Cure for Fundamentalism

Researchers have found an area of the brain that gets active when people have religious experiences.

http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=434D7C62-E7F2-99DF-37CC9814533B90D7&repost=with_catchy_title

I know you’re expecting me to say this proves religion is just an illusion caused by the brain. But I’m not. If God exists, it seems entirely reasonable that he’d design people with brains that can receive his transmissions. It wouldn’t be that much different from giving us eyes so we can read Bibles. So I don’t think this research says anything about the existence of God.

But it made me wonder if science could come up with a drug to minimize activity in that part of the brain, essentially removing the feeling of being close to God. And if so, could we put it in the water supply to reduce terrorism from people who think God is on their side?

Your first reaction might be that there’s no way to reach the water supply in Wazeristan where Osama is hiding. But we wouldn’t need to. We could spike our own water supply and drug the terror cells already operating on our soil. Every time they took a sip of water, they’d have a little more doubt about the afterlife.

There are already drugs that alter moods in all sorts of ways. It’s not a huge stretch to imagine a drug that could act on the religion portion of the brain. It would be easy to test. Just pick any town, add the drug to the water supply, and track church attendance.

Would it be ethical to use this drug, assuming it had no side effects? Your first reaction would probably be no. Obviously it’s evil to drug people without their consent, no matter what the purpose.

But wait, we do that already with fluoride in the water to reduce cavities. So we have a precedent. No one asked my opinion on that drug, and I take it daily.

Suppose you are a person who believes humans are moist robots with no free will. For people who hold that view, morality is considered an illusion, so they would have no ethical problem with using this drug.

On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will. Therefore, it is inconsistent for this group to think the anti-religion drug is unethical, since they would also believe it has no effect.

I think that covers everyone but the people who live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, and they tend to stay out of decision-making.

Should we fund development of this drug?

Comments

[nasim]

About: Cure for Fundamentalism

I think we should use the drug in double course on the people that started this topic. Because, who made osama? who started pushing those child to death? and you ppl remained ignorant of that, because, your that part of brain is now stimulated! is it not?

[urjx khos]

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[Victor]

What is it my very fundemental brother? I told you read that Quran, Ramayan, Bible.

What? Yeah I am serious. It is very resolved sorted out kind of programming. Some ideas presented in a general sense and still works today.

But I am not Christian? So, read the Quran.

But I am not Muslim either? read the Pali Cannon's, the Buddhist Bible.

You got the idea.

Christians -->> Jesus --->> Bible
Muslims -->> Muhammand -->> Quran
Buddhist -->> Buddha --->> Pali Cannon's
Hindu -->> Krishna -->> Ramayana
Seek --->> Nanak -->> Guru Grantha
Taoist --->> Confuses -->> Li Ki
Zuluism --->> Zulu --->> Bushman Book
Animism --->> Kootha ---> Watch the Dog and the Bitch

[John]

YES!!! We should as restraining relious fervour (as that ia what it would inevitably do) is the best way to end the war in Iraq and Bush would proabably stop being an idot(mayybeee...) and making descions based on religion. It would also stop all of the wierd theories such as "intelligent design" and "intelligent falling". Plus car suicide bombings would stop and the whole "72 virgins" would now seem absurd. Hey. Imagine a world without religion.

[Trevor]

Scott,
Have you not read the article that you posted on the blog? The part of the brain that is linked to religious experiances is connected to the limbic system.

Ask any neurologist and they will tell you that you do not, EVER, want to mess around with anything remotely near the limbic system.

Neurological drugs are inherently unpredictable and the effects vary from person to person. Everyone has a different brain (specifically brain chemistry,) and a drug, such as the one you proposed might work perfectly on one person and have catastrophic results on another. That is why when you look at a bottle of antidepressants there is a whole slew of side-effects and why there are so many on the market, because one antidepressant might work on one person and induce suicide in another.

I know that you are proposing this for good humor, and it is funny in a weird way, but make sure you have all the facts becuase someday someone is going to take you seriously

[pDale Campbell]

"people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work"

This is a fallacy. Just because the brain can be manipulated to thwart free-will, that doesn't mean free-will does not exist. In fact, how can you take something away if I don't have it to begin with?

If you chop off my legs, does that mean no-one can walk?

[Gerald]

Actually, it would be easier to discover the chemical basis for what causes this sensation than to discover the chemical that would suppress it. It would be just as easy for religious fanatics to drug the water with it than you would drug the water with the suppressant. Since most people have had a religious background, they would not, obligingly for the atheist, interpret the sensation as merely a pleasant experience, but God talking to them.

IT'S REVIVAL!

They, of course, could use the same arguments used for floridation to argue for use of the chemical to stimulate religious feelings.

What is interesting is that, if the shoe was on the other foot, depths of ethical reasoning suddenly would spring forth from those who supposedly don't believe in it.

[Roby Bang]

Oorrr...We could do it the other way around. Make a drug that enhances that part, causing people to experience a religious rapture. It could cure depression, since depressed people see no reason to live. Give them some, and they'll see God telling them to go to a third world country and give out bags of wheat. I'm too lazy to look up the statistics, but there are a lot of depressed people out there. If, conservatively guessing, 45% of these people felt the effects of the drug, there would be less suicides, more people partaking in religion, and lots of poor people with bags of wheat. Everybody wins!!!

[Sondra]

There is no need. There won't be any more attacks, Bush (read: Cheney) has generated all the fear he needs to to get the control he wants.

[Andy Watt]

Some cute logic as always Mr A!

Suppressing religion doesn't necessarily mean you'd change it, unless you're suggesting that not having religious experience is in some way a religion. Ah, the usual micro-breakdown of your sentences (no doubt embedded somewhere in the 100s of other comments!)...

but more worryingly, this drug might actually remove other blissful states: I often get something amounting to a feeling of "oneness with the universe" when I play bass and nail something really hard to play (like, say, "Teen Town" by Weather Report) - the hair on the back of the neck, heady, slightly euphoric sensation of being truly at one with something. I'm willing to bet my brain lights up in the same places; I treat music like a religion, probably at least in some part because I'm seeking that feeling when I play.

This drug would turn us all into bored zombies, and I'm willing to be the rate of suicides would shoot through the roof.

Instead, I suggest making a drug which kicks off this feeling and distributing it for free from healthcare stations, where you gather as a group to take it (a little like church?). The feelgood factor while in a group (not ecstacy style, mind) would give a sense of community which is now lacking. All the good feeling, without needing to go back to being "stupid enough" to believe in God (I use the quotes as personally I think Religion had its place in "sophisticated" socieites before the industrial and information revolutions when people's personal enlightenment was SOOOO much less.).

So yes to developing a drug, but NO to supression of that area of the brain: enhance it! Who knows, we might find a chemical way to that state of enlightenment which seems so elusive in this jacked-up hyper-speed competitive craphole we call Western Capitalist Society....

[Johnny Marretada]

Well, poison added to the water supply certainly would decrease the church attendance but it doesn't make it a religion suppressing drug. Or does it? :)

[TallDave]

"On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work."

Depends on how you define free will. If "free will" is just the ability to act on information to make decisions about ourselves, then there is no paradox here: the question is whether you TELL people they are under the influence of the drug; not many people will change their religion if they know the urge to do so is inspired by a chemical added to the water.

[rebel]

"Should we fund development of this drug?"

Who is "we"? The taxpayers?

Does that mean that the people will be forced against their will to pay for the development of a draconian drug that will be used against their will to brainwash and subjugate them?

I thought America was supposed to be a bastion of freedom and human rights!

“If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own.... [i]f in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1938

[M V, cubicleless engineer]

Natural anti-religion "drugs" already exist: sex hormones.

[Electric Maenad]

I certainly think using such a drug, if it were possible, on a population unaware of its effects would be unethical, but then I'm one of the free-will fence-sitters. I also am not entirely sure it would have the desired effect in any case, because it's entirely possible that the gradual loss of faith and feeling of connection with one's chosen deity might very well spur the faltering believer to greater and more fanatical efforts to "prove" his/her faith and dedication to the cause. Perhaps there are two sorts of fanatics - those who believe blindly, and those who blindly desire to believe in anything.

[Jason Dumler]

I think you'd find the people doing the terrorizing are the ones with little or no activity in that area of the brain - or activity in that area coupled with activity in a schizo part of the brain.

If you amped up that portion of the brain, I bet people would have less desire to impress God (in whatever form) because they'd already feel close to God (in whatever form). In the schizo people, you just stop the schizo part of the brain and leave the close to God (in whatever form) part alone.

[K]

"For people who hold that view, morality is considered an illusion, so they would have no ethical problem with using this drug."

Nor should they have any problem with terrorism

[Little me]

[Researchers have found an area of the brain that gets active when people have religious experiences.]
Doesn't that make atheists ... retarded?

[le Big MAC]

RLG says: "try producing a drug that removes irrational frustration and the overriding urge to win arguments using violence."
They made it. It's called Marijuana, and it's outlawed by many governments. How are we going to give up all our rights to our corporate lords if we are rational and peaceful?

[rebel]

This entire thread reeks of elitism. "We", the intelligent few, have the right to determine what the people should drink, and how they should think; and we should force them to conform to our standards, without their even knowing. How unfortunate to be one of those whose minds are not guarded by our great wisdom and vigilance.

After all, people's lives are too precious to let them run themselves.

[levi civita]

I am from Kansas. Only Kansasians will go to heaven, everyone else will burn in hell forever.

Sorry, dammit, no exceptions.

[Dan Quixote]

Scott - We know you're not serious. Thanks for the funny post.

Thanks for having the intellectual honesty to not confuse correlation with causality, and to not inflict such confusion onto the readership. That's huge.

But if the Art Bell crowd is to be believed, there's already mind-manipulation warfare being waged by governments (or shadow governments), including ours, via subliminal propaganda and electromagnetic waves, in addition to the overt propaganda.

[E]

Scott,

Could we measure the part of the brain that feels pleasure when thinking about, "blowing up myself and innocent people in Pizza Hut" and make a suppressing drug for that instead?

There are millions of people on earth who claim some sort of deeply felt relationship with God that don't kill themselves or other people. And many of them also don't believe heaven is an arab virgin 'girls gone wild' video.

[Will Von Wizzlepig]

We do plenty of things to each other already without consent.

We have social rules and ceremonies and other such nonsense to explain away these actions, though, so nobody seems to mind or notice.

If I were to endorse the production and dissemination of this drug, I'd have to be convinced that it would work in the long run.

Sure, some people might stop being religious for a while. But just like providing food and vaccinations to third-world countries creates as many problems as it solves (because the culture is not ready to change that drastically), yanking religion out of the world at this point seems a bit too early.

Sure, I'd love to see it gone yesterday. Everywhere. All religion. Kaput. Gone.

I don't think it's time yet, even in these supposedly educated first world countries most of us inhabit. As advanced as we think we are, many of us still buy in to nonsensical mythology- in fact, just like 1000 years ago, many of us can still get so riled up as to think it's a crime punishable by death to talk smack about some non-existent being. That, we can all do without.

[Joshua Jacobsen]

As an atheist, I'm loath to admit it....

...but Religion by-and-large serves mankind for the better. Taking religion away from "the masses" is similar to taking seeing eye dogs away from blind people.

The majority of people don't seem to have the intelligence or "sense of order" required to independently develop ethics and healthy social attitudes. I strongly suspect that a vast flood of crime and social injustice is held back by the promise of rewards in an afterlife... even if the same promises drive a miniscule fraction of the world's population to heinous terror crimes.

[Adrian D.]

Scott:

Allow me to give an analogy first. Suppose someone was putting a blinding agent in the water supply using your same argument. (If you don't believe in free will there is no ethical problem. If you do believe in free will, it doesn't make a difference) What you are talking about is interfering with perception, not will. If a man's house is burning and his children are inside, it would be unethical to alter his perception to make him think his children were not in danger.

[Andy]

We can design the drug to trigger the 'god spot' to worship the next image/person they see; and put my picture on the pill bottle.

My new world religion would be fun - do what you want as long as no one else gets hurt; on tithing - mail me the price of a cup of coffee every week (I like coffee).

But what if GW Bush but his picture on the pill bottle (or did he already?)

[Yuriy]

[Suppose you are a person who believes humans are moist robots with no free will. For people who hold that view, morality is considered an illusion, so they would have no ethical problem with using this drug.]

Wait, Scott believes that humans are moist robots with no free will. Does that mean Scott amoral and would have no ethical problems committing genocide if he thought he could get away with it?

Personally, having ethics is just another part of my moist robot program.

[DF]

More study would be needed first, like comparing the brains from an atheist to that of a religious nut to see if that really is the god spot on the brain, it should be dead in the atheist.

Unfortunately, this is a slippery slope, because then the government could start regulating the moods of the populace. Watch the movie "Serenity" to see where that might lead.

[rita mae]

YES!! But will I have to take it?

Rita Mae

[ezra]

Religion is something men made up. I doubt God transmits us anything to that part of the brain :P

[Jonathan Faia]

No.
For this example, you might be convinced (and convince us) that it is justified and for the "greater good."

(And I am not even going to talk about how it might affect those with legitimate, non-violent religion and faith.)

What happens if some power-hungry screwball in charge decides it's a good idea to have a suppressed, compliant, high tax paying or servant society and puts a a drug for that?

[random]

re
'One of my favorite things is when someone starts a post with:
"Scott, I'm not going to give you an answer. This is one monkey who doesn't feel like dancing today. :)"
And the person then proceeds to answer and dance!' by jerry w

Did you actually read Jorge's post that you are referring to? Or did you just see a long post and assume that he gave an answer? Read it again, he actually talks about something quite different to Scott's actual question, so he didn't contradict himself by answering anyway.

[Philo Sopher]

You are completely WRONG.

Firstly, what if there is a God who put a telepathy spot in everybody's brain? Don't you think he would be royally p*st if people's God Spots were drugged into oblivion? And, really, I don't think it's worth taking the chance.

Secondly, of course it would have side effects. A chemical that would damage the religion parts of the brain would probably also damage the math parts of the brain, etc. All of the neurons are made out of the same material.

Thirdly, there is this thing called the First Amendment. It says, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging to freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Obviously, what the government does not have a right to demand by law, they certainly do not have the right to cause by chemical-induced brain damage.

Fourthly, most people certainly do not approve of fluoride, so comparing your anti-religion drug to fluoride will not gain my approval, or trust.

"Avoid a referendum. The statistics are that 3 out of 4 fluoridation referenda fail."- Susan Allen, RDH, BS Fluoridation Coordinator, Public Health Dental Program, State Health Office, Florida. May 7, 1990

Fifthly, the idea that drugging the populace is justifiable to achieve a goal of the collective, especially a statistical improvement that does not take the lives of individuals into account, such as increased test scores, or lower out-of-wedlock birth rate, flies in the face of individual liberty. I don't care if there is a statistical paradise, if I'm going to have to sacrifice my life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness for it. The pros and cons are irrelevant. ANY MEASURE THAT ENDANGERS INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY IS EVIL, NO MATTER WHAT BENEFITS MAY RESULT!

Sixthly, how do you determine what the desired result should be of drugging the masses? You may want to make them less religious. Why not make them more so? Is there any objective standard of how the masses ought to be herded?

Seventh, what about the poor, the sick, and the elderly? The hopeless and the lonely? They NEED to have a concept of a Creator and Protector to sustain them and cause them to keep living. It sounds preposterous, but it is true.

Eighth, the existence of God, or lack thereof, is the single most important bit of information that will guide somebody the entire length of their life. It will influence what they believe or the origins of the universe, their purpose in life, their sexuality, the worth they place on others, and their proper role in the natural ecology. Everybody has a right to make that determination for themselves.

Ninth, belief in God is what keeps a nation free. One who believes in God will do what they believe is right, no matter who tries to stop them. One who believes "this is all there is" will submit humbly to whoever is in power, because they do not want to die. They do not want to cease to exist forever. That is why every communist dictatorship in history has tried as hard as possible to indoctrinate the people to be atheists. Whenever there is a nation that loves freedom, that country is most likely run by Christians.
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070710/28378_%5C%27Christian%5C%27_Nations_Dominate_World%92s_Best_Religious_Freedom_Spots.htm

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?" Thomas Jefferson

"...the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." John F. Kennedy

Tenth, to make decisions independently of the will of God is to make those decisions independently of the rights of man. The power to decide anything independently of the will of God or the rights of humans, much like the unjust judge in the parable of Jesus, who "feared not God, neither regarded any man", enables one to define ethics as one wishes. Therefore, drugging people to deny God is ethical, much like crashing a hijacked airplane into a building is ethical.

Lastly, terrorists are not motivated by love of God; they are motivated by lust for 72 whores, a decidedly not-so-holy desire.

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Thomas Jefferson

[random]

You only give and consider two view points and seem to assume that that covers everybody. The two you give are not 'either or' view points. Not everybody subscribes to the same definition of free will or lack of free will as you do. (And given that the definition you give in the past seemed more geared to humour than something that actually made sense I suspect that MOST people would have a different view point to the two you gave) So your argument that you covered everyone relevant to the discussion is ridiculous. Do you actually want your readers to take anything you say seriously or is everything on this blog just ‘humour’ to anger your readership? (And is this to increase hit count or just malice?)

[Jon]

I know you like to hear about other people who invented this first. I had a quick search of the comments but couldn't find anyone mentioning a short story by stephen king. See "The End of the Whole Mess" in Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Also on the TV series of the same name. It's about a scientist who finds that violence is caused by a lack of some chemical. He finds somewhere that has very low incidents of violence and works out what's in their water. He then persuades all the governments in the world to add this to their drinking water. It gets into the rain and soon there's no violence. Of course, there's a side-effect that everyone gets sever alzheimers and dies because they're taking this drug in high quantities.

Anyway. it's been thought of and its still a reasonable idea. Just make sure you test the drug before forcing it on everyone.

[Incensed]

Wtf? Al Gore, of all the people in the world, gets one and Gandhi, despite being nominated 5 (that's FIVE!) times, fails to win? Damn no-good Nobel committee, run by nothing more than publicity whores.

[RML]

Would I also loose interest in capitalism, politics and sports?

[Skeptical Fanboy]

Nothing you can add to the water supply is likely to have much of an impact in this country, thanks to the soft drink industry's successful efforts to convince people that bottled water (for which the FDA has one person spending half his time ensuring safety for the entire country) is safer than tap water (for which the EPA has thousands of employees nationwide ensuring the safety in every major municipality).

Even many of those who have figured out that bottled water is a scam and a waste of resources filter their tap water through reverse osmosis. This problem has led to dentists bemoaning the fact that kids don't get enough fluoride in their drinking water any more.

So your religious-experience-suppressing magic drug would have to have molecules small enough to pass through an R/O filter along with the H2O molecules in order to have even the slightest hope of getting into the bottled water supply and sneaking past home R/O filters.

[Guillermo Silva]

As religion is a human need, for it serves as an explanation to events around the world and gives us an illusion of control and that there is some kind of order in the world, if it is somehow diminished in the general population we would have a lot of highly disturbed and depressed people. This just might increase the suicide rates all over.
Is that bad...?

[Luke]

"On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will."

I think you may be missing something about the idea of free will here. I don't think people who believe in free will deny the mind-altering effects drugs can have. That's not about free will, it's about chemical alterations. People who believe in free will believe that a sane person makes their own decisions and choices in life, they don't deny that emotions have a sizeable say in the matter, they just don't believe it's all planned out and we are merely an audience to our own 100% uncontrollable life.

[Robert Gibson]

I'm with you that Free Will is an illusision, but what can i say? It's an effective illusion so I still feel morality. There's a big difference between making people's teeth stronger and fucking with their brain chemistry.

And on another tack entirely what if you made a drug that woud *stimulate* that area of the brain? say while people watch a film about being peaceful and not being a martyr?

[HCG]

Hi Scott,
Your Mengele inspired, religion-free brain cleansing plan assumes a cause and effect relationship between a "feeling of being close to God" and the murderous impulses of terrorist. I am no Vulcan economist with a highly successful career as a cartoonist, but I'll bet the relationship is slightly more complex.
The plan also assumes that this area of the brain only controls the "feeling of being close to God". What if it also controls our ability to find humor in irony? Be careful. If you take away our ability to laugh in the face of evil, the world is doomed. DOOMED! http://uncutvideo.aol.co.uk/videos/9766b65c8f751b87a5db54a78e0641f2
OK, I danced like you wanted, now where is my banana?

[brian]

Ah scott your really letting your self down with this one

On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will. Therefore, it is inconsistent for this group to think the anti-religion drug is unethical, since they would also believe it has no effect.

Why wouldn't a drug work just because of a persons beliefs?
if you were to put an e tablet into a nuns drink there is a very high possibility she'd fuck your brains out. no matter how religious she is.

It's not something I would do (or advocate anyone trying). its just a scenario i am using it to demonstrate how the administration of a drug can change a person's behaviour.

do NOT try this at home.

Do you think it would change George Bush's behaviour ?

[Dramenbnejs]

Your Bum Scott!

According to the article, your drug would have to suppress amygdala, parietal lobe and right frontal lobe!

People on the drug would be deaf disoriented savage psychopaths!

I love your ease in coming to conclusions!
(That's the education in economy... ;) )

[William of Urbana]

"You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will."

Huh? You just got through noting the possibility that there is a God-interface region. Assuming a spiritual realm, there would have to be a corresponding us-interface region (maybe most of the brain) for our spirits - our will. Like driving a car - dink with the control mechanisms, and the will of the driver is obscured and even changed.

[Steven McDaniel]

"...One thing I would really love to see is whether or not a drug like this would effect any religious based conflicts. I mean, the Israelis and the Palestinians have been going at it for awhile now. If we make them nations of atheists, would they stop fighting? I honestly don't know. But I would be very much interested in the results of such an experiment...." rob kay

kay, rob, One little point did cross my mind. Sorry if I offend you with some troubling news from here on planet Earth. Come visit us some time. Meanwhile one tidbit of information that may be of interest to you, if you are fully conscious. Well, here goes! Move your finger if you can hear me: Atheist governments in Russia, China, North Vietnam, Cambodia, Romania, Albania, East Germany, Cuba and many more, were responsible for more ideologically motivated imprisonments, tortures and murders in one century (well, carried on into this century, too) than all the religious nut jobs, including Islamic militants, in all of history. Considering this may affect your opinion as to whether elimination of religion would change the Israelis and Palestinians into pacifist atheist utopias. Meanwhile you may like to move to China to avoid Jehovah's Witnesses, where you could report them to the atheist authorities and have them subjected to the modern equivalent of being burned at the stake.

[Steven McDaniel]

"..No, most definitely not. Your example of the Israelis and Paletinians is flawed in that it's not about religion any more; it's habit, like the Hatfield-McCoy feud..." Gryffin

Actually, that would be true, except the McCoy's wouldn't have had 9 other Arab nations and all the western liberals cheering them on.

[Ned]

Scott - such a drug would be unconstitutional on several accounts.

1. Based on Supreme Court interpretations of the First Amendment, we have Freedom of Religion (1st Amendment) - not "Freedom from Religion" - and by putting this drug in the water supply, you'd be denying to some that Constitutional freedom.

2. More specifically, that same Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" - and to insert this drug into the water supply would be government either establishing the religion of "no religion" or prohibiting the free exercise thereof by chemically denying people the right to get up early on Sunday to be bored and give away money.

3. The Supreme Court has found in the First Amendment a separation clause, a governmental limitation that mandates a wide-ranging "separation of Church and State" that is nowhere stated in the First Amendment - but the Supremes "see it" there - and your proposal certainly breeches that "separation clause" ... Of course, you could wake up tomorrow a "strict constructionalist" and deny this Court interpretation - if you do, see #2 especially (and #1 tangentially).

Bottom line - you can't do it based on both the written Constitution and decades of anti-religion rulings of the Court.

You may construe that because I'm writing this at noon, I'm not myself a church-goer - and you'd be right. But I still believe in the full force and majesty of the Constitution (at least as written).

So let's do it to Canada, eh? (we could do it to France but nobody would notice). Once it works there (i.e., once we sort out the bugs), we could find ways of adapting deep-penetration bombs (designed to "bust bunkers") to crack into the water supply in Upchukistan and feed the water to our terrorist "friends" against their will (the Constitution says nothing about denying them their freedom of religion, no matter what the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says).

Ned

PS - Since San Francisco is clearly a weird-ass city located somewhere near the United States (instead of a city IN and PART OF the US), we could implement it there without fear of court challenges. In fact, if any judge on the 9th Circuit reads your blog, they may just decide to mandate it. Hey, they're just that kind of guys, eh?

[S E E Quine]

` I think that is a spectacularly bad idea! You know why? I enjoy having spiritual feelings similar to those who feel close to God, but I am an atheist and do not believe in supernatural, paranormal-type things. I don't need to.
` I think people might have first started coming up with spirit worlds and stuff because they had these feelings and needed to be able to explain them.
` Really, I enjoy them and I think that an occasional jolt is essential for my well-being - otherwise life would feel too boring for me!

` Here's a slightly better idea; spike the water supply with a drug that prevents people from feeling self-righteous, so that there can be revolutions, there can be political movements, there can be people who believe strongly in things, but they wouldn't want to physically hurt one another or destroy anything over it.
` I really hate terrorism.

[nonesuch]

Probable invalid presumption that having religious experiences correlates with fundamentalism. Fundamentalism seems to be concerned with beliefs, not experience of God. The blog seems to correlate feelings of peace and oneness with the universe with an urge to kill others - lol.

[Jeff]

I believe it is unethical to drug someone against their will regardless of whether it has an effect.

[Will]

Someone wrote a short story with a similar idea - "Osama Phone Home":
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18307/

BTW your logic is flawed. Just because it's okay to put fluoride in the water doesn't mean it's okay to put ANY drug in the water. Just because someone believes in free will doesn't mean they believe drugs have NO effect on human behaviour.

As usual, you use false dichotomies to justify your arguments:
"Either it's okay to put drugs in the water or it isn't"
"Either people have absolute free will or they don't"

The real world, and people's opinions, come in many shades of grey. For example, you believe in capitalism and the power of the free market, but you obviously don't believe in a COMPLETELY UNRESTRAINED free market, since you support copyrights and patents, which are an artificial restraint on trade imposed by government.

[Smokefoot]

I don't think you know what a religious experience is - most people go to church their entire lives without experiencing one. A religious experience is an overwhelming feeling of awe and connectedness. I doubt that suicide bombers need to have one to kill themselves - and even if they did have one in the past they would not expect one daily to keep on track.

Also, even believers in free will have to admit that drugs can affect judgment - someone who is dead drunk will not make the same decisions as someone sober.

[Andrew]

[quote]On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will. Therefore, it is inconsistent for this group to think the anti-religion drug is unethical, since they would also believe it has no effect.[/quote]

I disagree with you here. I believe in free will, but I also believe that the brain is still involved in the decision making. Thus, a drug that reduces activity in a particular part of your mind would affect how you felt about the thought that goes on in that portion of the brain.

[Chris Honkala]

I disagree with the suggestion that if we are all moist robots that morality is an illusion.

More like morality is our programming. Those moist robots without it are severely malfunctioning chaotics!

[jerry w.]

One of my favorite things is when someone starts a post with:

"Scott,
I'm not going to give you an answer. This is one monkey who doesn't feel like dancing today. :)"

And the person then proceeds to answer and dance!

Having done this myself, I feel qualified to laugh about it.

Crap, I just danced again....

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[Sailor]

This is nuts. Whatever would make anyone think that suicide bombers have or need some kind of religious experience? To them religion is reality - they have accepted what they have been taught as the real world and they are acting in accordance with that. It has nothing to do with with transendental religious experiences. If they had one of these, they might start thinking for themselves.

And Indo, I can only speak for myself, but I grew up before floride and my teeth are rotten. So I never was subjected to the floride thing (I don't hang out in major cities and drink well water etc). So to try and stop my teeth rotting I started appling medically accepted heavy doses of floride every day. Of course some of it gets in my system. My teeth have hardened up and stopped rotting, I have noticed no other difference.

[Patricia M]

I cannot believe you have not addressed Al Gore's Nobel Prize. It offends me that making a movie gets you a Nobel prize. Seems like soon enough the whole thing will be a global popularity contest, with people voting online and via txt messages. Mandela had to spend 29 years in prison and devote his life to a cause to get the same prize.
Could have sworn you'd be writing about this one.

I hope you do! Would love to hear your take on this :)

Have a great Sun you'all.

[Dale Henderson]

"...are moist robots with no free will." Or married, is there something here I'm missing?

[Enough Wealth]

It would be interesting to see if the same area gets activated for each religion. If yes, than this would suggest that religious experience is at least slightly delusional, as you can't have multiple "one true god" all using the same channel to talk to their followers. If no, then perhaps there are multiple gods who've each created a subset of humans to follow them. In that case religious belief would be "truth", except for the number of gods involved.

Regards
http://enoughwealth.com

[yes]

ASSUMING there are no side effects.

And assuming it works and is worth the money.

BTW the fact you can break something doesn't mean it didn't work to begin with. So the fact that you could affect a part of the brain and cause it to lose self-control does not mean that that part of the brain did not have self-control to begin with. So the idea that altering brain's biochemistry disproves free will is false.

[Steve]

Wow, people are taking you WAY too seriously today. I think we should absolutely drug the water to kill off religious terrorism. Just like we should also make sure sex offenders have to take medicinal salt peter. People who buy expensive cars should all be forced to take supplements to enlarge their male organs.

Take it easy, Scott.

Steve

[Jorge]

Scott,

I'm not going to give you an answer. This is one monkey who doesn't feel like dancing today. :)

I'm taking an ethics class right now as a prerequisite for admittance to a program I'm applying to. I've found that while it hasn't really changed my mind about things it has taught me a lot about some of the basics of moral philosophy and the thinkers who were first to get these thoughts on paper.

It's an interesting class and every time I attend I think to myself "Man, it would be interesting to hear what Scott Adams would say about...."

Have you ever taken an ethics class? If not I would recommend it; not in order to change your thinking but more to flesh out some of your arguments and see the points of the other side presented by people who really have a full understanding of their belief systems. I think you'd find it fascinating. I do.

Best Regards,

[Einmaliger]

So, spiritual emotions are closely related to a certain kind of epilepsy? Nice! Next time, when someone tells me about his religious experiences, I will explain him that what he experienced was basically a kind of "mental epileptic seizure".

[tjomas]

God bless this new drug :)

[Zuckerfrosch]

How insulting to say that athiests think that morality is an illusion. Morality is a consensus, and comes from exactly the same place in athiests as it does in the religious, from society. When you read a religious text, you see that modern followers pick and choose the moral lessons based on modern society, not these Bronze Aged texts anyway (except the fundamentalists). Hence the precipitous drop in stonings for working on the sabbath.

[Struan]

Some years ago, sitting at the train station, I met a Gideon.
We chatted, although I didn't know he was on a recruitment drive and the subject turned to the creation of us (mankind).

I said we were created through millions of years of evolution that spanned back to when the subatomic dust had not yet created the earliest ancestral atoms.

This is the response I got.

"Your Belief Is Wrong."

Spoken in hushed tones as if he was trying to sell me an E.

Now we all know of things that are right and wrong
(I.e. 4+5=9 is Right but 9-4=8 is wrong, simple),
But belief is completely different because it's not what the correct answer is; it's what you make the correct answer (eg “I believe eight comes from nine no matter what is subtracted!”).

Suffice to say I was happy to see the back of him and contribute his pamphlet of wildly misled opinions and conspiracies to the landfills.

So you can already guess how I’ll be voting.

And besides, the guy sounded really creepy just like that Warren Jeffs.

[T Simic]

You're heading in the right direction, but your thinking is flawed.

The correct thing would be to spike the drinking water with MDMA, thus ending all violence, not just the religious kind.

[Dave]

I'm a fundamentalist Christian (I believe in the good sense of the word) and we teach that you most often experience God through the Bible and interacting with His peopole (the Church). Experiencing God in the way the article describes is only one aspect of interacting with Him, ie emotionally.

[PalaeoBill]

Excellent idea, now that the seed of doubt has been planted in the minds of terrorists, all we have to do is arrest anyone who boils and condenses their water before drinking it.

[Arno]

Mmmm...this might not work. Imagine a potential terrorist who gets a religious orgasm even thinking about doing something terroristic. If he looses that feeling he might think his god is leaving him for not being terroristic enough. So he will think (or what has to pass for thinking in terrorists) he will have to be more terroristic to get his god and his reliorgasms back and plan a nice bombing or somesuch.

This might work out the wrong way. If you could invent a drug that caused rationalism in people it would be great, because you never can expect any rational thinking from any relidiot, no matter what religion they are.

In my vision religion is the worst thing ever invented, nice for herding un(der)educated sheeple to the willing of some leaders pretending to have the red telephone to their gods and of course being installed by this god him (her- or it-)self, so having absolute power.

Of course people with another brand of god and not 'The Only True And Real One Tested Best By Consumers And Stamp Of Approval By The Authorities Put In Place By The Only True And Real One Tested....' (yes, it IS circular reasoning) are enemies.

Divide and rule, works every time!

[James]

Since when does believing something can be broken (free will) equal believing that it does not exist? Just because a drug can make a person act differently does not mean we are moist robots. But like any fundamentalist, you will use whatever semantics it takes to prove your point. Likewise, my posting this, or my not posting this, either one will conform to your untestable belief.
Some day someone is going to take you seriously, that makes me sad.

[Paul Mckenna]

Drugs should be compulsory in schools and forbidden thereafter.
Once you are videoed talking rubbish under the influence of Ecstacy you would never go back. Same as Hasselhoff eating a pizza.

As for religion I thought the US forbade the unity of church and state or am I thinking of the DC or Marvel universe.

Paul

[Marxist]

YES! And let 'em kill eachother.

[latsot]

"How could anyone who truly believes in God and his commandments ("Thou shalt not kill" springs to mind) also be a terrorist or murderer?"

Have you not read the old testament? What about Moses, for example, who has no sooner dropped the ten commandments in disgust at the affrontery of people worshiping golden calves and so forth than he is commanding the deaths of thousands of women, children and animals.

"Thou shalt not kill" doesn't extend in this case to people who have slightly different beliefs. And this was the *very day* that Moses supposedly brought down the 10 commandments.

[latsot]

"Im not one to usually take the easy route of a George W. Bush joke, but I wouldn't want that man to have a crisis of faith while in control of the worlds largest supply of Nukes."

Really? I am *much* more worried that he *won't* have a crisis of faith. His faith allows him to believe, perhaps without doubt, that his actions are correct. If he had a crisis of faith, he would doubt his actions and might be a bit more careful of them.

I'd much prefer someone to make a nuclear decision based on rational reasons than on idealistic ones.

Wouldn't you?

[Mark]

Heck yes we should develop it!

Faith is driven by feelings, not logic - if people still believe after taking this drug, so be it. But most wouldn't, so it would make people more rational, more logical, which is the most important thing.

(Oh by the way, although I support fluoridation, it's not a drug - fluoride is a naturally occurring chemical which does good things for our teeth - but since it's really just a mineral, it's not a drug. Fluoride occurs naturally in most water supplies anyway - fluoridation just makes sure that the level of fluoride is maintained.)

Good luck with your comics Scott.

[latsot]

"I'm just wondering if anyone has considered the remote possibility that maybe, I mean, maaaaaybe, intellect and logic and faith are mutually exclusive?? Separate cognitive systems. And you can't apply one to explain God, or the other to explain science??"

Why wonder? Look it up. *Enormous* amounts of prose have been written on this subject and you will have no difficulty at all finding it if you bother to look.

Unfortunately, there is one slight flaw in this approach: it's BOLLOCKS. Who gets to decide what is amenable to logic and what isn't? If I decide you aren't allowed to use your tedious logic to assail my insane proposition, do you have to agree? Should everyone have to agree in advance what logic should and shouldn't be allowed to say? What exactly is it that makes the idea of god immune to logic and evidence? Who says so?

People only ever complain about logic when it doesn't support something they believe. Those same people will *leap* upon logic and science when does happen to work in their favour. The idea of separate magisteria is a retreat from reality, designed solely to allow people to feel better when they know their beliefs are irrational.

[latsot]

Scott said:
"You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will."

Sure I could. For the record, I don't believe in free will. I'm not even sure what free will could actually *be*. But if we assume for a moment that people do have free will, I see no contradiction in the idea that our ability to make decisions could be altered by environmental factors such as drugs.

Naturally this would mean that our will is not *totally* free: that it is or can be restricted by some things, but it doesn't itself imply that there is no kind of 'soul' that can reach into our own brain and change its neural activity. It would just imply that this soul is subject to interference from environmental factors and that our will is only partially free. I'm not sure anyone believes that will is *totally* free anyway - we all know that we can be persuaded by good arguments or charismatic people or large amounts of alcohol. None of this diminishes most people's belief that their wills are free.

It's all nonsense, of course, because it is perfectly clear that our consciousness resides in our brains, which are subject to physical law, but your logic is suspect here.

[syn]

"it has no effect", not "it has no affect"

Yeah thanks fags. Now back to the website.

[Boris]

Not sure about the netiquette of making two posts in one thread, but you can always not post one.

Quoting again, "On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will."

As I already pointed out, using different words, this amounts to saying that if you can figure out how to break something, that must prove it never worked. Not very logical, particularly if you can't be sure how free will worked in the first place. Throwing a monkey wrench in the machinery doesn't mean you understand the machinery. And the existence of machinery doesn't mean there can't be something external to it, which would direct the machinery, if only someone hadn't broken the machine.

But about the ethical side of things. Let's assume you have the free will to decide to use such a drug on other people or not. You'd be acting just like any other fanatic who thinks that he knows how and what people "should" think, and is willing to force them. Superficially, your motives might be more benevolent, but if you'll also concede your human fallibility, you should never trust yourself to make such a decision.

Any time that somebody thinks he can solve all of society's ills by enlightened social engineering, watch out for your freedoms.

Of course if you don't have free will, you couldn't help yourself, yada, yada, yada. . .

[Jaime]

Assumption: Religion is about how you feel.

This assumption is wrong. Religion is about truth, no matter how you feel about it. Faith is about obedience. Certainly, it helps to obey your religion when you are biologically "helped" to do so, but it is not necessary.

Counterexample 1: suicide terrorists for Allah. Dying is not pleasant at all, and it doesn't make you feel nice and fuzzy inside. In fact, it can be downright painful. Suicide terrorists for Allah are having faith & obeying, DESPITE the pain involved.

Counterexample 2: Mother Theresa. She experienced absolutely NOTHING from God for the last 40 years of her life (exactly mimicking the effects of your hypothetical drug), and yet SHE OBEYED GOD. She had faith in Him, though she could not sense Him.

Your arguments, though extremely entertaining, and sometimes funny, are not very thoughtful. But, if your goal is to entertain, you are doing a fantastic job. I just love laughing at what you write! :-)

[Boris]

Scott writes:
"On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will."

Um, no, that doesn't really follow. That's a bit like saying that if a drug can suppress, say, sexual desire, then there is no such thing as sexual desire.

I'm not going to get into the entire free will or not argument again. However, I see nothing impossible about the idea that people might have free will within limits, but that external factors might suppress it. Not saying that it's so, just that it's conceivable.

[Ranger]

Here you go again and display a fundamental misunderstanding of free will. Free will is not that nobody can change how you think. It means that given a number of choices, you can make one of them. It does not mean that those choices cannot be limited.

But if you're going to put drugs in the water supply, why go after religion? Why not develop a drug that reduces the egocentrical nature of a human? Or even a drug that reinforces the religious experiences? History has proven that religion is a good way to control the masses.

[Stan]

This acts on the assumption that free will can overcome physical problems. Unlike in the matrix, if you shoot someone they will die. Attitude may have some effect on survivability but will cannot make a broken bone work, it can only drive a person to find a work around to their current situation. A drug that acts on the brain short circuits the normal setup, thereby changing the state of a persons mind, and if enough of the drug is given it can overwhelm their ability to think and decide (whether their brain is a logic engine or a free willed entity).

Therefore the idea of discussing the morality of adding a drug to interfere with whatever methods is irrelevant to the people as a whole as God would take the changes that this drug causes into account. The action of adding the water would be held against those who made and enforced the decision to add additional interference via a mind altering drug.

One thing you have not considered are the consequences that such a drug might have. You may decrease the intensity of peoples religious experiences or remove them entirely, but you still need to reduce or eliminate greed, lust, anger, pride, gluttony, etc to do any real good. People who fight over religion do not actually believe in it, they are fighting over something else entirely.

[Mark]

Your proposal assumes the fact that Islamic terrorists commit terrorism because of religious beliefs. What if their religious proclamations are really just a facade? Maybe, they realize they would not garner much sympathy if their causus beli (err however you spell that) was "I'm just really mad!"

[indo]

Further to my 50 reasons to oppose fluoridation post, check this out from Wikipedia:

"Additional concerns of fluoridation opponents include the potential for fluoride to damage the brain[11], reduce thyroid function[12], and cause bone cancer in adolescent boys[13]."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride

Brain damage? Bone friggin cancer??? Shweeeeeeet... :-/

Now what was that I heard about fluoride NOT being a drug?

PS A relevant anonymous quotation comes to mind: "It's often better to remain silent and be merely suspected a fool, than to open one's mouth and dispel any doubt." And with this parting comment, i shall shut-up. ;-)

[indo]

To all those who are attempting to say fluoride isn't a drug since it doesn't effect the brain, check this link for '50 reasons to OPPOSE Fluoridation'.

http://fluoridealert.org/50-reasons.htm

I'm gonna take just ONE of those fifty:
"13) Fluoride is very biologically active even at low concentrations. It interferes with hydrogen bonding (Emsley 1981) and inhibits numerous enzymes (Waldbott 1978)"

Interferes with HYDROGEN bonding??? Inhibits numerous ENZYMES???

Now, i'm no bioligist, but that damn well sounds like a drug, and one that would have an affect on the body's fundamental mechanisms... INCLUDING the BRAIN! :-|

On the other side of the coin... The conspiracy theorist in me is telling me that 'fluoride for better teeth' is just a cover and we're actually already being drugged for some ultersecret agenda. Yet again Scotty, ur idea has already been thought of! ;-)

[indo]

To all those who are attempting to say fluoride isn't a drug since it doesn't effect the brain, check this link for '50 reasons to OPPOSE Fluoridation'.

I'm gonna take just ONE of those fifty:
"13) Fluoride is very biologically active even at low concentrations. It interferes with hydrogen bonding (Emsley 1981) and inhibits numerous enzymes (Waldbott 1978)"

Interferes with HYDROGEN bonding??? Inhibits numerous ENZYMES???

Now, i'm no bioligist, but that damn well sounds like a drug, and one that would have an affect on the body's fundamental mechanisms... INCLUDING the BRAIN! :-|

On the other side of the coin... The conspiracy theorist in me is telling me that 'fluoride for better teeth' is just a cover and we're actually already being drugged for some ultersecret agenda. Yet again Scotty, ur idea has already been thought of! ;-)

[P-A]

I don't mind funding that drug as long as the opposite drug is also funded and can be available in special cases.

I would take the "Get religious" drug typically if I had a disease in terminal stage, or if I were to reach a very old age (more than 100 years old say..).

Religion can bring a peace of mind and a sense of purpose quite difficult to achieve otherwise. So, fund the anti-religion drug, disperse it, but allow people to get the opposite drug before they die.. and everybody gets happy :)

note that the opposite drug could be any drug that "gives purpose to life and hope of afterlife" or just "brings you in a state of peace and happiness".. darn, re-reading this comment sounds a bit unethical.. oh, well..

P-A
http://devrouze.blogspot.com/
(blog not in english)

[Bilious Prudence]

(I'm not a religious person.)

Your hypothesis seems to assume that religious fundamentalism is caused by the feeling of being close to god, or undergoing a "religious" experience.

Observing Christian fundamentalists in the West -- and this situation basically amounts to a conflict between fundamentalists on BOTH sides -- it's apparent that the extreme view points motivating fundamentalist Christians and the Muslims are simply a result of closed-minded ignorance and misguided BELIEFS.

In documented cases of religious EXPERIENCES -- similar to the revelatory experiences sometimes obtained through the application of psychedelic drugs -- the subject is more usually inspired to compassion toward other people, rather than hatred.

My point is there are no grounds to assume that just because a person behaves like an idiot in the name of a religion, that it is because of the kind of "religious" experience to which you refer. There's more evidence to suggest that fundamentalists would benefit from such an experience and indeed be less inclined to commit murder in the name of a deity.

BP

[Steve]

You might be interested in The God Gene by Dean Hamer. In his book he shows that spirituality has a genetic component, whereas religion is environmental. He also explains the difference between the two (spirituality vs. religion). Supposedly Einstein was spiritual but not religious. It appears that changing the gene might not help unless you do it at a very early age. Once the brain has already developed the gene has already done its damage.

Good luck finding a drug that will cure religion. What if they make the drug that makes you a believer first?

[Alex]

Let's do it. Death to Religion!!!

[Kendra]

In theory its sounds great no more terror right? But alas almost everything can work in theory. I'm a religious person, just to make that clear. But the majority of religious people never actually have a religious experience. Years ago I went to church every week but eventually I gave up on that and deemed it not necessary. Not saying all church's are bad by the way. When I went to church I realized that the vast majority of people there just went because they were raised that way and that's what they had always done.
Terrorist most likely have the same deal they were raised to hate. The countries in the middle east have been at war with each other for 2000 years. The hate between the religious sects are deep rooted and has been past on from generation to generation. I'm not saying everyone form over in the middle east is like that, because that's not true. But unfortunately for those that are like that they were raised that way. So when you have terror on your own soil ( I'm not American) you have to wonder, who thought them to hate? Hatred is taught, it is some thing you learn, not a neurological condition.

[Jim]

Oh, I forgot one other point I was going to dispute. I don't believe decreasing religious experiences would solve any conflict, as the hatred and fundamentalist teachings pass by word-of-mouth and text. Not, primarily, by religious experiences.

[Carter]

Your reasoning is worse than usual today. For starters, as someone who doesn't believe in the gods, you can't understand the pathways to them. Some people are mystics that thrive on the religious experiences that you mention in the post today. But many find god through logic, study of a sacred book, all sorts of things that don't involve the mystical experience. I doubt most terrorists actually encounter a god, that is, until they blow themselves up. They tend to find more meaning in the Qu'ran. Secondly, this is absolutely appalling logic:

"On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will. Therefore, it is inconsistent for this group to think the anti-religion drug is unethical, since they would also believe it has no effect."

You are simplifying things until they are meaningless. I believe there are other parts to the brain than the physical, but that changing the physical affects them. Depression drugs can get rid of depression by changing the physical, but other forms of treatment can get rid of it by changing non-physical properties.

Lastly, what is your obsession with freewill? It's a concept so vague it's meaningless, and it's a rather poor frame to view the world through whether you are for or against it.

[Jim]

I agree that it's not fundamentally different than putting flouride in our water, which is classified as a drug according to the FDA. However, I disagree with your assertion that not believing in free will means you have no moral fiber, or objections to actions based on ethics.

I, personally, have ethical qualms with spiking a water supply with such a drug. For context, I do not believe in "free" will, nor do I follow any specific organized religion. I do, however, from what I can probably best describe as an economist's standpoint, believe in the Golden Rule, which is the basis for my moral "compass."

Drugging someone without their knowledge puts you on seriously unstable moral grounds, especially when that drug changes your brain chemistry; changes how you think, and therefore who you are. What is a person other than the particular way a brain processes information? I don't care what reason my neighbor has for drugging me, I don't want to be taking drugs without my consent, especially if there's the risk of losing who I am.

Of course, this is just my own stance regarding mind-altering substances. I don't drink alcohol, and don't plan to even when I become of age, largely due to stories from my colleagues at college, and some first-hand experience. I'm also wary about any medication that might alter my brain. I admit that there are reasons one might want to medicate undesirable brain activity, and I even cede that there may be some time in the future when I would want to, but that needs to be my decision.

[tubaguy]

As a person who seeks religious experience on a daily basis, I'm inclined to think that the drug wouldn't make any difference.

Christians believe that pure religion, undefiled, is to take care of the weakest and neediest members of society and to avoid the stains of a sinful world. Using a drug to prevent religious experience probably wouldn't stop them from trying to live righteously.

Similarly, it probably wouldn't stop evil men who use religion as an excuse for their malfeasance.

Orson Scott Card included an exploration of this idea in a sci-fi book titled "Xenocide." It's worth reading, but to understand the story, a person would need to read "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" first. I think all three won Hugos though.

[JEQP]

"On the other side of the issue, people who believe in free will would have to believe the drug wouldn’t work. You can’t believe a drug can change a person’s religion unless you think people are moist robots with no free will. Therefore, it is inconsistent for this group to think the anti-religion drug is unethical, since they would also believe it has no effect."

That's not correct -- if you gave someone a drug to make them blind, they'd still have free will although they wouldn't be able to see. This hypothetical drug would be viewed similar.

[Bill]

It would only help if you could come up with a drug that reduced the chance of government agencies funding terrorist groups... and another drug that got people like you to pay attention to where your taxes are going.

[Misanthropic Scott]

Scott,

It's absolutely unethical. The ends don't justify the means. Though I have to admit the ends are great. And, the means are not so bad. Hmm.... If you do this, I won't tell if you don't.

[Steven McDaniel]

That's a dumb idea, Scott, and of course, you know it is. The 'God Spot' spot of the brain may be one manifestation of what happens deep in the spirit, but it is not the primary source of religious initiative. Chemical interference with it will not necessarily eliminate someone's spiritual experience. Besides, my experience of Jesus has been extremely beneficial to me, and changed me into a productive and helpful member of society, and made me a way better person, and a fundamentalist. The only damage fundamentalism can normally do is outraging those superior people who say it is wrong to absolutely believe something - the people I call dogmatic existentialists. You know, the type who say, 'It doesn't matter what you believe in, except my belief that it doesn't matter what you believe in - that is infallible.' What you fail to see (or, as a skilled simian choreographer, no doubt, deliberately evade), is the fact that religion has given society a great deal of good things. To eliminate it would leave nothing but something comrade Stalin would have been proud of. A few 'fundamentalists' kill people - a few atheists kill people, too. But eliminating God or religion to avoid terrorism is as effective as sewing people's lips together to stop them eating just in case they got mad cow disease. Besides, one of my 'fundamentals' Jesus taught me is: 'Thou shalt not kill.' Don't try to drug that out of my brain!

[kman]

Obviously, you know that fluoride is in your water. Does that mean everyone would have to know that the anti-religion drug is in there's , too?

No one's going to drink it... duh.

[Dan Beeston]

I wish there was a small country I could put you in charge of and watch you run into the ground. All your ideas sound so good and I think we could learn wonderful things about how they fail. And if they don't fail,.. I'm totally moving there.

[Peter Payne]

There's a rather interesting book series called the Neanderthal Parallax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neanderthal_Parallax) in which humans and Neanderthals have evolved in alternate universes, then they accidentally discover each other now. In the other universe, Neanderthals are living a perfect life, keeping their population small and stable, and since they lack the "God organ" that we have, they don't even have any religeon. It's rather an interesting series of books.

[Billy B]

Everyone keeps failing to grasp what I keep saying. That 'God' is just a spirituality, a higher consciousness, in evolution. Screw that bogeyman in the sky biblical God.
Billy B

[mattpatt]

"YES. the world would be so much better without the scourge of faith to divide mankind.
Posted by: zlh | October 13, 2007 at 01:12 PM"

But what if it is true...?

[Kris]

I don't think you understand the concept of free will. Yes, I am a moist robot. My soul is a programmer. Of course, you can undermine the system the programmer relies on. Doesn't disprove free will.

[Bob]

So, only IF this drug can be proven to not have side effects? In other words, you are making a purely philosophical argument--one which has absolutely no practical use. ALL drugs have side effects.

Assuming no side effects, I am against drugging people. It just ain't right. You have every right to express your opinion, and even to call me a heathen for believing otherwise, but forcing your will (free or not) on me is just plain bad. I'm not sure I can explain that to someone who doesn't naturally understand.

I have little trust for our government. I do not wish to give them the authority to drug me. Don't forget what happened on Miranda (Movie:Serenity).

I'm not a fan of the flourine in the water, either. Flourine itself might be all good (it is not a drug, after all), but there are byproducts from the extraction routine. We don't know what they do. Some experts have speculated that they can lead to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Some people need to learn that there are consequences for every action. These people need to do more thinking, and less doing. As slow as government goes, I would appreciate it going slower, getting less done, but making more intelligent decisions.

[Neighbor Dave]

Man am I glad I only drink distilled water.

Oh, and that the government probably doesn't read your blog.

[Kevin Kunreuther]

No, but something akin may already be in the works. We live with a society and government that gets permission or forgiveness after the fact. The side effect would be not only terrorists cells becoming less certain of Islam but also Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Scientologists and Republicans becoming unsure of their core beliefs. People who believe in the constitution and the United States of America would become unpatriotic. People who worship their cars or Britney Spears would have to find new hobbies. Liberals would stop getting so hot under the collar. Nobody would give a damn about anything. We'd become a truly feckless nation.
Would give new meaning to the phrase, "Don't drink the water ... "

[amen-not]

All is needed is a drug to make people smart.

[Joe Canuck]

Some thoughts:

Where I live there was a referendum on fluoride in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

People who don't believe in at least some freedom of will have no ethical problems whatsoever. So that sort of gives you carte blanche (at least until someone who does believe in free will comes along and stops you}.

[Jenica]

For some reason, this seems right up your alley....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21271545/wid/11915829?GT1=10450

[D. Mented]

They can (non-violently) study my brain as a specimen with absolute zero activity in the feeling-close-to-god center. That's half of what I base my atheism on (the other half is distinct lack of evidence of anyone in charge...I mean come on; absence of evidence isn't *always* proof of absence, but a being who had been everywhere since there was a "where" to be "every" would have left *some* evidence in physical objects or ways things work)
To those who are angrily defending fluoride, it has been used as a medicine to slow down hyperactive thyroids.The amounts that are in our drinking water wouldn't knock out a healthy thyroid, but might just be enough to slow down a low-normal thyroid, causing a statistical increase in stubborn obesity, depression, fatigue, dry skin and hair, and low libido - especially in women...Thing is, doctors are wondering about the statistical increase in these problems.
Sadly, fluoride in drinking water doesn't reduce tooth decay.
Fluoride in toothpaste, yes. Mouthwash - if you hold it in your mouth for several minutes, yes, that too. It has to be applied directly to the teeth and left there for several minutes to do any good. It never ever goes from your bloodstream to your teeth if you swallow it.
D. Mented
Ethically, I don't think we can force this hypothetical anti-fanaticism drug on everybody, but populations in countries who have declared war against us - yes. We'd have to make it in a concentrated form and find a way to get it into their water supply. Once they overthrow their leaders and undeclare war, we'd have to stop. What might make it barely possible is that the middle eastern countries where this hostility is at its most active tend to have a few centralised water sources each.
I admit, the temptation to put vast amounts into the water supplies in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt and watch to see if they made peace would be overwhelming.

I would probably say no to this drug, not for moral reasons, but because i can't see it having any noticeable effects.
Of all the Christians (other religions aren't exactly common in my middle-class whiteboy area) i've ever talked to, only 1 has ever claimed to have had an actual religious experience; the rest all believe in a god because "he exists" or some similar circular logic. So you can take the potential for religious experience out of people, but it probably won't have much effect on the beliefs themselves.
As for terrorists, despite their obvious insanity, they are often surprisingly intelligent (or at least well educated) people. I would assume that any drug capable of providing such a specific neural effect over a range of brain regions would be quite large and complex, and therefore easy t