richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion
THL R O O T S OF R E L I G I O N 175so well schooled to obey orders without question that they carriedon marching, right into the path of an oncoming train. Now, ofcourse, I don't believe the story and I hope the preacher didn'teither. But I believed it when I was nine, because I heard it from anadult in authority over me. And whether he believed it or not, thepreacher wished us children to admire and model ourselves on thesoldiers' slavish and unquestioning obedience to an order, howeverpreposterous, from an authority figure. Speaking for myself, I thinkwe did admire it. As an adult I find it almost impossible to creditthat my childhood self wondered whether I would have had thecourage to do my duty by marching under the train. But that, forwhat it is worth, is how I remember my feelings. The sermonobviously made a deep impression on me, for I have remembered itand passed it on to you.To be fair, I don't think the preacher thought he was serving upa religious message. It was probably more military than religious,in the spirit of Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade', which hemay well have quoted:'Forward the Light Brigade!'Was there a man dismayed?Not though the soldiers knewSome one had blundered:Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die:Into the valley of DeathRode the six hundred.(One of the earliest and scratchiest recordings of the human voiceever made is of Lord Tennyson himself reading this poem, and theimpression of hollow declaiming down a long, dark tunnel from thedepths of the past seems eerily appropriate.) From the highcommand's point of view it would be madness to allow eachindividual soldier discretion over whether or not to obey orders.Nations whose infantrymen act on their own initiative rather thanfollowing orders will tend to lose wars. From the nation's point ofview, this remains a good rule of thumb even if it sometimes leads
176 T H E Ci O D D E L U S I O Nto individual disasters. Soldiers are drilled to become as much likeautomata, or computers, as possible.Computers do what they are told. They slavishly obey anyinstructions given in their own programming language. This is howthey do useful things like word processing and spreadsheet calculations.But, as an inevitable by-product, they are equally robotic inobeying bad instructions. They have no way of telling whether aninstruction will have a good effect or a bad. They simply obey, assoldiers are supposed to. It is their unquestioning obedience thatmakes computers useful, and exactly the same thing makes theminescapably vulnerable to infection by software viruses and worms.A maliciously designed program that says, 'Copy me and send meto every address that you find on this hard disk' will simply beobeyed, and then obeyed again by the other computers down theline to which it is sent, in exponential expansion. It is difficult, perhapsimpossible, to design a computer which is usefully obedientand at the same time immune to infection.If I have done my softening-up work well, you will already havecompleted my argument about child brains and religion. Naturalselection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatevertheir parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience isvaluable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for amoth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility.The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mindviruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, childbrains need to trust parents, and elders whom parents tell them totrust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishinggood advice from bad. The child cannot know that 'Don'tpaddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo' is good advice but 'Youmust sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rainswill fail' is at best a waste of time and goats. Both admonitions soundequally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and aredelivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect anddemands obedience. The same goes for propositions about the world,about the cosmos, about morality and about human nature. And,very likely, when the child grows up and has children of her own, shewill naturally pass the whole lot on to her own children - nonsenseas well as sense - using the same infectious gravitas of manner.
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THL R O O T S OF R E L I G I O N 175
so well schooled to obey orders without question that they carried
on marching, right into the path of an oncoming train. Now, of
course, I don't believe the story and I hope the preacher didn't
either. But I believed it when I was nine, because I heard it from an
adult in authority over me. And whether he believed it or not, the
preacher wished us children to admire and model ourselves on the
soldiers' slavish and unquestioning obedience to an order, however
preposterous, from an authority figure. Speaking for myself, I think
we did admire it. As an adult I find it almost impossible to credit
that my childhood self wondered whether I would have had the
courage to do my duty by marching under the train. But that, for
what it is worth, is how I remember my feelings. The sermon
obviously made a deep impression on me, for I have remembered it
and passed it on to you.
To be fair, I don't think the preacher thought he was serving up
a religious message. It was probably more military than religious,
in the spirit of Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade', which he
may well have quoted:
'Forward the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldiers knew
Some one had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
(One of the earliest and scratchiest recordings of the human voice
ever made is of Lord Tennyson himself reading this poem, and the
impression of hollow declaiming down a long, dark tunnel from the
depths of the past seems eerily appropriate.) From the high
command's point of view it would be madness to allow each
individual soldier discretion over whether or not to obey orders.
Nations whose infantrymen act on their own initiative rather than
following orders will tend to lose wars. From the nation's point of
view, this remains a good rule of thumb even if it sometimes leads