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?
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