Too Big to Fail?

TOO BIG TO FAIL?

A key challenge for the good skeptic is the common mind-set that says some beliefs are too special to question. To me it’s obvious that nothing should be off-limits to sincere and sensible inquiry. If we can’t honestly analyze and reconsider certain “important” beliefs, then how can anyone ever really know if those beliefs are valid? It makes no sense to say that something is too serious to treat seriously. Scrutiny should rise with importance, not go down. But many disagree. They feel that some beliefs are simply too big to fail and can’t be challenged because if they collapse, too many people will go down with them. I don’t buy this, of course, so I don’t refrain from encouraging skeptical thinking when it comes to any particular extraordinary or important claims.

My motivations are all good here. I want only to be constructive and help others. I look around and see a world that is deeply wounded and severely burdened by irrational beliefs. This drives me to act. I’m no saint or superhero, but I’m willing to at least try to improve the world. It seems obvious to me that we can do much better than this. Every day, I read news reports of horrors and heartbreak tied to one irrational belief or another. Skepticism is the prevention and the cure. One incessantly hears about money troubles these days and somehow the world just can’t scrape up enough cash to feed and vaccinate every child. Yet humankind currently spends hundreds of billions of dollars per year on fortunetellers, medical quackery, and other nonsense. We also seem to be constantly short of time and always tired, but somehow we are able to find countless hours and come up with enough energy to worry about things that probably aren’t real. Why are we crippling ourselves in this way? It’s the twenty-first century. Skeptical thinking should be more popular by now. After all, it’s not a state secret that science works. The fact that the scientific process does an excellent job of separating truth from fiction is not forbidden or inaccessible knowledge. Virtually everybody today relies on science to some degree—even the Amish. So why not rely more on scientific thinking?

One doesn’t have to make very much effort to find good reasons to be a critical thinker these days. Thanks to the current state of television news, it’s easy to come by examples of how failing to think before believing can lead to problems. The human misfortune and misery that results from weak skepticism is an endless source of fodder for TV news. Just turn the television on and marvel at the madness: On advice from his spiritual guide, man in Fresno eats four pounds of carpet lint and then drinks seven pints of Komodo dragon saliva! Full report from the intensive care ward at 11:00 tonight, plus NFL scores and weather! Our modern world is a nonstop parade of people being punished for their failure to think. Why don’t more people recognize this and react sensibly by deciding to think for themselves and question everything? Are they afraid of something? Are they waiting for something?

Being a good skeptic is not scary. What’s scary is letting other people think for you and then hoping that it all works out well. It’s not difficult to be a good skeptic and accept reality. What’s difficult is figuring out how to pay the rent after giving half your paycheck to a faith healer. Difficult is hearing your doctor tell you that it’s too late. She could have saved your life with medical science, but now you are going to die because you spent the last year harmonizing your spirit energy with the universe and consuming fungus-infused shark pills sold to you by some crook with a smile who promised they would cure you.

Things have changed since we first began this routine of making up answers to mysteries and accepting claims without evidence. We invented the microscope and telescope more than four centuries ago and have seen many things since. We now know how to discover the real and expose the fake using science. History is clear: bad thinking often leads to very bad outcomes. Yet today many smart and good people remain enslaved to irrational beliefs. Some hate and kill in the name of gods. Many expect magic to heal them when ill. Others see aliens, ghosts, and conspiracies lurking in every shadow. We rode on the back of science all the way to the Moon, yet millions of people today reject science and insist that stars and planets hold magical, predictive powers over our lives. What is going on? Who are we? What’s wrong with us? One scientist summarizes humankind as having “paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.”5 That is more than a description; it’s a warning, too. Clearly this is not a stable mixture for us as we barrel ahead into an increasingly high-tech and complex future. By 2050, there likely will be more than nine billion people sharing this same planet. It is difficult to imagine how we will avoid a pathetic series of self-inflicted catastrophes of increasing magnitude if we do not recognize the need and find the will to finally become less a believing species and more a thinking species.

My reaction to this critical challenge is to encourage people to become good skeptics. More thinking by more people ought to lead to better results for us. Maybe it won’t, but it seems to me like it is well worth trying. More skepticism means less irrational belief, which probably means a better and safer world. Skepticism can’t solve every problem, of course. But it certainly will help a lot. I hope people don’t view this as a fight between skeptics and believers. I prefer to think that we are all in this together. Living on a fantasy-prone planet ought to be a common concern because we all pay a price for it, regardless of who we are or where we are. Most believers probably would agree that there are far too many irrational beliefs out there today. They may not recognize a problem with their own belief, but they certainly recognize the drag or danger in others’. It’s a start. There is common ground here. For example, I am sure that a significant number of people, believers and skeptics alike, agree that Christians torturing and killing “child witches” in Africa and Hindus abusing and killing “sorcerers” in India is not only criminal and immoral but also profoundly senseless. If so, then promoting science and reason is something we can support together. Similarly, millions of women today are openly treated as the property of men. They are oppressed, beaten, and sometimes killed by men who believe their actions are sanctioned, if not required, by belief systems that any good skeptic can challenge easily. These acts of violence constitute yet more common ground, one more reason for both believers and skeptics to promote rational thinking.