Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (24 page)

It was the beginning of Rand's long decline and fall, of the slow loosening of her tight grip on the Collective. One by one, they sinned, the condemnations growing in ferocity as the transgressions became more minor. And, one by one, they left or were asked to leave. When Rand died in 1982, there remained only a handful of friends. Today, the designated executor of her estate, Leonard Peikoff, carries on the cause at the Center for the Advancement of Objectivism, the southern California-based Ayn Rand Institute. While the cultic qualities of the group sabotaged the inner circle, there remained (and remains) a huge following of those who ignore the indiscretions, infidelities, and moral inconsistencies of the founder and focus instead on the positive aspects of her philosophy. There is much in it to admire, if you do not have to accept the whole package.

This analysis, then, suggests two important caveats about cults, skepticism, and reason. One,
criticism of the founder or followers of a philosophy does not, by itself constitute a negation of any part of the philosophy.
The fact that some religious sects have been some of the worst violators of their own moral codes does not mean that such ethical axioms as "Thou shalt not murder" or "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" are negated. The components of a philosophy must stand or fall on their own internal consistency or empirical support, regardless of the founder's or followers' personality quirks or moral inconsistencies. By most accounts Newton was a cantankerous and relatively unpleasant person to be around. This fact has nothing at all to do with the truth or falsity of his principles of natural philosophy. When founders or adherents proffer moral principles, as in the case of Rand, this caveat is more difficult to apply because one would hope that they would live by their own standards, but it is true nonetheless. Two,
criticism of part of a philosophy does not gainsay the whole.
Likewise, one may reject some parts of the Christian philosophy of moral behavior while embracing other parts. I might, for example, attempt to treat others as I would have them treat me but at the same time renounce the belief that women should remain silent in church and be obedient to their husbands. One may disavow Rand's absolute morality, while accepting her metaphysics of objective reality, her epistemology of reason, and her political philosophy of capitalism (though Objectivists would say they all follow inexorably from her metaphysics).

Rand critics come from all political positions—left, right, and center. Professional novelists generally disdain her style. Professional philosophers generally refuse to take her work seriously (both because she wrote for popular audiences and because her work is not considered a complete philosophy). There are more Rand critics than followers, although some of them have attacked
Atlas Shrugged
without reading it and rejected Objectivism without knowing anything about it. The conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr., spoke of the "desiccated philosophy" and tone of "over-riding arrogance" of
Atlas Shrugged
and derided the "essential aridity of Miss Rand's philosophy," yet later confessed, "I never read the book. When I read the review of it and saw the length of the book, I never picked it up" (Branden 1986, p. 298).

I have read
Atlas Shrugged,
as well as
The Fountainhead
and all of Rand's nonfiction works. I accept much of Rand's philosophy, but not all of it. Certainly the commitment to reason is admirable (although clearly this is a philosophy, not a science); wouldn't most of us on the face of it, agree that individuals need to take personal responsibility for their actions? The great flaw in her philosophy is the belief that morals can be held to some absolute standard or criteria. This is not scientifically tenable. Morals do not exist in nature and thus cannot be discovered. In nature there are only actions—physical actions, biological actions, human actions. Humans act to increase their happiness, however they personally define it. Their actions become moral or immoral only when someone else judges them as such. Thus, morality is strictly a human creation, subject to all sorts of cultural influences and social constructions, just as other human creations are. Since virtually every person and every group claims they know what constitutes right versus wrong human action, and since virtually all of these moralities differ from all others to a greater or lesser extent, reason alone tells us they cannot all be correct. Just as there is no absolute right type of human music, there is no absolute right type of human action. The broad range of human action is a rich continuum that precludes pigeonholing into the unambiguous rights and wrongs that political laws and moral codes tend to require.

Does this mean that all human actions are morally equal? Of course not, any more than all human music is equal. We create hierarchies of what we like or dislike, desire or reject, and make judgments based on those standards. But the standards are themselves human creations and cannot be discovered in nature. One group prefers classical music over rock, and so judges Mozart to be superior to the Moody Blues. Similarly, one group prefers patriarchal dominance, and so judges male privilege to be morally honorable. Neither Mozart nor males are absolutely better, but only so when judged by a particular group's standards. Male ownership of females, for example, was once thought to be moral and is now thought immoral. The change happened not because we have discovered this as immoral but because our society (thanks primarily to the efforts of women) has realized that women should have rights and opportunities denied to them when they are in bondage to males. And having half of society happier raises the overall happiness of the group significantly.

Morality is relative to the moral frame of reference. As long as it is understood that morality is a human construction influenced by human cultures, one can be more tolerant of other human belief systems, and thus other humans. But as soon as a group sets itself up as the final moral arbiter of other people's actions, especially when its members believe they have discovered absolute standards of right and wrong, it marks the beginning of the end of tolerance, and thus reason and rationality. It is this characteristic more than any other that makes a cult, a religion, a nation, or any other group dangerous to individual freedom. Its absolutism was the biggest flaw in Ayn Rand's Objectivism, the unlikeliest cult in history. The historical development and ultimate destruction of her group and philosophy is the empirical evidence that documents this assessment.

What separates science from all other human activities (and morality has never been successfully placed on a scientific basis) is its commitment to the tentative nature of all its conclusions. There are no final answers in science, only varying degrees of probability. Even scientific "facts" are just conclusions confirmed to such an extent that it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement, but that assent is never final. Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength.

PART 3

EVOLUTION

AND

CREATIONISM

I have given the evidence to the best of my ability. We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all. his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system— with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

—Charles Darwin,
The Descent of Man,
1871

9

In the Beginning

An Evening with Duane T. Gish

On the evening of March 10, 1995, I entered a 400-seat lecture hall at the University of California, Los Angeles, five minutes before the debate was to begin. There wasn't an empty seat in the house, and the aisles were beginning to fill. Fortunately, I had a seat on the dais, as I was the latest in a long line of challengers to Duane T. Gish, creationist laureate and one of the directors of the Institute for Creation Research, the "research" arm of Christian Heritage College in San Diego. This was my first debate with a creationist. It was Gish's 300th-plus debate against an evolutionist. Las Vegas was not even giving odds. What could I say that hundreds of others had not already said?

In preparation, I read much of the creationist literature and reread the Bible. Twenty years ago, I had read the Bible very carefully as a theology student at Pepperdine University (before I switched to psychology), and, like many in the early 1970s, I had been a born-again Christian, taking up the cause with considerable enthusiasm, including "witnessing" to non-believers. Then, during my graduate training in experimental psychology and ethology (the study of animal behavior) at California State University, Fullerton, I ran into the brilliant but eccentric Bayard Brattstrom and the insightful and wise Meg White. Brattstrom was far more than one of the world's leading experts in behavioral herpetology (the study of reptilian behavior). He was well versed in the philosophical debates of modern biology and science, and regularly regaled us for hours with philosophical musings over beer and wine at the 301 Club (named for the nightclub's address) after the Tuesday night class. Somewhere between Brattstrom's 301 Club discussions of God and evolution and White's ethological explanations about the evolution of animal behavior, my Christian icthus (the fish with Greek symbols that Christians wore in the 1970s to publicly indicate their faith) got away, and with it my religion. Science became my belief system, and evolution my doctrine. Since that time the Bible had taken on less importance for me, so it was refreshing to read it again.

As additional preparation, I interviewed others who had debated Gish successfully, including my colleague at Occidental College, Don Prothero, and watched videotapes of earlier debates with Gish. I noticed that regardless of his opponent, his opponent's strategy, or even what his opponent said, Gish delivered the same automated presentation—same opening, same assumptions about his opponent's position, same outdated slides, and even the same jokes. I made a note to steal his jokes if I went first. A toss of the coin determined that I would start.

Rather than go toe-to-toe with a man so seasoned in the ways of debate, I had decided to try a version of Muhammed Ali's rope-a-dope strategy by refusing to engage in debate. That is, I turned it into a meta-debate about the difference between religion and science. I began by explaining that the goal of skeptics is not just to debunk claims; it is also to examine belief systems and understand how people are affected by them. I quoted Baruch Spinoza—"I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them"—and explained that my real purpose was to understand Gish and the creationists so that I could understand how they can reject the well-confirmed theory called evolution.

I then read parts of the biblical creation story (Gen. 1) to the audience.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.. .. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth"; and it was so.

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind; and God saw that it was good.

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind"; and it was so.

And God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and
let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every living thing that creep-eth upon the earth."

The Bible follows the story of creation with a re-creation story (Gen. 7-8).

And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.

And the waters returned from off the earth continually; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.

These stories of creation and re-creation, birth and rebirth, are among the most sublime myths in the history of Western thought. Such myths and stories play an important role in every culture, including ours. Around the world and across the millennia, the details vary but the types converge.

No Creation Story:
"The world has always existed as it is now,