In my 1996 copyrighted book on the neurobiology of addictions, Hypoic's Handbook, the Hypoism paradigm of addiction causation, I fully discuss the superstition instinct and even how people get addicted to it. This was ten years ago already. A 1999 article on the superstition instinct is on my web site: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/10thesuperstitioninstinct3100/

Thus, Dennett's book is far from new or original. I've written about this concept to the Brights and presented a paper on the instinct regulating apparatus, which included the superstition instinct, to a 2000 evolutionary psychology meeting which I would guess Dennett attended: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/

So, how does he come off not referring to my writings on this subject in his book? This is my original idea while he pretends it is his. This doesn't sound too kosher to me for an academic. Moreover, because it wasn't his idea he also doesn't understand the full implications of it and his book falls far short of what it should be. That you should be interviewing him instead of me is a disappointment because your readers aren't getting all they need to from this concept.

If we—and by "we" I mean the sham, commodified sense of community that we pass off as group identity in this country—are ever going to break out of this banal opposition of analytical, enlightened scientists to dogmatic, but somehow genuine Christians, somebody has to make it clear that Christianity itself is not the big problem here: it's what supposedly religious Americans do with it that's so nightmarish. America is not drowning in religion, but in a self-indulgence of emotion and thinking that relies increasingly upon old, nearly meaningless cultural institutions and allegiances for a counterfeit gravity that stupefies and prevents any and all genuine criticism. The phenomenon is not terribly conscious of itself (how could it be?), but it is very real. We have very, very few genuine Christians in this country, and while I don't know that I myself would be terribly eager for that not to be the case, it would be quite preferable to our present situation. Most of our zealots are mockeries of the religion and living evidence that it has long since become moribund. Christianity, of course, has historically had a strong appeal for both the most brilliant and the most stupid, who find license to do ill and false comfort within it. But when and where have the latter ever had such a shrill, deafening voice? And when have they ever had so much at stake in keeping it raised?

Known Not Believed

Thumbnail held in any direction.

From an eye it hides millions of suns.

Hiding the promise lives of conviction.

A theme that is an eternal connection.

Lives lived through a daughters and son.

Through time and space life is procreation.

Small as a germ, as large as a whale.

Forebearers born birth the next-bearers.

Life's purpose that no one can assail.

It's a grandeur that will always prevail.

Counts not on granting whispered prayers.

But real passing of the true Holy Grail.

Pleasure is the guide to the fealty.

Sex is not evil, thinking makes it so.

Authority is in truth not authority.

Look not to afterlife but to reality.

Live your life without fear when you go.

And know life continues in seeds you sow.

For living things a soul is not needed

To go to a place that some call Heaven,

Obeying commandments need not be heeded.

Don't let others use your selfishness craved.

Find peace in cosmos' biology haven.

Comfort in the known not in the believed.

Steven McCarty

Copyright ©2006 Steven McCarty

Dennett speaks of the "inversion of reasoning" required for the faithful to see that God is a construct of human biology, not the other way around. If we examine the history of science, we see that this "inversion of reasoning" (or, as I like to call it, "the inversion of the obvious") resides at the heart of scientific discovery: before Copernicus, it was "obvious" that the Earth was the center of the universe; before modern atomic theory, it was "obvious" that solid matter couldn't be largely empty space; before Einstein, it was "obvious" that space and time were constants throughout the universe regardless of perspective; before Darwin, it was "obvious" that all life was just plopped down on the planet in a singular act of creation.

Today, it's "obvious" that religious faith *must* be based on something greater than and external to ourselves. It's exciting to think that Dennett's efforts will bring about another major inversion.

For centuries, the enlightened intellectual elite kept the heresy of their rational beliefs to themselves, knowing full well that trying to reason the common folk out of a gods-and-demi-gods view of existence would serve no purpose other than to sow discord and possibly get their own (the intellectuals') heads on pikes. We can either call that a conspiracy to keep the masses in darkness, or we can call it pragmatic...or even wise. In any case, not much has changed in that regard in the past five hundred years. If 'brights' (and I consider myself one) are so smart, they should be clever enough to keep it to themselves, and make the truth available, certainly...but stop banging the dims over the head with it. It's good enough to keep prayer out of public schools and Darwin into them, legally. But pushing the truth so hard might very well be worse than futile....

If you think that Fundamentalism is bad, try imagining a planet of full-bore Nihilists. Really...let them have their beliefs.

What Dennett says certainly applies to a literal religious belief. What he fails to acknowledge is that a literal religious belief is a dead husk, a rigid framework already bereft of it animating metaphor & symbol. Spirituality isn't about defining or explaining the physical universe, as science does so beautifully. It's about defining how we experience the universe & our place within it. It's about personal meaning, and thus a subjective matter, as opposed to the objective approach of science. Religious literalism tends to cut out half of what makes us human: the wonder of the human mind & its ability to examine the universe & make sense of it. Not for a moment would I sacrifice this half of my humanity!

But what we call spirituality, which encompasses art, psychology, metaphor, symbol -- that's the other half of our humanity, which enables us to engage & appreciate existence at something other than just a rational level. And I wouldn't sacrifice that half any more than I would the rational half. Is it capable of being twisted, misused, channeled into horribly destructive practices? No question! Just as it's capable of being channeled into empathy, compassion, creation, transcendence. What's required is examining this half of ourselves, striving to free it from the chains of literal belief, soul-killing dogma -- from fear, the driving engine of the fundamentalist mind.

The human psyche is an astonishingly complex thing, an interior universe unto itself. Mere reductionism is as poor a tool for understanding it as religious literalism.