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TED Talks Worth Sharing, Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

One of the most common ways of dividing the world is into those who believe and those who don't -- into the religious and the atheists. And for the last decade or so, it's been quite clear what being an atheist means. There have been some very vocal atheists who've pointed out, not just that religion is wrong, but that it's ridiculous. These people, many of whom have lived in North Oxford, have argued -- they've argued that believing in God is akin to believing in fairies and essentially that the whole thing is a childish game.

Now I think it's too easy. I think it's too easy to dismiss the whole of religion that way. And it's as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. And what I'd like to inaugurate today is a new way of being an atheist -- if you like, a new version of atheism we could call Atheism 2.0. Now what is Atheism 2.0? Well it starts from a very basic premise: of course, there's no God. Of course, there are no deities or supernatural spirits or angels, etc. Now let's move on; that's not the end of the story, that's the very, very beginning.

I'm interested in the kind of constituency that thinks something along these lines: that thinks, "I can't believe in any of this stuff. I can't believe in the doctrines. I don't think these doctrines are right. But," a very important but, "I love Christmas carols. I really like the art of Mantegna. I really like looking at old churches. I really like turning the pages of the Old Testament." Whatever it may be, you know the kind of thing I'm talking about -- people who are attracted to the ritualistic side, the moralistic, communal side of religion, but can't bear the doctrine. Until now, these people have faced a rather unpleasant choice. It's almost as though either you accept the doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

So that's a sort of tough choice. I don't think we have to make that choice. I think there is an alternative. I think there are ways -- and I'm being both very respectful and completely impious -- of stealing from religions. If you don't believe in a religion, there's nothing wrong with picking and mixing, with taking out the best sides of religion. And for me, atheism 2.0 is about both, as I say, a respectful and an impious way of going through religions and saying, "What here could we use?" The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly, I would argue. And a thorough study of religion could give us all sorts of insights into areas of life that are not going too well. And I'd like to run through a few of these today.

I'd like to kick off by looking at education. Now education is a field the secular world really believes in. When we think about how we're going to make the world a better place, we think education; that's where we put a lot of money. Education is going to give us, not only commercial skills, industrial skills, it's also going to make us better people. You know the kind of thing a commencement address is, and graduation ceremonies, those lyrical claims that education, the process of education -- particularly higher education -- will make us into nobler and better human beings. That's a lovely idea. Interesting where it came from.

In the early 19th century, church attendance in Western Europe started sliding down very, very sharply, and people panicked. They asked themselves the following question. They said, where are people going to find the morality, where are they going to find guidance, and where are they going to find sources of consolation? And influential voices came up with one answer. They said culture. It's to culture that we should look for guidance, for consolation, for morality. Let's look to the plays of Shakespeare, the dialogues of Plato, the novels of Jane Austen. In there, we'll find a lot of the truths that we might previously have found in the Gospel of Saint John. Now I think that's a very beautiful idea and a very true idea. They wanted to replace scripture with culture. And that's a very plausible idea. It's also an idea that we have forgotten.

If you went to a top university -- let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge -- and you said, "I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live," they would show you the way to the insane asylum. This is simply not what our grandest and best institutes of higher learning are in the business of. Why? They don't think we need it. They don't think we are in an urgent need of assistance. They see us as adults, rational adults. What we need is information. We need data, we don't need help.

Now religions start from a very different place indeed. All religions, all major religions, at various points call us children. And like children, they believe that we are in severe need of assistance. We're only just holding it together. Perhaps this is just me, maybe you. But anyway, we're only just holding it together. And we need help. Of course, we need help. And so we need guidance and we need didactic learning.

You know, in the 18th century in the U.K., the greatest preacher, greatest religious preacher, was a man called John Wesley, who went up and down this country delivering sermons, advising people how they could live. He delivered sermons on the duties of parents to their children and children to their parents, the duties of the rich to the poor and the poor to the rich. He was trying to tell people how they should live through the medium of sermons, the classic medium of delivery of religions.

Now we've given up with the idea of sermons. If you said to a modern liberal individualist, "Hey, how about a sermon?" they'd go, "No, no. I don't need one of those. I'm an independent, individual person." What's the difference between a sermon and our modern, secular mode of delivery, the lecture? Well a sermon wants to change your life and a lecture wants to give you a bit of information. And I think we need to get back to that sermon tradition. The tradition of sermonizing is hugely valuable, because we are in need of guidance, morality and consolation -- and religions know that.

Another point about education: we tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. Sit them in a classroom, tell them about Plato at the age of 20, send them out for a career in management consultancy for 40 years, and that lesson will stick with them. Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on you knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

So religions are cultures of repetition. They circle the great truths again and again and again. We associate repetition with boredom. "Give us the new," we're always saying. "The new is better than the old." If I said to you, "Okay, we're not going to have new TED. We're just going to run through all the old ones and watch them five times because they're so true. We're going to watch Elizabeth Gilbert five times because what she says is so clever," you'd feel cheated. Not so if you're adopting a religious mindset.

The other things that religions do is to arrange time. All the major religions give us calendars. What is a calendar? A calendar is a way of making sure that across the year you will bump into certain very important ideas. In the Catholic chronology, Catholic calendar, at the end of March you will think about St. Jerome and his qualities of humility and goodness and his generosity to the poor. You won't do that by accident; you will do that because you are guided to do that. Now we don't think that way. In the secular world we think, "If an idea is important, I'll bump into it. I'll just come across it." Nonsense, says the religious world view. Religious view says we need calendars, we need to structure time, we need to synchronize encounters. This comes across also in the way in which religions set up rituals around important feelings.

Take the Moon. It's really important to look at the Moon. You know, when you look at the Moon, you think, "I'm really small. What are my problems?" It sets things into perspective, etc., etc. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often. We don't. Why don't we? Well there's nothing to tell us, "Look at the Moon." But if you're a Zen Buddhist in the middle of September, you will be ordered out of your home, made to stand on a canonical platform and made to celebrate the festival of Tsukimi, where you will be given poems to read in honor of the Moon and the passage of time and the frailty of life that it should remind us of. You'll be handed rice cakes. And the Moon and the reflection on the Moon will have a secure place in your heart. That's very good.

The other thing that religions are really aware of is: speak well -- I'm not doing a very good job of this here -- but oratory, oratory is absolutely key to religions. In the secular world, you can come through the university system and be a lousy speaker and still have a great career. But the religious world doesn't think that way. What you're saying needs to be backed up by a really convincing way of saying it.

So if you go to an African American Pentecostalist church in the American South and you listen to how they talk, my goodness, they talk well. After every convincing point, people will go, "Amen, amen, amen." At the end of a really rousing paragraph, they'll all stand up, and they'll go, "Thank you Jesus, thank you Christ, thank you Savior." If we were doing it like they do it -- let's not do it, but if we were to do it -- I would tell you something like, "Culture should replace scripture." And you would go, "Amen, amen, amen." And at the end of my talk, you would all stand up and you would go, "Thank you Plato, thank you Shakespeare, thank you Jane Austen." And we'd know that we had a real rhythm going. All right, all right. We're getting there.

We're getting there.

(Applause)

The other thing that religions know is we're not just brains, we are also bodies. And when they teach us a lesson, they do it via the body. So for example, take the Jewish idea of forgiveness. Jews are very interested in forgiveness and how we should start anew and start afresh. They don't just deliver us sermons on this. They don't just give us books or words about this. They tell us to have a bath. So in Orthodox Jewish communities, every Friday you go to a Mikveh. You immerse yourself in the water, and a physical action backs up a philosophical idea. We don't tend to do that. Our ideas are in one area and our behavior with our bodies is in another. Religions are fascinating in the way they try and combine the two.

Let's look at art now. Now art is something that in the secular world, we think very highly of. We think art is really, really important. A lot of our surplus wealth goes to museums, etc. We sometimes hear it said that museums are our new cathedrals, or our new churches. You've heard that saying. Now I think that the potential is there, but we've completely let ourselves down. And the reason we've let ourselves down is that we're not properly studying how religions handle art.

The two really bad ideas that are hovering in the modern world that inhibit our capacity to draw strength from art: The first idea is that art should be for art's sake -- a ridiculous idea -- an idea that art should live in a hermetic bubble and should not try to do anything with this troubled world. I couldn't disagree more. The other thing that we believe is that art shouldn't explain itself, that artists shouldn't say what they're up to, because if they said it, it might destroy the spell and we might find it too easy. That's why a very common feeling when you're in a museum -- let's admit it -- is, "I don't know what this is about." But if we're serious people, we don't admit to that. But that feeling of puzzlement is structural to contemporary art.

Now religions have a much saner attitude to art. They have no trouble telling us what art is about. Art is about two things in all the major faiths. Firstly, it's trying to remind you of what there is to love. And secondly, it's trying to remind you of what there is to fear and to hate. And that's what art is. Art is a visceral encounter with the most important ideas of your faith. So as you walk around a church, or a mosque or a cathedral, what you're trying to imbibe, what you're imbibing is, through your eyes, through your senses, truths that have otherwise come to you through your mind.

Essentially it's propaganda. Rembrandt is a propagandist in the Christian view. Now the word "propaganda" sets off alarm bells. We think of Hitler, we think of Stalin. Don't, necessarily. Propaganda is a manner of being didactic in honor of something. And if that thing is good, there's no problem with it at all.

My view is that museums should take a leaf out of the book of religions. And they should make sure that when you walk into a museum -- if I was a museum curator, I would make a room for love, a room for generosity. All works of art are talking to us about things. And if we were able to arrange spaces where we could come across works where we would be told, use these works of art to cement these ideas in your mind, we would get a lot more out of art. Art would pick up the duty that it used to have and that we've neglected because of certain mis-founded ideas. Art should be one of the tools by which we improve our society. Art should be didactic.

Let's think of something else. The people in the modern world, in the secular world, who are interested in matters of the spirit, in matters of the mind, in higher soul-like concerns, tend to be isolated individuals. They're poets, they're philosophers, they're photographers, they're filmmakers. And they tend to be on their own. They're our cottage industries. They are vulnerable, single people. And they get depressed and they get sad on their own. And they don't really change much.

Now think about religions, think about organized religions. What do organized religions do? They group together, they form institutions. And that has all sorts of advantages. First of all, scale, might. The Catholic Church pulled in 97 billion dollars last year according to the Wall Street Journal. These are massive machines. They're collaborative, they're branded, they're multinational, and they're highly disciplined.

These are all very good qualities. We recognize them in relation to corporations. And corporations are very like religions in many ways, except they're right down at the bottom of the pyramid of needs. They're selling us shoes and cars. Whereas the people who are selling us the higher stuff -- the therapists, the poets -- are on their own and they have no power, they have no might. So religions are the foremost example of an institution that is fighting for the things of the mind. Now we may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

Books alone, books written by lone individuals, are not going to change anything. We need to group together. If you want to change the world, you have to group together, you have to be collaborative. And that's what religions do. They are multinational, as I say, they are branded, they have a clear identity, so they don't get lost in a busy world. That's something we can learn from.

I want to conclude. Really what I want to say is for many of you who are operating in a range of different fields, there is something to learn from the example of religion -- even if you don't believe any of it. If you're involved in anything that's communal, that involves lots of people getting together, there are things for you in religion. If you're involved, say, in a travel industry in any way, look at pilgrimage. Look very closely at pilgrimage. We haven't begun to scratch the surface of what travel could be because we haven't looked at what religions do with travel. If you're in the art world, look at the example of what religions are doing with art. And if you're an educator in any way, again, look at how religions are spreading ideas. You may not agree with the ideas, but my goodness, they're highly effective mechanisms for doing so.

So really my concluding point is you may not agree with religion, but at the end of the day, religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Chris Anderson: Now this is actually a courageous talk, because you're kind of setting up yourself in some ways to be ridiculed in some quarters.

AB: You can get shot by both sides. You can get shot by the hard-headed atheists, and you can get shot by those who fully believe.

CA: Incoming missiles from North Oxford at any moment.

AB: Indeed.

CA: But you left out one aspect of religion that a lot of people might say your agenda could borrow from, which is this sense -- that's actually probably the most important thing to anyone who's religious -- of spiritual experience, of some kind of connection with something that's bigger than you are. Is there any room for that experience in Atheism 2.0?

AB: Absolutely. I, like many of you, meet people who say things like, "But isn't there something bigger than us, something else?" And I say, "Of course." And they say, "So aren't you sort of religious?" And I go, "No." Why does that sense of mystery, that sense of the dizzying scale of the universe, need to be accompanied by a mystical feeling? Science and just observation gives us that feeling without it, so I don't feel the need. The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. So one can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

CA: Actually, let me just ask a question. How many people here would say that religion is important to them? Is there an equivalent process by which there's a sort of bridge between what you're talking about and what you would say to them?

AB: I would say that there are many, many gaps in secular life and these can be plugged. It's not as though, as I try to suggest, it's not as though either you have religion and then you have to accept all sorts of things, or you don't have religion and then you're cut off from all these very good things. It's so sad that we constantly say, "I don't believe so I can't have community, so I'm cut off from morality, so I can't go on a pilgrimage." One wants to say, "Nonsense. Why not?" And that's really the spirit of my talk. There's so much we can absorb. Atheism shouldn't cut itself off from the rich sources of religion.

CA: It seems to me that there's plenty of people in the TED community who are atheists. But probably most people in the community certainly don't think that religion is going away any time soon and want to find the language to have a constructive dialogue and to feel like we can actually talk to each other and at least share some things in common. Are we foolish to be optimistic about the possibility of a world where, instead of religion being the great rallying cry of divide and war, that there could be bridging?

AB: No, we need to be polite about differences. Politeness is a much-overlooked virtue. It's seen as hypocrisy. But we need to get to a stage when you're an atheist and someone says, "Well you know, I did pray the other day," you politely ignore it. You move on. Because you've agreed on 90 percent of things, because you have a shared view on so many things, and you politely differ. And I think that's what the religious wars of late have ignored. They've ignored the possibility of harmonious disagreement.

CA: And finally, does this new thing that you're proposing that's not a religion but something else, does it need a leader, and are you volunteering to be the pope?

(Laughter)

AB: Well, one thing that we're all very suspicious of is individual leaders. It doesn't need it. What I've tried to lay out is a framework and I'm hoping that people can just fill it in. I've sketched a sort of broad framework. But wherever you are, as I say, if you're in the travel industry, do that travel bit. If you're in the communal industry, look at religion and do the communal bit. So it's a wiki project.

(Laughter)

CA: Alain, thank you for sparking many conversations later.

(Applause)

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Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0 Alain de Botton: Atheismus 2.0 Alain de Botton: Bottonotton: Αθεϊσμός 2.0 Alain de Botton: El ateísmo 2.0 Alain de Botton : Athéisme 2.0 Alain de Botton: Ateismo 2.0 アラン・ド・ボットン無神論2.0 Alain de Botton: Ateísmo 2.0 Ален де Боттон: Атеизм 2.0 Alain de Botton: Ateizm 2.0 Ален де Боттон: Атеїзм 2.0 阿兰·德波顿:无神论 2.0 阿蘭德波頓:無神論 2.0

One of the most common ways of dividing the world is into those who believe and those who don’t -- into the religious and the atheists. Dünyayı bölmenin en yaygın yollarından biri, inananlar ve inanmayanlar - dindarlar ve ateistler olarak. And for the last decade or so, it’s been quite clear what being an atheist means. There have been some very vocal atheists who’ve pointed out, not just that religion is wrong, but that it’s ridiculous. Es gab einige sehr lautstarke Atheisten, die darauf hingewiesen haben, dass Religion nicht nur falsch, sondern auch lächerlich ist. There have been some very vocal atheists who've pointed out, not just that religion is wrong, but that it's ridiculous. These people, many of whom have lived in North Oxford, have argued -- they’ve argued that believing in God is akin to believing in fairies and essentially that the whole thing is a childish game. Diese Leute, von denen viele in Nord-Oxford gelebt haben, haben argumentiert - sie haben argumentiert, dass der Glaube an Gott mit dem Glauben an Feen vergleichbar ist und im Wesentlichen, dass das Ganze ein kindisches Spiel ist.

Now I think it’s too easy. Şimdi bunun çok kolay olduğunu düşünüyorum. I think it’s too easy to dismiss the whole of religion that way. Ich denke, es ist zu einfach, die gesamte Religion auf diese Weise zu entlassen. And it’s as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Und es ist so einfach wie das Schießen von Fischen in einem Fass. 樽の中の魚を撃つのと同じくらい簡単だ。 И это так же просто, как запустить рыбу в бочку. And what I’d like to inaugurate today is a new way of being an atheist -- if you like, a new version of atheism we could call Atheism 2.0. Now what is Atheism 2.0? Well it starts from a very basic premise: of course, there’s no God. Of course, there are no deities or supernatural spirits or angels, etc. Natürlich gibt es keine Gottheiten oder übernatürlichen Geister oder Engel usw. Now let’s move on; that’s not the end of the story, that’s the very, very beginning.

I’m interested in the kind of constituency that thinks something along these lines: that thinks, "I can’t believe in any of this stuff. Ich interessiere mich für die Art von Wahlkreis, der etwas in dieser Richtung denkt: "Ich kann an nichts von alledem glauben. 私は、「こんなの信じられない」と思うような層にも興味があります。 Bu doğrultuda bir şeyler düşünen bir seçmen kitlesiyle ilgileniyorum: "Bu şeylerin hiçbirine inanamıyorum. I can’t believe in the doctrines. I don’t think these doctrines are right. But," a very important but, "I love Christmas carols. Ama "çok önemli ama" Noel şarkılarına bayılırım. I really like the art of Mantegna. Ich mag die Kunst von Mantegna sehr. Mantegna sanatını gerçekten seviyorum. I really like looking at old churches. I really like turning the pages of the Old Testament." Whatever it may be, you know the kind of thing I’m talking about -- people who are attracted to the ritualistic side, the moralistic, communal side of religion, but can’t bear the doctrine. Was auch immer es sein mag, Sie kennen die Art von Dingen, von denen ich spreche - Menschen, die von der rituellen Seite, der moralischen, kommunalen Seite der Religion angezogen sind, aber die Doktrin nicht ertragen können. Her ne olursa olsun, bahsettiğim türden bir şeyi biliyorsunuz - dinin ritüelistik, ahlaki, komünal tarafına ilgi duyan, ancak doktrine dayanamayan insanlar. Until now, these people have faced a rather unpleasant choice. Bisher standen diese Menschen vor einer eher unangenehmen Wahl. Şimdiye kadar, bu insanlar oldukça tatsız bir seçimle karşı karşıya kaldılar. It’s almost as though either you accept the doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart. まるで、教義を受け入れればいいものをすべて手に入れられるか、教義を拒否すればCNNやウォルマートの指導の下、ある種の精神的な荒れ地に住むことになるかのようだ。 Neredeyse ya doktrini kabul ediyorsun ve sonra tüm güzel şeylere sahip olabiliyorsun ya da öğretiyi reddediyorsun ve CNN ve Walmart'ın rehberliğinde bir tür ruhsal çorak arazide yaşıyorsun.

So that’s a sort of tough choice. Das ist eine schwierige Entscheidung. Yani bu bir çeşit zor seçim. I don’t think we have to make that choice. I think there is an alternative. I think there are ways -- and I’m being both very respectful and completely impious -- of stealing from religions. Ich denke, es gibt Möglichkeiten - und ich bin sowohl sehr respektvoll als auch völlig gottlos -, Religionen zu stehlen. Bence dinlerden çalmanın yolları var - ve hem çok saygılı hem de tamamen dinsiz davranıyorum. If you don’t believe in a religion, there’s nothing wrong with picking and mixing, with taking out the best sides of religion. もしあなたが宗教を信じていないのなら、宗教の良い面を選んで取り入れることは悪いことではない。 And for me, atheism 2.0 is about both, as I say, a respectful and an impious way of going through religions and saying, "What here could we use?" そして私にとっての無神論2.0とは、私が言うように、宗教を尊重し、かつ不敬なやり方で、"ここで何が使えるか?"と言うことなのだ。 Ve benim için ateizm 2.0, dediğim gibi, hem saygılı hem de dinsiz bir dinlerin içinden geçmenin ve "Burada ne kullanabiliriz?" Demenin bir yolu. The secular world is full of holes. Die säkulare Welt ist voller Löcher. 世俗の世界は穴だらけだ。 Laik dünya deliklerle dolu. We have secularized badly, I would argue. Wir haben uns schlecht säkularisiert, würde ich argumentieren. Kötü sekülerleştik, iddia ediyorum. And a thorough study of religion could give us all sorts of insights into areas of life that are not going too well. Und ein gründliches Studium der Religion könnte uns alle möglichen Einblicke in Bereiche des Lebens geben, die nicht allzu gut laufen. And I’d like to run through a few of these today. Ve bugün bunlardan birkaçını incelemek istiyorum.

I’d like to kick off by looking at education. Ich möchte mit der Ausbildung beginnen. Now education is a field the secular world really believes in. Artık eğitim, seküler dünyanın gerçekten inandığı bir alan. When we think about how we’re going to make the world a better place, we think education; that’s where we put a lot of money. Education is going to give us, not only commercial skills, industrial skills, it’s also going to make us better people. You know the kind of thing a commencement address is, and graduation ceremonies, those lyrical claims that education, the process of education -- particularly higher education -- will make us into nobler and better human beings. Sie wissen, was eine Anfangsrede und Abschlussfeier ist, diese lyrischen Behauptungen, dass Bildung, der Bildungsprozess - insbesondere die Hochschulbildung - uns zu edleren und besseren Menschen machen werden. Bir başlangıç konuşmasının ne tür bir şey olduğunu biliyorsunuz ve mezuniyet törenleri, eğitimin, eğitim sürecinin - özellikle yüksek öğrenimin - bizi daha asil ve daha iyi insanlar yapacağına dair lirik iddialar. That’s a lovely idea. Interesting where it came from. Nereden geldiği ilginç.

In the early 19th century, church attendance in Western Europe started sliding down very, very sharply, and people panicked. Im frühen 19. Jahrhundert sank der Kirchenbesuch in Westeuropa sehr, sehr stark und die Menschen gerieten in Panik. They asked themselves the following question. They said, where are people going to find the morality, where are they going to find guidance, and where are they going to find sources of consolation? And influential voices came up with one answer. Und einflussreiche Stimmen kamen mit einer Antwort. They said culture. It’s to culture that we should look for guidance, for consolation, for morality. Es ist der Kultur zu verdanken, dass wir nach Führung, nach Trost, nach Moral suchen. Let’s look to the plays of Shakespeare, the dialogues of Plato, the novels of Jane Austen. In there, we’ll find a lot of the truths that we might previously have found in the Gospel of Saint John. Now I think that’s a very beautiful idea and a very true idea. They wanted to replace scripture with culture. Sie wollten die Schrift durch Kultur ersetzen. And that’s a very plausible idea. It’s also an idea that we have forgotten.

If you went to a top university -- let’s say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge -- and you said, "I’ve come here because I’m in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live," they would show you the way to the insane asylum. Wenn Sie an eine Top-Universität gegangen sind - sagen wir, Sie sind nach Harvard, Oxford oder Cambridge gegangen - und Sie sagten: "Ich bin hierher gekommen, weil ich auf der Suche nach Moral, Führung und Trost bin. Ich möchte wissen, wie leben ", sie würden dir den Weg zur Irrenanstalt zeigen. This is simply not what our grandest and best institutes of higher learning are in the business of. Dies ist einfach nicht das, was unsere größten und besten Hochschulen im Geschäft sind. Bu, en büyük ve en iyi yüksek öğrenim kurumlarımızın faaliyet gösterdiği şey değildir. Why? They don’t think we need it. İhtiyacımız olduğunu düşünmüyorlar. They don’t think we are in an urgent need of assistance. Sie glauben nicht, dass wir dringend Hilfe brauchen. They see us as adults, rational adults. What we need is information. We need data, we don’t need help.

Now religions start from a very different place indeed. Jetzt beginnen die Religionen tatsächlich an einem ganz anderen Ort. All religions, all major religions, at various points call us children. Alle Religionen, alle großen Religionen nennen uns an verschiedenen Stellen Kinder. Çeşitli noktalardaki tüm dinler, tüm büyük dinler bize çocuk diyor. And like children, they believe that we are in severe need of assistance. Und wie Kinder glauben sie, dass wir dringend Hilfe brauchen. We’re only just holding it together. Wir halten es nur zusammen. Perhaps this is just me, maybe you. Vielleicht bin das nur ich, vielleicht du. Belki bu sadece benim, belki sen. But anyway, we’re only just holding it together. And we need help. Of course, we need help. And so we need guidance and we need didactic learning. Wir brauchen also Anleitung und didaktisches Lernen.

You know, in the 18th century in the U.K., the greatest preacher, greatest religious preacher, was a man called John Wesley, who went up and down this country delivering sermons, advising people how they could live. He delivered sermons on the duties of parents to their children and children to their parents, the duties of the rich to the poor and the poor to the rich. Anne babaların çocuklarına, çocuklarının da ailelerine, zenginin fakire, fakirlerin zengine görevleri hakkında vaazlar verdi. He was trying to tell people how they should live through the medium of sermons, the classic medium of delivery of religions. Er versuchte den Menschen zu erklären, wie sie das Medium der Predigten, das klassische Medium der Religionsausübung, durchleben sollten. İnsanlara, klasik dinlerin tebliğ aracı olan vaazlarla nasıl yaşamaları gerektiğini anlatmaya çalışıyordu.

Now we’ve given up with the idea of sermons. Jetzt haben wir die Idee von Predigten aufgegeben. Şimdi vaaz fikrinden vazgeçtik. If you said to a modern liberal individualist, "Hey, how about a sermon?" Modern bir liberal bireyciye "Hey, bir vaaza ne dersin?" they’d go, "No, no. I don’t need one of those. I’m an independent, individual person." What’s the difference between a sermon and our modern, secular mode of delivery, the lecture? Was ist der Unterschied zwischen einer Predigt und unserem modernen, weltlichen Vortrag? Well a sermon wants to change your life and a lecture wants to give you a bit of information. And I think we need to get back to that sermon tradition. The tradition of sermonizing is hugely valuable, because we are in need of guidance, morality and consolation -- and religions know that.

Another point about education: we tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they’ll remember it. Ein weiterer Punkt in Bezug auf Bildung: Wir neigen dazu, an die moderne säkulare Welt zu glauben, dass sie sich daran erinnern werden, wenn Sie jemandem einmal etwas erzählen. Eğitimle ilgili bir başka nokta: modern seküler dünyaya inanma eğilimindeyiz, eğer birine bir şey söylerseniz, onu hatırlayacaklar. Sit them in a classroom, tell them about Plato at the age of 20, send them out for a career in management consultancy for 40 years, and that lesson will stick with them. Setzen Sie sie in ein Klassenzimmer, erzählen Sie ihnen von Plato im Alter von 20 Jahren, schicken Sie sie für eine Karriere in der Unternehmensberatung für 40 Jahre, und diese Lektion wird bei ihnen bleiben. Onları bir sınıfa oturtun, onlara 20 yaşında Plato'dan bahsedin, onları 40 yıllık bir yönetim danışmanlığı kariyerine gönderin ve bu ders onlara sadık kalacaktır. Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. Sie müssen die Lektion 10 Mal am Tag wiederholen. So get on your knees and repeat it." Also knie nieder und wiederhole es. " That’s what all religions tell us: "Get on you knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves. Sonst sind unsere Gedanken wie Siebe.

So religions are cultures of repetition. Religionen sind also Kulturen der Wiederholung. They circle the great truths again and again and again. Tekrar ve tekrar büyük gerçekleri daire içine alırlar. We associate repetition with boredom. Wir verbinden Wiederholung mit Langeweile. "Give us the new," we’re always saying. "The new is better than the old." If I said to you, "Okay, we’re not going to have new TED. Wenn ich zu Ihnen sagte: "Okay, wir werden keine neue TED haben. Size "Tamam, yeni TED'imiz olmayacak. We’re just going to run through all the old ones and watch them five times because they’re so true. We’re going to watch Elizabeth Gilbert five times because what she says is so clever," you’d feel cheated. Wir werden Elizabeth Gilbert fünf Mal sehen, weil das, was sie sagt, so klug ist ", würden Sie sich betrogen fühlen. Not so if you’re adopting a religious mindset. Dini bir zihniyet benimsiyorsan öyle değil.

The other things that religions do is to arrange time. All the major religions give us calendars. What is a calendar? A calendar is a way of making sure that across the year you will bump into certain very important ideas. In the Catholic chronology, Catholic calendar, at the end of March you will think about St. Jerome and his qualities of humility and goodness and his generosity to the poor. Hieronymus und seine Eigenschaften der Demut und Güte und seine Großzügigkeit gegenüber den Armen. You won’t do that by accident; you will do that because you are guided to do that. Sie werden das nicht aus Versehen tun; Sie werden das tun, weil Sie dazu geführt werden. Now we don’t think that way. Şimdi böyle düşünmüyoruz. In the secular world we think, "If an idea is important, I’ll bump into it. In der säkularen Welt denken wir: "Wenn eine Idee wichtig ist, werde ich darauf stoßen. Seküler dünyada şöyle düşünüyoruz: "Bir fikir önemliyse, onunla karşılaşırım. I’ll just come across it." Ich werde nur darauf stoßen. " Nonsense, says the religious world view. Unsinn, sagt die religiöse Weltanschauung. Religious view says we need calendars, we need to structure time, we need to synchronize encounters. This comes across also in the way in which religions set up rituals around important feelings. Dies zeigt sich auch in der Art und Weise, wie Religionen Rituale um wichtige Gefühle aufstellen. Bu aynı zamanda dinlerin önemli duygular etrafında ritüeller oluşturmalarında da karşımıza çıkıyor.

Take the Moon. It’s really important to look at the Moon. You know, when you look at the Moon, you think, "I’m really small. What are my problems?" It sets things into perspective, etc., etc. Es setzt die Dinge in die richtige Perspektive usw. usw. Olayları perspektife vb. Yerleştirir. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often. We don’t. Why don’t we? Well there’s nothing to tell us, "Look at the Moon." But if you’re a Zen Buddhist in the middle of September, you will be ordered out of your home, made to stand on a canonical platform and made to celebrate the festival of Tsukimi, where you will be given poems to read in honor of the Moon and the passage of time and the frailty of life that it should remind us of. Wenn Sie jedoch Mitte September Zen-Buddhist sind, werden Sie von zu Hause aus angewiesen, auf einer kanonischen Plattform zu stehen und das Fest von Tsukimi zu feiern, zu dessen Ehren Sie Gedichte lesen können der Mond und der Lauf der Zeit und die Schwäche des Lebens, an die er uns erinnern sollte. Ancak Eylül ortasında bir Zen Budisti iseniz, evinizden çıkmanız, kanonik bir platformda ayakta durmanız ve onuruna okumanız için şiirlerin verileceği Tsukimi festivalini kutlamanız istenir. Ay ve zamanın geçişi ve bize hatırlatması gereken hayatın kırılganlığı. You’ll be handed rice cakes. Sie werden Reiskuchen übergeben. And the Moon and the reflection on the Moon will have a secure place in your heart. Und der Mond und das Spiegelbild auf dem Mond werden einen sicheren Platz in deinem Herzen haben. That’s very good.

The other thing that religions are really aware of is: speak well -- I’m not doing a very good job of this here -- but oratory, oratory is absolutely key to religions. In the secular world, you can come through the university system and be a lousy speaker and still have a great career. In der säkularen Welt können Sie durch das Universitätssystem kommen, ein mieser Redner sein und trotzdem eine großartige Karriere haben. But the religious world doesn’t think that way. What you’re saying needs to be backed up by a really convincing way of saying it. Was Sie sagen, muss durch eine wirklich überzeugende Art und Weise untermauert werden.

So if you go to an African American Pentecostalist church in the American South and you listen to how they talk, my goodness, they talk well. Wenn du also in eine afroamerikanische Pfingstgemeinde im Süden der USA gehst und hörst, wie sie reden, meine Güte, sie reden gut. After every convincing point, people will go, "Amen, amen, amen." At the end of a really rousing paragraph, they’ll all stand up, and they’ll go, "Thank you Jesus, thank you Christ, thank you Savior." If we were doing it like they do it -- let’s not do it, but if we were to do it -- I would tell you something like, "Culture should replace scripture." Bunu onlar gibi yapıyor olsaydık - yapmayalım, ama eğer yapacak olsaydık - size "Kültür, kutsal metinlerin yerini almalı" gibi bir şey söylerdim. And you would go, "Amen, amen, amen." And at the end of my talk, you would all stand up and you would go, "Thank you Plato, thank you Shakespeare, thank you Jane Austen." And we’d know that we had a real rhythm going. All right, all right. We’re getting there.

We’re getting there. Мы добиваемся этого.

(Applause)

The other thing that religions know is we’re not just brains, we are also bodies. Das andere, was die Religionen wissen, ist, dass wir nicht nur Gehirne sind, sondern auch Körper. And when they teach us a lesson, they do it via the body. So for example, take the Jewish idea of forgiveness. Jews are very interested in forgiveness and how we should start anew and start afresh. They don’t just deliver us sermons on this. Sie halten uns nicht nur Predigten darüber. They don’t just give us books or words about this. They tell us to have a bath. Bize banyo yapmamızı söylüyorlar. So in Orthodox Jewish communities, every Friday you go to a Mikveh. Yani Ortodoks Yahudi topluluklarında her Cuma bir Mikveh'e gidiyorsunuz. You immerse yourself in the water, and a physical action backs up a philosophical idea. Kendinizi suya daldırırsınız ve fiziksel bir eylem felsefi bir fikri destekler. We don’t tend to do that. Wir neigen nicht dazu, das zu tun. Biz bunu yapma eğiliminde değiliz. Our ideas are in one area and our behavior with our bodies is in another. Fikirlerimiz bir alanda ve bedenimizle davranışlarımız başka bir alanda. Religions are fascinating in the way they try and combine the two.

Let’s look at art now. Schauen wir uns jetzt die Kunst an. Now art is something that in the secular world, we think very highly of. We think art is really, really important. A lot of our surplus wealth goes to museums, etc. We sometimes hear it said that museums are our new cathedrals, or our new churches. You’ve heard that saying. Sie haben diesen Spruch gehört. Bu sözü duydunuz. Now I think that the potential is there, but we’ve completely let ourselves down. Jetzt denke ich, dass das Potenzial vorhanden ist, aber wir haben uns völlig enttäuscht. Şimdi potansiyelin orada olduğunu düşünüyorum, ancak kendimizi tamamen hayal kırıklığına uğrattık. And the reason we’ve let ourselves down is that we’re not properly studying how religions handle art. Der Grund, warum wir uns im Stich gelassen haben, ist, dass wir den Umgang der Religionen mit Kunst nicht richtig untersuchen.

The two really bad ideas that are hovering in the modern world that inhibit our capacity to draw strength from art: The first idea is that art should be for art’s sake -- a ridiculous idea -- an idea that art should live in a hermetic bubble and should not try to do anything with this troubled world. Die zwei wirklich schlechten Ideen, die in der modernen Welt schweben und unsere Fähigkeit, Kraft aus der Kunst zu schöpfen, hemmen: Die erste Idee ist, dass Kunst der Kunst zuliebe sein sollte - eine lächerliche Idee - eine Idee, dass Kunst in einer hermetischen Blase leben sollte und sollte nicht versuchen, etwas mit dieser unruhigen Welt zu tun. Две действительно плохие идеи, витающие в современном мире, которые мешают нам черпать силы в искусстве: Первая идея заключается в том, что искусство должно быть искусством ради искусства - нелепая идея, идея, что искусство должно жить в герметичном пузыре и не пытаться ничего сделать с этим беспокойным миром. Modern dünyada, sanattan güç alma kapasitemizi engelleyen gerçekten kötü iki fikir: İlk fikir, sanatın sanat için olması gerektiğidir - saçma bir fikir - sanatın hermetik bir balonda yaşaması gerektiği fikri ve bu sıkıntılı dünya ile hiçbir şey yapmaya çalışmamalı. I couldn’t disagree more. Ich konnte nicht mehr widersprechen. The other thing that we believe is that art shouldn’t explain itself, that artists shouldn’t say what they’re up to, because if they said it, it might destroy the spell and we might find it too easy. That’s why a very common feeling when you’re in a museum -- let’s admit it -- is, "I don’t know what this is about." But if we’re serious people, we don’t admit to that. Ama ciddi insanlarıysak, bunu kabul etmiyoruz. But that feeling of puzzlement is structural to contemporary art. Aber dieses Gefühl der Verwirrung ist für die zeitgenössische Kunst strukturell. Ancak bu şaşkınlık hissi çağdaş sanat için yapısaldır.

Now religions have a much saner attitude to art. Artık dinlerin sanata karşı daha mantıklı bir tavrı var. They have no trouble telling us what art is about. Bize sanatın neyle ilgili olduğunu söylemekte hiçbir güçlükleri yok. Art is about two things in all the major faiths. Sanat, tüm büyük inançlarda iki şey hakkındadır. Firstly, it’s trying to remind you of what there is to love. And secondly, it’s trying to remind you of what there is to fear and to hate. And that’s what art is. Art is a visceral encounter with the most important ideas of your faith. Kunst ist eine viszerale Begegnung mit den wichtigsten Ideen Ihres Glaubens. Sanat, inancınızın en önemli fikirleriyle içgüdüsel bir karşılaşmadır. So as you walk around a church, or a mosque or a cathedral, what you’re trying to imbibe, what you’re imbibing is, through your eyes, through your senses, truths that have otherwise come to you through your mind. Wenn Sie also um eine Kirche, eine Moschee oder eine Kathedrale herumgehen, versuchen Sie zu saugen, was Sie saugen, ist durch Ihre Augen, durch Ihre Sinne, Wahrheiten, die Ihnen sonst durch Ihren Verstand gekommen sind. Yani bir kilisenin, bir caminin veya bir katedralin etrafında dolaşırken, özümsemeye çalıştığınız şey, gözleriniz aracılığıyla, duyularınızla, aksi takdirde aklınızdan size gelen gerçeklerdir.

Essentially it’s propaganda. Im Wesentlichen ist es Propaganda. Rembrandt is a propagandist in the Christian view. Rembrandt ist nach christlicher Auffassung ein Propagandist. Now the word "propaganda" sets off alarm bells. Jetzt löst das Wort "Propaganda" Alarmglocken aus. Teraz słowo „propaganda” uruchamia dzwonki alarmowe. We think of Hitler, we think of Stalin. Don’t, necessarily. Propaganda is a manner of being didactic in honor of something. Propaganda ist eine Art, zu Ehren von etwas didaktisch zu sein. And if that thing is good, there’s no problem with it at all.

My view is that museums should take a leaf out of the book of religions. Я считаю, что музеи должны взять пример с религий. Bence müzeler dinler kitabından bir yaprak almalı. And they should make sure that when you walk into a museum -- if I was a museum curator, I would make a room for love, a room for generosity. Ve bir müzeye girdiğinizde - eğer ben bir müze küratörü olsaydım, aşk için bir oda, cömertlik için bir oda yapardım. All works of art are talking to us about things. And if we were able to arrange spaces where we could come across works where we would be told, use these works of art to cement these ideas in your mind, we would get a lot more out of art. Und wenn wir Räume einrichten könnten, in denen wir auf Werke stoßen könnten, die uns erzählt werden, und diese Kunstwerke verwenden, um diese Ideen in Ihrem Kopf zu festigen, würden wir viel mehr aus der Kunst herausholen. Ve bize söylenecek eserlerle karşılaşabileceğimiz alanlar düzenleyebilseydik, bu sanat eserlerini bu fikirleri zihninizde pekiştirmek için kullanın, sanattan çok daha fazlasını elde ederiz. Art would pick up the duty that it used to have and that we’ve neglected because of certain mis-founded ideas. Kunst würde die Pflicht übernehmen, die sie früher hatte und die wir aufgrund bestimmter falsch begründeter Ideen vernachlässigt haben. Sanat, sahip olduğu ve bazı yanlış temelli fikirlerden dolayı ihmal ettiğimiz görevi üstlenirdi. Art should be one of the tools by which we improve our society. Kunst sollte eines der Instrumente sein, mit denen wir unsere Gesellschaft verbessern. Art should be didactic. Kunst sollte didaktisch sein.

Let’s think of something else. The people in the modern world, in the secular world, who are interested in matters of the spirit, in matters of the mind, in higher soul-like concerns, tend to be isolated individuals. They’re poets, they’re philosophers, they’re photographers, they’re filmmakers. And they tend to be on their own. Und sie neigen dazu, allein zu sein. They’re our cottage industries. Sie sind unsere Heimindustrie. Onlar bizim yazlık sanayimiz. They are vulnerable, single people. And they get depressed and they get sad on their own. And they don’t really change much. Und sie ändern sich nicht wirklich viel.

Now think about religions, think about organized religions. Denken Sie jetzt an Religionen, denken Sie an organisierte Religionen. What do organized religions do? They group together, they form institutions. Sie gruppieren sich, sie bilden Institutionen. And that has all sorts of advantages. First of all, scale, might. Zuallererst, Maßstab, Macht. Her şeyden önce ölçek, kudret. The Catholic Church pulled in 97 billion dollars last year according to the Wall Street Journal. Die katholische Kirche hat laut Wall Street Journal im vergangenen Jahr 97 Milliarden Dollar eingenommen. Wall Street Journal'a göre Katolik Kilisesi geçen yıl 97 milyar dolar çekti. These are massive machines. They’re collaborative, they’re branded, they’re multinational, and they’re highly disciplined.

These are all very good qualities. We recognize them in relation to corporations. And corporations are very like religions in many ways, except they’re right down at the bottom of the pyramid of needs. Ve şirketler, ihtiyaçlar piramidinin hemen altında yer almaları dışında pek çok yönden dinlere benziyorlar. They’re selling us shoes and cars. Whereas the people who are selling us the higher stuff -- the therapists, the poets -- are on their own and they have no power, they have no might. So religions are the foremost example of an institution that is fighting for the things of the mind. Dolayısıyla dinler, zihinsel şeyler için savaşan bir kurumun en önde gelen örneğidir. Now we may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they’re doing it.

Books alone, books written by lone individuals, are not going to change anything. We need to group together. If you want to change the world, you have to group together, you have to be collaborative. And that’s what religions do. They are multinational, as I say, they are branded, they have a clear identity, so they don’t get lost in a busy world. That’s something we can learn from.

I want to conclude. Really what I want to say is for many of you who are operating in a range of different fields, there is something to learn from the example of religion -- even if you don’t believe any of it. If you’re involved in anything that’s communal, that involves lots of people getting together, there are things for you in religion. If you’re involved, say, in a travel industry in any way, look at pilgrimage. Eğer herhangi bir şekilde seyahat endüstrisine dahil olursanız, hac yolculuğuna bakın. Look very closely at pilgrimage. We haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what travel could be because we haven’t looked at what religions do with travel. Seyahatin ne olabileceğinin yüzeyini çizmeye başlamadık çünkü dinlerin seyahatle ne yaptığına bakmadık. If you’re in the art world, look at the example of what religions are doing with art. And if you’re an educator in any way, again, look at how religions are spreading ideas. You may not agree with the ideas, but my goodness, they’re highly effective mechanisms for doing so.

So really my concluding point is you may not agree with religion, but at the end of the day, religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they’re not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they’re for all of us.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Chris Anderson: Now this is actually a courageous talk, because you’re kind of setting up yourself in some ways to be ridiculed in some quarters. Chris Anderson: Şimdi bu aslında cesur bir konuşma, çünkü bazı çevrelerde alay edilmek için bazı şekillerde kendinizi hazırlıyorsunuz.

AB: You can get shot by both sides. AB: Her iki taraftan da vurulabilirsin. You can get shot by the hard-headed atheists, and you can get shot by those who fully believe.

CA: Incoming missiles from North Oxford at any moment.

AB: Indeed.

CA: But you left out one aspect of religion that a lot of people might say your agenda could borrow from, which is this sense -- that’s actually probably the most important thing to anyone who’s religious -- of spiritual experience, of some kind of connection with something that’s bigger than you are. CA: Ama dinin, birçok insanın gündeminizin ödünç alabileceğini söyleyebileceği bir yönünü dışarıda bıraktınız, ki bu şu anlama geliyor - bu muhtemelen dindar olan herhangi biri için en önemli şey - ruhani deneyim, bir tür senden daha büyük bir şeyle bağlantı kur. Is there any room for that experience in Atheism 2.0?

AB: Absolutely. I, like many of you, meet people who say things like, "But isn’t there something bigger than us, something else?" And I say, "Of course." And they say, "So aren’t you sort of religious?" Ve diyorlar ki, "Dindar biri değil misin?" And I go, "No." Why does that sense of mystery, that sense of the dizzying scale of the universe, need to be accompanied by a mystical feeling? Evrenin baş döndürücü ölçeğine dair bu gizem duygusuna neden mistik bir duygu eşlik ediyor? Science and just observation gives us that feeling without it, so I don’t feel the need. Bilim ve sadece gözlem bize bu hissi onsuz veriyor, bu yüzden ihtiyaç hissetmiyorum. The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. So one can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

CA: Actually, let me just ask a question. How many people here would say that religion is important to them? Is there an equivalent process by which there’s a sort of bridge between what you’re talking about and what you would say to them? Bahsettiğiniz şeyle onlara söyleyecekleriniz arasında bir tür köprü olan eşdeğer bir süreç var mı?

AB: I would say that there are many, many gaps in secular life and these can be plugged. It’s not as though, as I try to suggest, it’s not as though either you have religion and then you have to accept all sorts of things, or you don’t have religion and then you’re cut off from all these very good things. Öyle değil ki, öne sürmeye çalıştığım gibi, ya dininiz var ve sonra her türlü şeyi kabul etmek zorunda kalıyorsunuz ya da dininiz yok ve sonra tüm bu çok güzel şeylerden mahrum kalıyorsunuz. . It’s so sad that we constantly say, "I don’t believe so I can’t have community, so I’m cut off from morality, so I can’t go on a pilgrimage." O kadar üzücü ki sürekli "İnanmıyorum, bu yüzden topluma sahip olamıyorum, bu yüzden ahlaktan kopuyorum, bu yüzden hacca gidemem." One wants to say, "Nonsense. Why not?" And that’s really the spirit of my talk. Ve bu gerçekten konuşmamın ruhu. There’s so much we can absorb. Emebileceğimiz çok şey var. Atheism shouldn’t cut itself off from the rich sources of religion.

CA: It seems to me that there’s plenty of people in the TED community who are atheists. But probably most people in the community certainly don’t think that religion is going away any time soon and want to find the language to have a constructive dialogue and to feel like we can actually talk to each other and at least share some things in common. Are we foolish to be optimistic about the possibility of a world where, instead of religion being the great rallying cry of divide and war, that there could be bridging? Dinin büyük bir bölünme ve savaş çığlığı olmak yerine, köprü kurmanın mümkün olduğu bir dünyanın olasılığı konusunda iyimser miyiz?

AB: No, we need to be polite about differences. AB: Hayır, farklılıklar konusunda nazik olmalıyız. Politeness is a much-overlooked virtue. Nezaket çok gözden kaçan bir erdemdir. It’s seen as hypocrisy. But we need to get to a stage when you’re an atheist and someone says, "Well you know, I did pray the other day," you politely ignore it. Ama ateist olduğunuzda ve birisi "Biliyorsunuz, geçen gün dua ettim" dediğinde, kibarca görmezden geldiğiniz bir aşamaya geçmemiz gerekiyor. You move on. Because you’ve agreed on 90 percent of things, because you have a shared view on so many things, and you politely differ. Çünkü şeylerin yüzde 90'ı üzerinde anlaştınız, çünkü pek çok konuda ortak bir görüşünüz var ve kibarca farklılaşıyorsunuz. And I think that’s what the religious wars of late have ignored. Ve bence son dönemdeki din savaşlarının görmezden geldiği şey bu. They’ve ignored the possibility of harmonious disagreement. Uyumlu anlaşmazlık olasılığını görmezden geldiler.

CA: And finally, does this new thing that you’re proposing that’s not a religion but something else, does it need a leader, and are you volunteering to be the pope?

(Laughter)

AB: Well, one thing that we’re all very suspicious of is individual leaders. It doesn’t need it. What I’ve tried to lay out is a framework and I’m hoping that people can just fill it in. I’ve sketched a sort of broad framework. Bir çeşit geniş çerçeve çizdim. But wherever you are, as I say, if you’re in the travel industry, do that travel bit. If you’re in the communal industry, look at religion and do the communal bit. So it’s a wiki project.

(Laughter)

CA: Alain, thank you for sparking many conversations later. CA: Alain, daha sonra birçok konuşmayı ateşlediğin için teşekkürler.

(Applause)