Part 1 is my introduction and my explanation of skepticism and why I think it’s important. I also touch on why new age magical thinking and spirituality can be so appealing and easier to promote. My goal is to use storytelling to show skeptical values as virtues.

Part 2 is an overview of manga and why I’ve chosen it as a medium to tell stories that promote skepticism. I also speak about some series that have inspired me in my approach to doing this—-which is also an excuse to talk about Masters of the Universe.

Part 3 is about my series I’m producing, Legend of the Ztarr, and how I hope it will convey messages about critical thinking and humanism.

The Q&A discussion that took place afterwards is also available:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Today, we attended a debate between Michael Shermer and Sam Harris vs. Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston. The debate was “Does God have a Future?” and will air on ABC Nightline on March 23rd. It was splendid  to see Shermer and Harris speak again, after each giving their own great talk, last month, at TED. Chopra was predictably absurd, dishing out his brand of woo juice cocktail—-new age pseudoscience post-modernism blended with faux quantum physics. Jean Houston, whom I’ve never heard of, was a complete embarrassment. I don’t recall anything relevant in her boring anecdotes.

I had a chance to ask a question, so I came up with one for Deepak. He had mentioned “deeper ways of knowing” and gave the impression that this was through intuition and repeatedly referred to “the subjective”. So I asked, “Without the objective scientifiic method, how can we distinguish what is true from what we simply want to be true?” Deepak answered this by saying he would answer my question, but that he didn’t want to answer any more questions after that. He then proceeded to not answer my question by doing his little Chopra word dance of nothingness.

Now, I know correlation doesn’t always mean causation, but if you want to interpret Chopra’s actions as being totally scared off by my question of skeptical awesomeness, I have no problem with that whatsoever!

Alternative medicine

Alcoholics Anonymous is the original 12 Step program, which has spawn a whole industry of recovery programs that basically copy-paste the 12 steps to deal with any addictive behaviour—-Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, Clutterers Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Online Gamers Anonymous, Smokers Anonymous, Emotions Anonymous—-the list goes on. There are also groups like Al-anon, where you don’t have to be an addict yourself, only someone being affected by one.

AA has been extremely successful in promoting itself as the most successful treatment for alcoholism. It markets itself as a non-denominational support group for alcohol abuse. Once inside the walls of its meetings, however, it’s clear that members are to understand that AA is the only treatment for alcoholism. It isn’t officially stated (in fact, the opening remarks are careful to say that the program is “widely regarded” as the most successful treatment), but if it isn’t implied in nearly every member’s ‘share’—-their anecdotal evidence that life without AA means relapse and death—-it is certainly the message of the AA bible “Alcoholics Anonymous”, referred to as The Big Book.

What is often said in the meetings and what is written in The Big Book contradict the public image of AA as a support group for those who wish to quite drinking. What the general public doesn’t know about AA is that it is a religious group which teaches its members that alcoholism is a spiritual disease with no cure and only by giving yourself up to God can one stay sober.

“Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant.”
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174.

Though it is argued that the Twelve Steps refer to a “power great than ourselves” and that ‘power’ can be anything you want, it is clear in the reading material that you are supposed to want that power to be God.

We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God.
The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, Page 46.

It is also clear that the goal of AA isn’t to stop abusing alcohol, but to serve God.

“At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God…”
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 77.

(My bold)

The magical thinking in AA is no different than that found in other alternative medicine. Like any typical spiritual healer, who will tell you that ‘negative energy’ is the cause of your cancer, AA attributes alcoholism to sins and moral shortcomings instead of alcohol consumption. In AA, being sober doesn’t mean simply not drinking. You are only sober if you have turned your will over to a power greater than yourself. Those who haven’t done this are labelled “dry drunks”. When their quack treatments don’t work, alternative medicine proponents will blame the patient. In the world of AA, if you overcome your addiction without the program (especially if you learn to drink in moderation), you were never an alcoholic in the first place.

But the most important feature of AA, true of any other alternative medicine, is that it doesn’t work. Those of us who advocate science based medicine make evidence of efficacy a requirement. The 12 Step industry deserves the same skepticism that we would apply to any other faith healing group…and people suffering from substance abuse and addiction deserve more than the “support” of a spiritual cult.

“Undrunk: A Skeptic’s Guide to AA”, by A.J. Adams, seems anything but skeptical. That is, the word ‘skeptic’ seems to be used in the “I was skeptical, at first” kind of way…rather than referring to a person who evaluates claims based on evidence and the scientific method. Has AA escaped the attention of the science and skepticism community? Certainly, the 12 Step industry must be one of the most successful quackery organizations out there–embedding themselves into the medical industry as successfully as any alternative medicine woo–and branding themselves as secular more successfully than intelligent designers.

AA and its counterparts (there’s a 12 step program for just about any addiction) are anything but secular. Of course, any program member will tell you that atheists and agnostics are welcome…but the program is chuck-full of religion; only about four of the twelves steps make no use of god or spirituality. Dr. Harriet Hall wrote a great article over at Science-Based Medicine about AA and the lack of evidence for it’s effectiveness: AA is Faith-Based, Not Evidence-Based. Another resource I found is a blog called Stinkin Thinkin:

…[W]hat we’re doing is muckraking, in the time-honored sense of the word. AA and 12-Step is has a monopoly. Sure there are some alternatives, but none of these alternatives are offered in your general addictions treatment facility. And none of these alternatives have the power to lobby in Washington the way that AA does…to get insurance money

There is a group called SOS (Secular Organizations for Sobriety, or Save Our Selves) which provides non-religious support for alcoholism and drug addiction. I found some interesting articles about AA by browsing their site:

AA, as a doctor once told me, is “an evangelical movement about saving souls”. At its core it has a good heart – it wants to save people from their demons. But, as with the death penalty, McCarthyism, the Conquistadors and other such crusades against evil, the pious ambitions of AA make the movement blind to its own hooliganism. As disinterested in individuality as the SS, and unaccountable for its actions as the KKK, AA preaches, bullies and lies to achieve its ends, and it does so with all the righteous impunity of a secret sect. Unlike other religious cults, however, AA’s victims are those who escape from its grip and return to society, their brains so laundered by fundamentalist claptrap that a glass of beer can take on the menace of a loaded pistol. That I eluded such a fate myself is thanks to nothing but sheer good luck – those not as fortunate as I can’t tell us about it, their stools at the bars and chairs in AA inhabited by new people entirely disinterested in tales of the dead ones who went before them.

I know there’s a lot of woo for skeptics to deal with, but I think the 12 Step industry deserves more criticism from the skeptical community. AA isn’t an effective treatment, never mind the most effective treatment for alcoholism, and those suffering due to substance abuse deserve treatments which are evaluated for their safety and efficacy.

The director, Alex Proyas, was quoted saying he wanted the movie to explore different viewpoints, “the scientific viewpoint of the logical construct of the universe and the one of faith, where people see this incredibly complex place we live in and go, ‘Well, how could this have all just happened randomly?’“ (my bold) This is one major annoyance with the film; it doesn’t even know what science is and what viewpoint it has. Again, audiences are getting the misguided message that science claims everything is random and stuff just happens by accident.

The irony is, unlike new age garbage like numerology, scientific theories actually do make accurate predictions for the world around us. Real predictions…not just after-the-fact pattern matching that happens with divination games like astrology, tarot, and psychic readings. You can use scientific theories to accurately launch a small rover into space and have it travel to another freakin’ planet and predict where it should land on that planet, hundreds of millions of kilometers away! Or you can have a theory like evolution, which predicted, about a hundred years before the discovery of genetics, that such a system should exist–it predicted the existence of an entirely new field of science!

Science is all about discovering how the world works and the cause behind the things we see and experience. It is faith that gives empty answers for why the world is the way it is; it’s faith that tells us that the big questions about the universe are infinitely mysterious and beyond our grasp.

And, frankly, it’s a little tiring to see the happy religious characters lecturing to grumpy miserable scientist characters in films and TV. The happiest people I know are scientifically minded and lead their lives free of faith and the supernatural. All the religious and new age people I know are quite unhappy, worry-full people, who always seem to be lost and unsure. Anecdotal, I know…

It’s not hard to see why such a horrible movie is doing so well at the box office. A lot of people are full of doubt, fear, and uncertainty about the future. It’s a comforting idea that there’s a magic solution that can warn us of danger and protect us against the unknown…and the only thing you have to do is keep believing, no matter what the facts tell you.

Just keep listening to the little voices inside your head–they know a lot more than the objective voice of reason coming from your MIT colleague.

Cage, you and your pseudoscience crapfest are forcing me to quote again:

For me, it is far better to understand the universe as it really is, than to persist in delusion, however satisfying or reassuring.

-Carl Sagan

And spirituality still involves faith: believing something to be true without evidence, despite evidence to the contrary, or even believing something for which there can be no evidence. There seems to be only one reason why we would give in to this type of thinking; because it feels good. People only have faith in things they want to be true. And so, when you use faith you fall into a dangerous mode of thought where you let your emotions get in the way of seeing objective truth.

This is where I found what’s important to me (and why I love Carl Sagan so much)…I realized that I’m far more concerned about what’s true than what feels good. This takes much more discipline than faith, though the spiritual gurus would have you think different. Spirituality is constantly trying to convince people that faith is a virtue and that it takes a disciplined mind to make faith work.

I have never known anyone, not one person, either religious or spiritual who is happy…truly content, and content because of their faith. What I see is people constantly needing to remind themselves of their faith; day in and day out they need to repeat to themselves what they believe…as if they are deeply unsure if it really is true. They need to gather in large groups with others of similar faith to reassure one another that this is what they all believe. Not only do I find this deeply unsatisfying, but doesn’t that also seem like a ritual of self-denial?

This is why I want truth. Truth isn’t something you need to recite. The truth simply is…whether you want it to be or not…good or bad. The truth about the world around you is there whether you choose to accept it or not, whether it hurts you or not, whether you want it or you don’t. Truth doesn’t promise to always makes you happy–but isn’t there something so very selfish about wanting only what makes you happy to be real? What the truth will always offer you is understanding and that is something that stays with you.