 It's Saturday, February 6th, and this is For Good Reason. Welcome to For Good Reason, I'm DJ Grothi. For Good Reason is the radio show and the podcast produced in association with the James Randy Educational Foundation, an international non-profit whose mission is to advance critical thinking about the paranormal, pseudoscience, and the supernatural. Before we get to this week's guest, Daniel Loxton, I'd like to invite our listeners to check out randy.org for details about some recent developments at the JREF. First, you'll see news of a couple job announcements. We're looking to hire a director of educational programs and also an administrative director. In addition, you'll learn some ways that you can easily support the important work of the foundation, like through the Capital One Visa card that we offer. If you're the type to responsibly use credit, we'd love for you to help out the JREF by getting the JREF Visa card. And also, you'll learn about the new membership drive we're launching. If you care about the values that the JREF advances, the values of critical thinking about the supernatural, about the paranormal, we'd love your support. I'm happy to have Daniel Loxton on For Good Reason. He's editor of Junior Skeptic, the children's section of Skeptic Magazine, a quarterly science education and science advocacy magazine published by The Skeptic Society. The magazine's been called Stimulating and Provocative by Carl Sagan, Clearly Superior Gutsy by E. O. Wilson, and The Best Journal in the Field by Stephen J. Gould. And Daniel joins me on For Good Reason to talk about his new book, Evolution, How We and All Living Things Came to Be. It's a children's book. It's based partly on a two-part Junior Skeptic story. Daniel, welcome to For Good Reason. Hi, DJ. Thanks for having me on. Well, I wanted to have you on because this book, my gosh, what a great project, a book on evolution, a serious book, it's not dumbed down, but it is explicitly for children. Let's start off. I just want to ask you, why do you think there are so few books out there like this? Well, you know, it was a surprise to me how few there are. You know, since the book's just been released in the last couple of weeks. And you know, I've been a little bit of a giddy school girl about it, you know, checking to see how sales are going on Amazon and running down to my local bookstore to see if it's in yet. Right. Such great reaction in the blogosphere. It's been well-reviewed and it's climbing the rankings on Amazon, eh? Yeah. It's off to a great start, which is very rewarding after all this time toiling away in the attic. Anyway, my father and I, we walked into chapters, local mega bookstore here in Victoria and went down to see if it was in yet. It wasn't. But he walked up to the bookstore lady in the children's section, which is, you know, the largest section of the largest bookstore in the provincial capital of British Columbia. He said, do you have any books about evolution for kids? She said, oh, well, let me check my computer and came up with one. Wow. One book for kids on the central organizing principle of biology. I found that kind of amazing. You know, I've done some other interviews about this book since it's been released and I've been saying things along the lines of, you know, there are many high quality evolution books for kids. Are distinguished by the following things. But, you know, I really have been overestimating. I think how how much material is available for kids. I mean, there have been good books published over the decades, you know, in the 150 years since the series was published. But things that are readily available at your local bookstore, practically nothing. And do you have a guess as to why? Is it just because evolution creationism? Is it that the notion of evolution is so controversial? Or maybe people guess that maybe it's just too complicated, too hard of a scientific issue for youngsters to grasp. I've heard both objections. I'm sure both things are operating. When we were shopping the book around to large U.S. children's publishers, we heard more than one that was too controversial or too hot, which was, you know, really astounding to me. But, you know, that's how it went. And of course, that combination of factors of, you know, the people involved may not agree with modern biology or they may assume that their market will not agree with modern biology. Those same factors play out for publishers as for local bookstores. That's what's amazing about this book being published because it's not only about evolution, of course, it's about evolution. But one thing that sets this book apart is that it covers for kids some of the objections to evolution that they might hear. So talk about controversial, right? You get into a little of the creationist notions maybe that human footprints have been found together with dinosaur footprints or some pseudoscience challenges to evolution. This is something you felt like you needed to challenge head on in the book. It wasn't enough just to talk evolution, right? Yeah, that's correct. And I aimed the book for sort of a I think something of a novel strategy on that where on the one hand, you know, notwithstanding it for kids, I wanted to in a substantial, direct way tackle those objections because those are the objections that people, the regular folks bring to the table when they're encountering evolutionary biology. And those are the objections that kids will have inherited from their parents or their community. But on the other hand, I didn't want to divide. I didn't want to make it an us and them kind of issue. You know, this is the science. The science is a great asset for all of humanity. This book is written for eight to 13 year olds. I think that the science in quite a deep way is accessible to eight to 13 year olds if it's made made clear enough. And so I didn't I didn't want to carve up humanity into, you know, different different camps. I wanted to just deal with the arguments on their face. So I'm not actually sure that the word creationism even shows up in the book. But on the other hand, a number of arguments, which are common pseudoscientific arguments advanced by creationists are directly dealt with. Right. Scientific arguments or pseudoscientific arguments, depending on how you might want to characterize them. That's right. Another beautiful thing about the book. Well, beautiful. It's the artwork, the absolutely beautiful artwork. Thank you. These gorgeous, big, full color illustrations. You have cartoons in the book, diagrams, photographs, also a number of these computer generated creatures. Right. It's it's like something out of, you know, right off Discovery Channel or something, these woolly mammoths, other creatures you have in there, it's like from the computer design. It's not, you know, just by your pen. So this is a kid's book. I guess you need a lot of pictures in it to get the message across, right? Yeah, that's I mean, this is funny. You know, organized skepticism is grown out of kind of academic roots. And and the idea that, you know, it matters to have pictures. Some of those kinds of things are things that we're still reaching for. Junior Skeptic is a project, which is the the section of Skeptic Magazine that I do has always stretched and reached for those kind of production values that would allow it to compete in the marketplace of ideas. This book has, I think, up the ante considerably from from my previous work and I think from from the general production values that Skeptics are used to. You're right. I want to say some of the images are I mean, they're just breathtaking. Great images, they're they're frame worthy, great job there. Daniel, you do another beautiful thing in the book. And this is just like, hey, let's have Daniel on the show so I can congratulate him on this great book. But I'm serious about this. You not only get into evolution, so kind of the brute fact of evolution. It explains how every aspect of life got here. But you kind of tease out the call it the wonder coming from that any adult. I know who stops and thinks about evolution, explaining everything from the petals of the rose to the lungs of a whale or the wings of a pterodactyl long extinct, you know, every aspect of life. Is explained by evolution. That is an amazing reality that kind of stops you in your tracks. Do you think kids are going to similarly be bowled over by how amazing evolution is? It's kind of inspiring to me. I wonder if you think kids are going to get that inspiration. Well, I think a failure to appreciate that the kind of on wonder of the natural world there. I think that's one of the barriers for for trying to create these books for kids. Publishers don't see how that can be how that can be done. Seems complicated. It seems dry, but as you say, you know, that, you know, if I may use this in sort of a paraphrase way, but the the spiritual power of understanding billions of years of history of life on earth and the interrelatedness of all living things, you know, it's the, you know, it is a blow your socks off kind of an idea if you're able to communicate it. Now, I'm by no means the first author to try, you know, Darwin himself. But, you know, when he he wrapped up the origin of species on it, just an unabashedly romantic note writing, there is grandeur to this view of life. And, you know, I try to I try to set that same note. And I think it's a kind of book that will make people interested in the material, but it's 100 percent how I feel, you know, it. So it's not just a gambit to get the ideas across. It's actually one of the ideas you want to get across. It's maybe the primary idea I want to get across is that that the power of the understanding that the natural universe is comprehensible, you know, that's that's the understanding that I want to pass to my young son. It's the it's real. I see when I see the those ideas, you know, sparking in his eyes when he tells me that birds are really dinosaurs. You know, it's it's powerful stuff. It's, you know, it's kind of an emotional powder cake for a parent. Right. I'd like to let our listeners know that you can get a copy of Evolution, How We and All Living Things Came to Be through our website forgoodreason.org. Daniel, almost as an aside in your book, you say that evolution doesn't actually do anything. So, you know, we just talked about the inspiration we can derive from evolution, but then you say the the notion of evolution doing something is just a figure of speech for all these mindless processes. So you're talking about drawing inspiration from mindless processes. You actually say something like there being no brain, no intelligence behind evolution that's running things. I really like how you compare evolution to the weather. You say evolution is a process that happens naturally and unthinkingly like the weather. So where are you getting inspiration from something that has no purpose in in that sense? Well, I feel almost funny making this argument. As you know, a few of you listeners may know, I'm I'm something of a skeptical purist. I've argued that skepticism should not be linked too closely to humanism or atheism or some of these parallel rationalist movements. But, you know, I am a humanist. And when I, you know, when I look around my own life and derive meaning from the relationships I have to my close relatives and my extended relatives and to all of humanity into the biosphere in general, you know, those those relationships are, you know, it's really it escapes me how anyone could face up to that that reality and not be moved by it, not be swept away by the by the the intimacy of those relationships and off of the incomprehensible vastness of the cosmos. But you're saying you're not shying away from maybe the atheistic implications or call it the philosophically naturalistic implications of thinking of evolution as mindless as the weather. Well, you know, I don't shy away from that personally. You probably know that the book strikes what might be called an accommodation tone or position right deals with religion only very briefly. And it says, you know, it just kind of briskly says, science is the science, which is a position which is acceptable to most mainstream religious believers. And, you know, science, you know, scientists are not the authorities on on spiritual matters, you know, talk to your friends about those things, talk to your parents, to your community leaders. At the moment, we're just talking about the graph text of science. So, you know, on the one hand, you know, I'm swept away by by evolution. But, you know, I think that that many people can have that experience regardless of whether or not they personally are theists of one brand or another. You're right that the book doesn't spend a whole lot of attention on the whole conflict between science versus religion. You basically just say that science cannot speak about religion. And you try to leave it at that. That's the accommodationist line that you're talking about. But on the other hand, you know, when you say direct quote from the book, science is our most reliable method for sorting out how the natural world works. But it can't tell us what those discoveries mean in a spiritual sense. To understand what that is, go talk, you say, go talk to your friends, your family, your community leaders, you don't tell kids to go talk to their religious leaders, right? So you stop short of embracing religion somehow in this book. Well, you know, it would be disingenuous for me to embrace religion. I personally am not religious. But I'm aware that, you know, any random cross section of people buying this book or any book, a large percentage of them will be religious. Now, I'm not catering to them. I'm not catering to anyone. I'm just trying to lay out the science and make it accessible for kids. But it's this topic has to come up. It's the most common objection to understanding modern biology by far. And I just, you know, it is not my place to tell people about the existence of a God or the existence of an afterlife or, or, you know, what people ought to do in their ethical relationships. That's not my job as a good science writer. So I just, I just, you know, said that entire matter aside, leave that up to parents and families. And, you know, it's just out of scope for the book and out of scope for science. Right. Well, I don't want to be too disagreeable. But while on the one hand, you try to kind of set it aside, maybe even skirt the issue, some might argue. On the other hand, you're pretty clear. The way I read it, you're pretty clear that not only are you saying science doesn't have a place in those religious discussions, you're saying religion does not have a place in these scientific discussions. I mean, when you compare evolution as a mindless natural process to the weather, just look at anthropology, look at in our distant past, people believed that even the weather was a function of the gods, you know, the God of thunder, God of rain, whatever, we all drew out of that. Nobody really believes in those gods anymore. And if you're saying evolution is like the weather, some people think you need a God to explain how life got here. But no, evolution is as mindless as the weather. There are kind of atheistic implications in all of that. Well, I mean, think about it like this, you know, for a billion Catholic, it's more or less acceptable to say science is true. God stepped in somewhere and infused souls into hominids. Now, I have no ability to examine that question, you know, that assertion is, you know, it cannot be tested. It is to my mind, as an atheist, personally, it's just kind of a metaphysical utterance that has no actual meaning to me, you know, it's just, it might as well be poetry. So I'm, you know, I'm hardly going to attempt to refute it. When I talk about the mindlessness of evolution, there could be exceptions in there. I mean, who knows if, you know, the gray aliens have periodically stopped in every couple of million years and settled with us. I mean, could you, would you know it if that had happened? But at this point, we have no need of that hypothesis, we don't see that anywhere in the findings of science. You know, when I talk about the mindlessness of evolution, more what I'm trying to address is a problem in language that, you know, when, when you talk about the history of life, you have to talk about things like design, you have to talk about the things like competition. But any of those things have a kind of, you know, they imply a sort of agency, which is not as far as we can tell, present in the natural world. So So you're letting children know, hey, it is a metaphor. Evolution isn't actually doing this. There's no, it kind of just happens. There's no evolutionary agents, you know, like in the Marvel Universe, the high evolutionary, right? Yeah, I guess I got a goofy suit, but the yeah, that's right. You know, as far as we can tell, these things just unfold like the sorting of pebbles on a beach, you know, or the word as I suggest in the book, like the weather. But the way we talk about it implies agency. And so, you know, it's just kind of a failing of English language. It's really hard to deal with as a writer and my editor, a very accomplished kid's book veteran, Valerie Wyatt, she and I struggled back and forth with every one of these instances where, you know, there's an implied, you know, either it seems to imply that evolution is looking into the future, which it can't, you know, a natural section only operates under the conditions that are operating at this very moment that can't make predictions. Right. There's no idea of progress in evolution. There's no ultimate end point. Well, you know, that's a kind of a question. There is definitely no ultimate end point. You know, you can, if you pick this index of that index, you can, you can find progress in the history of life. Things do go in different directions. But it's really arbitrary what things are identifying as progress. It's just one thing happening after another. Right. Right. Why is it, you know, is it the case that intelligence is a sign of progress? Maybe not. Maybe there's purely just an aside, an inclinant sequential detour. Yeah, or an accident of evolution that's actually a curse. You know, there's been that kind of cheeky dismissal of our big brains. You know, these things are in some sense progressive. You know, like there was a time in natural history where those things were not present on the earth and over time, cognitive complexity increased at such a point that you and I can be having this conversation right now. So, you know, there are, we can see trends in fossil records, but we're haphazard. Right. But not progress in the sense that evolution has a goal for all of us to be arriving at. In other words, that humanity somehow is the pinnacle of the design of evolution or that... I remember Mark Twain talking about that. He said, you know, in his, obviously much more pithy phrasing, but he said it has been the Eiffel Tower, you know, the entire tenure of mankind is like that, you know, like the width of the depth of the paint on the gnaw on the top of the Eiffel Tower and the rest of geologic time is like the Tower. So, you know, he says, well, you know, it must be that the whole Tower is there just for the bit of paint. I don't know. Daniel, I love the tone of the book. You've called it accommodationist. Now, I don't want to take that away from you, but it's atheistic enough for me. I think secularists and skeptics of all stripes should pick up this book for their youngsters. You're right that it's not kind of this hard line, angry atheist kid's book. I'd like to see that book written. That'd be a funny book to read. But I love this book. Anyone who wants a good entree into discussing evolution with their kids and even these, you know, more these philosophy questions or religious issues can get into that through this book, the science, of course, but also the other stuff. I want to thank you for joining me on For Good Reason, Daniel. It's a it's a great book and a tremendous pleasure. Thank you very much for having me on. And to finish up the show this week, the honest liar considers dangerous deceptions. Here's Jamie Ian Swiss. What's the most dangerous deception of all? A week ago, Jim McCormick, a 53 year old former police officer, was arrested in England on charges of fraud. McCormick is managing director in the British firm of ATSC Limited, who manufactured the ADE 651 bomb detection unit, or more accurately, a dowsing machine. Officials in Iraq, where the ATSC device was widely used by the Iraqi military, said they would begin an investigation into why their government paid at least 85 million dollars to the British company for at least 800 of the dowsing bomb detectors. 85 million dollars. Now dowsing is easy to test. And variably, when James Randy has tested dowsers around the world, he runs a preliminary demonstration in which the dowsers are shown where the target, say a glass of water, is actually located, perhaps concealed beneath an inverted bucket, or hell, science doesn't have to be complicated, let's say under a hat. In the preliminaries, the dowsers seem to always find the object a success rate of about 100%. But then, when the target is secretly located in double-blind testing, dowsers consistently perform with a success rate of about one in two, in other words, as dictated by chance and chance alone. So, dowsing doesn't work and never has, but the movement of the bent coat hangers or forked stick or ADE 651 bomb detection unit is often dramatic and seemingly mysterious, thanks to what's known as the idiomotor response. Idiomotor action was a term coined in 1852 by the psychologist and physiologist William Carpenter, who described it as, quote, the influence of suggestion and modifying and directing muscular movement independently of volition. Independently of volition, that's the important part. In other words, the person holding the bent wires or whatever object is supposed to move is actually responsible for moving the object themselves with tiny, almost undetectable muscular activity, and they don't know they're doing it. Idiomotor action explains how in the area of spiritualism, seance tables tip turned and sometimes crawled around the seance chamber, thanks to the unconscious pressures of the fingers and hands of those seated at the table. If you've ever seen a Ouija board mysteriously spelling out words and messages, that's idiomotor action too. Even today, power utilities in many parts of the country still rely on dowsers to attempt to detect water. Far more disturbingly, idiomotor action lies behind the controversial practice of so-called facilitated communication in which facilitators claim to translate the intentions of patients seriously damaged by autism, brain damage, or even those who are comatose. But all of these examples, from water dowsers to facilitated communicators to bomb detecting soldiers, often share a frustrating and disturbing aspect of the idiomotor phenomenon, namely that most practitioners are sincere. When dowsers show up for scientific testing, they believe they're going to succeed because by and large they're not actively engaged in any deliberate fraud. No one is being more fooled than themselves. And so when the tests fail, dowsers tend to think that the phenomenon is simply unpredictable and a little mysterious, that they're just having a bad day. Cognitive dissonance is typically resolved by the practitioners holding on to his belief system. It's easier for humans to believe we've had a bad day than to accept that we're just plain wrong. So dowsers and facilitators believe in their skills and abilities and tools and devices because of subjective validation. They sooner believe the evidence of their own eyes and experience than the critical inquiry of the scientific method. But if I have learned anything from my life as a magician, I know this. Human beings, all human beings, including magicians and scientists and police and judges, and military purchasing agents, too, are incredibly lousy observers. Without the double-blind test, what we think or guess about the world based solely on observation is about as reliable as the Daily Weather Report. Bad example. So it's just possible, perhaps not likely, but it is possible that Mr. McCormick, for all his millions in profit, believes in the legitimacy of his product. I'm not betting the farm on that. And it doesn't alter the fact that no matter what he believes, he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for selling a useless product that cost innocent lives. But in fact, when it came to the scientific evidence against the bomb detector, Major General Jihad Al-Jabiri, the head of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's Directorate for Combat Explosives said, and I quote, whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is detecting bombs. I don't care what they say. Now, while we can speculate that the Iraqi General might have been provided with some financial motivation for ignoring the scientific evidence against the device, despite the fact that it was, in essence, killing people, we can't be certain, because it's also possible that the General didn't care because he had personally witnessed the function of the device. I don't care what they say, sayeth the Good General, perhaps because he cared more about his own subjective experience than about what any damn scientific method I had to say about it. And people died. And so, what is the most dangerous deception of all? Self-deception. This is Jamie Ian Swiss, and I am the honest liar. Thank you for listening to this episode of For Good Reason. To get involved with an online conversation about this episode yourself, join the discussion at ForGoodReason.org. Views expressed on For Good Reason aren't necessarily the views of the James Randy Educational Foundation. Questions and comments on today's show can be sent to info at ForGoodReason.org. ForGood Reason is produced by Thomas Donnelly and recorded from St. Louis, Missouri. ForGood Reason's music is composed for us by Emmy award-nominated Gary Stockdale. Contributors to today's show included Jamie Ian Swiss and Christina Stevens. I'm your host, DJ Grovey.