Skepticism, Rationality, And Logic

There's been some interesting hullabaloo on the atheist/skeptic front lately.  Two separate events come to mind, but they have some things in common, and things that I've seen in other areas as well and will probably continue to see.

The first was a forum thread in which I was called "arrogant" and "condescending" (two words that atheists in general are very familiar with being called) for my interview on the Does Polyamory Make You Atheist episode of Poly Weekly.  For those who didn't listen to the episode, there was a very specific question - does polyamory make people atheist.  Minx kept wanting to get off track and wander into the land of "I don't want to say anyone's beliefs are wrong because I think whatever makes sense to you is OK with me", which wasn't the point of the episode.  I took special care to address only the question, and to not touch on any belief system or even to explain what atheism is, let alone my own brand of atheism.  I pointed the listeners to my LJ atheist tag to learn more about that.

The question was, does polyamory make people atheist.  My answer was very simple.  No.  I had only a few minutes of talking time in which to explain why I am both atheist and polyamorous and what, if anything, they had to do with each other, partly because the episode is only 30-45 minutes, partly because my interview was only a portion of the total episode, and partly because this segment was half-taken up by Minx going on about her acceptance of any and all belief structures, which was besides the point.

In this episode, I outlined the path that I took to both polyamory and atheism.  I said that the same tools that led me to my version of atheism are the same tools that led me to my version of polyamory.  In both cases, I looked at the evidence that the world around me presented to me with regards to religion and with regards to relationships, and I reached a conclusion using a logic and reason applied to the subjects of religion and relationships.

I was called "condescending" because I said I used logic to arrive at my conclusions, so some people claim that this necessarily implies that anyone who arrives at another conclusion must therefore be illogical. I was also called "arrogant" because I spent no time asking or learning about other people's beliefs. In an episode about how atheism affects polyamory, I was arrogant for talking all about atheism & not talking about paganism or Christianity.

This was the path, in a nutshell, that I took that led me to both polyamory and atheism.  It's called "skepticism".  Skepticism means, literally, inquiry.  To be skeptical is to inquire.  Skepticism is at the heart of the scientific method.  It is often mistaken for "doubting", and for "cynicism", but those are not correct.  Of course, some skeptics can ALSO be doubters or cynics, they are not mutually exclusive (I tend towards cynicism all too often), but they are also distinct from each other.

People can reach either conclusion (polyamory or atheism) via other means.  I would not call Bill Maher a "skeptic", since he is not rational and does not use the scientific method, but he is most definitely an atheist.  And people can use the tools of skepticism, or rational inquiry, and reach other conclusions, as I *did* imply when I said "No, I think it's more that skepticism and rational inquiry CAN result in both atheism and polyamory."  We're not talking about something as simple as the claim "there is oxygen in this room".  That's easily testable and can have only one answer - either there is or there isn't, and doesn't change depending upon the beliefs or prespective of the tester.  We're talking about whether a person believes polyamory is the right relationship style for himself, or whether a person has belief, or lacks belief, in a deity.  These are very complicated questions, and a person's perspective, which is naturally subjective, is a valid and important criteria in logically evaluating the questions and determining a conclusion.  These are not empiric questions, they are subjective considerations.  Questions about economic and politics are also very complicated questions and one can arrive at different conclusions using the same tools of logic and reason, depending upon one's priorities and subjective experiences.  These are issues of value judgments, not purely empirical facts.

The validity of atheism is an empiric question, but that's not the question at hand.  Is it possible to be polyamorous is an empiric question, but that's not the question either.  The question is, are YOU an atheist or a polyamorist and how did you get there, not how correct is your position.  My reasons for being a polyamorist may not apply to your position.  Maybe you think you probably can love more than one person simultaneously, but your love and your devotion and your commitment to your existing partner is a higher priority than your commitment to polyamory - it's just not that big of a deal to you.

With that criteria, it is entirely logical and reasonable for one person to choose a monogamous relationship structure.  Using logic, a different person may arrive at a different conclusion than I have because that person has information that I lack or vice versa.  Much like my rant about the Fanboys, who want to insist that they have the answer for me without having all the information about the situation, or who have different priorities than I do & refuse to accept that another set of priorities are valid for other people, this is a matter of perspective and two people can arrive at different conclusions, even if they use the same, or similar, tools, such as logic.

Skepticism is a process.  It requires that one investigate a claim, no matter who is making that claim.  The scientific method is inherently skeptical in that it investigates claims, using a process that is designed to reduce human bias and come to conclusions that are reasonably empirical and free of human fallacy.  It is a long, slow process that requires many different people and many different tests precisely because of the possibility of human error.

And one of the things that humans are prone to do, is to apply their skepticism inconsistently.  A person can be a logical, rational, analytical, skeptical person in general, and still have one or some subjects about which they do not apply their logic, their rationality, their analysis, or their skepticism.  In fact, that's pretty much everyone.  Albert Einstein, noted brilliant scientist, refused to accept the idea of a universe based upon probability at the quantum level, which prevented him from doing any significant work in quantum physics.  His entire life was devoted to the pursuit of scientific inquiry, which, as I've already pointed out, has at its heart skeptical inquiry.  And yet, this was an area he was quite irrational about, in his refusal to accept the evidence presented to him.  He died, still refusing to accept quantum physics.  

Linus Pauling is a Nobel Prize winner.  Pauling was included in a list of the 20 greatest scientists of all time by the magazine New Scientist, with Albert Einstein being the only other scientist from the twentieth century on the list. Gautam R. Desiraju, the author of the Millennium Essay in Nature, claimed that Pauling was one of the greatest thinkers and visionaries of the millennium, along with Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Pauling is notable for the diversity of his interests: quantum mechanics, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, protein structure, molecular biology, and medicine. In all these fields, and especially on the boundaries between them, he made decisive contributions.  However, Pauling got sucked into the idea that megadoses of vitamin C can cure cancer.  He published lots of papers on the subject, all of which were refuted on the basis of flawed methodology and his conclusions were not repeatable when others tried to replicate his tests.  In the end, it was concluded that vitamin C, in regular or megadoses, did not cure cancer and did not prevent colds.  Pauling, who megadosed until his death, died of cancer.

Both examples are men who are considered brilliant scientists, and as I've said, skepticism is inherently at the core of science.  And yet, both men held in reserve some subject for which they would not apply their skepticism.  This does not invalidate their contributions to science and they deserve the accolades they have been given for their advancements in science.  Their ideas are valid, regardless of what *other* wacky ideas they might also hold, because their valid ideas stand up no matter who is making the claim.  Unlike faith-based, authoritarian systems, claims are not true because Someone said so, claims are true no matter who says so, and true claims are accepted even if the Speaker is batshit crazy on all other subjects (but maybe we'll reserve acceptance until someone a little less batshit crazy comes up with the same conclusion using legitimate testing methodology).  For instance, Phrenology was the first discipline to claim that the brain had specialized areas.  Of course, bumps on the head don't tell us jack shit about the brain, but the idea that our brains are not just one big lump of grey matter was tossed out when evidence came to light.  Scientists didn't ignore phrenologists because they were crazy, they ignored them because they were wrong, but the itty-bitty part they got right was accepted even though the wacky phrenologists claimed it.

People are admired and revered for their contributions, but the science and skeptical communities know that people are still just people, not 2-D movie heroes (watch the Star Trek movie First Contact, where the crew goes back in time to discover that the inventor of warp drive, and consequently the father of their entire society, was a drunk bastard with an attitude problem, who just happened to also be a brilliant physicist, who hated hearing that they built a statue in his honor and taught about him in school, and who was nothing like what the textbooks said he was.  Also watch the Jaynestown epsiode of Firefly, where an entire town makes a hero of the most disreputable, selfish, ego-centric members of the crew because he happen to drop a load of money on an impoverished indentured slave town - the good works was good works, but the people are complicated & not as equally good as their works).  People are complicated, and even the most dedicated skeptics can be unskeptical about some things they hold dear.  That's why we have science, to discover the truth even when we really want to believe in something false.

Which brings us to the other event.  A particular astronomer has been singled out because she is a good astronomer, a science popularizer, and a Christian.  Some people in the skeptical community want to make skepticism an atheist movement, which would necessarily remove all skeptics who have some sort of religious beliefs.  I'm reminded of a Babylon 5 episode where a culture built some technology that would weed out the alien influences that had been seeded in the society to destroy them.  The technology was designed by religious zealots and designed to kill the "impure".  The problem is, there was no possible way to define "pure", since *everyone* had something different than everyone else.  So the technology destroyed the entire race.

Some people want to cry hypocrisy of certain skeptics for allowing a religious believer into the ranks.  And then there are others, like me and PZ Myers and DJ Grothe, who say that people are not skeptical of all subjects, all the time, and what matters are the claims.  If a person is in favor of science, advances science, and promotes skepticism, they are, by definition, a skeptic, even if they hold a sacred cow, or, as Penn & Teller say on their show, a gris gris.  Their legitimate claims benefit society and the scientific and skeptical communities as a whole.  The individual should be welcomed in, but that does not mean that their beliefs or claims will not be scrutinized.  

For the most part, a skeptic can and will respect a person, and fully believe that a person has the *right* to hold any particular belief, but this does not equate to respecting any given *belief* that the person in question might hold.  That's how science gets done.  If we just sat by in awe because someone famous said something, we'd never have corrected the flaws in their theories and claims, bringing us to an ever greater understanding of the universe.  This astronomer is a respected astronomer.  She does good science.  She promotes science education.  She leaves her religious beliefs out of the classroom.  We respect her for that and we welcome her into the folds of the skeptics.  But we are not required to also leave her religious beliefs untouched, especially when they come out into the public sphere.  We can hold her in high esteem while not hiding our opinions on her religious beliefs.  And we can have a conversation with her about skeptical topics without bashing her repeatedly for her religious beliefs when that's not the topic at hand.  There's nothing hypocritical about treating people with respect while not respecting a belief, nor about sticking to the topic at hand about which we are in agreement while we disagree about other topics.  

• A skeptic can respect a person who holds other beliefs, including beliefs that the skeptic does not think are "rational".  
• A skeptic can disagree with, and even not respect, a set of beliefs while respecting or befriending a person with those beliefs.  
• Holding a particular worldview in common with a skeptic does not automatically make that person a skeptic - plenty of people are atheists who are not skeptical, either about atheism or about other subjects.  It's the process that makes someone skeptical, not whether they reached the same conclusion.
• Being skeptical or rational does not automatically mean two people will reach the same conclusion, depending on the subject, particularly those subjects for which subjective criteria are valid for informing one's conclusion.
• No one, including skeptics, are 100% skeptical about everything they do, think, feel, believe in, or choose 100% of the time.
• Some skeptics *strive* to be skeptical in all areas, and others are willing to section off a subject as outside of their skepticism, and both can be called "skeptical", or be under the umbrella of the "skeptical community".

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what skepticism is, and a knee-jerk response to be offended at skeptics just for being skeptics:   When a skeptic speaks her mind, she must necessarily be insulting everyone else around her, especially if she claims to use logic as her tool of choice.  And a skeptic can't possibly be friends with someone who isn't a skeptic.  And, of course, a skeptic is always a skeptic about everything, all the time.  So if a skeptic *doesn't* bash in a friend or colleague for his non-skeptical beliefs, she's necessarily a hypocrite, but if she does bother to mention her own atheistic beliefs or point out where the non-skeptic might be wrong, then she's rude, arrogant, and condescending.  It doesn't matter what the atheist or the skeptic says or does, we are wrong, mean, hateful people who should go sit down and shut up, so as to not make anyone else feel bad about themselves.

The Woman Problem

Skeptic, atheist, biologist of some note, PZ Myers has asked the question, what can we do to get women more active in the skeptic and science communities. Sometimes this is a condescending question, but PZ seems to really and truly believe in equality, that women are valid, contributing members of society, and is completely baffled at all attempts to segregate or patronize women. He just does not get why some people think the patriarchy is the best option or why some people think men and women are significantly different. He also doesn't come across like some of the woo-meisters who would like to place women on a pedestal above men. He is, in the same way tacit is, a true egalitarian who manages, most of the time, to not let his position of privilege as a white, middle-class male, make him sound patronizing or condescending when railing against inequality or asking how to fix the problem.

He asked the question in his blog, and decided to just sit back and let women answer the question of what could get us more involved, rather than to attempt to come up with answers as a white, middle-class male of privilege looking in from the outside.  He also asked the men to stay out of it, which should hopefully prevent well-meaning but clearly clueless-of-his-entitlement men from butting in, like the guy who once answered this same question with "how about more secular wedding ceremonies?  Women might become atheists if they didn't have to give up the dress and the big party."  (yes, someone did say that, I will spare you my scathing retort, as it's only tangential to my main point here)

Here's my answer, that really needs to be fleshed out, but I wanted to post here for reference, and as a place to start:

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I *really* wanted to read all the comments before I chimed in, so I didn't repeat anything, but there are LOTS of comments!

So, you asked for women to post their blogs or other activist activity. I can be found at http://joreth.livejournal.com where I talk about lots of things, including science, skepticism, and atheism. You can also add /tag/science or /tag/atheism to the end of that URL to read just those articles. I also have /tag/gender20%issues for posts that rant about these sorts of issues as a woman who works in a male-dominated field and who dabbles in other male-dominated arenas, like science and the internet.

As for what I, as a woman, would want that would get me more active in the science and skeptical communities? Well, several people have mentioned financial aid, and that would definitely help. I like the idea of a big, mainstream convention that chose as a theme women's interests, but not a women-specific convention (as I believe you, PZ, mentioned you were not suggesting). I'd love to get out to TAM or some of these other events, but I just can't afford them. I have to settle for the Skeptics Track at Dragon*Con for all my skeptical convention activity (which is a pretty fantastic venue, btw). It's almost-local and certainly the closest one to me, closer than any other. More local conventions would help too, even if they're not as large as the national conventions.

Also, as some were saying, people who represent skepticism and science from other angles, like artists, musicians, performers, philosophers, etc. Some workshops on community building from community leaders would be a good idea, so we can start our own organizations and communities even if we're not scientists ourselves. Some non-science-focused events, for those of us who aren't scientists but who support science and critical thinking - this new trend of Skeptics In The Pub is a great idea. How about something like The Skeptics Movie Society, or Skeptics Book Clubs, social events where people can do things that aren't strictly science-based but with skeptically minded people. I'd love to attend a dance with all skeptic, science, and atheist music - something where I can have a romantic slow dance without a song invoking god or fate and where, maybe, we can even poke a little fun at ourselves with some humorous music or performances.

As a community leader myself, I'm yelling at myself in my head, that if anyone made all these suggestions to me, I'd be wanting to say "great ideas, why don't you get on that?" It can get really frustrating to hear people say they want certain things out of their community, but don't make any effort to contribute to getting those things accomplished. So that's why I suggested including some community leaders that are not necessarily skeptical leaders, to offer workshops on how to build our own communities right where we are to offer all these services that we think the skeptical community is currently lacking. Many people have good ideas for what they'd like to see, but haven't the faintest idea how to go about implementing them, and don't think they have any skills to contribute to getting these things done.

I also think we need some cultural changing that says logic is not a mens-only domain, being loud and aggressive is not a mens-only domain, science, especially the hard sciences, are not mens-only domains, and that there shouldn't be certain areas that men need to *do something* to cater to women in order to invite them in.

There is nothing inherently masculine about being loud and brassy. There is nothing inherently de-feminizing about liking sports or science or power tools. I can be feminine, female, sexy, demure, and anything else that is supposed to signify "woman" while still being logical, analytical, scientific, mechanical, athletic, or anything else that's supposed to signify "man". These dichotomies of what makes us "woman" and "man" are false dichotomies. There is more variation among women and more variation among men, than there is between men and women as groups, even counting sexual dimorphism. And we need to make our society accept that.

I think it is only when we embrace the concept that there is no such thing as "man's domain" and "woman's domain" will we see more gender balance among subsets of people. I am not being "like a guy" because I play with power tools for a living. I am being "like a woman" because I am a woman who likes to play with power tools, so therefore playing with power tools is a woman's thing because this woman does it. I am not diminishing my accomplishments in a mechanical career because I also like to cook, which is traditionally a "woman's domain". They both use the same skill sets - an understanding of mechanics and chemistry, and an inspirational drive to create things. These are not the domains of either women or men, these are the domains of humans. When we learn that, women will stop feeling so intimidated, and men will stop feeling so threatened.

A plausible hypotheses for why women are so inclined to be steeped in woo, for example, is because that's where women feel they have more power. When society strips women of their power to contribute equally to society, women find some other outlet that gives them a sense of taking back some of that power, and so fall for The Goddess and alt-med with its easy fixes, and psychic phenomena which women are supposedly more "in tune" with because of "women's intuition". So a general cultural shift away from sexism and patriarchy would remove some women's need to find their own power in a fantasy world because they would have power in our society based on their own merits. If a woman's voice is ignored without the power of the dead behind it, I can see why wanting to develop psychic abilities would be so tempting. But if a woman's voice is heard simply because she's speaking, then she doesn't need to be bringing messages from dead relatives to get attention or build a power base.

I don't know that this is something the skeptical community should be doing within itself, but it is definitely something the skeptical and the equality communities should be doing to our culture at large.

But PZ, your continued insistence on gender equality, not as a pandering patriarch who must make allowances for the wimmenfolk, but as someone who truly understands equality, does a great deal for the community in making women feel appreciated and their contributions valued. More men who can express their equality views without sounding like they're pandering or being condescending would be very welcome.