Several people have asked me if I plan to respond to PZ Myers, considering the “beating” he gave me and others in a post last week.

No, I don’t. I may if I see a good reason, but the truth is that responding to him is a bit like debating a creationist. Sometimes one should, but this is not one of those times. In this case, PZ has so grossly misrepresented my writings and statements that it is very clear that no productive discussion can occur with him on the matter. This is not the first time he has done so and not the first time that I have essentially ignored it. The post is almost entirely built on mischaracterizations, straw men, and falsehoods. If anyone else wants to discuss it, I will be happy to do so after you have read what I actually wrote, context and all.

Instead, I think that this is a good time to gather some of the more recent materials on the matter in one place because I strongly believe that most of the discussion in the general community over these issues involve new members trying to get a handle on what we’re all about. So, I will summarize my views on the matter in a few bullet points and provide a list of links to posts, publications, and videos what are free to all.

I will not be discussing tone and approach, but some of the materials do touch on this issue. I disagree with Novella and a few others on that question and it is always a discussion worth having, but separately.

As always, I welcome comments, but ask that if you plan to leave a comment arguing against my stance, please look through the links and read/watch those which appear to address your argument before you do so. I really hate repeating myself, especially when I have written what I think is a clear explanation, so I am quite likely to respond by referring you to one of the links.

A summary of my position and opinions on the issues:

• Skepticism, secularism, humanism, and atheism (as an issue for activism, not a conclusion) are distinct ideologies with differing central values. These distinctions are important for several reasons, including organizational focus, communication, and personal objectivity. Those are covered in more detail in the materials linked.
• Many people have adopted more than one of these ideologies (I, for example, have adopted all of them to some degree), creating a “greater” community we tend to refer to as the “rationalist” community. Not all community members have adopted all ideologies.
• Activism is about goals, and organizations form around specific goals to promote specific ideologies. Although the “greater rationalist community” shares a few core values, most importantly a naturalistic world view, each organization uses its resources in different ways, supporting different priorities.
• Central to one of these ideologies, atheism, is the conclusion that there is no higher power (god). The ideological part is the value that belief in a higher power is harmful. There is more to atheism than that and I will not outline how it differs from secularism, etc., but these points are important because conflation of the conclusion with the value is one source of conflict.
• At the core of scientific skepticism is the view that evidence-based reasoning is the best way to decide what is and is not true.  Furthermore, the only legitimate way to acquire evidence is through the scientific method, which is basically a combination of systematic observation (empiricism) and reason. Therefore, scientific skepticism involves using the scientific method to test claims.
• The major Skeptic organizations have expressed missions to promote scientific skepticism. They do so for a number of reasons, both epistemic and pragmatic, most of which have been discussed at length in past days, weeks, months, years, and decades (and so on).
  • From a “best practices” standpoint, skepticism reaches more people by focusing its efforts on testable claims because it can include those people who have not adopted one or more of the other ideologies I mentioned (e.g., atheism).
  • From a philosophical standpoint, science is a method for acquiring knowledge, all of which is tentative. Because nobody knows with absolute certainty what is true, the method is much more important than personal conclusions. The method is how we can convince other people that our conclusions are accurate.
  • Also from a best practices standpoint, promoting methods (which includes sharing evidence and information such as alternative explanations for events) provides people with the tools to evaluate other claims more effectively.
  • From both a philosophical and best practices standpoint, promoting personal conclusions rather than method is a violation of basic scientific tenets and logic. Likewise, when we judge a person’s ability to use methods based solely on their beliefs (e.g., statements such as “Christians are not good skeptics”), we are judging an argument by its conclusion and not the merits of the argument itself. This is not scientific at all. Ironically, it’s bad skepticism.
• Skepticism activists do promote some conclusions, such as the conclusion that vaccines are relatively safe and effective, however, we do so with great care. Where scientific consensus is weak or lacking, expertise and personal responsibility is vital.
• Objectivity is a central feature of scientific thinking and, therefore, of scientific skepticism. Although no human being is purely objective (arguable, but I think most of us agree), one of the main purposes of the scientific method is to remove subjectivity from the inquiry process. In practice, it’s imperfect, but if we throw our hands up on this issue because scientists are not unbiased, we must reject science altogether. It’s that central.
• Because objectivity is central to skepticism and values such as political ideologies should not drive the practice of skepticism or science, but should be informed by the findings of science and skeptical inquiry (e.g, science cannot tell us if gun control is good, but it can tell us if a specific regulation is likely to reduce the number of deaths by gun). In other words, economy, religion, and feminism are not “off-limits”. They should be and are subjected to the same treatment that all other topics are subjected to. They appear to receive different treatment merely because the claims made in these areas tend to be more complex and more difficult to test (if they are testable at all). Furthermore, these topics tend to be attached to strongly-held values and, because human beings are notoriously tenacious in their beliefs, more controversial.
• The difficulties with discussions of complex topics makes internal agreement less common and without internal agreement, good outreach efforts are not possible because no coherent, unified message is possible. The goal of most activist organizations is outreach more than community and they are trying to maximize success, not put up roadblocks to it. Therefore, they tend to focus on claims which provide a more predictable and clear outcome.

I could get into more detail, but that isn’t my goal with this post. So, I will stop here. Following is a list of excellent materials which discuss, in one form or another, the scope of skeptic activism, its purposes, and its value.

Free Publications (these three should be required reading):

• Where Do We Go From Here? by Daniel Loxton – The most to-the-point discussion of why we do what we do, sometimes referred to as a skeptical manifesto
• What Do I Do Next? edited by Daniel Loxton – a collection of discussion about skeptical activism by leading skeptics
• Why Is There A Skeptical Movement? by Daniel Loxton – A two-part essay with highlights from the history of the movement and a practical discussion of scope

Blog Posts/Web Publications:

• Scientific Skepticism, CSICOP, and the Local Groups by Steven Novella and David Bloomberg – a primer on scientific skepticism and organizational scope
• Bigfoot Skeptics, New Atheists, Politics and Religion by Steven Novella – a response to PZ Myers and another blogger who suggested that skeptical activism needs to expand its scope
• PZ Replies by Steven Novella – a continuation of the dialogue with PZ Myers, responding to a reply in which Myers accuses several of us (myself included) of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice
• Scientific Skepticism, Rationalism, and Secularism by Steven Novella – more clarifications incorporating the discussions which followed the dialogue with PZ.
• Steven Novella Steven Novella Takes on Some of the Oldest Clichés About Scientific Skepticism-Again by Daniel Loxton – more on the conversation between Novella and Myers
• You May Be Forgiven For Thinking That Some Skeptics Are Taking A Firm Stance, But… by Kylie Sturgess – more on the conversation (and a reiteration that the arguments are not new) with added emphasis on the importance of educating one’s self before criticizing
• Further Thoughts on Atheism by Daniel Loxton – discusses the need compartmentalization of concepts (atheism and skepticism), mostly for pragmatic reasons
• The Surprising Twists of TAM9’s Diversity Panel by Daniel Loxton – discusses the way that a focus on methodology allows for a more inclusive group
• The Conflation of Atheism and Skepticism: Fact or Fiction? by Kylie Sturgess – a discussion of the problems with confusing methods with conclusions
• Skepticism and Religion – Again by Steven Novella – a reminder of the reasons behind mission focus and what it does and does not mean in terms of how skeptics approach religious claims
• A Few Comments on the Nature and Scope of Skepticism by Jim Lippard – a discussion of the problems with conflating skepticism with atheism and assuming that one leads to the other. This blog contains a large number of posts on scope, many of which are linked in this post, so I will only link to this one, but I highly recommend browsing through them
• On the Scope of Skeptical Inquiry by Massimo Pigliucci – discusses the relationships among philosophy, skepticism, atheism, etc.
• What Is Skepticism, Anyway? by Michael Shermer – also includes a video, so it’s listed twice here
• Is There a New Atheism at the JREF? by D.J. Grothe – a response to accusations that the JREF’s mission might be shifting with an emphasis on the organization’s priorities
• Media Guide to Skepticism by Sharon Hill – Sharon worked with community leaders to produce a summary of the purpose and scope of organized skepticism.
• Blog post by Daniel Loxton introducing a video of a panel at TAM 2013.
• John Horgan is “Skeptical of Skeptics” by Steve Novella
• Bigfoot Serses the Quest for World Peace? by Daniel Loxton

Posts on this blog:

• Take Back Skepticism Part I: The Elephant in the Room – The first in a three-part series about the scope of skepticism, tone, and arguments about both
• Take Back Skepticism, Part II: The Overkill Window – the second in a three-part series which focuses on the propogation of hate and irrational arguments about tone and scope
• Take Back Skepticism, Part III: The Dunning-Kruger Effect – the third in a three-part series which focuses on overconfidence and anti-intellectualism displayed during arguments about scope
• Paved With Good Intentions – about the dangers of allowing values to drive the process and interfere with objectivity
• Why the “Critical” in Critical Thinking – covers the basic falsification approach in science and critical thinking to explain the purpose of critique
• You Can’t Judge an Argument by Its Conclusion – describes the Belief Bias (a form of Confirmation Bias) and explains why judging a person’s ability to reason based on their beliefs is fallacious (ironically)
• Mission Drift, Conflation, and Food For Thought – discusses some of the dangers of “mission drift” and attempting to add values such as political ideologies to organizational missions
• What Matters – a response to the misguided view that skeptical activism does not focus on things that matter
• Scientific Skepticism: A Tutorial – about definitions and scope

To watch/listen

• Overlapping Magisteria, TAM2012 – Jamy Ian Swiss talks about the importance of mission focus, the value of the work that skeptics do, and the reason we value methods more than conclusions
• Skepticism is a Humanism, NECSS 2010 – D.J. Grothe’s keynote, which discusses the scope of skeptical activism, noting that, although it is methods-based we are motivated to activism by humanist values
• On the Ledge, Skeptrack at Dragon*Con 2011 – A panel discussion with Eugenie Scott, Margaret Downey, D.J. Grothe, and me, moderated by Derek Colanduno about the overlap of atheism and skepticism, its challenges, advantages, and pitfalls. Ideology is discussed about half way through
• What Is Skepticism, Anyway? by Michael Shermer – also includes a blog post, so it’s listed twice here
• Skeptical Scope and Mission, a panel at TAM 2013 with myself, Daniel Loxton, Steven Novella, Jamy Ian Swiss, and moderated by Sharon Hill.
• How To Be A Bad Skeptic, Q.E.D. – D.J. Grothe’s rundown on some of the dos and don’ts of skepticism. You’ll have to guess which parts are facetious and which are serious. By this point, you should be able to do this.

I will add to this post as new content becomes available, so if I have missed any that you think should be included (and it is freely available online), please contact me on Twitter or Facebook so that I can add them into the body of the post. I will also apologize now if I have missed something important. There has been so much discussion of this topic that I was a bit overwhelmed trying to put together just the highlights.

Responses to requests, demands, and criticism in the blogosphere in recent months has prompted a great deal of discussion, most of it terribly unproductive. In fact, most of it has been downright silly – a childish back-and-forth which, to an outsider, might appear to be violent agreement. In other words, camps do not appear to disagree, in general, about foundational issues, yet the bloodshed continues. Need I provide examples? I don’t think so*.

I hate to harp on a point (I really do), but oversimplification and shallow treatment of issues appears to be at the source of so much of the animosity that I think that rational discussion could be had if a short checklist were followed which included keeping one’s mind open to the possibility the other person is not evil simply because they criticized something or failed to submit to demands.

I am short on time and not prepared to discuss “Atheism Plus” in detail at the moment, but the discussion of it provides an excellent example or two that I think provide some insight into how discussions devolve into battles.

First, there is a slippery slope involved which is accelerated by crowd behavior and by unproductive reactions to criticism. We may, for example, start with a civil discussion about whether or not gender disparity in local groups can be attributed to a barrage of unwanted sexual attention women may receive at meet-ups. A number of views will be expressed, some with comments about their own experiences:

Person A: “I don’t do that.”

Person B: “I’ve been groped at meet-ups and it made me feel powerless and alone.”

Person C: “That’s never happened to me.”

Person D: “I think we should ban people who do that kind of thing.”

Person E: “So, I can’t ask a woman out at a meet-up?”

Person F: “Wait, I go to meet-ups to meet men and I like it when they grab me. I can take care of myself and I don’t want that behavior banned.”

Person G: “I’m not going to attend meet-ups anymore if people think that groping is okay.”

…and so on.

None of these views should shut down discussion. The refusal to concede that one’s own view may not be “right” is what turns discussions like these into battles of wills. Note that the original talking point was simple and there are small steps away from it as people talk rather than listen or make assumptions about what was said rather than ask for clarification. Those small steps add up. One day, a woman casually asks that men put a little more thought into when and how they proposition women and a few months later dozens of people are painting everyone who doesn’t support a rather specific call to action as a misogynist or ‘gender traitor’ while some of those called misogynists and gender traitors have dismissed the original problem altogether. This helps no one.

Those promoting “A+” have painted critics with a broad brush; we are “haters” who are “against social justice”. A post by Greta Christina on the issue of inclusiveness provides some insight:

An atheist movement cannot be inclusive of atheist women… and also be inclusive of people who publicly call women ugly, fat, sluts, whores, cunts, and worse; who persistently harass them; who deliberately invade their privacy and make their personal information public; and/or who routinely threaten them with grisly violence, rape, and death.

An atheist movement cannot be inclusive of atheists of color… and also be inclusive of people who think people of color stay in religion because they’re just not good at critical thinking, who blame crime on dark-skinned immigrants, who think victims of racial profiling deserved it because they looked like thugs, and/or who tell people of color, “You’re pretty smart for a…”.

In addition to holding up the reprehensible behavior of a few trolls as representative of the community as a whole, these statements are so full of subtext that they cry out for scrutiny. There are clearly false dichotomies buried in there as many of the proponents of A+ and many of their readers have expressed the desire not simply exclude the asshats who “publicly call women ugly” or “who deliberately invade their privacy”, but also anyone who dares to question whether such things have actually happened in given situations.

As has been said many times, we should be charitable when someone’s meaning is not entirely clear – give them the benefit of the doubt when we have little evidence of malice. This requires empathy. It requires us to resist defensive reactions and reconsider our views when we realize that we have failed in that regard.

Greta also notes that to provide a safe space for people of color, they must exclude “people who think people of color stay in religion because they’re just not good at critical thinking”. I found this particularly interesting in light of the fact that the belief that everyone with faith in a deity of some sort is “not good at critical thinking” is a widespread view among atheists (and skeptics, unfortunately). PZ Myers, one of the founders/owners of FreeThoughtBlogs said  this of the religious in a debate a few months ago (one I urge you all to watch: http://youtu.be/ZsqqFpWh7m8 ): “There’s something wrong with their braaains!”

It may be that Greta meant to refer to those who claim that people of color are generally poor critical thinkers and this explains lower rates of atheism. However, the math does not add up. Try constructing a syllogism from these statements. The proportion of believers in the population of people of color is higher than the general population. Believers are poor critical thinkers. Therefore…

So, who is right? Well, neither is right. Or correct.

Out of curiousity, I watched a recording of a few people discussing “Atheism+” [A+]. Much of this particular discussion involved defending the approach of A+ and suggesting that critics are somehow against social justice in general. I won’t got through the entire discussion; many of the arguments were straw men, which are not relevant. However, many were based on unsupported assertions (assumptions) and that is directly relevant.

One of the participants, Debbie Goddard (of CFI On Campus) attempted to address real criticisms rather than discuss those straw men and from her comments the disagreements became more clear. At one point, Stephanie Zvan criticized skeptics for ignoring evidence, noting that “We have mountains of evidence that ‘treating people equally’ is not treating people equally.” Debbie clarified this by expressing her belief that “color-blindness” is wrong.

That is when I realized that what they are talking about here are legitimate and rational disagreements over how to approach social injustices.

Legitimate and rational disagreements. Meaning that neither view is so well-supported that they can claim to know what’s best.

Yet people attempting to discuss these things rationally have been vilified and views have polarized. And the people who were speaking in this recording were doing so with such certainty that they were “right” that they failed to see that legitimate and rational disagreement was even possible.

And this has happened with many on both sides of the issue with most of the ‘dust ups’ in the community. I think a lot of the problem lies in treating these topics as simple when, in fact, they are not. As Ron Lindsay stated in a recent post on A+:

Social justice is great. After all, who’s against social justice? It’s when one starts to fill in the details that disagreements arise.

And it’s the details that matter here.

There are some who argue that, because minorities are at a disadvantage due to a history of oppression, they require special protection in order to reach equality. There are others who argue that such protection is both unnecessary and racist/sexist/___ist in and of itself. And there is a full spectrum of positions in the grey area in between these two views. 

What Stephanie claimed is that science tells us that the first view is “right”. Her certainty in that conclusion is clear from the video. Yet, she is wrong – sort of.

There are three details that we should consider. I am going to ignore one which comes from that grey area because it is extremely complicated, and that is the question of whether equal opportunity or equal outcome should be the goal. In other words, what “equality” means [If you claim that the answer to that question is no-brainer, you are making my point]. The other two major issues are the evidence for the claim and the evidence which suggests the best courses of action to correct injustices, which is the whole reason for asking the question in the first place.

We all know that stereotypes exist and that racism, sexism, any-ism, are alive and well in our society. And there is plenty of evidence that implicit biases exist. In fact, they are impossible to eliminate. We favor people whom we view as “like us” in many different ways. Depending on one’s definition of “ingroup” in a given context, we favor those who fit it. However, we are capable of making choices and taking actions which render such favor powerless. We are capable of overcoming these biases just as we are capable of overcoming other cognitive biases. Not eliminating, overcoming.

So science tells us that we have implicit biases which require a special effort on our part to overcome. Stephanie is right, no?

Not so fast.

Science may be able to tell us if affirmative action has contributed to the huge reductions in racism and related outcomes which have occurred in recent decades, but it cannot tell us if affirmative action is a good idea today simply based on the knowledge that we need to make a conscious effort to overcome biases. Even the first question is difficult to assess confidently, but I suspect it can be done and I suspect that the answer will be, “Yes. Yes, it has.”

But this is an extremely complex issue and it is further complicated by the fact that we all have dog in the race. We all care about it because we all identify with one or more of those man made categories we sum up as the variable “race”.

My personal views about special protection are like most of my political views (this IS a political issue, after all): very centrist. I believe that we need to pay attention to things like gender parity if we are interested in decreasing it. I am not convinced, however, that quotas are entirely appropriate in all situations. And if you think that science has the answer to whether my views are “correct”, I challenge you to prove so.

And here’s where I say that in my view, both Stephanie and Debbie are wrong. What I won’t do is reject their views outright and wonder why they can’t just see the truth that I think is written in “mountains of evidence”. I won’t do that because, although I am confident in my own conclusions, I am open to the possibility that I am wrong about this very complex, emotionally-charged issue.

Why I think they are wrong:

The goal is not to place blame for disparities, but to reduce them. If the major source of disparity is discrimination, then the act of discriminating needs to be reduced. Science does provide us with information which is useful in efforts to reduce interracial and other inter-group tensions. What the evidence suggests is not the multiculturalism approach that Debbie believes is best, but what she rejected: color-blindness (and gender-blindness, etc.). Or perhaps a better term would be color-not-noticing, but that doesn’t roll of the tongue very well.

We all have multiple identities. I am a woman, a scientist, an educator, a skeptic, an activist, a blogger, etc. There are always people with whom I share some identities and not others. When the context focuses on a specific value or identity, those with whom I share that value or identity are part of my ingroup. Ingroup/outgroup classification changes with context, but some are more flexible than others.

Decades of applied research has failed to demonstrate that interracial tension in schools can be reduced by increasing discussions of cultural differences and celebrating diversity. This should not be surprising given the mountains of research that Stephanie mentioned about ingroup/outgroup mentality. Attention to differences increases that tension.

What reduces the tension? Focus on similarities, seeing people as part of the ingroup and ignoring the differences which are present in a given context. Reducing the amount of “othering” we engage in. The best way to do that is to focus on commonalities. For example, the work that Chris Stedman, author of a soon-to-be-release book entitled Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious  does has been criticized by PZ Myers and others because it brings people of different religious affiliations (and none) together to work toward common prosocial goals. Just yesterday a group of interfaith activists (as they call themselves) spent the day picking up trash on a beach to make it safer and cleaner.

Am I suggesting that people suppress parts of themselves about which they are proud? Let me make this clear: Hell, no. 

If that is what you’re taking from this post, you need to look outside of yourself and try to see the bigger picture. What I am saying is that my gender identity should have zero bearing on whether I am hired for a job or asked to speak at a conference or viewed as a sexual object in a professional context. Does that mean that I should not be proud to be a woman? Of course not.

Interfaith work does not suggest that people ‘check their religion at the door’, either. The work benefits more than just the likelihood that they will accomplish common goals.  Working together exposes each participant to people with whom they both share ideology and differ in ideology. Focus on the common ideology reduces the tensions caused by differences in other views and that reduction spreads to the differences themselves.

For example, a 2009 Gallop Poll result which most will find unsurprising is that people are much, much less likely to oppose same-sex marriage if they know someone who is gay/lesbian. There are certainly problems with drawing causal conclusions from such a study, but the effect is large and the findings are consistent with many lines of research which converge.

As I stated before, this is a complex issue. You may completely disagree with my argument, but to dismiss it altogether would be ludicrous, not to mention closed-minded and, dare I say it?, anti-intellectual.

I prefer to be recognized for my work rather than patronized because I am female. You may not see the issues the way I do, but calling me a misogynist for that disagreement is not only outrageous, it’s insulting and wrong.

When you speak with such certainty about how right and moral you are in relation to your critics without considering the possibility that you may be missing a nuance or two, you cannot hold any sort of moral or intellectual high ground.

My purpose here is not to argue about the topic of social justice, but to make the point that certainty, particularly about moral questions, is something we all need to be careful about. Too much (more than what is warranted) and it gets in the way of rational discussion. Too much and it divides people when no division is necessary. Too much and it is counterproductive. Too much and it is not confidence; it’s arrogance.

NOTE: Before you start commenting that Atheism Plus is about “allowing these discussions” because nobody else will, let me remind you that nobody ever said that discussions about evidence were outside the scope of Skepticism (one of the primary reasons put forward for the founding of A+) just because they relate to issues of social justice. In fact, quite the opposite is true and I think that this post is a good example of how science and skepticism can be applied to those areas.

*For those not following the ‘rationalist’ blogosphere, I apologize for my lack of links to the incidents I mentioned here. Frankly, there are too many and it’s difficult to know where to start or to choose one link which clearly demonstrates what’s happened. It seems to me that one does not need the background information to understand the example, but I cannot tell for certain.

The highlight of TAM2012 was an easy pick. That does not mean that the talks were bad by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, despite what some felt was a scarcity of “big draw” speakers (e.g., high-profile science communicators like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye or high-profile atheists such as Richard Dawkins), the talks were as excellent as always. This was no surprise to me, though, because I have come to expect that kind of quality from those in the line-up.  I could list the talks I particularly enjoyed, but that would be far too long a post and my Twitter feed recorded some of the highlights. Many will be also posted by the JREF in coming months.

The meeting was smaller than last year (~1200 vs. >1600), but this is a good turnout considering that last year the line-up included both Tyson and Nye. Sizable, also, despite the hubbub that led some people to ‘boycott’, the economy, the growing number of skeptic, secular, and atheism conferences offered each year, and (probably the biggest factor, but the one that everyone seems to forget) the fact that Comicon was held in San Diego the same weekend!

For my part, I was honored to participate in a discussion on the main stage on the Future of Skepticism with an impressive panel: SkeptiCamp creator Reed Esau, skeptical IT guru Tim Farley, and long-time activist Jamy Ian Swiss (moderated by D.J. Grothe). I also presented a workshop on skepticism in classroom settings for a third time, along with Matt Lowry,  and I would like to thank the wonderful panel of educators (Dale Roy, Dean Baird, Ani Aharonian, and Sachie Howard) who took the stage for a round table-style Q & A with only a couple of hours’ (or less) notice.

So, the weekend was a good one. And the video embedded here was the stand-out highlight of it. If you have read more than a post or two on this blog, it will be immediately clear to you why it was the highlight and why I found it important enough to urge you to watch it. I should also note that almost everyone I spoke with at TAM found this talk to be, far and above, the best of the weekend if not more. Please watch it before continuing.

Jamy spoke clearly about the difference between discussion of and battling over issues such as scope, definitions, and goals. What he hinted at, but did not say, is that discussion can only happen among those who are educated about those issues (or those who are trying to educate themselves about them). With a few exceptions, it is usually when people who do not fully understand the nature of what we do insist on being allowed to redefine our work that distinctions become battle lines.

One sign that someone does not fully understand scientific skepticism is something Jamy hit hard – that skepticism, secularism, and atheism are different things. When we all understand this (good fences), we can identify our common goals and work together (good neighbors). The differences are complex, but as Jamy noted, we have general rules for practical purposes that allow us to operate while the philosophical discussions can continue among those interested. However, shallow treatment of the issues (or outright dismissal of the ‘rules’) is an ironic form of anti-intellectualism.

When Elizabeth Cornwell’s TAM2012 talk is posted, I hope you will revisit this post. She discusses the characteristics and behaviors of cyberbullies and it should be clear how it fits here. You might notice the enormous overlap in the sets of people who conflate atheism/skepticism and those who argue for verbal aggression (A.K.A., bullying and ridicule) as a means of outreach (and, apparently, as a general communication style).  It does not need to be this way.

I attended a couple of workshops on Thursday and one was interesting as well as relevant. “Coalition Building for the Skeptical Activist” was lead by the most qualified person I can think of to lead such a thing, Doubtful News founder Sharon Hill. Also on the panel were Kitty Mervine, whose website helps those who believe that they were abducted by aliens connect with other possible abductees and learn about alternative explanations for their experiences, Chris Stedman, an interfaith activist and author of the upcoming book “Faitheist“, American Atheists president Dave Silverman, and vice president of the Secular Coalition for America David Noise. What an interesting combination.

Sharon, Kitty, and Chris are all known for their bridge-building style. Chris’s efforts center around coalitions with diverse groups to work toward common goals. Chris is not a skeptical activist, yet his work and ours overlap in several areas. Chris is the kind of “good neighbor” that Jamy discussed in his speech.

Silverman and Noise, on the other hand, seemed odd choices for a workshop on coalitions. Noise seemed to echo a lot of what Silverman said; he seemed more of an activist for atheism than secularism. During the panel, the language and content both Silverman and Noise provided was related to ingroup-outgroup thinking. They stopped short of discussing the kinds of militant strategies PZ Myers has talked about, but considering that Silverman describes his organization as the “Marines of the Freethought Movement”, it is cause for concern. I heard nothing about building coalitions from either of them, only unsupported assumptions and uncreative, brute-force solutions to problems.

On Thursday, before the main stage events even began, Silverman tweeted this:

Tabling at #tam2012. You can be a skeptic and you can be a theist. But if you’re both, you’re not very good at one of them.

— David Silverman (@MrAtheistPants) July 12, 2012

There are so many things wrong with this statement that it’s hard to know where to start, but I wanted to reply with this entire post. The next morning I gave in to temptation and tweeted:

Pondering #TAM2012 tweets. “If you believe X, you’re not good at skepticism” is poor skepticism (it’s Belief Bias; form of confirm. bias). — Barbara Drescher (@badrescher) July 13, 2012

While Silverman is not known for “waging war” with skeptics over where to draw lines, he has attempted to redefine skepticism (or perhaps simply shown his lack of understanding of it). Furthermore, this kind of insult (which, I will note once again, comes from a place of ignorance) to skeptics who are not atheists does not even remotely resemble an attempt at discussion. Neither did his reply to Kylie Sturgess when she dared to disagree:

#thetruthhurts “@kyliesturgess: Couldn’t disagree MORE: You can be a skeptic & a theist. If you’re both, you’re not good at one of them.”

— David Silverman (@MrAtheistPants) July 13, 2012

I hope I grabbed your attention with that title, but do not expect to find the answer to that question here. What I am going to discuss today is a study that many people seem to think answers that question, but it doesn’t.

As I noted in my last post, the study I’ll be discussing was grossly misreported, starting with its press release. Since the study itself appears to be behind a pay wall for most people, I’ll describe as much detail as I can in a blog post as I discuss the study’s validity and findings of the study, published in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science and titled “My Brother’s Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals”.

But for those who are not at all interested in the research methods or a breakdown of why I rate the quality of the study the way I do, I will give you the the bottom line so you can skip the rest or only read the sections that interest you (I’ve used headings to make it easier).

Summary

I think that the findings will hold up to replication, despite some issues I have with the way they did a few things. Overall, the research quality is quite high.

The groups they compared did not include atheists, agnostics, believers, non-believers, highly religious, or any other label that you can throw at it. In the studies they used raw religiosity scores and made some comparisons of “higher” and “lower” using values from the distribution. In a sense, the compared those who scored in the lower half of the sample to those who scored in the upper half.

They found:

• Differences in prosocial behavior cannot be dismissed as due to political affiliation, socio-economic status, or other factors often held up as responsible.
• Religiosity is correlated with trait compassion; the more religious, the more compassionate.
• Trait compassion is related to prosocial behavior in general. This relationship is stronger in the less religious than in the more religious. This does not mean that the less religious are more compassionate (see number 1) or that the less religious are more prosocial. It just means that compassion is a bigger factor in prosocial behavior in the less religious.
• The findings of the first study can be interpreted one way that isn’t discussed in the paper: when the relationship between compassion and religiosity is accounted for, the more religious are not more prosocial than the less religious.
• The findings in the second study, which involved inducing feelings of compassion, were similar for generosity, except that the more religious were more prosocial even after accounting for compassion.
• The findings of the second study also included a different pattern when the prosocial behavior was giving to charity. Compassion induced more giving, but the effect was weak and did not differ much across religiosity. Religiosity had a significant affect on charity. This can be explained by the guidelines provided by many churches for how much of one’s salary one should give.
• In the third study, in which state compassion (how compassionate the individual felt at that time) was measured and the prosocial behavior measure involved real-world cash, religiosity was not related to either compassion or prosocial behavior.
• In the third study, state compassion was positively correlated with prosocial behavior, but the effect was greater in the less religious than in the more religious.

What the findings as a whole say to me, and what I believe the press report tried, but failed, to express, at least with convincing support: We do not need religion to be prosocial. We need compassion.

This is great news for secularists.

However, it doesn’t say anything negative about religion or the religious, nor does it provide anything that should make atheists feel superior. It just shows that one can be good without God; that motivations can come from other sources.

Now on to the details…

NOTE: to keep this as short as possible, I’ve included a lot of links to terms and demonstrations. Where I describe problems in more detail I still water-down quite a bit. I will do my best to make it understandable without rambling on and on, but keep in mind that it takes many years to learn enough about research design and statistics to understand why some of these are problematic. Furthermore, not all researchers will agree on the consequences of some of these problems. I am still learning this stuff myself (probably always will be learning).

The Study (description)

The article reports three studies, each related to the relationship between compassion and prosocial behavior in less-religious individuals. I have created graphs using the information in the paper, but in some cases I did not have exact numbers, so while the relationships are visually accurate, there are only values where I could use exact numbers.

Theoretical Foundation

The introduction discusses research which documents that religiosity is associated with prosocial behavior. Specifically, religious people give more and volunteer more than nonreligious people, over and above what they give to and do for religious organizations. The researchers note that the nonreligious do give; when we compare groups, we do so using averages. However, it may be that the motivations for prosocial behavior vary in a way that interacts with religiosity. In other words, the more religious among us may be motivated to prosocial behavior by one set of factors and the less motivated by another.

The researchers hypothesized that compassion is a more influential factor in prosocial behavior for the less religious than for the more religious among us.

Study 1

The first study examined the relationships among religiosity and traits of compassion and prosocial tendencies. What this basically means is that situational factors were not involved; traits are a matter of personality or attitude. For example, “trait anxiety” refers to how anxious a person is in general, while “state anxiety” refers to how anxious that same individual feels in a given situation.

This study involved analyzing data from a 2004 “survey”. I put that term in quotes because it usually refers to a set of questions that do not measure more than what is apparent at face value. Established measures of latent variables (variables which cannot be measured directly such as feelings and attitudes) are usually called an “inventory” or “scale” and we refer to them loosely as “measures”. In this case, the survey involved such measures and I want to make that clear.

The sample was comprised of 1337 participants and covariates (variables other than those of interest which could explain differences among the groups) of gender, political orientation, and education were included in the analysis. The variables of interest were religiosity, compassion, and prosocial behavior. Religious identity (identification with a specific religion or no religion) was also considered.

Results

Correlations

• Covariates had little impact on the results.
• Trait compassion was positively correlated with religiosity* and prosocial behavior. On average, the more compassionate the individual, the more religious they were and the more the more prosocial they were.
• The relationship between religiosity and prosocial behavior was marginally significant (statistically).

Hypothesis Test (See Figure 1)

Figure 1: Study 1 results. "Higher" and "lower" are defined here as 1 SD from the mean.

• A regression analysis revealed an interaction of religiosity and compassion on prosocial behavior. What this means: The effect of compassion on prosocial behavior differed among levels of religiosity.
• More specifically, the level of trait compassion affected prosocial behavior less as religiosity increased.
• There was also a main effect of compassion, but that was apparent in the correlational analysis.
• There was no main effect of religiosity on prosocial behavior. This is interesting, because they found a marginally significant correlation, but it does not mean the there are no difference in prosocial behavior. I would interpret these findings, when put together, as suggestive of little or no difference between the more religious and the less religious in prosocial behavior over and above the differences accounted for by compassion.

The authors discuss the findings a little differently, though, focusing on the differences in the way that compassion affected prosocial behavior (the interaction in the first hypothesis test result) and ignoring the way that the effect of religiosity disappeared when compassion was entered into the equation. It seems more interesting to me to treat compassion as the moderator. It also makes more sense in the end.

Study 2

This study was experimental in that the researchers manipulated state compassion. In other words, they induced feelings of compassion in half of the participants and compared the amount of prosocial behavior those participants engaged in to the amount of such behavior in a control condition.

The sample included 101 participants and the study was conducted online, so the age range was exceptional (from 18 to 68 years). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions and each watched a short video under the guise that there would be a test of memory afterward.  The videos were established manipulations of feelings of compassion and neutral emotion (i.e., other researchers tested their effectiveness). Following the video, participants completed two tasks which are well-established measures of prosocial behavior commonly used in such research.

Results

• Again, covariates had little impact on the results.

Hypothesis Tests (See Figure 2)

Figure 3: Results of Study 3. Values are relative.

There were two tests since the participants completed to different prosocial tasks, one involving generosity and the other involving charity.

For the generosity task:

• This time there were a main effects of both religiosity and compassion on prosocial behavior. The more religious, the more prosocial. Those who watched the compassion-inducing video were the more prosocial on average than those who watched the neutral video.
• The interaction appeared again in the manner as in Study 1.

For the charity task:

• There were main effects of both religiosity and compassion on prosocial behavior.
• There was no interaction.

This is where they screw up, in my opinion.

The pattern of the moderation was in the predicted direction but failed to reach statistical significance.

This is not an acceptable statement unless the findings are marginal. This was not. The p-value was .408. This is not even close to meaningful. Still, they went ahead with the analysis of the interaction and reported an effect of compassion on charity for the less religious participants and no effect for the more religious.  The problem is that post-hoc analysis like this assumes that a significant interaction was observed. Their tests inflated alpha (the probability of a Type I Error) and can only mislead. They stated that they had found “partial support” for their hypothesis, but they did not in this case.

The relationships in the generosity task are very clear when we look at a Figure 2. The interaction is the interesting finding. Compassion had little effect on the more religious, but a very large effect on the less religious, who gave practically nothing when compassion was not induced. There is no analysis to tell us if the less religious surpassed the religious by a statistically significant amount when compassion was induced, but they were clearly out done by the more religious when not made to feel compassion.

The charity task showed no such interaction and the authors did not include a graph of this effect that I could recreate, nor did they provide the information to make one.

Study 3

For this study, the sample of 120 completed a state compassion inventory (a measure of their feelings of general compassion at the moment) and a series of “economic tasks designed to measure their generosity, trust, trustworthiness, and motivation to reward others’ generosity.” What differed in this study, however, was that the ‘points’ they earned in these tasks could be exchanged for cash at the end of the study. Participants did not know how much cash, but they knew that the more points they earned, the more cash they would receive.

Results

Hypothesis Tests (See Figure 3)

The findings of this study were very different from the other two.

• State compassion was not related to religiosity.
• Religiosity was not related to prosocial behavior.
• There was an interaction of religiosity and compassion on prosocial behavior. The amount of compassion felt had more of an effect on the behavior the less religious than it did on the more religious.

The graph of these findings, a reproduction of their graph since they did not provide information to create one that would make more sense (to me anyway), is a bit misleading. The values are z-scores, so they are relative to one another and not actual values. What is interesting, though is how little the prosocial score varied in the more religious group and how that line barely dips below the mean value (represented by 0).

There is also a problem with the press release in that it makes the claim that the high state compassion/less religious group out-performed the others. There is no statistical analysis comparing the groups in that way, so this is a misstatement. We do not know if less religious individuals are more generous than more religious when motivated to act prosocially. We just know that they are more generous when motivated by compassion than when compassion is low.

The Study Overall

As I noted, my opinion of the studies as a whole is relatively high, but I do have some major criticisms. Some of the language makes me cringe (e.g., results are the product of statistical tests, so “We tested our results”…), but I have seen more and more of this as scientific reports in general have grown sloppier.  Study design and method is much more important, as is the quality of the reporting beyond language.

The authors also throw around the term “robust”, claiming in the first study that the relationship between compassion and prosocial behavior is “particularly robust” for less religious individuals. That term refers to findings which are “sturdy” and will stand up when some supports are removed – effects which appear to hold up in different situations. Since this was one analysis of one data set, that term just doesn’t work. It does not fit in any of their uses of it.

In fact, they err in Study 2 by saying that the effect was “attenuated” for the more religious. That term is relative; attenuated compared to what? The effect was not “robust” in one condition and “attenuated” in another; they can only be compared to each other. The effect was greater in the less religious than the more religious.

Missing Information

There are a number of bits of information which are considered to be, at minimum, required for a good research report. A general rule of thumb for methods and results sections is to include enough (without being redundant) information to allow other researchers to replicate (in a strict sense) the study and to confirm that the statistical findings are properly interpreted.

I am not sure that this article meets that criterion. The methods are pretty well fleshed out and the paper is full of statistics, but some descriptive statistics are missing that I would have liked to have seen (e.g., means reported overall for measures, but not by group) and there was not enough of the right information to recreate them.

Grouping the Data and Errors of Generalization

One overall criticism which warrants discussion is in the grouping of data. There are some problems with this and they are related. The sensitivity of the religiosity measure is one problem that, by itself, is not a big target for criticism. Combined with the second problem of grouping participants, though, it becomes more serious.

The practice of comparing groups of people based on a variable which is distributed on a spectrum is a common one. The question the researcher wants to answer is important in deciding whether to group and, in this case, I do not disagree with that choice, but I question how they grouped and how it was communicated. If the data are clustered (the distribution is multi-modal), grouping is simplified, but if the data are distributed more loosely, it can be tricky and dangerous.

First, the researcher loses information, therefore they lose sensitivity and usually lose power. The sensitivity problem is relevant in the first study, but mostly because it makes the findings difficult to interpret.

Second, if the way that the grouping is communicated is not consistent and clear, it is likely to be misinterpreted, compounding any existing problems with the method. I discussed this problem in my last post. Most of the reports referred to the groups compared as “highly religious” verses “atheists and agnostics” or something like that. However, where are all of the people in the middle (i.e., most likely the bulk of the sample)?  Within each group there was variation in religiosity and comparisons are made using averages. Generalizing only works when the samples are representative of the population of interest and this applies in either direction of the generalization (i.e., specific to mixed or mixed to specific).

Third, researchers must decide where to draw the lines between high and low (and anything in between). Since the majority of variables in psychology are normal distributed (therefore symmetrical), the lines are usually drawn using rankings of sample values and the most common way to split a sample in half is to put all values above the median into “higher” and those below into “lower” (called a “median split”). However, ease is not a good reason to use this technique.   Here is an interesting demonstration of the dangers of dichotomizing normally-distributed variables.

But… religiosity is not usually distributed normally; it’s usually skewed. Skew means that it’s not symmetrical, so a median-split would make even less sense.

In this case, it seems that the authors tried to have the best of both worlds by treating religiosity as a continuous variable, but doing post-hoc analysis on it, discussing it, and graphing it as if it were dichotomous, choosing values which were one standard deviation from the mean in both directions as the central tendencies of each group. The biggest problem with this is the assumption of normality. If the variable is not normally-distributed (and I suspect that it is not), this grouping is a bit tough to swallow.

When this problem is mixed with a limited range as it is in the first study (the religiosity scale only had four points), it’s a problem. The four possible values were 1 = no religion, 2 = not very strong (religious identity), 3 = somewhat strong, and 4 = strong. Since the mean was 2.99, the bulk of the sample were fairly religious. one standard deviation (1.03) below the mean is not exactly in non-believerland and one above is off the scale (literally). It is just very difficult to see where “higher” leaves off and “lower” takes over.

Although the range is adequate in the other two studies, the problem of discussing groups which do not actually exist and have fuzzy definitions remains. In my opinion that is one of the reasons it was so misreported.

But, overall, the research is of a relatively high quality and interesting. I would like to see more variation in the prosocial tasks, given that the outcome of the charity task was so different from the tasks of generosity.

It seems that the less religious are at least as generous as the more religious, but their reasons for acting prosocially differ. I would like to see the day when, as a group, we are generous and prosocial consistently, without the need to be provoked and without needing to feel an emotional connection to the receiver.

Saslow, L., Willer, R., Feinberg, M., Piff, P., Clark, K., Keltner, D., & Saturn, S. (2012). My Brother’s Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals Social Psychological and Personality Science DOI: 10.1177/1948550612444137

First, if you have not read Parts I and II, please read them now. The most important parts of those posts are:

Arguments over scope and the conflation of atheism and skepticism have reached a fever pitch, as have arguments over tone. I will talk about some of this, but I will not attempt to explain all of the issues in any detail because everything that needs to be said has been said here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here… Well, you get the picture. In fact, if you want to argue the definition of skepticism or Skepticism* in the comments of this post, don’t bother. Instead, read what I wrote about it last year, which I would simply repeat in answer…

…I suggest is this: Skepticism*, as a movement, is not hindered so much by the conflation of atheism and skepticism, the ridicule of believers, or attempts to promote values-based ideology as it is hindered by the blatant ignorance, arrogance, and irrationality displayed when those acts are committed.

In a field dedicated to reducing ignorance and irrationality, a field in which arrogance is toxic, I find this kind of behavior offensive. It is time that we reclaim Skepticism and restore its credibility and integrity.

If one of the major goals of Skepticism is to educate, shouldn’t we all understand the material?

I am angry. I am angry and a little fearful for our future. We live in dangerous times and the work of Skepticism is serious. The work is hard. It requires patience, discipline, empathy, and knowledge.

I am angry because an influx of people who have stumbled upon or been recruited to the work of Skepticism are making it much more difficult. We’re moving backwards. This is happening, in part, because some of these rookies insist that their understanding of that work is as good or better than the understanding of people who have studied and worked in the field for years. Many have little or no education in the basics of science or the scientific process. Some claim to follow the teachings of people whose works they have never read. Some believe that the ‘old guard’ have more to learn from them than the other way around. These people voice their opinions on blogs and in talks, discussing topics about which they consider themselves competent after reading a couple of blog posts, listening to a podcast, considering their own limited experiences, or MAYBE reading a book or two on the topic.

What’s worse, they argue about details with little or no understanding of even the big picture. They believe that their understanding is complete and, therefore, requires no study, no thought beyond the surface features, and certainly not time or mentoring.

This is anti intellectualism in a field which promotes intellect and deep thought.

The problem has bothered me for some time and, in fact, ignorance of one’s own incompetence is something that bothered me in my classroom so much that I studied its relationship to academic entitlement, narcissism, external attributions for achievements, and study strategies. What we learned is that narcissism, entitlement, and shallow study strategies are strongly correlated with the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is the phenomenon that the least competent people overestimate their competence the most as part of a self-serving bias. As relative competence increases, overestimations decrease, until the 75th to 95th percentile (depending on the domain), when estimates are fairly accurate. This is particularly problematic in an academic setting because the less students understand a concept, the more likely they are to believe that they understand it, the less likely they are to make changes to ensure that they learn it, and the more likely they will be to feel entitled to a high grade for their poor work.

Skeptical activism is not unlike academics.  Incompetence feeds on itself in this effect. The more an individual overestimates their competence, the more entitled they believe they are to an uncritical audience to which they can voice their opinions. What’s more, the more confident a blogger appears, the more their audience will reinforce their views (because they convince the audience that they know; the same thing occurs with eye witness testimony), although this is somewhat limited to situations in which the view is shallow enough to for the audience to understand, a perfect enhancement to the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

But high confidence is not an indication of actual understanding, nor is the number of supportive cheers of agreement from their followers.

The rest of this post will focus on one example of this, but there have been countless. This particular example is an especially egregious one, since she attacked both a friend for whom I have a great deal of respect and the field I defend daily. It was back-breaking straw for me.

When Amanda Marcotte whined that Daniel Loxton doesn’t want us to talk about religion, she built a now very familiar straw man and dressed him with inappropriate comparisons and other ignorant rambles. She appears to be upset because she somehow thinks that the usurping of a movement in motion, one which is founded on scientific principles, for the promotion of her personal political and religious ideology, should go unchallenged.

Amanda does not appear to understand what skepticism actually is or what science involves, yet she’s thrown her hat in, anyway. Perhaps she is insulted that somebody tried to tell her, I really don’t know, but I do know that the confidence with which she writes about the issues is unwarranted, a fact which is clearly demonstrated by the content of her post.

Amanda wrote,

“Look: atheism is the result of applying critical thinking and demands for evidence to the god hypothesis. It’s not any different than non-belief in all sorts of supernatural claims, such as ESP and ghosts. All of the weaseling around that is intellectually dishonest. It’s not about critical thinking, but about politics and frankly, not taking on religion because religion is seen as too powerful. “

Wrong.

What is intellectually dishonest is arguing about something you do not fully understand against people who are experts in the field. What is intellectually dishonest is advancing an uneducated opinion because the educated one does not help you achieve your own goals.

Her first two sentences demonstrate the problem with this entire post and most of the comments on it: ignorance. The rest of the paragraph is bullshit that Amanda made up. Nobody is ‘backing down’ and there is no concern that “religion is seen as too powerful”. This is not about politics. It is about scientific integrity.  This point has been made again and again, but ignored by people like  Amanda. Perhaps they ignore it because they do not understand it, or maybe they ignore it because it doesn’t help them, but the reasons don’t matter. Ignoring it won’t make it go away.

Science is the pursuit of truth. Truth is not value. Desires are not facts. Facts are not morals.

Scientific integrity requires adherence to scientific principles. Likewise, scientific skepticism relies on scientific integrity. Otherwise, we are just a bunch of people with opinions.

… Loxton decided to shit all over the work of people looking at improving gender, sexual oriention, class, and race diversity in the movement by complaining that the panel at The Amazing Meeting dedicated to this didn’t have any fucking Christians on it.

Again, she’s just making stuff up. Daniel noted that the diversity of the panel did not reflect the diversity of the audience in one important aspect. Framing this as “complaining that there were no Christians” is dishonest and the implication that Daniel does not care about issues of gender, class, and race is simply unfounded and abhorrent. Anyone who actually knows Daniel understands just how stupid that accusation is.

He firmly believes that the god hypothesis should be off-limits for skeptics, and that there should be a bright line between atheism and skepticism. This is ridiculous. “God” is a supernatural claim just like fairies and ghosts.

This statement, once again, not only demonstrates gross ignorance and shallow thinking, but the fact that she’s written an entire blog post questioning the knowledge of a professional skeptic on very basic definitions of the field without first educating herself is offensive and disrespectful. Had she even tried to understand the issues, a task which takes time and energy, she might have learned enough to at least recognize that she has a lot more to learn.

But I am clearly expecting too much, because Amanda thinks that “I don’t get it” equates to “It must not be true” as demonstrated by this parroting of Skeptical sound bites and bullet points, mostly taken out of context or misused (bold mine):

The excuse from “traditional” skeptics for making an exception for religion is that the god hypothesis is an untestable claim, and they’re only interested in testable claims. But as this fairy example shows, that’s not really true. There are plenty of things skeptics are skeptical about because of the preponderance-of-evidence standard. We don’t believe in ESP or ghosts or fairies because no one has ever produced solid evidence in favor of these things existing, and we combine that with an assumption that these things are highly unlikely and so the burden is on the people making the claims to prove them. I don’t see how god is any different.

… Yes, it’s true that you can’t test whether or not there is a god somewhere that simply refuses to show himself, but that’s also true of fairies, people with ESP, and ghosts. And yet it’s considered a good use of skeptical time to point out the weakness of the ghost/ESP argument. So why not god?”

She doesn’t ‘see it’, so it doesn’t exist. I hate to add to the sound bites when what is needed here is serious coursework, but there are some basic concepts that could help Amanda “see how” these things are different, starting with breaking down some of her giant straw man. Here are a few basic points that Amanda should have known before she wrote this post:

• Science is empirical, therefore scientific skepticism is empirical. This is more important than testability, although it is related. NOTE FOR THE RECORD: The concept of testability is watered down somewhat in my posts and comments because it is complicated. For a good discussion of these issues, I recommend Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World.

• Skeptics do not “make exceptions” for religion. The fact that “God exists” is not an empirically testable hypothesis is not the fault of skeptics or Skepticism. It is the nature of the hypothesis. Science and skepticism have nothing to say about any hypothesis which can never be tested empirically.

• Skepticism is not a set of beliefs or conclusions. This is important. “We don’t believe in ESP or ghosts or fairies” is not something that a good skeptic would say and the ‘we’ part is presumptuous. I certainly do not want someone like Amanda Marcotte speaking for me if this what she thinks skepticism is.

• What any Skeptic believes is irrelevant. Personal knowledge is derived in whatever way the individual chooses to derive it. Science and skepticism deal with shared knowledge. Shared knowledge requires empirical evidence.

• The reason that we can easily discount ESP in most cases is because it is usually easily tested empirically.

• Requiring empirical testability is not “giving religion a pass”. It is holding true to the scientific process, which is designed specifically to ensure that our human biases and personal values do not affect our ability to distinguish what is true from what is not true. Religion’s most basic claims usually involve an omniscient and omnipotent being, making them largely untestable. This is not at all true of ESP, ghosts, or other traditional topics in skepticism. More on that below.

• A good skeptic would never state that there are no ghosts. A good skeptic would investigate specific claims of hauntings, searching for natural phenomenon which would explain the evidence. A good skeptic would not say there is no such thing as extrasensory perception. A good skeptic would say that we have no evidence to support precognition, telekinesis, etc.

• Skepticism is not about pointing out the weaknesses of arguments. It is about evaluating the evidence. These are not even close to being the same. When a self-proclaimed psychic moves the bar and says, “If it failed the test, then the forces that give me these powers do not want to be seen,” they make their claim untestable. Skeptics then have nothing to say in response. However, skeptics can provide natural explanations for phenomena (e.g., reveal that Peter Popoff was being fed information via an ear piece) which are much more parsimonious than supernatural explanations. This is also what we do with religious claims. If someone claims that God created man as he is today, we can point to the evidence which support the theory of evolution. If they claim that God created the universe, we can point to the evidence for the Big Bang. If they claim that God created the universe and man by making these natural processes possible, well then, we cannot refute that.

But Amanda would like to cast out Pamela Gay because Pamela believes in a personal God. Never mind the fact that she has never tried to sell that view to others, that she never claimed to support it with evidence, or that she is a very competent and knowledgeable Skeptic, scientist, science educator, and science communicator. Nevermind that Pamela Gay is a valued member of the Skeptical community who has done more to educate and excite young minds about science than all but a few others. [NOTE: minor edit for clarity, 08/07/11 9:50am]

Pamela Gay is not being irrational. Amanda Marcotte is.

Marcotte’s diet example is another case of irrelevant comparison. She states, sarcastically, that people are also touchy about their diet and so expressing skepticism about food trends is probably bad idea, too. This is clearly a straw man. We can demonstrate the effects of gluten empirically, so it is a poor comparison, too. Nobody is saying that people should not express skepticism about the existence of a God. What we are saying is that we cannot demonstrate empirically that God does not exist, therefore, if that is your conclusion, you cannot share that conclusion with others. The difference between personal knowledge and shared knowledge is not trivial.

Making others comfortable is not the issue, either, although making people uncomfortable out of arrogance and ignorance is certainly a part of the issue. I would like to point out that Amanda’s double-standard is pretty obvious in that paragraph. Apparently, the needs that matter are the needs of those she thinks deserve our attention and that’s it. But while we’re on the subject, it doesn’t matter if you are promoting skepticism, atheism, or your favorite restaurant. Being an asshole is being an asshole. The reason that DBAD matters to the rest of us is that when a dick represents Skepticism, they make our jobs more difficult.

The issue of scope is more complicated than the atheism/skepticism debate. The only reason that religion is given special consideration in the discussions of scope is that there are more people conflating atheism with skepticism than ever before. There are more people acting like superior assholes than ever before. People who could be helped by skeptical outreach as well as people who contribute a great deal to the movement (people like Hal Bidlack, a brilliant, scholarly, honorable man with years of service to the community) have been run off by the relentless arrogance of people like those I have discussed in this series of posts. The ignorant, the arrogant, and the irrational (I’m picturing monkeys of the ‘no evil’ variety, but with interesting facial expressions).

And this problem is growing.

Most of the comments on Amanda’s post demonstrate a frenzied groupthink that will further convince her that she’s on the right track. Comment number 41 describes this problem (among others) quite well: “One cool thing about having a political blog which is allegedly powered by skepticism is that people will be much more tolerant of logical fallacies.”

Some of the most fallacious comments:

…There’s nothing worse than an agnostic who thinks he’s more logical and skeptical than an openly religious person. Whether you’re an agnostic or a believer you’re engaging in special pleading on the god question, subjecting it to a different standard than any other question of existence, and you are not a skeptic nor are you logical.

“Special pleading” is a straw man that is repeated often. But it is just that: a straw man.

what the hell is skepticism for if not doing away with false beliefs?

More ignorance. There is no such thing as a ‘false belief’. Beliefs are simply what you hold to be true. Nobody actually knows for certain what is true. Skepticism is about evaluating evidence, period.

H0: There is no god. H1: There is a god. There is a serious shortage of evidence for H1, therefore we must accept the null hypothesis.

Introductory statistics cannot address the question of whether or not God exists.

If there’s a lack of humanpower and ressources to do everything, the question skeptics organizations should ask themselves is not why they should get involved in the more political aspects of skepticism, but why they should still waste ressources on the trivial, non-political aspects like Bigfoot/UFO/ghost/cryptozoology debunkings and such.

Wow. This is very disturbing, and I’m not just talking about the spelling or misuse of words like “aspects”. Apparently many commenters don’t watch television or get out of the house much. The number of shows devoted to ghost hunting alone is staggering. Then there are the shows about psychics of all ages, animal mind readers, monster hunting, etc. These shows are appearing on channels once devoted to science, for FSM’s sake. As for why we don’t get involved in politics, read this.

And anyone who is interested in the bigger picture – the picture concerned about meeting the goals of the movement – should read Comment number 75 on Amanda’s post.

The parroting that atheism is the result of applied skepticism that is so prevalent in the comments and stated in Amanda’s post is anti-skeptical. It demonstrates a failure to understand the fundamental process of skepticism and the empirical nature of science and scientific skepticism. The definitions of science and scientific skepticism were arrived at through centuries of study, collaboration, contemplation, and discussion. They are not negotiable, at least not without agreement from a vast majority of scientists.  If you cannot accept these definitions as they are, you have three choices:

1. Publish your opinions in peer-reviewed journals and hope that philosophers and scientists agree with you.
2. Keep arguing about it with Skeptics and impede our progress.
3. Go do something else.

*”Big-S Skepticism” refers to the work of the skepticism movement in promoting the practice of skepticism.

A recent event not included in my last post, but one about which I am very excited, is the release of Daniel Loxton’s book Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be. It is a book aimed at children ages 8 to 13 and covers the basics of natural selection and speciation in the most clear and concise language I have found on this topic so far.

Perhaps I am a little biased as I expected a great book, given his track record writing-wise, but even I was surprised by the clarity and creativity of some of the examples. My 9 year old son was looking forward to the illustrations. Daniel sometimes shares his works in progress and both of my art-minded kids (their father’s influence) think that Mr. Loxton is awesomrific. Of course the illustrations did not disappoint, but he was even more intrigued by the discussion of natural selection in a grove of trees. I thought my son understood natural selection quite well, but it seems that his 3rd grade lessons focused on biodiversity and the results of selection.

I was impressed with a discussion of the often-forgotten limits and compromises in evolution, but that is a lesson my boys learned quite well from playing Spore&#8482.

My 12 year old son, who is obsessed with man’s origins, wrote a review. Here it is, unedited:

Evolution: How We and All living Things Came to Be is a amazing book. It puts a difficult concept into easy to understand words. Digital art recreates dinasaurs, fossils, and prehistoric creatures right on the page. Analogies, comparisons, and visualization helps a young reader grasp this concept. This book directly tackles questions about evolution. In conclusion, cold hard facts and mind-boggling illustrations laced with superior analogies makes Evolution: How We and All living Things Came to Be a must for the young scientist!

It should be obvious by now that we love the book and highly recommend it. It doesn’t sound like something that skeptics would disagree about, does it?

Skepticism activists and advocates disagree often and there are a few topics guaranteed to heat up the room. The most volatile is libertarian-style fiscal conservativism, but a close second is the mix of skepticism with atheism. This is a multi-faceted issue with several questions whose answers are debated, the most contentious of which is, “Can science address questions of faith?”

This seems like a simple question, but it is it not. It is really a philosophical question and a rather complicated one. As such, I do not plan to answer it in this post. What I will say is that insulting people of faith by calling them irrational (what they’ll hear: stupid) is a great way to get their attention, but it would likely ensure that efforts to convince them of the merits of critical thinking are wasted. I also believe that the most important property of science is its lack of arrogance, the open-mindedness that comes with the knowledge that our conclusions depend on the infallibility of a few fundamental principles we assume are true. To deny that 100% certainty is not possible is dogmatic, unreasonable, and anti-science. For that reason, my philosophical position on the matter is irrelevant. I would not claim to know the absolute truth. Note that open-mindedness should not be taken as an agnotistic stance. I am quite certain that there is no God. I am simply not 100% certain of anything.

So, what does this have to do with a kid’s book on evolution?

The book includes an answer to the question, “What about religion?”

In his answer, Daniel makes a clear statement that science does not address such questions, nor does it interpret knowledge in a spiritual way. This answer is not an answer at all, but a caveat which absolves science of the responsibility of placing value judgments on its discoveries. This is another extremely important property of science. It is concerned with finding truths, regardless of how ugly or unpleasant those truths are. “Passing the buck” is not a matter of dodging the question. It is a matter of preserving the objectivity of science.

What Daniel has done is to immediately dispel any notions that the content of the book must destroy ones’ faith. For that he has taken a good deal of criticism, but he has also received a good deal of support. Although I am thoroughly disgusted that such a section is necessary, I think it was a wise decision. What we need to do is focus on the fact that there is no debate over the theory of evolution, regardless of how much proponents of misguided-design kick and scream about it. Since that theory is so obviously true, the question of religion is moot.

Many have blogged about this issue including (since the book was released) Daniel himself. Each time it comes up, the comments of the blog which breaches the subject become a bit of a war zone.