Is it time to give up on “Skepticism”?

Today I’m recovering from a rather unpleasant patch of illness that has left me drained, tired and at times irritable — and has prevented me posting the following thoughts for over a week. As I can’t see anyone caring anyway, the following post can be seen as a sort of note to self — but hopefully in future rows I can refer people here. I was awaiting the chance to read Daniel Loxton’s piece on scepticism – I often agree with him on much – but in the end have seized the opportunity to write my own thoughts here. I shall adopt a short, simple and hopefully clear style, rather than my usual one.

So, I don’t want to be called a “skeptic” any more. Or even a “sceptic”, though I think I prefer that, it having the advantage of being spelt correctly in the British English I speak. Of course, if you go to the Greek — but either way, the issue is sceptic does not work for me. I even think it’s potentially harmful. We might need to lose it.

I know a bit about ghosts. I know people experience ghosts. I’m still fairly ambivalent about what ghost experiences represent and whether science can currently explain them. (I think not all).  I am therefore surely not a sceptic?: I am open to “paranormal” beliefs.

Or am I? Skip back to 2006 when I joined the JREF forum, Randi’s place. People were just as belligerent and rude there back then as today (and some, indeed many, just as ace) and I soon ended up trying to explain that I saw Scepticism as a methodology,  a critical process of investigating facts and assessing evidence, rather than a simple process of nay saying. I argued many posters at the JREF were “a priori skeptics” – that is that they knew say the paranormal was all bunk, therefore there was no need to address paranormal claims. (And such opinions still appear there today). APS, a priori skepticism can be defended as a tactic, but is irrational (in the technical sense) as an actual worldview.

I guess I had best defend that last statement. OK, imagine tomorrow we prove that some phenomena that occurs in paranormal books – take Giant Squid  as that happened – really exists. Giant squid were staples of 70′ paranormal books. Therefore to APS they can not be real because they are/were paranormal. Now you can presumably if you are an a priori skeptic move things from the “paranormal” to the “real” category — but how remains rather obscure, because once you allow that it removes any justification for the APS of paranormal claims in the first place.  Luckily most people who adopt APS are not concerned with epistemology or consistency, only in sneering at anyone who lacks their extreme faith-based beliefs. (I’m sure I don’t have to explain why APS is faith based?)

So enough of APS: it is still a minority position. Most sceptics I spoke to agreed with my 2006 definition of scepticism as a process: a way of looking at the world. Now I spent a lot of 2008-2010 reading philosophy of science, as I kept finding myself puzzled by things I experienced in sceptical circles (people used “rationalist” to mean something other than “argument based on deduction, not sense-observation” for example — and they used “empirical” to include mathematical proofs which are not empirical but rationalist, as well as conflating “rational” and “true” and “irrational” with “false”. I was irritated at times by what seemed to be the exuberance and bull headed self confidence of people who thought they were clever, yet often struck me as not actually knowing what they were talking about. Rather than fight over misappropriation of philosophical language, words can change their meanings and usage after all, I however noted something quite clear —

There seemed little difference between a process sceptic (or methodological scepticism) and normal scientific methodologies.

Yes I really did just write that in red bold. Methodological Scepticism and Science are one and the same thing. If you disagree with me, as I’m sure someone must, then please do comment, and tell me how they differ. Both begin by asking questions, and usually involve attempting to falsify a hypothesis. Both involve ending up making a judgement regarding the strength of the evidence, and if the research supported or opposed certain conclusions. Science like Scepticism can be performed by people irrespective of their personal ideological baggage – even  Richard Dawkins has been able to perform science successfully despite his clearly strong ideological biases. 

In process Scepticism paranormal belief is perfectly compatible with said scepticism, if that is what the empirical evidence leads you to. And hence the strong scepticism among many spiritualist circles, and large numbers of scientists I think who sit in such circles – they have a very anti-faith and evidence based mindset, and spiritualism provides what appears to be empirical proof, or so its adherents profess.

Now I’ve bolded that last paragraph cos I want to look at it more. I’m not a spiritualist, and immediately my instinct is sod “process scepticism”/”scientific methodology”, they are all deluded or being defrauded. Yet I immediately stop myself – because that claim is absolutely unfounded. I have certainly seen fake mediums – and ones who were convinced of their own abilities too – but I certainly have not seen enough to know they were all fakes, even if the Problem of Induction allowed one to make such grandiose claims. I have certainly know enough intelligent critical people who think they have encountered empirical evidence of the persistence after death of loved ones to realise my reaction is emotional, and far from sceptical.

As a sceptic I should do the work: conduct some experiments, investigate the evidence, and not draw conclusions beyond what the evidence permits. To allow “scientific cultures” sneering contempt for mediumship to influence my thinking is clearly seriously unscientific; and when I turn to the arguments most commonly brought against studying such things as impossible, I find most of them are of the category “belief claims for a materialist philosophical worldview” rather than actually anything to do with Science.

If Scepticism is as I propose simply synonymous with Science, it must remain as neutral as possible in framing the questions and conducting the research. If Scepticism is not Science, but instead something more akin to the philosophical defence (apologetics) of materialist, reductionist, and eliminative philosophies then it should be honest that it is that – faith based teaching, a form of apologetics, and state so.

So to go back to those spiritualists — I must adopt an open minded approach as far as I can, given my prejudices, to the phenomena. I must attempt to be objective. If strong belief either way is allowed to interfere with my reading of the data, my science will be flawed. I will want to render the whole research as transparent and objective as possible.

So why disguise my Scientific investigation as something else, dressing it up as “sceptical”? If that term says nothing about my final position (which will be evidence based) why use the misleading “sceptic”  term? I’m assuming that no one thinks one can scientifically investigate spiritualism’s reality with the conclusion already written – that would be appalling science – so why take on a label that seems to suggest one is doing exactly such a thing?

Furthermore, imagine you think you have seen a ghost, or a bigfoot, or somesuch. You look in the phonebook – there is the local woo group with their YouTube video series, or the local SCEPTIC. Who will you go to? I doubt it will be the sceptic – even if you are unsure about exactly what you experienced, sceptic implies someone who won’t believe you.

Science is methodologically rigorous, critical thinking, and evidence based. Why do we need to add a Skeptic label?

We don’t. I suggest “Skeptics” stop trying to promote “scepticism”, and promote simpler easier to sell virtues, Truth and Science. No one will react badly to you promising to use science and objectively look for the truth. They may even support you.

I can only think of four reasons why the term Sceptic may be used…

1. It may be employed by people who feel insecure about their credentials for doing science. Don’t. You do not need to  wear a white coat or have a PhD in a Scientific discipline to do science. If you aspire to do science, people will help you. Choose a simple research topic, think of an experiment, and try and ask a few folks to check out your methodology before you start. Make sure your ethics are good. And publish your results, if only on the web

2. It might be employed by people who think researching say ESP or Lake Monsters without setting out clearly they think it is all bunk will damage their university careers and funding. If so I sympathise, but your publications can speak for themselves, and I think the contrary implication that you are researching topics with your mind already made up as to the outcomes might do you rather more damage in much of academia than a predilection for studying slightly offbeat things.

3. It might be employed by people who genuinely believe there is a difference between sceptical and scientific methodologies, and that the former is superior. If such a position is held, please do explain it to me.

and finally 4. Some people may like calling themselves skeptics because it sounds clever. I have often found skeptics to be fairly intellectually self-assured.   I don’t think advocating Science is any less clever though.

So seriously, this whole skeptic thing, it has got so much baggage attached. Stuff it. You find great papers and poor papers in the journals, and whether written by sceptics or believers is irrelevant. Evidence and sound analysis — good science – is what matters at the end of the day.

cj x

The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

A fairly short piece today, on something I have mused over this week. I think it all started with a friend finally persuading me to watch the US comedy The Big Bang Theory: for the record I enjoyed it, and it’s a fun sitcom about geek stereotypes. In many ways it is similar to the wonderfully written British sitcom The IT Crowd – which features the IT department of a large utterly awful London corporation, and remains one of my favourite shows.

Geeks come in all forms, and The IT Crowd includes gaming geek references – there is a shot of what is clearly the board game Ticket to Ride in one episode, and another episode in which Moss ends up running a Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy rpg. The DVD series box set even comes with one of its own as I recall Bravo! I personally enjoy these things immensely, just as I enjoy the mathematical geekery of Randall Munroe’s wonderful xkcd, which also featured the board game Agricola in one strip.

Both Big Bang Theory and IT Crowd provide affectionate portraits of geeks; they mock, but with genuine sympathy. The geeks are the good guys and gals. This is fine, though it is noticeable that in both shows the female character is the non-geek, or rather, the slightly less geeky. I assume this is to reflect the traditional issues geeks are said to have with “girls” (though it may simply be a narrative framing device for the non-geek Watson to be more sympathetic?) but  it is hard to say of that reflects reality any more. My experience is that geeks today, comic, science, maths, games, computer, whatever shade — that they are as likely to be women as men. I may be wrong, your experience may vary. Certainly geeks can get dates these days, and I was amazed when I googled it at the plethora of “geek” dating agencies out there. I actually think “geeks” are increasingly the sex symbols of our society — but I’ll get back to that later.

Now when I was an undergrad I was told to start assignments by defining my terms. Being as pedantic as I am, this usually meant I ran out of words long before I started to answer the question, but it did teach me a lot. However I am fiercely going to avoid trying to define “geek” here: the term is fairly synonymous to my mind with the older pejorative nerd, in defining a group of scientifically/mathematically minded folks who have cultural associations with gaming and science Fiction and Fantasy: but ultimately geek is what geek is to you. We can argue definitions in the comments.

Kicking My Own Argument for Fun

I’m going to make the case that The IT Crowd and Big Bang Theory are symptomatic of a shift in cultural and economic power, and that the Geeks will (and have already to a large extent) inherit the Earth. I will try and defend that position. However, I’m going to start by critiquing the idea that a couple of TV shows really shows us anything. Back in the 90′s Graham Linehan, the urbane witty and genuinely brilliant writer behind The IT Crowd gave us another much loved show, Father Ted. For those who spent that decade on a remote Irish island, er sorry, in a cave, Father Ted gently mocks (and at times fiercely satirizes) the Irish Catholic Church. It was a masterpiece. And we can compare it with another show of the period, that did much the same to the Anglican Church in England, The Vicar of Dibley. (Vicar of Dibley deserves its own piece, for its romanticisation of English country life, and the feudal/pastoral idyll it depicted. I enjoy it, but there is so much we can say about it. That must wait however.)  So, given that Dibley and Father Ted both dealt with Churches, does that mean that religion was in the 1990′s gaining in importance? Far from it: I think those shows in their own way reflect a (at times hideous) past – they refer back to an earlier age, and our childhoods. The churches were safe to mock in the 1990′s, because they had to many become ridiculous, and yet reassuring. I’m going to write more on this theme: for now I simply ask you to consider it as a counterbalance to what I have to say below. In short, I may be talking utter rot about geeks.

Here I Stand

So right, I am making the strong claim that geek has become mainstream, and may soon become the largest subculture, indeed perhaps even the mainstream culture of the UK (that is it will be hegemonic if you want to get technical – geek assumptions, morals and ideals will be seen as “common sense” and the reality, and those not sharing these values will be in ‘outsider’ subcultures.

Secondly, I am making the claim that geek culture is in denial of this reality, and continues to see itself as outsider and to some extent persecuted by “The Establishment” and “The Cool Kids”.

Thirdly, I predict that what we now regard as geek will simply become so mainstream that new oppositional subcultures will arise that will reject computing and Joss Wheldon programmes as much as geeks probably were not great fans of Blankety-Blank. We will see a new generation who just don’t think the internet is cool, and don’t give a hoot about SF or Halo 3. Based upon the end of the Victorian period in a dangerous piece of historical guesswork, I will claim that there will be an inevitable backlash and move to something very different, and probably anti-science and probably hedonistic and anti-intellectual. This is by far my most daring claim, because it is based on nothing more than what happened in the period 1860-1920, and history does not have to repeat itself.

To defend all these claims properly would take all day, so I have nailed my colours to the mast. I’ll just briefly explain my thinking. If I am wrong after all it will be forgotten in a week, and if I am right, posterity may credit me far more than I am due as having had insight rather than a bad sense of humour and a good sense of the odds.

Defending The Theses

So let’s start with 1. that geek has become mainstream, and may soon become the largest subculture, indeed perhaps even the mainstream culture of the UK.

I think this is really easy to defend – how many people do not use computers today? How many people do not know who Cthulhu is? (And I must note with great sadness the passing of Lynn Willis, who only a tiny number of hardcore game geeks will recognize the name of, but whose cultural impact, along with Sandy Petersen and Chaosium generally, has been out of pall proportion to their sales as popularizers of Lovecraft.  Lynn gave me my first break in to game writing, and is sadly missed.) How big is xkcd? How many people know what a LARP is now compared with in 1997? and most of all, how many people have played computer games obsessively, and chat on online forums, or attend conventions? Cosplay is pretty mainstream now. Dr Who is once again massive. We can have a new Hollywood Star Trek movie, and we can have good sales for almost forgotten classics like Sapphire & Steel, Logan’s Run and Blakes 7. Even Robin of Sherwood has fan conventions these days.

So geek is culturally pervasive, but it hardly challenges the Premiership and Coronation Street does it? No, but that is perhaps because the mainstream media and commissioning editors are woefully slow to seize the ball, and because geeks might neglect TV in favour of the net and social media. I have watched a tiny fraction of TV time in comparison to hours online for well over a decade now, though I was an early adopter of the web.

It is the Interwebz that really marks the triumph of the Geek. Who are the great heroes of our time? Well Steve Jobs came close to being beatified by his legion of Cultic Mac fans on his death, and Bill Gates has to be one of the most inspiring figures to a generation. Clive Sinclair has his fans as does Lord Sugar; and various hackers, programmers, game writers and tech-heads are way more popular than most pop groups these days. Or so it seems to me, I could be wrong, but if I wanted to check Twitter followers would be one way, and that while obviously a flawed methodology in this case still in itself tells us something about how our society is moving. When even footballers need Twitter accounts, we have reached the Age of Geek.

You’ve read Karl Marx and you’ve taught yourself to dance

OK, I’m now going to employ a bit of Marxist theory to try and explain what is happening. Technically it’s Marxistant – I’m using some of their economic theory stripped from the ideological assumptions. I’m not a Marxist, and don’t hold this stuff as dogma – I just think it makes sense to use it it here.  (And just in case the section header id bothering you as you cant work out where you have heard it before – here. )

I am going to invoke the Marxist Base/Superstructure Model. This arcane piece of economic/cultural theory boils down to this — societies are founded on an economic base, and from that grows the superstructure of our culture. So a feudal society will embrace different cultural means of expression to a mercantilist one, or a communist one, etc, etc. Really all it comes down to though is if you alter the way people get paid, make money, are employed and buy things you change society. Please don’t skip this – it is useful. I promise to return to happy geek topics shortly. And also note I am massively simplifying all this. Wikipedia is your friend.

Now I’m not asking you to read Gramschii and Althusser. Just grab the idea that the economy MAY drive our cultural forms, and that is this is right then a societies hegemony is dictated by economic factors. If so “common sense” reality for the UK today is at least in part defined by the fact we increasingly have economies driven by the net, hi-tech, science and communications technology. New technologies have given rise to a country where Richard Dawkins and Brian Cox are seen as proponents of good sense: the internet meme helps define our actual lived reality. Perhaps cats will inherit the Earth.

If you don’t believe this, consider something that changed Britain forever. When I was young people were often unless professionals paid weekly, in little brown envelopes. Then to (I presume) cut down on tax evasion, the law changed and we all became salaried, paid monthly. So rents became due monthly, people had to learn to budget, but could make larger purchases each payday than before without saving, and could take loans which were pretty secure as their wages were now paid in to their bank accounts and deducted at source. Our whole society changed in massive ways in the 80′s through this one change – stop reading this rubbish and spend a little while trying to figure out all the impacts of that weekly pay packet to monthly bank payment change. Seriously, do it.

Even if you can’t follow, or disagree with the above, we can use a plain ol’ Yankee analogy – “Follow the money”. The big bucks are in computing, IT, social media, and online sales – soon the world of Are You Being Served? may appear as quaint as the world of the Vicar of Dibley. You can get rich in the City, or you can get rich in Silicon Valley, or you can get rich in writing the next big console hit, but you ain’t gonna be as rich if you open a greengrocers on the Lower High Street. The true power, the true sanity and sense in our society lies in the geeky IT department in the basement: because they understand the changed game rules. Their decisions are what matters now. Richard Ayoade’s brilliant portrayal of Moss – though to me he is forever Dean Learner – is the kind of character who today makes the real power decisions, NOT the boardroom. Well, maybe. We have a class struggle between the net literate IT crowd and the establishment business-folk — and we idolize those who combine both qualities, like Gates and Jobs.

By this analysis, Geeks are a) increasingly mainstream b) damned sexy – they have money = power = sex (Sheep on Drugs, 15 Minutes of Fame) and c) defining our reality and cultural norms. They are literally Geeks bearing gifts.

Now not all Geeks are by their skill set computer wizards working in IT implementation or emerging technologies. Gaming geeks, comic geeks, SF geeks, and all the other little geekdoms stand to benefit from this cultural transformation as well however. They a) provide services directly to a new market – I predict an increase in board game, rpg and comic sales in the next few years for example – and b) they are culturally literate in this “Brave New World”. Many accept the anti-homophobic socially liberal pro-science mindset as common sense and the norm for any society. They have embraced the new hegemony, because they helped define it. Let’s move on to claim 2.

Rebels Without A Cause

My second claim is that geek culture is in denial of this reality, and continues to see itself as outsider and to some extent persecuted. Now I would say that: I am oppositional, in that while i have spent a decade kicking around sceptic and atheist forums, I’m actively engaged in parapsychology and religion, two subjects the emerging hegemony dismisses as false or irrelevant in the main. (Or such is a sub-claim of mine). Yet I have noted, time and time again, that despite the evidence of book sales, conferences and general pervasiveness of memes, atheists and sceptics continue to regard themselves in the UK as  a persecuted outsider minority. I have argued their attitudes have long since become hegemonic, and that the cultural influence of say Richard Dawkins massively outweighs that of the archbishop of Canterbury, and that of James Randi or Richard Wiseman dwarfs that of say the late lamented Prof. Archie Roy or even Derek Acorah. These groups have become culturally mainstream here; yet their rhetoric remains that of the “Culture Wars” of the USA instigated by the Religious Right. Persecution complexes in majority groups can have horrible results. This is not the Mid-West guys.

Yet the elitism and outsider position are cool toys, and hard to give up. And yes, many geeks are scathingly elitist, if only in an ironic sense. Scientific literacy and intellect are valued over character and decency — we see exceptions, like Robin Ince, who has a great moral compass and seems from his tweets a genuinely decent guy I’d like to know, and Ben Goldacre who I also admire – but geeks can be cruel, scathing and vastly smug. It feels like being beaten up back in the late 90′s by nouveaux-Pulp fans, who had decided that you were one of the mainstream kids and somehow had decided to lash out in faux-nerd frenzy: the irony of geek on geek violence is never lost on me. “Hey Jarvis, can you hear me now?”

Science is more popular than ever before, but the sense of persecution persists, together with dangerous historical myth-making I have torn in to on this blog. The Geek Revolution will not be a velvet one – and strangely, the modern generation of Geeks might not know much about 1989, or care. Come to think about it they don’t know much about the Velvets either — can you tell a track from Live at Max’s Kansas City  from something off say White Light/White Heat?  Geeks are scientifically literate, but sadly many are historically and artistically illiterate – there are many exceptions of course, like the aforementioned Ince, but I try to discuss Marinetti in vain these days.

So I think Geeks have failed to recognise they have gained power, and while mainstream broadcasting is partially denied to them, the last bastion of the older influence groups, that may be because they don’t want it. Geek-chic is outsider culture, hence this terrible pretence, just as in the USA the Christian majority make a mockery of themselves with their claims of victimisation (a few of course are absolutely legitimate, the rhetoric more rarely) based on cultural memes of Second century Roman Empire.

The first stage in dealing with a problem is often recognising it. I hope geeks will realise they hold the keys to the kingdom; they have the empire, now as then.

Flapper Culture

My third claim is geek will simply become so mainstream that new oppositional subcultures will arise. I think this is actually happening in youth cultures that stylishly adopt the memes of the last pre-computing age, the 1950′s. Rock n Roll hedonism, blues, soul, austerity chic all seem to be making a revival in disenfranchised younger folks. Amy Winehouse and even Bruno Marrs are raiding the dead vinyl dreams of a pre-download age to bring us a new subculture or movement, however loosely defined. Football, dancing, drinking, sex n drugs n rock n roll – may all arise again, and form the basis for new subcultures.  They will be subcultural though, not mainstream,and I am not sure if they count as geek or anti-geek. I’m thinking Jazz Age hedonism, the great Gatsby, the flappers and the rejection of science and militarism.  If there is anything to historical determinism, I think these memes may create the new youth culture as surely as hippy followed 50′s corporate America. I’m not even going to tray and defend this claim yet though. I can explain why I think there will be a there will be an inevitable backlash and move to something very very different, and probably anti-science and probably hedonistic and anti-intellectual though.

We have been through something similar before, from the age of the first Internet, the telegraph, through the social dislocation caused by the rise of typist pools and telephones, mass media and radio. The late Victorian Era was characterised by I believe HG Wells as the “Age of Whoosh” – there was a tremendous optimism about scientific solutions ushering in an age of progress, justice and ease. (And many of those beliefs have been historically justified in the 20th century). Prince Albert espoused something close to the MacDonalds theory of conflict prevention – that no two countries with a MacDonalds had ever fought (true till 2008 as it happens). Obviously Prince Albert did not foresee the burger empire — he felt mutually beneficial trade would result in less war, as countries worked towards mutual benefit and this led to constraints on military adventurism.  The Kaiser had similar visions of European Union, as did Napoleon, leading to less war and misery ultimately. yet all these ideas were blown out of the water in August 1914, and in the prolonged horror trench warfare in the Great War (1914-1919). The mechanisation of war had already wrought horror on  vast scale in the American Civil War, but it took the deadlock of Flanders for Europe to get it. World War 2 was less costly to us, but left us living under the shadow of the Atom bomb and mutually assured destruction. Geekery and worship of science could hardly prosper in a Cold War environment when our most brilliant minds were dedicated to the issues of how to destroy each other; and the culture that emerged in the 19320′s was frankly hedonistic, and that of the 1950′s was frankly at times anti-intellectual, or challenged the intellectual establishment as phoney. No more heroes anymore.

So I think our situation now is similar in some ways to 1912. We don’t take prophets of doom, even the serious pontification of Lord Rees on threats to humanity seriously anymore. The Millennium Bug, the Doomsday Preachers, the 2012 nonsense, all have made the idea anything can interrupt our smooth progress seem loony. Our main concerns are the economy, politics, and faster progress. Yet some concerns are real, no matter how much those who express them are pilloried. We live in a complacent age, and age that reminds me of the one Walter Lord famously described as ending on April 15th 1912 when the Titanic hit an iceberg. If that smugness is justified it is hard to tell, but a Cold War era kid like me can smile at the beauty of Justin Sullivan’s 1989 lyrics in I Love the World, and a few of us still understand exactly what he meant, however much the geeks of today seem to have forgotten the lessons of history. I’ll leave you with some of his words…

Well I never said I was a clever man but I know enough to understand
That the endless leaps and forward plans will someday have to cease
You blind yourselves with comfort lies like lightning never strikes you twice
And we laugh at your amazed surprise as the Ark begins to sink
This temple that is built so well to separate us from ourselves
Is a power grown beyond control, a will without a face
And watching from outside I wish that I could wash my hands of this
But we are locked together here, this bittersweet embrace
Oh God I love the world

CJ, January 19th 2012.

 

A 5 million dollar question: Is Life after Death real? The Immortality Project.

Today I should be working, but about the time I’m writing this my Becky is finally submitting her PhD thesis at Coventry University, entitled something like A Century of Apparitions: The Census of Hallucinations in the 21st Century. I have read the Abstract, and got to look at a few pages last night and it looks very interesting, and annoyingly looks like it may disprove one  interesting hypothesis I had developed, at least based on one chart I saw in the content analysis section. (Becky was too tired to discuss it!)  Once she has had her viva and made corrections, I will read the whole thing, but for now congratulations to Becky on getting it all done.  Becky’s Ph.D  thesis was made possible by generous funding from the SPR, and I know she wants to rework the whole thing for publication in the JSPR or PSPR.

Why do I mention this?   Well another funding story caught my eye this morning, on the Facebook at Paranthropology,  where the excellent Nancy Zingrone commented, and then at Roy Stenman’s blog Paranormal Review.  It seems the Templeton Foundation are putting 5 million dollars in to a research programme, but not just any research programme –

Newswise — RIVERSIDE, Calif. — For millennia, humans have pondered their mortality and whether death is the end of existence or a gateway to an afterlife. Millions of Americans have reported near-death or out-of-body experiences. And adherents of the world’s major religions believe in an afterlife, from reincarnation to resurrection and immortality.

Anecdotal reports of glimpses of an afterlife abound, but there has been no comprehensive and rigorous, scientific study of global reports about near-death and other experiences, or of how belief in immortality influences human behavior. That will change with the award of a three-year, $5 million grant by the John Templeton Foundation to John Martin Fischer, distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, to undertake a rigorous examination of a wide range of issues related to immortality. It is the largest grant ever awarded to a humanities professor at UC Riverside, and one of the largest given to an individual at the university.

The full story is here – do read it! Now I know humanities are suddenly fashionable, at least in the UK and we are now treated like the cool kids in uni, ending 90 years of humanities and social science types being seen as not real academics by Science, Medicine and other numerate types — a rather odd trend, but apparently a real one. I think the rampant Scientism of the 2000′s has caused a reaction; but even so, it’s rare and rather wonderful to read of an award of this scale being given to a philosophy department. I expect Richard Dawkins will be unimpressed!

Anyway, I can imagine my friends broadly agreeing on something. The atheists and materialists will say “what a waste of money — it is all bunk”. (I hope to be proved wrong though!) My fellow Christians and folk of other faiths will say “we know we survive death, why not spend the money on medicine, feeding the hungry or getting clean water for the millions living in poverty?” (or so I hope, because that was my first thought).  My scientifically orientated friends will know just how many areas a few hundred thousand dollars could help with.  However, none of these are the real reason for my unease, though I am not sure the question needs so large a sum when people are starving and dying of preventable diseases or suffering injustice or poverty in this life which we all know exists.

No, my real issue is that the plans seem seriously odd. Let’s look at the Immortality Project page. All good and worthy stuff, and great news for philosophers and  theologians. Now I sometimes wear one or the other of those hats, and I have no issue in principle with allocating resources to these areas, and while I’m surprised that spending money on translating American philosophers in to German, and one hopes vice versa, is seen as a pressing issue in survival research I am utterly amazed at one thing.

Since 1882 psychical researchers have worked constantly on exactly this issue, and the SPR have published millions of words, including all manner of top rate scientists and philosophers writings on the area. Yet I see nothing on any of this work? Let’s look again at the Press Release

Anecdotal reports of near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences and past lives are plentiful, but it is important to subject these reports to careful analysis, Fischer said. The Immortality Project will solicit research proposals from eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians whose work will be reviewed by respected leaders in their fields and published in academic and popular journals.

I nearly spat my coffee all over my keyboard. The cat is still holding his paws over his ears from my indignant yelp. The bolding above is mine, obviously, but really, how can anyone write this?

For 130 years exactly this kind of work has been going on, and being published in the peer reviewed parapsychological and psychical research journals. This has been an interdisciplinary research programme, involving doctors, neurologists, psychologists, philosophers, theologians, and many other brilliant thinkers. I believe the SPR has had 8 Nobel Prize winners as Presidents, though Tom Ruffles will doubtless be able to correct me if I am wrong. Believers, sceptics and agnostics alike have attended annual conferences, study days and monthly lectures, and published millions of words in the JSPR and PSPR, That’s just the SPR. On top of that we have the Parapsychological Association, the ASPR, and many many more groups and research institutions. With I believe 13 postgraduate research centres studying these issues in UK universities alone, it seems bizarre this has all been dismissed as anecdotal and by implication lacking careful analysis.  Now hopefully parapsychology is included under scientists mentioned: but I can think of an awful lot of established research centres from the Alister Hardy Research Centre now at the University of Wales, to the KPU at Edinburgh, to Lund University, to the SPR, ASSAP, the ASPR and Scottish SPR, through to Chris French’s APRU at Goldsmith’s, who all deserve a slice of that money. What about Atlantic University? Coventry? Bucks New University? Northampton? Middlesex? The Rhine Research Centre?

Yes I know the plan is to bring philosophers, medical men, theologians and scientists together to study the issues, but surely the Templeton Foundation must realise that the SPR and PA conferences already do just this? Yes there are other aspects mentioned, which fall under sociology and psychology of religion in the main, but those are already represented at the psychical research conferences.

I have tried for twenty years to get funding to study survival and immortality. On paper I look like a good candidate – not up to Stephen E Braude or Anthony Flew’s level, or the wonderful and sadly departed David Fontana, and Christopher Moreman is the current expert here, but hey I’m passionate, hard working and my academic background is in exactly these fields. Given half the money is going on grant awards, I should be sensible like everyone else will be, and keep my head down and hope for funding and be delighted the subject will finally be investigated with lavish funding. I’m not going to. I’m going to howl in protest that there is no mention of any of the above peoples work, or the recent large scale scientific projects on NDE, contemporary scientific research on OBE, in fact just a general suggestion, if I do not infer to much, that the subject has never been academically or scientifically investigated rigorously before. If there is a life after death you can test it empirically now: Myers, the Sidgwicks, Podmore, Gurney, William James et al will be spinning in their graves!!!

I’m going to suggest that rather than funding two new conferences, the PA and SPR conferences, or even the ASSAP conference, could have benefited. I’m going to make a noise about this, because I’m frankly offended. I need about $15,000 maximum for my PhD fees: $5 million is probably more than the SPR has spent on funding research in the area in I know not how many years, possibly since 1882. In an area starved of funding, this is indeed welcome news, but not if the research effort ignores “controversial” areas like psychical research.

Maybe I’m being too hasty. I though of writing to Professor Fischer to express my concerns, but than thought I’d post publicly, and now.  I’m tempted to create a detailed bibliography of research on human survival, NDE, OBE and other peer reviewed articles of relevance, but today I am very much pressed for time. SO I write these words, and realise that once again my outspoken nature when I perceive injustice may debar me from any of the Templeton loot. So be it: I have in the past been a big fan of the Foundation’s work, and I am absolutely delighted for  Riverside and Prof. Fischer, but this press release has done nothing but arouse my fears that psychical research and 130 years of serious academic study is to be side-lined in a project designed to re-invent the wheel.  I look forward to future statements however that will hopefully allay these suspicions, and show that those who have worked in this area for their whole academic lives will not be, once more, overlooked.

I wish everyone involved in the project the very best, and desperately hope my reservations prove unfounded.

cj x

Ghosts, God and the Trouble With Ghosthunters.

Right, a quick post today, which will cheekily incorporate in the second half a re-post of some material I posted years ago on this very topic, because let’s face it, no one is going to click on a link to read another entry. Many of you know I have great respect for the sceptic writer/researcher Hayley Stevens, especially as she constantly manages to actually get out there and do real research, and to write more than I can. I put it down to my age – “it’s never how it used to be/what happened to all that energy?” Today Hayley has written an interesting piece on a site for young atheists, skeptics and freethinkers, The Heresy Club. I had to have a nose, despite being neither young, nor as it happens an atheist.

As usual Hayley’s article is excellent, well written and informative, and deals with real issues – an issue I care deeply about, the damage that poor research ethics in amateur ghost groups can do when they are let loose in private houses or even businesses and upset or scare people badly. Now I’m not going to quote Hayley’s article in full, because I want you to go read it for yourself. Do that now. No summary I give would be fair, because she makes several points.

However I am notoriously contrarian (freethinking?) so I’m going to disagree with one fundamental thing Hayley wrote, which is at the heart of the article for me, as an Anglican and a “ghosthunter” of sorts. She writes –

Looking back now, on those early years, I can see that the whole culture surrounding ghost hunting that I became involved with was a mish-mash of religious practices and beliefs that were all geared towards convincing the people involved that their very soul was in danger from evil at all times, and that invisible enemies were around us just waiting for us to mess up so that they could attack us psychically.

Now given in the past I have suggested that ghosthunting groups do sometimes take on the attributes of a religious group, and in fact enjoyed once a great discussion on the phone with Jeff Belanger where we talked about this, I can’t disagree too strongly. However, s always I’m going to raise issues.

Number one is the fact that in the sociology of religion defining what a religion or religious group is really proves difficult. Patriotism, political parties and ideologies, even perhaps scepticism or atheism are defined by some as having the same kind of principles involved, and hence “secular religions”. I don’t mean by this the people who used to turn up to sneer on Richard Dawkin’s forum and say “Atheism is a religion: he is your guru.” I’m talking about serious academic sociologists desperately trying to pin down what defines something as a religious behaviour. I happen to have spent a lot of my life as an academic studying religion: so I’m not going to get sidetracked in to a huge discussion of this, which would bore everyone. However it raises another point, which Alex Gabriel has already highlighted in the comments much better than I ever could! We can clearly see the Roman Catholic Church, or the CofE, or various other religions denominations are “religious” because of what they do and their detailed creeds. Yet those groups inpose really strict behavourial codes and ethical requirements on their members, and while I may claim to be an Anglican, many Anglicans might say “hey CJ you are not – you don’t go to Church enough/have shabby morals/dabble in the occult” or whatever. We know what these groups stand for – they are authoritarian in a real sense, and people who don’t do the “right” things get kicked out, or told they are “bad” members of the group.

Now some religions have very little in the way of formal dogmas, theology, doctrine and imposition. Hinduism is incredibly diverse, and hard for me to comprehend as a religion cos I’m used to this rather more authoritarian structure, but there are core beliefs, and social measures to ensure consistency of practice as far as I can see. Wicca is perhaps the best example of a theological anarchy – the various “wiccan denominations” have core theological beliefs, but those outsoide of the formal coven-structures, which in the 90′s I think though do not know comprised most of the self-proclaimed adherents of the Wiccan religion could believe an incredible diversity of things about the nature of the divine, afterlife, and karma etc. This “folk wicca” ran the risk of being mistaken for the coven traditions, and just because a complete loony did something vile in the name of the religion, well it was not in any way the fault of any other adherents of that faith. As Alex Gabriel wrote

“You hear a lot from New Agers and ecumenicals, don’t you, that the coercive and oppressive elements of religion are all from the institutional structures? But this is a brilliant example of how bad beliefs themselves can be oppressive.”

Yes I agree totally, well said Alex, and I’m no fan of heavy authoritarian religion, but I am painfully aware of the dangers posed by liberty of conscience. I absolutely hold the principle of freedom of religious belief and non-belief, but as anyone who knows me know I distinguish between beliefs and practices/behaviours. If a practice is illegal, and damaging to others, your freedom of belief does not make it right in my mind. Still we could disagree on this and still we are no closer to my actual issue with Hayley’s article.

Many ghosthunting groups do adopt a sort of “folk spiritualism”, and in some cases other religious beliefs, In the USA we see a lot of very religious ghosthunters – they often term themselves demonologists, and look at things in terms of a very religious paradigm, because the base culture there is profoundly religious compared with the UK. Yet in all my ghosthunting experience nearly none of the participants have been Christian believers, or held to any of the other mainstream faiths — with the exception of David Carter-Green, and on the social and academic side David Sivier. And in fact, belief in the paranormal does not seem to map well to what most people would see as “religious belief” in any way — in fact quite the opposite.

Now years ago I wrote a piece I consider one of the most important ton this blog, called “Are Education and Atheism Enemies of Reason”. The title was half joking half serious, but it’s so directly relevant to what we are talking about here i’m going to reproduce it before moving on to discuss the implications…

“The majority of Britons believe in heaven and life after death, new research suggests.” The BBC News story here is well worth reading, and shows some interesting things. Firstly we are a lot less sceptical about New Age ideas and certain fringe practices like astrology and tarot cards than we used to be – what Randi’s people categorize as “woo”. However we are more sceptical about certain aspects of the supernatural than a decade ago in 1998 – in short popular belief in the supernatural is constantly waxing and waning; I think I could have told you that. The popular culture of the 1970′s was far more sympathetic to parapsychology say than the 90′s were – and yet the 2000′s saw a sudden interest in Spiritualism connected with certain TV shows.

I have a rather heretical thought about ‘paranormal’ beliefs, and their relationship to atheism. I originally posed a question on Professor Dawkins forum as it was inspired by his show The Enemies of Reason. I am sure the Professor has better things to do than answer my questions though, (and he didn’t) and so I have revised it and asked it here.

I had been reading The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (1983) by noted mathematician, science writer and skeptic Martin Gardner. In 1976 Martin Gardner was a founder member of CSI(COP), which has done a great deal over the years in debunking paranormal claims and fighting the rise of superstition. Many readers of this blog may have his enjoyed his Fads & Fallacies In the Name of Science.

In Chapter 3 of The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener – “Why I am not a Paranormalist” – Gardner mounts a blistering attack on superstition. It contains many of the themes touched in Dawkin’s The Enemies of Reason, and one curious disagreement.

Martin Gardner, 1983 wrote:

As always with such manias, causes are multiple: the decline of traditional religious beliefs among the better educated, the resurgence of Protestant Fundamentalism, disenchantment with science for creating a technology that is damaging the environment and building horrendous war weapons, increasingly poor quality of science instruction on all levels of schooling, and many other factors…

I found that first bit fascinating. Now Gardner is not Fundamentalist obviously, he is not a Christian, though he is a Fideist rejecting all special revelation, but remaining a theist. Like most scholars he sees Fundamentalism as arising recently (within the last century pretty much) and a bad thing– but he regards the “decline of traditional religious beliefs among the better educated” as a key factor in the rise of pseudo-science, cults and superstition?

It in no way justifies religious belief, but it is very interesting as a claim. OK, so I doubted. Gardner is a theist – he must be biased. What are his sources? Luckily he references them. It is the article Superstitions Old and New by William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark in The Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 4, Summer 1980.

Gardner says they

…reported on their surveys of how beliefs in certain aspects of the current occult mania correlated with religious faith. They found people with no professed religion were the most inclined to believe in ESP and extraterrestrial UFOs. Paranormal cults were strongest in areas where the traditional churches were weakest.

Never trusting anyone’s opinions I have just been through the Sheep/Goat tests from my 1993 Paranormal Beliefs Survey of attendees at a lecture series in Cheltenham. The test used by the group was an early Sheep/Goat test which measured some religious claims as well as paranormal ones. Later we adopted the 1979 New Australian Sheep/Goat Test by Michael Thalbourne, but this earlier version suited my purposes. There were 83 respondents, and while I have not had time to perform a proper statistical test – the data is on stapled questionnaires, not in electronic format and it’s too late to type it all in tonight – there does appear to be a very strong correlation between non-belief in God and belief in UFOs as alien visitors, and between non-belief in Jesus as divine and belief in both ghosts & magic, to give a few examples. I recall now being once asked asked if many parapsychologists were Christian – and I said none at all that I knew of, they were all atheists. I have just looked at my “psychics” who I sometimes work with on testing – only one identifies as Spiritualist, two as atheist (Atheism is VERY common among Spiritualists following the example of Arthur Findlay – indeed Roll’s Campaign For Philosophical Freedom is an atheist organization which makes Dawkins look like a vicar) and seven “none”; six more are unclassifiable.

Not one professed belief in any “orthodox” faith. Now I’m sure Dawkins would regard my Anglicanism as just as much superstitious woo as does say crystal power, so this is a false distinction to him: but the evidence seems to suggest to me that the modern irrationalist supernaturalism is inversely related to traditional (non-fundamentalist) religious beliefs. I think whoever misquoted G.K. Chesterton was right, even if as is possible Chesterton never actually said it “when a man stops believing in God he does not believe in nothing: he believes in anything”. Correlation is not causality – and of course the better educated college students are more likely to believe in ghosts etc -

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060121_paranormal_poll.html

assuming the Skeptical Inquirer is cited correctly! So perhaps the increase in woo is just a by product of the decline of traditional religious belief, increased secularism and atheism, and better education? The evidence certainly seems to point that way???

I find this both interesting, amusing, and deeply ironic.

So I wrote a few years back, and I have discussed at length elsewhere the issues. What concerns me is that actually while Hayley as a rational sceptic may be an excellent investigator, “atheism” as a non-belief does not actually necessarily imply scepticism of any claim but the existence of a God. There are plenty of loony and not bright atheists, just as there are plenty of loony and thick as two short planks Christians out there. Furthermore, rationality does not always map to good personal ethics, as I think we all recognize, and even rational people make mistakes – though like the Christians who confess they are crap at it by definition (we are all sinners), they may spot the problem and be able to do something about it.

Still, it’s peoples right to believe what they like, and no one has a monopoly on how to investigate spooks etc, or say what we should believe. The actions/behaviours/practices which are damaging to others should however clearly be subject to scrutiny, and I’m absolutely in favour of higher ethical standards in the field. I just don’t think that religiosity, in the normal sense, is much to do with a lot of this — and I hope I have somehow made that point. Yes my personal research ethics may be terrible, as I often joke, but that stands completely independent of the actual religious framework I exist within (Church of England liberal, in case you wondered.)

So as Martin Gardner said, I think the decline of traditional religious belief may actually underlie, rather than be the opposite of, this explosion of popular ghosthunting. Still a great article by Hayley, and got me thinking as normal. Now I really must go do some work!

cj x

Via Media: Reflections on the Appointment of Bishop Richard Dawkins

OK, just to make absolutely clear – this was my April Fool’s joke for 2012. No Bishops were harmed in the making of this post.

I expect many people were surprised, not least “New Atheists” and devout members of the Church of England, by last nights announcement from Whitehall that Richard Dawkins has been ordained in to the Church of England, and has in very short (holy) order been appointed to an episcopal see. Bishop Dawkins, as he will become on ascending to the office of Bishop of Bury St. Edmunds later this year, has for many years been an outspoken atheist, and indeed his best selling book “The God Delusion” was an impassioned call for a secular culture and end to traditional religious thought, almost as radical as those by Anglican Divines like Don Cupitt or former Bishop of Woolwich John A. T. Robinson whose “Honest to God” caused such controversy in the 1960′s.

Perhaps the greatest surprise to an Anglican like myself is that the obvious diocese for Dawkins was missed – one would have expected him to become Bishop of Durham. Still, with the lack of vacancy in that diocese Bury St. Edmunds is a good choice. My only fear is that his attitudes on religion may be too moderate and too simplistic and literal-fundamentalist for the average sophisticated pew dweller of the modern Anglican church. While I admire his liberal stance on many social issues, including his defining statement on homosexual marriage — “I don’t think it should be compulsory” — I too feel it should be restricted to non-heterosexual laity and clergy alike and non-mandatory– his rather direct and literal reading of a text as complex as the Bible flies in the face of my Neo-Orthodox reading of the Holy Scripture, and will cause him no doubt to have many problems with those who place Tradition and Experience and Magisterium above Scripture – indeed I don’t think we have seen the spirit of sola scriptura and emphasis on the Bible alone as the basis for the Christian faith so loudly advocated since the time of Luther and Calvin, except by certain Evangelicals. The fact Dawkins chooses to refute the whole book is irrelevant – he still accepts a theological principal that that is all Christianity is that has not been fashionable since the days of Augustine (with a few noted exceptions as mentioned), and that would make Origen blush.

Bury St Edmunds Cathedral

Still, the move to appoint Dawkins as Bishop of Bury St. Edmunds is undoubtedly a courageous one, albeit not unsurprising. I seem to recall he is a good friend of former Bishop of Liverpool Richard Harries, and last month debated the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams. During that debate Dawkins made what many saw as a shocking announcement, that he was actually “agnostic”, not entirely excluding the possibility of a god. That this shocked anyone at all was a source of amazement to me, given that his scale of atheism and the words he used were almost verbatim those he has used in The God Delusion many years before. He is comfortably, clearly a pragmatic atheist, while admitting to being a “cultural Christian” — and as such I think he has to be accepted as the perfect candidate to reflect the views of the modern CofE Church attendee.

Of course I fear he may have problems with certain of the defining principles of the Church of England, in particular the first and most crucial of these, The 39 Articles. The first article reads “God is nice: preach this often, but cause no offense to any man, women, child or person of other gender.” In his practically absolute denial of the existence of the deity Dawkins will not got far enough for many Anglican pew sitters, but will outrage others who will ask how the niceness of God can be compatible with His non-existence. I think they should take a moment to reflect on Rorty’s non-representationalism, and non-realism in modern theological language – clearly Cupitt and others blazed a path here, even if Dawkins is slightly too much mired in traditional notions of faith to fully accept their principle that when we say something we don’t actually mean it at all like that, but something quite different, quite sacred, and quite mundane, and quite ineffable, as the word sacred means nothing.

While the new fast tracking system for Anglican ordinands has been controversial, I do like it. I myself am hoping to be raised to be Dean of somewhere one day, or perhaps a Royal Chaplaincy would suit. For too long the Church was a haven for the family idiot, or for Neo-Marxist social liberals who had been thrown out of Outrage for being too outspoken. The new meritocratic system, where merit is measured largely by the colour of ones old school tie promises to bring a reassuring conservatism back to the church, even if it is only a social conservatism not a theological one.

Bishop Richard Dawkins

Most surprising to me was that while I can see Lambeth Palace would be enthusiastic for this move, that 10 Downing Street assented. Prime Minister David Cameron must have known that it would make the church relevant to 90% more modern British people than it currently is, and it is clearly a huge coup for the Anglican Communion – Dawkins book sales far outweigh all the Bishops combined since the Colenso affair in the 19th century, and the incorporation of the schismatic “New Atheists” back in to the Anglican Communion albeit with the new “Skeptical Rite” will do huge amounts to to boost church attendance and take pressure on hard pressed roof repairs off jumble sales and bailiffs enforcing Chancel tax. So why did Cameron agree?

Well, in the words of senior civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby the Church of England is primarily a social organisation, not a religious one, and one must maintain the balance, the Anglican Via Media, between those who believe in God and those who do not. Cameron clearly took this important lesson to heart, and Lambeth, with a long tradition on its side, have appointed the best man to the post. I fear that next month some long haired ex-acid head Graham Kendrick’s chorus singing loon will be appointed to balance the balance: but it for best perhaps, and at long last the CofE has learned from our current government – it is bad to look both heartless and feeble, so do both alternately?

Best wishes to Richard Dawkins on his ecclesiastical preferment. Further reportage here.
cj x

Half- Baked Review: What has Philosophy Got to do with Religion?, a talk by Mark Vernon

I often get invited to events through groups I have joined on Facebook or my membership of email lists, and have only the very vaguest idea of who it was who asked me. Tonight was one of those – my Facebook page announced that I had said I would attend a free lecture on “What has Philosophy Got To Do With Religion?”, and given that one of my standard responses to people asking me “what do you do?” is “er, philosophy of religion” (– it makes them go away I find, and sounds better than “hunt ghosts and argue on the internet”) — well I felt kind of obliged. The fact the lecture was taking place within a gentle stroll of my house probably helped too.

“Why do I go to lectures?” would be a more useful session for me to attend, given that I invariably fall asleep, or become incredibly bored, or gaze out the window and think about when this room was the SU Bar, and Roger Puplett used to rip his shirt off while playing Van Halen’s Jump as last record of the night, and … see?!! I have the attention span of a newt on uppers: I find it hard to sit still for 5 minutes, and almost impossible to go two minutes without asking a question. It’s bad enough when I’m lecturing, I get bored by my own lectures, and tell the audience that frequently.

Well given I hate sitting through lectures, was stuck by a hissy radiator turned on full blast that slowly baked me and the room was too full to sneak out to get a drink, I should have hated this. Given Mark Vernon announced that his talk had three parts, and would last 45 minutes, and that after two parts were on 45 minutes and he stopped to ask if he should proceed, hell I should have been crawling up the walls. Yet so effective a speaker is Vernon that we all asked him to continue, and I’m sure would have stayed much longer if it was not for the heating stuck on (I crept out to the SU bar and got a drink at the beginning of questions, but returned to loudly ask more as is my nature )

Vernon read his presentation: a long introduction on Aurignacian art, which I was confused a little by the relevance of, then a rather succinct but fun critique of EvoPsych stuff on religion, and Hyper-Sensitive Entity Detection stuff like Dennett’s ideas, and those of Bruce Hood – he has more time for Scott Atran, but still regard him as wrong from what I can make out — and a short but well aimed attack on over generalising modular mind theorists (folks like Steven Mithen?), with some interesting research cited. I would hesitate to use as Vernon appeared to (in passing, as a minor point) Developmental Psychology as a way to judge how early human psychology evolved; but compared with some of the problems with the Evo-Psych approaches, that is easily forgiven, and I may have misunderstood. It was really hot, and the radiator was annoying me with its hiss, burble, hiss, while slowly cooking me. I wished more of my friends from Skeptics in the pub were present (any of them actually) — some Skeptics often seem to buy wholesale highly questionable EvoPysch “just so” stories without any real effort at critical analysis or awareness of the problems with them in my experience, just as earlier generations of rationalists embraced Frazerian and Comptean ideas of Religion with equal fervour. (Occasionally one sees all three argued in the same forum thread on certain New Atheist sites… ) Mark Vernon’s objections would have perhaps made it clear that these theories are not just contested, they are highly controversial, even among Evolutionary Psychologists and evolutionary biologists and morphologists, let alone cognitive scientists.

I found it hard to concentrate because of the heat, but Vernon kept me listening, and I was particularly interested in some of the paleontologist Simon Conway-Morris’s ideas. Graham Budd had mentioned him to me recently, and I will definitely look up his work, and would have by now if Wikipedia was not down today in protest over SOPA. Vernon acts as a great introduction to others ideas: he seems astonishingly well read, ad his reading particularly showed in the second part, which was on being good without God.

I have long been of the opinion that one can be good without God – inevitably the Euthyphro Dilemma came up in the questions, but agree with Vernon the best modern explorations of the issue are by Richard Holloway. It was in this section the temperature finally proved too much for me, and I began to think about a question the friendly gentleman from the Bible Society sitting in the row in front of me had asked me before talk began about how authentic a lot of ‘Celtic Spirituality’ was to the historical roots. Not sure how we got on to it, but I’m quite sceptical on the issue, and I started daydreaming about writing a blog piece on it, only to reconnect with the talk somewhere about Iris Murdoch on morality, God and Truth and have no idea what was going on. Fortunately as part 3 commended I was on safer ground – for now Vernon turned to the soul, and the question of post-mortem survival.

Vernon made some excellent points about afterlife in various religious traditions, and the development thereof, but this will be very familiar to anyone who has read my review of Christopher Moreman’s Beyond the Threshold and hence lost some of its force which I think lay in how surprising these things are to most people. Ditto with Vernon’s emphasis on Reconstituitionalism, the merging of the soul with a new body at Resurrection, as being the New Testament view of afterlife. (As I remarked in questions, one of them. I think there are at least two, if not three views of life after death in the New Testament writings, by no means necessarily incompatible). There was a brief discussion of the odd character of the resurrection appearances, which always reminds me of a wonderful passage from Tyrell’s Apparitions I think, but I will leave that to a later post as I have been planning to explore it for years. Anyway I don’t agree Reconstituionalism is the only viable reading of the NT texts on afterlife, but it is certainly a strong theological tradition, and the great sceptic and CSICOP founder member Martin Gardner (who hoped for life after death himself) gives an excellent overview of it on his The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener. as I recall. Vernon gave a good overview of Aquinas I think, not that I have ever managed to really grasp Aquinas on the Soul or Life after Death, not least I suspect because some of his ideas are actually contradictory, or divergent. This has inspired me to take another look.

Anyway I had never heard of Mark Vernon before tonight, but excellent speaker, and I will check out his books, such as his latest “How to be an Agnostic”. His website is here, do go take a look. and do catch him at one of his upcoming event s listed there – well worth seeing.

As an aside, I was shocked to learn that despite the Premises and Services Agreement between the University and the Student Union that was agreed when I was there, the SU has now lost control of the bars at the University of Gloucestershire, which are now run by a third party company. None of this was reported in the local press or even on the uni website as far as I know; I have been assured by a friend that a deal was struck to protect the Student Welfare aspects of the SU’s work, which was always funded by the profits from the bars and Summer Balls in the past. I won’t mourn this change, it may be for the better, and my loyalties lie with the College of St Paul and St Mary and CGCHE, predecessor institutions, but I was very surprised to hear from the staff the SU bar was no longer that, while getting a drink.

Ah well, the room TC007 where we had the talk was once the SU Bar, before it moved upstairs to its present location, so change can be good I guess. I recalled sitting there tonight walking in there in 1987, and being hit on the head by an ashtray and nearly knocked out when I first entered the room; and then 1992, and watching the news coverage of the LA riots which was playing on the big screen, Hugh and I (with severe sunstroke) danced 17 minutes to Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground before I vomited in a loo that once stood roughly where I was sitting tonight, and collapsed there with a terrible headache. Now it’s a bland lecture room. Such are memories – inappropriate, intrusive. Years ago I taught in a uni classroom that had previously been a female friend’s dormitory room – that jarred, and was almost awkward. Who says there are no ghosts?

cj x

When Psychics Fail — Beyond Sally Morgan

OK, last week I wrote a short piece on Sally Morgan, in which I critiqued the evidence that she was using a well known fraud trick, that is having accomplices gather information in the crowd (or prepare information from public sources like newspapers), and then being fed it by hidden assistants using a radio connection. (I almost wrote “wireless” there for “radio”; astonishing how the meaning of that word, so common in my youth, has changed forty years on!). I doubted this partly on the fallibility of witness testimony, partly because the Theatre manager had came forward with a fairly convincing “alibi” involving two theatre techs being overheard being the cause of the whole matter. I lay out all the facts as I had them in my previous piece, which may be worth reading as it links to the RTE broadcast and the Irish Independent article, if you have not been following the case.

Well Sally Morgan has now issued a statement, categorically denying fraud — you can read it here.

Sally Morgan

It does not actually say anything new; and certainly does not come any closer to proving she possesses a genuine “paranormal gift”. I guess the only way she could convince us all of that would be to undergo some kind of scientific test – after all plenty of protocols for testing psychics and mediums exist, and if I ever have time I will write on them here.

Still, today one person who has been involved in testing psychic claimants in the past, the excellent sceptic Professor Chris French wrote a short piece on The Guardian site. I note with approval that like my earlier piece on Sally he mentions perfectly natural ways in which people might convince themselves they are psychic, though he does not go in to as much detail as I did in mine. It’s a good piece, but part of it caught my attention…

This episode is reminiscent of the exposure of faith healer Peter Popoff by James Randi in 1986. Popoff would wow his audiences by giving specific and accurate details of their medical problems before claiming to cure them with his divine powers. This information was, according to Popoff, provided to him directly by God. It was certainly an effective technique, as at this time Popoff was raking in around $4m per month (tax-free) from his poor, sick and uneducated followers.

Randi, with the assistance of investigator Alexander Jason, convincingly demonstrated that Popoff was actually receiving the “divine” information from his wife via a hearing aid. Following his exposure on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Popoff declared bankruptcy in 1987.

In a more rational world, that would have been the end of Popoff’s career as a faith healer. Sadly, we do not live in a rational world. Popoff is back, earning more than ever by fleecing his flock using exactly the same techniques that Randi exposed, plus a few new ones, such as the sale of “Miracle Spring Water”. According to ABC News, Popoff’s ministry received more than $9.6m in 2003 and more than $23m in 2005. In that year, Popoff paid himself and his wife a combined total of almost a million dollars (not to mention two of his children receiving more than $180,000 each).

Since the heyday of mediumship during the Victorian era, exposure as frauds has typically done little to diminish the popularity of alleged psychics in the eyes of their followers.

There is of course a caveat offered at the end of Prof. French’s piece –

Phone-in caller Sue, who believed that Morgan had psychic powers before her experience at the theatre, described herself as being “totally disappointed” and insisted that she would not be attending such shows again. Maybe some of her friends and others sitting near her that evening will follow suit. Sadly, however, history suggests that most of Sally’s followers will continue to adore her and pay the high prices demanded to see her in action.

Prof. Chris French

Watching ‘Nationwide’

I immediately began to question this. Does exposure as a fake always result in people continuing to believe, regardless of the evidence?

My first thought was of the cultural studies writer  Stuart Hall and David Morley, who if I recall correctly argued that when provided with something like a television programme (the original research was the study Watching Nationwide, on the show which brought us skateboarding ducks…)

– people do not simply respond  by accepting the “story” as given. Some will buy in to the “dominant” reading, and enjoy or accept it as given: some will “negotiate” what it means, framing what is presented in terms of their own lives and own experience, and some will create “oppositional” readings. There is  a short wikipedia discussion here.  I often find this quite a handy model to look at things.

Whereas the dominant motif in most media coverage is “so called psychic Sally Morgan was caught in fraud”, and let’s face it most people will have a good laugh and think little more about it, there have certainly been some negotiated readings. As someone interested in both critical thinking and psychical research I offered my alternative reading of what happened in my last blog piece, and Derek Walsh who is clearly extremely unsympathetic to psychic hocus pocus offered an excellent sceptical appraisal of the dominant sceptical message on his blog here in a great example of scepticism squared – when a sceptic applies scepticism to the sceptical consensus, something which is eternally necessary, but rarely makes you friends…

But it is the “oppositional” readings, the defenders of Sally Morgan who really caught the attention of the sceptic world. And let’s face it, some of them really are incredibly dedicated, indeed I think they I will use the word “devoted” to the cause.  Want to  have a look at some? Try Sally’s facebook pages! I note with interest it is her birthday today, and I sincerely hope she has a lovely day. (These things are never personal to me, despite my strong distaste for fraudulent psychics who should be prosecuted as the money grabbing vultures preying on the vulnerable they are — and after all, I am not personally convinced of fraud, or of her psychic gifts, which may place me in a minority of one! )

So in this instance an awful lot of believers in Sally are refusing to accept the evidence of fraud, and carry on believing. And to be fair, I don’t think that is actually as silly as it sounds. Firstly as Derek and I have both pointed out, the evidence for fraud is actually not overwhelming – there are other explanations, and the theatre has leapt to her defence.  Sue she is a big name draw, but I’m pretty sure that theatre in Dublin does pretty well anyway, and is hardly likely to be “in on it”.  If even a handful of sceptics are not sure she actually cheated, well, I can hardly blame her devotees for questioning it?

What if Sally WAS ever caught?

So let’s try a thought experiment: imagine Sally has been caught cheating, absolutely blatantly, flagrantly, and beyond a shadow of a doubt. I don’t know much about the Popoff affair, but I do remember a case many years back when a young “physical medium” called Lincoln was caught in very embarrassing circumstances when the lights went unexpectedly up on his seance, back in 1993. Tony Youens maintains a superb archive on this here, with the full text and many related articles. Yet Lincoln went on to a successful TV career, and is still today a major figure in the world of these stage show psychics, now doing mental not physical mediumship (albeit now known by another name: though forever plagued by jokes like “Colin is not afraid to blow his own trumpet!”).

As with Popoff, exposure seems to have done him no harm at all, though he did spend almost a decade away from the public eye? I don’t actually know much about Popoff, and the circumstances, but yes he bounced back like Alan Partridge.

So we would expect that even if Sally was caught, then she would be back on the scene within a decade, and perhaps as popular as ever? Why? Are people inherently gullible?

Um… I might have left it there if Tracy King had not questioned this on Twitter. I knew instantly she was right: for every big name caught out who bounces back, there are others who slink away and quit the limelight.

When Prophecy Fails…

Certain texts that would be considered obscure at best by non-academics take on a life of their own in popular culture, and in certain subcultures. One of these, When Prophecy Fails (1956) by Elliot Aronson, Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter is a book that few in sceptical and atheist circles can fail to have heard of. The book is a sociological study of a UFO cult whose leader predicted a cataclysmic event, a flood that would embrace their city. The flood failed to materialize — and the cult kept right on believing.  I think it’s important for people to check the facts, and the wikipedia account is very good.  Now there is one real critique of the book, which is very simple; as you will have seen from the Wikipedia page if you had a look, in the view of the people involved the prophecy did not actually fail, they had saved the world by the faith, averting the cataclysm.

Some of you may recall the incident I am fond of mentioning when I was a young student at university and the Christian Union outing was called off after the bus broke down before we departed, and the various members of the C.U leadership offered contrasting theological explanations. That is the nature of theological talk, to explore why things are in terms of God and the universe I guess.  I found it all fascinating, and rather unconvincing — did God really want us to stay and spend the day on evangelism to our heathen fellow students, or was it really the Devil trying to thwart us? I thought the bus had broken down…

Anyway, we recently saw an example of this when Mr Harold Camping’s much publicized prophecy of the End of the World failed to manifest.   The bad news is he has revised his prediction to October 21, 2011 so folks we have just a month left. Um, assuming no particle physics disaster or asteroid strike I’m going to enjoy writing on the 22nd October about what he says next! Strangely there has been very little academic discussion of how his followers have responded beyond the immediate disappointment; I suspect an awful lot have drifted away, but I can neither conform nor deny it. Yet this is all very familiar to those who follow such things -  if any one really has read this far, they may well want to acquaint themselves with The Great Disappointment.

So yep, I think most sociologists of religion agree with Festinger, who also gave us the concept of cognitive dissonance – and while I have critiqued When Prophecy Fails in the past, and equally have critiqued the idea of cognitive dissonance (favouring Bem’s alternative Self-Perception Theory) many of my critiques are actually of the rather shoddy precis of the book one sometimes finds in sceptical articles and books. Festinger et al were much more careful in their claims, and the Wikipedia article gives the conditions for faith in the prophet to “survive” the disappointment –

Festinger stated that five conditions must be present, if someone is to become a more fervent believer after a failure or disconfirmation:

• A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he behaves.
• The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual’s commitment to the belief.
• The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
• Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
• The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.

In the case of Sally Morgan number 5 is true: her supporters help each other maintain their faith, that much is clear. I’m not convinced any of the others are, so perhaps we do not need to look to Festinger after all for an explanation.

Other sociologists of religion have argued that when an adherent of a faiths faith is weakest, they are prone to proselytizing more, buoying up their faith by convincing others. Maybe! I think we actually face slightly more complex issues here….

Counting Crows…

Firstly, there are allegations she was caught cheating, but it’s far from clear, and a reasonable person could doubt this as I have already stated. Secondly, the believers are by their nature already disposed to belief in life after death and psychics I assume, and very few of them will place their faith in one psychic alone. Even if Sally is caught cheating, there are still thousands of other psychics, and the Problem of Induction tells us that one psychic being a fraud in no way means all are: after all as William James famously stated, the claim “all crows are black” is falsified if we find a single white crow. (James believed he had in the form of the medium Leonora Piper).  Spiritualists certainly acknowledge the existence of fake psychics and fraudulent mediums, so one being caught is no problem to them, just as one failed Christian sect’s prophecy is no issue to the rest of the Christian world.

Beyond this, we have to consider what would happen if a personal friend was accused of a serious crime (something like this is currently occurring on the JREF, a miserable business we will pass over beyond noting the potential parallels). Many will spring to their defence, some will renounce them, and some will wait further developments.  There is nothing unique in the way Sally’s adherents are reacting right now, we can all do it when our beliefs are challenged…

So Can Sceptics Win?

No matter how many psychics get debunked, others will step forward. No matter how good the evidence against a fraud, some people, but not I am convinced most, will continue to believe. So is there any point in pursuing the frauds?

My answer is a resounding “Yes!”.  It is in no ones interest to have vulnerable individuals preyed upon by the pond scum who represent themselves as psychic and offer false comfort while using fraudulent means. While there may well be very real benefits to the grieving in seeing a psychic, no matter how much we may question the morality of it all, the frauds are just that – frauds and criminals.  Whether a sincere but deluded individual is better than a fraud is a tricky question, but my personal belief is yes, there is  a huge difference, though I understand others may disagree. Are there real psychics? I can’t discount that possibility; my personal experience suggested it could be, but I honestly don’t know.

So it is really important for sceptics to challenge these people. I’m not sure it’s safe, rewarding or sensible, but it has to be done. I’m not convinced on the current evidence that Sally Morgan is either a) psychic or b) guilty of fraud, and I make no claims to have a real knowledge of her case, but as even spiritualists and psychics acknowledge wholeheartedly there are  lots of scam artistes and conmen and conwomen out there teaching critical thinking and sceptical approaches does no harm to anyone.

Most people will not make their minds up on psychics, life after death, mediumship, or any of these issues based on the academic or scientific evidence. Given there is very little mainstream discussion of the topics, and the journal articles are hard to come by, and the sociology and religion texts fairly obscure, it’s hard even for someone passionately interested to make a rational evidence-based decision on these matters, so we tend to go on the other type of evidence, personal experience. I hope my musings on all this help people to gain a slightly broader perspective, and to think a little deeper about it.

So why have I written all this?

A while ago when I interviewed Dr Matthew Smith on this blog we noted how we live in a very unfashionable neighbourhood indeed, what one of us (I forget which!) termed “the uncomfortable middle”. That is neither of us is wholly “woo”, if such a creature exists, or wholly “sceptic”, if such a thing exists.  Back in the days of the old Most Haunted Forum on Living TV’s site I watched as “parties” formed, one “skeptics”, the other “believers”. There is a polarization of views, and a growing culture of sceptics (who also fight among themselves, argue and debate) and believers (who also fight among themselves, argue and debate). Seeing that I regard scepticism as a methodology, and  belief in any given proposition an outcome, well I don’t see them as really opposed, but you would never get that from reading much written by either side. Venom, hatred and antagonism are all too common: and both “sides” close ranks. And then, when something like this happens, well the sceptics tend to say “I told you so” and the believers say “all sceptical lies”, and people stop talking. Real research does not fall victim to this, but the rhetoric of subcultures fighting for the hearts and minds of the masses do.

I encourage everyone to take a step back, take a deep breath and try to lose the vitriol. Britain is a sceptical country: and no one is going to stamp on you if you believe in fairies here, either.

And on that note I willonce again wish Sally morgan a very happy birthday, and “peace to all people of good will on Earth.”

cj x

On Being A Sceptic: the Third Sermon of the Reverend Jerome

OK, I think some people are genuinely puzzled by why suddenly CJ the ArchWoo-id of the Dawkins forum has mentioned he sees himself as a sceptic. I therefore have posted the third of my series of Sunday Sermons i wrote for that forum several years ago, in the hope it will clarify much. Of course I hold some religious and paranormal beliefs — I see scepticism as a methodology, not a conclusion! The sermon format was because there was a rule against religious proselytism and sermons on the forum, so I set out to playfully break it — and my user name was Jerome there, so I put my opinions in the fictional Reverend Jerome s mouth to keep up the joke. The reference to Scrubbage minor is actually a reference back to my second sermon I have never posted on the blog, and a few bits may reflect forum in jokes… But for “scepticism as religion” this may take some beating…
Good morning all. It will come as no surprise to regular attendees here at St. Dawkens that I am late: I do wish however that the parish newsletter would stop referring to me as the “late Rev. Jerome”. I am not quite ready for the Elysian fields yet.

Today is of course the feast of three of our most important saints, and that shall set the tone for this mornings discourse, away from the “niceness of God”, and in to more controversial territory. I think we all must first pause for a moment, and meditate silently upon the Bearded One who watches over us — St. James the Randi (1), whose thaumurturgical miracles are known to all of us, and let us first praise his works –

Priest: May he deliver us from Woo.

Congregation: Long live the JREF challenge!(2)

Let us not also forget St. Shermer(3) and St. Gardner(4), for all three have brought much light in to the world, and helped defeat the foul darkness of superstition. And remember that you too are called to be a light unto the world, and to bring joy and knowledge where there was ignorance and despair, and to smite evil. And let us pray briefly for the Queen, and Her Government, who have recently passed a most righteous bill, which maketh fraudulent practices of this sort illegal, and allows the smiting of Evildoers.(5)

And on that note, let us sing Hymn number 451, God Save the Queen, to the exuberant tune of the Sex Pistols. And yes I am aware Scrubbage minor is incarcerated in a straightjacket this week. After last weeks accident I did not want him to face temptation again…

This week I wish us to turn our attention to matters of Doubt and Faith. This morning, I plan to discuss why Doubt is a Virtue, and encourage us in our Scepticism — and in this evening sermon I shall turn my attention to Faith.

Now I am sure we have all sat through many long and tedious sermons on the value of doubt – was it not instilled in us as children, that our teachers should be questioned, authorities constantly checked for signs of pompous glib ignorance and all we were taught checked carefully for signs of underlying ideological bias? If not it bloody well should have been, for that is what differentiates education, which leads to questioning and allows us to learn, from indoctrination, which tells us that “this is how things are and you better believe it johnny or you will get a clump on the head.”

Now of course children have a pernicious and innate tendency to trust adults — something I have noticed many times, and despite our best attempts to teach them that this is dangerous – and if a lady in a sleigh offers you turkish delight to get in her sled for a ride, or a leering old perv offers you sweeties to get in his car, you know the correct answer I’m sure — tell them to F*** right off, shout loudly and run like hell. Still, trusting adults serves a useful purpose – when Daddy says if you put your hand in the fire you will get burned he means it, and you must as a child listen. Well unless you are Thomas Cranmer.

 

Dave D's wonderful illustration of me from his blog (linked)

So as children we have a pernicious but actually valuable in survival terms tendency to trust at least some adults. And the sad thing is, some children never grow out of it. As Paul wrote
“Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.”(1 Corinthians 14:20)
or to put it another way “Wise up, sucker.” (I have no idea why he was under the misapprehension children were not evil, huh Scrubbage?) Be as, the carpenter said, “As Wise as Serpents, as Gentle as Doves.” In short, use your brains. Otherwise you are going to get fleeced, the fate of most of those who follow shepherds.

Right, so once we are adults, we should be sceptical. It’s our duty and responsibility. And furthermore, without doubt how can we progress? If any here are inclined to agree with me without thinking it through, I must say — I have some prime Attractive Wetland in Florida you might wish to invest in?

Still, Scepticism is much misunderstood. Often when Bob tells us that the reason he was found with his trousers down in the attractive widow Jenkins bedroom by his wife, it was because indeed his belt had failed, his motorbike subsequently struck the good widows fence, and he was hurled bodily through her open bedroom window and just happened to end up on top of her in the compromising position in which he was found, well we like his good wife doubt. I’m sure Bob’s explanation was a perfectly reasonable one, as we all agree, but rightly we question…

Too often scepticism is regarded as mere “nay saying”. There are no ghosts, ghoulies, or invisible pink unicorns. UFOs did not abduct Edna Mullins along with the Church Missionary Fund, and leave her on a beach in Majorca, but sadly kept the money. Some have even doubted my explanation about that unfortunate episode with the supermodel, the clothesline and the riding crop — all perfectly innocent, despite the video. The camera frequently lies, and I’m sure you accept the testimony I was watching the Grand Prix with my good friend Max at the time…

NO, scepticism is NOT simply saying “No” or being a professional contrarian.The sceptic is the person who questions, without pre-judgement, every issue. They make a considered judgement, based upon the evidence presented for and against the claims, and the rational coherence of this, often tested against their own experience. Of course sceptics usually disagree with one another — because all of this requires a subjective input — but what form of knowledge does not?

Of course there are pseudo-sceptics, heretics I’m afraid, who differ from this path of righteousness. I plan an open air barbecue and marshmallow toasting this Wednesday, to which any who hold this position are cordially invited. Bruing your own stake – er I mean steak… The a priori sceptic denies that a certain category of phenomena are at all possible, and will consider no evidence whatsoever in support of that hypothesis. Hence we can see that blind faith and dogmatism persist, even after religion has declined! These folk often assign a value of impossible to anything put in the category “paranormal”. As the category is so wide and nebulous as to include all manner of silly things, I am not surprised, but clearly the truth of otherwise of each phenomena therein should be tested on its own merits. If I do not believe in Werewolves, that tells me nothing of the reality of Giant Squid. I recall some sceptics who claimed ghost hunters were creating “orbs” with Photoshop a few years back. Piffle! The orbs were there, and perfectly natural. A good explanation was not long coming, and the phenomena ceased to be regarded by any intelligent person as “paranormal” in almost all instances. Yet a priori scepticism had made some people blind to the real causality – they were right they were not paranormal, but completely wrong in their reasoning!

Nope, the true sceptic keeps an open mind, questions authority, and doubts. Of course we accept certain doctrines on faith — my knowledge of physics suggest to me that it would be unnecessary to study every perpetual motion device suggested, unless the inventor can show me how it breaks the Holy Writ of Physics. If my understanding of the doctrines of physics are wrong, then I rejoice to have been proven wrong, and we can all benefit, and move on, building better models and increasing our understanding.

Now how do I decide which doctrines to accept on faith? I note that a huge body of work by learned divines exists, building upon the work of earlier divines. In Physics the doctrines are built upon for the most part things one can test oneself, and where it goes beyond that in to speculatively theology, as in Quantum Mechanics and Cosmogeny, we can at least test the maths by seeing how it relates to what we already know. That is the great thing about Science — it’s claims are provisional, and change with new data, and testable, and provide us with useful benefits in terms of technology. I will talk more about these issues in tonights sermon on faith however.

So, as I have rambled on long enough – doubt is a virtue, and scepticism a wonderful methodology for testing ones claims, and approaching truth. The process is never ending, and yet that does not prevent us reaching provisional conclusions, or making judgements on how we see the evidence – we are not forever trapped in Fortean (6) agnosticism.

As a final word however: beware hypocrisy! For if we are truly sceptics, then we must be willing to openly question our own Sacred Dogmas, and barbecue our won Sacred Cows. Even those Holy Doctrines which seem most certain to us, like the Laws of Physics, must be revised in light of new evidence – for if we had piously accepted Newton or Galilieo or Darwin as the final Prophets in their fields, where would be now? Questioning those eminent Holy men led us forward, and Fort was right to remind us those damned uncomfortable facts are exactly what lead us in to questioning, and overthrowing accepted wisdom with new and exciting breakthroughs.

So Doubt is a virtue, and i am minded of the words of Aleister Crowley, who wrote
““I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”

Tonight we shall discuss why Faith too is a virtue.

We shall end with Hymn no 21, “Mr. Crowley” by the Right Rev. Ozzy Ozbourne.

Thank you!

Sermon Footnotes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi
2. http://www.randi.org/
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shermer
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort

The Triumph of Skepticism?

There are few things more annoying than Christians in the USA who claim to be a tiny persecuted minority; but it’s an idea that goes back a long way, to the Apostolic age, when persecution was real and rife. There are three things that annoy me about “we are victims” claims by American Christians – firstly, they tend to originate from sects who hold almost everyone else, even their fellow Christians, to not be “True Christians” ( I let God decide who is on His side myself); secondly Christianity is still overwhelmingly dominant in the USA, and can be oppressive to non-Christians; and thirdly there are still Christians in many other parts of the world dying in significant numbers, being imprisoned or tortured, for their faith.   The so called “culture wars” of the USA pale in comparison. I’m not saying Christians are not persecuted in the U.S. note — some may well be — but the Christian majority there has done it fair degree of shin kicking and hate-mongering over the years, deplored by the vast body of believers as it may be.

The UK is VERY different from the USA in this respect — a mere handful of my friends hold any religious faith, and Christians are actually probably a minority, not that you could tell by the census data. At least the type who go to church on a Sunday are — three out of my immediate circle meet that description, and I think in that respect I may be unusual — I may know more practising Christians than most of the readers of my blog here in the UK. Still this post is actually about the “UK Skeptic Movement”, not about religion, and therefore I won’t dwell on it too long. The one thing I will say to my US fellow believers who yearn for a return to religious education and school prayer — look at the USA, where these things do not exist, and the UK, where they are still mandated by law? Which is the more secular country? By far the UK: we may know more about religion, but we are far less likely to practice one?

So what has all this got to do with Skepticism (yes I know that is the American spelling, but it’s what most sceptical groups here use) in the UK? I actually think British Skeptics may end up like American Christians, complaining of a persecution that does not exist, and with messianic and apocalyptic motifs in their thinking and writing, unless they realise a very simple fact. They won many years ago — the battle for the public’s mind is over, done and dusted.

Now let me be clear – that does not mean that scepticism is pointless, or not urgently needed. The battle in the medical world for evidence based practice, the need to fight the false marketing claims that permeate our culture, attack media hysteria, and  continue the brilliant sceptical research in parapsychology, anomalous experience etc is pressing and real — I still think Skeptics in the Pub etc do a great deal of good, in exposing people to new and useful information — but gals and guys, you are not the persecuted minority. We do not face an imminent dark age of woo and superstition. We face a declining health system, economic misery and appalling poverty, educational standards and public health problems, but we are fighting to get them fixed. Crystal power, reincarnation, and people frittering away their life savings on quack cures is not about to cause the end of all we know. Because most people in the UK are fundamentally sceptical, cynical, and questioning nowadays, or so I believe.

Yes we all know people who embrace some outrageous woo – sadly it goes hand in hand with the end of institutionalised religion. What we have to remember though is that the battle has been hard fought, but rationality and scepticism have often won. I’m not a fan of much of what passes for Skepticism these days — too often I find myself wondering about what seems to be ideologically driven denialism, rather than actual research or fair critique — but I have seen both sceptics and believers in various things frothing with anger at each other. Hey dudes, we all have our biases, and our idea of prior probability, and often we get angry when deeply held beliefs are challenged and stop listening. That’s true of human beings – it’s a human thing.  But Skeptics are supposed to question and doubt, and I think sceptics are just as prone to in-fighting and argument as any other group, so the believers need not fear some monolithic ideology of ridicule developing to crush them – there will always be intelligent sceptics in the “Skeptic  Movement” who will question allegedly sceptical research as much as they question “woo”. It’s why I put “Skeptic Movement” in quotes – because really it’s just a  bunch of people who share some interests, and who talk to each other, and have a kind of loose tribal loyalty that falls apart as soon as you put them in a room together. It’s a social phenomenon, not a cult. There are no rules, doctrines or dogmas, just a  lot of Doubting Thomases who enjoy critical thinking, and sadly all too often mocking those whose ideas they don’t understand and whose research they have not read. But on the whole they are decent, kind, and intelligent folks – much like most of our age group in the UK?

Now most of you will be shaking your heads by now – my believing friends wondering if I have lost the plot, given how fiercely I argue my corner for various beliefs against the “Skeptic Movement”: my sceptical friends thinking I have lost the plot, because the battle against woo remains white hot. Well stop and think — when did you last see major woo on TV, on any of the terrestrial channels? In my case it was some nonsense talked about the non-existence of a Davidic Kingdom on a Biblical archaeology show — sure it may not have been much of a kingdom, but it existed as even minimalist like Finkelstein admit — we have some archaeological evidence for it. I’m sure I have seen tons of crap about new wonder beauty treatments on the adverts, but on the whole, you have to go to cable to get real woo these days, to the ghosthunting and paranormal shows that even dedicated ghosthunters and psi-researchers like me, and let’s face it even the Little Woggle Spiritualist Ghost Group or whatever, think are utter nonsense, though occasionally entertaining!

OK, so why do I claim the sceptics have won the fight for public consciousness? Let me quote myself from comments on a previous post “However market forced DO influence what is produced, and Wiseman signed a five figure book deal at Frankfurt. Good for him! However I fail to see how we can argue that sceptical books outsell paranormal ones now. Let’s take two excellent sceptical books — Paranormality and Bad Science — both Amazon Top 10 bestsellers. Currently it is at 206. the wonderful Bad Science, two years after its release is at 281. The best selling psychic woo book is at 1,206! The first actual parapsychological book I find, on NDE, is at 43,319, and though much woo can be found before, and the first hard core academic parapsi book is Irwin & Watt’s Parapsychology (despite heavy plugging by me) which comes in at #13,472. I think this tells us something about the influence and market for sceptical books in the UK, as opposed to the market for woo and academic parapsychology??? The fight for sceptics to be heard has long since ended, and I would say among readers is done and dusted?”

So let’s try an experiment. Let’s look at books by Goldacre, Wiseman, Dawkins, Randi and Shermer – sure all heavy hitting public intellectuals — and then look at books by the household names of the paranormal — Derek Acorah, Colin Fry, Most Haunted, TAPS (the American ghost group who have their own popular TV show) and Lord help us Sylvia Browne. Who will rank highest in this top ten? I’ll take the first book listed by each, and use today’s sales rankings.

Richard Wiseman, Paranormality, (2011), #202

Ben Goldacre, Bad Science, (2009), #285

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (2007), #481

Colin Fry, By Your Side, (2010), #8,955

Sylvia Browne, Life on the Other Side, (2004) #29,835

John Edward, Infinite Quest, (2010) #67,128

Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things, (2007)  #78,740

TAPS, Seeking Spirits, (2009) #94,292

Derek Acorah, The Psychic World of …, (2005), #146,886

Most Haunted , Official Guide, (2005), #213,332

James Randi, Flim Flam, (1994), #261,312

Look at the sales rankings. Now the problem is the way publishers work books sell in volume initially, then tail off. I can’t do a  proper analysis of total units sold, as Amazon do not give away that data — but we can try dividing the sales ranks by number of years since published? Still the picture is clear – bear in mind the huge gap between the highest ranked book sales and the lower ones — scepticism sells in the UK market??

I’ll write more on this I am sure, but I’ll throw it open to discussion now…

cj x

On Thin Ice? The Blessed Bishop of Lincoln!

Well snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow. The roads were impassable, or so the media said, in large parts of the country.  Panic buying has set in in some places, as the tabloids helpfully said, reassuring the public with useful headlines about food running out in the shops and causing much more.  In short much like last winter!

So it comes as a relief to hear that the Church has at last decided to lend a hand, and the following rather fun story from the BBC last week made me smile.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-11805752

The Bishop of Lincoln will bless Lincolnshire’s gritters in the hope of cutting the number of winter crashes.

The Right Reverend Dr John Saxbee, who retires in January, has blessed the county’s fleet each year since 2003.

He said past ceremonies had been followed by a reduction in road deaths, which was “perhaps not a coincidence”.

The blessing takes place at Sturton by Stow on 7 December, with church leaders simultaneously carrying out ceremonies at the county’s other depots.

Bishop Saxbee said: “These annual ‘Blessing of the Gritters’ events have coincided with a dramatic reduction in the number of fatalities on Lincolnshire’s roads.

“Perhaps that is not a coincidence, and as I look to my retirement in January I hope and pray that driving carefully and arriving safely will continue to matter to all who use our road network in the years ahead.”

Well, I’m all for the Bishop! Such a blessing, regardless of his rather hedged comments on whether it is efficacious or not – and let us face it, it raises so many theological questions I’m not even going to start – does something to make the Church relevant, and if it does have a positive effect on road safety statistics  then even better!  On sceptic forums however the response has been a bit more reserved, even unkind. I think the issue is that people have read the service as some kind of magical rite, and felt that it was supposed to have a definite effect. I think if it did, we would all be out praying right now.

Cheltenham High Street, January 2009

Amusingly a lot of  folks have pointed out that correlation is not cause, and have looked for other reasons for the decline in road traffic fatalities in Lincolnshire; the truth is that the picture there is similar to the general decline across the UK, for which we can all be thankful.  Being CJ I set about investigating.

 

Ok, from the Department of Transport figures to 2008, being all I have easy access to, Lincolnshire Road Deaths, and after the slash / Norfolk road deaths and then the / third set are Suffolk road deaths. I chose Norfolk & Suffolk as similar terrain in part, and as far as i know the bishops there do not bless the gritters!

1999 – 104 / 71 / 48
2000 – 71 / 75 / 56
2001 – 84 / 75 / 53
2002 – 91 / 77 / 43
2003 – 104 / 62 / 60 * blessing starts winter 2003
2004 – 77 / 63 / 42
2005 – 69 / 53 / 36
2006 – 66 / 66 / 47
2007 – 79 / 56 / 39
2008 – 51 / 38 / 31

I have no later data. What is clear is a) Lincolnshire has a higher rate of fatalities than East Anglia does, but all three are in decline.

Not wanting to try and work out which 2003 deaths were before the blessing and which after, I just did the obvious simple maths – average of deaths prior to 2003, and post 2003.

Lincolnshire

Preblessing 87.5
Post-blessing 68.4
Drop of 22%

Now the two un-blessed counties!

Norfolk

Preblessing 74.5
Post-blessing 55.2
Drop of 26%

Suffolk

Preblessing 50
Post-blessing 39
Drop of 22%

Conclusion: Blessing, while admirable and worthy, has not resulted in any effect on road deaths as far as I can see in the county. Still good publicity for road safety awareness.

Well, I guess my research is a bit coarse – one would not expect gritters to have much effect on road deaths except in the winter, and I could therefore say take fatality numbers in November, December, January & February for each county.   I only note this because my methodology is a bit crude, and could in theory be masking an effect, as I’m testing total RTA fatalities per annum per county, rather than the actual “claim” made, in as far as there was one.

So as a prayer experiment a negative, but I still thank God for Bishops like Lincoln who actually do something and care about real issues, and long may he be blessed.

cj x