 It's Sunday, July 4th, and this is For Good Reason. Welcome to For Good Reason, I'm DJ Grothe. For Good Reason is the radio show, the podcast produced in association with the James Randy Educational Foundation, an international nonprofit whose mission is to advance critical thinking about the paranormal, pseudoscience, and the supernatural. My guest this week joining me again is Paul Kurtz to discuss skepticism when it comes to religion. He's considered by many one of the founders of the worldwide skeptics movement. He's a founder of the committee for the scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal, PsyCOP, and has also been involved with Free Inquiry Magazine and Skeptical Inquirer Magazine for many years. He's a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been featured very widely in the media about UFO abduction and psychic powers and communication with the dead, a whole host of skeptical topics. Thanks again Paul Kurtz for joining me on For Good Reason. Well I'm delighted to join you because you're a skeptic, you ask probing questions, and that's important. Okay, good, I said that right on cue Paul, just joking. To review some of the things you said during our last conversation, for you skepticism is not the emphasis on doubt and the impossibility of knowledge, but it's more affirmative. It's really a way of finding things out. Yes, it's affirmative and it's the necessary ingredient of the educated mind in any field of inquiry. Well, you say any field of inquiry, but you often talk science. You say this kind of skepticism is continuous with science. Well science is the best illustration. The methods of science are the best illustrations of advancing knowledge, namely you have a problem, you formulate a hypothesis, you look for evidence or reasons to support it, you test the claim, and that method used in science so successfully can be used in all areas of human life to some extent. So we just almost started talking about this last time you were on the show, let's get into it now. One of the sacred cows in science has been that science describes what is and religion and ethics describe what ought to be and never the twain shall meet. The old is ought to be. Well they don't think it ought to be, they think that is what is. Those who are religious believe there is a God. Well, no what I'm getting at is that scientists often have argued that religion and science occupy non-overlapping magisteria and that science should say nothing about religion, but I know you and we've had this discussion before, you disagree with that position. Of course. Why not apply it to religion? Why confine it? The reason why it was not applied for religion, it was dangerous. If you become a doubter or an atheist or an agnostic, you suffer the social consequences, though there is great fear in treading it to the area of religion. So you think skepticism, this kind of critical thinking, should be applied to religious claims and not only the kinds of claims that could be studied in a laboratory? Yeah, you need some courage, the courage to question. In many dictatorships you can't apply to politics, it's against the law to do it, you'd be thrown into prison, though the same thing applies in other areas, in democracies as well. Okay, well you're on the show today to really get into this question, should skepticism be applied to religion? So rather than getting off into politics, other topics, let's focus on religion and there's two senses of the term religion that people use, I think, when they have this discussion. One is religion as the practice of religious believers and certainly you could be skeptical of that, you could kind of investigate that stuff scientifically or skeptically, but that's not the only sense of the term that matters and that's not the sense that you think skepticism should be confined to, it also refers to the transcendental and you say skeptics can be warranted in their skepticism of the transcendental. Yes, of course, and that's the major critique of the great skeptics, historically, of David Hume and the Mono World as a good illustration. If you claim you believe in God and you take these divine claims, then you can ask, well what's the evidence for that? Why do you say that? Many people are afraid to raise that question, but we need to challenge religious beliefs. Well, a lot of skeptics say, however, that those religious faith claims are untestable and therefore they're outside the bounds of skepticism. Well, if they're untestable, then you won't believe that, then they're meaningless in one sense. No, we need, people who believe in religion deeply believe in it, they believe it's true and they believe that they have evidence for it. But the reason why I'm a skeptic is because the religion is different so greatly between Islam and Judaism and Christianity and Hinduism. So, you have to bring knowledge to bear in evaluating any claim in religion. Well, the diversity of religion or the diversity of religious claims, that's not itself evidence that they're all false, maybe almost all of them are false and only one is true. No, maybe some of them are true, depending on what you're talking about. But there are parts of religion that seem to be to be truthful. I'm not talking about God necessarily, but the effect of religious belief on a person's life, that claim has been made. Right. Well, let's get back to this testing faith claims. Some people have claims about the veracity of sacred texts and there are, I think, legitimate skeptical ways of looking at these. Oh yes, Mike Golly, that anyone who studies biblical criticism that developed in the 19th century, they go back and read the text. Now the question is, which text, which version of the Bible or the Koran? And you find out that these were written over a period of time and that they're different ways of interpreting them. So they cannot take religious texts as with God's honest truth. The critical historical method they call it and it's a kind of research you're saying based on evidence and reasoning. Well it's the interpretation of meanings. You go back and read the text. There are many ways that you become skeptical, it depends on the translation and you go back and study the historical origins of these flames, other witnesses to revelations and who are they and so when you get into that kind of inquiry, then powerful degrees of skepticism are required. And skepticism is a method, it's not just rejecting those claims out of hand but actually looking into the evidence. No, he'll be minded and examine them. I think it seems to me the closed-minded, fundamentalist atheists who simply reject religion without examination are like the religious believers who simply accept it without sufficient evidence. It applies in all sides. And so you think you're in between those two extremes? Well, I'm a skeptic about religion. I'm also a skeptic about religious atheists, that's another matter. And those are charged words and it's also a kind of polemical phrase, religious atheists, I don't think that... Well they're fundamentalist atheists who reject everything without examination. They said you need to prepare to examine every question. Yeah, another polemical claim and yes, I do not want to get off on that topic, Paul. Let's talk about big skeptics, big name skeptics who are influential in the history of skepticism. They believe in the supernatural still and in God, even though they've been influential at raising awareness about these other kinds of... Who did you have in mind? I'm talking right now, maybe Martin Gardner. Look... Oh yes, Martin Gardner, dear Fred, who died recently, what a loss. And he was embarrassed about that. He was a great skeptic, played a key role but he held on to a number of religious beliefs. When I would talk to him, his ears would turn red sometimes. Well it's... My understanding is that he didn't hold on to doctrinaire religious beliefs but he's what they would call a fideist. He always said that atheists had the best arguments, the best reasons. He just chose to believe in God anyway. Yes, but he also confessed he didn't have sufficient evidence for that, but he believed it anyway. Well it was like Anthony Flu who was the great skeptic and atheist and in recent years claimed to believe in God as the deus would and that has puzzled many people. Well there's been some speculation that some of that was manipulated by believers kind of manipulated out of him, that he was suffering... Well I think that they did exaggerate but I think both were true. I knew Anthony Flu very well. And at the end he said well maybe the deus conception, not a God that answers prayers and not a God that reveals himself but maybe God as a kind of a principle for interpretation, intelligent design. Well that's... And I disagree with it but that was his position. That sort of notion, you know, the out of work God, the God who started it all but is uninterested in humanity, right? You can't get to that God, you can't even examine those claims, right? Yes, that's a spurious claim that God got everything going. How do you know were you there? What's the evidence for that? The Big Bang? What came before the Big Bang? Maybe there are many Big Bangs, not just one, so you can be very skeptical about that argument. Well in effect, in your book Exuberant Skepticism you say that that kind of fideism or deism is, you use the words illegitimate and irrational, you say that skeptics are completely justified in accepting only those beliefs that are based on evidence and reason and if there's no... I don't want to say completely, but in principle we should base our knowledge upon evidence and reason. Sometimes we have to act and make choices with insufficient evidence. Right, well based on the best evidence or a working theory. But what I'm getting at is you say that when there's no evidence one way or the other, like for the God of deism or the God of fideism, that skeptics should just withhold judgment rather than taking that leap of faith. Well I have the argument that William James, he said, where you don't have evidence either way, the famous American philosopher at the turn of the century, then he will will to believe in God because of moral consequences and other psychological consequences. But I think that argument doesn't hold up. So I think if you don't have evidence either way, then you ought to suspend judgment. But it doesn't follow that you think you can't be a good skeptic if you're a deist. Well, no, I mean only a few of the deists. You can be a theist believing in God who is the person that you prayed over the answers prayers, or you can be a deist, or you can be an agnostic saying there's insufficient evidence either way, or like me, you can be a non-theist. I don't think there's evidence for a God, and until I see any I'm going to doubt it. And you think that's a legitimate skeptical position. It's not based on... You can say you're an atheist, but I prefer saying I'm a non-theist. The reason why I'm hesitant to say I'm an atheist or I am an atheist, I'm a goddamn atheist. The reason why I'm hesitant to say that is because often atheism is converted to a new religion, a holier than our religion of disbelief, and I'm skeptical of people who take that stance, and many have historically. The only reason I'm zeroing in on this is because there's a lot of hand wringing the past year in the skeptics community about the topic of religion, and some people say, oh, you know, deal with any other supernatural or paranormal claim, but don't deal with religion because you'll offend the religious believers in our midst. That's surely, well, if your boss holds religious beliefs, I wouldn't rub his nose in skepticism. So you get in trouble if you do that. If you're a candidate for the presidency, you better avoid that topic. There are lots of practical issues. But I think in principle, you ought to be prepared to examine any questions. And if you don't have evidence, then withhold judgment. Let's talk about the other kind of religious believer. Rather than admitting they have no evidence for their theism, no evidence one way or the other, and they just choose to believe, rather than doing that, they instead say there's good evidence that warrants belief in God. Well, there are people, thoughtful people who believe in God. I don't agree with my atheist friends who say that, will not even listen to the point of view of someone who defends belief in God. But it seems to me the evidence is totally insufficient at this stage in human knowledge. So you think that such claims should not be off limits to the skeptics, just because they're religious claims, that they should be examined like any other sort of claims. What point they should be examined? I don't see why a skeptic should refuse to examine them. If he claims that there's no evidence for astrological horoscopes, who are the astrologers who are going to attack them? Why can't he make a claim that there's insufficient evidence for life after death or salvation by God? It seems to me that you have an intellectual obligation. Now, you may decide not to do it because of social reasons or other complications. But nonetheless, in principle, we should be prepared to apply skepticism to religion. Anyone who does it is a coward. Well, but I'm using that in quotation marks because it depends on the context. Like you said, you might not want to upset the apple card at Christmas necessarily as family dinner. My people won't even celebrate Christmas. One of my friends, I think that I enjoy Christmas. My friends and my kids' relatives enjoy Christmas. They enjoy getting presents, so do I. That doesn't mean I believe that Santa Claus comes out of chimney or that God has anointed this. Right, so we both know the kind of atheist whose idea of a good time is to only sit in an assembly line and X out in God we trust on all his dollar bills. They were my friends, they were former altar boys that have been abused or they were taken in by the rabbi or they were fundamentalists that were misled. So then they abandoned it. You're talking about embittered atheists who are like one note Johnny's. Yes, that's true. It becomes a holy war. And you know, I can understand it. People, so many atheists have been bruised by religion, by their families. For example, if a gay couple wants to go together and the family is religious, this is verboten and so they've been bruised by religious beliefs and they turn against them strongly and that can be understood. And religion is censored truth. It's repressed women. Many crimes have been created and applied in the name of God. But religion has also done good things. I'm not going to deny that. So you don't want to, you know, on the other hand, you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. No, no, because I think that religious institutions have had a positive function and that's why I believe that atheists, and particularly secular humanists simply can't destroy religion without bringing in other institutions to fulfill those needs, such as the need to celebrate happy occasions or funerals, depends on who dies that may be happy, but certainly not. But you're talking about fellowship and coming together. Yes, of course. Fellowship and friendship and communities. And so churches and mosques and synagogues and temples have provided communities for people to share the values of a good life and you can't overlook that. That's why atheists and secular humanists need to build institutions where communities can gather and share values that they cherish. Paul, I want to talk about a possible inconsistency that I think I see. If you say skeptics should treat religion, that religion should not be off limits and not just religious claims that make empirical claims that you can test somehow, but even claims for which there's no evidence whatsoever, that's within the bounds of skepticism you're saying. Let me ask you, why doesn't Skeptical Enquirer Magazine or Psychop treat religion more? I think sometimes they deal with those topics. If you go back over the years, they deal with those topics. Well, from the start they decided to deal with the paranormal. They decided they were not an atheist magazine and they avoided the basic religious questions. But skeptics elsewhere should do that. The paranormal was big business and someone had to deal with it. Psychic claims and astrological claims and fortune-telling, someone had to criticize that and so Psychop did that and that was important. But you're saying there's more to skepticism than just the paranormal. The notion that skepticism is only narrowly confined to paranormal issues is foolish. Skepticism is a mark of the educated mind, the willingness to doubt claims for which there is insufficient evidence or reasons and it ought to apply in every field of endeavor. If you have the time, if you have the interest, if you have the knowledge to do so because it requires knowledge in many fields so you just can't be a skeptic unless you investigate. Well, and I think that's a point that you've spent decades underscoring. You have to investigate. You can't just in a knee-jerk fashion reject claims. That's a great problem is when I affirm that God exists and I'm not going to investigate or I deny that God exists and the hell with you I'm not going to investigate. I think you may have your reasons at that time to say that but in principle at least on both sides you should be willing to investigate. You just mentioned that Skeptical Inquirer is not an atheist magazine. Psychop is not an atheist organization. No, it's not an atheist organization. Similarly, the James Randi Educational Foundation is not set up to advance atheism. That's not our mission. Of course, and Randi does a brilliant job in critically examining how people are hoodwinked, how what appears to be magic can be given a perfectly prosaic explanation and that's important as a form of education. So I agree with you that these national skeptics outfits are not atheist per se but at the same time that religion should not be treated with kid gloves. Well, I see no objection to paranormalist groups dealing with religion. I mean, there are many topics that they could deal with. Yes, indeed. And they have. I mean, for example, faith healing. I spent a lot of time in that. Can people be healed by prayer? It's insufficient evidence. But depending on the illness, it may be psychosomatic. Correct. And that's an important question. Or even the claim, you know, God exists and here are my 10 good reasons why I believe he's real. That's within the bounds. Yes. I think, of course, the claim since religion has been among the most powerful institutions in human history and clash and disagree. And this leads to violence as the truth throughout the world today. Then we have an obligation, moral obligation to critically examine the claim and to compare them and to reject those that are painfully false. So we've talked about this before. I also just mentioned a second ago that, you know, the JREF is not an atheist organization. Speaking for the JREF, we don't push skepticism of religion only. We're not an atheist organization. No. And more to the point, I really think that nonprofits are best when they don't try to do everything. They instead have focused missions. Well, they can't do everything in nonprofits in many areas. So there are areas of specialism. And I think the magicians such as, or the conjurers such as Randy and others or Martin Gardner who show how what appear to be mysterious paranormal can be easily explained. That's vital in the beginning of human knowledge. I want to finish up by talking about religious skeptics again and thinking of them as allies in this endeavored, advanced skepticism in society. Now, when you say religious skeptics, you mean skeptics or skeptical about religion, unless they're the religious. Oh, good point. I meant to say skeptics who in fact do believe in God. You're right. Oh, there are skeptics who believe in God. Yeah, we spoke about Martin Gardner. Yeah, exactly. And so my question is, if skepticism says religion is not off limits, but religious folks who happen to share skeptical values about these other areas of inquiry, the paranormal or pseudoscience, you know, being skeptical of religion may ruffle their feathers. Is it just good strategy to not touch religion for that reason? Well, you know, you can you can be skeptical about theories and economics. And it's vital that we have that. And the person on the other side may be devout. But so you can work with people on many projects. And surely we don't all agree on everything. So we have different economic, political, and religious beliefs. I'm prepared to work with religious people. I find most religious people find decent, upright citizens. And I work with them on a whole number of projects. I differ with them about their religious claims. And it may be that I'm in a situation where I can present my doubt that I would do so. So you could be skeptical of your friend's beliefs and still work with your friend to advance. Of course, yes. Yeah, but the point you're making, look, it's a fine line, but it's a line we should we should walk. Yes, that is the case. I mean, I think that many religious people will be impressed with James Randi and say hurrah, hurrah, and how he exposes a paranormal claim. But they can have their own beliefs without a turning on them. And that's true in all areas. Who agrees with everything that you agree is true or what I believe is true? Well, very few people. So we have wide diversity of beliefs in society. And skeptics should recognize that. Well, Paul, much appreciate the discussion. Thanks for joining me again on For Good Reason. I feel like we could just keep going for hours, but I can. Now, DJ, you deserve a skeptic to be your reward because your radio programs raise skeptical questions, difficult questions. And the best kind of radio is those in which the moderator is probing. So you're a probing skeptic, and I appreciate that. Well, I appreciate you saying that. It sounded a little kinky there for a second, probing skeptic, but I'll take it. Thank you, Paul, and for being on the show again. For Good Reason is produced by Thomas Donnelly and recorded from St. Louis, Missouri. For Good Reason's music is composed for us by MA Award-nominated Gary Stockdale. Christina Stevens contributed to today's show. I'm your host, DJ Grothe.