Liminal Worlds

Socrates is famous for saying, “I know that I know nothing.” Since everything we know about Socrates comes from Plato’s writings, we can’t be sure if he, Plato or someone else coined this phrase, but that doesn’t really matter. It can also be seen as a kind of false modesty, especially when we consider how much cleverer Socrates appears than the people he debates in the Socratic dialogues. Still, the quote is significant, for it suggests that true knowledge might be very difficult to come by, if not impossible. It’s the ultimate assertion of a true skeptic.

Nowadays, skeptics are usually thought of as rational, educated people who doubt the reality of intellectually suspect beliefs such as psychic phenomena, UFOs, alternative medicine or even religion. Yet I call these modern skeptics fundarationalists, as they exhibit many of the signs common to fundamentalism of all varieties -fanaticism, intolerance and a stubborn clinging to dogma.

In the truest sense of skepticism, which really requires open-mindedness, hardcore fundarationalists like Richard Dawkins, famous for books such as The God Delusion and The Amazing Randi, who is famous as a debunker of various “unscientific” beliefs and practices, are not skeptics at all, but dogmatic materialists who try to compel everyone to accept their assumptions by making us believe they are beyond questioning, in a similar way that religious fundamentalists consider the teachings of the Bible, Koran, or whatever sacred book they may believe in, to be the final word of God. This is the idea put forth by Robert Anton Wilson, in my opinion a bona fide skeptic, in his book, The New Inquisition, which draws parallels between modern scientific dogma and the Medieval church.

Today, of course, “heretics” aren’t burned at the stake. The enforcers of the modern status quo use a type of intellectual and psychological intimidation to ensure conformity. Of course, their influence is rather flimsy, and doesn’t extend much beyond the walls of academia and those still cling to the sort of urban, elitist secular humanism that has actually been rapidly declining since the 1950s. Indeed, if you think about the proliferation of “alternative’” information available on the internet alone, from alternative healing to psychic phenomena to conspiracy theories, it becomes obvious that if this is an inquisition, its reign of terror is rather pathetic. So, “inquisition” is a bit hyperbolic, to be sure, but that doesn’t change the basic tenor of this stubborn, if fading cultural paradigm. Its spokespeople still act like they possess the indisputable truth.

I find one aspect of the fundarationalists’ behavior especially significant and revealing. It can be easily seen in the vitriolic manner of its leaders, such as Randi or Richard Dawkins. It’s the swiftness to which they resort to ad hominem attacks against their opponents, usually using words like “idiot,” “charlatan,” or “fraud.” They are especially fond of sticking their foes with the “idiot” label. Here we might draw an analogy once again with the religious fundies, who are quick -or were, as not many people talk that way anymore, though I admittedly don’t watch many televangelists or listen to much right wing talk radio- to call those who fall short of their moral standards “wicked,” “evil,” and “immoral,” and confidently condemning them to a fate of eternal damnation.

Since the fundarationalist is deprived of the colorful descriptions of hell that the religious zealot can threaten his moral inferiors with, he must stick to what he worships most -reason or science, or at least his interpretation of them. That’s why calling someone stupid, or an idiot or moron, is the most vicious possible accusation from this point of view. To insert some dime score psychology into this analysis, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to guess that many of the hardest core adherents of this point of view have a barely concealed terror of appearing stupid themselves. So they wield their credentials, degrees, IQ scores and studies as sharp-edged daggers with which to tear their intellectual inferiors to pieces. Yet, ironically, their arguments are often just as emotional, immature and devoid of reason as those of any backwoods preacher.

One of the fundarationalists’ favorite tricks when it comes to dismissing the beliefs of their supposedly idiotic opponents is the contempt with which they treat anything that they can label as anecdotal evidence. This simply means anything that someone has claimed or experienced but hasn’t been “proven” according to the rules set up by the current authorities in any given discipline. While, on the surface, it may seem perfectly reasonable to place more credibility in something that’s been established in double-blind studies than in the claim of a single individual, this also implies a strict hierarchy where everyone is expected to defer to the word of authorities, even when one’s own experience contradicts this.

For example, conventional doctors and medical researchers will often caution the public against trying any unsubstantiated healing method until its effectiveness has been “proven.” We can ignore for the moment the political and economic incentives that are often involved in recommending a certain drug or medical procedure, though in a way that’s quite relevant to this discussion as well. But the main point is that we are expected, if necessary, to ignore the evidence of our own senses, or -heaven forbid- our intuition, unless and until the proper authority sanctions something.

Suppose that you personally witness something whose existence hasn’t been proven scientifically. It doesn’t matter if it’s a UFO, a ghost, Bigfoot or perhaps a healing you experienced or witnessed. If you related this experience to this new type of “skeptic,” they would respond that it’s merely anecdotal evidence and therefore not scientific, so they wouldn’t believe you. Fair enough, but let’s take this a step further. Doesn’t it follow, from the fundarationalist point of view, that if you were a truly rational person, that you wouldn’t believe it either, despite having personally experienced it? After all, it’s unproven and rational people only believe in something that there’s proof for. So we end up coming to the rather absurd -considering this is supposed to be a rational belief system- conclusion that we should trust official pronouncement more than our own senses. This is where we come full circle back to the realm of religious fundamentalism, where doctrine and the word of authorities is final. This is an appeal to authority, pure and simple, that supercedes our own merely subjective experience.

This contempt and dismissal of the subjective and anecdotal is extremely significant, and lies at the heart of the fundarationalist’s dogma. For, while this is ostensibly an upholding of the revered “scientific method,” it’s equally a refutation, or at least a trivialization of subjective experience. It also implies a certain metaphysical belief system, one in which everything meaningful can be quantified and repeated. This is not the worldview of many older traditional and esoteric belief systems.

Consider, for example, the approach taken to curing either a physical or mental illness. The modern medical approach is to find a drug or treatment that can successfully treat this condition in all, or at least a large number of patients. Yet a traditional or psychic healer would not be so quick to categorize the patient’s condition, but would approach each case as unique. So, for a healer of this type to “prove” to the modern researcher that he or she can cure “cancer,” “depression,” “schizophrenia,” or a headache, it would first be necessary to agree that the latter definitions are really describing the identical condition in each patient. In other words, modern medicine rests upon a set of definitions that categorize people in a certain way. So, we can see, that the very insistence on proof in the form of double blind studies presupposes that results are repeatable because every case is basically the same. This assumption, which is based on the commonality of certain symptoms, is not Reality (capital R), but a shared belief system that is not necessarily the most useful in all cases.

The fundarationalist point of view is based on a certain philosophical and scientific world view that began roughly during the so-called Enlightenment in the 18th Century (though it certainly has roots that go back at least as far as Aristotle, the father of definitions),, picked up momentum in the 19th Century and has been in steady decline since the 20th Century, especially since the advent of quantum physics, which actually cuts the ground out from most of its core assumptions. The fact that it’s in decline is causing many of its proponents to proclaim its supremacy -and to keep reasserting the idiocy of anyone who disagrees- with increasing shrillness. In fact, it’s similar to the recent and enduring spike of religious fundamentalism in a world that is rapidly making it obsolete. Fundamentalists, by their very nature, are not inclined to go quietly into the night, but are are more apt to attempt a bold and desperate rally to reclaim the world that they sense is slipping away from them.

In order to get beyond fundarationalism, it’s helpful to understand some of its core assumptions, such as the aforementioned denial of subjectivity. This is only a beginning, of course, and the topic deserves a more comprehensive treatment. Ideally, we shouldn’t be trying to stamp out fundarationalism by returning to some romanticized pre-modern ideal, but rather transcend it, so we may evolve into a more mature world view that synthesizes science, reason, spirituality and a healthy skepticism.