Why the "Brights" are Themselves Deluded

© Ian Lawton 2006

The “Brights Movement”, which has recently been set up by prominent atheists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and James Randi among others, aims to promote a “naturalistic worldview that is free from supernatural belief”. Indeed, they want to escape from being described as “atheist”, and the negative connotations of “rejecting belief in a god”, and instead hold their heads high as… well, very bright people. And we can only assume that they prefer the term “naturalist” to “materialist” to ensure that they are not confused with people who like to buy too many pairs of shoes.

Even if we allow that these eminent members of the western intelligentsia are indeed as intellectually well-endowed as they suggest, their choice of name is a somewhat breathtaking piece of arrogance. They are, finally and explicitly, suggesting that anyone who does not have an exclusively naturalist worldview is… well, not very bright. But is their assumed intellectual superiority really justified?  

Given the current fevered climate in the US at least, we can give them the benefit of the doubt and regard their attacks on traditional religious belief as brave. Perhaps we can also allow that behind the fiery rhetoric they are substantially well-meaning. They see themselves as spokespeople for the many rational, intelligent people in the world who recognise the atrocities that dogmatic, faith-based religions have perpetrated for thousands of years. And they are even more disgusted that, despite the advance of secular science in recent centuries, humanity’s ability to tear itself apart by masquerading behind the mask of different religions continues unabated. For the most part these are intelligent men who seem to care deeply about our planet, about humanity and its future, and especially about making sure that future generations are sufficiently educated to break out of this repeating pattern.

For all this they are to be applauded, and at least in their analysis of traditional religions they speak for many modern spiritual seekers as well. But all is not as it seems – because their naturalist convictions are now proving to be just as ill-founded and irrational as those of traditional believers of all faiths. Indeed, they must now face a new challenge from an equally nascent but committed movement, that of “Rational Spirituality”. As we will see, this is not the contradiction in terms that it might at first appear to be.

Because of their justifiable desire to concentrate on hard evidence, sceptics have traditionally centred their arguments with believers on the issue of evolution. Of course it is extremely worrying that creationism is enjoying something of a resurgence, especially in the US, but Rational Spiritualists give it no credence, and accept that evolution is a fact. They might support the emerging intelligent design model, but this merely questions the underlying mechanisms of evolution, suggesting that natural selection may not be the only motive force. As such it is an immeasurably more rational approach than creationism and, because the arguments in this shifted debate are highly complex, for now at least there is no obvious winner.

However, in recent decades a number of other fields of research have yielded a huge mass of evidence to support a spiritual worldview. And we are not talking about the typical spiritualist areas of clairvoyance, mediumship and telepathy, which are such an easy target for sceptics. There are almost certainly a number of gifted psychics in existence, but many are not averse to using pure psychological trickery to fake supposedly paranormal abilities when the heat is on, especially if that is how they earn their living. This is exactly why Randi has focussed on these areas in issuing his “million dollar challenge”, because he knows he is on pretty safe ground, especially if he rigs the testing in his favour. And the damage caused by fake psychics does not rest there. By giving sceptics such an easy target, they encourage the natural tendency to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. So, for example, the influential UK-based psychological illusionist Derren Brown, in recognising the extent to which fraudsters might be using similar techniques, feels naturally inclined to promote a sceptical point of view.

So what are these other fields of spiritual research? They are primarily threefold, involving near-death experiences, children’s spontaneous memories of past lives, and past-life regression, and they share a number of consistent features. They each involve the testimony of what are now thousands of ordinary people from all walks of life, with no fixed religious or nonreligious preconceptions, no axe to grind, and no pretensions as spiritual gurus. They have each been pioneered not by new age quacks but by qualified psychologists, whose largely scientific training tended to give them a sceptical bias before their research gradually convinced them otherwise. And they each involve subjects disclosing historical or factual details that are verifiable, and so obscure that to attempt to dismiss them as the result of guesswork, pure chance or normally obtained knowledge is irrational in itself.

Dawkins suggests that “faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” I could not agree more. But the emerging Rational Spiritual worldview is not based on faith; it is based entirely on a whole plethora of modern evidence. Meanwhile another prominent atheist, the now-deceased Carl Sagan, who would surely have joined the Brights had he still been around, has been quoted as saying that “if some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote.” The key issue is this: where does anecdote stop, and scientific data begin? And when does dismissing evidence as merely anecdotal become an excuse for the evasion of what may, for some, be uncomfortable facts?

Take the case of the woman who had a near-death experience under completely controlled conditions while being operated on for a massive aneurism at the base of her brain. Afterwards she made a number of verifiable statements about events in the operating theatre, one of which involved an accurate description of the “toothbrush-like” saw used to open up her skull, with a “groove around the top”, and “interchangeable blades in what looked like a socket wrench case”. She had no medical knowledge, she could not have seen the instrument in advance in the operating theatre, and mere guesswork – even if there were a motive for fraud or self-deception, which is doubtful – would be highly unlikely to come up with the unusual design. She was not brain dead at the time – that would only come later – but she was deeply anaesthetised, and her eyes had been taped shut. She could not have “seen” the saw using any physical mechanism. While sceptics are happy to attack other aspects of this case, they are selective, and never attempt to answer this crucial element. The most likely explanation for this and a significant number of other impressive veridical cases is that her consciousness had genuinely left her body, and remained able to perceive and remember things. The only sensible conclusion we can draw from these cases is that the brain is not the seat of consciousness, merely the vehicle through which consciousness expresses itself in the physical plane.

What about the Indian child who spontaneously recalled many obscure details about her past life in another family? Many of her statements were made before there was any contact between the two at all, but they still proved to be entirely accurate. Once they did meet in the presence of independent investigators she was even repeatedly misdirected by her past personality’s family, who were deliberately trying to catch her out. But she passed all the tests with flying colours. And what about her disclosure to her former husband that he took 1200 rupees from her money box not long before she died – something known only to the two of them? Is it really objective and logical to write this off as just a “lucky guess”? Again there are hundreds of other cases of this nature where deliberate fraud or self-deception has been ruled out by close examination.

Finally we have the impressive recall of past lives under hypnotic regression. This is no panacea, and sceptics are right to point out that some apparent past-life memories merely result from a combination of imagination and knowledge already obtained by perfectly normal means. But what about the Australian woman who had never been to England in her life, yet under regression recalled thoroughly obscure details of the life of a young girl in eighteenth century Glastonbury? Among many other things, while still in Sydney she drew a carving that she described as being on a floor slab in a cottage to which she was once taken, which she said had been stolen from the Abbey. When she was brought to Europe by a film documentary crew, again under completely controlled conditions, she located the cottage, which was now a dilapidated chicken shed. And when the decades of droppings were swept away, there was the carving exactly as she had drawn it. Two other subjects in this experiment provided equally impressive, obscure details that were subsequently verified – one even held lengthy discussions in fluent, archaic French while in trance, despite having only had two short weeks of tuition as a child.

These cases, and the many more like them in each of the three areas of research, are not just anecdotal. They have been investigated by professional psychologists under as controlled conditions as possible given the nature of the research. So the idea of widespread fraud, misreporting or misinterpretation should be a non-starter, even for the most committed sceptic. But there is one other consistent factor that marks them out. Sceptics’ attempts to explain each of them away, if they bother to acknowledge their existence at all, are selective and reductionist. So near-death experiences are “nothing but euphoria resulting from endorphin production”, and past-life memories are “nothing but vivid imagination”. Such simplistic dismissals do not even begin to target the breadth and depth of modern evidence that has been diligently collated in each area, and especially not the consistent emergence of highly obscure and subsequently verified details.

Rational Spirituality is not based on a need for comfort, and to believe in something more. It is based entirely on logical analysis of hard, modern evidence, which points not just to the survival of consciousness or the soul, but also to its repeated reincarnation. Nor is it just another religion, with dogmatic moral codes derived from revelation. It merely provides a spiritual framework of how the universe works, and humanity’s place within it, while placing the onus on each of us to take personal responsibility for our own actions, and for understanding our own highly individual paths and lessons.

Randi argues that “no amount of belief makes something a fact”. He is quite right, but he and other leading Brights must now swallow their own medicine. The challenge has been taken up, and it is now up to them to take the time to analyse the evidence on the table properly, and argue against it in a detailed, logical and objective manner – if they can. And if they fail to successfully tackle the challenges being laid down by Rational Spirituality, the tables will be turned. It will be they who will have to answer charges of persisting with an irrational worldview whose materialist stance flies in the face of the modern evidence.

Rational Spirituality is not a formal religion, but it does attempt to provide seekers the world over with a new spiritual choice that is firmly grounded in evidence. It is a new “third way” that supersedes the battle between dogmatic religious belief and blind materialism. It is an idea whose time has come.