Debunking new-age spirituality | Slavoj Žižek, Rupert Sheldrake, John Vervaeke and more
Debate · The Institute of Art and Ideas ·
2023 · 0:29:04 · 4,403 words
with John Vervaeke, Rupert Sheldrake, Michael Shermer, Co-Panelist, Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, Lisa Miller
ideologyreligion-theologycapitalismfascism-populismethicsphilosophy-generalconsciousness-mindecology-climate
A panel debating whether New Age spirituality leads into a post-Enlightenment dark age. Žižek's contribution argues that so-called Western Buddhism is the ideal ideological complement to global capitalism: it lets corporate actors commit 'dirty' violence and then dissociate via the 'zero experience' of non-self. He supports this with Brian Victoria's documentation of Zen's near-universal support for Japanese imperial war, D.T. Suzuki's theory of the knife that 'dances in the air,' and Himmler's carrying of the Bhagavad Gita to reconcile the Holocaust with a self-image of decency. Other panelists defend meditation, gratitude, innate spirituality, and Spinozist pantheism as alternatives to Cartesian dualism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 22
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Shermer's secular redefinition of spirituality: the sense of awe elicited by cathedrals, telescope domes, hikes, dancing, anything that gets you 'out of yourself.'
Vervaeke invokes the 'two worlds mythology' inherited from the axial age as the moribund framework New Age spirituality wrongly tries to reconcile with science.
Vervaeke's charge that New Age seekers, trying to force the two-worlds mythology into the scientific worldview, slide into pseudoscience.
as “opiate of the people”
Marx's line (religion as the sigh of the oppressed / opiate) that the Co-Panelist cites to frame why people flee unbearable mechanized lives into transcendence.
Used implicitly: Western Buddhism functions ideologically by making capitalist violence bearable, a story invented to cover the horror so one can live with it.
Žižek's signature term for the Western appropriation of Buddhism as a depoliticized spiritual practice that functions as the perfect ideological complement to global capitalism.
as “vague pseudo-oriental spiritualism”
His pejorative for the corporate-elite spirituality of the day, invoked to show it is not authentic Buddhism but an ideological pose that serves capitalist interests.
as “the zero experience”
His renaming of Buddhist nirvana/enlightenment as a depersonalized void in which the subject sees no substantial reality and becomes an inert observer of phenomena, thereby dissolving moral agency.
The Buddhist term for enlightenment/cessation that Žižek reads here not as liberation but as the detachment that enables moral disengagement (the 'zero experience').
as “empty brain observing the crazy dance of phenomena”
His paraphrase of the Suzuki/Zen position: the enlightened subject is not an agent but a depersonalized witness before whom the act 'happens', which he reads as the mechanism that lets killing proceed without a killer.
as “cynicism at its purest”
His signature 'X at its purest' formulation, applied to Himmler's reversal: the most cynical move is to admit the horror and then invoke spirituality to preserve a self-image of decency.
Sheldrake cites meditation's measured reduction of the brain's rumination/worry circuitry as evidence that spiritual practice has real effects.
Sheldrake presents gratitude as a cross-traditional spiritual practice that positive-psychology experiments show measurably increases happiness.
The relatively new field studying what makes us happy, which Sheldrake cites for the gratitude studies.
Miller's method to separate innate from environmentally transmitted traits, used to claim spirituality is partly innate (~30%) while religion is 100% environmental.
Miller's claim that spiritual awareness is ~30% innate by adulthood, a 'birthright', with the rest environmentally formed.
Miller posits an innate neuroanatomical 'docking station' for transcendent perception, arguing spirituality is a form of perception/knowledge rather than belief.
Whitehead's term (placed on Descartes) for splitting mind from matter, which Sjöstedt-Hughes argues is the common root of the ecological crisis and the hard problem of consciousness.
Sjöstedt-Hughes promotes Spinoza's monism, mind and matter as one substance, as the antidote to Cartesian dualism.
as “hard problem of consciousness”
The explanatory gap of how mind arises from matter, which Sjöstedt-Hughes traces to the Cartesian bifurcation of nature.
Sjöstedt-Hughes' Spinozist position that nature is God, one substance with all attributes, making mankind part of nature rather than transcendent over it.
Vervaeke treats the hunger for transcendence and transformation as a legitimate human need that New Age practices misguidedly try to meet.
Stories he reaches for 2
Suzuki's thought-experiment: a soldier meets his enemy with a knife. Through the 'zero experience' of nirvana he becomes an empty brain whose knife 'dances in the air and gets stuck into your breast', killing without a killer, since there is no substantial self acting.
“i'm observing a phenomenal multiplicity where my knife is dancing in the air and somehow it gets stuck into your breast”
Himmler, the SS boss who organized the Holocaust, considered himself formally ethical and always carried a special copy of the Bhagavad Gita in his pocket, invoking oriental spiritualism to reconcile killing Jewish children with remaining a 'decent German.'
“he always was carrying in his pocket a special lettered copy of bhagavad gita”
Works invoked 4
Bhagavad Gita book
Carried by Himmler as a special copy; deployed by Žižek as the exemplary spiritual text used to reconcile atrocity with a self-image of decency.
Zen at War book
Brian Victoria's book documenting Zen's near-universal support for Japanese imperial war, Žižek's grounding source for the critique of Western Buddhism, which he quotes often.
The Lion King film
Referenced as 'the Lion King version, really, isn't it, of the circle of life', a popular image of the secular redistribution of one's atoms after death.
A Shropshire Lad book
Housman's poetry collection; the line 'and he wears the turning globe' is the closest the speaker gets to spiritualism, a secular image of the dead becoming part of the planet.
People invoked 11
Jill Purce positive
Sheldrake's wife, who leads 'Inner Sound and Voice' workshops demonstrating that days of group singing and chanting bond disparate groups into connection (transcript renders the name as 'jill pass').
Brian Victoria positive
Author of Zen at War, which Žižek reads and quotes often as the source documenting Zen establishments' near-universal support for Japanese imperial aggression.
Alfred North Whitehead positive
Cited for naming the 'bifurcation of nature' and placing the blame on Descartes.
Alfred Edward Housman positive
Source of the speaker's favourite line of poetry, 'and he wears the turning globe', used to express a secular sense of continuity after death.
Benedictus de Spinoza positive
Sjöstedt-Hughes promotes Spinoza's monism (nature is God; one substance) as the antidote to Cartesian dualism, noting Spinoza was excommunicated and suppressed for making mankind part of nature.
Heinrich Himmler negative
SS boss who organized the Holocaust while considering himself formally ethical; Žižek's exemplary case of spiritualism (the Bhagavad Gita) serving as cover for atrocity.
D. T. Suzuki negative
The popularizer of Zen in the West; Žižek points to his late-1930s writings justifying Japan's attack on China and his army collaboration, and to his 'zero experience' theory dissolving moral agency, while noting he respects Zen Buddhism and 'appreciates' Suzuki's brutal candor.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for the line that religion is the sigh of the oppressed / opiate of the people, framing why people flee unbearable mechanized lives into transcendence.
René Descartes negative
Blamed (following Whitehead) for the mind/matter bifurcation that Sjöstedt-Hughes argues is the common root of the ecological crisis and the hard problem of consciousness.
Friedrich Nietzsche positive
Source of the diagnosis that we live in a post-Christian world.
Albert Einstein positive
Cited as a self-declared Spinozist who called Spinoza the greatest philosopher of modern times for first uniting mind and matter.
What it argues
Western Buddhism as the ideological supplement of global capitalismZen Buddhism's historical complicity with Japanese militarismSpiritual detachment as a mechanism of moral disengagementHimmler, the Bhagavad Gita, and the spiritualism of atrocityThe corporate embrace of pseudo-oriental spiritualismNew Age spirituality as a symptom of the rationality/spirituality splitSpinozist pantheism as an antidote to Cartesian bifurcation
Dialectical moves 3
“In politics, it's not that you enact a story — it's that you do something horrible and the big problem is to invent a story which covers it up, which allows you to live with the horror.”
Reverses the priority of narrative and act: the horror is primary, the story is the retroactive cover-up that makes the horror livable.
“It's not I as a person who sticks my knife into you — I am observing a phenomenal multiplicity where my knife is dancing in the air and somehow it gets stuck into your breast.”
The negation of the self does not abolish the act; it relocates it to a depersonalized phenomenal field where the agent vanishes but the killing still happens.
“How can we decent Germans kill Jewish children and remain decent? The answer is: oriental spiritualism.”
Spirituality is invoked not despite the atrocity but as the very mechanism that lets atrocity coexist with a self-image of goodness, the supplement that produces the 'decency.'
Claims 22
asserts
In politics the primary act is the horror; the narrative is a cover-up invented afterward so one can live with the horror.politics and narrative
asserts
Western Buddhism is the most popular spiritual orientation of big corporate elites precisely because it serves as the ideological cover for capitalist violence.Western Buddhism and capitalism
asserts
Zen establishments almost universally supported Japanese imperial aggression in WWII, with only four or five dissidents out of millions.Zen Buddhism's political complicity
asserts
D.T. Suzuki, in the late 1930s, wrote a justification for Japan's attack on China and collaborated with the army by proposing a theory of killing-without-a-killer.D.T. Suzuki
reframes
The Buddhist 'zero experience' does not abolish violence; it dissolves the agent — the knife 'dances in the air and gets stuck into your breast' because there is no substantial self acting.Buddhist detachment and moral agency
asserts
Himmler used oriental spiritualism — carrying a special copy of the Bhagavad Gita — to reconcile organizing the Holocaust with seeing himself as a decent, ethical German.spirituality as cover for atrocity
asserts
New Age spirituality is a symptom of much deeper, profounder confusions about rationality, meaning, and transcendence.New Age spirituality · John Vervaeke
asserts
Rationality and spirituality have been fundamentally severed since the Enlightenment, producing the confused New Age phenomenon.Enlightenment rationality and spirituality · John Vervaeke
asserts
Meditation measurably changes the brain and is prescribed on the NHS for depression because it is cheaper and at least as effective as antidepressants.meditation · Rupert Sheldrake
asserts
Randomized gratitude exercises measurably increase happiness for days afterward, confirming that being grateful makes people happier.gratitude · Rupert Sheldrake
asserts
Group singing and chanting synchronize breathing and heartbeats, bonding disparate groups into cohesive connection.communal ritual and bonding · Rupert Sheldrake
asserts
Spiritual awareness is innate — about 30% heritable by adulthood — and is every human's birthright, while religion is 100% environmentally transmitted.innate spirituality · Lisa Miller
asserts
There is an innate neural seat of transcendent perception, so spirituality is a form of perception and knowledge rather than of belief.neural spirituality · Lisa Miller
asserts
Nature is God — the Spinozist pantheist view that mind and matter are one substance and mankind is part of nature, not transcendent over it.Spinozist pantheism · Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
asserts
The ecological crisis and the hard problem of consciousness share a single root in the Cartesian bifurcation of nature.bifurcation of nature · Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
asserts
Spinoza was the first philosopher to bring mind and matter together, making mankind part of nature philosophically — which is why Einstein called him the greatest philosopher of modern times.Spinoza · Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
asserts
Religious people's longer, healthier lives come from community and belonging, not from divine intervention stirring particles.religion and health · Michael Shermer
asserts
Spirituality and awe can be fulfilled through many secular modalities — cathedrals, telescope domes, hiking, dancing — without religion.secular spirituality · Michael Shermer
asserts
Established religion is too tied to the capitalist systems of production that Marx targeted, lining up with the mill owners against the trapped.the church and capitalism · Co-Panelist
asserts
The established church has too often betrayed people whose needs are not met by mechanized, meaningless-work society, driving them to seek transcendence outside religion.the established church · Co-Panelist
asserts
The pandemic was a missed opportunity to rethink meaningless work and commuting, which wastes roughly 500 human lifetimes per year in London alone.work and commuting · Co-Panelist
asserts
The mind constructs the world we experience, so there is no need to posit that spiritual or deranged experiences come from outside — they come from in here.consciousness · Co-Panelist
Quotes 9
“in politics, it's not that you enact a story. it's that you do something horrible and the big problem is to invent a story which covers it up, which allows you to live with the horror.”Slavoj Žižek · politics as cover-up of horror
“you do all the dirty things, people losing jobs, killing and then you tell them but what is this? but isn't life just a fleeting appearance? the truth is in me”Slavoj Žižek · Western Buddhism as capitalist ideology
“i'm observing a phenomenal multiplicity where my knife is dancing in the air and somehow it gets stuck into your breast”Slavoj Žižek · Zen detachment as moral disengagement
“how can we decent germans do this killing jewish children we mean not even armed and remain decent. you know what was his answer? oriental spiritualism.”Slavoj Žižek · spirituality as cover for atrocity
“you're not out there. you're in here. i have constructed you.”Michael Shermer · the brain constructs the world
“and he wears the turning globe.”Co-Panelist · secular afterlife / continuity through nature
“you are not an innately spiritual being due to your belief. but rather due to your ability to perceive and know.”Lisa Miller · spirituality as perception, not belief
“i'm going to promote the view that nature is god.”Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes · Spinozist pantheism
“the church is in the background on the side of the mill owners.”Co-Panelist · established religion aligned with capital
Transcript 19 turns
John Vervaeke
the new age movement.
the new age movement.
Rupert Sheldrake
is a symptom of much deeper, profounder confusions. people are grateful are usually healthier, happier and more popular than those who are ungrateful.
is a symptom of much deeper, profounder confusions. people are grateful are usually healthier, happier and more popular than those who are ungrateful.
Michael Shermer
to evoke a sense of awe and wonder, just do anything to get yourself out of yourself. you're not out there. you're in here. i have constructed you.
to evoke a sense of awe and wonder, just do anything to get yourself out of yourself. you're not out there. you're in here. i have constructed you.
Slavoj Žižek
you in my brain. you do all the dirty things, people losing jobs, killing, and then you tell yourself, but what is this? but isn't life just a fleeting appearance?
you in my brain. you do all the dirty things, people losing jobs, killing, and then you tell yourself, but what is this? but isn't life just a fleeting appearance?
Co-Panelist
religion comes, marx says, from the sigh of the oppressed.
religion comes, marx says, from the sigh of the oppressed.
Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
i think today we live in a post-cartesian, post-christian world.
i think today we live in a post-cartesian, post-christian world.
Co-Panelist
are the new age spiritual beliefs leading us into a post-enlightenment dark age?
are the new age spiritual beliefs leading us into a post-enlightenment dark age?
John Vervaeke
i think i'm going to do what an academic would do. i'm going to challenge the question i think the new age spirituality is a confused phenomena. i think there is in it a lot of things going wrong. i think what's going wrong is people are trying to deal with anomalous spiritual, mystical experiences, and we know that on average about 40% of the population has these, or they're hungry for meaning in a way i've tried to articulate, or they're looking for transcend. transformation or they're looking for belonging. and i would make a case that these all have a proper role in a well-lived human life. but i think they're trying to do it in a moribund two worlds mythology that we sort of inherited from the axial age that is not consonant with the kind of picture that the scientific worldview is giving us. that often leads them into pseudoscience as they try often in a very a sloppy way to integrate those two together. i think they also move towards a kind of decadent romanticism in which they try to find alternative faculties that they believe give them special access to reality as sort of my intuition or my imagination is a magical faculty. and i think these are all very confused projects and they're part of the way in which rationality and spirituality have been sort of fundamentally severed post the enlightenment. now, i think that's the negative. i think the positive in the new age spiritualities is that they do represent that people are seeking. places in which they can practice in a way that will bring them. transformations so that they have a proper home for something like the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. but as i said, this is often confused with sort of an arcane or esoteric knowledge project. it's often confused with sort of weird subcultural, political commitments. so i think there's a lot of confusion in this confused phenomenon. so i would say that my overall position is the new age movement is a symptom of much deeper, profounder confusions that if we don't address, things are going to get much worse in general for us as a culture.
i think i'm going to do what an academic would do. i'm going to challenge the question i think the new age spirituality is a confused phenomena. i think there is in it a lot of things going wrong. i think what's going wrong is people are trying to deal with anomalous spiritual, mystical experiences, and we know that on average about 40% of the population has these, or they're hungry for meaning in a way i've tried to articulate, or they're looking for transcend. transformation or they're looking for belonging. and i would make a case that these all have a proper role in a well-lived human life. but i think they're trying to do it in a moribund two worlds mythology that we sort of inherited from the axial age that is not consonant with the kind of picture that the scientific worldview is giving us. that often leads them into pseudoscience as they try often in a very a sloppy way to integrate those two together. i think they also move towards a kind of decadent romanticism in which they try to find alternative faculties that they believe give them special access to reality as sort of my intuition or my imagination is a magical faculty. and i think these are all very confused projects and they're part of the way in which rationality and spirituality have been sort of fundamentally severed post the enlightenment. now, i think that's the negative. i think the positive in the new age spiritualities is that they do represent that people are seeking. places in which they can practice in a way that will bring them. transformations so that they have a proper home for something like the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. but as i said, this is often confused with sort of an arcane or esoteric knowledge project. it's often confused with sort of weird subcultural, political commitments. so i think there's a lot of confusion in this confused phenomenon. so i would say that my overall position is the new age movement is a symptom of much deeper, profounder confusions that if we don't address, things are going to get much worse in general for us as a culture.
Co-Panelist
well, cards on the table. i'm a christian. i'm a member of the. episcopalian church. which is what we have in scotland. instead of the anglican church. and much better. scots always say that. there's a line in marx which is often quoted or misquoted um religion comes, marx says, from the sigh of the oppressed, the suffering of the downtrodden people. religion, marx said, is the opiate of the people. it's their way of escaping from unbearable realities that they find themselves trapped in. now, it seems to me that um... old age spirituality of the kind that i guess i represent as a christian. has in some sense got too tied in. to the kind of systems of economics and production that marx was targeting. when he said those famous things, people find themselves in a reality which is unbearable. because it's been mechanized. it's become completely dominated by the running of engines which make for lives within the system which are just like, to use an image i was using earlier, just like hamsters on a wheel, you are running and getting nowhere, you're trapped in meaningless labour, you're trapped in a life which doesn't mean anything to you, and the church is standing in the background saying, hooray for this. the church is in the background on the side of the mill owners. so what we have today is a situation where a lot of us find that we're trapped in meaningless work. in lives that society wants to define. as pretty much making us just cogs in a machine. vivid illustration of this in recent political discourse, the pandemic's over, get back to your offices. say the politicians. i think the pandemic was a huge opportunity for us to rethink. the way we do things. did you know that in london, every year a million people commute. and the amount of time that people spend commuting. on average is an hour a day. and if you do the sums, it turns out that means every year in london, 500 human lifetimes. are wasted on commuting. the pandemic gave us a chance to change that, but the powers that be don't want to change it. and too often, old age spirituality is lined up with those powers and is cheering on those powers. no wonder then. that people want to find. ways of expressing their longing for the transcendent that stand outside. those political structures and that stand away from the church. or any other kind of religion, which seems to be just there to reinforce and buttress those structures. i don't think it's at all surprising, given what i think is a kind of historic betrayal. too often, not always, but too often, by the established church of people who have needs which are just not being met. within the kind of society that we live in, i think it's far from surprising that people are looking for new ways to satisfy their longing for the transcendent.
well, cards on the table. i'm a christian. i'm a member of the. episcopalian church. which is what we have in scotland. instead of the anglican church. and much better. scots always say that. there's a line in marx which is often quoted or misquoted um religion comes, marx says, from the sigh of the oppressed, the suffering of the downtrodden people. religion, marx said, is the opiate of the people. it's their way of escaping from unbearable realities that they find themselves trapped in. now, it seems to me that um... old age spirituality of the kind that i guess i represent as a christian. has in some sense got too tied in. to the kind of systems of economics and production that marx was targeting. when he said those famous things, people find themselves in a reality which is unbearable. because it's been mechanized. it's become completely dominated by the running of engines which make for lives within the system which are just like, to use an image i was using earlier, just like hamsters on a wheel, you are running and getting nowhere, you're trapped in meaningless labour, you're trapped in a life which doesn't mean anything to you, and the church is standing in the background saying, hooray for this. the church is in the background on the side of the mill owners. so what we have today is a situation where a lot of us find that we're trapped in meaningless work. in lives that society wants to define. as pretty much making us just cogs in a machine. vivid illustration of this in recent political discourse, the pandemic's over, get back to your offices. say the politicians. i think the pandemic was a huge opportunity for us to rethink. the way we do things. did you know that in london, every year a million people commute. and the amount of time that people spend commuting. on average is an hour a day. and if you do the sums, it turns out that means every year in london, 500 human lifetimes. are wasted on commuting. the pandemic gave us a chance to change that, but the powers that be don't want to change it. and too often, old age spirituality is lined up with those powers and is cheering on those powers. no wonder then. that people want to find. ways of expressing their longing for the transcendent that stand outside. those political structures and that stand away from the church. or any other kind of religion, which seems to be just there to reinforce and buttress those structures. i don't think it's at all surprising, given what i think is a kind of historic betrayal. too often, not always, but too often, by the established church of people who have needs which are just not being met. within the kind of society that we live in, i think it's far from surprising that people are looking for new ways to satisfy their longing for the transcendent.
Slavoj Žižek
in politics, it's not that you enact a story. it's that you do something horrible and the big problem is to invent a story which covers it up, which allows you to live with the horror. and i think unfortunately, and my japanese friends even agree with me here, that that's the case with so-called western buddhism, that's in the same there. no wonder that so, the most popular spiritual, religious, if you call it, but it's not, orientation of big corporate guys today is some kind of a vague pseudo-oriental spiritualism. because it's wonderful you do all the dirty things, people losing jobs, killing and then you tell them but what is this? but isn't life just a fleeting appearance? the truth is in me and so on and so on. i mean, if you have i respect buddhism, especially zen buddhism but this was for me the sober one of my, how should i call it? grounding. again, fucking life, we are coming back. life experiences. when i read a book, i quote it often, maybe some of you heard of him, brian victoria. he is a japanese, although this type name. zen and war, zen war, something like that. it describes how almost all of them, there were a couple of million, zen establishments, apart from four or five dissidents, totally supported the japanese imperial war. you know, if you are old enough, the big guy popularizer of zen, daisetz teitaro suzuki, suzuki from hippie times. yeah, but look at his earlier writings, you know, in late 30s, he wrote a long justification of the japanese attack on china. not only this, he collaborated with the army because he proposed them a theory with a terrifying example, but which is the truth. i appreciate him. he said, sorry, let's say you are my enemy. we meet in the battlefield. the fight is primitive, i have a knife. nonetheless, i'm not totally evil. i would find it a little bit problematic to stick my knife into you. and he confronts this problem, suzuki. and he says, zen buddhism has a solution here. you must go through that, they have another name, you can call it nirvana, whatever, the zero experience, enlightenment, where you see there is no substantial reality. you are not really active. you are just an empty brain observing the crazy dance of phenomena. so suzuki, i'm quoting him, he said so it's not i as a person will stick my knife into you. painful and'm still human at some level. but you have said, i'm observing a phenomenal multiplicity where my knife is dancing in the air and somehow it gets stuck into your breast. i was so fascinated. we uh the figure of heinrich himmler, ss boss, who was formally, formally as to form, an extremely ethical guy. never heard, but he organized holocaust. but for him this was the highest ethical act. and you know, he used a terrifying reversal here, this cynicism at its purest. he admitted it. this is horrible. how can we decent germans do this killing jewish children we mean not even armed and remain decent. you know what was his answer? oriental spiritualism. he always was carrying in his pocket a special lettered copy of bhagavad gita.
in politics, it's not that you enact a story. it's that you do something horrible and the big problem is to invent a story which covers it up, which allows you to live with the horror. and i think unfortunately, and my japanese friends even agree with me here, that that's the case with so-called western buddhism, that's in the same there. no wonder that so, the most popular spiritual, religious, if you call it, but it's not, orientation of big corporate guys today is some kind of a vague pseudo-oriental spiritualism. because it's wonderful you do all the dirty things, people losing jobs, killing and then you tell them but what is this? but isn't life just a fleeting appearance? the truth is in me and so on and so on. i mean, if you have i respect buddhism, especially zen buddhism but this was for me the sober one of my, how should i call it? grounding. again, fucking life, we are coming back. life experiences. when i read a book, i quote it often, maybe some of you heard of him, brian victoria. he is a japanese, although this type name. zen and war, zen war, something like that. it describes how almost all of them, there were a couple of million, zen establishments, apart from four or five dissidents, totally supported the japanese imperial war. you know, if you are old enough, the big guy popularizer of zen, daisetz teitaro suzuki, suzuki from hippie times. yeah, but look at his earlier writings, you know, in late 30s, he wrote a long justification of the japanese attack on china. not only this, he collaborated with the army because he proposed them a theory with a terrifying example, but which is the truth. i appreciate him. he said, sorry, let's say you are my enemy. we meet in the battlefield. the fight is primitive, i have a knife. nonetheless, i'm not totally evil. i would find it a little bit problematic to stick my knife into you. and he confronts this problem, suzuki. and he says, zen buddhism has a solution here. you must go through that, they have another name, you can call it nirvana, whatever, the zero experience, enlightenment, where you see there is no substantial reality. you are not really active. you are just an empty brain observing the crazy dance of phenomena. so suzuki, i'm quoting him, he said so it's not i as a person will stick my knife into you. painful and'm still human at some level. but you have said, i'm observing a phenomenal multiplicity where my knife is dancing in the air and somehow it gets stuck into your breast. i was so fascinated. we uh the figure of heinrich himmler, ss boss, who was formally, formally as to form, an extremely ethical guy. never heard, but he organized holocaust. but for him this was the highest ethical act. and you know, he used a terrifying reversal here, this cynicism at its purest. he admitted it. this is horrible. how can we decent germans do this killing jewish children we mean not even armed and remain decent. you know what was his answer? oriental spiritualism. he always was carrying in his pocket a special lettered copy of bhagavad gita.
Rupert Sheldrake
meditation is widely practiced by lots of people, including me. how many people here meditate or have meditated? well, it certainly a majority, a big majority. and there have now been studies on meditation that show changes in the brain, reduction in the activity of the default mode network, those regions of the brain concerned with rumination, anxious thinking, worrying and so forth. lowering of blood pressure, reduction of stress, making people less prone to depression, which is why in some parts of britain, on the national health service, psychiatrists can give prescriptions for meditation to people who are depressed because it turns out that it's cheaper and as effective, if not more effective, than antidepressant drugs. so here's a spiritual practice that can induce a feeling not all the time, most of the time thoughts keep going on and one detaches oneself a bit from the thoughts and they still carry on, but there are moments of... calm unity and a kind of more unitive state of being or presence. which can lead to spiritual experiences, this experience of connection with something greater than ourselves. there have been many studies of the practice of gratitude. this is found in all religious traditions, giving thanks for what we have. and there are now many studies that show that people who are grateful are usually healthier, happier and more popular than those who are ungrateful. people are ungrateful and who complain a lot, you who see the glass as half empty, not surprisingly less. be't be with them people who see the glass as half full and lead a more grateful kind of life. and the critics of this research which was done by positive psychologists, psychologists who study what makes us happy, as it's a new field of psychology, relatively new because most psychology is about what makes us miserable. and positive psychology has shown that when they showed this, people said, well of course these people are great. they're grateful because they're happy, not happy because they're grateful. so they did experiments where people do gratefulness exercises and those randomized samples of people do gratefulness exercises compared with writing a list of complaints or just a short story about something that happened in the previous week. those who count their blessings are measurably happier for days afterwards. and other gratefulness exercises show conclusively that being grateful on the whole makes people happier. and i think that's because being grateful recognizesises that what we have, so much of what we have comes to us from others, our food, the natural world. the language we have, our culture, we didn't invent english language or the landscape or anything. all these things are gifts. and if we're grateful for them, this flow that comes to us can go through us and is part of a flow which again is a spirit of connection. singing and chanting are part of all spiritual traditions and when people sing and chant together, they're literally breathing together and resonating together. and now physiological studies have shown that not only do they breathe together, when you're, for example, singing a hymn at the end of each line you have to take a breath, so everyone's breathing together and singing together. it can also lead to heartbeats being more synchron. people come much more into a group. cohesion and i've seen this many times through the work of my wife jill pass, who's here, who's for many years been leading workshops called inner sound and voice workshops and groups of people come together in her workshops they all come from all over the place, disparate groups of people and after two or three days of singing and chanting together, they leave bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and bonded and connected and it's a wonderful transition and this again is present in all traditions as a way of unifying groups, bringing groups together, bonding people with each other. again, connection. many of these spiritual practices are about connection and connection is what makes us feel happy on the whole, whereas disconnection, separation, alienation is what makes people feel miserable on the whole.
meditation is widely practiced by lots of people, including me. how many people here meditate or have meditated? well, it certainly a majority, a big majority. and there have now been studies on meditation that show changes in the brain, reduction in the activity of the default mode network, those regions of the brain concerned with rumination, anxious thinking, worrying and so forth. lowering of blood pressure, reduction of stress, making people less prone to depression, which is why in some parts of britain, on the national health service, psychiatrists can give prescriptions for meditation to people who are depressed because it turns out that it's cheaper and as effective, if not more effective, than antidepressant drugs. so here's a spiritual practice that can induce a feeling not all the time, most of the time thoughts keep going on and one detaches oneself a bit from the thoughts and they still carry on, but there are moments of... calm unity and a kind of more unitive state of being or presence. which can lead to spiritual experiences, this experience of connection with something greater than ourselves. there have been many studies of the practice of gratitude. this is found in all religious traditions, giving thanks for what we have. and there are now many studies that show that people who are grateful are usually healthier, happier and more popular than those who are ungrateful. people are ungrateful and who complain a lot, you who see the glass as half empty, not surprisingly less. be't be with them people who see the glass as half full and lead a more grateful kind of life. and the critics of this research which was done by positive psychologists, psychologists who study what makes us happy, as it's a new field of psychology, relatively new because most psychology is about what makes us miserable. and positive psychology has shown that when they showed this, people said, well of course these people are great. they're grateful because they're happy, not happy because they're grateful. so they did experiments where people do gratefulness exercises and those randomized samples of people do gratefulness exercises compared with writing a list of complaints or just a short story about something that happened in the previous week. those who count their blessings are measurably happier for days afterwards. and other gratefulness exercises show conclusively that being grateful on the whole makes people happier. and i think that's because being grateful recognizesises that what we have, so much of what we have comes to us from others, our food, the natural world. the language we have, our culture, we didn't invent english language or the landscape or anything. all these things are gifts. and if we're grateful for them, this flow that comes to us can go through us and is part of a flow which again is a spirit of connection. singing and chanting are part of all spiritual traditions and when people sing and chant together, they're literally breathing together and resonating together. and now physiological studies have shown that not only do they breathe together, when you're, for example, singing a hymn at the end of each line you have to take a breath, so everyone's breathing together and singing together. it can also lead to heartbeats being more synchron. people come much more into a group. cohesion and i've seen this many times through the work of my wife jill pass, who's here, who's for many years been leading workshops called inner sound and voice workshops and groups of people come together in her workshops they all come from all over the place, disparate groups of people and after two or three days of singing and chanting together, they leave bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and bonded and connected and it's a wonderful transition and this again is present in all traditions as a way of unifying groups, bringing groups together, bonding people with each other. again, connection. many of these spiritual practices are about connection and connection is what makes us feel happy on the whole, whereas disconnection, separation, alienation is what makes people feel miserable on the whole.
Lisa Miller
so if you ask a clinical scientist, what's the difference between religion? and spirituality, we would use a twin study. using a twin study, twins raised together, twins raised apart, factoring out their commonality as a function of genes and environment, we can determine the extent to which any human trait is inborn or environmentally formed. religion is a gift of our parents and grandparents, our community. religion is 100% environmentally transmitted. we might choose a religion and immerse ourselves. spirituality is innate. every single one of us is born with an innate seat of spiritual awareness. how much so? by the time we're adults, 30% innate. it is our birthright. and yet, two-thirds environmentally formed. for many, the two-thirds is the rich embrace of a religious tradition. for others, it is through art and poetry. but every one of us is born. a spiritual bane. now let's take that down one more level to mri studies. what is the inheritance that is ours, that is innate, our birthright? there is a neuroocking station, an innate seat. of transcendent awareness with which we are all endowed. in a culture that has silenced multiple forms of knowing, multiple organic epistemologies, we don't hear much in k-12 or in the boardroom about the deep neuroseat of transcendent perception. but you are not an innately spiritual being due to your belief. but rather due to your ability to perceive and know. this is a form of human perception at the inner table. we have a logician. we have, of course, a skeptic who's most welcome. we have an empiricist, a mystic, and intuitive. and when we can bring all kners into... tandem. we see in our mri studies interconnections myelinating the tracks's highways. between forms of knowing for a more innovative, situationally aware. creative brain. this is a room full of artists and writers. you have a highly interconnected brain. i might even venture to guess that the muse or some form of transcendent knowing may have informed one of your creations. if you ask scientists, if you ask a scientist, 70% of scientists who have made a meaningful contribution in their field report that while the rollout of science, perfectly good lens was quite logically driven. the inspiration, the question through which they broke ground. was a proverbial apple on the head from here. it was a form of transcendent experience, dream, mystical experience, synchronicity. we are kners in multiple forms, and when we own all forms of knowing, we are ready to move forward. you will not have the problems we have now. new generation. you won't need to solve them. they won't happen in the first place.
so if you ask a clinical scientist, what's the difference between religion? and spirituality, we would use a twin study. using a twin study, twins raised together, twins raised apart, factoring out their commonality as a function of genes and environment, we can determine the extent to which any human trait is inborn or environmentally formed. religion is a gift of our parents and grandparents, our community. religion is 100% environmentally transmitted. we might choose a religion and immerse ourselves. spirituality is innate. every single one of us is born with an innate seat of spiritual awareness. how much so? by the time we're adults, 30% innate. it is our birthright. and yet, two-thirds environmentally formed. for many, the two-thirds is the rich embrace of a religious tradition. for others, it is through art and poetry. but every one of us is born. a spiritual bane. now let's take that down one more level to mri studies. what is the inheritance that is ours, that is innate, our birthright? there is a neuroocking station, an innate seat. of transcendent awareness with which we are all endowed. in a culture that has silenced multiple forms of knowing, multiple organic epistemologies, we don't hear much in k-12 or in the boardroom about the deep neuroseat of transcendent perception. but you are not an innately spiritual being due to your belief. but rather due to your ability to perceive and know. this is a form of human perception at the inner table. we have a logician. we have, of course, a skeptic who's most welcome. we have an empiricist, a mystic, and intuitive. and when we can bring all kners into... tandem. we see in our mri studies interconnections myelinating the tracks's highways. between forms of knowing for a more innovative, situationally aware. creative brain. this is a room full of artists and writers. you have a highly interconnected brain. i might even venture to guess that the muse or some form of transcendent knowing may have informed one of your creations. if you ask scientists, if you ask a scientist, 70% of scientists who have made a meaningful contribution in their field report that while the rollout of science, perfectly good lens was quite logically driven. the inspiration, the question through which they broke ground. was a proverbial apple on the head from here. it was a form of transcendent experience, dream, mystical experience, synchronicity. we are kners in multiple forms, and when we own all forms of knowing, we are ready to move forward. you will not have the problems we have now. new generation. you won't need to solve them. they won't happen in the first place.
Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes
so i'm going to promote the view that nature is god. in other words, the view of spinoza, the philosopher baruch or benedict de spinoza. um... spinoza's philosophy, i think today we live in a post-cartesian, post-christian world. and i take that partly from nietzsche. i believe that a lot of the ecological problem, crisis that we have and the so-called hard problem of consciousness, how we basically explain the relationship between a mind and matter, stem from the same root. and that root is the bifurcation of nature, as alfred north whitehead said. um whitehead places the blame as always with descartes. so descartes, if you don't know, of course, split-minded matter. he was a mathematician, geometrician, and he said that... mind was souls, a completely different substance from matter. matter was for him purely extension or space and it seems that what has happened is in our culture we've endorsed cartesianism, descartes' thought here. we've left the soul to religion, we've left matter firstly as extension to science. and then what happened is, of course, a lot of scientists have then thought, well, we don't need religion, we don't need the soul, let's just work on pure matter as extension. the problem with that, of course, is that we end up with this cul-de-sac, which is the... has a number of names, the explanatory gap, the hard problem of consciousness, and so on and so forth. basically the mind-m matter mystery. how do you get mind from meat, essentially? regardless of the complexity of that matter, that meat. and... looking at nature as completely geometric or purely physical. makes us think that it has no intrinsic worth at all. it only has instrumental value for us humans, or at least those beings with some kind of sentience. um... now, spinoza, he had, as it were, an antidote to cartesianism. namely a monism that mind and matter are one. not only mind matter are one, but that the universe as a whole is one. with all its attributes and he calls, spinoza called that substance, that one substance, as opposed to descartes' two substances, called it god. i suppose we are special in the sense that we are complex organisms compared to many others but essentially i just see that as a difference in degree rather than in kind. and for another organism or another life form, another species, of course they wouldn't really appreciate shakespeare's sonnets or whatever it may be, they would prefer their pond or whatever it might be, right? and so the question is, how do you weigh up those two preferences? can you weigh them up? and then you get into moral theory. i won't go there now. i don't think you can, essentially. but sorry to agree with you, tim. i think what you said about people being part of nature, i mean, this is precisely spinoza's reaction to descartes, because descartes, following the christian tradition, saw mankind as very special, not merely because of mankind's intelligence, but because they had a soul, a soul that was transcendent. they could go to heaven or hell, in my case perhaps, or wherever. and spinoza's, the reason einstein said he was a spinozist, the reason einstein said spinoza was the greatest philosopher of modern times, is because he was the first to bring mind and matter together. in other words, he made mankind part of nature philosophically. and that's why he was suppressed. he was excommunicated by his fellow jews in amsterdam and then his books were banned for 100 years by the church. it wasn't until the 1780s with the pantheism controversy that his ideas became serious again, but then science had moved on, as i said, with the cartesian framework.
so i'm going to promote the view that nature is god. in other words, the view of spinoza, the philosopher baruch or benedict de spinoza. um... spinoza's philosophy, i think today we live in a post-cartesian, post-christian world. and i take that partly from nietzsche. i believe that a lot of the ecological problem, crisis that we have and the so-called hard problem of consciousness, how we basically explain the relationship between a mind and matter, stem from the same root. and that root is the bifurcation of nature, as alfred north whitehead said. um whitehead places the blame as always with descartes. so descartes, if you don't know, of course, split-minded matter. he was a mathematician, geometrician, and he said that... mind was souls, a completely different substance from matter. matter was for him purely extension or space and it seems that what has happened is in our culture we've endorsed cartesianism, descartes' thought here. we've left the soul to religion, we've left matter firstly as extension to science. and then what happened is, of course, a lot of scientists have then thought, well, we don't need religion, we don't need the soul, let's just work on pure matter as extension. the problem with that, of course, is that we end up with this cul-de-sac, which is the... has a number of names, the explanatory gap, the hard problem of consciousness, and so on and so forth. basically the mind-m matter mystery. how do you get mind from meat, essentially? regardless of the complexity of that matter, that meat. and... looking at nature as completely geometric or purely physical. makes us think that it has no intrinsic worth at all. it only has instrumental value for us humans, or at least those beings with some kind of sentience. um... now, spinoza, he had, as it were, an antidote to cartesianism. namely a monism that mind and matter are one. not only mind matter are one, but that the universe as a whole is one. with all its attributes and he calls, spinoza called that substance, that one substance, as opposed to descartes' two substances, called it god. i suppose we are special in the sense that we are complex organisms compared to many others but essentially i just see that as a difference in degree rather than in kind. and for another organism or another life form, another species, of course they wouldn't really appreciate shakespeare's sonnets or whatever it may be, they would prefer their pond or whatever it might be, right? and so the question is, how do you weigh up those two preferences? can you weigh them up? and then you get into moral theory. i won't go there now. i don't think you can, essentially. but sorry to agree with you, tim. i think what you said about people being part of nature, i mean, this is precisely spinoza's reaction to descartes, because descartes, following the christian tradition, saw mankind as very special, not merely because of mankind's intelligence, but because they had a soul, a soul that was transcendent. they could go to heaven or hell, in my case perhaps, or wherever. and spinoza's, the reason einstein said he was a spinozist, the reason einstein said spinoza was the greatest philosopher of modern times, is because he was the first to bring mind and matter together. in other words, he made mankind part of nature philosophically. and that's why he was suppressed. he was excommunicated by his fellow jews in amsterdam and then his books were banned for 100 years by the church. it wasn't until the 1780s with the pantheism controversy that his ideas became serious again, but then science had moved on, as i said, with the cartesian framework.
Co-Panelist
science to me is a very creative endeavour, far more so perhaps than most non-scientists would assume and also than society would give it credit for. and to me, you know, a lot of my day is trying to imagine how things might be and occasionally something pops into my mind and i don't know where it comes from. and this is what you're calling transcendence. i'm putting it very badly. so i'm not disputing at all that these things exist and are real and feel very real. world around us all oh, you guys out there, you're not out there. you're in here. i have constructed you in my brain. there is no, you know, any tree that i see over there, everything i see in the world around me, you're not physically in my head. what's in my head is a bunch of neurons, a bunch of electrical wiring and so on. and it's put together in a way that we can barely understand and it constructs a world. and we interact with that world during early development. we walk into trees, we hurt ourselves. we figure out that that is not moving, it's bigger than me and it hurts. and so we piece together world and if you keep someone in a, i mean apparently this kind of thing happens, keep someone in a dark room until they're six or something, they never can see properly because they you know the neuron, the synaptic connections in the mind is too late for them that plasticity of forming the links to understand what you're seeing it is too late. so if the mind, and clearly it is because it is for absolutely everyone here, capable of constructing this astonishing world, what a beautiful part of the world that we're in. we are able to construct all of this in our heads and we can agree about what's out there. so what happens when some of this goes wrong? i know for a fact that my mind is capable of constructing an amazing world. it doesn't surprise me very much that it's also capable of constructing all kinds of horrors, all kinds of forms of mental derangement in one way or another. and will it happen to me? i don't doubt it. i don't see a need again to believe that it's coming from somewhere else. i see my own mind as capable of doing things that i cannot understand. but it doesn't mean to say it's coming from over there. it means it's coming from in here to my mind.
science to me is a very creative endeavour, far more so perhaps than most non-scientists would assume and also than society would give it credit for. and to me, you know, a lot of my day is trying to imagine how things might be and occasionally something pops into my mind and i don't know where it comes from. and this is what you're calling transcendence. i'm putting it very badly. so i'm not disputing at all that these things exist and are real and feel very real. world around us all oh, you guys out there, you're not out there. you're in here. i have constructed you in my brain. there is no, you know, any tree that i see over there, everything i see in the world around me, you're not physically in my head. what's in my head is a bunch of neurons, a bunch of electrical wiring and so on. and it's put together in a way that we can barely understand and it constructs a world. and we interact with that world during early development. we walk into trees, we hurt ourselves. we figure out that that is not moving, it's bigger than me and it hurts. and so we piece together world and if you keep someone in a, i mean apparently this kind of thing happens, keep someone in a dark room until they're six or something, they never can see properly because they you know the neuron, the synaptic connections in the mind is too late for them that plasticity of forming the links to understand what you're seeing it is too late. so if the mind, and clearly it is because it is for absolutely everyone here, capable of constructing this astonishing world, what a beautiful part of the world that we're in. we are able to construct all of this in our heads and we can agree about what's out there. so what happens when some of this goes wrong? i know for a fact that my mind is capable of constructing an amazing world. it doesn't surprise me very much that it's also capable of constructing all kinds of horrors, all kinds of forms of mental derangement in one way or another. and will it happen to me? i don't doubt it. i don't see a need again to believe that it's coming from somewhere else. i see my own mind as capable of doing things that i cannot understand. but it doesn't mean to say it's coming from over there. it means it's coming from in here to my mind.
Moderator
i mean, i find,, feel free to clap, feel free to clap. sorry, i didn't mean to stop that. i'm sort of struck that you've all immediately gone into this, well, it must be something that you're all aware of, but that the afterlife is just about consciousness, that there's some sort of sense of like an identity that goes on. i'm struck that no one talks about an afterlife in specifically here, we're talking about what would an afterlife look like in a secular world, right? and i was expecting at least... of you to say well of course you know, our bodies the atoms in our bodies go on in the form of other organisms and you know there are ways in which we could sort of secularize this idea of continuity right? but i'm struck that none of you said that so i'm i
i mean, i find,, feel free to clap, feel free to clap. sorry, i didn't mean to stop that. i'm sort of struck that you've all immediately gone into this, well, it must be something that you're all aware of, but that the afterlife is just about consciousness, that there's some sort of sense of like an identity that goes on. i'm struck that no one talks about an afterlife in specifically here, we're talking about what would an afterlife look like in a secular world, right? and i was expecting at least... of you to say well of course you know, our bodies the atoms in our bodies go on in the form of other organisms and you know there are ways in which we could sort of secularize this idea of continuity right? but i'm struck that none of you said that so i'm i
Co-Panelist
well, this is the lion king version, really, isn't it, of the circle of life. and it's a very beautiful idea, and i do subscribe to that. i love the idea that all my atoms are going to be consumed and distributed around the world. one of my favourite lines of poetry, and i'm going to get this wrong, but it's from a.e. housman, who was from these parts, from a shropshire lad. and someone, some boy dies and he's thrown overboard and the final line of this poem is, and he wears the turning globe. it's just a beautiful line that now he's become part of the planet, part of the oceans, part of everything. and that's probably as close to spiritualism as i get.
well, this is the lion king version, really, isn't it, of the circle of life. and it's a very beautiful idea, and i do subscribe to that. i love the idea that all my atoms are going to be consumed and distributed around the world. one of my favourite lines of poetry, and i'm going to get this wrong, but it's from a.e. housman, who was from these parts, from a shropshire lad. and someone, some boy dies and he's thrown overboard and the final line of this poem is, and he wears the turning globe. it's just a beautiful line that now he's become part of the planet, part of the oceans, part of everything. and that's probably as close to spiritualism as i get.
Michael Shermer
right.
right.
Co-Panelist
ready.
ready.
Michael Shermer
there's a lot of ways to fulfill spirituality, the sense of awe and wonder about your place in the cosmos. i'm an atheist and i still get great fulfillment and a sense of spirituality when i go into a cathedral because they're designed to invoke that. in the same way, i feel the same way when i visit astronomical domes, great big, huge astronomy domes with those telescopes. i feel the same sense as i go into a cathedral. and you can get this through lots of different human modalities. there's a lot of research on this to evoke a sense of awe and wonder, just do anything to get yourself out of yourself. go outside, walk barefoot, go on a hike go dancing, go meditating. you know, there's lots and lots of different ways to kind of invoke a sense of spirituality and awe. religion kind of had a monopoly on the job for a while and that's fallen into disuse and most of us atheists think that's not such a bad thing for other reasons. reason does it have to be replaced by something? not really specifically. i think just a deeper understanding of what it is we need to do to fulfill whatever it is religion was doing, one of which is providing community and friendship and a sense of belonging to other groups. and that's what it does pretty well. so, you know, there's studies, these research studies, you quoted the one that sounded pretty negative. that religious people live longer, they're healthier, and so on. but there's nothing magical about that. it's not like the deity reaches in to stir the particles in your body so you live longer. it's that people that are religious tend to have more community. it's the community. or having somebody that loves you or that you love, having close friends, having meaningful work and a purpose and volunteering for a nonprofit, something like this. these are the things that make people feel good about themselves. themselves, they're more likely to go to the doctor to stay healthy for their family and friends and community that they care about and they care about them. that's the actual pragmatic implications of being religious. not having religion doesn't mean you can't have those things. there's just lots of other ways to get it.
there's a lot of ways to fulfill spirituality, the sense of awe and wonder about your place in the cosmos. i'm an atheist and i still get great fulfillment and a sense of spirituality when i go into a cathedral because they're designed to invoke that. in the same way, i feel the same way when i visit astronomical domes, great big, huge astronomy domes with those telescopes. i feel the same sense as i go into a cathedral. and you can get this through lots of different human modalities. there's a lot of research on this to evoke a sense of awe and wonder, just do anything to get yourself out of yourself. go outside, walk barefoot, go on a hike go dancing, go meditating. you know, there's lots and lots of different ways to kind of invoke a sense of spirituality and awe. religion kind of had a monopoly on the job for a while and that's fallen into disuse and most of us atheists think that's not such a bad thing for other reasons. reason does it have to be replaced by something? not really specifically. i think just a deeper understanding of what it is we need to do to fulfill whatever it is religion was doing, one of which is providing community and friendship and a sense of belonging to other groups. and that's what it does pretty well. so, you know, there's studies, these research studies, you quoted the one that sounded pretty negative. that religious people live longer, they're healthier, and so on. but there's nothing magical about that. it's not like the deity reaches in to stir the particles in your body so you live longer. it's that people that are religious tend to have more community. it's the community. or having somebody that loves you or that you love, having close friends, having meaningful work and a purpose and volunteering for a nonprofit, something like this. these are the things that make people feel good about themselves. themselves, they're more likely to go to the doctor to stay healthy for their family and friends and community that they care about and they care about them. that's the actual pragmatic implications of being religious. not having religion doesn't mean you can't have those things. there's just lots of other ways to get it.