Skepticism and the Incurious

May 6, 2008

Matt Taibbi’s article “ Jesus Made Me Puke” about his experience going undercover at an evangelical Christian religious retreat demonstrates another deep flaw in the philosophy of Skepticism — its deeply incurious streak. The one that seeks to debunk rather than discover answers.

The previous half hour or so I’d spent dawdling in my car outside a Goodwill department store off Route 410 in San Antonio, clinging to some inane sports talk show piping over my car radio — anything to hold off my plunge into Religion.

There are lots of good questions to ask about Christian charismatics and the evangelical experience. How do “normal” people end up acting so strange? How are the pastors and ministers who preside over these events taking advantage of people? What gives this experience so much power over the poor, the desperate, and the junkies that nothing else seems to address?

The bus was nearly full, and mostly quiet. Here and there a few people sitting together or near each other huddled and chatted, but I could see right away that a great many people on the trip had come alone, like me. They were people of all sorts: younger white men in neat middle-class haircuts, a matronly Mexican woman quietly reading a romance novel, a few scattered weather-beaten black folk in secondhand clothing whom I immediately pegged as in-recovery addicts, a couple of ten-alarm soccer moms who would prove the loudest people on the bus by far, a few quiet older men of military bearing.

Are people’s spiritual experiences at these events genuine? Is it the result of the Holy Spirit? Some other spirit? An altered state of consciousness brought on through psychological manipulation? Or is everyone just faking it? If everyone is faking it, why do they feel they need to? If they’re not faking it, just what the hell is going on? How is it similar to meditiation? How is it similar to Vodoun or other indigenous practice?

But then it started. Wails and cries from the audience. To my left, a young black man started writhing around in his seat. In front of me and to my right, another young black man with Coke-bottle glasses and a shock of nerdly jheri curl — a dead ringer for a young Wayne Williams — started wailing and clutching his head.

“In the name of Jesus,” continued Fortenberry, “I cast out the demon of astrology!”

Even if we do not accept the idea of the spirit, what does this tell us about the human mind?

Taibbi spends a weekend with these folks dishonestly, under a pseudonym. He does not report that he asked any questions of the attendees to try to answer these questions. He does not indicate that any of these questions have even occurred to him, except insofar as he already feels he has the answer.

It was obvious that virtually everyone in the crowd was playacting to some degree or another. [...] The whole thing — the demonic expulsions, the trading of miraculous wives’ tales, the crazy End Times theology based on dire predictions that come and go uneventfully once a year or so — it’s all a con that is done with the consent of the conned. Which is what gives it strength. If everybody agrees to believe, it is real.

“It was obvious” means “I did not have to look for an answer or ask questions.” It means “everyone was transparent to me.” It means “I was not taken in.” It does not mean “I made an attempt to understand.”

Taibbi makes no attempt to understand. He mocks. He is horrified. He dismisses what he sees around him as entirely artifice (though some of it probably is). And he leaves with the conviction that hey, you just can’t talk to these people.

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to “be rational” or “set aside your religion” about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this — once you’ve gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. [...] Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.

That’s the biggest problem with Skepticism; it is cynicism and incuriousness — an abdication of thought and judgement — dressed up as philosophy or scientific inquiry. But the Skeptics do not seek to know; they choose to deny. Where someone might reasonably say “what is going on here,” the Skeptic is merely content to say “prove to me that this is real.” (See also: Randi and Pentawater)

What opportunities are lost waiting around for someone to prove something? Wouldn’t we be better off asking questions rather than mocking the scene?

Posted in Religion