A Sense of Self

Supporting Richard Dawkins.

Another letter to Professor Dennett

Dear Professor Dennett,

I have just seen your interview with Johnathan Miller regarding the need to speak out against religion and the risks of "upsetting the moral boat" as a consequence.

This is indeed a grave task to undertake, but surely one that must be undertaken for precisely moral reasons. The moral certainty of religion removes so much of the apparatus that we would otherwise develop for policing our own morals. We can be morally lazy once we have been handed the proscribing tablets.

I contend the very root of the problem (and its solution) lies in the popular perception of our consciousness. We are all happy (scientists as well)... to talk of our "spirit". Whilst some of us may use this term in everyday speech in a poetic sense, I believe the damage has been done in its mere use. The homunculus has been created. This immutable thing strung round our neck like an albatros. This internal fixedness leads us naturally to accept the possibility of an external, immutable spirit. (I'm cutting this short!)

The sensation of consciousness is so remarkable to us, it takes a huge edifice of logical thought to grasp that it may come about naturally, and that, in fact, the idea of "spirit" may be selling the experience of living way short. And it is here, I contend, that the dismantling process should begin.

There is no way that religion will be disassembled through the next few generations. Nor should an attempt to kill it be undertaken. (Ideas can't be killed, but they can be made stronger by a visible attack.) But the removing of this one piece of internal evidence of "spirit" will lead people to release their reflex grip on other such absolutes.

I hope one day that the idea of a god that is outside of physics yet somehow intervenes in the world, that may be beseached to useful effect, will seem as sad and tiny an idea as Erik Von Daniken's that God was an Alien.

Once we have the thinking tools and the habit of a truer way of thinking about our daily experience of life, then we may have the freedom to be truly moral, not merely obedient.

People fear this potential loss of "spirit". You asked at the end of the Johnathan Miller tape. What shall we put in religions place? Well... Mervyn Peake's epitaph read "To have been born at all is miracle enough". And certainly a true sense of our marvelous subtle, capable, sentient selves is a start...But perhaps in place of religion we might actually celebrate our barely credible ability to act and create....celebrate that if enough people dream something, it may oneday come true. Telepathy may come to exist (if you've had the implant and paid your monthly bill). Magic of all sorts is here already (Berstein played Copeland in my house last night). Perhaps one day we may even be the proud possessor of a Spirit, some archive of the essential us.(Make sure to have it backed-up though.)

Rephrasing Arthur C. Clarke, technology will come to look like magic to our primitive eyes, and as the physical stuff of it falls away with the years, it will leave us in a heaven or hell of our own making. Boy, we'll need clear, open minds to get it right......

posted by Phil Rimmer @ 2:28 am