Selective Skeptics

I regularly consume atheist podcasts and YouTube videos, and something about them is especially striking. These self-described skeptics rarely apply their vaunted skepticism to whatever they perceive the consensus to be among scientists. 

How odd! The ideal of science -- even if it is not often fulfilled -- entails vigorous (and rigorous) continuous debate and suspicion of consensus, which in other contexts is denigrated as group-think or herd mentality. Skeptical atheists seemed to have missed this point.

Many scientific truths that we today take for granted were once marginalized minority positions that brought their proponents immense grief from the scientific establishment -- such as the life-saving importance of doctors' washing their hands. Yet many members of the skeptical school of atheism seem to believe that the correct scientific position is whatever the alleged consensus seems to be and that any doubt (skepticism) about an alleged consensus position is a sign of fundamentalist scientific rejectionism. Blind deference to establishment voices is unbecoming self-described skeptics. I seriously doubt they have personally verified the scientific claims they embrace.

I say alleged consensus because often the consensus is invented. How many of you believe that 97 percent of climate scientists believe we face manmade and imminent catastrophic global warming? And how many of you formed your opinion on climate change on the basis of that alleged consensus? (I've heard TV news people ask, since "the debate is over," why should they interview anyone who disbelieves that the end of the world is near. Funny how messianic the global alarmists can sound.) It may surprise you, then, to learn that the statistic is bogus -- read about here. 

Where the consensus isn't invented, it may well be a creature of interest -- gasp! don't tell me scientists have interests beside truth-seeking -- particularly where science intersects with government policy, a source of fortune and prestige.

Another area where online skeptical atheists misplace their skepticism is the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically, how to deal with it. I've heard atheist hosts ridicule any dissent from the lockdown policies (as if lockdown costs were trivial), and they accomplish this in an openly prejudicial (perhaps dishonest) way: by featuring soundbites only of evangelical preachers. (Apparently the only reason that atheist program hosts venture into public policy with respect to science is to discredit Christians.) You would never know that credentialed epidemiologists and social scientists with prestigious university jobs have from the start challenged the revealed truth that mass quarantine rather than herd immunity with protection of the most vulnerable is the best way to deal with the coronavirus.

I won't debate climate change and COVID-19 here (or anywhere). I am neither a climatologist nor an epidemiologist, although I know a bit about economics. All I want to do is, first, ask the skeptical atheists the question they love to ask others -- why do you believe what you believe? -- and second, point out something they seem to have missed: that reputable scientists, many of whom are probably atheists, can be found on the dissenting side of many "official" scientific consensuses. Science is -- or should be -- a contentious and continuing enterprise that tolerates -- correction: welcomes! -- grounded dissent. Self-styled skeptical atheists look hypocritical when they mock even the possibility of reasonable doubt about an establishment-stamped scientific "truth." (For the record, I'm confident the earth is very old and roundish and that vaccines are safe.)

This trust -- or is it faith? -- in approved science and the demonization of dissent is exceedingly odd for a group of people who insist we can never reach the "capital-T truth" -- whatever the hell that is. (I have an idea of what just plain truth is.)

I would hate to think that the "skeptics" apply their edgy approach only to positions they have perhaps hastily rejected or that they oppose anything backed by people they already dislike. If so, they turn Science into the new Church -- which abuses and insults science. Selective skepticism makes me skeptical.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 18, 2020 at 12:53 PM

    I've stayed away from most atheist sites for some time because of what you bring up here. It seems that for the most part any disent from the prevailing party line is jumped on and savaged with great gusto. As a radical libertarian who questions the legitimacy of the state I have felt the wrath of the faithful many times.

    Thanks for what you are doing here, Sheldon. I try to read most of what you write, everywhere you write it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sheldon RichmanJuly 19, 2020 at 4:30 AM

      Thank you. What I say here ought to appeal to nonlibertarians too. (In my view, libertarianism is simply consistent liberalism, which was the original name for it.) In this post I make a modest appeal: to acknowledge that serious scientists dissent from the establishment line on so-called "settled" matters.

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