(APPLAUSE) Well, thank you so much
for that. Thank you so much for inviting
me back to the Opera House. I remember
the first time I spoke here, I thought, "This is definitely
going to be the last time," but it's now, I think,
even my fourth time here, so it's an incredibly
generous gesture on the part not only of the Opera House but also of
the whole city of Sydney. I can't thank you enough. What I want to talk about today
is my new book and the themes
that underlie it, and I guess it's worth saying
that throughout my career, I've been in search of guidance. I don't believe
that the business of living is very obvious. It's not very obvious to me. On a daily basis, I'm reminded
of how little I know and how things are
extremely complicated and don't necessarily
have easy answers. And this has led me to look
in a number of different areas for what I could
broadly call wisdom. I've looked at
the world of philosophy. I've looked at the world
of literature, of art, of sociology, and then a few years ago,
I began to be interested in the field of religion. Now, this surprised me
as much as anyone else because I didn't happen
to believe anything, and still
don't believe anything, and in our society,
we assume, naturally, that those who don't believe won't really care very much
for religion and won't be able
to see anything in it, but I suppose
my whole argument is that that's perhaps
not entirely true. One of the major divisions
of the world nowadays is between those who believe
and those who don't, between atheists, or agnostics,
and believers, and for about the last,
I would say, 10 years or so, it's been relatively clear,
in the minds of many, what being an atheist means. Being an atheist means someone who not only believes
that God doesn't exist, but it also means someone who thinks that anyone
who believes that God does exist is a simpleton. (LAUGHTER) Or an idiot,
to put it more politely. So, in other words, a rather virulent
kind of atheism stalks the land that essentially believes that there is something
quite wrong with believers. They are not simply making
another choice. They made very much
the wrong choice and need their errors
pointed out to them in intellectual ways. They've made
an intellectual error, and therefore, they need
an intellectual corrective. I've got a few quibbles
with this, and my approach
is slightly different. I don't believe that the question of
God's existence or non-existence is the most interesting one
in this topic. In fact, I think it's
incredibly boring and sterile, because one never really
makes any headway. You know, on the one hand,
you've got the believers, who think the atheists
are going to hell, and on the other hand,
you've got the atheists, who think that the believers
are rather stupid, and that kind of divide
is, for me, painful and sad, and I don't really want
to dwell on it. So I'm taking
a different road. For me, I am an atheist, and
so I want to begin, really, now with something
which may surprise you, and if you feel
very strongly about it, please make your ways
to the exit, and I won't hold
any grudges, but, you know,
let's be honest with each other. I don't think God exists. Now, let's move on. -(LAUGHTER)
-If we can. I think that's
the end of the matter. -Now, the greater question is...
-(LAUGHTER) ..where... The greater question is, where
are we gonna go from here? Now we've settled that question,
where are we gonna go from here? How are we going to live a
good life? How is our society... How are our societies
to be managed with that insight in mind? And I suppose
I'm writing for someone who's a little bit like me,
who thinks something like this. I don't believe
in the doctrines of religion, but I do like singing
Christmas carols, and I quite like some of the
passages of the Old Testament, and I love
the music of Bach, and there's something
about Zen Buddhist temples, and there's something about
the moral structure that you find
in certain religions, etc, etc. You know the sort of person -
someone who cannot believe but is attracted
to aspects of religion. Now, for too long,
the choice has been either you sign up
to all the doctrines, involving many
supernatural incidents, etc, and then you get
all those nice bits, or you find you can't
sign up to these doctrines, and then you're left
in a sort of wasteland, where there's a lot
that isn't really attended to. I want to suggest
a different strategy. I want to suggest it
not just for myself but, as it were,
for our own times, and that's a strategy
of stealing from religions, that atheists should learn
to inform themselves about what religions
are up to and then selectively
steal the best bits. Now, this has been described
to me sometimes as a bit of
a pick-and-mix approach, and the truth is,
that's exactly what it is, and I'm very, very proud
of pick-and-mix when it comes to religion. Some people say, you know, I've rifled through
the buffet of religions. Well, that's great. I think
that religions are a buffet. They lie before us, and a lot of
what you might put on your plate is, to my eyes,
not that appetising. But there are
some really lovely bits, so I'm gonna go round
with my plate around some major religions
and pick the nicest bits, in my eyes. That is my overt strategy. I don't mean to offend, but I think that if
you'd believe, as I do, that religions are
essentially cultural products, that they were made
by humans, then there seems to be nothing
wrong with choosing among them like one would
with any work of culture. I mean, imagine...
Take music. You know,
imagine you like the Beatles, and somebody said, "Oh, right,
you like the Beatles, "so I hope you're
committed to the Beatles "and will listen
to every single track "and never deviate
and make no time for, "you know,
"Robbie Williams, "because, really,
you must stick to the Beatles," that would seem bizarre. We naturally rifle through
the buffet of cultures, be it in music
or in literature - you can go from a bit of Jane
Austen to a bit of Shakespeare to a bit of James Joyce,
and that's allowed. You can create a playlist. And that's what
I want to suggest that contemporary society can do
as regards religion too. So, what I want to do tonight
is take you through the buffet and show you the bits
that I'm picking. You may want to pick out
other bits. What I'm trying
to show you is a method, and... 'Cause I think
at the end of the day, the method is more important
than particular choices, but... Let me take you through
some of these choices. So one area that I think
religions are fascinating in is the area of education. Now, education is something
that the secular world prides itself
on taking very seriously. Huge amounts of money
are devoted to education, and... Now, the question is,
what is education for? Well, when politicians
talk about it, the prime explanation is
that education will provide us with the skills necessary
to take up a place in modern capitalism. So education will give us
technical and business skills to make our societies
richer and safer. But there's another claim
that you often hear made on behalf of modern education, and you sometimes catch it
during the more lyrical moments of politicians' speeches or at the end
of graduation ceremonies. And that's the suggestion that
education can, in some ways, make you into
a better human being, a fuller, richer,
nobler person - it can make you
into a grown-up citizen. Now, I like those claims. I think they do sound
rather beautiful. And I want to explore them,
because I think in some ways, we've failed to honour
that second claim associated with education, and I think we've
partly failed to honour it because we've forgotten
about religion. Let me explain. In the 19th century,
in the UK, church attendance
started falling off a cliff. In the middle
of the 19th century, the numbers really collapsed
year by year. And this set off a real panic
amongst many people, who wondered where on earth
society was going to find its sources of consolation,
its ethical framework, its guidance,
its morality - where were these things
gonna be found? They had been the preserve
of religion. Where were they
gonna be found? Now, there was
one influential group among whom you might call the
chattering classes of Britain who came up with
a fascinating answer. People like John Stuart Mill
and Matthew Arnold suggested that there was a ready-made
replacement for religion, and that replacement was called,
with a capital 'C', Culture, works of culture, ranging
from the essays of Plato, the plays of Shakespeare,
the novels of Jane Austen - they comprised a corpus
of knowledge and wisdom that could do very much
all the things that religions
have traditionally done. They too could be
sources of guidance, of morality, of consolation. In other words,
culture can replace Scripture. That was the dream
of a certain kind of reformer in the mid-19th century. Now, I actually think
this was a really good idea. I fervently believe
that culture can get us through some of the great challenges
of our life. I'd add a few more things,
like cinema and photography and music, but all of these things together
are vital tools to a good life, and I think these reformers
were absolutely right. The problem is that
that insight has fallen entirely
by the wayside as regards the modern
educational establishment. I mean, imagine if you went to
any university, in Australia, or even anywhere in the world -
say you went to Harvard, apparently
the best university - and you said, "Look,
I've come to study at Harvard "because I want to find
a moral framework. "I need ethical guidance. "I need to learn how to
love, to live and to die." The administration people would start looking at you
so strangely, they'd be
dialling up the ambulance, if not the insane asylum. This is simply not what
the modern educational system believes it's
in the business of doing. It doesn't believe that
it's providing ethical guidance, a moral framework
or consolation. And the reason it doesn't
is that it assumes that people, once they've become adults, sort of know how to live. It's a fairly obvious business,
knowing how to live. You know,
you get up in the morning and you find a life partner
and you have children, you find a job
that you like and you watch your parents die
and your friends get ill, and eventually you're diagnosed
with a fatal illness, and then it's time for you
to head to hospital and gradually
shut the coffin and slide yourself
easily into the earth, and it's kind of obvious -
we don't need help. All of that's kind of
pretty much taken care of without any further need. Now, that's their view,
so their view is, "Don't drag culture
into the business "of telling us how to live. "A proper academic,
a proper university, "does not soil itself
with these questions." And that's why the
university education system is suspicious
of questions of relevance. You know, "Why do we want to
make this thing relevant? "There's no need. "We're rational beings,
fully in command of ourselves, "and we can make this journey
on our own, thanks very much." Now, religions start from a completely different
point of view. For a start,
for religions, we're only just
holding it together. All of us are in trouble,
real trouble. For religions, all the major
religions, at various points, call us children. And what do children need? They
need help. They need guidance. And so religions assume us
to be broken creatures who throughout our lives
are going to need help. There is nothing obvious
about the business of living, and we will need assistance
throughout it, throughout our lives, so guidance is
absolutely fundamental. You know, the Christian concept
of original sin has many dark undertones
and associations, but really what it's trying
to get you to take on board is that from
the very beginning, there's something
a bit wrong with you, and that's what religions
tend to believe, I think, not wrongly,
as I'll go on to show, so... So religions start
with this idea of our fragility, and they see themselves
as in the business of helping us
along that journey. I don't necessarily believe
in the advice they give us at every stage
along that journey. In fact,
only at very select moments can I agree
with what they say, but, but, I'm fascinated
by how they feel that we need this guidance. Have a think about the ways
in which religions deliver their knowledge
to people. You know,
in the secular world, when people want
to deliver knowledge, they give a lecture. When religions
deliver knowledge, they deliver a sermon. And what's the difference
between a sermon and a lecture? Well, a lecture wants to,
you know, share some facts, and a sermon wants to change
and perhaps save your life - in other words, a much more
urgent, didactic process is going on in religions. So, as I say,
I don't necessarily believe what they're telling us
all the time, or, indeed,
for a lot of the time, but I'm fascinated
by the urgency that religions bring
to the business of living, and I think there's something
that the secular world leaves really quite absent -
there's a real gap here. Now, moving on, moving
slightly along this buffet, kind of a related point - I've been discussing, as it
were, the form of education... ..sorry,
the content of education, but I now want to discuss the
delivery mechanisms of education that religions
are working with. I think religions
can be seen as supremely successful
educational machines. There's never been
educational machines as accomplished as they are. So let's look at
what they do. Let's look at
how come they're so good at getting
their ideas across. Well, one of
their first insights is that human beings
are incredibly forgetful. Our minds are like sieves. Religions have been
very influenced in the West by the Greek insight
that we suffer from what the ancient Greek
philosophers called akrasia. Now, what is akrasia? 'Akrasia' is translated
as 'weakness of will'. So weakness of will suggests
that there are lots of things that intellectually
we know full well but practically
we don't do or abide by because we get swept away
by the hubbub of events. Our wills are weak. And so, for religions, what you need to do
is to strengthen that will in order to make the knowledge that you
actually believe in effective, in order to make ideas stick. So, because
you're so forgetful, one of the first things that
religions recommend that you do is repeat things. All religions
emphasise repetition. Think of prayers,
you know. At 9:00 in the morning,
you get down on your knees and you say some stuff. By midday, you'll have forgotten
it, so back down on your knees. By evening time,
you'll have forgotten it again, so back down
on your knees, you know, and... Now, of course,
in the secular world, we associate repetition
with sterility. It's like, "Oh,
I've already seen that film. "Oh, I read that book
a year ago." That's the sort of
modern approach. Now, the problem is,
with that approach, is that it does mean
that a lot less sticks. You know sometimes
when you come out of a film and it's been a really good film
and you come out and you think, "Wow! I want to
transform my life." "'Cause," you know,
"that sense of energy "or love or beauty
that was in that film, "I want to
flood my life with it "and kind of make
a new start." Problem is, by the time
you're having your sandwich at lunchtime the next day, you've forgotten the film. And, you know,
the next month, you wouldn't even
remember the title. Ditto with books.
We forget everything. Our minds are like sieves. And yet the secular world
keeps thinking that you can sit somebody
in a classroom at the age of 20, pour in some really vital stuff
and it'll still be there across a 40-year career
in management consultancy. (LAUGHTER) The problem is, it generally
doesn't work like that. So, religions
are much more careful. They're careful with time. Now, what all the religions do
is manage our calendars. You know, our diaries tend to be
packed with lots of things, but when you look
at what they're packed with, they tend to be packed with
the appointments of capitalism - a meeting here,
a business appointment, you know, checking in
with a tax inspector. They're things that we need
to keep our working lives going, or our social lives going. That's what we put
in our diaries. Now, religions are interesting,
'cause they have diaries - all of them have diaries -
but they put slightly different things
in those diaries. They put things
related to our inner self. They try and give us
appointments with psychologically
important ideas from a belief that unless
they are in our diaries, we'll just
forget about them. So they want
to lend structure, so every religion has
a structure of some sort, so... Take Catholicism. You know, on 31 March, you will
be thinking about St Jerome and his qualities of humility
and patience, etc. Every day has an idea
associated with it. And I think
it's rather useful, because I think many of the
things that we care a lot about do slip through the cracks. Take the moon, right? Looking at the moon is, I think,
a really wonderful, beautiful,
calming thing to do. You look at the moon and
you think, "Well, I'm so small. "This thing's so far away.
The universe is so large." And somehow
your soul is stilled, some of
the anxieties of the day lessen as you look
up at the moon. And often one thinks, "You know, I should do this
a little bit more often." But the problem is
that we don't. You know, none of us spend
much time looking at the moon. The reason is we're too busy,
other things come along, etc, so it goes by the wayside, but,
but, if you're a Zen Buddhist, you've got an appointment
with the moon, and that appointment comes
in the middle of September, at the festival of Tsukimi, where you'll be asked
out of your house and made to stand on specially
made canonical platforms and you'll sing some songs
and recite poetry in honour of the moon, and you will remember
the fragility of life, the importance of friendship and
the brevity of life on earth, all the while
eating some rice cakes. So it's a charming ritual,
a charming ceremony, designed to put a place
in the diary for psychologically
important ideas, and that's really
what a ritual is, you know. Religions are full of rituals.
What is a ritual? A ritual is a social event
that has as its ultimate goal some inner transformation, some psychological
transformation, and rituals
really throw up the difference between modern society
and religious society. Modern society
is obsessed with spontaneity. We think we'll find our way
to the important stuff on our own,
in our own time. "No-one should tell me
what to do and when to do it. "It should just bubble up." And the problem, however beguiling that is
as an idea conceptually, the problem is, you know,
we don't really do it. Take springtime. Another lovely ritual that
you find, in Judaism this time, is called Birkat Ha'ilanot where every springtime, you take
a rabbi, or the rabbi takes you, out into the fields and you look at
the new blossom on the trees and you recite
some poetry and some prayers in honour of the beauty of
the fields and of the new year. Now, Wordsworth
was also doing this. You know,
if you read Wordsworth, that's what it's all about,
or a lot of it's about - welcoming the new year,
blossoms, etc. The problem is, and the reason why
the ritual of Birkat Ha'ilanot perhaps has got an edge
over Shakespeare in some ways is that none of us
really read Sha... ..not Shakespeare,
Wordsworth. The problem is that none of us
actually read Wordsworth. Well, we might have
touched on him at university, but, basically, you're not
really gonna go and dig out your Wordsworth nowadays. It's something that is
a theoretical possibility that gets left
by the wayside, and religions,
much more forceful, try and timetable that. Now, the other thing
that religions know in the field of education
and delivery of education is that if you have
an important idea, it's not enough simply that it
is important and reasonable. You need to get it across
in a convincing way, and in order to get it across
so that it will stick, you need to be
a really good public speaker. I'm letting you down here,
but that's the idea. You need to be
a really good public speaker. Otherwise, however good the idea
is, it's just gonna fall limp, which is, again,
why the major religions invest a lot in oratory, and you find this
at its best, probably, in the American South,
in the Pentecostalist tradition, and any of you who've been
to a Pentecostalist service on a Sunday
down in the American South will know
it's an extraordinary event. You know,
these preachers are amazing. They'll say some stuff, and when it gets
really convincing and good, people will say,
"Amen! Amen! Amen!" And if there's
a really rousing point, then members of the congregation
will stand up and say, "Thank you, Saviour. Thank you,
Jesus. Thank you, Christ." And there's a kind of call
and response with the audience and, you know,
it's a real frenzy. Now, compare that
with the modern university. -Everybody's there...
-(LAUGHTER) And... You know... 'Cause the prof...the prof thinks that it's enough
that, you know... He's got a PhD and his ideas
are really logical, so he thinks that's enough,
but the problem is it's not, 'cause it's not gonna stick. And so my suggestion is
that some of the profs be sent over to Alabama
for a little bit of instruction with these
Pentecostalist guys so that at the end
of our university lectures, you'll get people
standing up going, you know, "Thank you, Montaigne,
thank you, Shakespeare, "thank you, Jane Austen." And there'll be, you know,
some real energy in the room. But until then, things are gonna
be quiet in the university. Now, there's something else
that religions remember when they're trying
to teach us something, and that is that we are
not merely brains. We are not merely
machines of reason. We are embedded creatures. In other words, we exist
within bodies that are sensory, that are passionate. We have senses of smell,
of sight, of hearing, of touch, and if you want to try
and teach someone something, religions allege, you have to involve
these senses. It's not enough
simply to target reason. And so all religions do this
to one extent or another. Take again Zen Buddhism. One of the most charming lessons
of Buddhism is delivered along with
the drink of a beverage, and that is
the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony. Now, what is
the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony? At one level, it's a lesson
in the brevity of life, the importance of friendship,
the value of the community, all of these things, but
it's not just lectured to you. It's combined with the ritual
drinking of some hot tea. And there's
a curious collaboration and, if you like, sympathy between the moral
of the words that are used and the moral of the tea, so something physical
is supporting something psychological
or intellectual, if you like, and you find religions
doing this all the time. Take in Judaism - Judaism, a religion really
interested in forgiveness, in notions
of forgiveness, but you don't just hear
lectures on forgiveness. If you live in an Orthodox
community, every Friday, the rabbi will lead you
to the mikveh, the ritual bath, which is often
in a beautiful setting, and you're asked to
go back over the week, confess to things
that you've done and ask for forgiveness, forgiveness both of your friends
and also of God, and then you plunge into
some water from head to toe - you have
a really good soak. Now, I think
all religions recognise that there's some connection
between water and lessons. You find this
across the religions. And we know this from our
own lives, our secular lives. You know, sometimes, when you want to change
your mood in some ways, you say, "I'm gonna take a bath.
I'm gonna take a bath." But the really
life-changing capacity of water, the capacity of immersion
to effect a change, is something that only religions
are picking up on with their full depth,
and I mention this because it's a characteristic
move of these religions to employ the body
to make a lesson. Let me go on to a few
other things on the buffet. Another area that I think religions
are really interesting in is the world of art. Now, in the secular world, we think we've got art
pretty well wrapped up, 'cause we invest a lot
in museums, in galleries. There's a lot of surplus wealth
that goes towards the arts. But I want to suggest
that in a way our relationship to the arts is
not going as well as it could be and that some of the reason is
that we haven't properly studied how religions use art. It's sometimes said that museums
are our new cathedrals, but in some ways, I don't think they're
quite doing what cathedrals did, for various reasons. One of the reasons why art isn't
quite living up to its message, or the claims
we make for it, is that we're obsessed
in the modern world with that ancient...
well, old 19th-century adage which says that art should be
for art's sake - in other words,
that a successful work of art exists in its own realm,
in the aesthetic world, and that it shouldn't have
an attempt to change society or to have an impact
directly on people. It exists in art world, in that special world
called the world of art. The other thing,
the other piece of ideology that surrounds the display
and interpretation of art is a veneration of mystery. It's almost as though
the more complex and interesting
a work of art, the harder it will be
to explain what it's doing
or what's going on, and so nice people like you,
when you go to a museum, especially
a museum of contemporary art, one of the common feelings
one comes away thinking is, "What did that mean?" And that's often
a feeling you often get reading museum catalogues,
which often seem as though they're translated
from the German, even when they're not, so... So there's
a kind of air of mystery and there's an air of removal
from daily life. Now, this is not at all
what religions believe when it comes to art. When it comes to art,
religions are very simple about what art is for. Art is for two things. Firstly, it's to remind you
of what is good - how you should live,
the good way to live - and secondly, it's to remind you
of what's bad - what's unfortunate, what's sad,
what's away from fulfilment. So that's the dual mission
of art. In other words, art is didactic,
and it's a piece of propaganda. All religious art
is propaganda. Now, when people hear
the word 'propaganda', it's never too far
till somebody thinks of Hitler and somebody else
thinks of Stalin. So in saying this, I'm aware
that I'm on a slippery slope. But I want us
to try and hang on to somewhere in the middle
of that slippery slope. We don't necessarily have to
tumble down to the bottom. And I think religions
show us how. Because if you look at
the history of religious art, the sort of things that propaganda
has been made on behalf of have often been
some quite nice things. I mean, take something like
Rembrandt's Christ crossing
the Sea of Galilee. Beautiful painting. A piece of
propaganda. On behalf of what? The fascist state? Or, you know,
the worker's paradise? No. It's a piece of propaganda
on behalf of courage. It's trying to remind you
of what courage is like, and it's trying
to instil in you a sense of how you
might be more courageous by looking at the example
of some courageous guys who were crossing the
Sea of Galilee one day, and... Now, why do religions think
that we need this kind of art? Why are they calling up
people like Rembrandt? The reason
for religions doing this is that they think that
there are all sorts of ideas that we have in our minds that basically lie
dormant and ineffective until they are reawakened
by a work of art. Art turns cliches into things
that we actually believe in and can act by. So we all believe, for example,
that it's nice to be nice and that we should be good
and we should love our children, we should love the environment
and all these things, and we know all of this, and
it's all wise and it's all true. The problem is we don't
really tend to act on it until a great work of art
comes along, and I'm thinking, you know,
it could be a film by Tarkovsky or 'Hey Jude' by the Beatles,
or whatever it is, and suddenly you think,
"Oh! That's what love is." Or, "That's why
I should be," you know, "caring about the world
or loving my children "or trying to be
more tolerant of my partner," or whatever it is. We are reminded in a visceral,
active sense of truths which would otherwise
have left us cold, and that's why
religions believe that you need some artists
to hand, and that's why
they've had the phone numbers of some of the greatest artists
in the world at all times. They knew who to call, and they
knew the art needed to be good, 'cause if it was
gonna be bad art, the message
wasn't gonna get across. Now, just think about
how different that is to the way
the modern world works. You know,
in the modern world, there are
people of ideas, right, and, you know, they write their
books and they do their things, but do they ever call up, you know, the great artists,
the great filmmakers? No, not really - you know,
the artists are in one corner and the sort of thinkers
are in another, but the way you have to
conceive of religion is it's joined up - the thinkers
are in touch with the artists. The thinkers might be telling
the artists what to produce. Very, very different
from a kind of modern mindset. But I think it may be
just very important to do that. There may be
something quite essential about
animating our beliefs by using the works
of the great artists. I suppose what religions
are really saying is that the aesthetic realm
is not just superficial, that the way things
look and feel and sound isn't just
something over there that belongs to a kind of
'House & Garden' magazine or, you know, 'Interior Design'
or some sort of trivial thing. It's right at the centre
of importance, and it's important
because we, as humans, respond to sensory material. I remember a few years ago,
I was looking to get married, and I thought, "Right, well,
how am I gonna do this? "Where shall I go,
as a nonbeliever?" And I thought,
"Right, well, "I'm not gonna go to a church
or anything like that, "because, you know,
that would be wrong." So I looked on the website
of an organisation called the
British Humanist Association, and I clicked
on their website, and from the moment
the screen came up, I thought,
"Something's a bit wrong here," 'cause it looked like it had
been done by a 12-year-old, the website - you know how html
goes wrong and it's a bit wonky? Anyway... And then I thought,
"I'll keep going." And then there was a bit which
said, "Find your own celebrant", a guy who's going
to help you to celebrate, so I clicked on the celebrant,
and some pictures came up. And I looked at the pictures
of the possible celebrants I was gonna entrust
to this special day, and I thought,
"Ooh, dear." And partly, I thought, "Their clothes!
They're so badly dressed!" And then I'd read their prose
that they put, and I thought, "Ooh, there's
so many spelling mistakes. "And it's not very eloquent." Now, this could sound
sort of bitchy and superficial, but I don't mean it to -
I don't mean it to. What I'm trying to say is that
if we're to make a viable world beyond religion, we're gonna have to study what religions get up to
very carefully, and we're gonna have to learn
that hats are really important and shoes are really important
and clothes are really important and the way that language is put
together is really important, and we can't just say,
"Right, well," you know, "there were some errors in the
tales of the loaves and fishes, "and Genesis doesn't quite
stack up, so that's enough." We're gonna need
to work a little bit harder, and religions know this. Let me move on a bit. Something else.
Moving on the buffet. Something else that religions
are very practised in and sort of intelligent about,
and that is that if you want to change the
world, you've to get organised. Right? You've got to group
together with other people. It's not a coincidence that the
major religions are also known as organised religions. In other words, it's not just
a chap or two with a good idea. It's a group of people
who've coalesced and have shown discipline
around a set of ideas. Now, it's interesting - when
you look at the modern world, when you look at people
who are interested in what one could
broadly call the soul... I'm using that in a completely
non sort of supernatural way - the soul, the inner part,
you know, the kind of... ..the weighty,
important stuff. The people who are interested
in the soul in the modern world are basically
lone practitioners. You know, they're the poets
in their bedrooms, the writers in their bedrooms,
you know, the guitar players, the psychotherapists,
the painters - you know, they're all off
in their little sheds, in their little studios, you know, doing their stuff,
saving the world. And... In other words, the view is,
if you care about the soul, you're on your own,
you're supremely individual, and that's a legacy
of that romantic world view that crops up
in the 19th century which says, you know, "If you've got
an important contribution "to make to humanity,
speak alone with your own voice. "Only the singular lone voice
is important. "Don't learn
to read a spreadsheet. "Don't group
with other people." You know, "Speak purely
from the mountain top." So that's the kind of
modern world view. Now, religions differ a lot.
They are organised. They are multinational. They
have rules on how to behave. They are branded.
They're the leaders in branding. And they show extreme coherence
in a lot of areas. Now, the only thing
that's comparable to religions
in the modern world is multinational corporations. If you look at
the structure of multinational corporations
and religions, they're eerily similar - branded, multinational,
disciplined, etc. Lots and lots
of similarities. Except they do, of course,
slightly different things. The religions
are in the soul space. They're doing the kind
of soul bit, feeding our soul. And the multinationals
tend to be in the... ..you know,
more physical space. They're, you know, shipping us
cement or selling us pizzas or shoes
or whatever it is, so in the modern world,
we've got, you know, the soul-focused religions,
organised, well organised, you've got the corporations that
are well disciplined and focused but they're
selling us shoes, and on the other hand, you've got the poets
and the psychotherapists in their bedrooms. And this seems kind of striking
and, I think, a real loss. No wonder, in a way, that religions
continue to be so powerful and that the messages
of the very good ideas that secular society
has come up with often don't
get through to us. You know, the revenues
of the Catholic Church last year were $97 billion. When people
scratch their heads and go, "Why is it
that Catholicism "remains a very powerful force
in the world "when some of their arguments
don't make much sense?" Well, you know, look at that $97
billion for a moment at least. They're very organised. They're pooling together
the intelligence of large numbers of people and they're showing
great discipline. In other words,
I'm trying to suggest that if
in the secular world, the ideas that we
fervently believe in are to have real traction
in the world, we may have to think about
organisation, that organisation seems key
to getting things across, and that the lone practitioner,
however pure he might be, however untainted by commerce
and fellowship with others, is ultimately a very, very
weak voice in a lonely world. We tend to assume that if
you want to change the world, just, you know, write a book
and then that all will be fine. But religions
are not just books. They may have books at their
centre that are very important, but they're also about schools
and they're about music and they're about eating
and they're about calendars and they're about
funeral services - they're about
all of this sort of stuff. And to think you can move on
by just, you know, chucking a few wisely aimed
arguments against them and the whole edifice
will collapse, dream on -
of course it won't. Right. I want to move on to just
a few other things on the menu. Let's look at community. One of the things
that religions are indisputably
rather good at doing is creating communities,
turning strangers into friends, and one of the things the secular world clearly
has a problem with is community. I think the modern world
is lonely. We're all hunting for
that one very special person. That's how we start off,
you know, in adolescence, in our early 20s - we're searching for that
one very, very special person who can spare us a need
to mix with everybody else. So we're all kind of selfishly
looking for that special person, but the group...
the group is... You know.
We don't really like the group. Now, I think it's actually very
important to live in groups, and I think a lot of our
neuroses and anxieties comes from the fact
that we're not living in the sufficiently
group way. Now, don't get me wrong -
in the modern city, in Sydney,
in Melbourne, in London - there are all sorts
of gatherings all the time of people, like tonight
and everywhere, places where you can
hang out with people. There are bars
and restaurants. So for someone
to come along and go, you know, "We're lonely.
There's no-one around," that's clearly wrong -
there are lots of people. The problem is
we don't talk to them, ever, unless I perform an exercise which could both be
embarrassing and quite fun, but I don't think I will, of doing that thing
that many religions do, which is asking everybody to introduce everybody
to each other by turning to
the left and the right, but I won't do that quite yet -
we'll see how it goes. You guys are not gonna
get to know each other. You're just gonna file out
and that's it. Now, religions regularly
take people into a space and they basically perform
a host function. They introduce them
to each other. They introduce us
to each other. Now, I think below the surface,
we're not as grumpy as we look. You know, when we're walking
round, we're all a bit grumpy, you know, sort of look
a bit strange, you know, and... And the reason is
we're scared. We're scared of rapists
and we're scared of murderers and we're just scared of all
the bad people we've read about and paedophiles
and nasty people, so... That's why we've got to be very
careful as we wander around. But deep down, under a layer,
we're actually quite friendly. Most of us are friendly. The problem is that it normally
takes, you know, a flood, a fire or a snowstorm until
anyone talks to anyone else, 'cause it's just
too sort of embarrassing. Someone did say to me, "That's
just 'cause you're in England," but I suspect
it's a little bit... ..it's a little bit
everywhere. Anyway. So, what do we need
to bring out our sociability? What we need
is a good host. Now, you know the host from
a party, right, so, you know... Again, quite English. When you go to a typical
English party with a bad host, everybody's standing like this,
looking quite glum, sheepishly,
with their drink, and it's all quite stiff
and quite awkward, but if there's a good host,
they'll go, "You meet so-and-so, you meet
so-and-so, talk to so-and-so," and suddenly
the party is going. Now, writ large,
without any disrespect, religions are hosts
in their societies. They introduce people,
they bring people in a room and they say, "It is safe
to talk to people here." It's a very basic thing. It doesn't require
belief in the supernatural. Many people will often say, "Look, I've kind of
lost my faith a while ago, "but I do love
those services. "I do love the after,
you know, bit "when you have the tea and the
biscuits, that kind of thing." And they're not wrong. You know,
why are they like this? Because there's
not much else going on. Some people say,
"What about the football club "or," you know,
"the swimming club, or the pub?" And the problem is that
not everybody likes swimming or football
or anything else, that we don't all belong to
these specialised hobby groups. The modern world
has hobby groups, whereas religions
have communities, and the difference between
a hobby group and a community is that in a community,
a group of people are gathered who have, in a sense, nothing
in common with each other. They look weird
to each other. You know, they're different
races, ages, colours, etc, and maybe they're
a bit scary-looking, but the whole process,
the kind of spiritual journey, is to turn that alien person
into a human being, to discover the humanity
below the surface, and that seems
like an incredibly sort of valuable exercise
that religions make us do. Now... I'm really running on.
So I'm gonna conclude. Really, what I want
to end by saying is that even if you don't
believe in anything, as I don't believe
in anything, it really seems vital
to learn enough about religion that you can draw
on those bits of it that still seem to have
an awful lot going for them. You know, if you're in the world
of community-building, look at how religions
build community. If you're in the art world,
look at how religions do art. If you're an educator,
look at how religions educate. Ultimately, ultimately, and
I want to end with this point, ultimately, religions are far
too complex, wise, rich, nuanced to be abandoned
simply to those who actually happen
to believe in them. -(LAUGHTER)
-They're for all of us. They're for all of us,
especially nonbelievers. -Thank you very much.
-(APPLAUSE) Thank you. But I did want to start with one
question from Alison Badahoss, who says to Alain,
"Your latest book refers heavily "to Christianity,
Judaism and Buddhism "but rarely mentions
Hinduism or Islam. "Why was that?" Well, I knew from the start that
this wasn't going to be a work of comparative religion. This wasn't
going to be a work where I kept comparing
one religion to another. If there is a comparison,
it's between the secular world and the world of religions, and for this, you don't necessarily need
an infinite array of religions. What matters is to get to know
some religions really well. And they double themselves up
in many, many areas. So I didn't want
another Abrahamic religion, having already got
Judaism and Christianity, and I was very fascinated
by Buddhism, which I didn't know
that much about and now know
a little bit more about, so it was a personal choice, and, well, almost to say, one
shouldn't read too much into it. We had some wonderful questions
from Oliver Damien, who says, "Do you consider
that the cultural means "atheists can borrow
from religion "will be as potent "if they are divorced from
the bedrock of a firm belief "in a supernatural reality, "which, arguably,
is what gives them their power?" Look, I think this is an anxiety
on the part of many. I mean, when I was in London,
I did a debate with a Catholic priest, and he said to me,
rather waspishly, I thought - he said, "Look, you think you
understand Bach, but you don't." (LAUGHTER) And he said, you know, "You
think you've looked at Titian, "but your eyes are closed." And... You know, and he said,
you know, "And you think you've read
John Donne, but you haven't." And I sort of started getting a
bit depressed about this, and... And then I thought,
"Well, look, "I don't know what you're
getting out of all this stuff." You know, "I don't know what the
full-strength dose feels like. "But as far as I'm concerned,
it's not bad." You know, "I'm really
revving up there "with the Mass in B minor
by Bach." You know,
"It's doing something for me." So I think it's always
going to be possible for believers to say
to nonbelievers, "You don't get it, do you?" To which, as a nonbeliever,
one can only say, "Perhaps, "but I don't have access to the
kind of sensory data you do," so all I can say is,
it seems enough. I think we can be
getting on with quite a lot and getting quite a lot
out of cultural works even without
the supernatural structure for which they were, indeed,
once invented or created. Can we go back briefly to your
question about organisation and your very funny reference to the psychotherapists
and artists in their bedrooms - how do you think
they could get out? How could they get out?
That's a big question. Look, take something
like psychotherapy, which is really close
to my heart. In London, first of all,
if you go and see a therapist, people will still say,
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. "How is your madness?" (LAUGHTER) And you want to say,
"Look, it's not that bad. "I'm just trying to, you know,
get more out of life," but the dominant assumption -
you are a marked person, you're crazy. And then when you call up
a psychotherapist, you shuffle along to your GP
and you ask for a therapist and you get referred and
you dial a number in Hampstead and then somebody picks up
with a Hungarian voice and goes, "Hello?" And you think... "Hello. I'd
like to make an appointment." "Hello?" And the whole thing...
And you sound... You know, the whole thing is
just intimidating and peculiar and very, very odd. And I contrast that
with the priesthood. You know, contrast that
with the Catholic priesthood. Now, after one's said
every last horrid thing about the priesthood
and paedophile priests and blah, blah, blah -
all of which I'm well on top of, very well aware of,
don't forget for a minute - the priesthood is still a
rather interesting institution. Really, what it is
is a group of people whose task is to minister us
through the key stages of life, from birth to death, and to offer advice,
consolation, reflection,
conversation, etc. Now, what's the equivalent of
that? We don't really have it. The equivalent
is probably psychotherapy. But the psychotherapists
are in their bedrooms, so, what do we need to do? Look, I mean, I'm sure there are
some entrepreneurs in the room. The question is not different
from any other problem requiring what one might call
an entrepreneurial solution. It requires that we
band together the therapists, that we give them a nice logo, that we give them
a coherent pattern, etc, and that we learn
why religions are effective and we use that
when designing something that might work
for the secular world. So, taking inspiration
and being creative. I think, you know, we're
still at the dawn of history. Sometimes it can feel like we're really, really
at the end of everything, the Romans, and all
the rest of it, so long ago, and we've tried everything,
and the basic assumption is, if it's a good idea,
it's already been done, and if anyone's
suggesting now anything
at this very late stage, it must be mad. Let's reverse that. We're
very much beginning things. We're learning to live, many
of us, now, for the first time, the first generation
without organised religion, and we're stumbling around, and we haven't necessarily
got all the answers, but I very much believe
that this is a creative moment. Do we have someone
at microphone two? WOMAN: I'm sorry,
I'm a bit short. Hello, Alain. I'm Sally. It's a bit related
to that last question. I'm on the same page
with you so far - that's great. I'm just wondering, you know,
what's the next step? Where is this organisation
going to come from? Are you the next leader, or
are you merely a prophet, or... (LAUGHTER) ..is somebody coming along? And will this new group include the phrase
'pick-and-mix' in the title? Right. Well... One of the funny things about
publishing a book is that... You know, some people say it's
absolutely terrible, it's awful, and sometimes you get emails
going, "I've read your book "and I'd like to sign up -
where do I sign up? "And I'd like
to give you all my wealth "and devote myself to you." So this can happen... It hasn't.
The last bit was exaggerated. But it...it...it...
Look, it can happen. Look, my answer is,
I think we are beyond the world of organisation at the level
of neo-religious organisation in the sense of, you know,
one structure, with one head, you know,
directing things, etc, so I believe in organisation,
but in miniature organisation, the organisation
of the therapists or the organisation of people
who are going to bury people or marry people
appropriately, etc. There's lots to be done, and
there's lots to be organised, but I don't think
the creation of a new papacy with a secular pope is on the cards
or is in any way desirable. We live in a wiki world
where truth is multiple, where we're
fiercely individualistic, and insofar as
we do organise ourselves, it's in relatively
spontaneous clusters, and I think the answer is... Look, my book
is full of suggestions of things that need doing in the secular world, everything
from building community to, you know,
organising the therapists, to reorganising travel - there's
a whole host of sort of ideas. And my hope is that,
you know, reading the book, someone might think,
"Oh, that's a good idea. "I might have a go
doing that." And they would organise
themselves and... You know. So it's not like
it's gonna be a central thing. It might just be something
that you're inspired by. Or someone might say, "Look, my
idea's not in this book at all, "but there's something
that's kind of analogous "that will inspire me," so I'm aiming
to seed inspiration and get the reader working,
by all means, organised, but no new papacy. And we were so looking forward
to the shoes and the hats. -At microphone number four.
-MAN: Thank you. Mr De Botton, you spoke about
universities and their role. I'm just interested to know
where you think they should be really filling
a similar purpose in society to what you've spoken about, turning people
into grown-up citizens, because universities only are
going to educate in Australia about a third
of our citizens. What about
the other two-thirds? Shall they stay
not grown-up, or is there
something else for them? Well, first of all,
I'd say a third is not bad, so at least if we got
one-third right, that would be
a really good start - we could then work
on the next two-thirds, so, you know,
looking at the first third, institutions of higher education
are failing there, as far as I'm concerned,
in delivering that promise, and, as I was trying
to suggest in my talk, they're partly failing because they have a non-instrumental
view of learning. They do not believe that
there is a particular purpose that can be frankly stated
in a few words to studying literature
or philosophy or theatre or the arts or whatever, the importance... You know, one tends
to get tautologies - "It's important
because it's important." And anyone who asks why
is either a government official trying to reduce funding or a vulgar, nasty person,
an accountant, who's trying
to make life meaner, rather than just someone
who genuinely wants to know, so that's the one-third. As for the other two-thirds,
well, let's look at how the dominant mood of society
is set. It's set through
the mass media. And the interesting thing
about the mass media is that we've abandoned that
to the free market. The secular world
believes in the free market in all sorts of areas,
including the world of ideas, and the underlying reason
for that free market is a belief deep down that
a lot of what you read and hear doesn't really matter, so, you know,
if you've spent an hour driving and you've looked at a billboard
selling you chocolate and another billboard selling
you a holiday in Thailand and a third billboard
selling you a 4x4, doesn't really matter,
it's not gonna sink in, it's not really important. That's the kind of
official thing - it doesn't really matter
what we see and read. All that matters is...
Well, we're such grown-ups. Of course we know
what we want. We're not gonna get sidetracked
by an advert. You know. Now, of course,
if you think about that, of course, we are gonna
get sidetracked by an advert, but, then,
that's really tricky for the governments
to take on board, 'cause if we're gonna
get sidetracked by an advert, that means there shouldn't be
any advertising, which is a real nuisance if
you're relying on tax dollars to keep things going, so suddenly, you're in
a really tricky political area where commercial propaganda,
if you like, turns out to have
quite a big impact, and the question as a society
we have to try and work up is, in the so-called
free market of ideas, what ideas
do we want out there? Is it right that the only people
who can pay for a billboard are certain corporations
with certain intentions on us? And do we want to
level that playing field? And I guess I'd just like to
draw your attention to the way that religions are very, very
concerned with public space. They know that public space
affects the inner being. In the secular world,
we think public space can be sold off
to the highest bidder and it doesn't
really matter. Religions think, no, public
space influences private space and you've got to
watch it carefully. We'll go to microphone three
and then we will turn around and talk to
this gentleman here. So microphone three. Thank you very much.
My name's Nicholas. And can I say thank you
very much to Alain de Botton? I was reading you
when I was 16, and it's been
a long time coming - I'm glad I got
to hear you speak. Now, you know, I completely
agree with your first premise, that, you know, atheism is right
and that there isn't a God and that, you know, we should
all consider how to live. The problem
with trying to find an atheistic institution,
in my mind, is that the religions
always have an advantage in that they have
one central source of authority. You know, once you take
your central premise that there isn't a God, how to live can become
very interesting. You can have more relativists,
who believe that, you know, we can go over and live
in carrots and kill people, and then you can have people
who believe in Kant's golden rule, and so having a group where
you can discuss how to live within different frameworks becomes a lot more complicated
because, you know, in religions, you at least have
one framework to work with. Yep. I think... I think that's
a really good question and a really good anxiety because it's an anxiety right
at the heart of modern society. We live in a world
of moral relativism. And what is
moral relativism? Moral relativism is the fear
that any assertion could be shot down
from another side, so, you know, "Look, I don't
believe in eating babies, "but maybe you believe
in eating babies, "so we'd
better watch out. "I believe that it's fine to,"
you know, "hit children, "but maybe," you know,
"you don't," so we've got to be
very, very careful about saying any things -
we might upset somebody. And anything that you say
might get you back the retort, "Who are you
to tell me what to do?" Now, my secret conviction is that there's
an awful lot of agreement - there's, in fact, far more
agreement than disagreement. And rather than imagining that
once religion has disappeared, we can't agree on anything and we're just left
in this complete moral vacuum, we don't know what to do,
what to believe or who to trust. Actually, if you gather
a group of Australians, like everyone
in this hall tonight, and if you said to them, "OK, let's take a poll
about what people believe," I would suspect that there
would be enormous congruence around some central beliefs. I think that people here
will tend to believe in love, in kindness,
in generosity towards children, in generosity towards strangers,
in the environment, etc, in equal opportunity,
in fairness. A lot of assumptions
can be generalised from and made to be at the heart
of secular society. We don't lack things
to believe, and we don't lack things
that we can agree on. What we lack is things that will make the ideas
that we already agree on stick and effective at key moments
of our journey through life. (APPLAUSE) So, basically,
what this gentleman is saying is that if you
look beneath the surface of many works
of modern culture, you will find
a religious substructure. Gentleman was talking about
'Lord of the Rings'. And... Now, I agree that if you look beneath
many works of modern culture, you do find... You know, if you follow the work
of someone like Joseph Campbell, you do see that there are
these archetypes - the hero, you know,
the myth, the mother, the return,
the prodigal son, etc, etc. These are our stories. Now, sometimes
religious people say, "Aha! "This shows that we're right,
because it shows "that even though you guys
think you are secular, "in fact, you are
still following our stories." Now, as an atheist, I would
flip that round, and I would go, look, it doesn't mean to say
that anyone is right. It just means that there
are some archetypes in the human mind, which religions have drawn on and non-religions
have drawn on, and so it goes. I wouldn't privilege the fact
that these myths have cropped up
perhaps first and foremost within religious texts. This seems to be
more an accident of timing than a feeling
that this is divinely revealed. MAN: Alright, good evening. Thank you very much.
That was a fascinating talk. I've got
a double-barrelled question because I believe
in getting my money's worth. (LAUGHTER) I was interested to know
whether there was a precedent or if you were
blazing a new trail or whether there were
any thinkers or philosophers that you're aware of that have explored
this territory before, and I was also curious to know
about the reaction from various religions and perhaps some of the other
classical pit bull atheists such as Richard Dawkins, if they had come out swinging
against your blasphemous work. -(LAUGHTER)
-Yeah. Well, to answer that, there was, weirdly, a small
cheer at my publisher, Penguin, when Richard Dawkins
did come out and very grumpily said, "The
whole thing's very unnecessary." -(LAUGHTER)
-And, you know... "We're all OK
as it is." So... And in a way... Look. In a way, it was interesting,
because in the world view of some of these more militant
Oxford atheists, the idea is that life is a relatively easy business
to get through, you know. You know, you do your scientific
research, you're at high table, and, you know,
things are basically OK, and, you know,
there are just lots of sort of horrible thick people
out there who all the time, you know,
they're just weeping at Mary and believing in odd things, and they just need to be set
right with some solid reason. And I think what they tend to
underestimate is vulnerability, and I think that's what,
emotionally, I have a problem with there. We are clearly
all vulnerable creatures, and to try and persuade someone
out of their religion without paying attention
to the vulnerability and its role
in their religiosity seems, I think,
a cynical ploy, so, anyway, that's... So the atheists, yes... Certain kind of militant atheist
has been out... I received
a wonderful email. Someone said,
"You have betrayed atheism," which seemed to me
paradoxical, and... But as for
precedent in history, yes. Look, there was one guy,
called Auguste Comte, the French
19th-century sociologist, who, in the mid-19th century,
analysed modern society and decided that
we were all gonna fall apart and fall prey to mental
disorders and anxieties because the only thing
that secular society was gonna be living for was work and romantic love, and he believed
that a society fixated on work
and romantic love would be twitchy,
and he didn't put it like that, but, essentially, would have a wide variety
of nervous disorders, and he believed that what he had
to do was to invent a religion, a secular religion, that could help people
to cope with their anxieties, so he invented this religion called
the religion for humanity. It was very, very batty indeed
but quite touching. It had at its centre
a maternal figure, who was actually
Comte's girlfriend... -(LAUGHTER)
-And... Although they weren't
actually sleeping together. It was very much
unrequited love. And he thought
that by making her head of this new religion,
she would be grateful, and indeed - I'm not making
this up - indeed, she was, and they did sleep together,
but then she fell prey to terrible
nervous disorders of the kind
the 19th century produced, and he went crazy and the whole
experiment collapsed, but... -(LAUGHTER)
-Nevertheless... Nevertheless,
it's a fascinating thing, and if ever you find yourselves
in a big library, look up Auguste Comte and his... I mentioned him in my book, because he's onto something
rather interesting, and he holds a place... You know, lots of sociologists
are aware of him, and he never quite goes
entirely out of fashion, because he's touching
a raw nerve that I think we know
has not yet been appeased or kind of dealt with
in the modern world. Number two. MAN: You may be
familiar with the fact that there is a
small schoolyard tiff going on in our capital city
of Canberra today, and I wondered, apart,
perhaps, from shinier shoes, what you feel
our political leaders may be able
to draw from religion to restore public faith. (LAUGHTER) -Goodness.
-(APPLAUSE) Well, look. Let me give you a non-religious
answer, which is mine. I think the fact
you're having this squabble is not a sign that Australia
has reached a new low. It's a sign
of real privilege. It's a sign that you guys
have it good. Because most countries can't
afford this sort of behaviour. (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE) So even though
it's a little bit tedious and a little bit peculiar, enjoy - it's not gonna last
long, they're gonna sort it out, and have fun with it, yeah. I think that's probably
the most interesting response to this whole thing
that any of us are gonna hear. Number three. MAN: It's actually, I guess,
a follow-up on that question. If attendance at church
collapsed in the 19th century, in the late 20th century,
the similar collapse is in belonging to
a political organisation. What do you think... Do you think politics
played the role of religion in the meantime, between
the 19th century and now, and is now failing to do that,
for a secular world? And do you think that the last bastion
of that politics as religion is in the American
presidential kind of system? ALAIN: Well, look, I think that one of
the great innovations and wisdoms of Christianity was the separation
of Church and state, at least for a time
and in its original form - "Render unto Caesar," etc - the idea that there is earthly
power and spiritual power. And even in a secular context,
that distinction continues, and I think that most people,
in Australia, in the UK, in many modern societies, take it really badly
when we feel that power,
that political power, is edging into
the world of religion - in other words,
the world of ethics, the world of the soul, etc. When David Cameron responded
to the London riots last summer, he started making comments
in praise of personal morality and discipline, etc,
and the world went nuts - no-one allowed a politician
to say that sort of thing. We don't want our politicians
to do that. That's a very
ingrained thing. So, by all means,
organise and use a public voice for issues of morality
and ethics, etc, but I think the ability
to join up political power with moral authority... At this point, I probably
will invoke Hitler and Stalin, which I was resisting doing. I do think that at that point,
the slope gets really steeper, so I am not for giving a moral
authority to Julia or Kevin. That said, I did give... Two nights ago,
I gave my book to Julia. We were staying
in the same hotel - the Park Hyatt in Melbourne. And I went to
give her my book. So we'll see what happens. (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE) And we thought that she was
staying up late at night making a phone call. I just wanted to ask... I think that the way
that you explained how secular society
can draw from the traditionalism and
the repetitiveness of religion is...is a really good thing -
I love how you explained that. But I also want to ask, do you
think that there's a detriment or a stagnation
that comes from traditionalism in an emerging society
such as ours, where our understanding's
always changing and, you know, we're learning
new things all the time about our world and our reality,
and that's always shifting. Do you think that
that traditionalism actually stagnates that... ..that update
or that shift in thinking or... Like, a good example of that
would have been Galileo and his discovery
of our place in the solar system and how that was rejected
by traditionalist structures, but then, years later... I think it's really good
that you mentioned Galileo, because that reminds us
that insofar as the modern world
is addicted to novelty, what's often driving that
is science, and I absolutely believe
that's right, that science needs
to march forward, and, you know, if we were to keep repeating
the experiments of Pythagoras, we'd be lost, so I don't believe
in repetition in the scientific
or technological area, but there is a real distinction
between that area and what you could more broadly
call the humanistic area. This crops up in... You know, not to
knock the universities, but let's have
one more knock. You know, the way in which
the universities are arranged is you get scientists
in universities who are trying
to advance knowledge and they're trying to push ahead
and do new things all the time, and they have
fantastic discoveries, they're inventing retinas
and growing toenails, etc, and doing wonderful things. And then there are the guys
in the humanities departments, and they think, "We'd better
pretend to be like scientists, "so we're going to invent a new
discovery, and we're gonna... "..a new interpretation
of Wordsworth "and a new interpretation
of a letter in Keats "or," you know, "the way
that Proust used the alphabet "or the way that Joyce
used the full stop," you know,
"a new, a vital discovery "in the world
of the humanities," you know. This is the way that
the modern university works. And I think most people who've
looked at that close-up think, "Well, that's
actually nonsense," because in this area,
unlike in science, repetition is possible because
our psyches, as we all know, don't show dramatic evolution
minute by minute. The truths that we need
to feed our souls are relatively stable ones. We keep coming back
to some of the same themes. And if you look, indeed,
at the history of literature, they circle -
things are already circling. The great artists are circling.
We're all circling. And that's OK. So I would
make that distinction. MAN: Is Facebook
part of the problem, or is it part of
the potential solution? Is Facebook
part of the problem, or is it part of
the potential solution? Well, I don't think it's,
in itself, part of the solution, because it's
a typical modern instrument in grouping people together
by what they like, by their personality,
and as I tried to point out, what's interesting
about religion as a community is that it's literally
a group of strangers who might not
like each other very much. In all religions, there's an idea of hospitality
to the stranger, literally - someone you think, "Ooh! I don't
want to sit with that person. "They look horrid!" Nevertheless, you're supposed
to sit down with them, and even though
they're a bit smelly, maybe, or they speak a foreign language
or they just look a bit odd, the point is
that you undergo a journey to see the humanity
in that person, and I don't think
Facebook's there. (LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE) I'm very glad we did get
to the Facebook question, but to conclude,
one of the wonderful questions that came in via email was, "Where do you
draw the line? "What are
the aspects of religion "that we should
steer clear of?" Well, look... I think, you know,
there are some obvious things - cruel abuses and violence
and all the things that... ..you know, that we know about,
and that, you know, the Inquisition and
the Crusades, blah, blah, blah. But I think, more interestingly,
I, as an atheist, there are moments when I have to
draw the line with friends who believe or
who are spiritual in some way, and often it goes
like this. People will say
things like, you know... We're standing outside.
It's a beautiful night. Looking at the stars. And I say,
"Gosh, it's amazing," you know, "One feels so small
under this giant cosmos," and they'll go, "Yeah,"
you know, "absolutely, we do." And then they'll say,
"Just...it makes you think "that there's
something there." And at that point, I go,
"No. Not really. Not really." And I think that's
the moment of difference. So... But by that time, one's... There's a lot of friendship
to be had up to that point. -You've enjoyed the moon.
-We can enjoy the moon together. Anyway. Thank you. -(APPLAUSE)
-Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
this video i think is (or should be) directed at the "/r/atheism" communities, but he makes a lot of sweeping statements like, "all religions say X" which is problematic...
also, contrary to the speaker, I think modernity has a lot of ritual, which is not necessarily opposed to its impulsiveness.. which says something about so called 'secular society'.
overall, I couldn't finish the lecture, but I think its useful for some (like die hard atheists)
Really entertaining and insightful stuff.
I've always liked Alain de Botton regarding his religious beliefs, and hope to buy his book, myself.