For five years through 2018, our humanist community, the Humanist Hub*, met every Sunday afternoon at our suite in Harvard Square for fellowship, music, and a speaker. Our advisory board included luminaries of humanism such as Rebecca Goldstein, Steven Pinker, and Dan Dennett. These friends of the organization regularly spoke at Humanist Hub events. One of the most memorable, for me, was Dan Dennett's talk in November 2017, "The Science of the Soul (and where to go from here)."
I was lucky enough to be asked to introduce Dan, and shared thoughts about what his work had meant to me. I've included my lightly edited script below. The video on Facebook includes more jokes (and laughs) and shows a typical Sunday program at the Hub. The program starts at 13:30, with music at 20:30, my remarks starting at 27:30, and Dan's talk starting at 37:20.
Hi I’m Stephen Matheson, I’m a member of the Hub, and I’m also on the board. It is my joy and privilege to be introducing Dan Dennett. Dan’s work is a big part of my story as a humanist. While Sarah didn’t make me beg to be allowed to introduce him, I gladly would have. I’m going to say a little about what Dan’s writing has meant to me, then a little about what that has to do with our community here at the Hub, and then I’ll properly introduce our speaker.
Here is Paul the apostle, writing to the Corinthians: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” Twenty years ago, I was an evangelical Christian, and it was completely natural, even expected, to begin a personal reflection with a verse from the bible just like that one. Turnabout is fair play, so let me tell you just a little about how Dan Dennett helped me learn to think like an adult and equip myself to eventually dismantle the influence of Paul the apostle in my life.
I think it was 1999 when I picked up this book at the library. [Show Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.] I was an evangelical and a postdoc in biology, so there were some compelling reasons to be reading a book about “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” Now, it would be reasonable to wonder if I was a creationist and that Dan deconverted me by explaining how evolution works. That’d be a great story, but it’s wrong: I wasn’t a creationist and didn’t need to be convinced of common ancestry. But I was, by virtue of my religion, inclined toward magical thinking, toward “skepticism” about scientific explanation — in other words, toward skyhooks. Skyhooks anyone? Who knows what I’m talking about? (It’s not an unblockable basketball shot, not in this context.) [explain skyhooks] Reading this book didn’t merely undo a lot of vacuous skepticism or magical thinking on my part. It did something deeper and more subversive: it showed me how adults think. After I read Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, I was ruined as a Christian, even though I didn’t deconvert until more than a decade later.
Thinking like an adult is harder than thinking like a child. You need tools. Dan calls them “intuition pumps” and he created a collection of them that I use as a devotional. [Show Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking]
- Skyhooks and cranes.
- The Library of Mendel.
- “Give me Order and give me time, and I will give you design.”
- Design space, Forced Moves, Good Tricks.
These aren’t just ideas, they’re tools. And they’re exercises. Buy this book and keep it handy whenever you need some brain exercise. Here’s one typical piece of wisdom: so many atheists say that biological design is some kind of illusion, because to have design, so the thinking goes, you need a designer, and they worry that talking about design is some kind of dangerous invitation to a “divine foot in the door.” Dan goes in basically the opposite direction (reading from Intuition Pumps p. 222):
Which campaign do we evolutionists want to lead? Do we want to try to convince laypeople that they don’t really see the design that is stunningly obvious at every scale in biology, or would we rather try to show that, wonderful to say, what Darwin has shown is that there can be design – real design, as real as it gets – without an Intelligent Designer? We have persuaded the world that the earth goes around the sun and that time is relative, not absolute. Why shrink from the pedagogical task of showing that there can be design without a designer?
But there’s something else about Dan that really inspires me. He’s a founding member of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse, but his thoughts on religion and disagreement are generously humanistic. It’s not enough to think like an adult — here in our humanist community we want to act like adults, like generous adults who audaciously seek a better world for everyone.
I’m a board member and a financial supporter at the Hub, because I’m enough of a romantic idealist to still believe that humans can make a better world. 2017 hasn’t been a good year for romantic idealists in the US, and yet here we are getting ready to hear Dan Dennett talk about human nature, in a place committed to connection and action and change. This space is the gathering place of our humanist community, and it is only possible because people support it with their time and their money. I do hope you are giving generously to the ACLU and Doctors Without Borders and organizations like those. But I also want to ask you to support the Humanist Hub. Be a part of our community, give to support it, and join us in pursuing adult thought and generous action. I know that Dan would agree: he spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony in this very space 4 years ago. You can give a 1-time gift online or right here in the red box, or even better you can become a growth or sustaining member and get perks like tickets to hear speakers like Dan.
Now I will introduce Dan Dennett. He is a University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. His many books include these two, and this one, and most recently From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. I don't own that one, and came here ready to buy it.
*Five years of running a humanist community with weekly meetings and other events, and paying for a full office/meeting space in Harvard Square, was a great run but ended in 2018. The organization is alive and well in its long-term original form as the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard & MIT.
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