Skepticism and deception: Introduction

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but it took some time to gather the thoughts I wanted to include.  I've wondered a lot the past couple months about what place skepticism should take in my life.  I started reading this webcomic called Carbon Dating that is, of course, for total incurable nerds.  Unlike some webcomics, Carbon Dating has a developing story and recurring characters.  The main character, Rob, is a science journalist, whose job is to find and report on new and developing scientific findings.

In doing so, Rob often comes across a lot of pseudoscience or "quack science", products or ideas meant to appeal to people who really don't need a lot of evidence to be convinced of something.  A couple characters in the webcomic are meant to represent the gullible target audience of pseudoscience, who at their best are attracted to medical products whose only benefit is the placebo effect, and at their worst get scammed and ripped off by false advertising.  The underlying plug from the author is to not believe everything you're told, even if it looks like it's backed by solid evidence.  Sometimes the author gets up on his soapbox about skepticism and promotes material from the skeptic community, of which he is an active part.  Readers of Carbon Dating often get referred to stuff like this:

This is Michael Shermer, a well-known contributor to the skeptic community.  The video is his theory why many people have a knee-jerk response to believe something they hear.

Why am I attracted so much to skepticism?  There's a few reasons.  Of course, I don't want to get duped by something that's obviously wrong.  But while there's plenty of stuff out there that has a laughable lack of evidence and rationality behind it, to me it seems like there's more and more that's very well covered up.  I feel that the technological age is making it easier and easier for evidence to be fabricated.  In addition, skepticism is important to a career as a reputable scientist, and while I don't intend to be the best there is, I want to be proficient at a good way of finding truth, scientific or otherwise.

Does that mean I'm instantly mistrusting of anything that comes to me?  No.  I'm trying to find a good balance between skepticism and gullibility, and this series of posts is part of my finding.  In the next couple of posts, I'll outline both extremes of the spectrum and talk about why I think they're not a good idea.  After that I'll try and aim closer to what I'm looking for.

Why I believe in God: Objections and responses

To close out this topic, I'd like to respond to further objections to the existence of God.  I've discussed a couple already (the lack of evidence and the existence of scientific counterexamples of creationist teachings), and there's one more that I'd like to address.  In doing this, I hope that it doesn't appear that I'm simply setting up a strawman argument and beating it to pieces.  Atheists and agnostics have real and legitimate concerns about God's existence and what has been taught concerning Him.  The religious community often does not have complete or even partial answers to these questions.  For example, the problem of evil is something both religious and non-religious people struggle with (although I won't address that topic here).  I'd like to be as complete as possible, so if any readers feel that other relevant questions are important to address, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer it.

What if you weren't raised religious?

Since this is hypothetical, there's no way for me to be fully accurate in my response.  Also, this seems like more of a statement than a question to me, the statement being "the only reason you believe in God is because that's how you were raised".  But I'll do my best.  The short answer is that, all other things being equal, I don't know if I would have found God if religion wasn't in my upbringing.  Now for the longer answer.

Let's assume that as many other things as possible about my life, my experiences, and my personality are preserved.  Perhaps I am raised in a family of atheists who encourage me to excel academically and follow my dreams, whatever those may be.  They are good, moral people who help others and volunteer in the community.  They do not believe in God, but have no problem with people who do.  I have friends who are religious, and thus I am familiar with the idea of God and with mainstream Christianity.  I devote much of my time to doing well in school, since that is what I am good at and I want to get into a good college.

Somewhere along the way, during my teen years, several of my religious friends notice that I am not involved in religion and, with varying degrees of persistence, seek to help me see the reality of God's existence.  At this point I have not thought about whether their "god" really exists or not.  After some time, I decide to read some of their religious texts, mainly out of curiosity.  Much of it I find boring and devoid of meaning, but every now and then I find a story that teaches good principles.  I resist invitations to church services to all except the most persistent, since I don't want to appear as if I am planning on being a member of their church.  I resist invitations to pray for a long time, since it feels weird talking to nothing.  The first few times I try, I begin speaking briefly and then withdraw due to awkwardness.  During times of great happiness or distress, I sometimes reach out in my mind to see if anything is there to respond.

My impression of their doctrine and theology evolves along with my cognitive skills.  At first, I am likely to reject a belief or teaching if it seems too "weird".  Such teachings include stories of miracles, prophets receiving revelation, angels, and the atonement of Christ.  Later on, as I become more familiar with religious teachings, my interest might be hindered by discovery of intellectual discrepancies in their doctrine.  I bring these discrepancies up to my friends, and they try their hardest to answer them.  Some answers satisfy me, some don't.  The more my personality becomes analytical and intellectually based, the less likely I am to entertain much of their teachings.

I tried to mentally construct a hypothetical sketch of how I might feel during such a situation.  I don't think I know enough to make it conceivably accurate, and I think that depends a lot on whether God exists.  Surely God has to make Himself known somehow, and in my experience, much of that has been through thoughts and feelings (as I explained in the last post).  But I think the important thing to mention here is that God's existence is not dependent upon our acceptance of theism.  If God is real, it is completely possible for many people to disregard, disbelieve, or supposedly disprove His existence, but it is equally plausible that a belief in a nonexistent God can be widespread.

Why I believe in God: Evidence

Why I believe God is a reality, not just a plausibility

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe in the Holy Ghost as a God along with Jesus Christ and God the Father.  To me, the Holy Ghost is a being who lacks physical form, and is able to communicate to each of us what God would have us know.  In addition, the Holy Ghost (commonly referred to as the spirit) can help us feel when something is true and motivate us to do good.  Mormon doctrine teaches that the influence of the spirit is subtle and usually can only be detected if one is looking for it.

Thus, I try to make my life and myself an environment in which the influence of the spirit can be most easily felt and received.  In the past, I have had a variety of what I call spiritual experiences, in which I believe the Holy Ghost was present to some degree or another.  The vast majority of these have been simple and at a low level of intensity, often small enough that I am unable to distinguish between the effects of the spirit and my own feelings or thoughts.  However, several experiences have occurred in my life which I consider to be much more conspicuous manifestations of the spirit, to the point that I can no longer accept that they were produced by my own mental or emotional processes.  I will describe three such experiences.

The first occurred when I was around 12.  Like many Mormons raised in the church (especially in Utah), I had grown up learning church doctrine, history, and principles.  For the preceding couple of years, I had been giving a lot of thought to what I believed and realized that I didn't really know if it was the truth.  I worried about the possibility of entering the afterlife only to realize that I should have been a member of a different religion.  I had been taught at least a few times before this period that each person should strive to find the truth for themselves, and not have a certain belief system just because their friends, parents, or leaders professed the same.  This is often referred to as "getting your own testimony" in Mormon culture, and this was what I was trying to do for a couple years.  I remember feeling like my case was a minority, that there were not many Mormons who spent a significant amount of time wondering if their doctrine was true.  Because of this, I almost completely kept my doubts to myself.

I put plenty of time into prayer and study of the scriptures, seeking to have some sort of spiritual impression or manifestation that would confirm my faith.  There were times when it seemed as if my doubt was alleviated, but it would later return.  I felt much like Joseph Smith, the first prophet of the Mormon church who also spent much of his youth wondering and searching for the truth (further information about Joseph Smith is available here).  I had a friend at that time who seemed spiritually in tune and someone I could share my thoughts with, so I decided that I would talk with him about it.

I decided to do so at a boy scout campout some time later.  After everyone else had gone to bed, I explained my plight to him and asked if he had had any similar experiences.  I don't remember him giving a direct answer to my question, but I remember the experience he related to me.  He told me about a dream he had in which he was alive during the second coming of Christ (Mormons, and many other Christians, believe that Jesus Christ will return to the earth as a resurrected, immortal being).  In the dream, angels were singing a common Christian hymn, "God be with you 'til we meet again".  He continued relating the story, but at that point my mind focused on the lyrics of the hymn.  At that moment, I felt an incredibly strong wave of emotion come over me.  I cannot describe it as any particular emotion, just strong.  I felt reassurance about my doubts and the wordless communication that my beliefs were true.

The second occurred during my time as an LDS missionary in Alabama.  Since my previous experience years ago, I had never doubted the truth of the church.  I did my best as a missionary to do what I knew I was "supposed" to do, but there came a time when being a missionary out of a sense of obligation wasn't enough, even though I knew it was what God wanted me to do.  I wanted to be motivated by desire, not just duty.  I felt that the missionary I was serving with (Mormon missionaries always live and work in pairs) was an excellent example of who I wanted to be.  He gave me a copy of a talk (Mormon jargon for "speech") he had read earlier on his mission that was given to missionaries by a leader in the Mormon church (the talk is here).  The focus of this talk was the difference between desire and obligation as motivating factors for missionaries, and the speaker described how to gain the intrinsic motivation to serve.

Over a period of several weeks, I studied this talk, as well as scriptures from the Book of Mormon that I felt were related to the issue.  I prayed many times for the true desire to do what was right, and to be happy and content in doing missionary work.  Unlike the other two experiences I describe here, no part of this experience for me was instantaneous.  I cannot pinpoint a time when any monumental change occurred.  But I do know that before this period, I was motivated primarily by obligation.  After this period and ever since then, I have been motivated primarily by a desire to please God.  Something changed in me that I had tried and failed to change in myself before.  It has never permanently left.  I do not believe it came from myself, or from any other person.  It came from the purifying influence of the Holy Ghost.

The third experience was also as a missionary.  I was in a different area with a different missionary at this time, and we were teaching someone we had met quite recently.  I enjoyed teaching this person because he was close to our age and someone we could relate to.  He seemed open-minded and willing to explore and find out if what we were teaching was true.  He had been raised as a Christian, and on this particular visit he asked us what was different about our faith.  We had a good discussion about a few of our unique beliefs, and he was once again accepting and willing to ask questions and learn.  At the close of our visit we asked him if he would pray, and he complied.  We closed our eyes and waited for him to speak, but for a good while he said nothing.  Finally he looked up and said, "Wow.  That has never happened to me before."

My first assumption was that he had prayed silently and felt the Holy Ghost telling him that what we had taught was true.  But he then explained that he was trying to speak and no words were coming out of his mouth.  He wasn't distressed, but wondered why such a thing would happen.  The other missionary and I were surprised to hear him say this, because Joseph Smith's account of his praying to know which church was true includes a description of a similar experience.  My companion urged him to try again to pray.  I don't remember the words he said during the prayer.  I may not have even been paying attention at the time, because at the moment he began to pray, I had the most amazing and powerful feeling of joy that I had ever experienced before.  When he finished the prayer, I looked up at him and the other missionary, and their expression suggested that the same thing had happened for them.  Nobody said anything for a while.  We didn't really know what to say.  We all knew what we had felt, and we all knew it was from God.  We stayed for a couple more minutes.  Nobody wanted to leave and disrupt the moment.  But we eventually departed, and thanked God for what we had experienced that day.

Prison break

Since mid-summer of 2013, I have been watching a show that aired from 2005-2008 known as "Prison Break".  Many of you may be familiar with it, and although I am not a TV watcher (even watching shows I enjoy only sporadically), Prison Break has been very entertaining for me.  The main appeal of the show for me is the protagonist, Michael Scofield, who is an extremely intelligent structural engineer who uses his talents to break his wrongfully convicted brother out of prison.  It soon evolves into much more than that, of course, but I enjoy the show because the characters use creative and intelligent ways to get out of difficult situations.  From this and other creative works I have read/watched, I have come to the conclusion that many of the works I enjoy the most share this same quality:  the characters prosper because of their intelligence.

But I'm getting besides the point.  The reason I wanted to write about this is to gather and possibly share my thoughts about some of the themes and ideas that Prison Break presents.  Prison Break does contain more mature themes and ideas, which is why I'm glad I watched it after my mission rather than before, because I am able to deal with and respond to them in a mature way.  Many of the minor events along the course of the story have been disturbing for me, but what troubles me more is the general themes of what the show seems to teach, although it's almost never explicitly shown.  I don't know if the producers/creators were attempting to send these messages through the show, but here is some of what I feel Prison Break is attempting to "teach":

1.  There is no way to absolutely know the truth about anything.

Later in the show, we become aware of a corrupt governmental entity known as "The Company", who has infiltrated essentially every aspect of society in a very realistic, believable way (the realism, I believe, is what makes the messages more powerful).  We find that the protagonist's brother, Lincoln Burrows, was convicted off of doctored evidence that was fabricated so meticulously by the Company that upon escaping prison, the brothers are completely unable to prove that Lincoln is innocent of any crime, even after finding that the man who Lincoln is purported to have killed is still alive.

The point the show seems to make is this:  in this day and age, information can be technologically corrupted to the point that nothing is reliable anymore.  Everything from the surveillance camera feed to the DNA information of the supposed murder victim was altered irreversibly by the Company and could not be accessed in its original form anymore.  Because of the realistic nature of the plotline, I have admittedly been affected by this idea.  For instance, in the political sphere (which I have a hard time with anyway), I have a hard time deciding who to vote for in part because I have no way of knowing whether a given party, candidate, or group has gone to a great deal of effort to make themselves appear outstanding and create "evidence" and "statistics" to go along with it, when in fact they do not intend to support the interests they claim.  This idea has far less power in the religious context for me, however, because I believe there are alternate methods of finding truth than any form of person-to-person communication.

2.  You can't trust anyone but yourself.

Throughout the show, but especially in the last season, the main characters find people they think they can trust, and are betrayed again and again.  Those they trust end up either getting killed, turning out to be from the Company, or decide to act for their own interests and not for those of the group.  This idea is a social embodiment of the first idea I described.  Just as any form of information can be altered, all semblances of personality can also be fabricated with a sufficient amount of skill.  Several Company agents construct extremely believable representations of innocent and benign citizens, only to instantaneously shed the facade as soon as they are able.

I feel that this point is somewhat overexaggerated in Prison Break.  Part of this, of course, is the fact that not everyone is trying to dismantle a multi-national group that has power over several world governments, so obviously they would not be endlessly tailed by extremely skilled individuals who were out to get them.  But even if the show doesn't convince you to become paranoid schizophrenic, it's hard to look at people the same way after you see something like that.  I don't dwell on the issue too long, but I can see this show causing a lot of other people to reconsider the integrity of the people they know well.  Maybe in some cases that's a good thing, but I feel that in most cases people are pretty close to who they appear to be, and the differences that do exist aren't going to be harmful for the people they know.

3.  Evil and corruption are ultimately inescapable and undefeatable.

The Company is extremely powerful.  Michael and his friends must work tirelessly and use all of their resources in their efforts to bring down the Company, and even then it doesn't seem like enough.  Every obstacle they overcome is met by another, still greater, one in its place, and throughout the show there is the lingering idea that even if they end up bringing down the Company, who's to say something like it won't just spring up into existence immediately afterwards?

I have to say at this point that I haven't finished the show, so I don't know if Michael and the others end up bringing down the Company or not.  They do get out of countless amounts of tight situations, which of course is important to the suspense quality of the show, but each time they seem to get a little closer into falling into the hands of the Company.  Even if they end up successful in their attempts by the time the show ends, I still think this message is continuously communicated to Prison Break viewers.  Those who invest a lot of time into thinking about this show might begin to wonder if they or anyone can ever overcome evil, chaos, corruption, or anything like it.  It's certainly because of my religious beliefs, but I know that this idea is just not true.

4.  Given sufficient motivation, every good person can always be corrupted.

This has a lot to do with point #2 I made, although the majority of the people who betray the protagonists are found to have been dishonest all along.  But in the last season, when the protagonists are trying to acquire necessary intel to bring down the company. several people working with them begin to want it for its monetary value, and several others get into positions where they must choose between fighting the Company and protecting those they love.  I do agree that money is one of the most universally corrupting forces known to mankind, and I feel that few people are free of that risk.  But I also believe that nobody is without help, as long as they desire to do good.  The success of the show, of course, is largely dependent upon a lack of religious material in order to appeal to a wider range of people.  God can help any man to overcome a temptation that would otherwise destroy him, if his desire is truly to avoid what corrupts.


These ideas have changed my perspective to some extent from watching the show, and I recognize that not all of that is good.  There have been several times when I seriously considered continuing to watch the show because of how it was affecting me, but I've found it pretty addictive (which is why I am extremely hesitant anytime someone tells me about a long-running TV show, even if it's not like this because I don't want to have to invest a lot of time into it if I get hooked).  I'm pretty close to being done with the series, and probably will finish it.  But I wanted to write this because I feel like collecting my thoughts will help me deal with these issues better.  I think the best thing for me is to remember that it's not real (despite how realistically it's depicted), and these ideas are just coming from people who are trying to express something that may be right or wrong.