Richard Dawkins invited to sit Sanity Test

The worldwide audience far surpassed all expectations.

When the Australian Broadcasting Corporation decided to go live to satellite with the premier event at the Global Atheist Convention – Richard Dawkins' sitting of a Cosmic Sanity Test – as part of its Big Ideas series, it expected perhaps 5 million viewers. They were punch drunk with elation and disbelief to learn that 2 billion people watched. Management were kicking themselves – the only promotion they had organised to flog to such a market were the logos on a few banners, as well as on officials' and commentators' caps: Bananas in Pyjamas merchandise.

The test itself lasted only 15 minutes, with a front-on view of Professor Dawkins hunched over a desk, with the paperwork in front of him, and hushed commentary for the viewers supplied by four academics from leading universities, one a theist, one an atheist, and two agnostics, all present in a sealed studio lockdown at the gathering, plus post-test analysis by these experts slotted to take up the remainder of the allotted hour.

A single question was written across the top of the page, under a Bananas in Pyjamas logo, and the ample space below was blank for him to write a 'Yes' or a 'No'.

"Professor Dawkins, your time begins now," the examiner stated with solemnity, after the audience was brought to order and asked to remain silent.

The professor began by reading the question, and proceeded to sit there, a study of concentration, with furrowed brow and closed eyes in an electric silence, the tension punctuated occasionally as he opened his eyes to reread the question.

The effort of intense thought soon began to show, as beads of perspiration grew from specks to drops on his forehead, necessitating the use of his Oxford tie to wipe the moisture away, no-one having thought to provide a box of tissues. There were some atheists who swore that they could just discern two words outlined ever so faintly in blood on his forehead, using their opera glasses, before his first dabs: Selfish Gene.

Some tense whispering was becoming audible from the onlookers. "Quiet please!" the examiner muttered, loosening his own tie to release an anxious lump trying to reach his Adam's apple.

As 5 minutes grew to 10, it became obvious from the grimace etched into his face that a great struggle was underway betwixt Professor Dawkins' synapses, an epic contest between long held ideas and competing concepts. Way before Time's Up!, the veins in his forehead and neck were emerging like fingers, with menace in their sinews.

Even the commentators were going pale whilst they held their breaths, the inner turmoil the professor was enduring was now palpable, and but for some nervous shuffling in the auditorium, you could have heard a pin drop in those last couple of minutes.

The one-minute-to-go bell dinged, scaring many squeals out of the lookers-on.

"Write your answer NOW, Professor Dawkins," the examiner commanded, and as the view switched to the overhead camera zooming eagerly down onto the page, the eminent atheist, whose face was now drained of all colour, took a deep breath, exhaled, and, before collapsing, printed "YES"!

While a doctor rushed to the professor's aid, the auditorium burst into a cacophony of shouting, screaming, and booing. Scores of atheists fainted.

Meanwhile, on the street outside huge cheers erupted among the churchgoers of the city, who were waving placards – God hates atheist scum! and Fry as you might, it'll be too late, atheist loser! being the most popular – as they watched the test on a huge outdoor screen. And around the world unbelievable numbers of folk were either distraught or jubilant. A rather small number of viewers from opposing ideologies were at ease, actually realising the purport of what the professor had done, as well as what he had not done.

Professor Dawkins' vital signs were not so encouraging, and the attending doctor soon had him ensconced in the ambulance on standby, and speeding off to the nearest hospital. Next the medico set to assisting the paramedics, who were ever so busy reviving the atheists who had fainted, scattered like apples after a storm. Some had even wet themselves.

The ABC urgently attempted to extend its satellite lease time, without success, and so 'lost' 15 minutes until the pandemonium gave way to a semblance of order (this episode became unintended free entertainment), but nevertheless the broadcaster sent live the engrossing last 30 minutes, consisting of commentary by the experts, despite no questions being able to be asked of Professor Dawkins.

Here is the question, which he had not seen prior, that the professor answered:

If it was possible for you to have an eternal life of ever increasing ability, satisfaction, fulfilment, net positive experience, and happiness, shared with others for whom the same applied, with no harm caused to anyone, would you want it?

When was this occasion, did I hear someone ask? If I said sometime after the publication of this HubPage, you'd know I made it all up, but then you'd guessed that already.

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While the story above is just a bit of fictional fun, I stand by the sanity¹ test within it. I would be delighted if Richard Dawkins took it, and any number of atheists and agnostics with him, and for that matter, theists as well. Everybody, even those who somehow don't fit into those categories.

For those who get the spirit of the question, it could be shorter; for the hairsplitters, it needs to be longer.

I would, with sadness, declare anyone – who understood the question adequately – cosmically insane, if he answered no. This would not be a value judgment upon other aspects of his life, just upon this big picture purpose-of-life issue.

As simple as the question might appear to most people, I am sure some even well educated people would have difficulty understanding just what choice the question presents. Especially so for strong atheists² – dare I call them fundamentalist atheists! – who will be struggling, mainly unawares, against deep seated programming in their subconscious minds, as they process the question to extract its meaning.

This phenomenon I call attenuation of reason, every human being experiencing it to some extent within his own thinking daily, and it would be a rare person who is aware of the conflict each time it occurs. Any strong belief, long held, will tend to act as a reason antagonist, when it is triggered. And there are times when it has only positive results, but the scope of this article doesn't lend itself to that discussion.

Something as simple as reading anything containing the opposite of our belief, is enough to trigger the programming that the belief has become, to rise up and make sufficient disturbance in the conscious mind to seriously compromise our reasoning. It can be so powerful that it totally blocks the comprehension of the concept being presented to us. And we can be quite unaware of what is happening internally to us.

This way of performing of the human mind is actually there for our survival, involving the reticular activating system³ and its gatekeeper functions, but that's another story for another time. Hypnosis is one of the practices which depends for its success upon this operating method of our minds, again something for another time.

The problem for an atheist, or even the average scientifically literate person, is that science has no facts in its storehouse that show that an individual can live eternally. Scientific facts have become the only grounds for many to accept the reality of a thing or process or state of being. This attitude comes from the deeply infused belief system, of relatively recent centuries, that only scientifically established, or 'establishable', facts are real, can exist.

In their favour, we all know of some acquaintance, relative, or friend, who has died, and nothing is ever heard or seen of them again. The scientific evidence is clearly on the side of those that believe death cannot be survived. Those that do claim to be in touch with the deceased do not produce convincing evidence, evidence that would pass scientific scrutiny. And while it is unkind, I can appreciate how many consider them to be fruitloops.

The atheist who considers the various organised religions to be 'religion', to epitomise 'religion', will understandably also have a hard time accepting eternal life as a possibility, even for the sake of argument. The atrocious behaviour that is and has been sanctioned by these institutions, the nonsensical and abhorrent teaching still coming from them... if her definition of religion gets no further than current and historical institutionalised examples, she's severely handicapped from the start. She'll have a hard time noticing the good mixed in among all the bad.

And so, when one such as a strong atheist sits the Cosmic Sanity Test, her deep seated belief, based on lack of scientific evidence, that survival of death is not possible, this program will be triggered by the concept of eternal life contained within the question. Try as she might, it is altogether possible that she will not be able to adequately understand the idea of living forever at all, given the power of the opposition mounted by her subconscious program, now whirring in high gear, protecting itself and, supposedly, its owner-master.

However, while she might concede that the reason attenuation phenomenon is real, I expect that she, in common with most people, would think "It doesn't affect me in this case." It is an education to observe the reasoning power of many brilliant minds being intermittently blocked by this process, without their owners having the slightest awareness of what's happening to them. This can explain much of the contradiction if not absurdity they occasionally write and say, smack bang alongside excellent exposition. (Even though I wish I could avoid this, it is inevitable that it also happens to me.)

If an apparently intelligent and sound minded person answered no to the test, after giving it some thought, I would suspect the operation of a reasoning attenuating, subconsciously lodged belief, long before I would suspect that person of cosmic insanity.

It takes will power and conscious effort to stay such reason antagonists, when they operate within our minds. But first, one has to be aware, or made aware, of them, of their long hidden residence in the vaults of our subconsciousness. It would be very helpful to get assistance during the test, if a person resolutely does not believe in the possibility of living forever, by someone talking him through, discussing the key concept of never-ending life, despite the lack of scientific backing. Repeatedly going over the point, until that person had moved mentally to that place where he can accept, for the sake of this argument, just the possibility.

Once the possibility, as a temporary concession, is accepted, then the quality of the described eternal life can be considered, and a value judgment rendered, in the form of a yes or a no.

To answer the test truthfully with a yes means simply that, if it were possible, I would like to have it. Nothing more, nothing less. Despite the enormity of the concept, the limitlessnesses contained within it, to say yes does not imply that I behave in any particular way, nor change my behaviour from what it has been to something different.

If I was an unbeliever, a yes doesn't imply that I am going to become a believer, or embark upon a journey of investigation, or do anything. I may choose to change nothing regarding my beliefs and values and actions, directly as a result of answering in the affirmative to the test, or on the other hand I may alter my life in some way because of it, even drastically.

The test is neutral regarding future beliefs, values, and behaviour. It is only concerned with my desire or not to have something, if it was possible.

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"My word! Professor Dawkins is looking amazing, all his colour's back, he's sitting up, smiling... I thought we were losing him back at the convention," remarked Ms Faith Vjersess-Reecen, Religious Affairs journalist for Inevitable Doom Weekly, the largest circulation atheist magazine in the world. For a decade before she joined the Inevitable Doom masthead, she cut her teeth as journalist at large for the sizzlingly successful monthly, Heat Death, till it ran out of steam. She was to have interviewed the professor immediately after the broadcast, her thirteenth one with him over the years.

"Yes", Nurse Now-Now agreed, "I put it down to the experimental drugs we gave him." She joined her, peeking through the doorway.

"Experimental drugs!" Ms Vjersess-Reecen exclaimed. "What ones are they?"

"Three new synthetic vitamins, Vitamin Hope, Vitamin Trust, and Vartamurn Lurv, one hundred thousand IUs of the first two, a million of the last, in his bum, we got Lalla's permission over the phone. Perked him up in no time." Nurse Now-Now smiled.

"Are there any side-effects?" the journalist spluttered.

"Harmless ones, a bit of crying, a lot of giggling, some patients fart," the nurse replied matter-of-factly.

"What causes the farting?" Ms Vjersess-Reecen enquired with clenched buttocks, and trying not to giggle herself.

"We don't know," the nurse answered, "but we have found that it's limited to the atheist patients, the stronger their atheism, the more they fart, lasts about a day."

"How long did you say?" the journalist moved closer, a huge boom from under the professor's sheets having drowned out the end of the nurse's last sentence.

"About a day. You can go in now, if you dare!" A wink, and Nurse Now-Now was gone.

"Faith, hallelujah!" Professor Dawkins stretched out his arms for a hug, greeting Ms Vjersess-Reecen like the long lost friend that she had become.

"Wonders never cease, Richard!" she hugged him like Lazarus' sister did, or would have, or might have, or might not have.

"Don't sit there, Faith, sit here on the bed, hold my hand," the professor moved a bit to allow room, with a couple of bullfrog croaks acknowledging the effort. "Whoops, dear me, fancy that!" he said.

Turning her head a tad, the journalist looked closely at his face, shaking her head and sighing, with a smile lighting her features. "You are a changed man, Richard, what's come over you? You know the world's currently turning upside down out there, half of them can't fathom why you answered yes." On the bed now, she squeezed his hand. "I think I know, but tell me, why yes?"

Another passing of wind, and he began. "You saw the effort I put into that test, Faith, the strain I was under."

"Sure did, I wanted to come and rescue you."

"Well, the first struggle was to work out what eternal life actually would mean, would be, since, heck, I've been powerfully convinced since I was a lad that God doesn't exist, and that when we die that's the end for us. You've no idea how hard it was to push that fact aside while I tried to make eternal life a possibility to think about. Scats, excuse me – " he let out another whopper, "scats it was jolly hard!"

"We could all see that!" Faith nodded, patting the back of his hand.

"Once I'd finally managed to hold the idea of eternal life as a possibility, I wrapped my head around the quality of it, as the description was at pains to show, you know, a kind of utopian life really..."

"I'll say!" Ms Vjersess-Reecen interrupted.

Another Bronx cheer escaped, and he went on, "So, I must admit, that kind of living began to greatly appeal to me, and it was then that a crushing weight descended, with the thought of my lifelong reputation, you know, those countless articles for Heat Death, and then Inevitable Doom, my websites, my lectures, my books, what would all my atheist and materialist admirers think, what would it do to my standing with them all, would I have to become a recluse, ashamed to have apparently sold out?"

"Even though a yes answer was not doing anymore than indicate a preference for a hypothetical?" Faith had got the right end of the stick not long after she read the test and digested his answer.

"Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that even among my atheistic faithful, rigorous analysis is sometimes in short supply." The irony of his words escaped him as he again let go a few couplets below the sheets, the last were more harmonies than originals. "But would you like to know the clincher?"

"Of course!" Leaning forward, and tossing any remnants of journalistic distance out the window, Faith embraced him. Her squeeze wasn't exactly tight, but tight enough to trigger the biggest flatus event yet of her visit, making her jump with an "Ooooh!", bumping the trolley table, sending the professor's glass eye, which was sitting in a dish, onto the floor. Till that moment she hadn't even realised his eye was out, everything else about him had seemed so odd. Good heavens, she didn't even realise for all these years he had only one eye!

Nor had she taken notice, till then, of the pyjamas he was wearing – Bananas in Pyjamas! The professor had negotiated a hundred pairs, fifty summer shortie style, fifty fleecy long winter style, in a contra deal with the ABC. He'd mixed the seasons, the top being winter weight, the bottom threatening to expose the last turkey in the shop, but no matter, he was alive.

"What was it, Richard, tell me."

"We lost Hitch last year," his voice choking up, "and dear Douglas, he went over ten years now, and I got to thinking what it would be like to always be able to email them, visit with them now and then, laugh, joke, reminisce, complain together about the infernal churches, hang out together, and that there would never come a time when I could not do that..."

Faith wiped the tears from his eye and eye socket with her hanky.

"And I'd always have Lalla to chat with, I'd always have my daughter, to enjoy seeing her progress and achieve and be happy..." He was crying now, and looking exhausted again. "I'd be crazy not to want that," he managed to say, with a big exhalation.

"You'd best leave him, dear," Nurse Now-Now said, appearing out of nowhere, as if out of nothing, somehow holding ten male bed pans, a finger in each, as though on delivery to an orchestra's horn section.

"Yes, Nurse," Ms Faith Vjersess-Reecen agreed, dabbing her own eyes this time, as she quietly bid her now sleeping friend goodnight.

They walked together, beamish, up the corridor, Faith helping by carrying half of the urinals, to the sound of an evolving gentle strain of a string of passing winds coming from the professor's room, each just a small step down in intensity to the previous, and improbable as it sounds, just making the tune of 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot', the bit that goes "Sometimes I'm up, and sometimes I'm down, (coming for to carry me home) but still my soul feels heavenly bound (coming for to carry me home)..."

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1. Sanity is the state of mind embracing sound judgment and mental health. It identifies and seeks the objective best for its subject.

2. Strong atheism is the belief, with 100% probability, that there is no God.

3. Reticular Activating System: a neural network in the brain stem involved with arousal and filtering functions between the conscious and subconscious levels of mind.

4. Monism: the doctrine that multiform reality actually consists of one substance, that everything is reducible to this one basic element.

© E.K. Lippenmeyer February 2012

This is an article from E.K. Lippenmeyer's 'Psychology on a Shoestring' series in progress.