Freethought Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for April 11, 2000; #66.
Michael Shermer talk @ the GRCC Calkins Science Center; Tuesday, April
11, 2000, @ 7PM.
The author of "Why People Believe Weird Things" kicked off the
lecture series @ the Grand Rapids Community College Science Center,
Tuesday evening, with a talk based on the ideas of that book where he
examines the fallacies in every day human reason and the methodology
of using critical thinking to see the more prosaic explanations behind
beliefs that have no evidence to support them.
He has written another book that specifically addresses religious
beliefs, how these supernatural concepts came to be, are perpetuated
and the reasons people give for their religious convictions. This
book; “How We Believe”, points out how people often feel that
others
rely upon emotion for their spiritual beliefs while they themselves
are using a rational basis for their own anagogical system. When asked
what he thinks about the Afterlife, he is likely to quip that he is
“all for it” but that wishing for something to be true, without
evidence, does not make it so.
His soon-to-be released book “Denying History” deals with the
denial
of various historical events in general and the Holocaust in
particular. Dr. Shermer has appeared on numerous talk shows and has
written many items about this topic that he expands upon in this book.
The Skeptic Magazine publisher, Shermer, examined a number of aspects
of “fuzzy thinking”, pseudo-science and paranormal beliefs in
his
lecture, including his very own personal encounter with alien
abduction! It happened in August of 1983, where he “lost” 90 minutes
of time, saw bright lights and alien beings emerge from their craft
with stiffly- extended pinkie fingers but otherwise humanoid in
appearance. They took him into their craft and, the next thing he
knew, upon regaining consciousness, was that he was back on the road
that he was “abducted” from. What had actually occurred was that
he
was 83 hours into a cross-country bicycle race, severely dehydrated,
physically exhausted, and had hallucinated that his support team in
their vehicle were extraterrestrials. The extended digits were a
confabulation from an old science fiction show that depicted such
beings, and the “lost time” was when he fell into a deep sleep
for an
hour and a half, before going on with the immense bike ride. He uses
this personal example to show that even the director of The Skeptics
Society can fall prey to such very real experiences. The question is,
he maintained, did this strong belief come from “in here”, pointing
to
his head, or “out there.”
Furthermore, on extraterrestrial visitation, he asked what the chances
would be for a civilization so advanced that they are capable of
traversing the mind-boggling distances of space, to spend incalculable
sums toward something as unlikely as finding our small planet in an
unremarkable system of planets ringing an un-noteworthy average star
among billions of such in a typical galaxy<sum>only to land in “Farmer
Bob's cornfield” to make “graffiti in fields” (crop circles)
or steal
eggs and sperm. Would such a stupendously technologically advanced
race (10-100,000 years beyond us) really feel the need to do such
rudimentary experiments? And imagine, he asked of us, these beings
returning from this staggeringly daunting journey across unimaginably
vast stretches of space, with only photos of “crop circles” and
human
eggs and sperm to show for it! He also mentioned our human paucity of
imagination that we generally assume these beings to have the same
primate body design as us, even though such a similar evolutionary
sequence re-occurring on a far- flung planet is illogical. Shermer
told an amusing anecdote about a woman in a Green Room of a show they
were both to appear on, talking about the veracity of alien visitation
to another woman. Dr. Shermer went through an exhaustive list of
reasons why this is so unlikely, including the astronomical
expenditure of funds. The woman, “without blinking” or missing
a beat,
responded that on the hypothetical planet that Shermer had just made
up, they don't use money and have no government. He intoned the verse
from John Lennon's song “Imagine” at this point.
The host of the Skeptics lecture series at Caltech brought with him a
Quadro Dowsing Rod that had been examined on his Fox Family Channel
program that he hosts and is the consulting producer for, “Exploring
The Unknown.” It consists of a piece of plastic with a hinge with a
metal antenna attached and a processing chip. This so-called “chip”
that was not even hooked up to the “device” in any way was supposedly
programmed to seek out specific items, depending upon the icon on its
exterior. It had sold for 900.00 but when tested performed no better
than chance, even with various changes in the testing environment to
appease the claimants, including installing some underground pipes
with “running water” as opposed to static containers for the “dowsers”
to locate. Dr. Shermer mentioned the “Clever Hans Effect” in relation
to the double blind method for set up they employ in testing the
claims of the paranormal. He does not want to give some unconscious
cue to the testee as to where something exists that they are
psychically divining. Clever Hans was a horse that clomped its hoof
the correct number of times in answer to arithmetic questions. The
effect resulted from the horse seeing its handler physically react
when the correct number of clomps was achieved and stopping upon
seeing that reaction.
The radio program “Science Talk” host also demonstrated a
“spoon-bending”, asking for audience participation in projecting
our
will to assist in the bending process. Once again, this well-debunked
example of “telekinesis” was shown to be a magician's trick. Dr.
Shermer noted that those who claim to do this using the paranormal
abilities of their mind, never do it without touching the spoon. One
of the explanations for lack of results that he often hears for a
tested paranormal claim, using scientific methodology, is that the
“skeptic(s) sent out bad vibes” that spoiled the results. They
want
one to believe in the claim in order to see it, whereas the skeptical
approach is to see and critically examine the claim before believing.
Dr. Shermer made use of a “plant” in the audience to show how
effective this can be in “proving”, to the credulous mind, a
pseudoscientific claim. And he demonstrated the procedures used by
spiritualists and psychics to do readings. If the questions are kept
vague and if any reaction occurs from the subject to denote that they
are on the right track; if the “psychic” has knowledge of statistical
probabilities and a sense for what is most likely to be true for most
people, then he/she can produce some “hits.” The misses are forgotten
and sometimes the subject helps by supplying information or trying to
reconcile a miss with something, to make it fit. Because the
spiritualist is giving comforting messages of deceased loved ones at
peace and forgiving transgressions and seeing a bright future for
them, it is eagerly latched onto by the subject. They want it to be
true, so for them it is.
Shermer spoke of “remote viewing” where people claim to have an
out-of-body experience using this disembodied essence to perceive
remote objects and locations. Our government spent a lot of time and
money, wastefully, in pursuing this- in the effort to locate secret
sites- as a sort of psychic espionage, after learning that the
Russians were “well ahead of us” in their own use of remote viewing.
He also talked, along these lines, about seminars that teach people to
perceive hidden images, where the class attendees are to make
drawings about what they think is depicted. When he investigated one
of these seminars, the leader proclaimed one of Shermer's drawings to
be a “hit” that depicted a statue he had seen in Hyde Park of
two
people kissing. The source image was of the Druidic Stonehenge. What
one sees in these classes is a lot of “mining of the data” of
random
drawings to try to make the closest thing fit somehow. If he simply
asked what specifically a given drawing was supposed to represent,
before the source image was revealed, a very vague and fuzzy
explanation would result.
He talked of his own personal experience with “Firewalking,”
explaining the scientific understanding of the varying heat
conductivity of different materials. He used the example of the cake
in a pan in the oven. One can place one's hand in an oven and not get
burned. One can, further, actually touch the baked cake also without
getting a burn- but when one touches the pan, with its superior heat
conducting and maintaining properties, this will likely result in a
burn. The actual burning embers that he walked across were, even with
a radiant heat of 1200 degrees, poor heat conductors. He traversed the
pit several times with no harm occurring and saying the experience was
less uncomfortable than walking across a hot pavement in the summer.
No mind over matter technique was required.
Shermer brought up “lie detectors” as mostly ineffective devices
that
are used primarily to intimidate the suspect into offering a
confession before the equipment is hooked up. Often this personal
interrogation, prior to using the device, is laced with falsehoods
about having eye-witnesses, etc.
He gave a run-down of other pseudoscientific and mystical claims
ranging from palmistry to astrology, to Tarot card readings. In all
cases, the common denominator is using psychology to influence the
subject into believing in the power that is being tapped into. With
horoscopes, messages are vague and mixed, so that at least part of it
somewhat fits and that which does not is ignored by the subject. When
skeptics randomly mix up the readings for various people, they still
feel “their” reading has described them well.
Shermer asked, rhetorically, what the harm was in all this credulity.
In this vein, he spoke of cults such as Applewhite's Heaven's Gate and
untested remedies for illness and disease. With the latter, people
will try out exotic methods performed by hucksters, instead of
efficacious medicine and techniques, thereby endangering their lives.
As to homeopathic medicine, where the medicinal essence is diluted
until there is only the “memory” of it in the water- Shermer said
that
back when medical understanding was of a poor quality, doing nothing
(what homeopathic medicine provides), where the natural recuperative
ability of the body came into play, was actually less harmful than
getting bad treatment. But this is no longer the case.
And he spoke of the mass hysteria that has swept our country at
different times about various large scale Satanic cult activity. When
investigated, nothing besides random unconnected things could be
found. He talked in this regard of our “confirmation bias” where
we
seize anything that fits our preconceptions and ignore disconfirming
data. This, he explained, is how a couple of mutilated cats, for
instance, can be blown up into a gigantic scare over Satanic cults by
those who already believe they exist. This also works with conspiracy
theories. And he referred to the numerous chilling examples of how
“recovered memory” (he would say “planted memory”) therapy
resulted in
families being torn apart and innocent people being wrongly accused of
horrific acts. He does not deny the existence of terrible abuses, but
when critical thought and skeptical investigation is suspended, this
paves the way for false “memories” to be inserted and for any
accusation, no matter how wild and unsubstantiated it is, to be
believed at face value.
Without critical thinking skills, all claims have equal validity and
value. One cannot, then, distinguish between good and poor ideas and
claims; one is easy prey to any huckster and charlatan. And as the
general population becomes further removed from understanding the
scientific method and applying critical analysis to life, the result
is an uninformed populace dangerously making decisions of great
significance and leaving decreasing numbers of people to wield the
power of science for good or harm.
Dr. Shermer ended with a question & response period. The questions
ranged from his opinion of the O.J. Simpson case, to those who would
restrict research into biotechnology. As to cryonics research; he
sees this as a sort of “secular religion” as it uses faith in
science,
rather than supernatural entities, but still looks to an afterlife,
and substituting an ethereal “heaven” with a bright future paradise
on
Earth. When asked if our filters--our conformation bias tendencies also
spoil the results of scientific research, he replied that science is a
self-correcting method, falsifiable and reviewed “blindly.” Claims
involving the natural physical materialistic realm are all subject to
testing. This is why, he explained, science cannot address the
validity of spiritual claims regarding the supernatural. He said that
to proclaim “science as godless” is the same as saying that plumbing
is godless--supernatural entities are irrelevant to the problems
addressed by these fields. Science, he said, was the best tool we have
for teasing apart the natural processes of the world. When asked, of
all the things that have been investigated, what has left him most
perplexed, he responded monosyllabically: “Cher.”
Dr. Michael Shermer also gave his presentation at the Dow Science
Center on the Alma College campus on April 12.
