Dawkins: Where does your skepticism come from?
Brown: Well in terms of sort of my history
I used to be a very devout Christian when I was
younger but didn't have a Christian family and
didn't have Christian friends. I had one good
Christian friend. But it came from a bible
reading class when I was young. It was an
unpleasant childhood indoctrination.
Because I grew up without a Christian peer
group, when I got to university it was
relatively easy for me to kind of, sort of
think my way out of it. Sort of challenge
it and not feel too much guilt. And I'd started
to learn hypnosis at the time. That was the
first stepping stone to what I'm doing now.
I had all these Christians terribly upset
and offended that I was doing it because
it sort of ushered in demons as far as they,
which, to me I kind of thought, well if you
believe that God created us, surely the mind is
the pinnacle of that creation. So why, looking at
the mind in any way would be seen as demonic
and a bad thing I really didn't understand.
Let alone, if you don't understand hypnosis
how can you say it ushers in demons?
I know I understood it better than they did.
That was a strange kind of, I realized there
was this fear issue of anything that was
misunderstood. And the new age industry at
that time was really blossoming and it was a
real bête noire to the fairly rabid pastors
that I had saw at churches. Because at the
same time I was getting into magic, and
through magic realizing how things like tarot cards
and psychics really work, and there's nothing
mystical about it that could be seen as
dangerous but it's just simply, just rubbish and
charlatanism and psychology at work.
Two things happened. One I realized that the,
well I talked to psychics and I listened to
their sort of circular beliefs and I'd think
"Well I'm just doing exactly the same thing
as a Christian. The only difference is it's
easier to sort of laugh at them because
it's a fringe belief, whereas my belief so
much more endorsed, institutionally, it's
more respectable." Then I thought "Well I'm
just being a hypocrite." So I started to read...
theology texts, and books about how the
bible came together, and a kind of mixture
of books that I hope would at least challenge
my easy pat answers that I had as a young
Christian. And I felt if I could undo all the easy
answers, if I just had a bunch of questions
that I might actually build a much stronger
more defensible faith from it. And then that just
sort of didn't happen. It just sort of seemed
silly. And I realized there was no going back.
Once you accept that the bible isn't a historical
account of things that happened then
you're sort of left with no basis for it at all.
From that then I wanted to defend my non-belief
as strongly as I felt I should have been
able to defend it as a believer. So that's
something that has been left with me.
On the back of that and off the back of the
magic I sort of, and understanding how these
supposedly paranormal industries work,
I think you end up just feeling there is information,
there's, being open minded isn't about accepting
things mindlessly. Being open minded about having
the information and then making the best
decisions you can. A chap Ian Rowland wrote
a good book on cold reading made the point
that if you are a chef and you think, "Well I know
if I put poison in this soup I and give it to
these 200 people it's going to kill them
but hey, you know I'll be open minded."
That's not being open minded. That's just being ignorant.
That's just not working with the information
you've got. So we have information
on thing like the placebo effect
and information like cold reading and
these things exist. And false memories and
anecdotal and all those things that are
important. And taking that on board is just
about being able to make better decisions.
That's about being truly open minded.
Ignoring them and putting them to one side
in this sort of pursuit of easy answers and
intuition as the be all and end all of truth.
That's not being open minded at all.
That's very narrow minded and certainly
to laugh at people that say that evidence
is important, I think that's hypocrisy of
the worst kind. To call them narrow minded.
Dawkins: Thank you very much.
Brown: Thank you very much indeed.
A real pleasure. Thank you, thanks.