I thought people might find this thought-provoking. It certainly has that
old Dawkins flair, does it not?
-- Jim
>Religion's misguided missiles
>Promise a young man that death is not the end and he
>will willingly cause disaster
>
>Special report: terrorism in the US
>
>Richard Dawkins
>Guardian
>
>Saturday September 15, 2001
>
>A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in,
>say, on the heat of a jet plane's exhaust. A great improvement
>on a simple ballistic shell, it still cannot discriminate particular
>targets. It could not zero in on a designated New York
>skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston.
>
>That is precisely what a modern "smart missile" can do.
>Computer miniaturisation has advanced to the point where one
>of today's smart missiles could be programmed with an image of
>the Manhattan skyline together with instructions to home in on
>the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Smart missiles of this
>sophistication are possessed by the United States, as we
>learned in the Gulf war, but they are economically beyond
>ordinary terrorists and scientifically beyond theocratic
>governments. Might there be a cheaper and easier alternative?
>
>In the second world war, before electronics became cheap and
> miniature, the psychologist BF Skinner did some research on
>pigeon-guided missiles. The pigeon was to sit in a tiny cockpit,
>having previously been trained to peck keys in such a way as to
>keep a designated target in the centre of a screen. In the
>missile, the target would be for real.
>
>The principle worked, although it was never put into practice by
>the US authorities. Even factoring in the costs of training them,
>pigeons are cheaper and lighter than computers of comparable
>effectiveness. Their feats in Skinner's boxes suggest that a
>pigeon, after a regimen of training with colour slides, really could
>guide a missile to a distinctive landmark at the southern end of
>Manhattan island. The pigeon has no idea that it is guiding a
>missile. It just keeps on pecking at those two tall rectangles on
>the screen, from time to time a food reward drops out of the
>dispenser, and this goes on until... oblivion.
>
>Pigeons may be cheap and disposable as on-board guidance
>systems, but there's no escaping the cost of the missile itself.
>And no such missile large enough to do much damage could
>penetrate US air space without being intercepted. What is
>needed is a missile that is not recognised for what it is until too
>late. Something like a large civilian airliner, carrying the
>innocuous markings of a well-known carrier and a great deal of
>fuel. That's the easy part. But how do you smuggle on board the
>necessary guidance system? You can hardly expect the pilots
>to surrender the left-hand seat to a pigeon or a computer.
>
>How about using humans as on-board guidance systems,
>instead of pigeons? Humans are at least as numerous as
>pigeons, their brains are not significantly costlier than pigeon
>brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior. Humans
>have a proven track record in taking over planes by the use of
>threats, which work because the legitimate pilots value their own
>lives and those of their passengers.
>
>The natural assumption that the hijacker ultimately values his
> own life too, and will act rationally to preserve it, leads air crews
>and ground staff to make calculated decisions that would not
>work with guidance modules lacking a sense of
>self-preservation. If your plane is being hijacked by an armed
> man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to
>go on living, there is room for bargaining. A rational pilot
>complies with the hijacker's wishes, gets the plane down on the
>ground, has hot food sent in for the passengers and leaves the
>negotiations to people trained to negotiate.
>
>The problem with the human guidance system is precisely this.
>Unlike the pigeon version, it knows that a successful mission
>culminates in its own destruction. Could we develop a biological
>guidance system with the compliance and dispensability of a
>pigeon but with a man's resourcefulness and ability to infiltrate
>plausibly? What we need, in a nutshell, is a human who doesn't
>mind being blown up. He'd make the perfect on-board guidance
>system. But suicide enthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal
>cancer patients might lose their nerve when the crash was
>actually looming.
>
>Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow
>persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence
>of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? If only! Nobody is
>that stupid, but how about this - it's a long shot, but it just might
>work. Given that they are certainly going to die, couldn't we
>sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life
>again afterwards? Don't be daft! No, listen, it might work. Offer
>them a fast track to a Great Oasis in the Sky, cooled by
>everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldn't appeal to the
>sort of young men we need, so tell them there's a special
>martyr's reward of 72 virgin brides, guaranteed eager and
>exclusive.
>
>Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too
>unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate
>enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next.
>
>It's a tall story, but worth a try. You'd have to get them young,
>though. Feed them a complete and self-consistent background
>mythology to make the big lie sound plausible when it comes.
> Give them a holy book and make them learn it by heart. Do you
>know, I really think it might work. As luck would have it, we have
>just the thing to hand: a ready-made system of mind-control
>which has been honed over centuries, handed down through
>generations. Millions of people have been brought up in it. It is
>called religion and, for reasons which one day we may
>understand, most people fall for it (nowhere more so than
>America itself, though the irony passes unnoticed). Now all we
>need is to round up a few of these faith-heads and give them
>flying lessons.
>
>Facetious? Trivialising an unspeakable evil? That is the exact
>opposite of my intention, which is deadly serious and prompted
>by deep grief and fierce anger. I am trying to call attention to the
>elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout -
>to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that
>religion has on human life. I don't mean devaluing the life of
>others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one's own life.
>Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the
>end.
>
>If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life
>highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer
>place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At
>the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince
>themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's
>death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and
>zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make
>the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe
>that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the
>tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if
>ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it
> any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring
>to be selected for suicide missions?
>
>There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really
>is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a
>smart missile, and its guidance system is in many respects
>superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money
>can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organisation, or
>priesthood, it is very very cheap.
>
>Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the
>customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a
>suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not
>helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11.
>Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not
>cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds
>braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to
>understand where that courage came from.
>
>It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying
>source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated
>the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is
>another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with
>the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the
>Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do
>not be surprised if they are used.
>
>Richard Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of
>science, University of Oxford, and author of The Selfish Gene,
>The Blind Watchmaker, and Unweaving the Rainbow.
