Tag: skepticism

Yesterday, Dr. Novella (my hero) made a post at Skepticblog on this topic: Science and Religion – Again

It’s really hard for me to say much more than /agree to that post. The man is more coherent and eloquent than I think I’ve ever been in my wildest dreams.

I will say that this goes a long way toward elaborating on the utter discomfort I’ve felt some times at skeptical events. It’s no secret that I’m an atheist, and that I don’t personally have much use for faith, let alone organized religion. But I start feeling really squirmy when some of my fellow non-believers get frothy enough to declare that someone can’t possibly be a good skeptic if they’re not also an atheist. I’m really not a fan of purity tests when it comes to inclusion in a social group; once you get to that point, it seems that a rapid slide in to savaging one another for not being whatever enough is almost inevitable.

Now, this is not to say that I think many religious/faith-based claims should be given a free pass. But this is the big point, as stated by Dr. Novella:

It is important, in my opinion, for skeptics to be crystal clear on this point, because often the purveyors of pseudoscience will try to evade falsification or the negative effects of evidence on their claims by positioning the claim outside of science. At that point the skeptic must acknowledge that science can no longer demonstrate that the claim is likely to be false, but rather the claim is no longer scientific and can only be an article of faith.

If there’s a claim that you can build a scientific test around, it’s fair game and shouldn’t be given a pass. Faith healing? You can test that – if the tumor hasn’t been prayed away, the answer to that claim is pretty apparent. Someone says that they can talk to your mom’s ghost? If they can’t answer questions about her without resorting to google or cold reading, there you go. If nothing else, claims like that are things you can put in to a really nice “If… then…” statement. “IF that is real Bigfoot hair, THEN it definitely shouldn’t have the DNA of a yak,” or “IF homeopathy works, THEN it will have a statistically significant effect in randomized, placebo-controlled trials” or “IF the Shroud of Turin is a real artifact, THEN it will carbon date to the appropriate age and there will be evidence that the image is created with blood rather than paint.”

But if someone tells me, “I believe in God because I can feel His love in my heart,” well… there isn’t a lot I can do with that. Let me see… IF you really feel God’s love in your heart, THEN… uh… THEN…

I suppose I could get in to a philosophical argument at that point, because once you’ve hit the faith-zone, that’s all you have left. But frankly, I don’t have a whole lot of use for philosophical anything, let alone philosophical atheism. (Sorry, guys.) My own conclusions are based on what I feel is a lack of convincing evidence for the existence of a god, rather than long-winded debates about the existence of evil or what-have-you in the world. Because when you come down to it, my non-belief is the result of evidence that cannot be tested in such a way as to provide a solid conclusion. I took a look around and decided that, well, with that we’ve got there’s no reason to actually believe in a god, but I’ll keep an eye out to see if things change.

But you know what? I think it’s just as fair that someone else looked around and decided that, well, with what we’ve got there’s no reason to not believe in a god. And hopefully they’ll keep an eye out to see if things change as well.

Daniel Loxton has written an interesting post over at Skepticblog about the role of skeptics in science. There’s quite the lively discussion going on in the comments of the post, as you can imagine.

For the most part, I agree with him. I’m in an interesting position as a skeptic with just enough science education (woohoo, undergrad degree!) to make me dangerous, so to speak. I find it fascinating that the skeptic movement has come up swinging when it comes to evolution denial, whether in the form of Intelligent Design or good old Creationism, but seems to be chasing its own tail when it comes to the science surrounding climate change. Now, I think part of the problem here is that the climate science is relatively new – at least in our understanding of it – compared to evolution, or geology, or medicine. Part of it may even be the subconscious realization that the climate science is saying something very scary about the way we live and the future that may be in store for us. I’ve honestly found it rather infuriating.

This actually makes me think of the little speech that Dr. Farmer gave at the department graduation last week. He told us that part of the importance of having our degrees is that it means we don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. We have the tools necessary to think for ourselves. Now, I’m sure this sentiment could be interpreted as something that supports the climate change deniers, for example. They’re just refusing to take the scientists’ word for it. Fight the power!

I couldn’t disagree with that more.

Having critical thinking skills and an understanding of basic science doesn’t mean that within us all is the power to take raw data and interpret is perfectly, or come to a reliable expert opinion after staring at tide gauge graphs for a couple of hours. What it does mean is that we don’t have to take, say, Al Gore’s word that climate change is a real thing and is happening. Rather, because we know how science works, we know where to go looking for the papers and the research. We can find a reliable body of experts in their field, such as the IPCC, because we know what sort of methodology and review are indicative of robust research.

This leads to how I often respond to just about any scientific issue that doesn’t involve geology (and many that do, since I’m certainly no expert); well, I don’t know enough to have my own opinion, but these other guys (e.g. the IPCC) have some good credentials and evidence, so I’ve got to go with them. The real pitfall here is that it’s very easy to get caught in the same trap as Randi did with the “Petition Project.” Some denialists are quite well camouflaged, and when they’re saying what you’d like to hear anyway, it becomes something of a siren song. Determining just who you ought to be listening to because you lack the necessary scientific background on your own is a gargantuan skeptical task in and of itself.

Skepticism works best when we’re going after pseudoscience because pseudoscience is at its heart bullshit lovingly dressed up in a lab coat. It takes twenty minutes on Google to become an expert (so to speak) on why homeopathy is crap because the base claim is so ridiculous in the face of reality. Psuedoscience and the paranormal often have only a lack of critical thinking or a dearth of common knowledge to support them; we bring in the “big guns” of basic scientific thought, and we win. The only expertise you need for these fights is in the field of critical and scientific thinking.

Once you get in to something like climate science, however, it’s time to admit that just one’s expertise at being a skeptic is no longer sufficient. When you’re wading in to a scientific field hip deep, you actually need expertise in that field to understand its subtleties and its messy parts, its strange interpretations and incredibly counter intuitive bits. At that point, whether you like it or not, you start relying on consensus and experts in the field. Or, I suppose, you can start sounding like an arrogant jerk who thinks that he understands tidal fluctuations when coupled with changes in the Earth’s geoid better than some schmoe who just (psh, whatever) did his PhD in it.

Critical thinking skills don’t give you the expertise to interpret data in a field that you haven’t been trained in. But it does give you the ability to detect that whiff of bullshit on the wind when an anti-vaccinationist waves around a study with a pathetically small sample size and some very dubious methodology in it. To rephrase what Dr. Farmer had to say, having a good science education means discerning just whose word is worth taking.