Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (5 page)

I extract two morals from this example. The first is that, while this refutation is empirically based, it would surely be odd to class it as a
scientific
refutation. Were we really doing
science
when we noted the absence of bumps and “meows” and concluded there was no cat present? Surely, this is an example of the common or garden-variety empirical refutation people have been conducting for millennia, long before the development of the rather refined and specialized tool known as the scientific method. If we conclude that it's not raining because the ground outside is not wet, or that the chicken is not cooked because the juices are not running clear, or that it can't be 8 p.m. yet because the sun is still up, those are perfectly acceptable empirically based inferences to draw, despite the fact that these inferences are not ordinarily classed as scientific. Indeed, such common or gardenvariety, everyday refutations can be just as devastatingly effective as their laboratory-based counterparts. Call them “scientific” if you like, but, given that such refutations aren't typically performed by scientists and don't involve the “scientific method,” it seems to me less misleading to describe them as empirical but nonscientific.

The second moral I draw is that the effectiveness of such everyday refutations is not threatened by the fact that we could yet turn out to be mistaken about there being a cat in Jim's shirt. This refutation, like any empirical refutation (even of the properly scientific variety), is open to the
possibility of error.
It is possible, for example, that Jim has secretly been producing mute microcats. Perhaps, by a program of selective breeding, Jim has managed to get them down to just an inch or two in size, and he has one of these microcats hidden under his left armpit, where we have failed to detect it. This is a possibility. But the mere fact that
we
might
be mistaken doesn't entail that we do not, on the basis of the available evidence, have excellent grounds for believing there's no cat present.

Might such an empirical, if not properly scientific, refutation of certain supernatural claims be possible? Again, I don't see why not. Suppose Mary claims she has a supernaturally aided ability to predict the toss of a coin. She says an angel whispers into her ear whether the next toss will be heads or tails. Because Mary's claim concerns the supernatural—concerns what is behind the veil dividing the natural from the supernatural realm—does that entail that the claim is not amenable to empirical investigation and refutation? Obviously not. Mary's supposed angel may be on the other side of the veil. But its activities, if real, have consequences that can be observed on this side. If there really is an angel whispering in Mary's ear, Mary will able to predict correctly the next ten tosses of the coin. If she fails to predict all ten tosses correctly, it's reasonable for us to conclude that Mary is either lying or deluded. While not terribly “scientific,” this would constitute a straightforward and effective refutation of a supernatural claim.

What about belief in God? Might that also be open to an empirically based, if not properly scientific, refutation? Again, I can't see why not. In fact, as we saw in my introduction (appendix B), the evidential problem of evil does appear to constitute just such a refutation. If there really is such a maximally benevolent and powerful being, then surely, while the universe might contain some pain and suffering and moral evil, it wouldn't contain anything like the amounts we observe. It certainly wouldn't contain any gratuitous suffering. But surely there is so much suffering, including nonhuman suffering, that it's implausible that it can all be explained as the unavoidable price paid for certain greater goods. Notice this argument is obviously
empirically based
—it relies on our observation of the world and the vast quantities of suffering it contains. Science might make a contribution toward the argument's effectiveness, of course, by
revealing, for example, that the suffering we observe has also been going on for hundreds of millions of years
(that's
a properly scientific discovery). But the evidential problem of evil is not ordinarily classed as a “scientific” argument, despite being empirically based. It's a common or garden-variety type empirical refutation. Which is not, of course, to diminish its effectiveness.

To sum up, even
if
we cannot, strictly speaking, provide a scientific refutation of belief in God, it does not follow that we cannot refute belief in God. I'd suggest that anyone who supposes that
only
science is capable of refuting god beliefs is seriously underestimating what other approaches—including more philosophical or conceptual approaches—might be capable of.

SCIENCE AND THE SUPERNATURAL

Let's now turn to the suggestion that no
scientific
refutation of a supernatural claim is possible. I see no reason to accept this.

Samantha's Supernaturally Empowered Spit

Consider a hypothetical case. Suppose Samantha claims her saliva has miraculous healing powers. She supposes that if she rubs her saliva over wounds, skin complaints, diseased organs, and so on, this has a miraculous curative effect. Samantha's friends and relatives swear to the amazing restorative powers of her spit. Samantha doesn't know exactly how it works, but she does claim to know that it has something to do with the spirit realm. By some supernatural means, people are cured.

Does that fact that Samantha's claims that her spit has some sort of
supernatural
power—that the cures it produces are of a supernatural origin—mean that her claims are not scientifically refutable? Obviously not. It's not difficult to think up some properly scientific tests. For example, suppose we provide Samantha with three vials, one of her own saliva, one of a stranger's, and
one of something that is not saliva at all, but just looks and feels like it. We have Samantha rub her miraculous spit on a number of subjects with various medical conditions: cuts, skin complaints, and so on. This trial is “double-blind”: neither the subjects to whom the substances are applied nor Samantha know who are getting Samantha's saliva and who are getting something else. We then monitor the subjects to see if those with a certain sort of skin condition, cut, and so on recover more effectively than those who do not. If Samantha's spit really does have the miraculous power she claims, we should expect those who receive it to get better quicker than those who don't.

Such a test might provide strong evidence that Samantha's spit does, indeed, have such extraordinary powers. However, suppose those who receive Samantha's saliva treatment fail to get better any quicker than those who don't. Surely this would provide us with a strong piece of scientific evidence that Samantha's claim is false. Suppose a variety of further tests are conducted, all of which produce a negative result. And suppose that we have (which, of course, we do) credible scientific evidence that people are highly prone to the power of suggestion (merely telling someone that something will make them better can be surprisingly effective—see
Piling Up the Anecdotes
). Surely the reasonable conclusion to draw, now, would be that Samantha is mistaken, and that the testimony of her friends and relatives concerning the miraculous powers of her saliva is in large part a result of the power of suggestion.

It's worth emphasizing that in the above example, science would not just have failed to find evidence that a certain supernatural power
does
exist. It would have established pretty conclusively that it
doesn't
exist. We would have not just an
absence of evidence
but
evidence of absence.
When supernatural claims are tested, and we get a negative result, true believers often insist that this “proves nothing”—we may not have found evidence for what they believe, but we haven't shown what they believe is false. In some cases, that's true. But “prove” is a slippery word (as we'll see
later in this chapter), and it may be that the tests have established beyond reasonable doubt that their belief is false.

So
science can pretty conclusively refute at least some claims of a supernatural nature.
This is because such claims, if true, often have
empirically observable consequences.
They are, in this respect, no different to claims about other “hidden” phenomena, such as claims about tiny, unobservable particles, or about the distant past. Such claims may be about phenomena to which we don't have direct observational access. But that's not to say that they cannot be pretty conclusively refuted by the methods of science.

Of course, it will always remain possible that Samantha's spit does, sometimes, have miraculously restorative powers. We might still be mistaken. But that's not to say we're not justified in supposing Samantha's claim is false. It's
possible
that my attic is inhabited by invisible space gerbils, that George Bush was a robot, and that the French are Martian imposters and the Eiffel Tower is a transmitter for secretly sending reports back to Mars. Any nutty belief about the world can always claim to be
possibly
true, for we can never prove beyond all possible doubt that it's false (as we'll see in “
But It Fits!
”). That's not to say we can't prove beyond
reasonable
doubt that it's false.

Samantha and her miraculous spit was a hypothetical example. However, many claims of a supernatural nature have been scientifically investigated in some depth. Scientists have tested the claims of remote viewers, psychics, crystal healers, and so forth and others claiming to have some sort of supernatural ability. Such investigations have failed to provide good evidence that any of these abilities actually exist, and, in many cases, they have provided overwhelming evidence that they don't.

Let's look at an actual example of such an investigation—an investigation that prompted a believer in the amazing powers of crystals to
Play the Mystery Card.

Professor Christopher French and colleagues Lyn Williams and Hayley O'Donnell at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, conducted a study
into the claim that crystals have unusual powers that can be detected when they are held. The resulting paper was presented to the British Psychological Society Centenary Annual Conference in Glasgow in 2001. The study compared the reactions of a group of volunteers who were told to meditate while clutching real crystals bought from “New Age” shops with a control group given fake crystals. Those given real crystals reported higher concentration powers, heightened energy levels, and better spiritual well-being. However, exactly the same feelings were reported by those holding fake crystals. This experiment repeated an earlier one in which the experimenter, Williams, knew which crystals were real and which were fake, and so it was not “double-blind.” This second study was double-blind. The result? Neither experiment found any difference in the effects reported between real and fake crystals. Richard Wiseman, a colleague of French's, commented on the results: “The suggestion is that the power of crystals is in the mind rather than in the crystals themselves.”
²

Let's suppose you believe in the miraculous powers of crystals and, in particular, in the ability of people to sense the power of crystals that they physically handle. But you're now presented with these experimental results that strongly suggest, as Wiseman notes, that the experiences people have as a result of handling crystals are a product of the power of suggestion, rather than anything in the crystals themselves. Oh, dear. What do you do? One commentator on a blog reporting the experiments responded like so:

There is much that exists beyond the visible spectrum of light, and beyond the five senses. Not being able to prove the existence of something does not disprove its existence. Much is yet to be discovered. You would do better to discover it by looking outside your narrow frame of reference.
³

This is a curious collection of sentences.
⁴
The first three are, of course, all true—indeed they are truisms. Yes, there's much that exists
beyond the visible spectrum of light and beyond the five senses. X-rays, for example. It is undeniable that not proving the existence of something does not disprove its existence. And of course, who would want to deny that “much is yet to be discovered”?

However, while the first three sentences are truisms, they fail to engage with the experimental results. What the experiment produced is some rather compelling evidence that some of the effects people typically report on handling crystals—increased concentration, spiritual well-being, heightened energy levels—are
not
a result of some special feature of the crystals themselves but rather of the power of suggestion. It is important to stress that what we are looking at here is not a
mere absence of evidence for
the claim that crystals have such effects, but rather that it is some
positive evidence of the absence
of any such effects. Yet notice how, in response to this experimental evidence, our commentator says “not being able to prove the existence of something is not to disprove its existence,” thus misrepresenting the results of this investigation as a mere absence of evidence.

What of the suggestion that there's much that is “beyond the senses” (whether it's a supernatural realm or merely more of the natural world is left open) that the methods of science are not well suited to discover (being too “narrow”). The thought seems to be that if we want to discover more about this undiscovered realm, we need to open ourselves up to other ways of knowing. But what other ways of knowing? A survey of crystal healing literature and websites suggests a combination of gut feeling and intuition (see “
I Just Know!
”) and heavy reliance on various anecdotes about the effects of crystals, such as people being supposedly cured, and so on (see
Piling Up the Anecdotes
).