Arguing Science. Michael Shermer

was only one factor in my deconversion. There was the intolerance generated by absolute morality, the logical outcome of knowing without doubt that you are right and everyone else is wrong. There were the inevitable hypocrisies that arise from preaching the ought, but practicing the is. One of my dormmates regularly prayed for sex, rationalizing that he could better witness for the Lord without all that pent-up libido. There was the awareness of other religious beliefs—often mutually exclusive—and their adherents, all of whom were equally adamant that theirs was the One True Religion. And there was the knowledge of the temporal, geographic, and cultural determiners of religious beliefs that made it obvious that God was made in our likeness and not the reverse.

      By the end of my first year of a graduate program in experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, I had abandoned Christianity and stripped off my silver Ichthus medallion, replacing what was for me the stultifying dogmas of a 2,000-year-old religion with the worldview of an always-changing, always-fresh science. My enthusiasm for the passionate nature of this perspective was communicated to me most emphatically by my evolutionary biology professor, Bayard Brattstrom, particularly in his after-class discussions at a local bar—The 301 Club—that went late into the night. This was another factor in my road back from Damascus: I enjoyed the company and friendship of science people much more than that of religious people. Science is where the action was for me.

      James Barham: You are known, among other things, as a skeptic, an agnostic, and an atheist. Is there a designation that you prefer for yourself? How would you distinguish these three designations?

      Speaking for yourself, are you certain God does not exist? Some atheists have such an antipathy toward God that they might better be called anti-theists. You’ve never struck us as that hardcore. What accounts for that?

      Michael Shermer: I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God. No, I am not 100 percent certain there is no God. But there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there is, and so pick whatever label you like. Technically speaking, “agnostic,” as Thomas Huxley defined it in 1869 to mean that God is “unknowable,” is accurate from an ontological perspective since it is difficult to imagine a scientific experiment that would clearly delineate between the God hypothesis and the no-God hypothesis. But we are behaving primates, not just thinking sapiens, so we must choose to act on our beliefs, and I act under the presumption that there is no God.

      That said, I don’t like to define myself by what I don’t believe. I believe in lots of things: the Big Bang, evolution, the germ theory of disease, plate tectonics and the geological record, the laws of nature, and the like. I also believe in natural rights, moral progress, and that science and reason are the best tools we have for determining how best we should live. To that end, I call myself a humanist and I adopt the worldview of Enlightenment Humanism.

      James Barham: In addition to being a best-selling book author and to writing a monthly “Skeptic” column for Scientific American, you are also the founder of the Skeptics Society and editor-in-chief of its house magazine, Skeptic. Could you tell us about the purpose of the Skeptics Society and how the idea for it came to you?

      Michael Shermer: After I earned my Ph.D. in the history of science, I got a job teaching at Occidental College, a highly regarded four-year liberal arts college in Los Angeles, and I figured I would settle in for the duration. But I was still restless to be an entrepreneur, so I co-founded the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine in my garage as a hobby, and as it grew, I realized by the late ’90s that I could do this full time. I loved teaching and being in a classroom. However, publishing magazines, writing a monthly column for such a large-circulation magazine as Scientific American, writing books, and doing television and radio shows gave me access to a much larger classroom than I could ever reach in a brick-and-mortar building. So, I’ve never looked back, even though I am now teaching one class a year at Chapman University—Skepticism 101—a critical thinking course that I like to do to try out new ideas on students.

      The mission of the Skeptics Society is to promote science and critical thinking. Although we do a lot of debunking—and let’s face it, there’s a lot of bunk out there—we always maintain an undercurrent of promoting the positive aspects of science, which we also do through our monthly science lecture series at Caltech and our annual conference on various topics.

      James Barham: You have stated, in connection with non-mainstream scientific claims, that “Skepticism is the default position because the burden of proof is on the believer, not the skeptic.”²

      However, some of the people you have criticized in your Scientific American column and in Skeptic magazine—we are thinking especially of Rupert Sheldrake, with whom you will be engaging in a “Dialogue on the Nature of Science” here at TBS in the near future—have pointed out that they are the ones who are “skeptical” vis-à-vis mainstream scientific opinion.

      In fact, there is now an entire website, Skeptical About Skeptics, devoted to equalizing the burden of proof between the scientific establishment and its critics.

      How do you respond to Sheldrake and others who are “skeptical about your skepticism,” and who want to shift the burden of proof back onto you?

      Michael Shermer: My position on who has the burden of proof stands pretty solid among most scientists because of the fact that most mainstream scientific theories are hard won over many years and, like governments, “should not be changed for light and transient causes” (as Jefferson opined in the Declaration of Independence).

      Yes, historically speaking, a few mainstream scientific theories were overturned by isolated outsiders, but that is almost never the case today. There’s a reason we talk about a “consensus” among climate scientists that global warming is real and human-caused. It isn’t because science depends on the consensus of authorities; it is because science is an extremely competitive enterprise, and if there were serious problems with climate models or datasets, then there is little doubt that these would have been uncovered by scientists working in other labs. The idea that scientists get together on weekends to get their story straight in the teeth of opposition from without is ludicrous. Attend scientific conferences on any topic and you will find often bitter contentions over this and that dataset or hypothesis. By the time findings and theories filter out of the lab into the public, they have been tried and tested and hold a high degree of confidence of most scientists who work in that field.

      I will expand on this more in my dialogue with Rupert, but in short, there’s certainly nothing wrong with outsiders (and especially insiders!) challenging the consensus. But the argument that they laughed at the Wright brothers doesn’t hold because they laughed at the Marx brothers too, so being laughed at doesn’t mean you’re right. You have to actually have both data and theory in support.

      James Barham: It is time to turn to your new book—by all accounts your magnum opus—The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.

      And a blockbuster of a book it is! First and foremost, it seems to us, The Moral Arc is a treasure chest of thought-provoking, cutting-edge social science research on a very wide array of topics, grouped around the unifying theme of the human condition very broadly conceived.

      But in addition to its wealth of absorbing empirical detail, the book is also thesis-driven. The thesis—again in our interpretation—is twofold: (1) the moral progress of humanity over the past several centuries has been palpable, and may be confidently expected to continue into the future; and (2) the principal driver of that moral progress has been science and reason, with the corollary that religion has not only been of no help in this regard, but has been a positive hindrance—and therefore the sooner it is extirpated the better.

      Is that a fair assessment of The Moral Arc, in very general terms?

      Michael Shermer: Yes. The Moral Arc is by far my best and most important work, so thank you for recognizing that.

      Most people have a hard time getting past the first thesis of the book—that things are getting better—and it is understandable why, if you’re paying attention at all to the news with all the stories coming out of Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, and parts of Africa, not to mention Ferguson, Missouri, and