Us and Them

When discussing flaws in skepticism and my fellow skeptics, I would say that divisiveness and superiority take the cake. It is all too easy to fall into an Us vs. Them mentality - 'we seekers' have found truth, and 'those others' are trying to rob us and other people of it.

I won't deny that every pseudoscience and religion has their share of charlatans who are all too eager to fleece the flock. But the vast majority of believers - the flock itself - are not in it for the money or power, but out of a genuine desire to know the truth and to get answers to life's big questions. In terms of attitudes, skeptics and believers can easily be mirror images of each other - both have a fair amount of people who feel superior because they have found truth, and both have people who compassionately reach out to help others, who are no worse or inferior or stupid than they are for having been mistaken, to find such truth.

I think that this sense of superiority is a universal facet of humanity. It has in roots in that deadliest of sins, pride. It crops up not just in faith and skepticism, but is also the basis of racism, patriotism, and the fact that my college is in all ways better than that college down the street.

But of course, the sense that 'we' have a monopoly on truth, and that theism or various superstitions are universally bad or evil, is unconstructive. It is easy to point out the bad things that religion has done through history - the deplorable witch hunts, the crusades, trying to take away our booze, and most recently knocking down our favorite skyscrapers.

But keep in mind - the United States' history involves the genocide of the native inhabitants of the land we occupy. At one time our forefathers were every bit as immoral and heartless towards an entire group of people as any crusader or Nazi - and let's not forget slavery, we can make that two groups of people. And yet we don't generally hate the United States as it stands today the same way some of my fellow skeptics seem to hate religion. If we're unhappy with this nation, we seek to change it rather than to destroy it. We should be well pleased when a religion decides that it will no longer engage in crusades or witch hunts or terrorism, and we should not hold the theists of today accountable for the sins of the theists of yesterday.

There is a fine line between hating theism and hating theists, and I find it much easier to not hate theism in the first place. Never having been a theist probably plays into my lack of animosity - in general, I have found that people who have left a group are more hostile towards it than those who were never in it at all. A former theist is more inclined to feel as though he were betrayed and lied to when he discovers that his belief no longer works for him, or becomes an idea he cannot see as true any more. So I cannot entirely fault my fellow skeptics for disliking something they see themselves as having been freed from - but I can certainly ask that they recognize that everyone else who is still a part of that particular faith is merely in the same boat that they were, and they are not deserving of contempt, rudeness, or mockery for having fallen into - or been born into - the same situation. Such actions will only serve to drive them away from a careful examination of their own faith - after all, see what a rude person that 'backslider' has become! They don't want that to happen to them!

We are not different. Theists, by and large, are good people. They are kindred spirits who, like us, have a desire to understand the world and the universe around them. We have reached a different understanding, and we recognize that one or both sides must be wrong about it. We are two men in our own life rafts that meet in the ocean, and both become immediately convinced that the other man's life raft is sinking. At that point it is clear that simply calling the other man an idiot for not realizing that his raft is going down is unconstructive (and makes him inclined to do the same to you). It is far better that you end up with the odd situation of both men trying to calmly convince each other to switch rafts, because in the end it's possible that one might actually convince the other to get on - or at worst, they agree to disagree on the condition of their respective rafts, and each merrily take their own craft on into the unknown seas.