in
their current state which which seems
rather imprecise and haphazard and you
know I happen to think that meditation
and meditation retreats you know very
deliberate weeks and months spent
practically practice various techniques
of meditation is a much more systematic
and mulai abilities and and some of the
same state certainly can be experienced
that way okay I have two questions
remaining here here's one of them from
Pat you describe some of the emotional
experiences of being an elf's book and
promoter of reason well it's a new it's
my career as a heretic essentially just
started so it's I guess by the in large
part it's been it's been amazingly
gratifying I mean the the the reception
despite how in politic my message is
that the reception has largely been a
totally positive and supportive and I do
get the occasional scary email and and
many people who are praying for me
but it's it's really you know it's it's
very gratifying it's it's a it feels
necessary and it's not it's not really
there's something effortless about it
because I just feel compelled to do it
at this point it's not it's not like I I
feel like I'm continually making choices
to open my big mouth somebody like
Stewart invites me and it's it's it just
feels like an essential thing to be
doing so it's there's there's not too
much friction in me at this point and
I've had a lot of to overcome in order
to be able to do it but it's it's
gratifying to just feel like I'm doing
something that is necessary to do at
this point so
so the last question is host prerogative
so it's a question for me I believe in
God and the more I think about my belief
this strange idea the more I use my
reason the more I believe in God and
actually I would like not to believe
because it was actually easier as an
atheist when I was in a sea it was
actually easier took less work and now
that I had do have a belief it takes
more reason on my part so can you help
me not believe what would you what which
is one of those surprising questions
that you have me do well I would want to
know what you meant by God I mean
precisely you'd have to unpack that
belief for me because the again there's
a range we've got there's one word God
and when you dig into the details with
people you get very there are people who
just just want to assert that there's
something bigger than ourselves you know
that there's that there and that it has
a kind of moral component to it that
there's there is love in the universe or
that it matters that that we treat one
another well and those aren't and those
are and and and they wrap that all of
that up in the term God and it has
nothing to do with a God who could
possibly hate homosexuals for instance
so I would need to know I mean if you
actually want to have this conversation
I'm happy to but I wouldn't I would need
to know many other things about what you
actually believe so so it's not about
belief in God per se but more about
religions what was that it's less about
a belief in God and more about the
dangers of a faith in or in every
religion you mean my argument yes well
it's it's about the dangers of dogma
essentially it's it's the danger the
danger of pretending to be certain about
things that you're not certain about
it's the danger of this double standard
we're in every other area of our lives
we maintain an intellectual honesty and
we and we demand that others do likewise
and yet on this subject we just rewrite
the rules and I think that we can have
we certainly can have ethical and moral
experience we can have strong
communities and we can even have the
most esoteric mystical experience
without ever asserting anything on
insufficient evidence
