1- I was shocked by your talk: 'Why We Believe in Gods' at the American Atheists Convention 2009 because it looks like religion is successfully exploiting human nature for their own benefit. What steps we, as atheists, should do to alienate human nature from religion?

Religion arises from certain aspects of human nature, cognitive mechanisms originally designed for other purposes. Religious beliefs have become finely honed, highjack the mechanisms that produce them and then can exploit individual humans to aid in spreading these beliefs to others. Religious leaders successfully exploit human nature for their own benefit. Osama bin Laden exploited suicide bombers for his own aggrandizement, and his popularity rose further. He married his fourth legitimate wife, Amal al-Sadah, a seventeen-year-old Yemeni girl in 2000. Was that possible because of his fame? Martin Luther King, whom I admire, had his share of women from his prominence as a black Baptist minister and the status that gave him within the African American community. The Pope lives a life of unparalleled splendor. The Catholic Church has collected priceless art and enormous sums of tax-free wealth for centuries. It has sheltered a virtual army of pedophiles. The examples of how religious leaders use religion to exploit individuals and groups litter all of human history.

You ask what steps we should take to alienate human nature from religion. Anything we can do to loosen religion’s hold on humanity furthers civilization. There is an old saying that there are three things crucial to a successful business: location, location, and location. Similarly I think there are three crucial steps to move humans away from religion: education, education, and education.

If we educate people to know the features of their own minds that make them vulnerable to supernatural beliefs, that knowledge may serve as an inoculation from the mind viruses that are religions.

Europe and Scandinavia became secular long before these mechanisms were fully known. The man-made nature of religion seemed obvious and the populations of those countries became more secular in the past decades. This is similar to the history of infectious diseases. Sanitation reduced morbidity and mortality from infectious diseases long before the agents of illness were known. Once bacteria, viruses and antibiotics were discovered, specific infections and rates of infectious disease declined dramatically. As we learn more about the intricacies of human cognition that generate and accept religious beliefs, we will combat religion even more effectively.

Because two of the mechanisms utilized by religious belief are romantic love and attachment, when you criticize believers, you are attacking something they love deeply and to which they are strongly attached. They react with defensive anger. Whereas, if you lay out the reasons that their minds may be susceptible, you stand a greater chance of persuasion. Showing someone why their own mind betrays them might be a better strategy. Instead of criticizing, you ally with them. “Let me show you something that has recently been discovered about our minds that make us both vulnerable to generate and accept supernatural beliefs.”

2- How did you become interested in the psychology of terrorists and suicide terrorism?

My interest in suicide terrorism arises from a frightening personal experience. My son worked in the building next to the World Trade Center. On September 11th he could have been killed, and he witnessed the entire nightmare. One of my coping strategies with his near death was to investigate the psychology of suicide bombers. I was already a long time unbeliever, but while researching the topic I discovered the unappreciated cognitive neuroscience of religious belief.

3- Following on for my previous question, your talk about terrorism in the AAI 2007 was quite impressive and totally comprehensive. If we are to talk solution-wise, which camp do you find yourself closer to? G.W. Bush's camp or B. Obama's one? What could be the solution for terrorism?

In general I am closer to the Obama camp, but on the issue of suicide bombing I am close to neither of them. On the issue of terrorism, as outlined in that talk in 2007, it is my opinion that you never eradicate a disease until you know the causes, attack them and eliminate them.

If I had been president in 2001, I would have called a conference of Islamic leaders and asked them what they were going to do about the attack. Muslims were killed in the attacks. Muslims conducted the attacks in Islam’s name. But, you cannot kill a poisonous snake without cutting off its head. I would have also assembled a coalition of armies that represented all the countries of origin of the victims of September 11th. I would have focused on bin Laden, al Zawahari, and Mullah Omar, capturing them if possible, but killing them if necessary. I would not have stopped until that was accomplished. Iraq was a disastrous distraction. Ideally, any leaders of al Qaeda who were captured would have been transported to The Hague and tried for crimes against humanity in the international court. Nothing would have reduced bin Laden’s stature more than being a criminal in a defendant’s dock at an international tribunal.

There would have been no death penalty, which is in accord with any civilized norm of justice. Guantanamo, secrecy, and the torture of captives are inexcusable and unforgiveable. They are an affront to the rule of law and civil society, even when we are mortally threatened. They have distracted us from the crucial issues: religion and fundamentalist beliefs’ threat to humanity.

For me the truth is quite clear. The phenomenon of suicide terrorism has three basic elements:

• 1) Male bonded coalitionary violence with lethal raiding against innocents is part of male human nature. It goes back to our common ancestor with chimpanzees and can be tracked through the hominid fossil record and all recorded history. The capacity is imbedded in all men. Women are off the hook on that element.
• 2) All men and women have the evolved capacity for suicide.
• 3) Religion is man made, a cultural construct, and it is the most powerful ideology that can highjack human nature’s capacity for male coalitionary violence, lethal raiding and suicide.

Until we truly face the horrors of our evolutionary history and the murderous legacy it has left in all men and religion’s capacity to mobilize our proclivities for violence and suicide, we will never see the end of suicide terrorism. It is unlikely that President Obama or any world leader will openly criticize religion and hold religion accountable as one of the crucial instigators of suicide terrorism.

4- I watched your lectures several times and each time I discover something new, have you considered writing a book about that subject? I bet every atheist (among others) would love to get his hands on a copy.

That is kind of you. There is already much that is available. The Richard Dawkins website, richarddawkins.net is a treasure trove of lectures and articles. For example, go to the site, to archives, and click video and pull up Dan Dennett’s lectures. They are marvelous, especially one in April 2009 for the British Humanists. The audio is not good, but the ideas are superb. Click for the videos of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. They too are marvelous. A recent one with Harris, Hitchens and Dennett, all of them, at a debate in Mexico contains rich arguments and ideas.

I am planning on writing a very short book on why we believe in god(s) based on the April 2009 lecture. The tentative title for the book is “Why You Believe in God(s): A Pocket Guide.” My hope is to be brief, clear and accessible. An individual should be able to read it in less than an hour and pass it on to a friend. The focus will simply be on the cognitive mechanisms that generate supernatural beliefs and make all of us vulnerable to religion.

5- Most of my board's members live in the Middle East smothered by a double siege of their societies and their very own families where the Internet is the only escape of a lifetime sentence of hypocrisy. Most of them are oppressed, depressed, and frustrated by no apparent light at the end of the tunnel. As psychiatrist, what advice would you like to give them?

Since I do not live in those difficult circumstances I hardly have the wisdom to offer advice. My wish is, “Do not despair.” As Sam Harris noted, if you return to the year 1855 in the United States, no one would have ever predicted slavery would end. It appeared to be an institution that would remain for the foreseeable future. But, slavery ended abruptly ten years later. If you traveled back to Catholic Europe 100 years ago, no one then would have predicted the rapid evolution of secular societies in most of Europe. In my opinion education, the internet and the knowledge of religion’s psychological structure will help bring about the tipping point from which religion will lose its hold in Muslim societies. Imagine if all secondary school psychology classes contain a unit on the psychology of religion? What if a basic education contains instruction on why human minds are vulnerable to religious beliefs? It may occur in our lifetime. That may be of little consolation to your board who live, as you note, under a double siege, the likes of which I can only imagine.

6- If you were elected the president of the United States, what would you do?

After the American civil war Union General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve.” That is a job that is too difficult for any one individual. If I were elected president of the United States, I would surround myself with the best minds possible and try to face the truth no matter where it led.

7- Can you tell us more about your personal and early life? We seem to know a little about that.

The details will soon be available at a website currently under construction, http://www.andersonthomson.com
In short I am the lucky beneficiary of a democracy that welcomed immigrants and gave them a chance at an education in a relatively classless society. My mother’s family is Scotch Irish from rural Virginia. My father emigrated from Scotland as a child. I was the first member of the family to obtain a graduate education and a medical degree, and only the third to have a college education. My parents attended a Presbyterian church (God’s frozen people), and were believers. Belief never made much sense to me, but I went along because my friends all sang in the choir and that provided a refuge on Sunday mornings.

Medical school and witnessing unbearable human suffering ended any possibility of religious belief. If there was a god, he had much misery to answer for.

Thank you for your kind praise and interest in my work. I hope it helps your colleagues trapped behind the double siege. Knowledge and the beauty of scientific discovery should guide as all. And, anything we do, no matter how modest, which loosens religion’s hold on humanity, strikes a blow on behalf of civilization and enhances the chance for a global civil society.

Dr. Thomson, thank you again for yout time.

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