TruthHammer

Dennett spoke at TED in 2006. In the last half he gives an informal and simple discussion on Rick Warrens book “The Purpose Driven Life” (Warren spoke at Ted earlier that day). Here is my transcription:

… “The heart of worship is surrender” and “Surrendered people obey God’s words even if it doesn’t make sense”.

Those words are by Rick Warren. Those are from The Purpose Driven Life and I want to turn now, briefly, to talk about that book (which I’ve read, you’ve all got a copy, you just heard the man). And what I want to do now is say a bit about this book from the design stand point, because I think it’s actually a brilliant book. First of all, the goal, and you heard just now what the goal is, is to bring purpose to the lives of millions… and he has succeeded.

Is it a good goal? In and of itself I’m sure we all agree it is a wonderful goal… he’s absolutely right, there are lots of people out there who don’t have purpose in their life and bringing purpose to there life is a wonderful goal. I give him an A+ on this.

Is the goal achieved? Yes. 30 million copies of this book! [looks at Gore] Al Gore: eat your heart out! I mean, just exactly what Al is trying to do, Rick is doing – I mean, this is a fantastic achievement.

The means… how does he do it? It is a brilliant redesign of traditional Religious themes… updating them, quietly dropping obsolete features, putting new interpretations on other features – this is the evolution of religion that has been going on for thousands of years and hes just the latest brilliant practitioner of it.

I don’t have to tell you this, you just heard the man – excellent incites into human psychology, wise advice on every page. Moreover, he invites us to look under the hood, I really appreciated that, for instance he has an appendix where he explains his choice of translations for different Bible verses.

The book is clear, vivid, accessible, beautifully formatted, just enough repetition – that’s really important. Every time you read it or say it you make another copy in your brain… Every time you read it or say it you make another copy in your brain… with me everybody: Every time you read it or say it you make another copy in your brain. Thank you.

And now we come to my problem, because I am absolutely sincere in my appreciation about all I have said about this book, but I wish it were better.  I have some problems with the book and it would just be insincere of me to not address those problems - I wish he could do this with a revision - a mark-2 version of his book.

“The truth will set you free” – that’s what it says in the bible, and that is something I want to live by too. My problem is, some of the bits in it, I don’t think are true. Now some of this is a difference of opinion, and that is not my main complaint, that’s worth mentioning. Here is a passage

If there was no God, we would all be accidents, the result of astronomical random chance in the universe. You could stop reading this book, because life would have no purpose or meaning or significance. There would be no right or wrong, and no hope beyond your brief years on earth.

Now I just do not believe that – by the way, I find Homer Groening’s film presented a brilliant alternative to that very claim. Yes, there is meaning and a reason for right and wrong, we don’t need a belief in God to be good or have meaning in life.

But that, as I said, that is just a difference of opinion and is not what I’m really worried about. How about this

God designed this planets environment just so we could live in it.

I’m afraid that a lot of people take that sentiment to mean we don’t have to do the sorts of things Al Gore is trying so hard to get us to do. I’m not happy with that sentiment at all, and then I find this:

All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition…that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality have their meaning and explanation in this central fact.

Well that’s Michael Dennett, he’s a creationist, and here I think wait a minute… I read this again I read it 3 or 4 times and think – is he really endorsing intelligent design?  Is he endorsing creationism here?… and you can’t tell so I’m starting to think well, I don’t know, I don’t know if I want to get upset with this yet. But then I read on and I read this:

First: Noah had never seen rain, because prior to the Flood God arrogated the earth from the ground up.

I wish that sentence weren’t in there, because I think it is false. And I think that thinking this way about the history of the planet, after we have just been hearing about the history of the planet for millions of years, discourages people from scientific understanding.

Now, Rick Warren uses scientific terms and factoids in a very interesting way, here is one:

God deliberately shaped and formed you to serve him in a way that makes your ministry unique. He carefully mixed the DNA cocktail that created you.

I think that’s false. Now maybe we want to treat is as metaphorical. Here’s another one:

For instance, your brain can store 100 trillion facts. Your mind can handle 15,000 decisions a second…

Well, it would be interesting to find an interpretation where I would accept that. There might be some way of treating that as true?

Anthropologists have noted that worship is a universal urge, hard-wired by God into the very fiber of our being — an inbuilt need to connect with God.

Well, there is a sense in which I agree with him except I think it has an evolutionary explanation… and what I find deeply troubling in this book is that he seems to be arguing that if you want to be moral, if you want to have meaning in your life, you have to be an intelligent designer, you have to deny the theory of evolution by natural selection and I think on the contrary that it is very important to solving the worlds problems that we take evolutionary biology seriously.

Whose truth are we going to listen to? Well this from Purpose Driven Life:

The Bible must become the authoritative standard for my life: the compass I rely on for direction, the counsel I listen to for making wise decisions, and the benchmark I use for evaluating everything.

Well, maybe okay, but what is going to follow from this… and heres one that does concern me…and remember I quoted him before on this line.

Surrendered people obey God’s words even if it doesn’t make sense.

And that…that’s a problem.

Don’t ever argue with the devil, he’s better at arguing then you are having had thousands of years to practice.

Now, Rick Warren didn’t invent this clever move, it’s an old move, it’s a very clever adaptation of religions. It’s a wild card for disarming any reasonable criticism. You don’t like my interpretation? You’ve got a reasonable objection to it? Don’t listen! Don’t listen! That’s the devil speaking. This discourages the sort of reasoning, citizenship it seems to me, that we want to have.

I’ve got one more problem then I’m through, and I’d really like to get a response if Rick is able to do it

In the Great Commission, Jesus said, “Go to the people of all nations and make them my disciples. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to do everything I have told you.”

The Bible says “Jesus is the only one who can save the world”.

Now here we have seen many maps in the last day or so. Here is one not as beautiful as the others; it simply shows the religions of the world

Now, do we really want to commit ourselves to engulfing all the other religions when their holy books are telling them “don’t listen to the other side, that’s just Satan talking”. It seems to me that that’s a very problematic ship to get on for the future.

I found this sign as I was driving to Main recently in front of a church – “Good without God becomes zero”. Sort of cute, a very clever little Meme. I don’t believe it, and I think this idea, popular as it is, not in this guise but in general, is itself one of the main problems that we face. If you are like me you know many wonderful committed, engaged, atheists/agnostics who are being very good without God. And you also know many religious people who hide behind their sanctity instead of doing good works. So I wish we could drop this meme, I wish this meme would go extinct. Thanks very much for your attention.