I had promised myself that I would spend less time ranting about the problems of the activist community, but I was so disappointed and frustrated during a Twitter exchange with Melody Hensley (of CFI-DC, caveat: she was speaking for herself, not necessarily CFI) the other night that I felt it prudent to bring it up once again, or at least a part of it.

First, I want to address the tired complaint that traditional skeptics exclude “the god question”.

Yup, we do. But before you roll out the silly paragraphs in which you substitute “God” and “religion” with “ghosts” and “the paranormal”, understand this: we also don’t address “the ghost question”.

Or “the psychic question” or “the Bigfoot question” or “the angel question”.

Statements such as “There are no ghosts” with claims that this is more than a personal conclusion are not good scientific skepticism*. Neither is “All psychics are fakes”. Neither is “there is no God”.

I can’t tell you if ghosts exist. I can tell you that I don’t believe in ghosts. I can explain why I don’t believe in them. I can give you alternative explanations for the noises coming from your attic. I can discuss reasons that you might ‘feel’ that ghosts exist. But I cannot prove to you that there are no such thing as ghosts.

I can devise an experiment to show that your dog is not psychic, but I can’t prove that psychic energy doesn’t exist.

I can explain the mechanics of sleep paralysis and the nature of memory, but I can’t say for certain that aliens did not abduct you if you remove the testability of your claim by adding things like “they reset the clocks”.

I cannot prove that there is no dragon in your garage if it does not interact with the world in measurable ways. I can only say, “I am not convinced.”

What I personally believe about these things is irrelevant. It is poor skepticism, poor science, and poor reasoning to include my beliefs in a discussion of your claims. (NOTE: “Belief” is defined in my posts as “that which one holds to be true”.)

I will not speak for everyone who has “harped” about this issue, but I can tell you that this has always been my bottom line in these arguments, so those who would take it out of context and build straw men like “she says that religion is off-limits”, don’t bother.

What I really want to talk about is about here is why this isn’t good skepticism. I’d also like to refute the tired argument that only atheists are good skeptics.

Since there are several versions of this argument and I acknowledge that they carry different meanings, I am also arguing against the following claims:

• Only atheists are rational.
• Theists/Deists may be good skeptics when it comes to other areas, but they are not skeptical about religion.
• Agnostics and theists/deists do not ‘go far enough’.
• There are no reasons to believe in/is no evidence for the supernatural.

The problem with these claims is that they are based almost entirely on a conclusion – the conclusion that there is no god (atheism). It is human nature to judge the validity of arguments by the believability of the conclusion. For example, consider the following syllogisms and decide whether each is valid or invalid:

Some students are tired.
Some tired people are irritable.
Therefore, some students are irritable.

All dogs have four legs.
Daisy is a dog.
Therefore, Daisy has four legs.

If I study, I will get a good grade on the exam.
I got a good grade on the exam.
Therefore, I studied.

If you are like most of my students, you identified the first and third as valid, but the second as invalid. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. An argument is valid if and only if the conclusion logically follows from the premises. Validity is not truth. This is important, because none of us actually knows with 100% certainty what is and is not true.

When we assume that we know what is true, we fail to evaluate arguments on their own merits. If it we were wrong, we perpetuate and strengthen our misguided beliefs instead of discovering our errors.

To know how strong a conclusion is, we must examine two things: 1) the validity of the argument that produced it and 2) the strength of the premises.

The validity of the argument lies only in its logical progression, so we can evaluate this without going beyond what is presented. However, the strength of the premises is another matter. To evaluate those, we must consider their sources. In science, some are conclusions of other arguments (often previous research) and we must evaluate that research to know how strong the premise is. Others are a matter of observation, which is subjected to interpretation and induction. For example, in the famous syllogism about Socrates mortality, the strength of that conclusion relies on the assumption that the premise “All men are mortal” is accurate. Since not all men have died, we don’t actually know with 100% certainty that all men are mortal. We accept it based on a large number of observations and converging evidence, but certainty is not possible.

In my examples, the second syllogism is logically sound, but most people reject it because they “know” that not all dogs have four legs. Perhaps you’ve seen or heard of a three-legged dog (I met one once named “Tripod”) or you have knowledge of how it could occur. This does not make the argument invalid, but it does address #2, making the conclusion unsupported. We cannot determine if it is true from this argument.

The first and third arguments are invalid because the logic is unsound. We may “know” that the conclusions are true, but we can’t know that based on these arguments, so if we want to convince others we need to come up with better evidence/arguments.

The tendency to judge conclusions based on current beliefs is a product of how our brains evolved and developed – a side-effect of what makes us successful organisms. It is human nature, it is wrong and must be overcome if one is to be consistently rational (This, by the way, is a bit of a pipe dream, but I think it’s a good goal).

This problem pops up in a host of cognitive tasks and is a manifestation of the most influential of human frailties: the confirmation bias. This makes it extremely resistant to correction, especially in real-world contexts. In my experience, the concept of “validity” is difficult for many people to grasp because of this problem.

So, going back a few paragraphs, note that I wrote, “The problem with these claims is that they are based almost entirely on a conclusion – the conclusion that there is no god (atheism).”

Reason is about the validity of arguments, so judging a conclusion as valid or invalid without examining the argument is itself an irrational act. Without the argument, your only yardstick is your own belief about the truth of that conclusion. Although we have reasons for our beliefs, so do the people whose beliefs we’re evaluating. Everyone thinks that their beliefs are well-reasoned and accurate. That’s why they believe them!

If you find their conclusion unbelievable, then by all means, be skeptical, but to call it “irrational” without evaluating the argument is to say that you are 100% certain that there is no rational argument. That is the very definition of arrogance and it is not scientific.

Science does not tell us what is (true). Science tells us what is likely (to be true) and, in most cases, how likely. It does so by making arguments. Science is shared knowledge, not because it tells us facts, but because we can discuss the evidence and logic processes behind why we should be reasonably certain of many things. Although science is both a process and a set of knowledge (I’ll call them ‘facts’), the facts in that set are the products of the process. This may include negatives such as “my dog is not psychic” and “vaccines do not cause autism”, but testing is required to make such conclusions scientific.

Science is not about those facts, though. It’s about the process of discovery. When scientists make arguments (by publishing papers), they cite previous literature by noting the findings and, in some cases, describing how those findings were produced. They do not list facts; they discuss evidence.

Scientists don’t judge conclusions. Scientists judge arguments. Scientists look at the whole argument – the assumptions, evidence, and methodology that make up the premises as well as the logic that holds them together – and judge if the conclusions logically follow from those premises.

Likewise, scientific skepticism is about testing claims, examining evidence, and providing natural explanations for the evidence. If there is no evidence to examine, there is nothing to discuss.

Because science ignores untestable claims and because some scientists (e.g., Carl Sagan) have discussed the reasonability of belief without evidence, many people oversimplify the issue (as Melody did in this Twitter conversation) by making the statement that belief in God is within the scope of scientific skepticism because “You don’t believe something without scientific evidence”.

This is misguided for several reasons, but the two main reasons are:

1. The assumption that most or all religious belief is completely blind faith is simply wrong. “Evidence”, scientific or otherwise, comes in all manner of forms. In a 1998 study conducted by the Skeptic Society, the most popular answers among believers for why they believe in God involved empirical evidence and/or reasoning (you can find this in Michael Shermer’s How We Believe). These people certainly think that they have good reasons to believe. How people interpret evidence varies a great deal. Most real-world questions are very complex and what seems an obvious conclusion to one person may seem ridiculous to another. Skepticism is about how we interpret evidence, how we reason, and how we consider alternative explanations, not about the conclusions we eventually draw.A good example of interpreting evidence is the study that prompted me to send a tweet to Melody in the first place. She’d first shared a link, then tweeted it again, this time directly to Daniel Loxton, editor of Junior Skeptic, with the comment “More good news about atheists that you might find hard to believe:” Only Melody knows what she meant by the comment, but when I read the study I was disappointed to find that it is not “good news about atheists” at all. I will include details in a post to follow shortly, but the gist is that article’s spin is a very loose interpretation of the findings that fails to mention some sobering facts. Its overgeneralizations and assumptions are criminal. For example, the study reported doesn’t involve atheists. Researchers measured religiosity, then divided participants in half (“more religious” and “less religious”), a common practice in social psychology. Sure, there were atheists among the “less religious”, but we don’t draw conclusions about a part of a sample. Furthermore, taking the three studies as a whole, the ‘more religious’ were more compassionate and more prosocial than the ‘less religious’ half. In essence, anyone wanting to spin the findings another way could easily do so by noting that the less religious half onlyacted prosocially when moved to do so by compassion, whereas the more religious were consistently prosocial. This is not a finding that atheists are better people and, quite frankly, I am sick of people trying to prove such nonsense. Promoting the fact that one can be good without God does not require atheists to be morally superior and, as this study shows, it is a good thing that it doesn’t.Again, we all think that our beliefs are well-reasoned, but what’s more interesting is that people tend to assume that those who disagree do so because either they “need to” (In that same Skeptic Society survey, the most popular reasons believers gave for other people’s beliefs in God involved the stereotype of comfort and meaning to life.) or they are not as rational.
2. Even if there was literally zero evidence, the “null hypothesis” argument is an oversimplification of a concept borrowed from statistical rules and applied to the assumption that science makes that every hypothesis is testable. Science makes this assumption, but it also acknowledges that the assumption could be wrong by excluding the possibility of 100% certainty and by limiting its scope to testable hypotheses. You cannot invoke science as an answer to claims it cannot test, nor can you claim that someone’s conclusion is wrong because science cannot test it; that’s circular reasoning unless you’re saying that science is the only way to know something. By that logic, people cannot be scientific thinkers and also have morals**. Science (shared knowledge) may ignore the supernatural, but people (personal knowledge) do not and cannot use scientific processes to examine every question and still manage to function in the world, so if you want to attack person knowledge as wrong, you’ll have to do better than “it’s not scientific”.

So, what about the other versions of this claim?

Are atheists more rational than believers? Probably on average, considering the other variables which are correlated with atheism. However, given how poorly all human beings are at reasoning, that isn’t saying much.

Is atheism rational? I can’t answer that. Atheism is a conclusion. Whether it’s a rational conclusion depends on why the individual drew that conclusion.

Is religion rational? Again, I can’t answer that and neither can you. It’s a conclusion. Whether it’s a rational conclusion depends on the reasoning of the individual and the evidence they considered.

From what I know about how human beings process information, I can see a great many valid arguments for the existence of God that would be perfectly rational. They’d have to have some extraordinarily well-supported premises in order to convince me, but lacking support for those premises won’t make them irrational. Reasoning well does not require convincing others.

As I’ve said twice now, everyone thinks that their conclusions are the ‘right’ conclusions. So what makes your conclusion (that there is no God) better than someone else’s?

If your answer is “mine is well-reasoned”, that’s not a comparison. See two sentences back.

To know that you are “right” and they are “wrong”, you actually have to examine their argument/evidence. If you haven’t examined their argument, then who are you to tell someone that they are irrational? Who are you to tell them that they have no evidence when you haven’t even bothered to ask them what their evidence is? This is exactly what you’re doing when you claim that any belief in a god is “irrational” or make a blanket statement about the intelligence or cognitive abilities of those with religious beliefs. It’s elitist, arrogant, bigoted wishful thinking.

You cannot judge an argument by its conclusion, no matter how unbelievable the conclusion seems to you.

Finally, the following is a list of things that I have NOT said. In fact, I do not believe that any of the people accused most of making these statements actually has:

• “Religion is off-limits in skepticism.” There are plenty of testable claims related to religion, but test the claims and discuss the evidence rather than attacking belief in them.
• “Stop talking about ‘the god question’.”I have no problems with debates about the existence of God. What I have a problem with is criticizing conclusions as rational or irrational without examining the argument that produced them and calling such criticisms “skepticism”.
• “Stop promoting secularism.” I am a strong advocate of secularism, but promoting atheism is, in my opinion, no different from promoting any other set of conclusions. Freedom from religion requires freedom of religion. Removing religion from government does not mean taking it away from its citizens.
• “Atheism is not the only valid conclusion of properly-applied skepticism.” I did not say that it was, either. Hopefully my discussion explains why that question is not relevant.

I had planned to ignore Melody’s accusations that my criticisms are ‘mean-spirited’, but I cannot do that, either. It certainly is mean-spirited to attack people, but that is not what I have done. You won’t find a personal comment about Melody here. If it is mean-spirited to address (or even attack) what people say and do, especially when one finds what they promote to be harmful, then our whole business is ‘mean-spirited’.

*Given that all of the major organizations in skepticism have adopted scientific skepticism, this is what I’m discussing. If you would like to argue that activism should go beyond scientific skepticism, please do so elsewhere. For that matter, this post is not even about limiting scope for practical and strategic purposes, which is an entirely different cup of tea.

**Yes, I am aware that Sam Harris claims that science can tell us what is moral, but so far his arguments fall far short.

NOTE TO WOULD-BE COMMENTERS: Please do not comment if you have not actually read (not skimmed, READ) the post. Also, before you write a comment about how Dawkins and others (i.e., persons whose credentials you think I should not question) argue that science refutes the existence of God or should include “the god question”, I recommend a thorough review those arguments (that means more than reading a couple of blog posts by bystanders or comment threads). Their treatment of the subject is much more considered than the oversimplification I’m addressing here and their arguments are not as shallow. Finally, if your plan is to quote from Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World, you might want to read the whole book first.

I was planning a short rant about some ironically irrational arguments made by self-described rationalists at the World Atheist Convention in Dublin a couple of months ago. However, events of the past two weeks have left me frustrated, angry, and a little bit sick. Since they are all connected, I have decided to discuss them together in one long post, broken into three parts for easier reading.

The Nutshell

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. It is clear from the comments on these posts that those who need to are not listening and I am rarely in the mood to spin my wheels. Instead, I will try to focus on the main reason these arguments should not be abandoned: it would be bad Skepticism.

In my opinion, the tone and scope arguments dance around a bigger problem and I do not believe that we can afford to ignore the elephants in the room any longer. We should not give people ‘a pass’ simply because they claim to be on our side.

In both his TAM6 and TAM9 keynote addresses, Neil deGrasse Tyson talked about a letter he wrote to the editor of The New York Times regarding a case in which a teacher was accused of promoting creationist-style anti-science (bold mine):

To the Editor:

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah’s ark carried dinosaurs.

This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it’s about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson
New York, Dec. 19, 2006

Similarly, what 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.

A Tiny Bit of Background

The issues of tone and scope have been widely discussed for years, but Phil Plait’s now famous “Don’t be a Dick” speech at TAM8 has become a centerpiece in the debate over tone and Daniel Loxton has become its whipping boy. Daniel also advocates for the limitation of scope for the movement for several reasons. It is the most basic of these limitations that seem to kick up the most dust: empirical claims. It is the dust around religion that I would like to talk about in these posts.

But before I do, let me say this about tone: decades of research tells us that it matters. The next time you read something like, “Neither method is well-supported” or “They can’t prove that my way doesn’t work”, remember that the Discovery Institute still produces propaganda about the irreducible complexity of baterial flagella, despite having been educated about the clear and indisputable counter-evidence repeatedly over the past decade. Then read Tavris & Aronson’s Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me).

What the research tells us is that swearing, sarcasm, and ridicule are great ways to rally your followers and gain new followers. This behavior polarizes groupthink, excites, incites, strengthens group cohesion, and promotes ‘othering’ of outgroup members. The target of ridicule and sarcasm is extremely likely to polarize as well, adhering more strongly to their beliefs** as those beliefs are threatened. Although direct and non-confrontational criticism of a belief is not likely to change the mind of the believer either, it is a seed with chance to germinate and is less likely to strengthen the belief.

Just so that you don’t think that I am a hypocrite, I will say right now that have very little hope that the targets of my criticisms in these posts will allow anything to grow; that soil is hostile. Planting seeds is not my goal. Okay, enough background. Let’s get back to the point:

Skepticism 2.x has been costly.

It is unclear when the tide turned, but at some point the expansion of skepticism as a movement began to get ugly. With “Skepticism 2.0″, the rise of wonderful and creative independent and grassroots efforts made possible by technology, came a wave of fresh new voices. Unfortunately, this has coincided with changes in culture and education practices which seem to be rooted in the United States, but are spreading beyond our borders very quickly – practices which reinforce shallow thinking when it is accompanied by overconfidence. The result is that too many of the new voices are – to borrow wording from Greg Laden – speaking out of their nether regions.

One factor is that self-identified skeptics in general do not seem to be much more rational than the general public. Intelligence is not enough. A rational person is one who has two things:

1. the tools (knowledge and intelligence) to reason well in a given situation.
2. open-mindedness and flexibility of thought; the ability to consider that their current knowledge might be wrong.

Without both of these characteristics, individuals resolve cognitive dissonance in all manner of ways except the rational way, which is to alter their current knowledge to accommodate new evidence. I do not believe that anyone has done the research, but it makes sense that self-described skeptics and atheists have more of the first characteristic than the general public. Atheism is correlated with education and IQ; it seems reasonable that skepticism would be as well. However, I have seen little evidence that, beyond many successful professional skeptics and scientists, they are any more open-minded or flexible than the general public. In fact, I would not be surprised to find that the opposite is generally true. And although there is “generational” component to this phenomenon, some of the most stubborn people that I have seen in the Q & A sessions at meetings, shouting that “some people are JUST WRONG!!” and putting people into two categories: atheists and irrational people, were middle-aged white men.

The behaviors which, in my opinion, are the most troublesome, are:

• conflating atheism with skepticism. This goes beyond the old arguments about testability and method vs. conclusion. In recent years, I have see these terms used interchangeably far too often. More and more speakers at major conferences (like TAM) have little connection with Skepticism and more atheism-laden conferences are adopting names and promotional language which suggests that the meeting is about Skepticism. I suspect that the overlap of ‘members’ of the atheism and skepticism movements is at the root of this.
• calling for social change related to political ideology or other values. Attempts by Michael Shermer and Sam Harris to promote their values were at least attempts to provide scientific support for those values. More recently Shermer publicly acknowledged (during the climate change panel at TAM8) that political values are outside the scope of Skepticism. However, there remain a large number of Skeptics who continue to argue for the promotion of ‘progressive values’ and Liberal ideology in the name of Skepticism.
• insisting that offending and ridiculing believers is an effective means of outreach.

These behaviors are troublesome because they impair us in various ways. The impairments are severe enough to see daily if one is on the front lines of grassroots work. For example, recruiting students to my campus club was easy. Retaining them was not. Several of my students abandoned the work they’d begun after encounters with other ‘skeptics’ at meetings and online. This happened with students whose beliefs can be described as agnostic and atheist; imagine if any of my recruits were Christians.

Even more troublesome than these behaviors is the uneducated groupthink that arises from these behaviors. By ‘uneducated’ I mean incorrect. Or so far afield that it’s ‘not even wrong’. This ignorance (and refusal to learn) is another very influential factor. If one of the major goals of Skepticism is to educate, shouldn’t we all understand the material?

Arrogance and ignorance, along with some shallow thinking, need only a cause to produce mob behavior. Opinions become stronger, more polarized, and more emotionally-laden they are spewed by overconfident people with an audience. When groupthink grows, hate often grows with it.

There is a very large overlap in the make-up of atheist and skeptic communities. My Facebook friends list is full of people whom I suspect sent requests only because I am an atheist. Despite little interest in atheism or religion, I once supported atheism-related activism. I continue to be a die-hard supporter of secularism. However, I will think twice before supporting any endeavor with the label ‘atheism’ in the future. In my opinion, the current climate of the atheist movement is making the work of Skepticism much more difficult. It has become, in my opinion, a septic tank of arrogance and hate.

For example, when reports spread that the man suspected of killing more than 90 people in Norway was a Christian, I read comment after hate-filled comment on Facebook and Google+ calling for the annihilation of Christians. Comments which claimed that Breivik was mentally ill were quickly attacked under the straw man that mental illness somehow absolves him of responsibility. I don’t happen to agree that an illness is more than an explanation of behavior (even in court, ‘insanity’ is much more than a diagnosis of ‘illness’), but that’s beside the point. What we wish to be true has no bearing on what is true. Even if, as reported at the time, some of the evidence suggested that he committed these acts as part of a God-loving crusade, the idea that he would not have been just as motivated by some other extreme ideology (e.g., anti-capitalism ideology) is absurd and an individual acting alone is much more likely to be mentally ill than to be part of an organized terrorist effort. His manifesto eventually revealed that he was fueled by any ideology that fit into his clearly delusional view of the world.

Some argued that all terrorists are mentally ill; there is no difference between Breivik and an organization like Al-Qaeda. Or they described all terrorists as ‘evil’ – an evil created by religion, as if religion is the only reason that people commit terrible acts. This simply is not reality. Psychologists have studied ‘evil’ relentlessly since the atrocities of the holocaust during World War II and we have learned that average people will commit some fairly heinous acts if situational factors are aligned. If we do not recognize that good, sane people are capable of bad acts, we will be helpless to prevent it. What’s more, such extreme ‘othering’ may make us feel better, but it closes our eyes to our own potential for wrongdoing.

The right-wing propaganda machine has done its best to paint Breivik as an isolated, politically-motivated nut job who was not a Christian. This is clearly wrong. However, painting him as part of a Christian terrorism-laden culture is equally wrong and serves only to fuel even more hatred. Hate breeds hate. Following are some examples of the kind of hate that I see growing among atheists.

A comment on a link to a report that the Westboro Baptists plan to protest at the funerals of the Norway victims made by a now ex-Facebook friend who claims to work for ‘The God Killers Inc’ (and two replies):

“FUCK THE Westboro Baptist Cult, and the God they pray to. I hope someone guns down this whole fucking group of hate fueling motherfuckers.”

“Hopefully the Norwegians will take them into custodian at the airport then fly them far north and dump them on a shrinking iceberg!”

“I always wondered why that hasn’t happened already? What a sad world we live in where innocent children are slaughtered and WBC isn’t? WTF OMG LMFAO…not really :(“

A Status update from the same ‘God Killer’ quoted above:

“Got banned on Teens Need Jesus page for telling the truth on the BS they were slinging trying to suck teens into their cult. Only took 1 day before I got banned this time. The Truth Is Consider A Crime By The Religitards.”

A commenter wrote this about a member of a Christian teens group:

“sick fucks are everywhere and need to be grouped together and sent to antartica or somewhere nice and cold”

…then posted a warning about a Facebook virus without first doing a simple search to find out if it was a hoax (it is).

Another now ex-Facebook friend whose comment, “fucking religitards!” prompted me to visit his wall, which reveals contact information that includes links to several Herbalife sites. His ‘activities and interests’ section includes ‘fuck Walmart’, ‘fuck religion’, ‘profanity’, and ‘rationalism’. Yeah, ‘rationalism’. Because God is fucking stupid and Walmart is fucking evil, but Herbalife really works, right?

Finally, one former Facebook friend blew me away with this series of equal-opportunity status updates and link introductions:

“The fat behind the desk rush said the heat index is all made by the government. And the earth is cooling f ing idiot”
– on an article about Rush Limbaugh

“Xtains fundies are diferent musnutts fundies”

“This guy is bat shit crazy and be taken awaywith men in white coats” – about Glenn Beck

“Pat was funny he’s jusy bat shit crazy now.” – on a post titled Tell MSNBC to Fire Pat Buchanan!

“Another bat shit crazy” – about Donald Trump

“Just found out 22 dems votedfor bonehead biil the f ing retards”

And the shocker (bold mine):

“Hate spreads quickly with the idiots he he bought his clips from the US” – on a link titled Norwegian Shooting Suspect’s ‘Manifesto’ Inspired By American Right-Wing Thinkers

Which was followed the next day by:

“F ing republicnuts I hope they get what coming to them” – on an Article in The Daily called How Republicans Screwed the Pooch

When I can’t tell the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’, there are no good guys.

And this leads me to something I’ve been trying to write about for weeks. In Part II I will discuss examples of irrationality and hypocrisy at the World Atheist Convention.

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

**In my writings, the word “belief” refers to anything that an individual holds to be true. This includes those things that we accept on faith, because of convincing evidence, or as a philosophical conclusion.

This post may sound condescending and perhaps it is. Self-righteousness is not my intention, but I am well aware that some may see it differently. The alternative is to keep my mouth shut and pretend that all is well.

All is not well.

I have been very disturbed by something that I have seen far too much of in the community recently. It is not new, but it was very salient right now and it broke my heart.

I feel that I must also acknowledge the fact that behavior in some arenas has left me angry, outraged, and even queasy. But this post is about skeptics and skepticism.

You see, it is obvious that an uncomfortably large portion of people calling themselves skeptics and skepticism activists and advocates are under the impression that the definition of “skepticism” is one or more of the following:

• liberalism
• humanism
• secularism
• atheism
• negotiable
• a refuge for people who felt like outcasts in high school

Following are some quotes which led me to this conclusion. I will not provide the names (I’m sure Google will help you with that if you must know) because none of them are unique. Each has been stated by at least one other person, although perhaps not in the same words. And some of these go back a few months.

I was under the impression that Skepticism was about questioning norms and creating change.

It’s [skepticism] not an either/or scenario (social justice movement OR tool), it’s whatever you want it to be.

Skepticism means something different to all of us.

Then you are using Skepticism as a social movement.

I will say this again because it is important enough to repeat: this is heartbreaking.

This is heartbreaking because it means that the movement has succeeded in attracting people who are willing to identify themselves as skeptics, but it has failed miserably in its cause: promoting skepticism. A friend whose interaction with the community is minimal summed it up nicely: The price of widespread acceptance is widespread ignorance.

The scope of skepticism and the line between atheism and skepticism have been discussed at length by many people who clearly understand the issues. There are philosophical and historical arguments which, settled or not, tend to be central in rational discussions of the topic.

It is not these arguments that prompted me to write this entry. It is not the people making these arguments who worry me.

It is the people who have either forgotten or never knew that skepticism is about epistemology; it is about how we know. I would like to think that people devoting their time and energy to a cause want to understand what it is they are working toward.

First, let’s establish that I didn’t make this up.

UK Skeptics:

Skepticism is an honest search for knowledge. It is an approach to claims akin to the scientific method. It is a powerful and positive methodology (a collection of methods of inquiry) that is used to evaluate claims and make decisions. It is used to search for the (provisional) truth in matters and to make decisions that are based on sound reasoning, logic, and evidence.

Suite 101

Skepticism, a form of evidence-based reasoning, is a way of knowing that weighs evidence and prior plausibility in determining if a claim is true… Skepticism is not a religion or life philosophy. It tells a person not what to think, but how to know. Skepticism provides time-tested tools used long in science and academia that give the best possibility of finding the truth.

Radio Freethinker

Skepticism is about the search for knowledge. Its foundations are the scientific method and relying on empirical evidence. Skepticism is the process of applying critical thinking, reason, and reality to a given matter. A skeptic is someone who applies vigorous and systematic research to any claim, regardless of its political, religious, or social implications…
Skepticism is not a belief system. Skepticism is a methodology.

Drinking Skeptically

Skepticism is a method of examining claims about the world. The skeptical “toolbox” includes a reliance upon reason, critical thinking, and a desire for verifiable, testable evidence about particular claims (especially extraordinary ones). Usually, the “skeptical way of thinking” is embodied in the scientific method.

You may redefine the word if you like, but then you are just making stuff up.

Notice that all of these definitions describe a process, not a conclusion. They describe a search for truth, not a search for values. In fact, there is a clear and very scientific statement that values are irrelevant: “A skeptic is someone who applies vigorous and systematic research to any claim, regardless of its political, religious, or social implications.”

While it is certainly the case that a large portion of the community supports socially liberal ideals, the promotion of those values is not skepticism.

What’s more, the promotion of values cannot be included in this pursuit.

Why are values and morals outside the scope of skepticism or science? Because they make us biased.

The most influential factor in evaluating arguments is something called the belief bias. Look it up.

Bias is not always a bad thing when we are making decisions about actions to take, such as whether we should donate to a cause or take in an animal that needs a home, but bias is our worst enemy when we are looking for truth. Biases lead us to misinterpret, misattribute, and misunderstand. They lead to mistakes. They are the reason we need science in the first place.

So, let me summarize this:

Skeptics assert that the scientific method is the best means for both acquiring knowledge and for testing claims. By definition, the scientific method is one in which we minimize human error by removing human biases from the process. This drastically reduces the probability that we will draw the wrong conclusion.

The skepticism movement is an organized effort to apply scientific skepticism to claims, thereby reducing the harm that belief in those claims causes. We apply skepticism to determine what is true. We use that information to reduce the dissemination of untruths.

Truth is not value and facts are not morals.

Furthermore, if you refuse to set aside your values and morals when considering whether something is true, by definition, you are not rational.

In my opinion, if you do not understand the fundamental concept that personal values and opinions may be informed by scientific inquiry, but cannot be considered in the methods that are science and skepticism, then you are not a skeptic.