took my religious beliefs fairly seriously. For a couple of years I attended this informal Christian study fellowship group at a place called “The Barn” in La Crescenta, which, in looking back, was a quintessential ’70s-era hangout with a long-haired, hippie-type guitar-playing leader who read Bible passages that we discussed at length. But more than the social aspects of religion, I relished the theological debates, so I matriculated at Pepperdine University (a Church of Christ institution) with the intent of becoming a theologian. Although living in the Malibu hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean was a motivating factor in my choice of a college, the primary reason I went there was I thought I should attend a school where I would receive serious theological training, and I did.
I took courses in the Old and New Testaments, Jesus the Christ, and the writings of C.S. Lewis. I attended chapel twice a week (although, truth be told, it was required for all students). Dancing was not allowed on campus (the sexual suggestiveness might trigger already-inflamed hormone production to go into overdrive), and we were not allowed into the dorm rooms of members of the opposite sex. Despite the restrictions, it was a good experience; I was a serious believer and I thought this was the way we should behave.
The only thing I miss—and only a little—is the confident certainty that religion brings, the knowing absolutely that this is the One True Worldview. That was, as well, the downfall of my faith.
James Barham: To follow up on the last question, what circumstances led you to abandon evangelical Christianity? In repudiating evangelical Christianity, did you immediately become a skeptic of all religion, or did your skepticism evolve more gradually? Please explain.
Michael Shermer: While undertaking my studies at Pepperdine, I discovered that to be a professor of theology you needed a Ph.D., and such a doctorate required proficiency in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. Knowing that foreign languages were not my strong suit (I struggled through two years of high school Spanish), I switched to psychology and mastered one of the languages of science: statistics.
In science, I discovered that there are ways to get at solutions to problems for which we can establish parameters to determine whether a hypothesis is probably right (like rejecting the null hypothesis at the 0.01 level of significance) or definitely wrong (not statistically significant). Instead of the rhetoric and disputation of theology, there was the logic and probabilities of science. What a difference this difference in thinking makes!
But the switch to science was only one factor in my deconversion. There was the intolerance generated by absolute morality, the logical outcome of knowing without doubt that you are right and everyone else is wrong. There were the inevitable hypocrisies that arise from preaching the ought, but practicing the is. One of my dormmates regularly prayed for sex, rationalizing that he could better witness for the Lord without all that pent-up libido. There was the awareness of other religious beliefs—often mutually exclusive—and their adherents, all of whom were equally adamant that theirs was the One True Religion. And there was the knowledge of the temporal, geographic, and cultural determiners of religious beliefs that made it obvious that God was made in our likeness and not the reverse.
By the end of my first year of a graduate program in experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, I had abandoned Christianity and stripped off my silver Ichthus medallion, replacing what was for me the stultifying dogmas of a 2,000-year-old religion with the worldview of an always-changing, always-fresh science. My enthusiasm for the passionate nature of this perspective was communicated to me most emphatically by my evolutionary biology professor, Bayard Brattstrom, particularly in his after-class discussions at a local bar—The 301 Club—that went late into the night. This was another factor in my road back from Damascus: I enjoyed the company and friendship of science people much more than that of religious people. Science is where the action was for me.
James Barham: You are known, among other things, as a skeptic, an agnostic, and an atheist. Is there a designation that you prefer for yourself? How would you distinguish these three designations?
Speaking for yourself, are you certain God does not exist? Some atheists have such an antipathy toward God that they might better be called anti-theists. You’ve never struck us as that hardcore. What accounts for that?
Michael Shermer: I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God. No, I am not 100 percent certain there is no God. But there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there is, and so pick whatever label you like. Technically speaking, “agnostic,” as Thomas Huxley defined it in 1869 to mean that God is “unknowable,” is accurate from an ontological perspective since it is difficult to imagine a scientific experiment that would clearly delineate between the God hypothesis and the no-God hypothesis. But we are behaving primates, not just thinking sapiens, so we must choose to act on our beliefs, and I act under the presumption that there is no God.
That said, I don’t like to define myself by what I don’t believe. I believe in lots of things: the Big Bang, evolution, the germ theory of disease, plate tectonics and the geological record, the laws of nature, and the like. I also believe in natural rights, moral progress, and that science and reason are the best tools we have for determining how best we should live. To that end, I call myself a humanist and I adopt the worldview of Enlightenment Humanism.
James Barham: In addition to being a best-selling book author and to writing a monthly “Skeptic” column for Scientific American, you are also the founder of the Skeptics Society and editor-in-chief of its house magazine, Skeptic. Could you tell us about the purpose of the Skeptics Society and how the idea for it came to you?
Michael Shermer: After I earned my Ph.D. in the history of science, I got a job teaching at Occidental College, a highly regarded four-year liberal arts college in Los Angeles, and I figured I would settle in for the duration. But I was still restless to be an entrepreneur, so I co-founded the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine in my garage as a hobby, and as it grew, I realized by the late ’90s that I could do this full time. I loved teaching and being in a classroom. However, publishing magazines, writing a monthly column for such a large-circulation magazine as Scientific American, writing books, and doing television and radio shows gave me access to a much larger classroom than I could ever reach in a brick-and-mortar building. So, I’ve never looked back, even though I am now teaching one class a year at Chapman University—Skepticism 101—a critical thinking course that I like to do to try out new ideas on students.
The mission of the Skeptics Society is to promote science and critical thinking. Although we do a lot of debunking—and let’s face it, there’s a lot of bunk out there—we always maintain an undercurrent of promoting the positive aspects of science, which we also do through our monthly science lecture series at Caltech and our annual conference on various topics.
James Barham: You have stated, in connection with non-mainstream scientific claims, that “Skepticism is the default position because the burden of proof is on the believer, not the skeptic.”2
However, some of the people you have criticized in your Scientific American column and in Skeptic magazine—we are thinking especially of Rupert Sheldrake, with whom you will be engaging in a “Dialogue on the Nature of Science” here at TBS in the near future—have pointed out that they are the ones who are “skeptical” vis-à-vis mainstream scientific opinion.
In fact, there is now an entire website, Skeptical About Skeptics, devoted to equalizing the burden of proof between the scientific establishment and its critics.
How do you respond to Sheldrake and others who are “skeptical about your skepticism,” and who want to shift the burden of proof back onto you?
Michael Shermer: My position on who has the burden of proof stands pretty solid among most scientists because of the fact that most mainstream scientific theories are hard won over many years and, like governments, “should
