Skepticism and Freethought as a Lifestyle

Here's the thing I always have to remind myself of: this freethinking thing, this rationalism and skepticism, it isn't a hat to put on and take off as I like. It doesn't work like that.

We see it all the time. Think of your Francis Collins types, who play the skeptical thought game as a matter of course in their jobs as scientists, but find ways to shove it aside in other matters. Atoms shall be questioned, the resurrection of Jesus shall not. I mention Collins because he has been a topic of conversation i

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n the atheist, skeptical and scientific blogospheres since his nomination for the NIH post. While his professional credentials are impeccable, his naive pronouncements on his religion are baffling when seen through the light of his day job and the mindset it demands. It's all a bit Jekyll and Hyde, really, only without the bloody murders. One moment he is Mr. Science, and the next he is Mr. Evangelical.
What's important though, I think, is that we are all Francis Collins to one extent or another. No matter how hard we try to be rational, to "freethink," to engage our skepticism in all things, we fail. And that's okay, really. We're human, it's going to happen. It's the larger process that's important. It's part of the permanent learning curve. If you ever think you have it figured it out, that you've "arrived," you really, really haven't.


I can't rag on Collins too hard, because really, I'm not much better. In my case it isn't a matter of setting aside skepticism to protect my religion -- it's setting aside skepticism to protect my bloody little illusions about myself. I've struggled, for years, with depression, anxiety. General screwed-upness. I've made bad choices, set up bad patterns of behavior. I hurt myself really, really badly in the process.

The last few years, I've been piecing it all back together, finding a way past the stupid thinking. That, let me tell you, is some hard work. Those stupid thoughts are habits, burned into your brain, and getting rid of them is a long, torturous process. It takes constant skepticism -- asking yourself questions all the time: is this right, is this true, is this real? Is this what I really want?  And sometimes, frankly, I slack off and go into a minor nosedive. I turn off the skepticism, don't question the assumptions I make about myself and my life, and usually end up the worse for wear.

I've been in one of those recently -- nothing major, nothing that will involve needless melodrama. But enough that over the weekend -- confronted with one small but frustrating problem created by it all -- I hit a minor funk, followed quickly by a flurry of thinking and planning and changing things to get back on track.

It's hard to make the skepticism a habit. Our brains just aren't designed that way, at least not completely. But it's nice to know that I've succeeded, in a small way. That I can apply it to all the areas of my life, not just to academic questions of science and social policy. Not all the time. Not completely. Not always with great success. But I'm working on it.

Thomas Paine pwns organized religion, part 1: Miracles

I've finished Part I of The Age of Reason. It's full of excellent, but it's the last chapter, Chapter XVII, that really shines. You know it's going to be good with a title like this: Of the Means Employed in All Times, And Almost Universally, To Deceive the Peoples.

Paine identifies three things that are used as means of deception: Mystery,

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Miracle, and Prophecy. Mystery he dispenses with in a prefunctory manner. Anyone who has heard George Carlin's old routines about growing up Catholic will be familiar with it -- it's a dodge, nothing else, something with which to shove uncomfortable questions away.


Miracles, though, that he spends some time on. I loved his discussion of miracles, not only because of the devastating fusillade that he levels against the notion, but because it exposes an aspect of belief in miracles I had never really considered before: the incredible arrogance it betrays.

His main attack on the idea of miracles is that the whole idea is presaged on knowing what is possible and what is not:

Mankind have conceived to themselves certain laws, by which what they call nature is supposed to act; and that a miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of those laws. But unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and of what are commonly called the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us wonderful or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting.

Essentially, we don't know all the laws of nature, and unless we do, it is premature to declare an event as being beyond their power, not to mention a bit presumptuous. Paine goes on illustrate with example (how a man floating high in the air would've seemed "miraculous" to people, but then balloons were invented) and then moves on to the second objection, namely Art: it is possible to create the appearance of a thing. He notes a performance in Paris wherein "ghosts" were shown, not to bamboozle, but for entertainment. The effect, he says, was quite astonishing. So, you have to not only know the full extent of natural law, but you have to know how far Art can go in creating illusion, before you can make a claim that something is a miracle.

It really strikes me, mulling over his argument, the arrogance that belief in miracles entails. To claim such knowledge! To claim to know what exactly is possible and impossible, not only in nature, but in art! What amazes me, over two centuries later, is that people still make that kind of claim. Science has been sitting us on our asses again and again. At each stage we find new marvels, new things we didn't even know could exist, and we also learn about whole new realms of knowledge in which we are ignorant. And Art? Could the performers of Paine's day even dream of the kinds of illusion that are created in today's movies, or that magicians like Penn and Teller perform in Vegas?

And they call rationalists arrogant. Hah!

Coming up soon: Prophecy, and the other line of attack that Paine uses on Miracles. Or, why Paine, as a believer in God, is really a bit perturbed the very notion.