Michael Shermer is the founder and editor of Skeptic magazine and a presidential fellow at Chapman University. His latest book is “Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational”. He’ll be speaking at the philosophy and music festival HowTheLightGetsIn London 2023, on 23-24 September. New Humanist readers get 20% off full festival tickets using the code NEWHUM23.
You’ll be speaking at HowTheLightGetsIn about the way in which, although established religion has been in decline in the west for a long time, spiritual or supernatural beliefs have persisted. How do those beliefs manifest today?
In the late 19th century, there were predictions that with mass public education, industrialisation and so forth, religion would decline. But that didn't happen until post-World War Two, when it happened in Europe, but not in the United States. It didn't happen in the United States until really the last 15 years or so…
Today, there's this thing called the “replacement hypothesis,” [which posits] that without religion, people still need something, so religion will be replaced by … some secular version, such as Marxism or feminism. I think it's a mistake to think about it like that because it suggests that there's a hole that needs to be filled in human nature that religion has filled, and it has to be something like religion [to fill it] … Religion has filled some roles that we need but ... but there's nothing magical about religion or belief in God. [Living a happy life] really comes down to having a social circle, family, people that care about you, and having goals in life …
The idea that you have to have religion to have morals is also falling away. People realise that without religion society is not going to just collapse. People are still for the most part good and they're not getting that from religion. They're getting that from our genes, our sense of right and wrong, our parents, our peer groups, our teachers and mentors and culture at large. The idea that you should just be good for goodness’s sake, which has been a humanist line for decades, is finally catching on.
And yet we still see among younger generations beliefs in things like horoscopes and spirituality. What's driving that?
“Spirituality” is a loaded word because it means so many different things to different people but roughly speaking it's having a sense of awe and wonder about your place in the world, taking yourself out of your own self and your ego … Scientists have studied this and what they find is that you can do this in many different ways – a walk on the beach, a hike in the mountains, dancing, music, literature. Meditation is huge now and it’s not replacing religion but it’s just another way of finding some kind of peace and wellness, you might say. On dating sites people describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” ... It's a way of signalling, “I'm not religious but I have some character and morals and values and I care about things deeply” …
I like going to cathedrals. My wife is from Cologne, so we go to the Dom whenever we visit her family, and I find great senses of spirituality and awe and wonder there – even though I'm an atheist, I don't believe any of the stories behind it … It’s the exact same feeling when I go into an observatory … It just reminds you that the universe is a vast place, and it takes you out of yourself and gives you some reflection and gratitude.
Your most recent book is on why the rational believe the irrational. What's the short answer?
My next book is called Truth and it takes this concept much larger. A lot of what people say they believe as being true is not [meant] in the empirical scientific sense.
It's "true" in some other sense – it's mythically true or psychologically true or religiously true or politically true. It's [a case of] "this is what I believe because I'm part of this team." For example, "I'm a liberal, so I believe in supporting immigration and abortion rights and free speech". [Which is different to] whether or not it’s “true” like you could run some experiments [to prove it]…
I've been writing about the resurrection of Jesus … When people say they believe it, do they really believe it like ... some empirical truth? No, I don’t think so. I think they mostly believe it because that's their religion. "That's part of what I believe as a Catholic" ... It’s mythically true …
I think most religious claims are in that area. Biblical archaeology is a waste of time – you know, “we’re going to prove once and for all that King David existed” or “how Jonah got swallowed by a whale and survived for three days”. That’s missing the point of the story.
How does that tie in with conspiracy theories?
Most people, when they say they believe some conspiracy theory like the deep state or QAnon or Princess Diana was murdered or whatever, they don't mean that literally in the sense that "I checked it out myself and I believe it."
I think it's more like "this is what my team believes. I'm a Republican so I think there is a deep state" or "I just don't trust big government agencies to tell the truth" because they lie a lot, which is true …
Most of us can't fact check most things so we just accept it or else you’d never be able to get around and do anything … [We] have to assume [a lot of things] … that are not empirically verifiable …
One of my favourite papers on this is called “Dead and Alive”, in which people who ticked the box that said they think Princess Diana faked her death and is still alive somewhere were also more likely to tick the box that said she was murdered. Well, she can't be both dead and alive. So what are they saying when they tick those contradictory boxes on a survey? In a way they’re saying, “I don't trust the media. I don't trust government to tell me the truth.”
Is belief in conspiracy theories growing?
Not really, actually. Conspiracy theories have been around forever, going back to ancient Rome. What's happened is the speed with which conspiracy theories spread and the number of people that can be affected overnight with this kind of mind virus. That's the difference that social media and the internet has made ... But the number of people who say they believe in conspiracy theories, that’s been pretty much the same since the polling agencies started asking people about it.
Let's talk about aliens, which are everywhere at the moment, including the US Congress, which took witness testimony during an unprecedented hearing on the issue back in July. What explains the enduring appeal of this idea?
I’ve just started a 500-page book called UFO about the history of that subject in the United States. And I tweeted a picture of the cover saying “here's a 500-page book on the history of a subject we don't even know exists. How long can this be sustained?” And then I posted a picture of the Bible.
I do think, in a sense, the whole thing is driven by this kind of religious impulse to think we're not alone, that there's something out there besides us … It's an incredibly interesting subject. You know the whole search for extra-terrestrial intelligence and the Drake equation [developed by astrophysicist Frank Drake in 1961 to estimate the number of advanced civilisations likely to exist in the Milky Way] and all the Carl Sagan stuff, looking for aliens – you'd have to be brain dead not be excited about that idea. But is it true?
There’s two separate questions: Are they out there? Have they come here? Most astronomers think "surely we're not the only ones". I mean there's something like [700 quintillion] planets in the entire cosmos …
But have they come here? Very likely not just because it's mostly empty space, it’d be next to impossible to find us … As for the sightings, the UAPs [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena], 95 per cent of them are totally explainable. I’ve spoken to ufologists, who totally believe we’re being visited, who say themselves that 95 per cent of these things are balloons and drones and swamp gas and Venus. So we're really only talking about 5 per cent of anomalies. And what do you do with anomalies? Nothing ... There's always a residue of unexplained anomalies in any field and it doesn't mean that the field is broken; it just means that we can’t explain everything …
But I'm happy to be proven wrong! You know, if a US government politician comes out and says "here it is, here's the body, here's a spaceship" … alright, I’ll concede. But that hasn't happened. I started Skeptic magazine in ‘92. I've been hearing about a coming disclosure every year for 31 years. Where is it?
What role will conspiracy theories play in the 2024 US presidential election?
The rigged election conspiracy theory has been driving a portion of the GOP for sure, but here's a good example of what I was talking about. Was the election rigged? How would I know? I wouldn't even know who to call, but you know who would know? The Department of Justice. And so, when attorney general Bill Barr, life-long Republican, voted for Trump, appointed by Trump, said "you know what, we looked into it and we just couldn’t find anything" – and he would have been motivated to find something – that's the end of the story for me.
Christopher Hitchens used to like to say “if you hear the Pope saying he believes in God today you think "well, the Pope’s doing his job again". But if you hear the Pope saying, "you know I’m starting to doubt God's existence", you think "oh, he might be on to something!” Motivated reasoning is huge. The only thing you can do to counter it really is what we do, like at Skeptic, is post “Here are the claims, here are the counter arguments to those claims, you decide” … All we can do is point [the contradictions] out and hope that people, when they go down the rabbit hole, can climb out.
How does understanding how these beliefs work help us to build solutions?
There is research on de-biasing programs. You can actually do something called “pre-bunking”. The US government did this on the eve of Putin invading Ukraine. The State Department issued a statement saying “there are going to be some videos online, posted by these Russian trolls, saying that the following is going to happen and this is why we have to invade” … That was an attempt at pre-bunking. [Telling people] “you're about to be sold a bunch of bullshit and this is what it's going to look like”. And the research shows that does seem to work. If you alert people of what to look for that seems to help.
Also, teaching people about the cognitive biases. "Here's the hindsight bias, the confirmation bias," and so on – there’s dozens of them. People really do get better at identifying them. Although there's a biased bias in that they're better at identifying it in other people [and] it’s still hard to see in themselves.
So the solution is just to keep reinforcing the norms of truth telling. That the truth really still does matter. That we don't live in a post-truth world. Because if we did, how would you know? Because the people that claim we live in a post-truth world have arguments. They're using reason. So apparently the truth still does matter.
HowTheLightGetsIn, the world’s largest philosophy and music festival, returns to London this 23-24 September. Renowned as a hub for world-leading thinkers, philosophers, scientists, politicians and artists, this year’s festival theme is "Dangers, Desire, and Destiny". Expect to see Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Ruby Wax, Michio Kaku, David Baddiel, Carol Gilligan, Martin Wolf, Peter Singer (via Zoom) and more lock horns over a packed weekend of debates, talks and performances. We’re delighted to offer our readers 20% off full festival tickets with the code NEWHUM23. Get your discounted tickets here. If you can't attend in person, don't worry. The festival's online platform IAI.TV has a wealth of festival content to enjoy.
