1 00:00:01,280 --> 00:00:10,160 The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol, an idea. 2 00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:14,800 The population of atheists in this country is going through the rule, rejecting 3 00:00:14,919 --> 00:00:20,000 faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I tell the truth, 4 00:00:20,079 --> 00:00:24,079 it's because I tell the truth, not because I put my hand on a 5 00:00:24,120 --> 00:00:29,440 book and made a wish and working together for a more rational world. Take 6 00:00:29,480 --> 00:00:33,719 the risk of thinking feels so much more happiness. Truth, Fusian wisdom will 7 00:00:33,759 --> 00:00:41,399 come to you that way. Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. 8 00:00:42,719 --> 00:00:56,920 This is the Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews. He was 9 00:00:57,039 --> 00:01:03,760 known as one of the four horsemen of the New atheist movements. And already 10 00:01:03,799 --> 00:01:10,799 at that first sentence, I find myself shifting in my chair. You've heard 11 00:01:10,840 --> 00:01:17,200 me resist the term new atheists. I guess I understand it. We saw 12 00:01:17,239 --> 00:01:23,439 a resurgence in these conversations about the non belief in gods just after the turn 13 00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:27,560 of the millennium two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, two thousand 14 00:01:27,599 --> 00:01:33,840 and eight, Richard Dawkins had just released his book The God Delusion, A 15 00:01:33,879 --> 00:01:38,480 Book that Changed My life. Christopher Hitchins had the book God Is Not Great. 16 00:01:38,519 --> 00:01:45,159 He was traveling Bible Belt states, doing speaking engagements and debates. He 17 00:01:45,280 --> 00:01:49,400 was on television about every five minutes. Sam Harris released a few books, 18 00:01:49,719 --> 00:01:55,560 The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. And then rounding out 19 00:01:55,560 --> 00:02:00,480 the four we had Daniel Dennett. He was known as the nice one. 20 00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:06,719 He had the book Breaking the Spell Religion as natural phenomenon. He did a 21 00:02:06,760 --> 00:02:14,120 lot of examinations of the evolution of religion, why people's adherents to God belief 22 00:02:14,199 --> 00:02:22,199 and superstitions and superstitious rituals might be explained evolutionarily. These were the horsemen, 23 00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:28,759 the new atheists. But were they saying anything new? I mean, the 24 00:02:28,840 --> 00:02:34,560 science was certainly better in the new millennium as we began to understand belief in 25 00:02:34,560 --> 00:02:42,599 the brain, evolved tendencies toward this thinking or that thinking, conditioned response, 26 00:02:42,919 --> 00:02:49,080 cultural reinforcements, all of these other elements related to human psychology, brain chemistry. 27 00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:53,280 That information was certainly better than it was back in the days of Robert 28 00:02:53,560 --> 00:02:59,400 Ingersoll, George Bernard Shaw Bertrand Russell Mark Twain, etc. But as far 29 00:02:59,520 --> 00:03:06,560 as rejecting dogma and thinking freely to say, honestly, even courageously, I 30 00:03:06,759 --> 00:03:10,919 don't believe I am an atheist. I mean, that's that doesn't seem all 31 00:03:10,919 --> 00:03:20,879 that new to me. But four horsemen has always bothered me because it seems 32 00:03:20,919 --> 00:03:25,599 to anoint in a point these four men as the shepherds of a flock. 33 00:03:27,439 --> 00:03:30,840 You know, they were there, the horsemen, waving the standards, swords 34 00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:35,960 drawn at the front of the army, leading us toward battle, and we 35 00:03:36,120 --> 00:03:39,639 followed in lockstep. It just comes off that way to me, and it 36 00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:45,360 gives a little bit of ammo to some apologists who'd like to say that atheists 37 00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:49,960 have just traded one religion for another, the religion of atheism, and these 38 00:03:50,039 --> 00:03:53,759 are their preachers, these are their shepherds, And I just you know, 39 00:03:53,719 --> 00:03:59,080 it's different when I was part of a church and the pastor would preach something, 40 00:03:59,159 --> 00:04:03,159 I was conditioned to accept it. Ever, notice how pastors don't finish 41 00:04:03,199 --> 00:04:08,360 their sermons with a Q and a time. But if you go to a 42 00:04:08,439 --> 00:04:14,159 free thought event, there's a ton of Q and A And even those who 43 00:04:14,280 --> 00:04:19,399 have expertise and experience and take the stage, they are listening even as they 44 00:04:19,439 --> 00:04:26,360 are presenting. But this type of engagement is not new, and so I 45 00:04:26,480 --> 00:04:31,879 resist this clumsy framing of new atheism. But whatever. I'm totally digressing. 46 00:04:31,959 --> 00:04:38,920 We're talking today about one of the horsemen who just passed away on the nineteenth 47 00:04:38,959 --> 00:04:44,800 of April twenty twenty four, Daniel Dennett, the philosopher. He succumbed to 48 00:04:45,279 --> 00:04:47,800 lung disease. He's the second one of these four that we lost. Of 49 00:04:47,800 --> 00:04:54,800 course, we lost Christopher Hitchens to asofageal cancer back in December of twenty eleven. 50 00:04:54,879 --> 00:04:59,519 I actually did a ten year anniversary tribute for hitch It's in the podcast 51 00:04:59,639 --> 00:05:04,480 archive. You can just scroll back and find that show from twenty twenty one. 52 00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:10,839 Now, it's interesting that Daniel Dennett is a known name, but a 53 00:05:10,879 --> 00:05:15,399 lot of people don't know much about him. And here in the wake of 54 00:05:15,399 --> 00:05:18,680 his passing, I thought it might be a good opportunity to introduce you to 55 00:05:19,120 --> 00:05:27,040 some of what Daniel Dennett said and much of who he was. Daniel Dennett 56 00:05:27,360 --> 00:05:32,160 in Memoriam, including many recordings of his own voice, his own thoughts, 57 00:05:32,160 --> 00:05:38,279 in his own words. Daniel Dennett born the twenty eighth of March nineteen forty 58 00:05:38,360 --> 00:05:43,560 two, Boston, Massachusetts. His mother had a master's degree in English. 59 00:05:43,720 --> 00:05:49,959 She was an educator. His father had a doctorate in Islamic studies from Harvard 60 00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:58,920 and I am not kidding was a counter intelligence agent for the government. Daniel 61 00:05:58,959 --> 00:06:01,720 Dennett's dad was killed in a plane crash when Dan was only five, and 62 00:06:01,800 --> 00:06:08,079 after that they were living overseas in Lebanon. Dan's mother moved him back to 63 00:06:08,319 --> 00:06:13,959 Massachusetts before he was even a teenager. Though he was apparently just a natural 64 00:06:14,040 --> 00:06:19,759 philosopher. He just thought like a philosopher. A camp counselor told him when 65 00:06:19,800 --> 00:06:25,160 he was just eleven, He told him, you will be a philosopher. 66 00:06:25,560 --> 00:06:31,000 In nineteen sixty three, Daniel Dennett graduated with a BA in philosophy from Harvard. 67 00:06:31,079 --> 00:06:36,040 A doctorate from Oxford would soon follow. He became a professor at the 68 00:06:36,160 --> 00:06:42,199 University of California from nineteen sixty five to nineteen seventy one, and then he 69 00:06:42,240 --> 00:06:48,720 moved to Tuff's University in Massachusetts. A few other bullet points off the resume. 70 00:06:49,079 --> 00:06:56,240 Daniel Dennett was a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Humanist Laureates of 71 00:06:56,319 --> 00:07:01,040 the International Academy of Humanism. He was named two for Humanist of the Year 72 00:07:01,279 --> 00:07:06,040 by the American Humanist Association, and of course, he was a much sought 73 00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:14,480 after author and public speaker in my own journey. I think what I found 74 00:07:14,560 --> 00:07:19,399 most interesting and continue to find most interesting about Dennett's work is how he speaks 75 00:07:19,439 --> 00:07:26,279 to the evolution of religion. Because a lot of times we talk about religion 76 00:07:26,319 --> 00:07:30,040 as an idea. It's a bad idea if it's a superstition and all the 77 00:07:30,639 --> 00:07:35,879 harm that it propagates. But we don't often understand the evolutionary reasons that people 78 00:07:36,199 --> 00:07:43,639 may gravitate to the idea of gods or spirits or some sort of other worldly 79 00:07:43,879 --> 00:07:50,399 metaphysical agency. But Daniel Dennett this was totally his wheelhouse. Several years ago, 80 00:07:50,680 --> 00:07:55,879 he was on a broadcast called Closer to Truth, which was hosted by 81 00:07:55,959 --> 00:08:00,240 Robert Kohn. Here's a clip, It runs over five minutes, but I 82 00:08:00,240 --> 00:08:05,439 wanted to include the complete thought, what are some of the methodologies that we 83 00:08:05,439 --> 00:08:09,439 should begin to think about looking at a study of religion? Well, I 84 00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:13,160 think we have to think not just historically, but biologically. We have to 85 00:08:13,160 --> 00:08:20,360 realize that homeless sapiens us we descended from earlier Hamanids. We have a share 86 00:08:20,399 --> 00:08:24,040 a common ancestor with a chimpanzee. Going back about six million years, a 87 00:08:24,120 --> 00:08:30,040 lot has changed, and as Darcy Thompsone said, everything is the way it 88 00:08:30,040 --> 00:08:33,879 is is it got that way. So let's look at the history as best 89 00:08:33,919 --> 00:08:37,200 we can. We have to do a lot of extrapolation and some speculation and 90 00:08:37,279 --> 00:08:45,720 see what religion adds to the mix that makes us so different from all other 91 00:08:45,799 --> 00:08:48,639 animals. And I think we can do that. I think we can see 92 00:08:48,759 --> 00:08:56,799 both what its origins were in superstition, which grew out of an overactive adoption 93 00:08:56,879 --> 00:09:00,799 of the intentional stance when it's something. And this, by the way, 94 00:09:00,919 --> 00:09:05,679 is a mammalian feature we share with say dogs. If your dog here's the 95 00:09:05,799 --> 00:09:09,600 thud of snow falling off the roof, and jumps up and barks, the 96 00:09:09,679 --> 00:09:15,960 dog is in effect asking who's there, what's that? But who it's assuming 97 00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:18,720 there's an agent, might be a dangerous agent out there, This assumption that 98 00:09:18,759 --> 00:09:24,600 when something surprising, unexpected, puzzling happens, to treat it as an agent 99 00:09:24,679 --> 00:09:30,240 until you learn otherwise. That's the intentional the intentional stance, and it's it's 100 00:09:30,320 --> 00:09:35,759 an instinct, not just in us, an entirely appropriate instinct. I don't 101 00:09:35,759 --> 00:09:37,919 want to get eaten running around on the plane. It's on a hair trigger. 102 00:09:39,799 --> 00:09:43,279 And so that's right. You don't want to wait around it is you 103 00:09:43,360 --> 00:09:48,879 want to you want to to fire have a lot of false positives, a 104 00:09:48,879 --> 00:09:52,360 lot of false alarms right now in the dog. The dog just goes back 105 00:09:52,399 --> 00:09:56,600 to sleep after a minute. But we, because we've got language, we 106 00:09:56,840 --> 00:10:01,679 mull it over in our heads, and pretty soon we've conned up a hallucinated 107 00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:05,840 agent, a little forest god, or a talking tree, or an elf 108 00:10:05,919 --> 00:10:13,559 or something what made that noise? Now mostly those are just harmless little quirks 109 00:10:13,559 --> 00:10:16,559 that we have in our heads, and we soon forget them. Every now 110 00:10:16,639 --> 00:10:20,480 and then one comes along which has a little bit more staying power. It's 111 00:10:20,519 --> 00:10:24,360 sort of unforgettable, And so it grows and we share it with a neighbor, 112 00:10:24,519 --> 00:10:28,200 and the neighbor says, what do you mean a talking tree? Nah, 113 00:10:28,279 --> 00:10:31,039 there's no talking trees, you see. Oh yeah, I could have 114 00:10:31,080 --> 00:10:35,159 sworn that tree with talking. Pretty soon the whole village is talking about the 115 00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:39,279 talking tree. Maybe they're all saying it's crazy, all such thing as a 116 00:10:39,320 --> 00:10:41,919 talking tree, but they're all talking about the talking tree. The talking tree 117 00:10:43,039 --> 00:10:46,600 idea has entered the world. It has made multiple copies. Everybody in the 118 00:10:46,679 --> 00:10:50,679 village has a copy of the talking tree idea. What's it for. It's 119 00:10:50,679 --> 00:10:54,759 for itself. It's just it's just happened because it could. It's like a 120 00:10:54,840 --> 00:10:58,200 it's like a virus. And it may be from time to time that one 121 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:05,000 of these little quirks gets randomly reinforced by I don't know, a good fishing 122 00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:09,960 catch or some animal, and then suddenly the good result is like an operant 123 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:13,240 condition back to that little quirk, and it gets. In fact, the 124 00:11:13,360 --> 00:11:18,759 f Skinner did some experiments with pigeons on just that randomly reinforcing them, and 125 00:11:18,759 --> 00:11:22,600 pretty soon they were doing quite elaborate little dances. And and sure, these 126 00:11:22,600 --> 00:11:26,639 are these This isn't religion, This is just superstition, and it melds perfectly 127 00:11:26,759 --> 00:11:31,279 in with their lore, their physical law, their their natural lore. But 128 00:11:31,679 --> 00:11:35,600 sometimes they get the idea, well, if you if you say a little 129 00:11:35,600 --> 00:11:39,600 prayer to the to the talking tree before you go hunting, then then you 130 00:11:39,679 --> 00:11:41,240 do a little better on the hunt. And and and so it goes. 131 00:11:41,279 --> 00:11:48,440 And the line between good law, I mean, true accurate law about where 132 00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:52,799 where the food is and so forth, and the sort of embellishment they don't 133 00:11:52,840 --> 00:11:56,519 drive. They don't think of it as a religion. And gradually these ideas 134 00:11:56,559 --> 00:12:03,039 which naturally infiltrate into their community and get copies in all the heads locally, 135 00:12:03,399 --> 00:12:07,039 they sort themselves out. There's competition, there's there's only so much room in 136 00:12:07,080 --> 00:12:13,000 people's heads for these things, and the ones that are unforgettable, the ones 137 00:12:13,039 --> 00:12:16,039 that really are catchy, will get copied and passed on and passed on and 138 00:12:16,080 --> 00:12:20,559 passed on. These are the memes. Those are what Richard Dawkins would call 139 00:12:20,639 --> 00:12:24,000 memes. That's right. They're cultural items that reproduce in people's brains, and 140 00:12:24,080 --> 00:12:28,799 their only purpose is their own propagation. What are they for? They're for 141 00:12:28,879 --> 00:12:33,159 themselves. It's like when I first started studying religion, people said, oh, 142 00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:37,559 evolutionary account of religion, what do you think religions are good for? 143 00:12:37,679 --> 00:12:39,840 Dan, They've got to be good for something, after all, every every 144 00:12:39,919 --> 00:12:45,279 human group that's ever been studied has some kind of religion. And I said, 145 00:12:45,320 --> 00:12:48,240 well, yeah, every group that's ever been studied has the common cold 146 00:12:48,240 --> 00:12:52,879 too. What's it good for? It's good for self. And these ideas 147 00:12:52,960 --> 00:12:58,399 are just good for themselves. They're good at reproducing in minds, whether they're 148 00:12:58,399 --> 00:13:03,159 good habits or bad habits of mine. They're good at sem producing some one 149 00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:07,879 s. That's a neutral comment. It's not positive. Now those are if 150 00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:11,320 you like, the wild memes, because they don't really belong to people. 151 00:13:11,360 --> 00:13:15,279 People don't take care of them. They're they're not. Now they're going to 152 00:13:15,279 --> 00:13:20,480 get themselves domesticated. And now, just the way sheep acquired shepherds, and 153 00:13:20,519 --> 00:13:28,120 it was very much to their genetic benefit, millions, hundreds of millions of 154 00:13:28,240 --> 00:13:31,799 sheep. Now, so some of these wild ideas got shepherds as well. 155 00:13:31,799 --> 00:13:37,360 They got stewards, They got people who would devote their lives to spreading these 156 00:13:37,399 --> 00:13:39,879 ideas, to protecting them, to teaching them, and so forth. Now 157 00:13:39,919 --> 00:13:46,039 we've begun the domestication of these wild memes. It's interesting how many people don't 158 00:13:46,080 --> 00:13:52,440 realize the word meme comes from that nineteen seventy six book I think it was 159 00:13:52,480 --> 00:13:58,399 seventy six, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. He was talking about genetics, 160 00:13:58,679 --> 00:14:05,080 the replication or imitation one to another. And now we talk about it 161 00:14:05,159 --> 00:14:11,080 in terms of things that are copied and spread rapidly, usually on the Internet, 162 00:14:11,159 --> 00:14:15,519 whether it's a picture, video, text, idea, whatever, the 163 00:14:15,679 --> 00:14:22,360 meme, but it has a scientific origin. Oh God, I guess we'll 164 00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:28,399 open up the free will Gan of worms and the thoughts, the perspectives, 165 00:14:28,679 --> 00:14:39,759 the opinion of Daniel Dennett coming up next. Thanks for listening and thanks for 166 00:14:39,879 --> 00:14:46,759 your support Patreon dot com, slash seth Andrews. You get the show two 167 00:14:46,840 --> 00:14:54,039 days early and totally commercial free, and your support is appreciated. Continuing to 168 00:14:54,120 --> 00:15:00,919 talk about Daniel Dennett, now I mentioned free will. This conversation makes my 169 00:15:01,039 --> 00:15:05,759 brain hurt. I'm not a philosopher. I don't think like philosophers. I'm 170 00:15:05,799 --> 00:15:13,840 still debating whether philosophy, which is this exploration of knowledge and life and purpose, 171 00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:20,440 you know, these existential conversations if philosophy is is it beneficial or is 172 00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:26,440 it just this sort of stuffy, snobby time wasting naval gazing. You know, 173 00:15:26,720 --> 00:15:33,480 should these be scientific questions? And then is philosophy actually rooted in science 174 00:15:33,600 --> 00:15:37,120 or is it something else? I mean I literally just stop, I just 175 00:15:37,159 --> 00:15:41,559 say quit it. I want to go and share memes, right, And 176 00:15:41,639 --> 00:15:43,600 I don't know if you feel the same way. There are some people who 177 00:15:43,759 --> 00:15:50,559 love to wade in or swim in the ocean of philosophy. Knock yourself out. 178 00:15:50,600 --> 00:15:52,600 But one of the big conversations I had to do with free will, 179 00:15:54,559 --> 00:16:00,120 does the brain automatically decide for us what we're going to do, what we're 180 00:16:00,120 --> 00:16:03,840 going to say, how we think the entirety of our being, and we 181 00:16:04,159 --> 00:16:10,039 just think we have agency, but it already happened, it was already predetermined. 182 00:16:10,279 --> 00:16:17,360 Or is there a choice? Do we really have free will? Daniel 183 00:16:17,480 --> 00:16:23,480 Denniz thought that we actually do have agency, we can choose, and that 184 00:16:23,559 --> 00:16:30,000 those who say free will does not exist may be harming the species. About 185 00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:34,080 a decade ago he sat down and shared his thoughts. This is probably a 186 00:16:34,080 --> 00:16:38,840 three or four minute clip. This is from the Big Think broadcast. Let 187 00:16:38,879 --> 00:16:45,159 me trot out one of my recent favorites, which I devised to jangle the 188 00:16:45,200 --> 00:16:49,279 nerves of neuroscientists who've been going around saying that neuroscience shows that we don't have 189 00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:56,000 free will. I think their reasons for saying that are ill considered, and 190 00:16:56,120 --> 00:17:00,000 moreover, that what they're doing is apt to be mischievous and doing some real 191 00:17:00,200 --> 00:17:04,000 arm. So I concocted a little thought experiment, a little intuition pump, 192 00:17:04,119 --> 00:17:11,839 to suggest that So this is the case of the nefarious neurosurgeon who treats a 193 00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:18,480 patient who has obsessive compulsive disorder by inserting a little microchip in his brain which 194 00:17:18,599 --> 00:17:22,680 controls the OCD, the obsessive compulsive disorder. Now there is such a chip. 195 00:17:22,319 --> 00:17:26,839 It's been developed in the Netherlands and it works really quite well. That's 196 00:17:26,920 --> 00:17:32,000 science fact. But now you've come to science fiction. So the neurosurgeon, 197 00:17:32,359 --> 00:17:36,559 after she's operated on the guy, sewed him all up. So, okay, 198 00:17:36,599 --> 00:17:40,279 you're OCD is under control. Now you'll be happy to learn. But 199 00:17:40,559 --> 00:17:45,759 moreover, our team here will be monitoring you twenty four to seven, and 200 00:17:45,079 --> 00:17:48,960 we're going to be controlling everything you do from now on. You'll think you 201 00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:52,160 have free will. You you'll think you're making your own decisions, but really 202 00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:56,240 you won't have free will at all. Free will is an illusion that we 203 00:17:56,359 --> 00:18:00,759 will maintain while controlling you. Goodbye, nice life, sends him out the 204 00:18:00,759 --> 00:18:07,680 door. Well, he believes her. He's had a shiny lab and you 205 00:18:07,720 --> 00:18:11,279 know, lots of degrees and diplomas and all that. So what does he 206 00:18:11,319 --> 00:18:15,400 do? Well, he thinking he doesn't have free will anymore, he gets 207 00:18:15,400 --> 00:18:19,519 a little self indulgent, a little bit aggressive, He a little negligent in 208 00:18:19,559 --> 00:18:23,720 how he decides what to do, and pretty soon, by indulging some of 209 00:18:23,759 --> 00:18:29,079 his worst features, he's got himself in trouble with the law, and he's 210 00:18:29,200 --> 00:18:33,200 arrested and he's put on trial. And at the trial he says, but 211 00:18:33,319 --> 00:18:37,680 your honor, I don't have free will. I'm under the control of the 212 00:18:37,759 --> 00:18:41,920 team at the neurosurgery clinic. I'd say, what's this and they call the 213 00:18:42,200 --> 00:18:47,359 neurosurgeon to the stand. I said, did you tell this man that you 214 00:18:47,440 --> 00:18:49,759 were controlling as every movie? He didn't have free will? He says, 215 00:18:49,839 --> 00:18:52,599 yeah, I did. Yeah, but I was just messing with his head. 216 00:18:52,640 --> 00:18:56,640 That was just a joke. I didn't think he'd believe me. Now 217 00:18:56,720 --> 00:19:00,400 right there, I think we can stop taking deep breath and say, well, 218 00:19:00,519 --> 00:19:03,039 she did something really bad. She really harmed that man. In fact, 219 00:19:03,640 --> 00:19:10,720 her little joke telling him that actually accomplished non surgically pretty much what she 220 00:19:10,799 --> 00:19:15,920 claimed accomplished surgically. She disabled him by telling him he didn't have free will. 221 00:19:17,480 --> 00:19:22,119 She pretty much turned his free will off and turned him into a morally 222 00:19:22,480 --> 00:19:26,000 incompetent person. Now, if we agree that she did a bad thing, 223 00:19:26,039 --> 00:19:30,559 if nobody recommends people play jokes like this, what are we to say about 224 00:19:30,559 --> 00:19:36,400 the neuroscientists who are telling the public every day. We've shown in our neuroscience 225 00:19:36,480 --> 00:19:42,359 labs that nobody has free will. I think if the neuroscientists recognize that what 226 00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:48,519 my imaginary neurosurgeon did was irresponsible, they should think Sarah seriously about whether it's 227 00:19:48,519 --> 00:19:55,279 irresponsible of them to make these claims about free will. You know, here, 228 00:19:55,359 --> 00:19:57,200 I am in my own life, and I've come to the conclusion that 229 00:19:57,839 --> 00:20:03,039 even if I don't have free will, even if my brain's going to do 230 00:20:03,119 --> 00:20:08,279 what it does automatically, I'm still operating as if, like I have an 231 00:20:08,359 --> 00:20:15,880 illusion of but I'm conducting myself with the idea the desire to do the right 232 00:20:15,960 --> 00:20:19,799 thing. So even if it's a foregone conclusion and I'm acting it out, 233 00:20:19,920 --> 00:20:26,079 even if it's make believe, it's it's something that should happen. And then 234 00:20:26,119 --> 00:20:30,119 I thought, well, if I'm pretending I have agency, was that make 235 00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:36,039 believe also a foregone conclusion in my brain? And I had no choice about 236 00:20:36,119 --> 00:20:40,759 choosing to make believe. You see what I'm talking about? All right? 237 00:20:40,759 --> 00:20:44,680 Well, you free will debaters, I passed the baton to you. You 238 00:20:44,839 --> 00:20:48,880 just go off into your little room, find that basement, sit around the 239 00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:53,039 card table, and you can debate all night. Just don't invite me, 240 00:20:53,559 --> 00:21:00,039 Okay, I just don't have the bandwidth for it. But Daniel Dennett used 241 00:21:00,079 --> 00:21:07,759 to do a lot of speaking about purpose, generating purpose, being handed purpose, 242 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:11,960 especially from a higher power. There was a speech that he did and 243 00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:15,039 this is one of the favorites that I found online. It was back in 244 00:21:15,079 --> 00:21:21,799 two thousand and seven at a TED conference. Now TED stands for Technology, 245 00:21:22,039 --> 00:21:26,359 Entertainment and Design, and these conferences are really slick. They've got like twenty 246 00:21:26,359 --> 00:21:30,440 minute speeches and they bring in thinkers and scientists, philosophers and just everyday people 247 00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:36,119 from all around the world to present. So this is a TED conference two 248 00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:41,559 thousand and seven with multiple presenters. Rick Warren was on the roster. Rick 249 00:21:41,599 --> 00:21:48,240 Warren is a world famous Baptist pastor. He founded the mega Church, one 250 00:21:48,279 --> 00:21:52,079 of the biggest churches in the United States. It's called Saddleback Church, Lake 251 00:21:52,119 --> 00:21:57,720 Forest, California, and Rick Warren really rose to fame. It's saddled Back 252 00:21:59,319 --> 00:22:03,680 by the way, he was excommunicated from his own church and from the Southern 253 00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:10,960 Baptist Convention entirely. They kicked him out. You want to know why he 254 00:22:11,039 --> 00:22:21,599 committed the sin of hiring a female pastor, because the Southern Baptist Convention apparently 255 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:27,799 thinks it's the year eleven hundred. But Rick ain't hurting because he published in 256 00:22:27,799 --> 00:22:30,480 two thousand and two. He's got a lot of books, but the one 257 00:22:30,519 --> 00:22:36,759 that he's known for published twenty two years ago. It's called Purpose Driven Life, 258 00:22:37,599 --> 00:22:44,160 a book which is beloved by Christians. It exploded all of these years 259 00:22:44,240 --> 00:22:48,000 later. It's been translated into one hundred and thirty seven languages. It has 260 00:22:48,039 --> 00:22:56,119 sold fifty million copies. Imagine the Royalty checks on that. So Rick Warren 261 00:22:56,200 --> 00:23:02,559 is speaking at ted about his book, which makes several claims, and Daniel 262 00:23:02,599 --> 00:23:06,480 Dennett followed up with the rebuttal. But the claims go like this, Okay, 263 00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:14,039 people should obey God's word even when it doesn't make any sense. And 264 00:23:14,839 --> 00:23:22,440 he also said to have meaning in life, you have to deny natural selection. 265 00:23:23,079 --> 00:23:29,720 With Rick Warren sitting in the audience, Daniel Dennett took the stage to 266 00:23:29,920 --> 00:23:33,880 push back just a little bit. Here's a clip, Well, this from 267 00:23:33,279 --> 00:23:37,000 a Purpose Driven Life. The Bible must become the authoritative standard of it for 268 00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:41,519 my life. The compass I rely on for direction, the council I listen 269 00:23:41,559 --> 00:23:45,720 to for making wise decisions, and the benchmark I use for evaluating everything. 270 00:23:45,759 --> 00:23:51,519 Well maybe, okay, but what's going to follow from this? And here's 271 00:23:51,559 --> 00:23:55,680 one that does concern me. Well, remember I quoted him before with this 272 00:23:55,759 --> 00:24:00,279 one. Surrendered People obey God's word even if it doesn't make sense, and 273 00:24:00,319 --> 00:24:07,920 that's that's a problem. Don't ever argue with a double He's better at arguing 274 00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:12,680 than you are, having had thousands of years to practice. Now, Rick 275 00:24:12,759 --> 00:24:18,880 Warren didn't invent this clever move. It's an old move. It's a very 276 00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:23,640 clever adaptation of religions. It's a wild card for disarming any reasonable criticism. 277 00:24:25,200 --> 00:24:29,039 You don't like my interpretation, you've got a reasonable objection to it. Don't 278 00:24:29,079 --> 00:24:36,039 listen. Don't listen. That's the devil speaking. This discourages the sort of 279 00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:41,079 reasoning citizenship it seems to me that we want to have. Okay, So 280 00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:45,240 there's Dan Dennett and he's right there, face to face, eye to I 281 00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:52,759 taking Pastor Warren to task, and he issued an idea, a proposal for 282 00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:57,920 how we might better prepare or educate the next generations. This clip is along 283 00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:03,680 when it runs just over four minutes from that same Ted talk in two thousand 284 00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:07,119 and seven. Here's my proposal. I'm going to just take you a couple 285 00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:11,920 of minutes to explain it. That education in world religions, on world religions 286 00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:15,599 for all of our children, in primary school, in high school, in 287 00:25:15,640 --> 00:25:21,960 public schools, in private schools, and in homeschooling. So what I'm proposing 288 00:25:22,079 --> 00:25:26,799 is, just as we require reading, writing, arithmetic, American history, 289 00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:33,799 so we should have a curriculum on facts about all the religions of the world, 290 00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:40,400 about their history, about their creeds, about their texts, their music, 291 00:25:40,480 --> 00:25:45,680 their symbolisms, their prohibitions, their requirements. And that this should be 292 00:25:45,759 --> 00:25:52,160 presented factually, straightforwardly, with no particular spin, to all of the children 293 00:25:52,599 --> 00:25:57,279 in the country. And as long as you teach them that, you can 294 00:25:57,279 --> 00:26:03,440 teach them anything else you like. That I think is maximal tolerance for religious 295 00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:08,759 freedom. As long as you inform your children about other religions, then you 296 00:26:08,839 --> 00:26:11,799 may, and as early as you like it, whatever you like, teach 297 00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:18,240 them whatever creed you want them to learn, but also let them know about 298 00:26:18,279 --> 00:26:25,400 other religions. Now why do I say that, Because democracy depends on an 299 00:26:25,440 --> 00:26:33,720 informed citizenship. Informed consent is the very bedrock of our understanding of democracy. 300 00:26:33,839 --> 00:26:38,000 Misinformed consent is not worth it. It's like a coin flip it's just not 301 00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:42,960 it doesn't count. Really, democracy depends on informed consent. This is the 302 00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:49,960 way we treat people as responsible adults. Now, children below the age of 303 00:26:51,039 --> 00:26:56,480 consent are special case. Parents. I'm going to use a word that the 304 00:26:57,079 --> 00:27:03,480 pastor Rick just used. Parents are stewards of their children. They don't own 305 00:27:03,519 --> 00:27:08,440 them. You can't own your children. You have a responsibility to the world, 306 00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:12,440 to the state, to them to take care of them. Right, 307 00:27:15,039 --> 00:27:19,279 you may teach them whatever creed you think is most important, but I say 308 00:27:19,319 --> 00:27:23,799 you have a responsibility to let them be informed about all the other creeds in 309 00:27:23,839 --> 00:27:29,440 the world too. Now, the reason I've taken this time is I've been 310 00:27:29,759 --> 00:27:34,000 fascinated to hear some of the reactions to this. One reviewer for a Roman 311 00:27:34,039 --> 00:27:41,920 Catholic newspaper called it totalitarian. It strikes me as a practically libertarian. Is 312 00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:45,559 it totalitarian to require reading, writing, and arithmetic. I don't think so. 313 00:27:47,039 --> 00:27:52,599 All I'm saying is and facts facts only, no values, just facts 314 00:27:52,920 --> 00:28:00,759 about all the world's religions. Another reviewer called it hilarious. Well, I'm 315 00:28:00,799 --> 00:28:04,680 really bothered by the fact that anybody would think that was hilarious. It seems 316 00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:11,839 to me to be such a plausible natural extension of the democratic principles we already 317 00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:18,279 have that. I'm shocked to think anybody would find that just ridiculous. I 318 00:28:18,319 --> 00:28:26,519 know many religions are so anxious about preserving the purity of their faith among their 319 00:28:26,599 --> 00:28:33,960 children that they are intent on keeping their children ignorant of other faiths. I 320 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:38,880 don't think that's defensible. I've got more Daniel Dennett clips, audio clips, 321 00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,079 and just a few, but first I want to cover some of his thoughts, 322 00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:48,920 written thoughts. These are his words my voice, from various books, 323 00:28:48,039 --> 00:28:53,680 publications, speeches, TV shows, etc. Nineteen ninety five from his book 324 00:28:55,039 --> 00:29:00,440 Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Then I was trying to say that you can't have science 325 00:29:00,519 --> 00:29:07,279 without philosophy. Quote. Whenever Darwinism is the topic, the temperature rises because 326 00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:12,880 more is at stake than just the empirical facts about how life on Earth evolved 327 00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:18,359 or the correct logic of the theory that accounts for those facts. One of 328 00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:22,640 the precious things that is at stake is a vision of what it means to 329 00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:32,880 ask and answer the question why. Darwin's new perspective turns several traditional assumptions upside 330 00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:38,400 down, undermining our standard ideas about what ought to count as satisfying answers to 331 00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:45,920 this ancient and inescapable question. Here, science and philosophy get completely intertwined. 332 00:29:47,559 --> 00:29:53,079 Scientists sometimes deceive themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only, at best, 333 00:29:53,519 --> 00:30:02,599 decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science, and that 334 00:30:02,759 --> 00:30:08,640 they themselves are immune to the confusions that philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. 335 00:30:10,119 --> 00:30:15,039 But there is no such thing as philosophy free science. There is only science 336 00:30:15,039 --> 00:30:22,759 whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. The Darwinian Revolution is both 337 00:30:22,799 --> 00:30:30,640 a scientific and a philosophical revolution, and neither revolution could have occurred without the 338 00:30:30,759 --> 00:30:36,960 other. As we shall see, it was the philosophical prejudices of the scientists, 339 00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:41,960 more than their lack of scientific evidence, that prevented them from seeing how 340 00:30:41,039 --> 00:30:48,400 the theory could actually work. But those philosophical prejudices that had to be overthrown 341 00:30:48,839 --> 00:30:55,680 were too deeply entrenched to be dislodged by mere philosophical brilliance. It took an 342 00:30:55,720 --> 00:31:03,400 irresistible parade of hard on scientific facts to force thinkers to take seriously the weird 343 00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:08,119 new outlook that Darwin proposed. Let me lay my cards on the table. 344 00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:14,559 If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever 345 00:31:14,680 --> 00:31:19,880 had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone 346 00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:26,240 else in a single stroke. The idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the 347 00:31:26,279 --> 00:31:32,279 realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, 348 00:31:32,519 --> 00:31:37,480 cause and effect, mechanism and physical law. But it's not just a wonderful 349 00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:47,200 scientific idea. It is a dangerous idea. My admiration for Darwin's magnificent idea 350 00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:52,480 is unbounded. But I too cherish many of the ideas and ideals that it 351 00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:57,079 seems to challenge, and want to protect them. The only good way to 352 00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:00,799 do this, the only way that has a chance in the long run, 353 00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:07,720 is to cut through the smoke screens and look at the idea as unflinchingly, 354 00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:15,480 as dispassionately as possible. Now, you put scientists in philosophers in a room 355 00:32:15,759 --> 00:32:20,400 and you read that quote to them, and then just watch chaos breakout. 356 00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:28,240 And I don't know the answer to this. I tend to think that scientific 357 00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:35,720 answers may not require philosophy. I mean, we're talking about hard data experimentation 358 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:40,799 and coming up with hypotheses. It's not philosophy, is it. But again, 359 00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:44,759 this is above my pay grade. You tell me what you think. 360 00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:50,880 From television, on a show called The Genius of Charles Darwin, Dennett said 361 00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:59,319 that the earth has grown a nervous system and it's us. There's a line 362 00:32:59,359 --> 00:33:02,359 from Breaking the Spell that I really liked, a couple of paragraphs where we 363 00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:09,160 talked about the difference between you and I relying on authorities on a specific subject 364 00:33:09,279 --> 00:33:15,039 or in a field, right scientist to our legitimate, vetted, peer reviewed, 365 00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:22,480 credible experts. We have to at some point rely on that expertise because 366 00:33:22,559 --> 00:33:28,799 they are an authority. Well, what's the difference between that and religious believers 367 00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:34,279 saying that God is their authority, or a pastor or a member of the 368 00:33:34,319 --> 00:33:38,680 clergy or whatever is their authority. Isn't there a difference? Daniel Dennett thought, 369 00:33:38,759 --> 00:33:45,079 So, here's what he said. Quote. Surely just about everybody has 370 00:33:45,119 --> 00:33:51,519 faced a moral dilemma and secretly wished if only somebody, somebody I trusted, 371 00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:58,799 could just tell me what to do. Wouldn't this be morally inauthentic? Aren't 372 00:33:58,839 --> 00:34:05,480 we responsible for making our own moral decisions? Yes? But the virtues of 373 00:34:05,559 --> 00:34:09,280 do it yourself moral reasoning have their limits. And if you decide, after 374 00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:16,800 conscientious consideration, that your moral decision is to delegate further moral decisions in your 375 00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:23,280 life to a trusted expert, then you have made your own moral decision. 376 00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:30,400 You have decided to take advantage of the division of labor that civilization makes possible 377 00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:37,440 and get the help of experts specialists. We applaud the wisdom of this course 378 00:34:37,519 --> 00:34:43,480 in all other important areas of decision making. Don't try to be your own 379 00:34:43,559 --> 00:34:49,360 doctor, the lawyer who represents himself as a fool for a client, and 380 00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:54,280 so forth. Even in the case of political decisions like which way to vote, 381 00:34:54,400 --> 00:35:01,519 the policy of delegation can be defended. Is this a dereliction of one's 382 00:35:01,639 --> 00:35:07,719 duty as a citizen. I don't think so, but it does depend on 383 00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:13,480 my having good grounds for trusting the delegates judgment. That's why those who have 384 00:35:13,559 --> 00:35:19,960 an unquestioning faith in the correctness of the moral teachings of their religion are a 385 00:35:20,039 --> 00:35:28,039 problem if they themselves haven't conscientiously considered on their own whether their pastors or priests, 386 00:35:28,119 --> 00:35:34,079 or rabbis or immams are worthy of this delegated authority over their own lives, 387 00:35:34,159 --> 00:35:40,199 then they are in fact taking a personally immoral stand. This is perhaps 388 00:35:40,199 --> 00:35:45,159 the most shocking implication of my inquiry, and I do not shrink from it, 389 00:35:45,559 --> 00:35:51,960 even though it may offend many who think of themselves as deeply moral. 390 00:35:52,039 --> 00:35:58,239 It is commonly supposed that it is entirely exemplary to adopt the moral teachings of 391 00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:04,599 one's own religion without question, because, to put it simply, it is 392 00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:09,440 the word of God, as interpreted always by the specialists to whom one has 393 00:36:09,599 --> 00:36:15,760 delegated authority. I am urging, on the contrary, that anybody who professes 394 00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:22,039 that a particular point of moral conviction is not discussable, not debatable, not 395 00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:28,360 negotiable, simply because it is the word of God, or because the Bible 396 00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,840 says so, or because that is what all Muslims, Hindus, seeks etc. 397 00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:38,119 Believe, and I am a Muslim, Hindu seekh should be seen to 398 00:36:38,159 --> 00:36:45,159 be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously, 399 00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:52,079 excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not 400 00:36:52,440 --> 00:37:00,639 conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing Dennett said this. He said, there 401 00:37:00,679 --> 00:37:07,480 are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of 402 00:37:07,639 --> 00:37:15,000 fundamentalism of all species, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and 403 00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:21,639 Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Then I find it interesting that 404 00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:28,119 he used the word infections on the issue of the soul. From Dan Dennett. 405 00:37:28,119 --> 00:37:31,559 This is two thousand and four. In a BBC documentary called The Atheism 406 00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:37,920 Tapes. He said, I was once interviewed in Italy and the headline of 407 00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:42,239 the interview the next day was wonderful. I saved this for my collection. 408 00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:45,760 It was, Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots 409 00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:52,079 of tiny robots. And I thought, that's exactly right. Yes we do 410 00:37:52,199 --> 00:37:57,880 have a soul, but it's mechanical, but it's still a soul. It 411 00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:01,239 still does the work that the soul was supposed to do. It is the 412 00:38:01,280 --> 00:38:07,639 seat of reason, it is the seat of moral responsibility. It's why we 413 00:38:07,679 --> 00:38:13,800 are appropriate objects of punishment when we do evil things, why we deserve the 414 00:38:13,920 --> 00:38:19,960 praise when we do good things. It's just not a mysterious lump of wonder 415 00:38:20,039 --> 00:38:27,840 stuff that will outlive us. Here is an interesting one that I don't think 416 00:38:28,039 --> 00:38:31,440 I agree with. And again I've got more quotes coming up in Daniel's voice. 417 00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:37,119 This is from Dennett in Breaking the Spell. He said this. Since 418 00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:42,360 September eleventh, two thousand and one, I've often thought that perhaps it was 419 00:38:42,519 --> 00:38:47,920 fortunate for the world that the attackers targeted the World Trade Center instead of the 420 00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:54,320 Statue of Liberty, or if they had destroyed our sacred symbol of democracy, 421 00:38:55,000 --> 00:39:00,480 I fear we as Americans would have been unable to keep ourselves from indulging in 422 00:39:00,679 --> 00:39:07,719 paroxysms of revenge of a sort the world has never seen before. If that 423 00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:12,519 had happened, it would have befouled the meaning of the Statue of Liberty beyond 424 00:39:12,599 --> 00:39:16,800 any hope of subsequent redemption, if there were any people left to care. 425 00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:22,559 I have learned from my students that this upsetting thought of mine is subject to 426 00:39:22,679 --> 00:39:29,360 several unfortunate misconstrules. So let me expand on it to ward them off. 427 00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:34,800 The killing of thousands of innocence and the World Trade Center was a heinous crime, 428 00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:39,280 much more evil than the destruction of the Statue of Liberty would have been. 429 00:39:40,039 --> 00:39:45,159 And yes, the World Trade center was a much more appropriate symbol of 430 00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:49,960 al Kada's wrath than the statue of Liberty would have been. But for that 431 00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:54,559 very reason, it didn't mean as much as a symbol to us. It 432 00:39:54,719 --> 00:40:04,159 was mammon and plutocrats and globalization, not Lady Liberty. I do suspect that 433 00:40:04,199 --> 00:40:09,400 the fury with which Americans would have responded to the unspeakable defilement of our cherished 434 00:40:09,679 --> 00:40:15,440 national symbol, the purest image of our aspirations as a democracy, would have 435 00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:22,679 made a sane and measured response extraordinarily difficult. This is the great danger of 436 00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:30,039 symbols. They can become too sacred. An important task for religious people of 437 00:40:30,079 --> 00:40:36,079 all faiths in the twenty first century will be spreading the conviction that there are 438 00:40:36,199 --> 00:40:44,480 no acts more dishonorable than harming infidels of one stripe or another, for disrespecting 439 00:40:44,599 --> 00:40:51,760 a flag across a holy text. Now I get his meeting, and I 440 00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:57,760 do agree with eighty five percent of it. We are seeing in this country 441 00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:05,000 the deification of symbols. You must stand and salute and say the pledge toward 442 00:41:05,119 --> 00:41:09,960 the flag. It is mandated because you are free right. And if you 443 00:41:10,079 --> 00:41:15,519 desecrates, if you tear burn whatever the flag you have, become a heretic 444 00:41:15,559 --> 00:41:20,320 in a way, you should be burned at the stake. We are creatures 445 00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:27,679 who respond to symbols that we have imbued meaning to. Somebody sets a history 446 00:41:27,679 --> 00:41:31,519 book on fire, fine, somebody burns a Bible or the Koran, and 447 00:41:31,559 --> 00:41:38,960 it's chaos. So I do understand and agree with his position that symbols that 448 00:41:39,039 --> 00:41:47,199 we take personally will almost always produce an irrational and sometimes very dangerous response rooted 449 00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:54,119 in emotion much more over reason. What I don't necessarily buy is the idea 450 00:41:54,199 --> 00:42:02,480 that our response to the World Trade Center wasn't also an irrational emotional response. 451 00:42:02,719 --> 00:42:07,400 Remember when the towers fell, everybody was saying, drop the nuke, turn 452 00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:12,159 the Middle East to glass. Fuck those people. I mean, that's all 453 00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:17,280 we heard. And it was this weird reductive thing where it wasn't just the 454 00:42:17,519 --> 00:42:22,239 terrorist, it wasn't just Islamic extremists. We heard people a lot of people 455 00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:31,760 saying it's the Muslims, those people practicing idolatry in league with Lucifer who hate 456 00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:37,800 America want to burn us to the ground. Let's burn them to the ground 457 00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:44,400 first. And the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are symbols, symbols of 458 00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:50,639 America and American freedom that people do still take personally. I'll let you discuss 459 00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:53,239 this further, but I take as larger point. Maybe we're more in love 460 00:42:53,920 --> 00:43:00,920 with the Maybe I'm just jaded. Maybe that's it. I just don't get 461 00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:06,480 misty about the freedom icons anymore. Is that just cynicism that comes with age? 462 00:43:06,599 --> 00:43:09,360 I don't know. You know, whenever people stand up and put hand 463 00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:16,639 over heart and sing, oh beautiful, fool spacious guys right for amber ways 464 00:43:16,679 --> 00:43:22,880 of green, and everybody's starting to feel that vibration of America freedom and their 465 00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:28,119 bones, and I just tend to throw up a little bit in my mouth. 466 00:43:29,519 --> 00:43:32,360 It might just be a me problem. Then. The Statue of Liberty 467 00:43:32,440 --> 00:43:37,079 is remarkable, it's lovely, it's beautiful. I'm glad it is there. 468 00:43:37,199 --> 00:43:42,159 I hope it represents the best of us. But seeing it does not produce 469 00:43:42,199 --> 00:43:46,280 in me the emotional response that Dennett is talking about. Maybe I'm just projecting 470 00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:52,440 me instead of assessing correctly the culture itself. What do you think about that? 471 00:43:53,679 --> 00:43:58,920 Let me take a short break. I've got more in memoriam. Hang 472 00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:09,480 on. We're taking a few minutes this week to remember the late Daniel Dennets, 473 00:44:09,800 --> 00:44:15,800 supposedly one of the four horsemen of atheism, and we've talked a little 474 00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:20,079 bit about that already. He passed away on the nineteenth of this month. 475 00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:24,000 I think there are some who might be worried that we are deifying Daniel Dennet. 476 00:44:24,440 --> 00:44:30,719 I do not. I think we listen, we observe, we analyze, 477 00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:34,679 we assess, we agree, we disagree. And he said some problematic 478 00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:38,480 things. I remember think he went after feminists at one point, and I'm 479 00:44:38,519 --> 00:44:43,880 trying to remember exactly what was said. You can elaborate or correct me, 480 00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:47,400 but I just it just rang false with me. As we talk about equality 481 00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:52,360 for all, and in my own life, I embrace the word. I 482 00:44:52,440 --> 00:44:55,119 think the word feminism is just fine. You can call it egalitarianism. But 483 00:44:55,199 --> 00:45:00,000 this idea of trying to promote gender equality across the board, I don't think 484 00:45:00,039 --> 00:45:04,960 that fight is over. But it's not like I look at Dan and disagree 485 00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,599 and say screw that guy, because I feel like he brought a lot to 486 00:45:07,679 --> 00:45:15,239 the conversation. He was massively involved in something called the Clergy Project. I 487 00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:20,559 probably should have mentioned this earlier in the broadcast because it's such a big deal. 488 00:45:20,639 --> 00:45:23,159 You may have heard about it, but let me elaborate. This is 489 00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:31,440 the creation of a group of pastors secretly atheists, yet they remain in the 490 00:45:31,519 --> 00:45:37,639 pulpits wondering, what in the hell am I going to do now? Man? 491 00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:39,760 I know that feeling. I work for a job where I was producing 492 00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:45,239 videos for mostly churches. At midlife, I think I was pushing forty. 493 00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:49,719 What am I going to do if I shouldn't be promoting churches? Because I 494 00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:52,559 don't want to do this anymore. But this is my skill set. Where 495 00:45:52,559 --> 00:45:55,559 am I going to go? Well? The genesis of the Clergy project takes 496 00:45:55,639 --> 00:45:59,360 us back to nineteen eighty four. Now stick with me. I'll try to 497 00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:05,199 make this quick. Dan Barker he's the current co president of the Freedom From 498 00:46:05,519 --> 00:46:13,760 Religion Foundation, A former evangelical preacher and I mean hardcore Pentecostal speaking in tongue's 499 00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:20,800 Bible literalist pastor Dan Barker. But in nineteen eighty four he appeared on Oprah 500 00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:27,360 Winfrey's show called Am Chicago. This is before she went global, and Dan 501 00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:34,519 came out as an atheist right there on television, and right away he started 502 00:46:34,559 --> 00:46:40,000 to get mail from pastors all around the United States who were saying I saw 503 00:46:40,079 --> 00:46:45,440 your interview. I can't tell anybody I don't believe either, but I'm still 504 00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:49,480 a preacher. I don't know what to do next. I just had to 505 00:46:49,599 --> 00:46:55,679 tell somebody. Dan Barker started to compile their stories well. In two thousand 506 00:46:55,679 --> 00:47:00,280 and eight, Dan Barker was featured in an article in Psychology Today. It 507 00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:06,760 was called an Atheist in the Pulpit. After that went public, more and 508 00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:12,960 more mail started coming in. This whole time, Richard Dawkins had been speaking 509 00:47:13,039 --> 00:47:17,559 with Daniel Dennett about what might be done with all of this, with the 510 00:47:17,639 --> 00:47:23,599 letters, with these poor people, non believing clergy looking for a way out. 511 00:47:24,639 --> 00:47:31,519 Now we jumped to twenty ten, qualitative researcher Linda Lascola and Daniel Dennetz 512 00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:37,800 helped to fuel and operate a pilot study called Preachers who Are Not Believers. 513 00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:43,960 That study included many of the folks who had originally sent letters to Dan Barker. 514 00:47:44,039 --> 00:47:49,880 So it's all starting to come together. The full scope of this research 515 00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:55,039 project would culminate in a book released in twenty thirteen called Caught in the Pulpit, 516 00:47:55,559 --> 00:48:00,960 Leaving Belief Behind, and around that time, actually just a bit earlier, 517 00:48:01,360 --> 00:48:09,400 the Clergy Project was formed pastors who reached out and went through a strenuous 518 00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:15,559 vetting process to make sure they weren't fakes or moles trying to rat out their 519 00:48:15,559 --> 00:48:22,800 fellow pastors by pretending there was a very intensive background check. The Clergy Project 520 00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:30,840 that first had like fifty pastors involved, and today it has hundreds and hundreds 521 00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:37,559 and hundreds of people who are still preachers, and yet they are atheists desperate 522 00:48:37,679 --> 00:48:46,239 to find a way out. Clergyproject dot org, and don't be hard on 523 00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:52,480 these people. I know what it's like to feel like you're financially held hostage. 524 00:48:52,559 --> 00:48:57,760 Many of these pastors would talk about how their own sermons changed. Instead 525 00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:02,440 of Adam and Eve and Noah's Ark and Moses and the Exodus and the Nativity 526 00:49:02,519 --> 00:49:07,719 story and Jesus on the Cross and Heaven and Hell, they were preaching more 527 00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:14,239 about good people doing good things, embracing the moments, kind of a humanistic 528 00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:19,159 thing. They were preaching humanism, and they were slowly starting to take all 529 00:49:19,199 --> 00:49:22,960 of the magic and all of the literal Bible dogma, etc. And they 530 00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:28,480 were just sort of taking it and suddenly sweeping it out, hoping nobody else 531 00:49:28,679 --> 00:49:32,679 would notice. They became motivational speakers in a way, and their sermons reflected 532 00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:38,320 that, afraid to tell their peers what happens if you're a pastor and you 533 00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:44,199 go, hey, Bob, I don't think I buy any of this anymore. 534 00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:50,119 And then Bob tells the church board or the religious organization, which is 535 00:49:50,159 --> 00:49:53,840 the umbrella for the denomination, and you find yourself on the street with no 536 00:49:54,000 --> 00:50:02,599 options. Clergyproject dot org is a re for them, and Daniel Dennett was 537 00:50:02,639 --> 00:50:08,800 a big part of it. What about consciousness? There was a Google talk 538 00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:15,320 that Daniel Dennett did about ten years ago. We talked about things called intuition 539 00:50:15,639 --> 00:50:22,000 pumps and other tools for thinking, and these were his thoughts on consciousness. 540 00:50:22,679 --> 00:50:30,000 I think the consciousness is like reproduction and metabolism and self repair, healing, 541 00:50:30,119 --> 00:50:37,760 blood clotting. It's a very interestingly complex and deeply recursive biological phenomenon. It 542 00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:43,320 is not in the interesting sense. And there's many senses of consciousness, in 543 00:50:43,360 --> 00:50:47,039 the sense that we in this rumor consciousness, which is this sort of anchoring 544 00:50:47,079 --> 00:50:52,400 its home base from our own experience and our reading of literature. You know, 545 00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:54,880 we read novels and things like that. We have this sense of what 546 00:50:54,920 --> 00:51:00,480 a conscious life is like I think we're the only creatures that have that kind 547 00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:02,280 of conscious life. I don't think dogs have it. I don't think dolphins 548 00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:07,280 have it. They're sentient, they're awake, they feel pain, but they 549 00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:14,079 don't have most of what makes human consciousness so important. And I think that 550 00:51:14,079 --> 00:51:20,239 that phenomenon is in the end software, and I think it has to be 551 00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:25,000 installed. I think so it is an implication of my view. And don't 552 00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:30,280 try this at home, don't test this that if a human baby could be 553 00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:35,480 raised entirely without any interaction with other human beings, have cut off from language, 554 00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:38,880 if it could grow to adulthood without benefit of all the thinking tools that 555 00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:44,159 would normally be installed in the course of just growing up in a social community, 556 00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:49,519 I think that human being would have a mind so profoundly different from ours 557 00:51:49,559 --> 00:51:54,199 that we would all pretty well agree it wasn't he or she wasn't really conscious. 558 00:51:54,760 --> 00:52:00,159 Now that may be a very eccentric notion of consciousness, but if you're 559 00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:04,320 wanting to know do I think that if you look for a better notion of 560 00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:07,559 consciousness, or one that isn't so eccentric, and you start thinking about what 561 00:52:07,679 --> 00:52:12,599 it is, you know the capacity to experience color and flavor, and to 562 00:52:12,679 --> 00:52:16,039 have quality, as philosophers say, I think that's all pretty badly confused, 563 00:52:16,039 --> 00:52:21,280 and I've tried to say how and why over the years, But part of 564 00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:27,639 what makes it confusing is that people want consciousness to be, to use a 565 00:52:27,679 --> 00:52:35,039 technical term, super califragilistic xpialidocious. And if you're not talking about something that 566 00:52:35,199 --> 00:52:42,400 is super califragilistic xpialidocious, they think you're not talking about consciousness. And there's 567 00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,599 a quote my friend Lee Siegel is a philosopher and a magician, a very 568 00:52:45,599 --> 00:52:50,920 fine stage magician, wrote a wonderful book on Indian street magic called Net of 569 00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:53,519 Magic, and there's a passage in there I love to quote and he says, 570 00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:57,519 I tell my friends I'm writing a book on magic, and they ask, 571 00:52:58,039 --> 00:53:04,960 do you mean real magic? And by real magic they mean pharmaturgical acts 572 00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:08,000 and so forth, And he says, no, not real magic, sleight 573 00:53:08,039 --> 00:53:12,320 of hands, you know, stage magic. And then he goes out and 574 00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:16,599 says, in other words, the kind of magic you can actually do is 575 00:53:16,639 --> 00:53:25,320 not real magic. Real magic is the kind of doesn't exist. Interesting that 576 00:53:25,400 --> 00:53:30,079 Daniel Dennet would often talk about, and I agree with this, by the 577 00:53:30,079 --> 00:53:37,559 way that the majority of people who say they believe in God actually believe in 578 00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:43,760 belief. This is Daniel Dennett interviewed on the Science Network May fifteenth, two 579 00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:46,559 thousand and nine. I guess it's my favorite chapter in the book is about 580 00:53:46,559 --> 00:53:52,880 belief and belief. I began to notice that arguing against the existence of God 581 00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:57,840 is sort of pointless in most circumstances, because it's not so much that people 582 00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:00,480 believe in God as they believe in belief in God. And in fact, 583 00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:05,519 more people believe in belief in God than believe in God. How do I 584 00:54:05,559 --> 00:54:10,239 know that, Well, with very few exceptions, people who actually believe in 585 00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:13,880 God also believe and belief in God. That is, they think it's a 586 00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:15,679 good thing. They are all for it. They're proud of the fact that 587 00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:21,440 they believe in God. They think it's good. Once in a while you 588 00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:25,000 will encounter somebody who actually deeply, bitterly regrets the fact that they can't shake 589 00:54:25,039 --> 00:54:29,679 their belief in God. They wish they could, but they're just it's a 590 00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:34,760 weakness. That's a rare individual. So all those people believe in belief in 591 00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:37,039 God, and then the people who don't believe in God, they believe many 592 00:54:37,079 --> 00:54:40,519 of them just believe in belief in God. So there's more all told. 593 00:54:40,880 --> 00:54:44,760 And the more I thought about it, the more I explore this, I 594 00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:47,719 discovered how true that is. For instance, I would say, with few 595 00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:55,760 exceptions, the most hysterical and vitriolic criticisms of my book have been from people 596 00:54:55,800 --> 00:55:00,400 who themselves declare themselves not religious, they don't need them life, but they 597 00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:07,079 are the self appointed defenders of religion, and they believe in belief in God, 598 00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:12,000 and they view me as mounting an attack on this, and in a 599 00:55:12,039 --> 00:55:15,639 way that I am. I'm saying the belief and belief in God is what 600 00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:19,440 is really standing in the way. It's what's doing all the work today, 601 00:55:20,599 --> 00:55:23,800 and let's do one more to finish us off today. On the question of 602 00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:28,280 a universe that has no meaning, and I've heard this from apologists, So 603 00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:31,039 if you don't believe in God, how could you have any purpose? If 604 00:55:31,039 --> 00:55:37,960 the universe doesn't care? Why bother Daniel Dennett's thoughts on that. There's two 605 00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:40,480 ways of looking at it. There's the old fashioned way, which is the 606 00:55:40,519 --> 00:55:45,800 trickle down theory of meaning. Our lives can't have meaning unless we are the 607 00:55:45,880 --> 00:55:51,199 lesser products of something. Even more meaningful than we are God. We're God's 608 00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:55,960 creations, God's army, God's tools, God's toys, God's playthings. That's 609 00:55:57,000 --> 00:56:01,079 what gives us meaning. We inherit it from the big The other way of 610 00:56:01,079 --> 00:56:06,000 looking at it is the bubble up theory of meaning, which says the universe 611 00:56:06,039 --> 00:56:09,199 starts off without any meaning and there really is no point to it, but 612 00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:15,000 it's possible for life to evolve, and it does, and we eventually show 613 00:56:15,079 --> 00:56:22,280 up, and we are meaning makers and we care. Initially, we just 614 00:56:22,400 --> 00:56:27,679 care because that comes along with our instincts as part of our biology. But 615 00:56:28,519 --> 00:56:32,280 as we think and reflect and care, things being to matter more to us, 616 00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:37,159 and what could be more important than the things that matter the most to 617 00:56:37,239 --> 00:56:45,480 us? That's who we are. And we can meet in rational exploration and 618 00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:50,760 mutual persuasion and decide, here are the things that are really important? Do 619 00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:52,840 we all agree? Now, maybe there's always going to be a few outliers, 620 00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:57,079 people that just don't get the point of it or think go their own 621 00:56:57,159 --> 00:57:00,280 way, well, okay, as long as they don't hurt us. But 622 00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:04,480 pretty much there's agreement about what ought to be done, what a good life 623 00:57:04,519 --> 00:57:07,760 is, what a good life for others is there's always rooms for improvement once 624 00:57:07,800 --> 00:57:14,920 you've got that, and that's homegrown ethics. It's not an edict from on 625 00:57:15,119 --> 00:57:19,320 high. You don't have to be told by an eternal being what's right and 626 00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:22,960 wrong. You figure out what right and wrong is, then you're motivated to 627 00:57:23,079 --> 00:57:29,280 act on this. And I look around the world and see so many wonderful 628 00:57:29,280 --> 00:57:32,480 things that I love and enjoy and am the beneficiary of, whether it's art 629 00:57:32,559 --> 00:57:37,199 or music, or medicine or clothing and food and all the rest. I'd 630 00:57:37,239 --> 00:57:40,880 like to add a little to that. That's the way that rather than thanking 631 00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:47,239 God is non existent benefactor, the way to thank the human beings that created 632 00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:52,960 all this is to create a little bit more if I can, and add 633 00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:57,559 to the goodness in the world. Daniel Dannet born on the twenty eighth of 634 00:57:57,639 --> 00:58:04,159 March nineteen forty two, assed away on April the nineteenth, twenty twenty four, 635 00:58:04,519 --> 00:58:09,159 at the age of eighty two. Go out there and spread some goodness, 636 00:58:09,719 --> 00:58:15,239 make some meaning, and thank you for listening. Follow The Thinking Atheist 637 00:58:15,400 --> 00:58:21,360 on Facebook and Twitter for a complete archive of podcasts and videos. Products like 638 00:58:21,440 --> 00:58:25,960 mugs and t shirts featuring The Thinking Atheist logo links to atheist pages and resources, 639 00:58:25,960 --> 00:58:30,880 and details on upcoming free thought events and conventions. Log onto our website, 640 00:58:31,159 --> 00:58:36,440 Thethinkingatheist dot com.