The Value in Skepticism

Atheist Alliance International, an alliance of several smaller atheist groups, will award their 2009 Richard Dawkins Award to comedian and talk show host Bill Maher. This has upset a lot of skeptics, since Bill Maher, in addition to being a loud and open atheist, is also a promoter of pseudoscientific "alternative medicine" treatments, a promulgator of paranoid conspiracy theories about pharmaceutical companies and western medicine, and an antivaccinationist. The Dawkins Award, in the words of AAI, is supposed to be given to those people "whose contributions raise public awareness of the nontheist life stance; who through writings, media, the arts, film, and/or the stage advocates increased scientific knowledge; who through work or by example teaches acceptance of the nontheist philosophy..." Bill Maher may meet the secularist qualifications, but he fails miserably on the increasing scientific knowledge front. And the nonsense he spews could keep people from seeking life-saving medical treatment.

Some of the criticism over this award has been directed at Richard Dawkins himself, but he's not a member of the AAI committee that chose Maher as this year's recipient. However, AAI has issued a statement claiming Dawkins is "happy" with the decision, as he doesn't have to agree with someone on every point to appreciate his or her work promoting nontheism. AAI says Maher's documentary "Religulous" was "easily the most prominent film against religion in the United States last year".

Putting aside the fact that this defense doesn't address the scientific clause in the Dawkins Award criteria, it makes no logical sense. How many other films released in 2008 could be classified as being "against religion"? Holding "Religulous" up as the best example in such a paltry field is meaningless. It would be like giving "Battlefield Earth" an Oscar for Best Movie with Pro-Scientology Undertones Starring John Travolta and the Last Remnants of Forest Whitaker's Integrity.

More importantly, "prominent" isn't a value judgment at all. Instead of honoring the anti-religion movie with the most publicity, AAI should be more concerned with whether the movie is a quality piece of journalism or entertainment that makes its case effectively. "Religulous" fails on both those fronts. It's a meandering, smug, and witless film that offers no insight whatsoever. Instead of engaging with the religious people he encounters, Maher simply balks at them. His idea of debate is to shrug his shoulders and say, "Oh, come on!" This isn't an inappropriate response when faced with the raw ideas behind religion. Virgin births and neverending fish baskets are pretty silly, and there's not a lot one can say to dispute the facts at hand. But Maher's target isn't just religion. It's religious people.

In one of the hallmarks of a poorly made documentary, Maher chooses to tack a speech onto the end of the film explicating his thesis in the most didactic way possible. After showing us a bunch of faithful people espousing silly but unsurprising opinions and acting anywhere between heartwarmingly cordial and slightly batty in the face of Maher's shrugs, his ultimate conclusion is that by preaching that the world will come to an end, the religious (mostly Christians, but not all) feel free to rape the planet environmentally and otherwise be total pricks. But while it's irrefutable that much prickishness has been committed in the name of religion, it's hard to reconcile this argument with the portrayal of so many hospitable and seemingly decent theists throughout the rest of the film. And to blame environmental travesty on religion is to ignore the more plausible explanation of sheer ignorance, selfishness, and greed. If the faithful were so sociopathically convinced that death is just an entryway to a perfect eternity and nothing on the Earth matters, they wouldn't spend so much time working for nicer homes, doting on their families, and watching TV. Maher gives too much credit to the scriptural convictions of the religious and, in the process, shows how little he understands them even after his trip around the world.

It's profoundly disturbing that AAI, Richard Dawkins, and many others are willing to look beyond the inherent value in a work or in the work of an activist like Bill Maher in favor of blindly accepting anything spewed from the mouth of the non-religious. This is exactly what religious people do! If Christians cared about the quality and integrity of their culture, mediocre to terrible "artists" like Amy Grant, Jars of Clay, Tyler Perry, and Creed wouldn't have careers. They value message over substance, and apparently AAI and Dawkins do the same.

It's spilled over into the broader skeptical community as well. Take, for example, a Twitter message recently sent out by Brian Dunning of Skeptoid.com: "'Anti-Religious Intent of "Invention of Lying" Confirmed' - http://is.gd/3P8NQ - If true, let's all go see it tonight!!" If you don't already know, "The Invention of Lying" is the new Ricky Gervais movie about a world in which no one has ever lied and what happens when one man (Gervais) learns how to lie. Because there's never been a lie in the universe of the movie, no one ever made up the concept of God. Hence, there's no religion. Gervais is an open atheist and skeptic, so this shouldn't be surprising at all. It's actually pretty brilliant. But instead of encouraging people to see "The Invention of Lying" because it's most likely a very funny movie starring, co-written, and co-directed by an exceptionally talented comedian, Dunning chooses instead to support it sight unseen because of its "anti-religious intent". And he's so worked up about the idea, he couldn't be bothered to look up when the movie comes out, which is two days after he told people to "see it tonight!!".

This isn't an isolated incident. Earlier this year, Dunning and Skeptic Magazine's Michael Shermer were subjected to a prank by British comedian Marc Wootton. Wootton plays a character called Shirley Ghostman, a self-proclaimed and obviously horrible psychic. Under the guise of a TV show seeking to have Shermer and Dunning test the powers of "real" psychics, Wootton's production company set up a situation where the two skeptics would test Shirley Ghostman. Hilarity, I'm told, ensued. But when Dunning and Shermer found out they'd been had for the sake of comedy, they went ballistic. They posted blogs and issued tweets blasting Wootton as dishonest, malicious, and unfunny. Shermer even went so far as to find out where the Ghostman character would be performing more pranks so he could send people there to disrupt the show. Only after Shermer and Dunning were informed of the very obvious fact that the entire Ghostman character isn't meant to lampoon skeptics so much as people who claim to be psychic did they settle down. Not only did they settle down, but they also changed their tune about whether the prank was funny at all. (And it was funny. Ghostman claimed to communicate with the spirit of Lee Majors, the Six Million Dollar Man. After being told that Majors isn't dead, Ghostman brought in a body bag containing a guy with calculators taped to his body. Good stuff.) They proved that their value judgments are based more on message than substance.

The Ghostman example is disconcerting, but perhaps understandable. Anger at having their time wasted and their dignity potentially compromised may have clouded Shermer and Dunning's initial statements on the matter. But allowing yourself to be blinded by ideology can also open the door to hypocrisy. For instance, Richard Dawkins appeared in Ben Stein's anti-evolution film "Expelled", and later complained that he was tricked. The producers of "Expelled" told Dawkins and the other rationalists who are interviewed in the film that it was actually called "Crossroads" and was about the intersection between faith and science. Far from the paranoid, delusional screed it turned out to be. But Bill Maher did the same thing in producing "Religulous". Speaking to the Los Angeles Time, Maher said, "We never, ever, used my name. We never told anybody it was me who was going to do the interviews. We even had a fake title for the film. We called it 'A Spiritual Journey.'" By supporting this film, Dawkins is embracing the same techniques he derided when they were used by people of an opposing viewpoint.

The list goes on. Greydon Square, an atheist rapper, has been the subject of fawning interviews on many skeptical podcasts, even though his songs are repetitive and pedantic compared to the best hip hop has to offer. Square entered into a relationship with the Rational Response Squad, the financially suspect atheist organization that enjoys several devoted followers despite the fact that its representatives barely managed to hold their own in a debate with intellectual powerhouses Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort of divine banana fame. Is it too much to ask that artists, writers, activists, and producers focus less on creating output that's good for skeptics and more on creating skeptical output that's simply good?

Sure, a lot of value judgments are based on taste. They're opinion, not fact. If you like Greydon Square's music or find Bill Maher funny, there's nothing wrong with that. But the next time you're reading a skeptical book or watching a TV show critical of religion, take a moment and ask yourself if you'd find any value in this piece of culture at all if it didn't reaffirm your own beliefs. There is absolutely a wealth of top quality content out there being produced by and for skeptics of all sorts. Richard Dawkins' prose is elegant and gripping. NOVA Science Now is funny and informative. The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is an invaluable resource for both knowledge and entertainment. Make no mistake that the good far outweighs the bad. But never accept the bad just because its message is good. And in the case of Bill Maher, AAI should consider whether making fun of religion in front of a wide audience is more important than feeding that same audience misinformation that could potentially kill them.

On the Overestimation of Origins

You've probably heard that out-of-work actor Kirk Cameron and poon-broomed evangelist Ray Comfort are planning to hand out thousands of copies of their own version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species on college campuses this November. The catch is that they've inserted a forward about how Darwin is full of crap and all scientists are liars. And why? Because, as Cameron explains it to noted science journal People Magazine, On the Origin of Species is "the Bible of the atheists". But I'm not sure this is true. Most atheists have probably never read the book. People believe in evolution primarily because it just makes more sense than the idea that people were created by dirt and ribs 6,000 years ago. It makes sense to anyone who's ever broken a vestigial tail bone or had to get a flu shot because the previous year's strain evolved. All the scientific data backing up evolution is just gravy. And the best way to get your message across to horny, drunken coeds probably isn't to throw a Victorian science tome at them, crazy forward or not. This all seems very misguided and silly. Sort of like Genesis. More details here.

Spanking the Dummie

University of New Hampshire professor Murray Straus has looked into the average IQ scores of children who are spanked compared to those who aren't, and he's determined that spanking makes kids dumber. While this may be the case, it's important to note that Straus is debuting his research at the 14th International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma. Note that this isn't a scientific journal. And while it's not uncommon for scientists to present early research initially at a conference of their peers, this does beg the question of whether Straus considers spanking to be violence, abuse, or trauma. In which case, his results might be skewed. Also, there's no telling whether children who are spanked are also more at risk for other factors that might contribute to lower IQ scores. In other words, there's no good reason yet to determine spanking was directly responsible for inhibiting their intelligence. Or maybe I'm just being too nitpicky. I've only ever spanked adults, but I can't say I'm 100% against violence toward children. I taught middle school English. More details here.

Catholics v. Gays

In November, Maine voters will vote on whether or not to repeal their marriage equality law allowing same-sex couples to be legally hitched. Not content to just sit on the sidelines and bitch about condoms, the Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine is taking up collection money in church to help pay for TV ads lobbying for repeal. This makes sense, as the Bible clearly lumps homosexuality in with eating shellfish and allowing women to braid their hair as sins against God. Where this gets tricky is the fact that as a religious organization, the Catholic church is tax exempt in the U.S. One stipulation of this cushy status is that the church can't politicize itself. What did Jesus say about giving things to Caesar? For his part, Rev. Louis Phillips is sticking to his guns. "Marriage pre-dates government," he says. That may be true (though probably not). But what we understand as marriage today doesn't pre-date government at all. You know, a social contract entered into by consenting adults instead of, say, young girls being forced to marry whatever dude flashes enough cash at her parents. In fact, you could say it took the enforcement of civil rights by the government to create the modern institution of marriage. In your face, tax dodger! More details here. Link via @BadAstronomer.

Xbox, for Your Health!

Simon Scarle used to work as a software engineer for Rare, the Microsoft-owned video game development studio responsible for Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, and the Xbox Live avatar you've created to present yourself to the world as someone cuter than you actually are. But Scarle is now a computer scientist at the University of Warwick in England, where he's put his gaming background to good use. Dissatisfied with the piddling processors used by medical science to process heart rhythm data, Scarle tricked out an Xbox 360 to use its enhanced processing power for the same purpose. The result is a machine that can crunch more numbers in a shorter amount of time for less money than traditional heart diagnosis computers. Which either goes to show just how much technology you might have in your home without really noticing or how atrociously inefficient the direct market medical tech business actually is. More details here.

Eats Shoots and Dies

BBC naturalist Chris Packham reckons it's time we took a cold, hard look at reality and just let all the pandas die already. The adorable endangered species enjoys millions of dollars every year in money spent trying to save it from extinction. But Packham says the cuddly animals are on an "evolutionary cul-de-sac" and saving them is a wasted effort. Spend the money on more hopeful causes, he says, and "let [the panda] go, with a degree of dignity..." He's right that pandas have traded their dignity for protection. The annual Steampunk Panda Parade I hold in my back yard is proof enough of that. (Though they look so cute in their goggles and top hats.) But I wonder if there's not a more sinister motive for Packham's grim outlook. After all, he said the same thing about tigers, arguing that it's useless to try and save an animal that's worth more dead than alive. Does he believe the same is true of pandas? And does this have anything to do with a company I just made up called Packham's Panda Parts, Inc.? Only time and research will tell. More details here.

Marxist Gay Marriage

Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa is kind of peeved about his state eliminating its constitutional ban against gay marriage. He predicted Iowa would become a "Mecca" for couples of the same sex who would like to receive the same benefits society affords to heterosexuals and gay people with beards. And according to him, he was right. Citing uncorroborated statistics, King claims a quarter of marriages granted in Iowa are the queer kind. Ew! All that nasty tax money and dirty, dirty administrative fees trickling into his home state from the sweat-stained backs of sinners? Gross! But even though the ban was ruled unconstitutional by the courts instead of being removed directly by the voters, polls show about a 50/50 split amongst Iowa's population when it comes to supporting gay marriage. In other words, it's unlikely a new ban would be voted into effect. And that pisses King off. So much so that he's made an argument that gay marriage is just a cog in the death machine of socialism. By "argument", of course, I mean "insane rambling". Quote: "That is, this is one of the goals they have to go to is same-sex marriage because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation. They want access to public funds and resources. Eventually all those resources will be pooled because that’s the direction we’re going. And not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis." That's the endgame here, people. Comrade Obama and his Americorps army won't stop until we're all pooling our resources on communal beet farms and fucking each other in the ass. Or scissoring, as the case may be. More details here.