The Atheist News Podcast

This is just too amazing to not propagate.  Pharyngula links to this spectacular piece of right-wing kitsch that depicts Jesus (Caucasian, like he should be) personally delivering the Constitution to a group of awed on-lookers who include, children, school teachers, US Founding Fathers (including, ironically, notoriously atheistic Thomas Payne), Ronald Reagan, dead astronauts, black soldiers (specifically), and a godless group of professors, Supreme Court Judges, politicians, and Hollywood producers.  Every individual and object in the picture has a nice little mouseover text (eat your heart out, Randall Munroe!) describing how that individual either worked to create the United States of Jesus America, or how he is working to bring Satan (can you find him in the picture?) into the White House.  This is absolutely golden.  Enjoy!

Jesus delivers the Constitution

There has, over the centuries since Darwin posited his theory of natural selection–and, more specifically, of the descent of man from early ape ancestors–been much wailing and gnashing of the teeth.  One of the more frequently wailed notes (translated into language that can be understood by reasonable people) goes something like this: if Darwin was right in even the broad strokes about the origin of humanity, where are all the links between our old-world ape-like ancestors and modern humans?  Why, that is, don’t we see more fossil records of things that look not quite human, but not quite ape-like either?  Discounting the fact that there are a multitude of such forms on record already, where (the wailers say) are our early hominid fossils?  Where, that is, are our Bigfoot fossils?

There are a lot of reasonable answers on record to this.  Even Darwin recognized what he called the “problem of transitional species” in the Origin of Species, and he went out of his way to address it: “[W]e should bear in mind that animals displaying early transitional grades of [any given] structure will seldom continue to exist to the present day, for they have been supplanted by the very process of perfection through natural selection.  [...] Hence the chance of discovering species with transitional grades of structure in fossil condition will always be less, from their having existed in lesser numbers, than in the case of species with fully developed structures” (this is near the middle of chapter five, page 209 in the 2003 edition of the Origin of Species edited by Joseph Carroll).  Darwin’s response to this objection raises a few philosophical problems–perhaps chiefly, it leads us naturally to ask what the hell he means by “perfection through natural selection”–but, I think, the core of his resolution rings true.  Fossilization is an extraordinarily rare phenomenon: it requires precisely the right conditions (rapid burial in sediment) that just don’t obtain very often, at least considering the number of organisms that might be fossilized.  This seems particularly true for even the early hominids, which might well have had the resources to avoid such burials in ways that other animals wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of.

Those points aside, it looks like there’s yet another link in the chain.  Wired reported yesterday on a recent discovery of another early hominid skeleton.  This one predates the previous record holder–Lucy–by at least one million years, and suggests that the line of species that eventually led to humanity originated in the forests rather than the Savannah, as previously thought; the new fossil, which the scientists have named “Ardi,” had thumb-like toes for climbing, walked upright, and had a thick coat of fur.  The artist’s rendition in the Wired article looks suspiciously like the paradigmatically “missing-link” Big Foot.  Perhaps more interesting than the physical features, though, are the hypothesized cultural features that Ardi might have shared with us: based on tooth and jaw structure, the evolutionary anthropologists have postulated that Ardi and her species lived together relatively peacefully, had a cooperative social structure, and generally lived more like humans than like chimpanzees, which have a relatively violent society.  This suggests that our cultural evolution may have been as important in the history of our species’ development as our physical evolution–indeed, the two may be closely linked.

In any case, this is just another piece of evidence for the evolution of man, not that the theory needed any more bolstering.  Any bets on how long it will take for a creationist to point out that now there are two more transitional forms required?

The Pew Research Center recently compiled a lengthy and exhaustive study on the state of science education in the United States.  The project–which sampled about 1,000 randomly selected US citizens–tackled a variety of issues in the public perception of science.  Some of the results were surprising–84% of Americans think that science’s impact on society has been almost entirely positive–and some where less surprising (that is, more disheartening): fewer than half of those surveyed knew if an electron was smaller or larger than an atom.  The Pew Center correlated the results with a few different factors, including education (which, not surprisingly, correlates very strongly with scientific literacy), age (the 30-49 age group was the most scientifically literate, while the 65+ age group was the least literate), and sex (on average, men know more than women).  They did not, however, bother to correlate the results with religion, which would yield some interesting results, I suspect–specifically, my (perhaps unfounded) suspicion is that religiosity will correlate negatively with scientific literacy: I’d be willing to wager that the strongly religious know less about science than the irreligious.  At the very least, I imagine that atheists would do better than average on a quiz like this–now, thanks to the pure awesomeness that is the Internet, we can test my hypothesis.

Since the official results have already been compiled, the Pew Center has made the original literacy quiz available on their website: you can answer the same questions that the original respondents answered, and see where you score for your gender, education, and age.  The quiz is short–only 12 questions long–so I’d recommend taking it, if just for the inevitable ego boost that it will give you.  If you do decide to take the quiz, post your score (as well as whether you identify as an atheist, agnostic, Christian, &c.) in the comments; let’s see if my hypothesis that atheists will do better than average–the average score overall was a bit less than 8 out of 12.  I got all of them right, which means that I don’t have to commit seppuku, at least not today.  How’d you do?  Were there any questions that gave you pause?  Anything about the results in general that you find surprising?

Link to the quiz.

Link to the study analysis.

In the second of what I suspect will be a scattered series of posts on Darwin–I’m TAing a class on him this semester–I bring you some facepalm-worthy news on this godless Sunday morning.  The UK’s Telegraph reports that a new drama about the life and times of Charles Darwin has recently made its premier at the Toronto Film Festival to much acclaim.  The film–which, judging by the trailer, looks quite good–is titled Creation, and is apparently centered around a portrayal of Darwin as a father, husband, naturalist, and human (rather than as an almost legendary scientific figure); it seeks to depict Darwin’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote the Origin of Species, and throughout his life.  The producers have had no trouble finding distributors for the film in most of the world, but have been unable to find a single distribution company willing to take the film on in the United States.  The reason?  The film’s central topic–evolution–has been deemed too controversial in the United States.

As shocking as this might seem, I suppose the distribution companies are on firm statistical ground here: a Gallup poll conducted in February (to mark Darwin’s 200th birthday) found that fewer than 40% of Americans endorse the theory of evolution even in the broad strokes, and the number falls to just 24% if only those who regularly attend religious services are considered.  That makes for some reasonably fierce opposition to the topic of Creation, and perhaps some good reason to think that the film might struggle to find a wide audience in the United States.  Even still, though, I find it hard to believe that there’s no audience here at all: Bill Maher’s Religulous, after all, was able to find enough of an audience for a release, so it can’t just be that Creation offends America’s religious sensibilities.  Is there a deeper opposition at work?  Perhaps.  Much of US culture is profoundly anti-scientific and anti-intellectual, so perhaps the fact that Creation is about science (or, rather, about a scientist) is as off-putting as the fact that it covers evolution specifically.

Whatever the reason, I hope that the film’s producers are able to strike a deal soon: this looks like a really entertaining and well-done look at Darwin the man.  I was happy to see hints at the inner turmoil he must have experienced as he pushed his theory to its limits and yet still tried to maintain a close relationship with his highly religious wife Emma, for whom he cared a great deal.  It also seems to deal with the tragedy that was the death of Annie Darwin, the scientist’s favored daughter, at age 10–the event was to haunt Charles for the rest of his life, and may well have helped shape his waning religious sensibilities as well.  Non-American atheists can expect to see the film soon; my fellow Yankees and I may have to wait a bit longer.  Still, I suspect it will find its way here eventually.

Charles Darwin was 200 years old this February–or, rather, he would have been 200 years old if he hadn’t been ejected from the gene pool in 1882.  Moreover, the 150th anniversary of the publication of his magnum opus, On The Origin of Species, is right around the corner: it was first published on November 24, 1859.  I’m not sure if he’d be shocked or completely nonplussed about the fact that his ideas are still being publically debated today; he was never much for the public intellectual spotlight himself, though, and likely would have been happy to cede his role in the vigorous discourse to Richard Dawkins and the other modern-day Thomas Huxleys of the world.  In the spirit of this auspicious annum, I offer the following book recommendation: Living With Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith, by Professor Philip Kitcher, is absolutely fantastic.

Kitcher is a professor of philosophy at Columbia University (and, in the interest of full disclosure, is your not-so-humble blogger’s advisor, so this review might be biased); he works mostly in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of literature.  He’s been a strong voice in favor of reason and evolution at least since the publication of his 1982 book Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, and Living With Darwin marks a triumphant return to that topic.  While he has received less attention than the Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens/Dennett crowd, Kitcher has, it seems to me, produced a work that is far more balanced, thoughtful, and scholastic than any of the work by the “Four Horsemen” (with the exception of Dennett).  Living With Darwin is far less shrill, condescending, and strident than (say) The God Delusion or God Is Not Great.  It is clearly a piece of careful scholarship, not a polemic designed to inflame as many opinions as possible; the whole work drips with the charmingly reserved English-gentleman wit that Kitcher exudes in person.  If you’ve tried some of the works by the “New Atheists” and have found the tone hard to swallow, I’d doubly recommend this book.

Kitcher’s approach is unique with respect to more than just tone, though.  As he points out in the first chapter, the common position to take with regard to the intelligent design/creationism/evolution debate is simply to deny that the first two are science at all–most opponents of intelligent design will argue that it ought to be kept out of the classroom because it fails some unnamed test on the basis of which science can be discriminated from pseudoscience.  Kitcher, with a philosopher’s typical sensitivity to tricky problems like this, disagrees.  He points out (quite rightly, in my opinion) that making this kind of move–the “ID isn’t science” move–requires us to solve a notoriously tricky problem in the philosophy of science: the so-called problem of demarcation. This is no small order.  The demarcation problem–the problem of how and where to draw the boundaries of science so that all cases of “legitimate” science are included within the boundary and all cases of mysticism or pseudoscience are excluded–is one that philosophers and scientists alike have wrestled with for centuries now.  Even some of the giants of the field–Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn for instance–have found themselves stymied by this problem.  Perhaps surprisingly, it turns out that this line is very difficult to draw in a consistent and not ad hoc way: it is difficult, that is, to articulate a general criterion (or even a general set of criteria) which invariably lines up with our intuitions about what should be science and what shouldn’t be.  Most people immediately go for testability as a criterion, for instance, but that would seem to exclude much of what theoretical physics does.  The problem is likely not insoluble (I’m inclined to think that very few puzzles are unsolvable), but it is difficult enough that I think Kitcher is wise for trying to find a way to make the evolutionist point without leaning on a tacit solution to the demarcation problem.

This, then, is Kitcher’s move in the game: let us admit (if only for the sake of discussion) that both intelligent design and young Earth creationism might count as valid scientific theories (whatever those might turn out to be); still, however, that is not enough to get them into the science classroom.  There are many theories that have been, in the course of human history, valid scientific theories (the theory of aether as the medium through which light waves propagated, for instance) but which are no longer taught in the science classroom.  Why are they no longer taught?  Precisely because (says Kitcher) they’ve been shown to be incorrect scientific theories; even if we admit that they pass the mysterious demarcation test, we can also admit that they’ve been shown to be false.  They’re science, that is, but they’re bad science.  Kitcher contends that ID and creationism both ought to be counted, along with aether, alchemy, flogiston, astrology, heliocentrism, and a whole host of other dead (but once respectable) theories about how the world might work, as scientific ideas that have, in light of new discoveries, lost their status as “good science.”  This is a clever move, I think, and one that turns out to be immensely profitable for him: it lets him argue that ID and “creation science” might belong in a history of science class (alongside alchemy), but that they have no place in a science classroom, which should communicate only our best–that is, our most explanatorily powerful–theories about the world.

There’s a further strength in that position too, though: it makes for much better public relations.  Rather than accusing the parents pushing for intelligent design in (say) Kansas of being stupid and unscientific, Kitcher takes the more even-handed approach of arguing that almost all of them are well-meaning people who have been taken in by a very few religious and cultural leaders who seek to exploit the debate for their own gain.  As a result of this stance, the book–including its somewhat more polemical final chapter–ends up feeling far less condescending than (say) the work of Dawkins or Hitchens.  Kitcher is happy to operate on the assumption that most people legitimately want the best for their children but, because they lack the education and experience to evaluate the status of one theory relative to another, are being manipulated by politicians and pastors who assure them that intelligent design is on just as firm scientific footing as it ever has been.  Most ID proponents, that is, are neither stupid nor evil, but rather just misguided.

This is not to say that the book is perfect.  Kitcher’s spiritual tolerance, I think, is not entirely misguided–still, I don’t agree with him on all points.  The last chapter is primarily dedicated to advocating a more “spiritual” interpretation of traditional religions; his point is that if we can encourage (say) Christians to hold onto the message of the Bible while throwing out literal interpretations, we can have our cake and eat it too–people can keep their religion, but will cease to try to use it to outcompete scientific explanations.  This spiritually tolerant position is one on which he and I have verbally clashed before, and I still think he’s wrong about it.  Kitcher’s position (both in the book and in person) is that we ought to encourage people to look at religion like they look at poetry–as just a beautiful way of expressing truth about the world, or as metaphor.  He seems to think that this shift can happen rapidly–within a single generation–and that it will largely eliminate the problems with religion.  I disagree.  While I think it might be possible to get to a point like this in the future–a point where we can encourage people to read the Bible and see it as literature with a good message–it seems to me that this shift will not happen unless and until the populace at large recognizes that religious and spiritual explanations for the world are fundamentally bad explanations.  To that end, we ought to strive for the complete elimination of spirituality, not a kind of nebulous middle ground of mutual tolerance and respect.  This is but one flaw in an otherwise very good work, though.

All in all, this book is, I think, incredibly successful.  Kitcher masterfully weaves science, philosophy, history, and social commentary together to create a compelling narrative.  He carefully considers the evidence both for and against intelligent design theory, and rehearses the discoveries in geology, physics, biology, and philosophy that have led all serious thinkers to abandon both ID and creationism as legitimate explanations for the diversity of life.  He shows a great sensitivity to the social and cultural issues surrounding the debate, and takes great care to write in a tone that is both accessible and respectful to all concerned.  The science is simply and clearly presented without being dumbed down, and the philosophy is so woven throughout it all that you’re scarcely aware that you’re reading a professional philosopher at all; technical vocabulary is almost entirely absent, and the tone is conversational.  This book is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about science education, evolution, or religion: it belongs on your shelf next to (or perhaps even in front of) the works of the more well-known atheist authors today.

I’m a member of the New York Academy of Science, so I regularly get emails about the various (generally excellent) series of public lectures that they put on.  Last Fall, the theme was neuroscience (hence my membership), and this Fall the theme is “Provocative Thinkers in Science.”  Of course, nobody does provocative science like Richard Dawkins does provocative science–rarely are death fatwahs issued over disputes in microphysics–so, of course, he is prominently featured in the series (which also includes other greats like Aubrey De Grey).  Tickets are quite cheap ($25 for nonmembers, or $20 for students), and are also likely to go very quickly: all the lectures I saw last year featured relatively small audiences, which is part of the draw–if this is run in a similar way, you’ll be in a room listening to Dawkins, not a lecture hall.  I’ve already got my ticket, and am very excited to see one of the modern atheist icons in person.  New York City area atheists: care to join me on October 19 at 7:00?

Details here.

Back when I was a human larva, Bertrand Russell was one of the first philosophers I ever discovered, let alone read in any depth. I was raised moderately Catholic, but by the time I was 11 or 12, I was wrestling with nascent feelings that Catholicism–and indeed, all of religion–might be terribly inadequate. One day, while hanging out in a bookstore (yeah, I was that kind of 12 year old), I happened on a book called Why I’m Not a Christian. I read the titular essay right then and there and, after buying the book, soon devoured the rest of them. Russell’s clear, lucid, humorous prose expressed all the doubts I’d been unable to put into words (and then some!) and exposed me to serious analytic philosophy for the first time. If anyone out there hasn’t read this book, I’d strongly recommend it–it’s highly accessible, but still penetratingly incisive.  Russell–himself raised in an almost abusively strict religious household–is often considered the patron saint of philosophical atheism, and this book is a good example of why.

In any case, after finishing that work I was hooked, and before long I was plowing through Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and every other piece of philosophy I could get my hands on. Though I’m not a logician–and though Russell’s work on religion was only a very, very small part of his mostly logic-and-math-oriented corpus–I still have a soft-spot in my heart for him: he was my first doorway into what eventually would become a career.

Through GE Moore at Cambridge, he discovered Leibniz and Boole, and became a logician. Through Alfred Whitehead’s influence, he travelled to Europe and met Gottlob Frege, who believed in a wholly logical language (and was borderline insane) and Georg Cantor, the inventor of “set theory” (who was locked up in an asylum) and a mass of French and German mathematicians in varying stages of mental disarray. Back home he and Whitehead wrestled with their co-authored Principles of Mathematics for years, endlessly disputing the foundations of their every intellectual certainty, constantly harassed by Russell’s brilliant pupil Wittgenstein.

If the subject matter seems a little arid, with its theories of types, paradoxes and abstruse language (calculus ratiocinator?), and if its recurring theme of how logic and madness are psychologically intertwined seems a touch gloomy, don’t let that put you off. Logicomix tells its saga of human argumentation with such drama and vivid colour that it leaves the graphic novel 300 (Frank Miller’s take on the Battle of Thermopylae) looking like something from Eagle Annual.

There’s nothing we academics hate more than apparent infringements on our essential freedom to babble about whatever the hell we want whenever the hell we want and get paid for it.  Well, we also really hate it when meetings don’t provide free sandwiches.  Or when the coffee machine is broken.  Ooo, or when students show up to the last five minutes of office hours with some complicated question and prevent us from getting one of the free sandwiches left-over from the last meeting; we really hate that (undergraduates take note).  Still, infringements on our academic freedom are definitely in the top five things we hate.  That’s why I feel so personally offended by the news that Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has issued a memo forbidding its teaching staff from teaching, writing, or advocating on behalf of homosexuals or homosexual issues.  I’m shocked and incensed.

Oh wait, no I’m not.

Some background: Calvin College is a fundamentalist Evangelical school named after John Calvin, the pre-Enlightenment theologian who taught that humanity is so irredeemably evil (that damn brain-fruit incident again) that no matter what we do, we’re all going to hell.  All of us.  Forever.  All of us, that is, except for a special few–the so-called “Elect”–who have been predestined (before birth, even) to go to Heaven.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the Elect are overwhelmingly Calvinists.  I’ve actually met a few Calvinists, and even co-taught a philosophy course with one of them once–he’s a very nice guy, but as he was telling me about this belief system, I had to actively suppress my total incredulity: how could anyone actually buy that?  He had an incredibly sophisticated (from a philosophical standpoint) framework in which his Calvinism was embedded–that is, he had an account of how to make sense of things like free will, moral responsibility, and God’s omnibenevolence in the face of the doctrine of predestination–but I was still shocked that anyone living in the 21st century would endorse such a palpably Medieval theology.  But they do, and they even have accredited colleges to prove their legitimacy–fine, gay-bashing institutions like Calvin College.

Here’s the thing: suppose that you’re a newly-minted PhD on the job market for the first time.  You’re looking for that first faculty position, and are trying to find somewhere that will offer you a tenure-track position so you can stop teaching 6 adjunct courses for less than you were making as a graduate student.  And so you can, you know, eat.  Take a moment to cultivate that sense of accomplishment mixed with desperation.  Now suppose that you get a job offer!  Great!  Money!  Free sandwiches!  You walk down to the coffee shop to use their free wifi (you think you can afford your own Internet connection?  ha!) and read the following on the website of your potential new institution:

Vision

Calvin College is a comprehensive liberal arts college in the Reformed tradition of historic Christianity. Through our learning, we seek to be agents of renewal in the academy, church, and society. We pledge fidelity to Jesus Christ, offering our hearts and lives to do God’s work in God’s world.

Purpose

To engage in vigorous liberal arts education that promotes lifelong Christian service

We offer education that is shaped by Christian faith, thought, and practice. We study and address a world made good by God, distorted by sin, redeemed in Christ, and awaiting the fullness of God’s reign.

We aim to develop knowledge, understanding, and critical inquiry; encourage insightful and creative participation in society; and foster thoughtful, passionate Christian commitments.

What might your first thought be?  Well, supposing that you got your PhD through normal channels and are thus not a complete moron, it probably wouldn’t be:

“Gee, I bet they have very progressive policies when it comes to gay rights!  This is the perfect place for me to do my advocacy work.”

Indeed, if you were into that kind of thing, you’d almost certainly recognize “education that is shaped by Christian faith” as a well-known code-phrase for “no gays, please.”  It’s a shame that any academic institution works that way, and I applaud the people at Calvin College who are protesting this kind of abysmal policy, but can they honestly say they’re “shocked” or “outraged” by this policy?  I don’t think they seriously can–they knew what kind of institution they were signing on with when they got hired.  You don’t enlist in the US Army and then act outraged at the prospect of firing a gun: that’s what the Army does, and if you signed up you should have known that.  Religious fundamentalism and academic freedom don’t get along very well, but that’s just common sense.  I know the job market for academics is particularly bad right now, but at least keep this maxim in mind when you’re hunting: insane people have insane policies.  If you can’t deal with the insanity, don’t sign up.

Since I talked a bit about Penn & Teller’s atheiskeptihumanist-style show “Bullshit!” yesterday, I thought this might be appropriate to mention.  While I was rambling around the Internet last night, I came upon a short, two-part series that Richard Dawkins did in much the same vein.  It’s called “Enemies of Reason,” and features much of the same material that one might find on “Bullshit!”  I suppose I should confess that I’m not a tremendous fan of Richard Dawkins’; he’s certainly a great evolutionary biologist, but his philosophical acumen has always struck me as somewhat less certain.  Still, he’s been an impressive force for populizing atheism and making it at least acceptable to talk about religion in mixed company, and those are important works.

In any case, as condescending and shrill as Dawkins can sometimes be, he’s miles beyond the outright mockery and antics of Penn & Teller; there’s nothing wrong with antics or mockery per se, but I’ve often been struck, while watching “Bullshit!”, with the wish that Penn & Teller–who are obviously quite intelligent–would engage with the subjects of their episodes a bit more.  There’s never any discussion or argument; all the narration and mockery is done via voice-over.  As Lord Scarab pointed out in his comment to my last post, that makes for good “preaching to the choir” style entertainment, but doesn’t advance the cause a whole lot.  That’s why I was so pleased to find this series by Dawkins.

“Enemies of Reason” seems to be freely available online in two 45 minute chunks.  The first episode focuses on the notion of irrationality generally, and features Dawkins interviewing and talking to a variety of religious/spiritual/irrational subjects.  The second episode–which should strike viewers in the United States as eerily appropriate–deals specifically with anti-rationality as it pertains to the health care industry; Dawkins talks to various “alternative” medicine practitioners about what they do, organizes a few minor studies, and so on.  It’s good stuff.  He’s uniformly polite throughout the series (that might be a feature or a bug, depending on your viewpoint), and is never overtly argumentative.  The characteristic Dawkins smirk only made one appearance that I noticed, and he really can’t be blamed for it: a woman was earnestly telling him that DNA is a “big deal these days” in human evolution, as we’re just now starting to rediscover the rest of our DNA strands–while most of us today only have two strands (for a double helix), apparently all humans had twelve strands of DNA when we lived in Atlantis.  After Atlantis, we “forgot who we were” and (somehow) lost those DNA strands.  I would have been smirking too, if I were Dawkins.

That’s not to say that he’s totally non-confrontational, though: on more than one occasion he says something like “I think you’re wrong, and here’s why.”  In any case, if you enjoy this sort of thing, it’s a very nice little series.  I wish they’d made more of them, as I strongly prefer this style to the somewhat more low-brown style of “Bullshit!”, but I’ll take what I can get.  If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Enemies of Reason (Part 1)

Enemies of Reason (Part 2)

As you probably have heard if you follow our news feed, the Catholic League is calling for Penn & Teller’s Showtime show “Bullshit!” to be cancelled after an (as-yet unseen) season finale attacking Catholicism.  For those who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing “Bullshit!”–which, as you might be able to tell already, I quite enjoy–I suppose a few words are in order.  Penn & Teller are well known for their sensationalized skepticism and hatred of trickery; they are magicians who, despite being world-class illusionists, have been thrown out of the Magic Castle in Los Angles for repeatedly (and gleefully) revealing the sleight-of-hand behind various magic tricks.  Professional magicians frown on this sort of behavior, but Penn & Teller maintain that if knowing how the trick is done makes it any less amazing, then the trick wasn’t all that amazing to begin with.  They are famous, for example, for doing a version of the common Cups and Balls illusion with clear plastic cups–the trick is, at least to these eyes, no less amazing.  Indeed, knowing precisely how they’re doing it makes it all the more interesting: your brain knows what’s going on, but the speed and precision with which they execute the trick leaves you still gaping in wonder.  For my money, that’s better magic than a hidden (and often mundane) prop.  On “Bullshit!” they take this skepticism and general hostility to mysterious pretension public (as it were) by presenting a series of short episodes (they’re in their seventh season now) dedicated to debunking various ideas, movements, organizations, or practices that they find to be, well, bullshitty.  They’ve taken aim at organized religion before, but have also had episodes attacking astrology, alternative medicine, recycling, the anti-war movement, and probably at least one bit of ideology that you, dear reader, hold sacred.  That’s just how they roll, and they’re spectacularly entertaining while they do it.

Now, it seems rather clear that some attacks on bullshitty (I rather like that adjective) beliefs, while they might be amusing, do little to actually advance the cause of skepticism and rational thought: the recent 4Chan (note the distinct lack of a hyperlink there) attacks on Christian Facebookers comes to mind as a prime example.  While the defacements might be good for a cheap chuckle from the atheist crowd (yeah, I giggled a little bit), I think most of us can agree that this is not the sort of thing that the community as a whole ought to take ownership of–indeed, it’s something that ought to be condemned.  If our goal is to convince believers that not only are atheists generally nice people (or at least no less nice than any other arbitrary group) but that there’s a good chance that we’re right on the metaphysical questions, then this sort of deliberately inflammatory route is probably not the one that we want to take.  Where, though, does “Bullshit!” fall on the spectrum?  Is it closer to the 4Chan end, or closer to (say) the thoughtful, reasoned, articulate criticisms of Dan Dennett?  Should the atheist community stand behind Penn & Teller as agents of change, or should we decry them as the televised equivalent of 4chan?

Let’s explore this question a little bit.  We’ve admitted the 4chan attacks as a paradigm case of the sort of thing we want to avoid, so let’s start by enumerating the qualities that we want to eschew here.  First (and perhaps most importantly), we might notice that the 4chan attacks were directed at individuals, not at any particular set of principles or ideas: the Facebook pages that got defaced were the private pages of actual people, not the ideological charters of some organization.  That certainly counts for something: these were the digital equivalent of ad hominem attacks on religion: personal attacks on the believers rather than on the belief itself.  That’s something we ought to avoid, both on rhetorical grounds and on moral grounds–it won’t win us any converts, and (that point aside) it’s just the wrong thing to do.  What else?  The 4chan attacks were all entirely negative in nature: at no point–at least, no point that I’m aware of–was a positive point made during the attacks; the purpose was just to deface, not to put forward a constructive solution or make a constructive argument.  Note that the first and second points are not necessarily mutually entailed: it would have been entirely possible (for instance) for the 4chaners to deface personal Facebook profiles and replace them with long, well-reasoned treatises on the philosophical problems of supernaturalism.  Doing so still wouldn’t have been right–it still would have constituted a kind of ad hominem, it seems to me–but it at least would have lessened their sins.  Anything else?  Well, we might also take issue with the fact that these attacks were conducted anonymously–no individuals took ownership for any of the actions.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; there are times when anonymity and group action can be good for intellectual discourse (e.g. as when anonymous groups function as industry whistle-blowers), but this is not one of those times.  Indeed, the anonymity of the group only seems to underscore their lack of desire to advance the discourse with their actions; they wanted to cause chaos, nothing more.

OK, so we have a few criteria here.  The most noteworthy respects in which the 4chan attacks are to be decried at: (1) their ad hominem style, (2) their lack of positive intellectual contribution, and (3) their anonymity.  How do Penn & Teller fare?  The results, it seems to me, are mixed.  The show’s tone is certainly somewhat ad hominem in tone: there are copious uses of words like ‘moron,’ ‘idiot,’ ‘fuck-tard,’ and virtually any other iteration of that sort of thing you can come up with; Penn & Teller aren’t shy about attacking individuals with whom they disagree.  However, their attacks don’t stop there: they continue on to deal with the concepts, ideas, and belief-systems driving the individuals they attack–they’re not just aiming at individuals, but also at the belief systems that–they argue–actually make the people “fuck-tards” in the first place.  That criticism–of intellectual principles–is of varying quality, but it is at least present.  What about (2)?  P&T fare a bit better here–they’re never shy about presenting their own ideas about how to fix the systems they critique, or about what beliefs they think would make the world a better place.  They’re not presenting detailed arguments for their positions, but in a 30-minute television show, I’m not sure we ought to expect them to–they are, at least, presenting the positions they hold and making some semblance of a positive argument.  (3) is clearest of all: appearing on a television show with your name in the title is about as far from being anonymous as one can get.  They very loudly and proudly take ownership of their ideas and actions–both for good and for ill.  They’ve admitted bias in the past, and at least make a cursory effort to revise their opinions when they’re shown to be in error.  More importantly (at least for this criterion), they’re putting themselves out there and acknowledging the opinions being expressed as their own.  They have at least some of the courage of their convictions.

Are P&T perfect?  Certainly not–they’d be the first to admit that, most likely.  Is the show perfect?  Again, I think they’d be among the first to say that it isn’t.  Are they biased, sometimes one-sided, crude, prone to ad hominems, and generally academically suspect?  Sure, but they’re running a TV show, not a university lecture series.  At the very least, they are exposing people to the controversy surrounding some of these issues, and they’re doing it in an entertaining and eminently watchable way.  They’re also equal opportunity in their attacks: contrary to what the Catholic League would have you think, only a small minority of the show’s content as been directed at Catholicism, or even religion in general; the vast majority has been spent on other instances of so-called bullshit, including some bullshit that I happen to agree with.  They are, I think, doing more good than harm.

What do you think?  Where should the line be drawn on this issue?  What’s productive, and what’s not?  How low can we sink in trying to make these ideas public before we’re guilty of doing something wrong?

Who am I?  Why am I here?  It seems only appropriate that a philosophy blog begins with these questions; Dan Dennett says that it’s an occupational hazard of the profession that we philosophers get asked to define the meaning of life over dinner (or over the Interwebs, as the case may be).  That’s not what I mean by posing these questions-though I won’t promise that I won’t, in the course of our discussions here, address that tricky subject.  My aim, at least initially, is much more modest: I want to tell you a little bit about who I am, what I believe, and how I ended up writing these words.  I want to set the stage for what will follow.  Those uninterested in inspirational words can stop reading now and pick up at the next post, which (I hope) will be a good deal more argumentative.  First, though, the mood must be established.

In an important sense, it matters less who I am, and more what I do (that’s a philosophical claim, for those keeping track)-let’s start there, then.  I’m a member of that rare and reviled group called “the Professional Academic.”  I get paid to do what I’m doing right now-that is, to think carefully, and then write about my thoughts.  Yes, it is a pretty sweet gig, if I do say so myself.  Still, there’s an old joke in academia that goes something like this: if you’re at a cocktail party with people of mixed professions, and someone asks you what you do and you say you’re an educator, eyes immediately glaze over.  If you’re at a cocktail party with educators and someone asks you what sort of education you’re in and you say you’re a college professor, eyes immediately glaze over.  If you’re at a cocktail party with a bunch of college professors and someone asks you what sort of professor you are and you say that you’re a philosopher, eyes immediately glaze over.  I’m a doctoral student rather than a full professor-a professorial pupae-but the point, I think, remains: something there is that doesn’t love a philosopher.

Why?  We’re an amicable enough bunch (at least when not arguing with one another), and we certainly shower more often than the engineers.  Here’s my guess: philosophers make people uncomfortable in a way that engineers (and poets and chemists and computer scientists and historians) don’t; in a very real sense, it is our job to make people uncomfortable-that’s what they pay us for.  The philosopher is much like the court jester of old in this regard: we get away with saying what no one else can get away with saying, and maybe that’s just because people can laugh off our words-oh, that’s just the philosopher, up to his old tricks.  The good student of history will note that wise rulers knew enough to listen to their jesters when they spoke, though: “The mind that’s afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never create the brilliantly original,” says David Brin.  Words that make us uncomfortable often do so because they strike at truths we’d rather not acknowledge-they “break the spell,” to borrow from Dennett once again.  This, I think, is at the heart of what good philosophy does (or ought to do): break the spell, and tell people what they might not want to hear.

It’s no secret that philosophy thrives when worldviews are in turmoil: the birthplace of philosophy as a coherent discipline was Ancient Greece, that archetypal cross-road of ideas and cultures.  Philosophy flourished in the Athens of 2500 years ago precisely because the comfortable bubble that the Greeks had constructed-the explanatory bubble of warring gods and mischievous spirits-found itself threatened by new cultures, religions, and explanations: by new ideas.  Philosophy developed as a way of trying to make sense of this turmoil:  as a way of trying to find a steady point in the intellectual maelstrom.  With Aristotle, it seemed that the Greeks had found this point, and the Aristotelian system kept the world comfortable for more than a thousand years.

Sometime in the middle of the 17^th century, though, that creeping edge of nervousness began to overtake humanity again, though this time the culprit was singular and clear: science.  Science’s attack on humanity’s comfort was well-organized and multi-pronged-the springing of a trap designed by a master general.  Copernican physics threatened our special place at the center of the solar system; biology threatened our special place as animate things in a fundamentally inanimate world; evolution threatened our special place as the chosen species, earnestly (and gravely) assuring us that we were just another “rational animal.”  I am taking some liberties with the timeline, I know, but be patient and allow the jester some poetic license.  Amid this cognitive vertigo, philosophy-more-or-less silent for centuries-found its voice again; it is no accident, after all, that Descartes’ primary project in his seminal Meditations on First Philosophy was to establish something “firm and lasting.”  In a world where the steady, soulless march of the natural sciences threatened to eradicate all that humanity had believed since we first arose, an Archimedean point was sought-a point on which humanity might stand, move the world, and be unmoved in turn.  The reader can judge the relative success or failure of this project for himself.

Science, for its part, has paid little attention to our collective discomfort.  It has rolled on, oblivious to the comforting fictions crushed beneath its treads, and we find ourselves at another crossroad today.  Computer science threatens our very notion of what it is to be a thinking thing (so much the worse for Descartes’ immovable point?); quantum mechanics tells us that reality might, in reality, be very different from the way that it seems to us.  Astrophysics tells us that we are even further from the center of the universe than Copernicus might have imagined-indeed, it tells us that the universe is a bounded shape that has no center.  The mind rebels at it all, and philosophy, as always, thrives-a brightly colored fungus feeding on the decay of our parochialism.  The philosopher might be the jester, but the philosopher is also the steady hand in the earthquake of ideas; the candle held up to the menacing shape of science; the voice that says “Now see!  There’s no reason to cower after all-what seemed to be the Specter of Insanity approaching is just so much shadow and nerves.  Stand tall and let’s make sense of this!”

“Together, we can make sense of this.”

Moreover, we can make sense of this without compromise-without backing away from the brilliant light that science has shed for us.  Plato’s prisoner, first emerging from the cave of his ignorance, found that the light of the sun-the light of knowledge-hurt and burned his eyes.  He wanted to flee back into the comfort and the dark, back into the easy, cool shadows of superstition and ancient wisdom.  As he resisted this fear, though, he found that he could, by degrees, see the world around him more and more clearly; he could see that the shadows in the cave, which had seemed full of life, power, and usefulness before, were now unmasked as nothing but pale reflections of the harsh, stunning, and beautiful reality above.  We too must resist the temptation to flee; we must resist the temptation to turn away from the light of reason and run back to the comfort of supernaturalism, because as soothing as it is, as real as it seems from this perspective within the cave, as much as we think we can’t live without it, the view from Inside is a lie.  It has been, historically speaking, a rather good and helpful lie-we wouldn’t be where we are as a species without it-but the time has come to cast it aside and step into the light of the natural world with eyes open and shoulders squared.  The time has come to face reality on its own terms.

And that, at last, is what brings me to you-what brings philosophy to you.  The journey is bound to be full of discomfort-we’ll have more than our share of mental blisters before the climb is done-but the vista at the top is, I think, worth it.  The view from above the clouds is beautiful, and it is beautiful in spite of (or perhaps because of?) the fact that we find no golden throne, no heavenly host, no trumpeted clarion calls to greet us as we break through into the light-above the clouds, there is only sky and sky and sky.  I do not claim to be your guide on this climb-even I, admittedly no paragon of self-deprecation, have enough humility to demure in the face of that title-but rather just hope to accompany you, pointing out some of the major landmarks along the way, and having some of the same pointed out to me.  I might help you avoid a few missteps and precarious drops, but only in virtue of my training as a mountaineer on smaller climbs-I suspect (and hope) you’ll pull me back from more than a few sheer drops as well.  Let’s make the climb together, and explore what it means to see the world from atop Natural Peak.  I look forward to the ascent, and I’ll see you on the trail.