Dr. Bernardo Kastrup explores his new found respect for religious myths in, More Than Allegory.

photo by: Bernardo Kastrup

Today we welcome Dr. Bernard Kastrup back to skeptiko to talk about his new book, More Than Allegory. In the book, Kastrup explores the potential for religious myths to propel us beyond the ordinary:

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup: Authentic religious myths can bring us beyond the constraints of this [reality]. That’s what they’re pointing to. They’re pointing at something beyond linear logic; beyond space and time; beyond the constraints that we willingly adopt in our ordinary relationship with reality. We shouldn’t give those constraints up but I think we shouldn’t lose, willingly, our only umbilical connection to something that goes beyond that either.

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more Bernardo: On why Idealism is Superior to Physicalism

 

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Alex Tsakiris: Tell us about this book, More Than Allegory, and the basic premise behind it.

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup: It’s an exploration of religion and what value it may have for us individually and for society at large. One of the key questions I look into in the book: is there any truth value to religion? Is there any way in which religion expresses truth at some level–in some form? If there isn’t, then there is no point anyway. I think there is. And that’s one of the things I explore in the book.

Alex Tsakiris: Do you think that this culture war issue regarding religion is where it was 10 years ago? I push this sometimes and people push back. And I’ve started to hear a truth in their push back in saying, you know what, we’ve moved on. Richard Dawkins isn’t a hot topic anymore. Atheists seem more silly to more people. Have we moved on as a society, as a culture, a little past this ‘religion is stupid’ [idea]?

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup: I think there are fashions. And maybe the fashion has changed. Maybe it’s no longer fashionable to bash religion like Richard Dawkins and others used to do, and still do by the way. Maybe they’re not taken as seriously as they were taken before. But the question is, aside from the fashion, aside from the outspoken, militant cultural dialogue, what about our personal relationship with religion? I don’t think that’s been reviewed sufficiently. There’s a much faster, much broader advancement of a kind of aloofness towards religion than the advancement of fundamentalism. I think people are becoming more disconnected from this primordial religious impulse that belongs in the human race, and I think that’s much more worrying than whatever fashionable or cultural militant debate that might be or not be going on right now. It’s about our inner lives at the end of the day. What I see is that people are losing more of their sense of meaning and transcendence. These are the things we get from a healthy relationship with religious myths.

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup: I think no one should be interested in religion just because it comforts us at night; because the moment you’re interested in religion for that reason alone,