I’d be curious to know if Dr. Shermer gets any really nasty reactions from some of the folks who make outlandish claims.

I saw the 20/20 interview, and it was great. The Edwards guy is a tremendous fraud — I feel sorry for the people that believe him. But Dr. Shermer is hitting people like that where it really hurts — their wallets.

Do they ever react in a threatening way?

How do we ensure that we maintain a healthy amount of skepticism towards radical new ideas while at the same time ensuring that we remain open-minded enough to not dismiss them without due consideration? I suspect that the answer is to simply subject all new ideas to the same level of scientific scrutiny. But in reality, is this always the case? Sometimes an area of research may be “stained” by the claims of pseudoscientists, frauds and charlatans, thus making it difficult for any actual scientific study to ever be taken seriously (e.g. parapsychology, Atlantis, UFO’s, etc.). Other times, a sound new scientific theory may be at odds with an existing theory in which many scientists have a heavily vested interest.

An example of the latter that comes to mind is The Great Sphinx Debate, in which geologists Schoch and West claimed that the Sphinx shows classic patterns of erosion by rainfall, thus dating it to within 5000 and 7000 B.C.E.–in stark contrast to the accepted archaeological dating of 2520-2494 B.C.E. The ensuing debate between geologists and egyptologists, who claimed that the geologists’ dating would topple the entire framework that they had painstakingly built up over many years and is not supported by any other archaological evidence, became extremely heated, indicating (to me) that scientists are human too and are not nearly so detached and objective as we would like to believe.

Another example is the work of geophysicist J. Marvin Herndon (interviewed here on SciScoop last April), who has spent ten years trying to convince the scientific community to even listen to his theory that a nuclear reactor resides at the Earth’s core, let alone debate his evidence.

So, in an age when scientific study is becoming big business, when one’s research grant (and sometimes one’s very employment) depends on the frequency of one’s published papers and books, when there are enormous pressures to find and publish evidence supporting one’s own theories while ignoring any non-supporting evidence, how can we ensure that we are as skeptical as we need to be but not more than is justified?

First off, let me say thank you, Sweetwind, for initiating a new interview on SciScoop!!! These are a very good feature I’d love to see continued, but I’m just not the guy to do it. Anybody that wants to get one of these rolling, I say go for it!!!

I will put my thinking cap on and try to come up with some good questions. For now, here’s one:

What’s an appropriate “skeptic” attitude towards the frontier mathematical fields of cellular automatia / chaos / fractals? In particular, how does a skeptic reconcile convincing visual evidence and patterns of apparent deeply fundamental forces at work with biological processes that work in ways that are seemingly totally unrelated to these mathematical ones?

In Part I of a recent article here on SciScoop I effectively used the “Wolfram” argument in trying to convince people that math has a deep philosophical component. I said look at this math, it produces things that look like ferns, wow, that means the math is almost mythically special and has to be tied to some special attachment to the Universe. Wolfram did the same thing with mollusk coloration patterns that look like they’re generated with (mathematical) cellular automation porcesses he outlines. Gee, both ferns and mollusks sure LOOK good as an example of Mystical Something, and they’re certainly intriguing enough to merit continuing legitimate interest in the math, but as a hard-headed scientist I still have nagging doubts and a sense of disbelief.

There seems to be no tangible physical process that biological cells can go through during growth to match how cellular automations and especially fractals generate similar-looking patterns. For example, fractals when they generate fern like shapes do so by reeling off a series of points that are only unconnected dots until you get enough of them plotted to visualize – THEN the fern like shape jumps out at you. It’s almost like Impressionist art. How can there be a corresponding Impressionist biology? How can a cell react to another cell that is so far away in space and time that it hasn’t even formed yet in in the area it needs to be in to complete the fern-shape?

Gee, I go off to lunch, come back, and this comment has two “5″ ratings attached to it. Weird. I write a deeply philosophical article about Why Math Is Mystically Special over the weekend, and in the VERY NEXT ARTICLE POSTED I’m leaving comments saying why I have trouble believing what I myself wrote about. Talk about feeling conflicted. I WANT to believe Math Is Mystical, but deep in my heart of hearts I’m not totally convinced of it myself…

I’m doing the background research for Part II this week anyway. Stay tuned.

…(I hope) is cognitive dissonance :-)

That’s the word I was searching for. Or two words. Very interesting article, thanks. Now I’m working up a conspiracy theory about fractals…

I know dissonance and consonance only in terms of poetry.  ”Cognitive dissonance” certainly seems to describe RJ’s perplexity over Mystical (Maybe) Math, though, more accurately than “schizo.”  I could be wrong, but I don’t think trying to sort out possibly conflicting viewpoints means one is “schizo” — just analytical :).  

Mr. Shermer:

I suggest here that skepticism cannot possibly establish good intellectual foundations for the future, because it fails to market rational ideals beyond basic self-interest. And who ever cared to sacrifice himself for anything of value when self-interest was the aim? Really.

In the first place, it’s not good enough to merely defy an idea because it does not appeal to one’s emotional state. The essential proof that skepticism often does this is in the fact that it cannot fairly analyze any faith based (biblical) idea without having an emotional reaction to it. Even logic has its basis in the idea that there is a wrong way to view an idea and a “right” way. Barring such tools of ethics and morals, even skepticism itself has absolutely no directional means to moderate its deductions and thus cannot rightly speak on what should be considered worthy and valuable.

Dissenters are a dime a dozen. But where are sincere men that have a good heart and a strong mind? Good grief! THAT is what we should be considering noteworthy!

-C

Dr. Shermer – your writing seems to focus on what I would call “extreme” examples of people’s gullibility, things that to any well-informed person are obviously nonsense. But the gullibility and wishful thinking extend very far into the rest of our society too. This covers a very wide range – the logic of investing and shopping, gambling, news media decisions on what to report, legislation that sounds good but often does nothing effective, or even the opposite of what it purports; conflating people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, etc.

Do you think this is just because the natural human state is one of laziness and real wishful thinking? Or is it because people are actively rejecting rationality? Or are we facing a conspiracy of obfuscation from a cabal that really does know what’s going on? Or perhaps all three?

I have recently read extensively in the areas of environment and energy policy, and I have been just astonished at the poor level of exposition of the real issues. People like Amory Lovins and Jeremy Rifkin seem to have either lost the capability to think clearly in their ubiquitous communications, or else are engaged in deliberate obfuscations. It’s just as bad or worse on the anti-environmentalist side, with the right-wing “debunkers” of global warming, ozone, and all those environmental regulations that hamper free enterprise. The whole hydrogen economy proposals make no rational sense to me, unless the intention is to expand fossil fuel and nuclear power plants… is hydrogen really the best way to store electric energy? What about extending the grid to the streets so our cars can run like electric trams and train cars? But no, they attack the “conventional electric power grid” as being “only 33 percent efficient” but that’s not the grid, that’s the thermal to electric conversion efficiency of any steam turbine generator and it’s going to be there whether you turn it into hydrogen at the power plant or transmit the electricity over wires (the wires themselves are typically well over 90% efficient in delivering power). And they attack the grid in other ways and advocate for distributed power production – which makes no economic or reliability sense to me. Rifkin writes an entire book on “entropy” that preaches doom and gloom in a way that no scientist should recognize as reality – a perfect counterexample to Rifkin’s argument is life itself, successfully recycling its own elements with the energy input of the sun, for hundreds of millions of years, but it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him. Well, I could go on and on here…

So are we just becoming increasingly susceptible to hucksters and the rhetoricians out there? Is it because they don’t teach rhetoric in schools any more, so people don’t recognize when they’re being deceived? I don’t want to get too paranoid here, but frankly the level of discourse on policy and substantive issues in the world today scares me…

Dr. Shermer, I’d like to know if you live a life which is rational in every regard, or do you have your little pecadillos? Do you, for instance, ever knock on wood when you make an optimistic proclamation, or do you ever sneak a glance at your horoscope in the morning paper?

Stephen Jay Gould once wrote “tangential thinking by combination of unexpected items may be a more important component of creativity than logical deduction,” and I think of that every time I do a Tarot reading to try to solve a problem :-) I’m definitely a skeptic, and I don’t expect to find any solutions in the cards that aren’t already somewhere in my head. But I often find that reading the cards helps me plumb the depths of my mind and come up with novel insights and approaches.

Do you think that some weird beliefs provide advantages to their holders? And that these beliefs could prove to be useful tools, even if wielded by a skeptic? Or should they all be dumped? (And for full disclosure, I admit to occasionally sneaking a glance at my horoscope in the morning paper… astrology is total bunk, of course, but the horoscope usually gives good advice which it would behoove anyone to take on any given day!)

Calia, I would submit that skepticism is not in the business to “market” ideas at all – it is a methodology used to evaluate the validity and value of ideas offered by others. In most cases, the person offering the idea is acting in THEIR self-interest, because acceptance of their idea / philosophy / religion by the masses will result in great gains of status and resources to them. By using skepticism as an evaluating methodology in this marketplace of ideas, a good intellectual foundation for the future results spontaneously because good, valid ideas are incorporated and bad, invalid ones are rejected.

And I am surprised you think people don’t sacrifice themselves on the altar of self-interest. They do it for the self-interests of others every day when they tithe and pay taxes and punch timeclocks in jobs they’d rather not do and fight wars they didn’t start and strap on suicide bomber jackets. They do it for their own self-interests every time they commit any crime big or small that enriches themselves, from flicking their cigarette butt out the car window (a pet peeve of mine) to multi-billion dollar accounting fraud.

Skepticism is not an emotional process, in my opinion, and actually seeks to curtail emotional envolvment with an idea as a potential source of unwanted bias. So your claim that skepticism rejects ideas based on their lack of appeal to the current emotional state of the skeptic is invalid, I think. Saying that skeptics cannot evaluate the validity of a religion without becoming emotional and emotionally biased in the course of their analysis is just plain wrong.

I think a more valid statement is that people of religious persuasion cannot evaluate the criticisms presented to them by skeptics without becoming emotional themselves. This is understandable. People of religious faith believe they have a LOT at stake with their religion – the eternal conquering of death, unlimited access to the love and benevolence of an omnipotent father figure, and protection and escape from a site of eternal pain and torture. Plus, religious believers generally have the secular advantages of belonging to a strong, supportive group or clan much larger than their immediate family, a desirable situation that is harder and harder to find in our mobile, transient, modern society. With these personal advantages and resources at stake, naturally religious believers feel threatened when a critic comes along and with mere words acts to take this from them and refuses to accept it for themselves.

Our brains are hardwired to kick in with emotions when we feel so threatened. Anger and its variations are intended to provide adrenaline rushes when we are in danger to make us fight harder and increase our chances of survival. Add to a Believer, what could be a greater danger and threat to their survival than an enemy who would take from them the salvation of their very soul and their membership in a supportive group? Not with fists or swords or guns but mere words, no less? Supression of survival-instinct emotions in religious adherents under these circumstances is impossible to imagine. It’s why there are words like jihad.

And finally, why would you WANT to bar tools like ethics and morals? These are the core components and ideas of religion that are of proven value to society whether there is a burning hell or not and whether or not there are streets of gold in heaven or not. The whole point of being a skeptic is to identify good ideas as well as bad ones. If you throw out tools like ethics and morals, you’re not a skeptic, you’re an anarchist. Which is very close to an antichrist.

Finally, you close with what is the key challenge facing America today, in my opinion. You state that dissenters are a dime a dozen but what is needed today are sincere men with a good heart and a strong mind. I submit to you that dissenters CAN BE sincere men with good hearts and strong minds. When dissention is stigmatized, as it is in your post and well on the way to being today in America, then what is the corrective force available to society to correct that which is incorrect and wrong?

Mr. Roberson:

There is likely nothing intrinsically wrong with being skeptical.   The key issue tho is for what cause?  

So it is my contention here that we live in an age that has us so saturated in self, we don’t even feel it unless the potential for its demise becomes apparent to us!  It is also possibly that the fear of making a “wrong” choice is what that causes people to find secular forms of skepticism plausible and compelling.  But in essence, skepticism mostly exists to destroy boundaries.  It is true, at times, that some boundaries need to be broken down, and reconstructed with a better model, but never at the expense of the core principles that cause us to look for truth in the first place.  If one is breaking something apart to find “truth”, he cannot simultaneously discount the possibility of the existence of it and actually expect to produce anything of lasting worth or substance.    

Reason is not as primary to skepticism as most who are engaged in such dialogue would have us think.  If it were, everyone would rush to adopt a moral code – which is nearly parallel to a mathematical means to create a certain amount of precision and harmony in one’s life.  That is not the case, however.  The skeptic usually casts a wary eye on moral codes, and especially if they are more stringent.

I doubt with all my heart that skepticism exists for other people.  And my core point here is that skepticism does not do away with emotional reactions or flawed thinking.  It just introduces a different form of it.          

-cal

(And about this statement: “And finally, why would you WANT to bar tools like ethics and morals?”  This wasn’t my intended context at all.  Apologies if the point turned out to be ambiguous)

Way back in high school geometry I remember a fellow student asking (with some annoyance) what good it was to learn how to do a proof. The teacher replied that it is so you learn to think logically, and I thought that was a good answer, and sufficient justification to keep it in the curriculum. But it wasn’t until I went to college that I learned about things like confirmation bias and the fundamental attribution error, and knowing about these tricks our minds tend to play on us is also important for being able to think clearly. Dr. Shermer, what would you like to see added to the standard secondary (or even primary) school curriculum to help our children learn to think logically?

As a former cyclist myself, I am curious as to your viewpoint on how strenuous athletics (i.e. your RAAM experiences) affect the creative and analytic process. Do you find that physically taxing efforts enable moments (or longer I suppose!) of mental clarity — making breakthroughs and insights that may not otherwise be stumbled upon?

Cal –

OK, it’s progress, I guess, that you acknowledge the possibility that there’s nothing wrong with being skeptical. As a scientist / scientist-wannabe, I personally take that axiom as a given and don’t really understand how somebody could entertain the possibility of it being otherwise. Under what circumstances could it be “wrong” to be a skeptic?

I totally disagree that skepticism exists mostly to destroy boundries. The only boundries that exist in this context are the boundries of beliefs that separate people into various groups of “believers”. Deliberately breaking down such boundries is a political-type action to create a new, larger group of people with the unifying belief structure of the group who broke down the boundary, enhancing their resources and status.

Such political-type actions are by definition not the action of a skeptic for two reasons.

First, a skeptic is not trying to win converts. A true skeptic wants to find “the truth” for her own personal edification. If others come to accept / believe what a skeptic has cobbled together for herself as a consistent belief system, that’s nice. But a true skeptic would continue to hold to her perceived consistent belief system even if it were rejected permanently by everyone else in the world.

Second, a skeptic is willing to become a convert. All the skeptic asks is for her questions about perceived shortcomings in the belief systems of others to be answered to the skeptic’s satisfaction. If the group inside the boundry of a belief system is able to do this, a true skeptic will be willing to take on their beliefs as part of her own.

I agree there are people who attack the beliefs of others to enhance their own situation by resource takeover. These people are not skeptics. They are opportunists, seeking to take advantage of people with weak faith in dubious beliefs. They may use some of the logic and reasoning skills and tools of the skeptic, but this does not make them a skeptic. Screwdrivers and hammers may be used by both murderers and saints.

You say you doubt with all your heart that skepticism exists for other people. I offer myself as a counterexample to prove you wrong. If you wish to believe in Christianity or Islam or Wicca or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism or any religion that has a rewarding afterlife as a basic tenet as a part of your personal belief system, fine with me. I have no desire whatsoever to disillusion you or deprogram you or come between you and your Higher Power. If your Higher Power does indeed truly exist, I in fact would love to get onboard your train before it leaves the station!

Before I buy a ticket, though, I’ve got a few questions to ask. If you can’t answer them, then I can’t in good conscience incorporate what you believe into my own belief structure. If the questions I feel compelled to ask bother you and make you doubt and / or question your own belief structure, that’s your problem, not mine. No, I’m not offering to replace your suddenly-fractured belief system with something else of “lasting worth and substance” – I never ever claimed to have that to give to you. I was just asking some questions, and that’s what makes me a skeptic. Somebody offering you a bottle of snake-oil to replace what they’ve “destroyed” or “taken” from you by asking questions isn’t a skeptic – that’s the opportunist I was talking about, not me.

So you see, we are in agreement – If one is breaking something apart to find “truth”, she cannot simultaneously discount the possibility of the existence of it and actually expect to produce anything of lasting worth or substance. But your true statement does not invalidate the goal of a skeptic, which is to ferret out the truth. If a skeptic “breaks” something thru scrutiny of it, it was never the truth in the first place, nor a thing of lasting worth and substance. However, if a skeptic scrutinizes something by asking questions and it DOES NOT BREAK, then that “something” IS a thing of lasting worth and substance – and the skeptic will assimilate it into her own belief system.

My main point: skepticism is not a process to CREATE something of lasting worth and substance, only to IDENTIFY it. The skeptic creates nothing; she only laboriously identifies what has been there all along. And when she succeeds in identifying it, her faith in it will be much stronger than will be the faith of someone who accepted it uncritically in the first place. By this token, skepticism should be an accepted tenet in any religion as a path to stronger faith…

Let me end by suggesting there is very little relationship between reason and moral codes. EVERYBODY has a moral code – they’re born as infants with it: The World Revolves Around Me. As they grow up, children modify their initial moral code to take others into consideration. By the time you become an adult, these modifications to your initial moral code are called laws if you can be imprisoned by society for breaking them, and ettiquette if you can’t. Reason has little to do with acceptance of these factors; socialization does. Often socialization is not very rational, especially when that socialization includes a strong religious component, and can result in excessively stringent moral codes that including things like racial segregation in the South and burqas in the Middle East that skeptics question precisely because their tenets are not self consistent, rational, or sometimes even moral. Far from rationality being an enemy of appropriate moral codes, I believe it is a legitimate path to developing them.

Finally, to be honest, I have at present only a vague and passing familiarity with Michael Shermer’s writings, tho I certainly approve of and agree with what I HAVE read of them in the past. Certainly this week and in the near future I will be reading more of his stuff. I make no claim here to be carrying the Official Skeptic Banner, whatever that is; all of these definitions and thoughts on skepticism are mine and mine alone, and certainly not all Michael Shermer’s. I’d be willing to bet he probably wouldn’t take too much issue with what I’ve said here, tho…

An excerpt from my favorite Indian philosopher/theologian, who virtually always breaks my heart and brings me down to size when he addresses skepticism.  Hope that it’s relevant to your questions.

by Ravi Zacharias
Questions I Would Like to Ask God

“..But there is a second question that is more burdensome and worrisome. Even the skeptic with a blind spot can see this one clearly. Over the years, I have come up against this one repeatedly from the university floor. In fact, just hours before penning this article I was faced with the same question from a fellow passenger on a plane. The range of the challenge is wide but its focal point is the same. It is this: History has not painted a good picture of the way in which Christianity has made some of its gains. Politicized, militarized and empowered in numerous ways, it has run roughshod over people and often has left a debris-ridden if not bloody trail in its wake. Why has this happened? Were such carriers of the message truly persuaded that they were doing the will of God or deep within them did they know that theirs was an effort to devalue others and to use God for their own purpose? Spiritual talk with power motives is the deadliest of all plagues. I would long to know the inside story of such lives.

The reason I raise this goes beyond demagoguery and power-mongering. The question filters down deep into our own personal lives. After years in the ministry I have seen so much and heard so much that leaves a puzzlement beyond measure. Why is there so much belligerence in lives that speak of grace? Why is so much hate and anger vented by many who name the name of Christ? After all, Paul does charge Timothy to watch his doctrine and conduct. To quote my fellow passenger, who happened to be from the East,”Christians are like vegetarians who harp on the virtue of vegetarianism but have a meat market of their own downtown.” It is true that some of the most obnoxious letters we receive are from some of the most pious sounding people. Some of the greatest rancor vented is often done in the name of righteousness, and I have frequently sat at my desk or laid my head down at the pillow at night and asked the Lord, “Why? How can this be?” Oh, I know the common answers to these issues. We all do. But deep inside there is a strug-gle. Are those who are governed by such blatant viola-tions of the Gospel aware of their hypocrisy or is there a pitiful desensitization that has plundered the heart? Where is the personal relationship we proclaim when He seems so absent in the living? This was the first major question posed to me when I became a Christian. A Hindu friend of mine asked my brother-in-law and me when we were new believers, “Is conversion truly a supernatural work or is it all just psychological and affects some while it does not change others?”

It may be that when the time comes to sit across the table from the Lord of history the answer to the skeptic and the believer will be more visible than it will be in need of utterance. Ironically, the clue came to me in the form of a question inscribed on a painting I saw in a pastor’s office in Puerto Rico. Just before we went into the sanctuary, my eyes caught a glimpse of it directly in front of his desk. It was the picture of a little girl holding the hand of Jesus, even as He tenderly gazed at her. She was clasping His hand as she asked Him, “Que paso con tus manos?”–”What happened to your hands?” That question, I suspect, contains the answer to the arrogance of the skeptic and the duplicity of the believer. It carries Larry King’s question to a more profound level. The virgin birth may only prove to the skeptic that naturalism cannot explain the world’s existence, that God has supernaturally intervened in history. He was born of a virgin. In a supernatural framework that is possible. But “What happened to your hands?” answers what it takes to rescue this life of mine from self-serving intellect or from self-glorifying moralizing to others, and brings me to a place from which I no longer live but Christ lives in me. It buries the self that seeks the self and brings to birth the fullest person that God has so uniquely endowed. In the cross I find my definitive loss that I might obtain my greatest gain. Only when the skeptic and the believer can see in my hands the marks that prompt “What happened to your hands?” can life’s questions cease and answers pour forth from the depths of the soul.”

This is sure to be controversial, but here goes.

You have often exposed self-proclaimed psychics as frauds, presumably to enlighten (and thus protect) the public. But there are many cult leaders that also prey upon the susceptible, with much more harmful effects. One could also argue that many accepted religions in the world preach beliefs that cannot be backed up by any scientific evidence, and that some religions are indirectly harmful to people on a global scale, often leading to bigotry, hatred and even war. While many religious institutions undoubtedly have a genuine desire to do good in the world and have helped those in need, there have certainly been numerous allegations and proven instances of religious institutions being highly corrupt. So while many (or all) psychics are hustlers, cult and religious leaders could similarly fit that bill.

So in addition to debunking beliefs in the paranormal, how have you and the Skeptics Society tackled religious beliefs (if at all)? The right to be free from religious persecution is enshrined, as it should be. Yet how does one promote critical thinking when most people in the world believe in a faith that seems to belie critical thinking? How many of us were indoctrinated into our parents’ religion, attending Sunday bible school classes, without once being told that there isn’t really any proof behind what they were teaching. It’s bad enough that we were not encouraged to think for ourselves, but we were actively encouraged not to think for ourselves–to instead “have faith”.

How can we encourage our academic institutions to promote critical thinking while our religious institutions seem to promote the opposite?

Well, after all the words I’ve laid down here on skepticism, Calia, you probably won’t be surprised to find I have few words to say here about Christianity as well. To begin with, the articulate article you posted basically expresses two concepts.

One, people who are Christians can do profoundly terrible things that will make others less likely to accept Christianity today as their personal belief system. Yep, this is true.

Two, people who are Christians can do profoundly good things that will make others more likely to accept Christianity today as their personal belief system. Yep, this is true too.

Neither point – and nothing that anybody who lives today can say or do – addresses the main question I’ve got, to wit:

Almost two thousand years ago in 30 AD, was there or was there not an extraterrestrial with supernatural powers who in front of human witnesses projected his body into another dimension and can even now do the same for other humans upon their biological deaths?

The earliest complete New Testament which says this all really happened is the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus. Both are generally acknowledged to have been written around 350-450 AD with Codex V coming under control of the Vatican library in 1209 AD and Codex S being discovered by Constantine Tischendorf in 1844. The earliest known fragment of the New Testament, written on Egyptian papyrus paper, is the so-called Rylands Papyrus P52, discovered in 1920 and containing a few verses from the book of John dating from around 150 AD. The variety of other early New Testament fragmentary source documentation have been summarized here, and an interesting list of ancient fragments of other Gospels that were never incorporated into the New Testament is here. Rev. Jimmy Williams lists an interesting relevent timeline about New Testament writings that is pretty much generally accepted as valid by everybody today.

A couple of observations. All of these ancient documents are written in Greek and none of them in Aramaic, which was the language Jesus Christ would have actually spoke. Even Williams acknowledges the New Testament Gospels were first written down in the “foreign” Greek language at least 20 to 60 years after the occurance of the events they chronicle. Thus the probability they were written by eyewitnesses is suspect at best, leaving aside the whole issue of eyewitness veracity for such events. Other non-Testament Gospels such as the Adventures of Baby Jesus, er, Protoevangelium were written even farther from their time of portrayal and thus certainly not by eyewitnesses. There are no fragments of any of these “first editions”, only fragments of what they had been transcribed as centuries later. In terms of timelines, the oldest complete New Testament we have is the equivalent of a book published today telling us about the Pilgrim’s first Thanksgiving.

Calia, I acknowledge that this led to this, which speaks endless volumes about human psychology at the very least. But all of the words and deeds by humans good and bad between the two are totally irrelevant regarding whether or not there was a true alien visitation at least two centuries earlier by a being who can sustain my current personal conscious self in luxury thousands of years from now. It seems at least equally plausable to me that this is the equivalent to a single surviving panel of this.

So, to summarize: I consider the actions of bad Christians to be irrelevent in my personal determination on the validity of Christianity. I consider the actions of good Christians to be irrelevant in my personal determination on the validity of Christianity. The original source artifacts of Christianity are not convincing to me as historical documents, much less the CETI method an omnipotent and all-powerful extraterrestrial Being would utilize to communicate with me about a Personal Plan of Salvation.

I’m still open to a personal epiphany, though, as long as it’s not from opportunists posing as skeptics who offer me snake-oil…

I don’t have a problem with religious thought – it’s inherently supposed to be about the subjective, not the objective world. Far more troubling are the things that claim to be rational, logical arguments based on proofs and observations about the objective world, but are in fact nothing more than empty rhetoric – like a lot of what passes for debate on the environment or energy policy…

An extraterrestrial deity?  Hmmm.  I would ask in return if it has ever crossed your mind that we, in fact, are the only part of the universe that is not “natural.”  I think possibly that the majority of the universe, God and His Son included, may be completely natural, while it is us, being earth bound and contentious, who are not natural at all.

What may seem as fragmentary about the documentary records to you may stem from the fact that when taken in context, instead of as disparate items, one realizes that the gospels are intended to be different accounts from different points of view.  Why should it then matter when the accounts arrived into the integrated whole, as they are merely intended to be literature that is supportive of the other works?  To concern oneself with such minutia, is to overcomplicate the idea of historical compilation, I think.  

In the finality of the issue, it is the intent (spirit) of the law (or the ideas and attitude that are carried with it) that does its work on the human heart, not our perfect interpretation of it.  True, one denomination has taken its entire theology from, “Hail Mary, full of Grace…” People do that, yes.  But that is why it is best to look at the entire integrated work, and if possible, in the inductive and contextual sense.   When this is understood, the fact that every detail is not identical from gospel to gospel and that they didn’t all arrive simultaneously, is no big deal.  

I am also rather amazed that one could discount the plausibility of a written record from several thousand years ago, but will readily accept varied and ever changing fossil records from millions of years ago.  In my mind, that has to be almost a senseless position to take.  

People choose life or death everyday in how they attempt to live their lives.  Is that not more powerful evidence that “truth” matters, than fossil records that presume to suggest that truth does not matter?        

cal

It was in 1937 that Dr. Joseph Rhine published his book, New Frontiers of the Mind, containing the results of his experiments in ESP. His tests of card-guessing and dice-throwing revealed ratios of correct guesses against incorrect ones with odds over chance expectation sometimes as high as a million to one. The President of the American Institute for Mathematical Statistics, after careful analysis of Rhine’s mathematical procedures, stated, “If the Rhine investigation is to be fairly attacked, it must be on other than mathematical grounds.”

In 1941, Rhine’s experiments were duplicated in England by Dr. S. G. Soal with a subject who achieved billions-to-one odds against chance in card-guessing. Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, C.D. Broad, wrote, “There can be no doubt that the events described happened and were correctly reported; that the odds against chance coincidence piled up billions to one; and that the nature of the events which involved both telepathy and precognition, conflicts with one of more of the basic limiting principles (of physical science).”

Finally, in the late 1960’s, the Parapsychological Association achieved Affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. American anthropolgist Dr. Margaret Mead, said, “For the last ten years, we have been arguing about what constitutes science and the scientific method, and what societies use it. The PA uses statistics and blinds, placebos, double-blinds and other standard scientific devices. The whole history of scientific advance is full of scientists investigating phenomena that the establishment did not believe were there. I submit that we vote in favour of this Association’s work!” The vote was 170-30 in favour of the PA.

Since then, parapsychologists around the world have amassed a huge amount of scientific evidence that they claim shows that paranormal phenomena such as ESP definitely exist, even if they cannot yet explain the mechanism by which it manifests itself. Dr. Shermer, what is your view on the work done in the field of parapsychology over the past 70 years? Do the experiments show that there really is a strange phenomena at work, or do you have issues with the methodology of the experiments? Do you think that parapsychology is a genuine science, that research in this field shows promise and should be continued?

Any fan of Noam Chomsky would be highly skeptical that the U.S. government (and perhaps most other governments in the world) would ever mandate the teaching of critical thinking in the school systems, because it would be so much more difficult to control the population if they all thought for themselves rather than buying into whatever viewpoint the media presents to them. What is your view on this? Do you think Dr. Chomsky is correct in his assessment of how populations cannot be disciplined by force and thus must be subjected to mor subtle forms of ideological control via the media? Do you believe that critical thinking should be taught in schools? Do you believe that it eventually will be?

“Skeptic” is a shorthand label that is synonomous to many with “atheist”. How do you define the difference between various labels applied to those who think rationally, and do you think it is desirable for rational adherents to adopt a new label such as “bright” that has been suggested by some?

Do you have any stories to tell about being surprised by the results of a skeptical inquiry, and perhaps coming away with a new perspective or insight you hadn’t expected?

You have spread the skeptic message in a variety of media: books, magazines, columns, television appearances, websites – and now a SciScoop interview! What are the strengths and weaknesses you have noticed in these media to spread your message and meet your goals? Any advice for SciScoop on how to become more effective as a website supporting science education and discussion?

God / Jesus must be considered by definition as an extraterrestrial intelligence, a fact which cannot be denied by anyone because there is no alternative. As such, contact between humanity and this particular alien is just as valid a subject for scientific investigation in general and discussion as a SciScoop topic in particular as any other alien-human contact. The Christian Deity has been comptemplated as a religious phenomenon throughout most of history only because science didn’t exist as an alternative methodology to examine It. Since we are lucky enough to live today, we are able to add science to our repertoire of tools (along with more traditional art and music which have been used for millenia) to provide a useful way of exploring our relationship with the Christian Deity. I would submit that science, which has as its core goal a search for truth, is a much more appropriate human enterprise for exploring the nature of the Christian Deity than is music or art, which does not and is in fact often used as supporting propaganda to indoctrinate people’s minds on beliefs which are not true.

I personally reject the notion that humans or Earth are not a part of nature while other aliens (including a Christian Deity) and their planets or dimensions are. We have discovered that there are at least 92 naturally occuring atoms, from hydrogen to uranium, that makes up not only our planet but stars and dust and gas on the far side of the universe. Thus certainly all inanimate objects are “natural”, whether on Earth or in deep space. As for animate beings, humans are just another animal on Earth that exhibits a higher intelligence level than others and not much more worthy of admiration. In fact, the most common Christian stance is that man is “fallen” and other animals are not, remaining in God’s grace.

If you believe humans are “not natural” and therefore a “lesser” or even “fallen” being compared to aliens elsewhere such as angels or animals such as the birds of the field here on Earth, modern biology provides you with a facinating possibility for an experiment. Stem cells can be isolated, individual genes can be added to their DNA, and they can be transformed into sperm cells – all of which has been reported here on SciSCoop. Since we now have a comparative map of (presumably “natural”) chimp and (presumably “unnatural”) human genes, it would be a straghtforward research-grant exercise to take chimp stem cells, modify them with the addition of varying numbers of human genes, transform them into sperm cells, and use them to fertilize human eggs. A believer in a “lesser” or “unnatural” or “fallen” humanity theory would, through examination of progeny brought forth in this experiment, be able to identify the exact genes which allowed humans to think and speak – and so be “fallen” from grace and thus unnatural. (Perhaps these “unnatural” genes are the same ones infused throughout humanity via evil gene therapy during the terrorist act known as “eating from the Tree of Knowledge” foisted upon us by the terrorist alien known as “Lucifer” of the “Devil”!!!) Identification of the genes resulting an a “fallen” or “unnatural” state for humanity is thus within our grasp and as such should be a priority effort for religious groups. Whether or not the first scientific religious group which identifies this gene set will be able to avoid a slide back into Nazi-style eugenics as part of their evolving doctrine remains to be seen…

As for the archeological artifacts and documents that document the origin of Christianity, the issue to me is not how many authors of the Gospels there were or at what point their accounts all made it into a unified document we now call the New Testament. Far from concentrating on this irrelevent mineutia, I focus instead on the glaringly obvious fact, disputed by nobody, that the timeline for the writing of these documents do not even come close to meeting a “chain of evidence” criteria for a routine crime scene investigation, much less the establishment of a religion puporting to save mankind from impending death and damnation. The earliest fragment (P72) is dated AT BEST 120 years after the event it is supposed to document, is written in a language that was spoken or used by none of the principals it documents, and cannot be freed from alternative possible explanations that it was written as some type of political or adventure fiction instead of historical fact.

I would be much more impressed and prone to believe the Gospels if they were found all-words-intact today on glowing, immovable, indestructible Rosetta-stone gold tablets hovering silently over the site of Christ’s death, or maybe beside a still-burning-bush out in the desert, than merely as a bunch of paper fragments and scrolls ignored for literally millenia or more that could have been faked to create a Christian religion (hey, even Christians say that’s happened before) instead of documenting an extraterrestrial visitation. Heck, I’m still trying to figure out what happened to the Gold Tablets in 1827. Plenty of Christian disciples have attested to THEIR existence…

As for fossils, they are the remains of plants and animals that only represent themselves by their own presence – not the words of fallible men claiming to document the events of decades and centuries before. Fossils don’t care if you believe them or not. Disciples do. That’s a reason for caution and even skepticism right there as far as I’m concerned.

or 12? or maybe more? I know the rules, but also, my question was No. 11, that feels bad.

(waiting for the ok, ok response)

:-)

I was just bundling the questions up and sending them out, and you are absolutely right about your ranking as of the cutoff time. So what the heck, I’ll send him an “extra credit” question as well and we’ll see if he’ll answer it :-)

:-D

Thank you.

Ricky, recently you had said:”…The Christian Deity has been contemplated as a religious phenomenon throughout most of history only because science didn’t exist as an alternative methodology to examine It. Since we are lucky enough to live today, we are able to add science to our repertoire of tools..”

Nonetheless, I think science does not change who we are on the inside.

Please consider implications of the ideas addressed in Whence Our ‘Reality’?

And also,Dinosaur DNA Recovered

thanks.

If a political interest group could manage the media for purposes of “subtle ideological control”, why can t it also be used to teach the masses to think critically?   It is clear, in all this, that if the pres. cannot hinder the media from giving him “bad press”, he certainly wouldn t be able to inhibit the media from teaching the public to think critically, either.  

The real trouble with the way we address conflict, at this point in history, is that most persons do not have the wherewithal to tolerate the slightest suggestion of loss or humiliation, and bad losers usually create poor thinkers.(I believe)  So if someone should happen to continually feed you a line that if you lose at anything, it must be someone else s fault.   AND if you are humiliated, you simply do not deserve it, such a person certainly must have your best interest in mind, isn’t that correct?

The greater % of media spits out this kind of nonsense everyday.  And I have no idea why this mindless chatter should happen to be the president’s fault.  If we fall for any of it, it is strictly OUR responsibility.