My first mistake was saying, when presented with a choice of tv shows, that I didn’t think I’d be able to watch the History Channel one because it would make me too upset. While I maintain that I was justified in this presupposition (I know from previous experience as well as plenty of comments in a number of skeptical blogs and podcasts that these shows often present the paranormal explanation with very little skeptical opposition and a lot of selective editing), my relative was quite right to call me on it. I had been expounding for several minutes on how credulous I expected the show to be, when she pointed out that maybe I should watch it first. Now, there are times when it doesn’t make sense to try it first (homeopathy to cure cancer, any number of wonder drugs, etc.) but in this case I would have made my case better if I had started on a more positive note.

What I should have done was agree to watch the show, but make several predictions about the style of arguments that would be made and why they would be weak. Then as the show was playing, I could have pointed out the very arguments I had predicted as they occurred. For instance, I knew ahead of time that there would probably be a claim that the pyramids or other structures were perfectly well-aligned with various stars, compass directions, or that their proportions formed the golden ratio. I could have pointed out ahead of time that these claims often arise from pattern-finding, of the same sort that gave us the bible code. There are enough angles and lengths and proportions on these structures that if you try hard enough, you’re just about guaranteed to find something that matches with an astonishing degree of accuracy, regardless of whether these ancient peoples intended it, especially if you’re a bit lax about your expectations. Then we could watch the show and find that in fact, one of the “compelling” pieces of evidence for alien visitors is that two independently-build structures (Stonehenge and something else in South America) have concentric circles that “exactly match” the orbits of the planets about the sun. Therefore these ancient people must have known that the planets revolve around the sun, and must have been able to determine their exact distances from it. 

Well. First of all, these concentric circles are circles, not ellipses as we later determined the orbits of the planets to be (and let’s not even get into the fact that each planet causes perturbations in the orbits of the others due to gravity). Secondly, I would like to know how many, and which planets, are included here. Just the ones that can be seen with the naked eye? The ones that require powerful telescopes? All eight? All nine? Is Pluto included? How about Ceres? How about the other asteroids? Various comets? Moons? When you consider that a structure of concentric circles, ellipses, or other closed curves approximately matching any of these would be considered a hit, it seems pretty likely that we’ll find diagrams of the solar system anywhere we want, even if the ancient builders didn’t mean it.

Secondly, even if we could be sure that these builders did intend to diagram the solar system with their structure, why on earth should they need aliens to help them? It’s not hard to make extremely perfect circles of quite a large size using Stone Age materials–the crop circle guys do it all the time. And many ancient cultures were obsessed with charting the movements of the planets; it would be a surprise but not entirely implausible to find that some society did come up with a heliocentric system and extrapolate some basic mathematical patterns to figure out the relative distances of each planet from the sun. Even if the more distant planets were included, they could be accounted for. I don’t know if this culture had actually discovered glassmaking, but an earlier segment of the program made a (pretty weak) case for the idea that the ancient Egyptians had lightbulbs. It’s not any more of a stretch to say that the society in question also could make glass, and therefore glass lenses. I admit I would be astonished, but the notion that an ancient culture would develop primitive technology and mathematics, for which we have little additional evidence, is a more parsimonious explanation of the phenomenon of these structures than the idea that intelligent extraterrestrials (of whose existence we have no additional evidence) would have come to Earth, helped the cultures build their structures for an unknown reason, and then left without leaving any other evidence of their technology behind.

These are the arguments I should have made, but I never got to address the claims in the program itself because I had ruined my chance by being so negative at the beginning. Nobody was very interested in listening by this point in time.

My other major mistake was in not expressing the skeptical approach clearly enough in our later conversation. My relative has told me before of the “meow ghost” she experienced several times. Several months ago, without warning, her daughter heard a human voice clearly say “Meow” from the direction of the hall closet. Startled and freaked out, she told her mother, who scoffed at first until she heard the same thing herself several weeks later. After it happened a third time, the two of them cleaned out the hall closet and searched through the attic and other areas of the house, but failed to find anything that could be making the sound. They have since taken to calling the phenomenon their “meow ghost”, and my relative brought it up tonight in the typical believer-to-skeptic challenge: “Well how do you explain this?”

I was quick to point out that, since I hadn’t heard it myself and it wasn’t likely to happen again any time soon (since it hadn’t occurred in the last several months), I would have a limited ability to actually explain the phenomenon. However, I pointed out, my relative was too quick to claim that it couldn’t have been a physical thing (and therefore must be paranormal). Just because they had searched through the house and failed to find anything (such as an old Halloween decoration that might have been malfunctioning, for instance) doesn’t rule out all possible causes in the physical world. And we ought to consider the physical world first and be very reluctant to conclude that there is something outside it, since we have no other (good) evidence for anything existing outside the physical universe. Most significantly, we know that we humans are extremely good at fooling ourselves, and we commonly interpret human voices and English words in all sorts of other sounds–that’s why people hear “Satanic messages” in music played backward. We’re also prone to imagining that we hear our own names being called when nobody is speaking, especially as we’re falling asleep. Since my relative has three cats, she’s accustomed to hearing them make all sorts of noises. It seems highly plausible to me that a creaking door or the yowl of a Siamese cat could be interpreted as a clearly human “Meow”, especially the second and third times when my relative was already preconditioned to interpret the sound this way.

Nevertheless, my relative insisted that this was not a misinterpretation of some other sound–it was a distinct human voice. (Frankly, I think the only way to convince her otherwise at this point will be to replicate the sound, or at least to produce an example of some other noise that sounds distinctly human.) I think my insistence on the possibility of human misinterpretation failed partly because, although I made it clear that was not calling anyone crazy, on some subconscious level my relative may have felt offended that I was comparing her very real phenomenon to a quirk or delusion of the mind. In the future, I think it would be a good idea to be very cautious about bringing up the fallibility of human memories and interpretations when attempting to explain a personal experience of this type, even though I think cognitive bias is one of the most compelling explanations in most cases.

The more significant problem is that I never made it clear, right at the outset, that I was not insisting that my explanation must be the right one. It became clear at the end of our conversation that my relative thought I was claiming the phenomenon must have a physical explanation, whereas I was only saying the physical had not been ruled out. It could have been physical, paranormal, or a little of both, but the fact is that we already know the physical world exists, and we already know about human foibles and biases, whereas we have no other evidence of anything paranormal, so we ought to prioritize the possibilities that require no additional assumptions. If suddenly some other irrefutable evidence of ghosts shows up, then the “meow ghost” explanation will make no new assumptions and we can accept it as the most plausible.

The thing is, over the last few years I’ve done a lot of skeptical reading, listened to many skeptical podcasts, heard and thought a lot about the process of skepticism, why it is important, and why and how it works. By thinking about and practicing skepticism on my own I’ve gained my own perspective and a deeper understanding of it. But I don’t often talk about it, either with fellow skeptics or with anyone else, and it seems my ability to represent and promote the worldview to others may be suffering for it. Despite any skill I may have at writing about these issues, I know I am not very articulate when it comes to discussing philosophical matters in person. You might think I’m being too harsh on myself, but I feel it’s important to hold myself to as high a standard as possible when speaking as an ambassador for skepticism, atheism, and so on. 

Over the course of the conversation tonight, a question was asked that I’ve seen thrown at skeptics many times, but never expected to hear myself: “Where’s your sense of wonder?” Anyone who knows me knows that I have as strong a sense of wonder as anyone you’ll meet–I am continually amazed by the things we humans are figuring out about the world, the universe, and ourselves. (Heck, just listen to me wax poetic about mathematics.) And I’m intrigued and delighted by the things we don’t know and by the tantalizing fact that we will never know everything. But you wouldn’t know it from the negative and disbelieving tone I took at the beginning of the conversation, and once I got started  it was pretty hard to back off and take a more positive, big picture approach. My relative was quite right to be skeptical of the existence of my sense of wonder, since she hadn’t seen any evidence so far. If I want to be an effective ambassador for skepticism, I’ll have to work on both better demonstrating the process and showing by my words and actions that skepticism can be a far better source of wonder and excitement than the science-stopper of credulous thinking.

Speaking of Douglas Hofstadter, a thought occurred to me the other day regarding self-reference: It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an I.

And yeah, I know, I haven’t posted in a long while. I’ll get back to it, I promise! I’m working on a few long-winded posts at the moment, but in the meantime I’ll make sure to do some shorter ones as well.

“If this works, we won’t have to keep using the bottle of fish-oil tablets to keep the phone charged.”

A nice thing happened to me yesterday, though. I decided to go to the local yarn store to pick up some yarn for a project. This place is not easy for me to get to, since I don’t have a car: I have to take the bus partway, but then walk along a road through a wooded area for about a mile. This is a very nice walk in summer and fall, but this time it was especially beautiful, with the trees covered in ice and the sky a perfect clear blue. I made it to the store, made my purchase, stayed around and absorbed the warmth for a little bit, then headed back. By this time the sun was getting low and all the trees glowed with orange light–amazing.

I got back to the main road, at a point that was right in between two bus stops; I looked to my left and saw that the bus was already at the earlier one. I would have to run to have any chance of getting to the next stop before the bus did, but the sidewalk was covered in ice, with only some tire tracks to give me some traction. I knew the next bus wouldn’t come for about half an hour and I had already been out in the cold for a while, so I decided to run as safely as possible. This meant taking short, fast strides and stepping down, not forward, choosing the roughest parts of the ice to step on. I probably wasn’t going much faster than I would by walking, and I risked a glance backward. The bus was still at the previous stop, to my surprise.

I know from experience that these drivers will not stop for a passenger anywhere but at the actual bus stop. I have run for the bus at times, waving my arms madly and getting there just as the bus was pulling away, and they won’t stop. I can understand this–they have a schedule to maintain, and if they have to keep stopping and starting every time they see someone running, they’ll never make it. It’s my responsibility to get to there on time, or accept that I’ve missed it and wait for the next one.

In this situation, I knew there was a very small chance I would make it to the stop before the bus did, and I was resigning myself to the fact that I would have to wait. I was still a good 20 feet away when I heard a roar behind me and looked up to see the bus going past, and I flailed my arms wildly in a last desperate attempt to flag it down, knowing that it wouldn’t stop for me.

But it did.

I made my way over to the bus and got on, panting, fumbling to pay my fare as my glasses fogged over in the heat. I thanked the driver profusely for stopping for me, and he laughed and said, “I saw you running.” And I sat down, caught my breath, and warmed up in the heat of the bus.

Now this seems like a pretty insignificant event. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if the bus hadn’t stopped and I’d had to wait a while as I was expecting to do anyway. But it was something nice the driver had done for me, seeing me running and stopping to let me on when he didn’t have to. It saved me a half-hour in the cold and made all the running on ice worth it. It made my day, and I told the driver so.

And as usual, this whole event got me thinking. Even while I was running for the bus stop, and turned to see the bus still behind me, it occurred to me that, if I were religious, I might be inclined to attribute this to God. The fact that the bus took a little longer than normal at the previous stop was a lucky coincidence for me, as was the fact that the bus was there at all (I hadn’t looked at the schedule and had no idea when the next bus would come). Some people would be inclined to say “Thank God!” for that. The fact that the driver was paying attention, realized I was running for the bus, and decided to wait for me was even more fortunate, and some people would again say “Thank God he stopped!” But I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and I don’t think God is the one who should be thanked here.

First of all, the fact that the bus was there when it was is pure chance, nothing else. If I had lingered a minute longer at the yarn store I wouldn’t even have seen it, and if I had left a little more quickly instead of joking with one of the other customers, I would have been at the stop before the bus came. In either case I wouldn’t even been be telling this story–it would have been a nonevent.

Second, the fact that the driver saw me and stopped is due entirely to his paying attention and being a nice guy. He’s the one who gets credit for that, not God or anybody else. I wrote down his driver number and will be contacting the CDTA to give them feedback, because I think a good turn should be rewarded. (By the way, it’s both amusing and a little sad that the CDTA website has a complaint form, but doesn’t seem to have any way to leave positive feedback.)

Lastly, I deserve a little credit here, too! I saw my situation, evaluated my options, and made the best effort I could to make the situation come out in my favor. That meant taking a risk, but a careful one (moving quickly on the ice), and in the end it was a good choice to make, since I wouldn’t have caught the bus at all otherwise.

When we recognize that we are the ones responsible for getting the results we want out of the situations in which we find ourselves, we benefit both ourselves and those around us. I think it’s important to acknowledge with clear thought the people and circumstances responsible for making things happen, both good and bad. Attributing them to a hypothetical invisible being in the sky, as some people do, deprives us of both the ability and the inclination to take responsibility for our choices. Maybe drawing a life lesson out of one little attempt to catch a bus is extrapolating too far, but I think it’s an important point and I don’t mind saying it whatever the inspiration.

It’s Thanksgiving Day and you’re hosting dinner for your large extended family of 30 people. In the interest of organization, you’ve created nametags for each person and placed them around the table. But when everybody goes to sit down at the table, there’s a problem: Great Aunt Ermintrude, who is 104, has already sat down. However, being a bit senile, she has forgotten her own name and just picked a seat at random! Not wanting to disturb her, everybody decides to just let her stay there. Each person, as he comes to the table, will sit at his own seat if it is available, but if it is not, he’ll just pick a seat at random from the ones that are left. You, being the host, are the last one to sit down. What is the probability that you’ll sit at your correct place?

[Note that there is a small possibility Great Aunt Ermintrude has sat at her own place after all.]

Don’t worry, the rant is coming soon.

As proud as I am of my country today, I am deeply ashamed of, and hurt by, and furious at, and bitterly disappointed by, my state.

My country did not buy the politics of hate and lies, divisiveness and bigotry. But my state bought it hook, line, and sinker. Over half of my fellow Californians proved themselves to be either bigots, or gullible, easily deceived sheep. Or — and this is the one I’m going with for a lot of them — far too willing to be gullible and deceived. Far too willing to let themselves be persuaded by any excuse, no matter how shabby and transparently false, for voting their bigotry instead of their better nature.

And so my state has told me that I am now — officially, legally — a second-class citizen.

My state wrote discrimination into its Constitution.

Considering that this failure of reason and equal rights affects her directly, I’m impressed that her writing is even coherent, much less as beautifully put as it is. But then, Greta has a skill for expressing anger in an eloquent and compelling way.

I still haven’t managed to put the words together for a rant about California’s passing of Prop. 8, and what I do have to say is not all that original, so instead expect a rant coming pretty soon about something I do have the words for: math education. (That may not be original either, but at least it’s something I can think about for more than five minutes without wanting to break something.)

When I first left sunny California to be with you, I thought you were exciting and fun, even as you made me uncomfortable at times with your cool demeanor. And over the last few years I’ve come to love you more and more, even learning to be comfortable with the iciness you sometimes show.

Our relationship has gotten cool of late, I know. Although we’ve always had our periodic ups and downs, we’ve understood each other pretty well, I think, and we’ve learned to predict each other’s moods. In the long run, you’ve been warming up to me, but right now we’re on a down slope and I think we both know it.

I have a history of not taking you seriously, I’ll admit that. There was that time in Montana, when I took my gloves off to take pictures and you nearly gave me frostbite; the day last year when I wasn’t paying attention to you and got caught at the bus stop in a blizzard. It’s taken time, and I’m finally learning to treat you with respect, but you’ve got to help me by holding up your end of the deal.

Weather, how can I take you seriously when you insist on snowing in October?

Yours frostily,

Susan

I’ve been tagged by Splendid Elles, and now also by Metro State Atheists, to do this meme, and since I forgot to do the last one Elles tagged me for I’d better do an extra-special job on this one.

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

Well, there are several answers to this question. Of course, before I was old enough to understand ideas of religion I was an atheist by default. But I need to explain my religious upbringing in order to answer more fully. I was raised as a Reform Jew (my dad is Jewish and my mom is Catholic) and when I was little I went with my dad to synagogue many times. I also attended Hebrew school two days a week for several years, learning Hebrew and stories from the Torah. I’m sure that for some of that time I did actually believe in God and take those stories literally, but by the time I was twelve I felt uncomfortable there, partly because I was starting to not believe.

The specific day that I came out as an atheist I remember very well: since I was almost thirteen, my dad asked me when I wanted to have my bat mitzvah, and that’s when I told him that I didn’t think I should have one because I wasn’t sure I believed in God. My dad, with the help of the rabbi, tried to assure me that it was okay to not believe in God and still be a Jew, but I said that I felt I wouldn’t be true to myself if I went through the motions without really believing. (I didn’t appreciate at the time how great it was that my parents, and even the rabbi, were so open in saying that it’s okay not to believe in God. One of my goals as a fledgeling atheist activist is to help people understand that it’s okay to be an atheist, something that few people ever hear from their parents and religious leaders.) (I also have come to understand that it really is possible to be a Jew and not believe in God. Judaism, more than many other religions, is as much a culture and a heritage as a religious belief, and there are plenty of Jews who consider themselves atheists, humanists, etc. while still following many of the cultural traditions of Judaism. For me I think it’s too late though–I’ve distanced myself so much from Judaism in my mind that I don’t feel any connection to the traditions and the culture.)

Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

No, and it definitely wasn’t a single day. I had been calling myself an atheist for several years when I first heard the term “agnostic”, and at that point I considered the words “atheist” and “agnostic” to be different positions on the spectrum of belief. Of course no one but an idiot would claim to have complete knowledge and to know absolutely that no gods exist, but nevertheless I distinguished my position from that of an agnostic by calling myself a “practical atheist”. I reasoned (and still do) that although we can’t know with absolute certainty, we don’t need absolute certainty for all practical purposes. In the face of the utter lack of evidence for gods, our complete failure to find such evidence in any sufficiently rigorous test, and the simplicity and plausibility of other explanations for both events previously attributed to gods and for the existence of religion itself, I am as sure of the nonexistence of any god as a rational person can be. I am as sure that there are no gods as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow, and for much the same reason. This reasoning is shared by many self-described atheists all over the world, including Richard Dawkins and the late Douglas Adams, both of whom have written similarly on the subject.

I probably first heard the word “agnostic” in ninth grade, when I first started getting into religious discussions with friends. I chose to make a distinction between my position and agnosticism as it was first defined to me–in the middle of the spectrum, not leaning toward either side but claiming “I don’t know”–for the reason discussed above. I felt that the word “atheist” is too useful and descriptive a term to waste it on the few silly people who claim absolute certainty, and a much better description of my position than “agnostic”. Since that time, however, I’ve read a number of essays on the subject that have convinced me that the terms “atheist” and “agnostic” are much better defined as describing two different but related qualities, rather than mutually exclusive positions along a spectrum. The words “theist” and “atheist” specifically refer to belief or nonbelief in a deity–either you do have a positive belief in a deity, in which case you’re a theist, or you don’t have a positive belief, in which case you’re an atheist. It’s also possible to have a positive belief in a lack of a deity, in which case you’re still an atheist since you can’t consistently also believe in a deity. By this definition, I am an atheist, as are Dawkins, Adams, etc., along with a lot of people who prefer to call themselves agnostics. But the terms “gnostic” and “agnostic” are referring to something different: a state of knowledge. You can be gnostic, in which case you claim to know that there is a god or that there is no god, or you can be agnostic, meaning that you don’t claim certain knowledge either way. In this sense nearly all self-described atheists, myself included, are agnostic because we don’t claim absolute knowledge. So more specifically I am an agnostic atheist, although I refer to my position primarily as just “atheist”, and I have been ever since I became an atheist.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

Hmmm…the only time I can remember is once at a Yom Kippur service when I was pretty young. I was a pretty sensitive kid and a prime target for the teasing of my schoolmates, and at that age I was really affected by it. So during the service when the rabbi asked us to bow our heads and pray silently, I begged God to please, please make them stop making fun of me. (In case you’re wondering whether the prayer worked, I’d say not. Eventually, the teasing died off, but not until high school and it’s pretty clear that that should be attributed to a combination of all of us growing up and my own growing sense of self-worth and attitude of “their opinions aren’t the ones that matter to me”.)

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

Nope, most certainly not. I think it was more that I never had a really strong belief, and so I drifted more and more into the default position of not believing unless I could find evidence for a god. On the other hand, once I was more sure of my nonbelief I spent several years as a very belligerent atheist, wanting to pick fights and get into religious debates with anyone I could. (I still do, but I try to limit myself to circumstances where it’s appropriate.)

Here is a good one: Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

I don’t think I ever believed in ghosts, except maybe when I was very little. For a long time I was hopeful, to the point of almost believing, about magic in general though. I have always been interested in fantasy stories, mythology, unicorns, dragons, talking animals and so on, and I sure spent a lot of time hoping any of that could be true. But for the most part I recognized magic as a really fun thing to imagine and read about but not at all supported by any real evidence.

Do you want to be wrong?

Do I want to be wrong? Sure, about lots of things. I’d like to be wrong about how much money I have in the bank, by about a million dollars. I’d like to be wrong about the fact that I probably won’t be the one to solve P=NP (which would also make me wrong about the million dollars). But about religion? Nah, not really. If I am wrong I’d certainly accept it, but I do pretty much think we’re better off without deities, just like we’re better off without kings, or anyone else who gets our deference and respect without earning it just because they’re bigger than us or have certain ancestors. The idea of a god who created us and watches over us seems degrading to me–are we just playthings made by a bored deity who treats us like children? How much better to know that this is not the case, that out of a nonconscious, meaningless universe, we humans have arisen with our consciousness, our ability to create meaning, and our ability to examine ourselves and the universe around us, with no help from anyone but each other!

Okay, the problem with these memes is that I don’t really like tagging that much, but I’ll do it anyway. How about Skeptic’s Play, Perky Skeptic, and Elliptica? No obligation of course, and if anyone else wants to do it, consider yourself tagged!