Religion as a naturalistic process

57 Minutes. Good grief! How long do you think my attention span is, anyway?

56 minutes?

Ten minutes in and Dennet has hit on one of the reasons folks like to believe in the immortality of the soul. Of course the bible does not support that idea. . . What can I say?

Still talking about man's inability to deal with death a few minutes later. So far he is using this fear of unknown as a basis for religion.

16 minutes:
Hmm. The Define God thread would have interested him.

18 minutes:
Suggestion that the universe itself may, in fact, be God. No personality suggested, however.

20 minutes:
Now suggesting that man particularly feels he must assign personality to naturalistic events.

21 minutes:
Claiming that today's religion does not resemble that of 2000 years ago. I disagree in one particular.

23 minutes:
Relating the need to search for God to the craving for sugar? That would seem a spurious connection.

25 minutes:
Stopped for a break.

Nobody else? Why should I continue?

Please continue Neo. You seem to the only one with enough fortitude to go through all this.

It's kind of tedious. I'll have to wait untilI have enough time.

As, unfortunately, i am currently restricted to dial-up, i have not attempted to access the video. This is, however, a topic of interest to me. If there were a transcript available, i'd be happy to read it.

Very interesting video. Dennett's remarks have been echoed by me and others on site when we asked for explanations from members of organized religions on how religious tenets dovetail with rational explanations, and if they can't be explained rationally why society itself should pay lip service to them and use them as a basis for social actions.

I particularly like Dennett's remark that reading Saint Thomas Aquinas or Ansalem never turned an atheist into a Christian.

I noted Bill Moyers quoted Joseph Campbell, my favorite spiritual guru, on several occasions through the discussion.

I refer to the words of Joseph Campbell when speaking of myth and one could replace "myth" with "religion."



From what, where, and how does this thing self-knowledge arise? It seems to arise from waking consciousness. And this revelation produces a sense of its own sustaining force of the mind, and the revelation of the wonder and ultimate mystery of the universe both within and without. What is this self-awareness seeing within and beyond itself?

Self awareness drives us to question what is the meaning of life, and that awareness is the seeker being aware of the seeked, ourselves.. We are the eyes of the world, and by us knowing or as the Gnostics called "gnosis" self-knowledge, of that bigger "thing" beyond ourselves, some call God, we know ourselves better.

Dennett touched on this when he mentioned the wonder of living in the world as a conscious being and feeling grateful for it.

I covered a few more minutes:

Science can explain religion; but religion avoids science in an attempt to protect the idea of God from disproof. The dangerous thing about religion is that it gives a "gold plated excuse to stop thinking".
27
Those who have faith should be willing to expose their belief to political/social scrutiny. Playing the 'faith card' removes topics from scrutiny. Wants to 'take the faith card off the table'.
29
If you say you know the mind of God, how can you explain to us who don't know the mind of God how we can be assured of the truth?
30
Example brought up of Islamic invocation of death penalty for apostates based on faith: Muslims should recognize that Catholics and Jews have long since abandoned this 'error'
32
US was founded on the idea of separation of church and state 'removal of absolutes'. Politics should not be faith based. Those who put religion before state should not be given political power.
36
Dennet claims he is not trying to destroy religion, simply to make sure that religions cannot be or become 'toxic'. One solution he proposes would involve a compulsory national curriculum on world religions for all schools. Feels that only 'benign' religions can survive such scrutiny.
(Might be a good idea)
38 Another break.

End of summation:
38
Re reducing or relating everything to science: Why can we not reduce religion to rational inquiry? We show how magicians ''do their tricks'; we should show how religions 'do their tricks' All religions have their technology for belief maintenance.
40
Moyers, quoting John Kase: "When you walk into the (old, majestic, European) cathedrals, you experience an immediate sense of something other worldly. You feel you are in the presence of many souls. . .and you feel their collective energy as if they were all congregated . . . in that one spot. And even though . . .the cathedral may be filled with many other (people), you feel very much alone with your thoughts and you find them focused in the most extraordinary and spiritual way."

What follows is a discussion of the influence of feeling on faith. (This, in my opinion, is not relevant to whether God exists.)

45
Dennet: Religions create infrastructure for moral teamwork. Examples: Religions worked to eliminate segregation and apartheid.
(I believe he is wimping out here. Religions have been just as instrumental in attempting to maintain these abominable institutions and have only lately got on board because of external humanistic pressures.)
47
But what is frightening to Dennet is the idea that religions claim to have an answer to everything. I'm waiting for him to include other estates besides religion.

48
How do we create humane institutions in which all would be able to agree on the correct moral course? Dennet says we can use ALL the churches sans the 'enforced ignorance of the young'. Example: what if young Muslims were taught the history of other religions? Would they continue in their self destructive jihad? (Back to universal religious education again?)
50
Since the existence of God has been neither proved nor disproved, that should not be the issue. In fact, God means so many different things to so many different people, why fault one for disbelieving the existence of another's god?
54
End

I think I've summed the interview fairly well.

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