Religion's Misguided Missiles

A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on theheat of a jet plane's exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell,it still cannot discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on adesignated New York skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston.

That is precisely what a modern "smart missile" can do. Computerminiaturisation has advanced to the point where one of today's smart missilescould be programmed with an image of the Manhattan skyline together withinstructions to home in on the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Smartmissiles of this sophistication are possessed by the United States, as welearned in the Gulf war, but they are economically beyond ordinary terroristsand scientifically beyond theocratic governments. Might there be a cheaper andeasier alternative?

In the second world war, before electronics became cheap and miniature, thepsychologist BF Skinner did some research on pigeon-guided missiles. The pigeonwas to sit in a tiny cockpit, having previously been trained to peck keys insuch a way as to keep a designated target in the centre of a screen. In themissile, the target would be for real.

The principle worked, although it was never put into practice by the USauthorities. Even factoring in the costs of training them, pigeons are cheaperand lighter than computers of comparable effectiveness. Their feats in Skinner'sboxes suggest that a pigeon, after a regimen of training with colour slides,really could guide a missile to a distinctive landmark at the southern end ofManhattan island. The pigeon has no idea that it is guiding a missile. It justkeeps on pecking at those two tall rectangles on the screen, from time to time afood reward drops out of the dispenser, and this goes on until... oblivion.

Pigeons may be cheap and disposable as on-board guidance systems, but there'sno escaping the cost of the missile itself. And no such missile large enough todo much damage could penetrate US air space without being intercepted. What isneeded is a missile that is not recognised for what it is until too late.Something like a large civilian airliner, carrying the innocuous markings of awell-known carrier and a great deal of fuel. That's the easy part. But how doyou smuggle on board the necessary guidance system? You can hardly expect thepilots to surrender the left-hand seat to a pigeon or a computer.

How about using humans as on-board guidance systems, instead of pigeons?Humans are at least as numerous as pigeons, their brains are not significantlycostlier than pigeon brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior.Humans have a proven track record in taking over planes by the use of threats,which work because the legitimate pilots value their own lives and those oftheir passengers.

The natural assumption that the hijacker ultimately values his own life too,and will act rationally to preserve it, leads air crews and ground staff to makecalculated decisions that would not work with guidance modules lacking a senseof self-preservation. If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who,though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is roomfor bargaining. A rational pilot complies with the hijacker's wishes, gets theplane down on the ground, has hot food sent in for the passengers and leaves thenegotiations to people trained to negotiate.

The problem with the human guidance system is precisely this. Unlike thepigeon version, it knows that a successful mission culminates in its owndestruction. Could we develop a biological guidance system with the complianceand dispensability of a pigeon but with a man's resourcefulness and ability toinfiltrate plausibly? What we need, in a nutshell, is a human who doesn't mindbeing blown up. He'd make the perfect on-board guidance system. But suicideenthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal cancer patients might lose theirnerve when the crash was actually looming.

Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that theyare not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper?If only! Nobody is that stupid, but how about this - it's a long shot, but itjust might work. Given that they are certainly going to die, couldn't we suckerthem into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? Don'tbe daft! No, listen, it might work. Offer them a fast track to a Great Oasis inthe Sky, cooled by everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldn't appeal to thesort of young men we need, so tell them there's a special martyr's reward of 72virgin brides, guaranteed eager and exclusive.

Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractiveto get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 privatevirgins in the next.

It's a tall story, but worth a try. You'd have to get them young, though.Feed them a complete and self-consistent background mythology to make the biglie sound plausible when it comes. Give them a holy book and make them learn itby heart. Do you know, I really think it might work. As luck would have it, wehave just the thing to hand: a ready-made system of mind-control which has beenhoned over centuries, handed down through generations. Millions of people havebeen brought up in it. It is called religion and, for reasons which one day wemay understand, most people fall for it (nowhere more so than America itself,though the irony passes unnoticed). Now all we need is to round up a few ofthese faith-heads and give them flying lessons.

Facetious? Trivialising an unspeakable evil? That is the exact opposite of myintention, which is deadly serious and prompted by deep grief and fierce anger.I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is toopolite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluingeffect that religion has on human life. I don't mean devaluing the life ofothers (though it can do that too), but devaluing one's own life. Religionteaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highlyand be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a planeis safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if asignificant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by theirpriests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace buttonand zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a verydangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is aparadisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off withsincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and isit any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selectedfor suicide missions?

There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is aweapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and itsguidance system is in many respects superior to the most sophisticatedelectronic brain that money can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organisation,or priesthood, it is very very cheap.

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche:mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for thevandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit NewYork on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly notcowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with aninsane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that couragecame from.

It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source ofthe divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadlyweapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. Myconcern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, orreligions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns.Do not be surprised if they are used.

(Richard Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science,University of Oxford, and author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, andUnweaving the Rainbow. The above was originally published on Saturday September15, 2001,  in The Guardian,reproduced with permission from the author)