Thurman Dennett

5/28/2018 Thurman Dennett

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Transcription by Rob Hogendoorn

Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Daniel C. Dennett in conversation with Robert Thurman

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2006

Miller Theatre, New York

For a growing number of people, there is nothing more important than

religion. Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, professor and director of theCenter for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University and prize-winning

author of the influential Darwin's Dangerous Ideaand other books,takes a hard look at this phenomenon and, drawing on his sure-to-be

controversial new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a NaturalPhenomenon, asks why. In conversation with Robert Thurman, JeyTsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia

University and author of Infinite Life: 7 Virtues for Living Well,Professor Dennett explores the evolution of organized religion and whyit is such a potent force today. Dennett contends that "belief in belief"has fogged any attempt to rationally consider the existence of God and

the relationship between divinity and human need. Yet Dennett is notanti-religion. The gulf between rationalists and adherents of

"intelligent design" is widening daily, and Dennett's provocative goal is

to reach believers and non-believers alike.

Dennett

0:00:00

Well, I'm going to tell you a bit about the book and then Bob and I are going

to have a discussion. I wrote the book because I looked around and thought

about religion. I don't know what is happening in this century, and I wonder

what the outcome will be. What does the future of religion look like in this

century? I just want to share some different scenarios and you tell me which

one *you* think it might be, because I don't know. One possibility is that the

Enlightenment is over many people say so and that religion is just going

to sweep the planet. Who knows which religions it is going to be? Is it going


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to be Islam, or Christianity, or Buddhism. Will one religion simply go to

fixation across the planet? That's one scenario. I think a rather unlikely one,

but it is one to be reckoned with. Then there are those who think that, no,

religion is actually in its deathrows. They say that the current problems we seeare just a late manifestation, and that perhaps even within the lifetimes of our

children the Vatican will become the European museum of Roman

Catholicism, and the Mekka will become Disney's Magic Kingdom of Allah.

Before you dismiss this out of hand you should bear in mind that the ... Sofia

in Istanbull started off as a church, then was a mosque and now it is a

museum. Strange things can happen. Another possibility is that religions

transform themselves into a sort of creedless, moral thebes????: Lots of

pageantry, different colours, different songs, but no real creed. That might be

the sort of thing we can expect in the future. Another possibility is that

religion diminishes in prestige and visibility rather like smoking: "If you gotta

smoke, go ahead and smoke, but don't impose it on others. Find a place

where you can do it without interfering with the rights of others. That's

another possibility - although it seems rather unlikely to me. Yet another

possibility is that Judgment Day arrives. There is a lot of people who think

that that is true. The main point I want to make about this is that all but one

of these at most is wildly wrong, and we don't know which one it is. Which

one is right nobody knows. I don't know, and you don't know. It seems to me

rather important in this 21st Century that we try to get a little better grip on

what religions *are*, so that we get a little bit of sense of what might become

of them in this century.

Dennett

0:04:50

This is my main message: We need to study religionthe way we study global

warming; global economy; global energy resources. It's a very important set of

phenomena. We need to study it with the full panoply of scientific

investigation as a natural phenomenon, which I submit it manifestly is. It may


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also be a supernatural phenomenon. The only way we could ever prove that,

is by studying it as a natural phenomenon and then discovering that there

were parts that we could't make sense of. That after all, that how the Catholic

Church tries to prove a miracle. You start with the feasible assumption ofnaturalism. Our minds, our brains are shaped by language and the rest of

culture, and this can be studied scientifically. Sometimes it helps to make the

familiar strange. So, imagine you are a Martian biologist and that you've come

to this planet and look around. What would you see, and what would

fascinate you? Here's one thing. Who knows what this is? Does anybody know

what this is? I'll tell you what it is. This would certainly fascinate Martian

biologists as they approach the planet. This picture was taken from a satellite.

It is the Kumela ???? gathering of about a million people on the banks of the

river Ganges in 2001. Wow, what a phenomenon! Here's another one that

you'll recognize and yet another. What would fascinate Martian biologists is:

So much energy; so much time and effort; so much human endaevour put

into these amazing ceremonies. What are they for? How did this get started?

How did it originate? Not just how did it originate what is it for *now*?

How does it perpetuate itself? These are important questions. Here's another

thing that might fascinate a Martian biologist, it might fascinate you. You walk

out into a meadow and you see an ant that is climbing up a blade of grass. It

climbs and climbs and it climbs to the top of the blade of grass until it falls.

And it climbs again, spending a lot of energy. What is it doing? What is the

*point* of this? Is it hunting for food? Is it lost? Is it showing off for a mate?

Tremendous effort on the part of this ant. What good accrues to the ant from

all this effort? The answer is: no good at all. None at all, as far as we can tell.

Well then, why is the ant doing it? Is it just a fluke? Yeah, it is. It is just a

fluke. It is a lancet fluke: Dicros ???? dendric??? It is small brainworm, that has

climbed into the ants brain and is driving the ant like an all-terrain vehicle up

to the end of that blade of grass because it needs to get into the belly of a

cow or a sheep to continue its life-cycle. It's sort of like karma, Bob. You

know, reincarnation.


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Dennett

0:08:11

Here's another case. Toxoplasma Gandia is a parasite that lives in mice, forinstance. It has to get into the belly of a cat, to continue its life-cycle. Well, if

you were a parasite in a mouse and you wanted to get into the belly of a cat,

what would you do? You make the mouse extra fearless! It runs out boldly

into the open where it is more likely to be eaten by a cat. There are actually

many examples of host manipulation by parasites; a very interesting part of

biology. So, these are cases where you have a high-jacker that affects the

braind and induces even suicidal behaviour on behalf of a cause other than

one' own genetic fitness. Gosh, that's pretty scary! Does anything like that

ever happen with us? Well, yes. Let me remind you that the Arabic word

"islam" means submission surrender of self-interest to the will of Allah. But

it is not just Islam; Christianity too. This is a photograph of piece of

parchment music manuscript that I have. I found it in a Paris bookstall, fifteen

years ago. It says "?????" It is interesting, by the way, the spelling of "Christus"

has a "Ki-ro" and then an "r". The sribe has made a mistake. He has mixed

Latin and Greek, and added a redundant "r". What that is, is the word of

"God" is the seed, and the sower of the seed is Christ. In other words, these

are ideas to die for. And there's quite a few ideas to die for. Islam is just one.

There is Christianity; Catholicism; many different Christian ideals too. Think of

all the people in the last century who gave their lives, and gave a lot of other

lives, to further the cause of Communism. Democracy is yet another; Justice,

Truth, Freedom. I live in Massachusets. Just to the North of me this is what

the licence plates say: "Live free or die." It's interesting that the moose can't

have that thought. No, we're the only species that does this. Now, a lot of

people have been telling me: "Dan, you shouldn't start off with this scary and

objectionable example of the brainworm. It's so offensive." I beg to differ. If

you think that it is offensive, you haven't thought about it carefully enough.

One of the things that people *glory* in is the fact that they are the willing


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servants of the ideas that have engulfed them; that are more important to

them than their children, their grandchildren their *life*! They are *proud* of

the fact that they are devoting their lives to an idea. It's not like buying a car.

It's not like that at all. Do we have a lot of grandparenst here tonight? Howmany of you think that maximizing your progeny and grandprogeny is the

most important thing in your life? Hands please. Hardly anybody. I mean:

Yeah, grandchildren are really great. I've got one. Wonderful, but it's not the

most important thing in life for anybody. We're the only species that has that

perspective. We have that perspective because of human culture, which has

enabled ideas to spread from mind to mind and so to captivate us, so to

enthrall us that we're prepared to devote our lives to them. That's the way

people usually put it, and I want to point out that *biologists* can make sense

of that too. They can make sense of ideas that captivate human beings, and

that's the first step to understanding what the biological perspective on

religion might be.

Dennett

0:12:44

Human culture is itself one of the fruits on the Tree of Life. I am going to go

very quickly through this. This is the Tree of Life, as seen from above. The

artist who has done this, has put three species right there out of the end of

the eukaryotic branch. It's sort of fun to see who they are: Comprinus, Home

and Sea????, What's that? Homo, that's us, of course. Those are two or our

close relatives: mushrooms and corn. Compared with the rest of the Tree of

Life, we're cousins. The Tree of Life includes among its fruits not just beaver

dam, but Hoover Dam; not just spider webs, but the Internet and Power

Webs; not just birds' nests but poems: Ode to a Nightingale. These are all

artifacts made by living, evolved creatures. And there's a biological

perspective it's not the only perspective, but it is a perspective that you can

take. Even human culture gets underway without any insightful design to

prime the pump. Ideas, not worms, high-jack our brains. Maybe some worms


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too, but it's the ideas that I want to talk about. These are ideas that persuade

us to make many copies of them. The theologian Hugh Piper says that the

Bible is the "fittest" of texts, because it has made so many copies. Interesting.

A word for ideas that replicate is "memes," coined by Richard Dawkins thirtyyears ago in his book "The Selfish Gene." He points out that they are

analogous to genes. They are informational items that replicate. At first they

might seem hugely different. Let's take a simple gene. A virus is not alive, but

it is, basically, a naked gene. More picturesquely, it is a string of nucleotic acid

with attitude. That is to say, it is simply happens to be designed in such a way

that if it gets inside a cell it commandeers the cells copy machinery and

makes more copies of itself. So it goes. It's not smart. It doesn't have a mind.

But it does that. Ideas can do the same thing.

Dennett

0:15:19

I am going to push ahead very swiftly here, because I want to give Bob plenty

of chance to get into the discussion here. In my book, I do not offer a theory

and claim that it is right. I sketch a theory and say: "If this theory is wrong,

and it probably is in many details, replace it with a better theory." I want

people to see what a good scientific theory of religion would look like. What

the resources are that are available to a scientific understanding of religion.

What sort of progress we can make. I don't have the answers, I have

questions. The basic idea, which I developed in a slightly different context,

now has the name HADV, "hyper-active agent detection device," which is just

one of its names. Maybe you witnessed this today. You got a dog dozing by

the fireplace and some snow falls of the eves and lands with a thud outside

the window. And your dog is up, growling, looking around, "Who's there,

who's there?" That's the dogs hyper-active agent detection device. Whenever

there's something surprising or unsettling or confusing or mysterious that

happens, we have an *instinct* yes, an instinct to ask "Who's that, who's

that?" Because it just *might* be an agent. It might be something that has


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beliefs and desires, and it might want *you.* This proclivity in us, with our

language, generates lots of phantoms, ghosts, goblins, things that go

bumping in the night and that might be a talking tree or a god or a

lepricon???? or who knows what. These gradually sort themselves out. Wehave a population of these, that grows, gets passed around. The best ones,

the unforgettable ones, spread. The ones who make it through the

competition for rehearsal space in individual brains are the ones that are

really unforgettable and vivid in various ways. What are these winners for?

They are not for *anything*, necessarily. They are just byproducts of the brains

that we're designed to have. But then, once they're on the scene, they can be

harnassed for all kinds of purposes. What they're for initially is just occupying

the minds they find themselves in.

Dennett

0:17:52

Here's a riddle: What do folk religions have in common with squirrels, rats,

pigeons and barn swallows? The answer is that those are all *wild* species.

They're not domesticated, but they've evolved to live in close harmony with

human beings. They're very cleverly designed by evolution to live in human

company, in close proximity with people. But they're not domesticated and we

don't have to take care of them. They do quite well on their own. The same

thing is true of, say, spoken languages and folk music. This all changes when

things become domesticated. How clever it was of sheep to acquire

shepherds! Very smart move. What they did was to outsource all their

problems: protection from predators; food finding; health maintenance and

all for the cost of a slight loss of free mating. Was that a smart move for

sheep? Well, I don't know. There's hundred of millions of sheep in the world

today the descendants of their nearest wild relatives you could carry off in a

couple of arks, maybe. A huge fitness boost to them. And, of course, their

brains are smaller as a result. Use it or lose it. But, of course, it wasn't the

sheeps cleverness, it was the cleverness of evolution. Sheep are really pretty


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stupid. You have to remember Orville's Second Rule: Evolution is cleverer than

you are. This is *not* intelligent design; it's just that the process of natural

selection discovers again and again and again these brilliant designs. The

same thing has happened with human culture. Religions are magnificentlydesigned artifacts. Most of that design is not the deliberate, intentional design

of any human being. It is the result of the same process going on in culture

that also goes on in the land of genes. When agriculture arrived and animals

became domesticated, so the wild memes of folk religion became

domesticated too. They acquired stewards, who were prepared to devote their

lives to their flourishing, and this changed everything for the same reason

that it changed everything when animal became domesticated. Now, we can

start looking at the use of domesticated God-memes.

Dennett

0:20:35

What are they good for? In the book I go into this in some detail, and I am

going to just allude to a couple of points. They are fantastic decision-helpers.

When you're really puzzled, don't know what to do My Gosh, what shall I

do? ask God and God will tell you. If you squinch just right, you may get a

little help from the priests. This can be a wonderful benefit, even if what God

tells you is as good as a coin flip. Because it may give you the resolution and

the confidence to carry out one plan or another it may just get you off the

dime. Another possibility is that they are placebo effect props. ... I am going

to move on because I want to let Bob talk ... I am not going to talk about the

surrogate police... I am just going to skip ahead... I do want to talk about one

feature of organized religion which I spent a lot of time on in the book, and

that's what I call "belief in belief." Many people believe in God, many people

believe in belief in God. In fact, *more* people believe in belief in God than

believe in God. Because people that believe in God also believe in belief in

God. They think it is a good thing; they wish more people did. But there's also

the people who do not believe in God, who have lost their faith, who still


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believe in belief in God. There's many more of them than there are of the

people who believe in God. This is no accident. It's very hard to figure out,

though, how many more, because organized religions have been designed to

lower a veil over these questions so that you really can't tell. There's almostnothing you can do to demonstrate you belief in God that doesn't also just

demonstrate your belief in belief in God. You pray, you give money to your

church, you *say* you believe in God that's just what you would do if you

believed in belief in God, of course. You can't tell.

Dennett

0:24:36

Another feature, and this is the one that I think bothers me the most I took

this picture on my way up to Maine a few weeks ago: "Good without God

become Zero." Organized religions have established the presumption that

without religion you can't be moral. This is, I think, the greatest con-job that

religions have accomplished. Particularly in this country. Not in Europe. You

can be an atheist and be elected to public office in European countries. Not

in this country. This is an extremely clever design feature of religion because

people *want* to be good. They really do. They want to be good, and they

figure that the only way can really be good is if they're religious. Interesting. I

will give one more little example: I don't know what this sentence means. If

anybody in the room does, please don't say a word. But I believe it's true. I

would bet a large sum of money that it is true, because I asked a trusted

Turkish colleague to give me a true sentence of Turkish and not tell me what

it meant. If anyone wants to bet a thousand bucks with me right now, I bet

that it is a true sentence. I have no idea what it means. OK? How many of you

believe this: E=MC2? How many of you know *really* what it means? Sort of,

but you know it's true. I believe both of these. I have a pretty good idea what

E=MC2 means, I have no idea at all what the Turkish sentence means. I don't

understand it, and I semi-understand E=MC2. With religious formula even the

experts claim not to understand. Why do we put up with this? Because of


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belief in belief.

Dennett

0:25:04

One more question: How many of you believe in ampulex compressa??????

You don't what it is whether to believe it or not. I happen to know what it is

and I believe in it, but I just wanted to point out that if you don't know what

something is you are hardly in a position to believe in it. Religions are

powerful forces in peoples lives. Religions are brilliantly designed. When we

understand their design, we can see better what they might do or should do

to revise their design and to improve them. On that note, thank you for your

attention. It's time for Bob to take over.

Thurman

0:25:39

It was a shock earlier just now, when I discovered that Dan and I were almost

classmates in the same high-school, some years ago and in the future maybe.

Your last remark made me think about a joke that you migh not have heard.

It's a theolgian's joke, actually, that you hear in a place like the American

Academy of Religion. It's a joke where you hear about a preacher that says to

the congregation: "Can anyone tell me what faith is?" Everyone looks quiet,

and then little Johnny, who is in the front row, puts his hand up. So, the

preacher says: "Now, look at that, little Johnny is the one who is going to tell

us what faith is. Do you really know what faith is, little Johnny?" He says: "I

do, preacher! I do!" "So," says the preacher, "tell us what faith is." "Faith,"

Johnny says, "is believing in what you know ain't true."

Dennett

0:26:47

I've heard the punch line, but I've not yet heard the joke.


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Thurman

0:26:48

So, that's what you're after here. I enjoyed it; it's very cheerful and dynamic,

as your books always are. But, maybe you will be bored unless I ask you a fewquestions? What do you think?

Dennett

0:27:03

Sure, ask away.

Thurman

0:27:13

First, I want to praise you in a self-interested way, because this ????? for the

scientific study of religion as a realy crucial, high-priority thing, in this day and

age when religions are threatening the fifth scenario. Some of them because

they think that that should happen, and that they should help God make the

Apocalypse happen the Rapture people which are very much in this country.

Other religions also have their versions of this final things; the return of the

Madi?????; even Buddhists have one, with some of them holding the

Shambala thing. But that's luckily in the 25th century, so we don't have to

worry about it right now.

Dennett

0:27:52

Maybe we should start worrying now.

Thurman

0:27:56

Well, you should worry because your reincarnation will be there, no doubt.

But we'll get to that later. I plan to be like on Mars, maybe. But I totally

agree with you, and at our religious studies department here at Columbia


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it's called Religion and ??? rather than Religious Studies for historical reasons,

but it is a religious studies department we intend to found something called

the Center for the Critical Study of the World Religions. We feel that there's

no academic center for the study of world religions that isn't a missionarysetting, where the religions sit back and say "Well, you're nice too" and

"We're nice," discovering that you can believe the weird things that other

people believe and still be human. I used to have a problem while I was at

Harvard with that, because having been born as a Presbetyrian by familiy,

although it was not a religious family, the apostacy of becoming sort of a

'lazy' Buddhist was not a good idea from the point of view of the Divinity

School there. Anyway, we think there should be a new kind of such center

where moderates in religious traditions, and even liberals and radicals, should

be nurtured as they are not in their own religious institutions to become

more critical of the more fanatical interpretations of the scriptures. So, part of

your text is a creed and a real support for our idea. We welcome you as a

Charter member, and if we ever get funded you will get a fellowship and be

there for a year. If you want to wind up being in New York, of course,

because you might rather want to be on your farm in Maine. That I really

wanted to recommend and praise. But, with that comes a question. It seems

to me as if you feel that there hasn't been a scientific study or theory of

religion up until now. You mention Clifford Geertz, the anthropologist, and

there are sociological theories that are related as well as anthropological

ones. Why is the evolutionary biological account of the development and the

nature of religion the only one that counts as scientific in your view?

Dennett

0:30:10

It's not the only one. But, you've said it yourself, the scholarly study of

religion up till now has not been conducted very often with the proper

attention to method, controls and getting things confirmed carefully. I think

the situation now is rather like the situation that Darwin found when he wrote


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"The Origin of Species." There were thousands of really wonderful scholars,

natural historians, that were experts on plants and animals and fish, you name

it. They had a mountain of excellent lore that was well gathered, and Darwin

was the first to figure out a theory to put it all together. Now, fortunately,they were not themselves ardent Darwinians, because then one would have

had to worry about bias in their data gathering. He harnassed their labours

very well. Now is the time, I think, for theoretical harnassing of the work of

these earlier generations of scholars.

Thurman

0:31:23

That's good, but you are a philosopher. I don't know what the religion

department at Tuft has been doing, but I think religion scholars in general will

take some humbrage ????? at being told that they weren't doing proper

controls, or checking for bias, trying to be objective, exploring things, being

critical. They are doing that. I wasn't saying that they're not doing that,

although there are apologetic scholars as well.

Dennett

0:32:00

Absolutely.

Thurman

0:32:00

But, mostly they're critical and they study religion as a natural phenomenon

though not necessarily through the lens of evolutionary biology. What I was

saying is not that there aren't such scholars, but that they're in an ivory tower.

They're not applying that necessarily in the world. They don't have access.

And in the World Religions Centers that *do* exist in a couple of places, the

religion departments are programs controlled by the Divinity Schools of those

institutions, so that they don't have that critical exchange. That's also where


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the more radical people. Let me give an example. There's an Islamic scholar

I won't mention his name who recently was here and gave some lectures

invited by an institution here. He was almost hired in a couple of

neighbouring universities. He's a very well established theologian. He'soriginally from Sout Africa; he studied in Pakistan at madrasses and in Saudi

Arabia. But, he's very radical. He believes that the veiling of women is not in

the Quran; that Mekka should be open to any serious pilgrim, even when he

or she is not a muslim; he is really radical. He couldn't get jobs in some of

these other schools because some of the local people felt he was not

representing and speaking for their community. Meanwhile he's a scholar

who's been critical and wielding the resources of the tradition to change

some of the idead of the community. That's what we would like to do: shelter

and nurture these people.

Dennett

0:33:35

Fine. I agree.

Thurman

0:33:36

Thank you so much for supporting that. So, you feel that if we could explain

all that by evolutionary biology we would finally *understand* religion?

Dennett

0:33:44

No, I just think that's a part of it. Only part of the book is about evolution,

but that is where I think it has to start. In fact, the main message, of course,

of the evolution part of the book is: 'Don't make the mistake of thinking that

evolution is a one-trick-pony. This isn't about genes. And it isn't about what

religion is good for, what fitness benefit it has brought to human beings.

That's one option. It is not a particularly plausible option. There are other


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theories that have to be looked at. As long as the non-biological community

says, 'Oh yeah, sure, religion is fitness-enhancing somehow,' then they will get

off on the wrong foot.

Thurman

0:34:34

I think it's great to add your perspective. But the other question is who do

you think will read your book, and will it affect religious people and

institutions in a good way? The memes in your book, which I think are

wonderful your humour is good, though some people will think you are

impious probably, for which I congratulate you , but how do they get into

the more radical or rabid elements of our religious institutions?

Dennett

0:35:16

I'm not really hoping that many really rabid religionists will react.

Thurman

0:35:18

Really? Maybe they won't!

Dennett

0:35:23

I hope they will, but I think that that's a relatively forlorn hope. I'm taking

religious people at their word. They say they're reasonable and they say

they're moral. I'm appealing to their morality and reason, and say to them:

'Well, then you should have no trouble with this book. I'm not insulting you.

I'm talking about a level playing field. I'm saying: "You think religion is

wonderful. You may be right; let's look at the evidence. Let's look at the pro,

let's look at the con. Let's understand what's going on here." I have an

example early on which is really not designed for them, but designed for my


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fellow brights, just to give them a sense of why this is so threatening to so

many people. Suppose you picked up The New York Times tomorrow and it

said: 'Studies by scientists at Caltech and Cambridge University show that

music if bad for you.' It turns out that music is bad. It lowers your IQ; it makesyou more likely to commit violent acts; it increases your risk of stroke; who

knows what. I know a lot of people would have the same reaction I would

have, which would be visceral it would be: "Well, this shows that they don't

know anything about music. We're going to have music no matter what. I

don't care if it is *bad* for me. I don't care if it is bad for other people. A

world without music is a world I am not going to live in." That's it, that would

be my visceral reaction. But then, I would think about it and I would realize

that I am so sure that music isn't bad for me or anybody that I am prepared

to study it. Bring it on. Let's study it and we shall see. And *if*, by some

horrible chance, it turns out that music really isn't good for us I want to know.

It seems to me that that's the moral response to this book. And we'll see how

many religious people can muster that response. One of the themes of the

book is that religious allegiance is a kind of love. And one of the most natural

responses to anybody who said "Well, let's subject the object of your love to

a careful examination" is to respond with anger and outrage.

Thurman

0:38:01

Well, yeah, maybe we have to do a careful examination, but not you, I think.

Dennett

0:38:03

Well, let's do it together.

Thurman

0:38:03

They wouldn't like someone else to do it.


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Dennett

0:38:07

Let's join forces; let's find out what makes religion tick.

Thurman

0:38:16

What about *defining* religion in exploring it in terms of 'breaking its spell.'

Dennett

0:38:25

Hang on, I want to say one thing. The title of my book concerns two spells:

one of them is the veil of polite ignorance of religion.

Thurman

0:38:35

The taboo to talk about it, right.

Dennett

0:38:37

That's the spell I want to break. And I do break it. I *want* to break it. But as

for the question of whether I want to break the spell of religion altogether, I

am completely agnostic on that. I have not decided how I feel about that. I

don't know enough. I do not know what we would replace religion with.

Thurman

0:38:55

Well, we have evidence that in the Soviet Union and in China, when they tried

to replace religion they deified the leaders of the society, and they became

really destructive.


18/53

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?


19/53

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?


20/53

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


21/53

decades without killing each other. When the Jews were thrown out of Spain

in 1429, they went to Sarajevo under the Aramens?????, and they were much

more tolerantly looked after. And yet, they never learned about each others

faiths. Therefore demagogues could exploit them to demonize each other andwe saw what happened in Yugoslavia.

Dennett

0:44:52

Indeed.

Thurman

0:44:57

So, it's a very precious thing, and I can't believe that someone would call that

totalitarian. It could be seeded effectively from America to other places if it

survives in America, that is. I'm sure current people in our government think it

is terrible that religious studies are comparatively taught even within our

universities. In fact, in the American Academy of Religion these scholars, who I

hope will read your book and add evolutionary biology more prominently to

their methods and tools in studying, will always discuss in which university

there can be no religious studies. There are certain State Universities, for

example, which will not alllow religious studies departments in the State,

because of the "separation of church and state."

Dennett

0:45:38

Many years ago, when I was at the University of California, back in the sixties,

I was on a state-wide commission that looked at whether there should be a

program in studying religion in the State University. And our group came up

with the conclusion, yes, that was fine as long as it was the objective study of

the different religious traditions their texts, their rituals, their histories. That

was fine. I think our report gathers dust on a shelve somewhere.


22/53

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


23/53

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


24/53

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


25/53

and harmony and all the rest. And I don't discard that when I listen to music,

it's in the back of my mind and it flavors my perception of the music. And I

think anybody who really loves music should learn how to read music, and

learn what's going on. It enhances, it doesn't diminish the beauty of themusic.

Thurman

0:50:39

OK, now what about your dogma of materialism? Isn't that a religious

dogma?

Dennett

0:50:46

No, certainly not. It's just a working hypothesis.

Thurman

0:50:50

OK, it's awaiting falsification? If a non-material entity presented itself to you,

you would take it seriously?

Dennett

0:50:58

Of course!

Thurman

0:51:04

I won't get into the issue of how it would do that, but you do take it

seriously.

Dennett

0:51:09


26/53

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.


27/53

Thurman

0:52:00

Well, I know that, you *explained* it! Was that satisfying to you? Do you think

you really nailed it? It's finished and settled, with Dan Dennett, signed andfinished?

Dennett

0:52:14

No, I think I gave a pretty good sketch, and it's holding up very well. And the

prediction...

Thurman

0:52:14

Didn't consciousness dissolve under analysis? Did it withstand analysis?

Dennett

0:52:24

That's like saying that if you have an explanation of colour and in the end you

don't have any coloured atoms or something you've explained colour *away*.

That's what it *is* to explain colour. Any explanation of consciousness which

still has consciousness in the picture at the end isn't an explanation of

consciousness.

Thurman

0:52:44

I see. So an explanation of something has to destroy what it explains?

Dennett

0:52:50

Not destroy, it has to analyze what it explains into non-questionbegging

terms.


28/53

Thurman

0:52:56

Right, OK, and since there is nothing in the world that we have everdiscovered that can withstand ultimate analysis than therefore consciousness

ends up as nothing?

Dennett

0:53:07

Nonsense.

Thurman

0:53:13

No? But you don't believe you're going to be reborn when you die.

Dennett

0:53:15

That's right, I certainly don't.

Thurman

0:53:17

So *you* do not withstand analysis. You, Daniel Dennett, do not withstand

analysis. In other words, you're going to be reduced to nothing simply

because your blood stops and your hart stops beating, right?

Dennett

0:53:19

That's not analysis. If you actually take me apart, then I'm gone. If you just

take me apart intellectually, if you analyze my parts, and leave me intact then

I'm still here!


29/53

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


30/53

But Borgheses point is... I say, a good theory of consciousness by the way,

the book called "Consciousness Explained" is still available in paperback; if

you bring I'll sign it has to have the following feature: when you got it all

laid out, and you go and look around at that theory it should be sort ofspooky. It should be like walking around in a deserted factory. There's all this

machinery going and there's nobody there! There's nobody home! If you still

got an observer, a witness, a boss in there, you haven't explained

consciousness.

Thurman

0:55:42

You are talking to the Buddhist theory of selflessness. Daniel Dennet, when he

was in Asia and didn't have as good a beard, probably in a previous life...

Dennett

0:55:55

Over the years many people have said to me that basically I'm a Buddhist.

Thurman

0:55:59

I know, they tell all the philosophers that and they all freak out. Especially if

they don't have tenure.

Dennett

0:56:04

I say, I'm a Buddhist without the rigmarole about reincarnation, OK.

Thurman

0:56:08

Don't worry about reincarnation.


31/53

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.


32/53

Thurman

0:57:38

What makes you think that maybe you don't broadcast on radio waves, some

signal of Dennetthood? Like a Dennett fluke that goes to impregnate thebrain of a...

Dennett

0:57:50

The beautiful thing about the fluke is that you can see it, it's real. It's an

unproblematic part of the physical universe. And so are our brains. The

information in our brains can in principle be maintained. I've pointed out that

an implication of my theory of consciousness is that in principle you could

save all that information in some medium, put it on harddisks, and then

resurrect the person at some later time. Just like finding an old

wordprocessing file and bringing it back to life.

Thurman

0:58:32

Do you know where Walt Disney is?

Dennett

0:58:37

I believe he is in a cryonic chamber?

Thurman

0:58:37

He is, underneath Michael Eisner's chair. And they're waiting for the

technology to reboot him. At a lower salary, of course.

Dennett

0:58:49


33/53

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


34/53

don't agree with that. I see the need for dualism in certain domains as very

important sort of in the area of what you call belief in belief but in the

scientific area I don't see that as necessary and neither does Buddhism.

Buddhism has mind-body nonduality in its deeper areas, definitely. But thatdoesn't mean that you always reduce mind to matter. Sometimes you can

reduce matter to mind usefully for certain settings. You could, because once

they are the same thing, the duality bending the terminology somewhat is

no longer useful. If there's a subtlety in Dennett's consciousness that we have

not analyzed away because we have no words for that subtlety, no machines,

no ways of observing that subtlety, then that kind of subtlety has another

kind of continuity that we cannot necessarily preclude.

Dennett

1:01:05

No, you can't preclude it, but what fascinates, or puzzles me is why you think

it would be so important that this be true. Bertrand Russell has a nice

example: I can't prove that there's no teapot orbiting Saturn.

Dennett

1:01:20

That might be true, but it's not worth worrying about. What fascinates me is

that you think it's important to believe that your...

Thurman

1:01:20

I know, you went through that. But you can't deny it absolutely. You can't be

certain about it, I agree.

Thurman

1:01:42

No, no, no.


35/53

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


36/53

metaphysical level.

Dennett

1:02:07

They got to be.

Dennett

1:03:12

Now, I confess I simply can't fathom most of what you just said.

Thurman

1:03:21

That's good!

Dennett

1:03:23

I expect that there's a great deal in what you say, but it's the last bit I want to

ask you about. Why should a *moral* point of view hinge at all on this idea of

rebirth? Why not the life that we lead right now? Aren't we lucky to be

alive? I certainly feel very fortunate to be here.

Thurman

1:03:45

Well, the key is who's alive. Who's alive?

Dennett

1:03:49

Who's alive? I am, you are, we are.

Thurman

1:03:57


37/53

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


38/53

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


39/53

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


40/53

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


41/53

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


42/53

Sure, they do not really matter that to me, but they matter as deeply to me as

my present *de facto* situation.

Dennett

1:10:05

How strange.

Dennett

1:10:15

It seems to me that if I were reincarnated as I don't know what, it would be

the luck of the draw whether anything that I had ever done in *this*

incarnation mattered to whoever that was. I just don't see why this is an

interesting idea.

Thurman

1:10:31

Well, if you were a heavy smoker as a teenager or a drug user or something,

and then at the age of sixty or seventy you had serious health problems you

would hardly remember what you did or thought at that earlier age. But if

you knew about it, you would deeply regret that misuse. Therefore, we see a

continuum even in the life that we *can* remember. There are many things in

this life that we cannot remember. You cannot remember many things, many

days probably the majority of the days of your past fifty or sixty years.

Thurman

1:10:31

But you don't deny that they happened to you. You know that they did

happen to you.

Dennett

1:10:31


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I know. Probably just as well.

Thurman

1:11:11

Let me take another tack with this. That nothing matters is precisely the point.

If you really are nothing, all of us, in that we will become nothing as our

permanent state, then that is the basis of the religion of scientism, basically,

and that's what you guys are in the grip of. That's what you really have got to

get released from.

Thurman

1:11:11

They are not really believers. Those people are religious people, they are

immoral, I grant you that, really destructive. We see them around, nowadays.

But it isn't really that they believe in reincarnation. They also do not *really*

believe in rebirth. Because they think, no matter what they do, that there's

some outside absolute that's going to take them out of that cycle and put

them in some permanent paradise. Nowadays I always make it analogous to

the Houston Country Club. It's a kind of paradise that they're going to go to,

forever. They also have a way of withdrawing from the real confrontation of

absolute relationality, total relativity. That's a much more threatening view. Let

me take another tack, let me imagine something, because you're a great

thought experimenter. I know I'm not going to persuade you. And I'm not

even that persuaded myself. I'm not fanatical about this, but I am critical and I

wish you *brights* I don't know though if 'brights' is too fortunate, because

you said you wanted the opposite to mean 'super', but not 'dim' or 'dum', but

that's what people will think.

Dennett

1:11:11

Fair enough.


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Dennett

1:11:11

I think that you're just playing with words. I don't know people who are moreengaged with the worlds problems then many of my scientific friends. And

they don't need a belief in reincarnation to be deeply moral people. In fact, as

you and I know, there's many people who are devout believers and who,

basically, do not lead moral lives.

Dennett

1:13:20

Some people may not know what we are talking about here. Let me explain.

It's not my coinage, but some people out in California decided that we

needed a word for agnostics and atheists and other naturalists. And they said

we should do the same thing the homosexuals did, when they took a

perfectly good word, in that case 'gay,' and they appropriated it. A lot of

people hated it at first, but it took. And it took some time and I think most

people would say, "Very good move, the recoining of the word 'gay.'" People

can come out of the closet and say they're gay. So I came out of the closet,

and said, OK, I'm a *bright*. They chose the word 'bright.' And this gave this

crowd some thrust, and now I get wonderful mail from people all over the

world, saying "Oh, thank you for coming out of the closet."

Thurman

1:14:24

But the opposite is dim or dum.

Dennett

1:14:24

Come on, what's the opposite of gay? Glum?


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Thurman

1:14:24

Yeah. That's right, most of the heterosexuals I know are glum.

Dennett

1:14:30

The opposite of gay, but only since the term was rebaptized, is 'straight.' Nice,

positive word: straight. So's gay: nice, positive word.

Thurman

1:14:38

You want to make the opposite word 'super?'

Dennett

1:14:43

Super! Because the supers believe in the supernatural.

Thurman

1:14:46

If you are going to make the religious people 'super,' then we should also be

accepting of the term 'subs.'

Dennett

1:15:02

No, I mean 'bright' was a term that was chosen. We're a bright, I'm a bright.

I'm out of the closest as a bright. If you don't want to call yourself a bright I

suggest 'super' because the definition is that you believe in something

supernatural and I don't. So, you can be the supers and we can be the

brights. Two happy words.

Thurman


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1:15:17

I want to do one other thing. Darwin is beloved and hated by the people who

hated him and still do because he reveals to human beings their embeddness

in nature, among other things. That they're related to apes, and in a racistnineteenth century that whites were related to blacks and every other colour

that can be thought of. People hated that and they still hate it. In San Diego,

where the fundamentalists have their museum I saw a film of it. In the film,

Adam is a white guy, lying on his side waiting to have a rib taken out to wash

the dishes. He's lying there and he's looking white, and it's 5000 years ago

and you see the Grand Canyon and ????? So, embedded in nature, and we

salute him for that. However, the karma theory, which also is not an absolute

theory but a relational one, had human beings embedded in nature *long*

ago. Darwin still has one place out of nature, which is where you go when

you die. Which is where you could go any time, because when you shoot

yourself there's nothing, and no one will tell you that *nothing* is a part of

nature.

Dennett

1:15:41

Where do carrots go when they die? Are they reincarnated?

Thurman

1:15:54

Don't change the subject. Conservation of energy. No energy is ever lost in

nature. Carrots become digested, they become fertilizer, they don't become

nothing there's a continuum. And don't use the word 'reincarnated.'

Dennett

1:17:21

Are you going to use it?


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Thurman

1:17:21

The point is, Darwin and you and the scientific materialists have given

yourselves as human beings another way out of your embeddedness in natureinto nice, quiet oblivion. All you need to do is die, and you're out of it. That

view, as a dominant view, has made Western culture irresponsible, I argue.

This was predicted in ancient India by people who disagreed on every other

philosophical topic. They said that if the Carvakas, those who were certain of

becoming nothing at death, ever took control of any government of any

society and dominated it, that society would be uniquely destructive of the

environment and everything it was connected to. The main point I want you

to think about if you think it's worth thinking about, is that when you are

essentially nothing there's some aspect of you that is *not* totally embedded

in nature. Therefore, if Darwin's greatness and his breakthrough was to re-

connect human beings to nature in a realistic way there's still something

unrealistic about thinking that your essence, however subtle it may be,

beyond subtle is just nothing.

Dennett

1:18:47

What I think is that you are unintentionally perpetuating a great calumny.

Thurman

1:18:58

Calumny? Oh dear! I thought I was just advancing a meme.

Dennett

1:19:02

Well, you're doing that too. You are perpetuating the idea: spirituality good,

materialism bad. I think this is one of the most pernicious ideas out there. I

spent a little time at the Museum of Modern Art today, and I saw a wonderful


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exhibit this house in Spain, the House of the Retreat of Spirituality. It's

fantastic, this wonderful house that has been built, and it's the house of

Spirituality! Well, it's a great place to be but, of course if they would have

called it the Plutocrats' Play House people would just appreciate that it was apretty cool house. But because they call it the House of Spirituality, now it is

*transcendent*. But this idea that *materialists* can't be spiritual in the sense

that matters is baloney.

Thurman

1:20:07

I didn't think that.

Dennett

1:20:07

Well, it *sounded* like it to me!

Thurman

1:20:12

Well, you're not going to be spiritual when you're nothing. And for a

philosopher like you to misuse language like that. How can something *be*

nothing? What does that mean?

Dennett

1:20:24

Those are your words, not mine.

Thurman

1:20:26

Well, you said you would become nothing when your brain dies.

Dennett


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1:20:32

Just like the carrot, my parts get distributed around in the world. And my

identity no longer exists.

Thurman

1:20:40

So your identity is not part of you?

Dennett

1:20:42

No, that's what I am. I no longer exist. And so what?

Thurman

1:20:48

The one part that doesn't get distributed is your identity then. The one form

of energy or information that does not continue.

Dennett

1:20:59

The energy continues, it does not get dissipated. But the information is lost.

Thurman

1:21:09

I hope so for your sake. If you find that comforting that idea. It *is* a belief,

you can't deny that. And how absolutely you hold the belief would then be

the test of whether your statement here that you have no religion is correct.

Dennett

1:21:34

I just think that I'm not that different from the animals and the vegetables

and other living things on the planet. You apparently think that...


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Dennett

1:21:40

I find that view that you're presenting *perhaps* coherent, I can't see anyobvious incoherence, but for the life of me I don't see why you think it makes

any moral importance. I think that people can lead just as fine, meaningful

moral lives without that belief as with it, and I think a lot of people who

*have* that belief are, basically, self-indulgent. They *think* that by retreating

into a monastery, for instance, and by studying spiritual matters they're being

moral. I don't think that's being moral. I think that's like collecting stamps. It

keeps you out of harms way. It keeps you from doing a lot of bad things, but

aside from that... I mean, Buddhist monks who spend their lives in

contemplation...

Thurman

1:21:40

No, I don't. They all have the same continuity. I've *been* every one of those

animals and so have you in this view.

Thurman

1:22:55

Who spends his life in contemplation? Buddha did? No way! The guy was like

46 years itinerant teacher, teaching everybody who was coming or going.

Dennett

1:22:59

There *are* Buddhist monks...

Thurman

1:22:59

He spend some time on his Graduate Studies, contemplating until he was 35,


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but then he taught steadily for 46 years.

Dennett

1:23:13

There are monks that pretty much...

Thurman

1:23:13

Yes, but they are less capable than him. Possibly, they're causing less trouble

than they would if they were out there, being soldiers in some fanatic's or

materialist's army.

Dennett

1:23:23

That's what I figured. I think that's probably true. It's a fairly harmless way to

spend your life, but it's not particularly moral.

Thurman

1:23:34

It depends on what your view is. It could be moral or immoral, just as you

could be an activist morally and immorally. Those things are not necessarily

concomittant. Anyway, all I am trying to do is suggest to you is one thing: if

everything is interrated and all is relativity, which is the ancient view, then if

you have one element of yourself that has a way out, simply by dying, then

you are giving yourself immunity from that interrelationship. That's all. If you

do that, that has consequences and that affects your ground of being. It

affects the way you are. Just like those religious people who have that God is

telling them what to do it affects the way they are.

Dennett

1:24:21


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Yes, unfortunately.

Thurman

1:24:23

But absolutism could be attached to the idea of an absolute God or an

absolute nothing. In other words, we have seen equally that a fanatic

materialist, like a communist can crash a plane into a building and kill a

bunch of people. And they do not say "Allahuh Akbar!" They're not

expectiong God to reward them. They're just expecting to be annihilated

beyond pain and become nothing. And then the other kind expects to be

taken beyond pain by some absolute force. Both are from a radical relative

point of view equally irrational, and are therefore behaving equally

destructive.

Dennett

1:25:07

Why don't I leave you with that last word.

Thurman

1:25:07

No, you're the author, so you should have the last word. I didn't know you

were my own near classmate. I've admired your work from afar tremendously.

Since you've explained consciousness so thoroughly, if you were the one to

then move the dialogue a little further into a more subtle plane than the

triumphalist thing that we find in E.O. Wilson's "Consilience".... It was a thrill to

have had this conversation.

Dennett

1:25:46

Well, actually, it's time to wrap up this conversation. I'll just reiterate one

thing. I do think we need to study religion carefully. I don't think I have the


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answers. I think I have the questions. I think that it is very important that

people find the courage to speak out and say: "Let's look at this calmly,

coolly, and reasonably. This is unlike my earlier books. This is really a political

book. It is calling for political action, and it is asking the reasonable, moralpeople to join forces to understand the phenomenon of religion better. I do

believe that those people, who are deeply religious, and who are deeply

moral, will want to join in this effort. I welcome them, and if they find that my

book is outrageous or offensive to them, I submit that it is not deliberately

offensive, it is an attempt to level the playing field. Many people are so used

to being approached with awe and reverence for every religious thing they

say and I am not doing that. I am treating their views matter of factly, calmly.

I am prepared to entertain what they have to say, but I am *not* letting them

play the 'faith' card. It doesn't have any role in this political discussion. Thank

you.

Thurman Dennett

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