Читать книгу Arguing Science - Michael Shermer - Страница 7

THEBESTSCHOOLS.ORG

MICHAEL SHERMER INTERVIEW

Michael Shermer is the editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine and the author of several books, most recently The Moral Arc. He has also authored a dozen other books on science, evolution, religion, parapsychology, morality, and other topics, many of them bestsellers.

Dr. Shermer holds a B.A. in psychology/biology from Pepperdine University, an M.A. in experimental psychology from Cal State Fullerton, and a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Claremont Graduate University. Among his numerous endeavors, he has been writing the monthly “Skeptic” column for Scientific American magazine since 2001, has produced the 13-episode television series “Exploring the Unknown” for the Family Channel, and is a former competitive bicycle racer who co-founded Race Across America (RAAM) and helped design better protective equipment for the sport.

James Barham for TheBestSchools.org: Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be interviewed. You have a new book just out! It is called The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom¹, and we will be spending a good deal of this interview discussing it in detail.

Before we do that, though, we would like you to tell us a little bit about yourself. First of all, when and where were you born, and what is your family’s educational, social, ethnic, religious background, etc.?

Michael Shermer: I was born and raised in Southern California, specifically the La Canada area in the foothills surrounding Los Angeles. My parents were not religious and none of them went to college. I had both biological and step-parents, and toggled between homes weekdays and weekends while growing up—a real boon at Christmas time! I have three sisters and two brothers and am an only child. Figure that one out—the quintessential American blended family of two half-sisters (same father, different mother), a step-sister, and two step-brothers. No one in the family was particularly religious, and yet somehow we grew up learning moral principles and how to be good. Imagine that!

James Barham: Today, you are one of the most recognizable atheists/agnostics in the United States, as well as across the world. Yet, you were once an evangelical Christian. That’s quite a journey! Could you describe the circumstances that led you to become an evangelical Christian as well as give some snapshots of what your life during that time was like? Is there anything you miss about that phase of your life?

Michael Shermer: My conversion to Christianity came at the behest of my best friend in high school, whose parents were Christian, and it was something of a “thing” to do at the time (early ’70s) as the evangelical movement was just taking off. I accepted Jesus as my savior on a Saturday night with my friend, and the next day we attended the Glendale Presbyterian church, which had a very dynamic and histrionic preacher who inspired me to come forward at the end of the sermon to be saved. My buddy told me that I didn’t need to do it, but it seemed more official in a church than at the bar at my parents’ home. So, I was born again, again, so I figure that must count for something, you know, just in case I’m wrong now in my belief that there very probably is no God.

I took my religious beliefs fairly seriously. For a couple of years I attended this informal Christian study fellowship group at a place called “The Barn” in La Crescenta, which, in looking back, was a quintessential ’70s-era hangout with a long-haired, hippie-type guitar-playing leader who read Bible passages that we discussed at length. But more than the social aspects of religion, I relished the theological debates, so I matriculated at Pepperdine University (a Church of Christ institution) with the intent of becoming a theologian. Although living in the Malibu hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean was a motivating factor in my choice of a college, the primary reason I went there was I thought I should attend a school where I would receive serious theological training, and I did.

I took courses in the Old and New Testaments, Jesus the Christ, and the writings of C.S. Lewis. I attended chapel twice a week (although, truth be told, it was required for all students). Dancing was not allowed on campus (the sexual suggestiveness might trigger already-inflamed hormone production to go into overdrive), and we were not allowed into the dorm rooms of members of the opposite sex. Despite the restrictions, it was a good experience; I was a serious believer and I thought this was the way we should behave.

The only thing I miss—and only a little—is the confident certainty that religion brings, the knowing absolutely that this is the One True Worldview. That was, as well, the downfall of my faith.

James Barham: To follow up on the last question, what circumstances led you to abandon evangelical Christianity? In repudiating evangelical Christianity, did you immediately become a skeptic of all religion, or did your skepticism evolve more gradually? Please explain.

Michael Shermer: While undertaking my studies at Pepperdine, I discovered that to be a professor of theology you needed a Ph.D., and such a doctorate required proficiency in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. Knowing that foreign languages were not my strong suit (I struggled through two years of high school Spanish), I switched to psychology and mastered one of the languages of science: statistics.

In science, I discovered that there are ways to get at solutions to problems for which we can establish parameters to determine whether a hypothesis is probably right (like rejecting the null hypothesis at the 0.01 level of significance) or definitely wrong (not statistically significant). Instead of the rhetoric and disputation of theology, there was the logic and probabilities of science. What a difference this difference in thinking makes!

But the switch to science was only one factor in my deconversion. There was the intolerance generated by absolute morality, the logical outcome of knowing without doubt that you are right and everyone else is wrong. There were the inevitable hypocrisies that arise from preaching the ought, but practicing the is. One of my dormmates regularly prayed for sex, rationalizing that he could better witness for the Lord without all that pent-up libido. There was the awareness of other religious beliefs—often mutually exclusive—and their adherents, all of whom were equally adamant that theirs was the One True Religion. And there was the knowledge of the temporal, geographic, and cultural determiners of religious beliefs that made it obvious that God was made in our likeness and not the reverse.

By the end of my first year of a graduate program in experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, I had abandoned Christianity and stripped off my silver Ichthus medallion, replacing what was for me the stultifying dogmas of a 2,000-year-old religion with the worldview of an always-changing, always-fresh science. My enthusiasm for the passionate nature of this perspective was communicated to me most emphatically by my evolutionary biology professor, Bayard Brattstrom, particularly in his after-class discussions at a local bar—The 301 Club—that went late into the night. This was another factor in my road back from Damascus: I enjoyed the company and friendship of science people much more than that of religious people. Science is where the action was for me.

James Barham: You are known, among other things, as a skeptic, an agnostic, and an atheist. Is there a designation that you prefer for yourself? How would you distinguish these three designations?

Speaking for yourself, are you certain God does not exist? Some atheists have such an antipathy toward God that they might better be called anti-theists. You’ve never struck us as that hardcore. What accounts for that?

Michael Shermer: I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God. No, I am not 100 percent certain there is no God. But there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there is, and so pick whatever label you like. Technically speaking, “agnostic,” as Thomas Huxley defined it in 1869 to mean that God is “unknowable,” is accurate from an ontological perspective since it is difficult to imagine a scientific experiment that would clearly delineate between the God hypothesis and the no-God hypothesis. But we are behaving primates, not just thinking sapiens, so we must choose to act on our beliefs, and I act under the presumption that there is no God.

That said, I don’t like to define myself by what I don’t believe. I believe in lots of things: the Big Bang, evolution, the germ theory of disease, plate tectonics and the geological record, the laws of nature, and the like. I also believe in natural rights, moral progress, and that science and reason are the best tools we have for determining how best we should live. To that end, I call myself a humanist and I adopt the worldview of Enlightenment Humanism.

James Barham: In addition to being a best-selling book author and to writing a monthly “Skeptic” column for Scientific American, you are also the founder of the Skeptics Society and editor-in-chief of its house magazine, Skeptic. Could you tell us about the purpose of the Skeptics Society and how the idea for it came to you?

Michael Shermer: After I earned my Ph.D. in the history of science, I got a job teaching at Occidental College, a highly regarded four-year liberal arts college in Los Angeles, and I figured I would settle in for the duration. But I was still restless to be an entrepreneur, so I co-founded the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine in my garage as a hobby, and as it grew, I realized by the late ’90s that I could do this full time. I loved teaching and being in a classroom. However, publishing magazines, writing a monthly column for such a large-circulation magazine as Scientific American, writing books, and doing television and radio shows gave me access to a much larger classroom than I could ever reach in a brick-and-mortar building. So, I’ve never looked back, even though I am now teaching one class a year at Chapman University—Skepticism 101—a critical thinking course that I like to do to try out new ideas on students.

The mission of the Skeptics Society is to promote science and critical thinking. Although we do a lot of debunking—and let’s face it, there’s a lot of bunk out there—we always maintain an undercurrent of promoting the positive aspects of science, which we also do through our monthly science lecture series at Caltech and our annual conference on various topics.

James Barham: You have stated, in connection with non-mainstream scientific claims, that “Skepticism is the default position because the burden of proof is on the believer, not the skeptic.”²

However, some of the people you have criticized in your Scientific American column and in Skeptic magazine—we are thinking especially of Rupert Sheldrake, with whom you will be engaging in a “Dialogue on the Nature of Science” here at TBS in the near future—have pointed out that they are the ones who are “skeptical” vis-à-vis mainstream scientific opinion.

In fact, there is now an entire website, Skeptical About Skeptics, devoted to equalizing the burden of proof between the scientific establishment and its critics.

How do you respond to Sheldrake and others who are “skeptical about your skepticism,” and who want to shift the burden of proof back onto you?

Michael Shermer: My position on who has the burden of proof stands pretty solid among most scientists because of the fact that most mainstream scientific theories are hard won over many years and, like governments, “should not be changed for light and transient causes” (as Jefferson opined in the Declaration of Independence).

Yes, historically speaking, a few mainstream scientific theories were overturned by isolated outsiders, but that is almost never the case today. There’s a reason we talk about a “consensus” among climate scientists that global warming is real and human-caused. It isn’t because science depends on the consensus of authorities; it is because science is an extremely competitive enterprise, and if there were serious problems with climate models or datasets, then there is little doubt that these would have been uncovered by scientists working in other labs. The idea that scientists get together on weekends to get their story straight in the teeth of opposition from without is ludicrous. Attend scientific conferences on any topic and you will find often bitter contentions over this and that dataset or hypothesis. By the time findings and theories filter out of the lab into the public, they have been tried and tested and hold a high degree of confidence of most scientists who work in that field.

I will expand on this more in my dialogue with Rupert, but in short, there’s certainly nothing wrong with outsiders (and especially insiders!) challenging the consensus. But the argument that they laughed at the Wright brothers doesn’t hold because they laughed at the Marx brothers too, so being laughed at doesn’t mean you’re right. You have to actually have both data and theory in support.

James Barham: It is time to turn to your new book—by all accounts your magnum opus—The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.

And a blockbuster of a book it is! First and foremost, it seems to us, The Moral Arc is a treasure chest of thought-provoking, cutting-edge social science research on a very wide array of topics, grouped around the unifying theme of the human condition very broadly conceived.

But in addition to its wealth of absorbing empirical detail, the book is also thesis-driven. The thesis—again in our interpretation—is twofold: (1) the moral progress of humanity over the past several centuries has been palpable, and may be confidently expected to continue into the future; and (2) the principal driver of that moral progress has been science and reason, with the corollary that religion has not only been of no help in this regard, but has been a positive hindrance—and therefore the sooner it is extirpated the better.

Is that a fair assessment of The Moral Arc, in very general terms?

Michael Shermer: Yes. The Moral Arc is by far my best and most important work, so thank you for recognizing that.

Most people have a hard time getting past the first thesis of the book—that things are getting better—and it is understandable why, if you’re paying attention at all to the news with all the stories coming out of Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, and parts of Africa, not to mention Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland! It seems like things are bad and getting worse. But we should follow the trend lines, not just the headlines, and when you do so, there is no question that in nearly every sphere of human endeavor, there has never been a better time to be alive than now.

As for my second thesis about religion, that is very much a secondary issue to the stronger thesis emphasizing the role of science and reason and the Enlightenment. The Moral Arc is not an “atheist” book. It’s a science book. It is about the positive forces that have been at work over the past two centuries to expand the moral sphere—bend the moral arc—and grant more rights and freedoms and liberty and prosperity to more people in more places than at any time in history.

I don’t care what someone’s religion is, as long as they agree that everyone has the natural right to be treated equally under the law, to be endowed by nature and nature’s laws—evolution in my model with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and to honor the Liberty Principle: The freedom to think, believe, and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs, and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. I doubt that there are any Jews or Christians who would disagree with this principle, but then they—like me and most everyone else reading these words—are children of the Enlightenment, where these ideas were first articulated.

James Barham: We found ourselves—perhaps surprisingly—in general agreement with much of what you have to say in The Moral Arc. For example, we largely applaud your definition of “moral progress” as “the improvement in the survival and flourishing of sentient beings.” Though we believe that rational beings should take precedence over other sentient beings, nevertheless that is an excellent definition—and one that is very much in keeping with Aristotle, we might add!

You make only one glancing reference to Aristotle in connection with ethics, yet it seems to us that your moral system is clearly a form of eudaimonism—in which morally good or virtuous behavior is grounded in what it means for human beings to flourish as rational animals. If that is right, then aren’t you really an Aristotelian at heart? If not, why not?

Michael Shermer: Yes, I’m an Aristotelian, although I graft onto that parts of other moral philosophies, such as natural rights theory and sometimes utilitarianism and occasionally Rawlsian original position theory. No one moral theory can get it right for all circumstances, so we have to cobble together parts of what our greatest minds have generated before us. All I’m trying to do in The Moral Arc is establish that: (1) there are objective transcendent moral truths—right and wrong—and these are grounded in nature and human nature; and (2) there is no wall separating is and ought. Everyone just repeats the naturalistic fallacy without ever reading what Hume actually said—which I did, and then took my interpretation to one of the world’s leading Hume scholars, Oxford University philosopher Peter Millican, who confirmed that he thinks my interpretation of Hume is accurate. This is all in Chapter 1 of my book.

James Barham: Although you do not discuss Aristotle, eudaimonism, or virtue ethics in any detail, you do spend a couple of pages discussing the concept of “natural rights” in connection with John Locke as the foundation of your individualist approach to morality, which we applaud. We understand why you wish to claim a direct lineal descent from Locke, in accordance with your claim that Enlightenment “science and reason,” not religion, have been the principal drivers of human progress.

Now, natural rights are normally thought of as grounded in natural law—and so ultimately in human nature.³ Of course, we also understand that the view of human nature underpinning your invocation of natural rights is based on the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, as you have explained at length in several of your previous books, as well as in The Moral Arc. We will explore all of this in detail with you in a few moments. However, first we wanted to point out a significant historical connection that you do not mention.

Obviously, Locke himself knew nothing of Darwin. For him, as for the other Enlightenment figures whom you cite, natural rights were principally grounded in the natural law tradition leading back to Hugo Grotius—who lived a couple of generations before Locke—and beyond Grotius to the great sixteenth-century Spanish Scholastics (Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Bartolomé de las Casas, Francisco Suárez, et al.), who in turn based their ethical and political thought on earlier Scholastic philosophy, notably that of Aquinas and Ockham.

In short, the Lockean tradition of human rights which you wish to claim as the offspring of the Enlightenment, we would claim is in reality to a very significant degree the offspring of Scholasticism—i.e., of Christian philosophy. How would you respond?

Michael Shermer: I have taken a number of courses from The Teaching Company on the history of rights and the origin of the concept of natural rights—Rufus Fears’s “History of Freedom,” Dennis Dalton’s “Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation,” and Joseph Koterski’s “Natural Law and Human Nature”—all of whom take the concept back to the ancient Greeks. So, you have to start the historical timeline somewhere, or else we’ll end up with all ideas as footnotes to Plato, as Whitehead said—wrongly, I might add.

I begin with Locke because that was the most influential source for the founding of America and the modern concept of natural rights as it is understood and practiced today. Certainly, the Scholastics were hugely influential in their time, as were the Renaissance humanists such as Erasmus in their time. But The Moral Arc is not a history book meant to convey the full and rich history of ideas, but rather, as you properly discerned, a work with a central thesis in the spirit of what I call Darwin’s Dictum: “All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.”

James Barham: Here is another problem we find with your general approach to morality in The Moral Arc: You quite rightly point to the importance of what you call “the principle of interchangeable perspectives” as absolutely fundamental to human morality. Your principle appears to mean more or less the same thing as Adam Smith’s “impartial spectator,” Kant’s “categorical imperative,” or simply the Golden Rule. That is, in our dealings with others, we ought to give much, though not necessarily overriding consideration to their interests, and not just to our own or those of our family, friends, tribe, etc. With all of this, very few would disagree.

But then you go on to say the following:

Reason and the principle of interchangeable perspectives put morals more on a par with scientific discoveries than cultural conventions. Scientists cannot just assert a claim without backing it up with reasoned argument and empirical data…

But the claim that human morality is closely akin to natural science is problematic, to say the least. For one thing, if it were true, it would suggest that the vast majority of human beings who have ever lived were all egoists blind to the claims of morality—which we take to be an unacceptable consequence of your view.

More seriously still, by assimilating reason to science, you seem to be labeling most of humanity as irrational, conflating a highly refined and specialized form of reasoning (natural science) with the general human capacity to reason (common sense). While common sense undoubtedly has its limits, nevertheless it is a thoroughly rational process. Every time a Paleolithic hunter said to himself, “If I want to be successful in the hunt tomorrow, I must sharpen my spear blade,” that was human reason in action. And it is this universal commonsense form of reason that, in our view, is at the root of the principle of interchangeable perspectives, not science.

In short, we believe that you are confusing science with reason itself in claiming that morals are “on a par with scientific discoveries.” How say you?

Michael Shermer: The Paleolithic hunter who deduces that he must take certain actions to be successful in his hunt is employing a form of scientific reasoning by proposing a hypothesis (“If I want to be successful in the hunt tomorrow, I must sharpen my spear blade”) and then testing it the next day to see if it works. That’s not a moral matter, but once brains evolved the capacity to substitute parts in an equation (“If I try, X then Y will result, and whenever Y happens, I also did X”), then we can employ that same capacity to reason about other people, our actions and theirs, and the consequences for both. As I wrote in The Moral Arc, referencing Steven Pinker’s analysis of the role of reason in moral progress in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature⁴