Michael Shermer and Dave Rubin dissect skepticism as a deliberate, rational counter to intuitive tribalism, tracing Shermer's shift from evangelical Christianity to secular humanism via evolutionary biology. They critique identity politics for fostering division, contrasting it with Dr. King's universal vision, while debating gun safety versus liberty and challenging the NRA's stance on background checks. Addressing abortion, Shermer argues women's bodily autonomy outweighs fetal rights post-trimester, yet rejects absolute pro-choice absolutism. Finally, they advocate for libertarian experimentation with tax systems across states to empirically determine optimal governance, rejecting ideological dogma in favor of evidence-based policy. [Automatically generated summary]
I think a healthy dose of skepticism is one of the most important attributes one can have, but also saying most of us could use a little more of.
You guys know I'm big on definitions around here, so let's actually define the word skepticism before we go any further.
An attitude of doubt or disposition to incredulity, either in general or toward a particular object.
The doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain.
The method of suspended judgment, systemic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics.
Doubt concerning basic religious principles as immortality, providence, and revelation.
So all skepticism really is, then, is the desire for more information before making a judgment.
This seems like a really simple and pretty obvious concept, yet we're so lacking it in our public discourse.
We're so quick to dismiss people the second they say something we don't like, we ignore evidence when it doesn't fit our narrative, and too often we pick sides when we don't really know the facts.
This is why pundits on cable networks, radio, and online media are yelling all the time.
Instead of making a compelling argument based on fact and reason, they just yell with righteous indignation so you think that what they're saying must be true.
After all, they're really fired up, so they must have a true and decent cause, right?
Well, usually the opposite is true.
Of course, it's not just these talking heads who could use a healthy dose of skepticism.
We're in the midst of an election year, so all of us should be skeptical of everything each one of these politicians running for office says.
We shouldn't take their word for it.
Instead, we should question whether what they're saying is true and take the time to learn the facts.
Politicians prey on an uninformed, uninterested, and non-skeptical electorate.
It's our job as citizens to make them more honest and more forthright.
Pretty sure we all know they're not going to do that on their own.
Going even deeper, it's not just pundits and politicians we should be skeptical about, but it's also our very selves.
The word skeptic even has a slight tinge of negativity to it, right?
Like, oh, he's a skeptic, you better watch out for him.
All the skeptic actually wants is more information to form an opinion on the world in a rational way using facts and proven methods.
Sure, that's not as comforting as blind faith, and it certainly isn't as easy, but perhaps the satisfaction is in the journey of questioning.
My guest this week is Michael Shermer, an author who has written much on this subject and is a thought leader in the skeptic movement.
Using science and provable methods, he talks about how we can have morality that is based in fact, not fiction.
It's a harder road, but it is one that more and more people seem to be taking.
It's also an idea I try to use in all my interviews.
I'm the first to admit that I don't know everything, and I'm genuinely curious to learn from people of all walks of life.
Talking directly to them is one of the few ways that we can actually do that.
140 characters is nice, but there's nothing like the true personal connection.
At the end of the day, none of us truly know the meaning of life and the answer to the big questions.
We can think, we can guess, we can create, we can destroy, but we simply cannot know.
It's the age-old question that will remain until the end of time.
In a way, not knowing is perhaps the most human trait there is.
So when preachers, politicians, or conspiracy theorists tell you they know what's really going on, just know that they're full of something, but it ain't knowledge.
Michael Shermer is the author of many books, the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, and is very skeptical of everything I'm saying right now.
Anyway, but I took it fairly seriously and I went to Bible classes and then I went to Pepperdine.
Which is a Church of Christ school, very conservative.
President Ford came to speak and, you know, it was in a bubble where everybody believed.
And, you know, when you're in the bubble, psychologically, it makes sense.
It's logically coherent, it's internally consistent, and everything falls into place.
And it's not really until you're out of the bubble and you encounter other worldviews that you think, huh, you know, maybe mine's not so solid as I thought.
And that was how I kind of chipped away at it later.
Right, so what kind of stuff were you questioning before you got into the bubble that led you to jumping in and becoming born again?
And actually, before I let you answer that, when you're born again, I always think of born again as someone that's left the religion and come back, and that's why they're born again.
Born again just means... You're born physically and then you're born again when you accept Jesus as your Savior.
Right.
It's sort of a new, you start life anew and you get eternal life because you've accepted Jesus.
So that's what they mean by born again.
Yeah.
And evangelical, they mean you were supposed to evangelize.
So this is why evangelicals are always talking to people about Jesus.
hold up the placards at sporting events, John 3:16, "For God so loved the world He gave His
only begotten Son for you." And they wear the black face in football with the three, John 3:16.
>>Right. And then they thank God after they win. >>Yes, so the idea is that you wear it on your
sleeve. You are the shining beacon on the hill. You do not hide your faith underneath a bushel,
a basket. You tell people about it. And in a way you kind of have a moral obligation to do so,
because if you know that this is the way, the truth, and the light, and you get eternity for
this person's soul, you really have to tell them about it.
They're missing out.
So, it's not like the old school, like maybe George H.W.
Bush's, you know, he was a Methodist, and they're pretty quiet about it, you know, you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and we just don't talk about it.
Evangelicals are not like that.
They're more like H. George W. Bush.
You know, you tell people, Jesus was my favorite philosopher and I'm a born again, and you witness to people literally going door-to-door, and I did that.
Well, I went to graduate school at Kelsey Fullerton, which is a secular school.
And it's not, again, it wasn't that atheism was a big thing.
It was just that no one was religious, or if they were, they were quiet about it.
And so I began taking classes in, you know, social psychology, anthropology, and I could see the, you know, psychological basis of belief and where you happen to have been born determines what you believe.
Particularly in anthropology, you study all these indigenous peoples who've never even heard of Jesus Christ, let alone Christianity or anything like that, you know, and it's like, well, why would they be condemned?
You know, my girlfriend at the time was in a car accident and broke her back.
And I was pretty much on the way out at that point.
But I remember being at the emergency room Thinking, this poor woman, I mean, she is the sweetest lady and why would this happen to her?
This is not right.
You know, so I sort of made one last ditch effort and prayed, you know, and it's not that this was the big test and if it fails, then I won't believe it.
It's just like, you know what?
Of course, she's still paralyzed today.
It's like, okay, you know, I just don't think there's anybody up there pulling the strings.
Well, I think cognitively we know now that once you comprehend an idea, a concept, anything, the brain automatically just believes it to be true, just accepts it as part of the factual world that is.
And then being skeptical of it, or saying, I don't know, or I'm not sure, or I challenge this, is an extra cognitive load.
You can do it, lots of people do.
So, think of the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 thinking.
Type 1 cognition is rapid, intuitive, instinctive, emotional.
Type 2 thinking is deliberate, slow, methodical, rational.
And most of our thought processes that we initiate are Type 1.
We just kind of have a feeling about things.
Gut instinct, go about the world.
And Type 2 requires, okay, wait, let me stop and think about this.
Maybe I shouldn't make that investment.
Maybe I better not marry this person.
Maybe I shouldn't buy that company.
Whatever it is, that requires additional steps.
So it's an extra cognitive load.
It's uncomfortable.
It takes time, and anyway, and that's true with religious beliefs.
I think, you know, it just feels like, you know, the Earth is the center of everything.
We're the center of creation.
God's here for me.
It just, you know, everything that happens, happens for a reason.
So it's really just, I mean, it's just as simple as comfort, really, is what you're saying.
It's just like there is some stuff out there that I don't understand, And I better just pick this belief because then I don't have to spend that much mental energy on it.
It does win, but it takes time, and it's deliberate, and it takes effort.
It's uncomfortable.
You know, Sam Harris' doctoral thesis was based on this idea of scanning brains while people read statements that are obviously true, obviously false, or you can't tell, you just don't know.
And he showed that the brain activity is very rapid, And simple and easy and positively reinforced with dopamine for questions that were obviously true or false.
The ones that you had to deliberate on and so on were the areas of the brain that lit up were, not only did it happen slower, but they were associated with things like bad smell and disgust and negative emotions.
So really, you know, an idea that stinks or an idea that's bad.
In other words, being skeptical, saying, I now comprehend this and I doubt it.
It's a little bit like why lying is cognitively a heavier load, because you have to know what the truth is, and then take another step and go, okay, now I'm going to manipulate the truth in this particular way, and I have to remember both of those, and then maybe you tell it to a third person.
Now you've got three different stories.
So the load gets heavier, and it's harder, and it's just easier to go the simple route.
It was a really interesting piece because a lot of what we're talking about, it's not just couched in religion.
I think that's what his point was, that he was saying that we're all comforted by a nice fireplace and a fire, but then he goes into the carcinogens and the toxins and all this horrible stuff.
And I read it that day, and then I did light a fire that night.
I think it was I think I read it on Christmas Eve and I lit a fire and I think it illustrated his point perfectly like we have this idea we really like the fire right it's a really nice comforting thing and then we can cognitively know that it's doing a lot of damage to us so not all crazy beliefs and crazy actions are sort of based in religion
Again, aliens are like deities for atheists, as I call them.
Even if you don't believe in God, but there's somebody out there who's looking out for us, who knows we're here, loves us maybe, looking out for us morally, something like that.
That's kind of how aliens are described.
In a way, it is like somebody cares about me.
It's like the fire.
It makes you feel good.
The afterlife is like that as well, where all scores are settled.
You know, where you get to have the perfect body, and you're 29 years old, and so on, and all justice is served, and it just feels good.
I mean, that's the way the world should be, and you can just look around and go, well, it isn't.
You know, it's so funny what people take comfort in, because just this past weekend I was watching the History Channel, You know, they've gone from what once was history, now they do a lot of God stuff, right?
So I think it was God vs. the Devil was the name of the show, or God vs. Satan, or one of these things.
And there was so much horrible imagery, you know what I mean?
Burning people, and endless war, and Armageddon, and all this stuff.
And I kept thinking the entire time, this is incredible to me.
I mean, this is what people are taking comfort in.
Well, so part of that is that we're also moralizing animals, moralizing primates.
We care deeply about justice and right and wrong.
So it's not just we want a good life, an easy life, a life with plenty of food and water and milk and honey.
It's not just that.
we want a cause we can be behind that we feel is a good cause, and all causes have to have
an anti-cause.
So, who is preventing us from achieving this utopian?
It's those guys, those bad guys over there, and they are preventing us from having eternal
bliss forever.
How bad are they?
They are really bad.
And what does that mean we can do to them?
Whatever we want because they are so bad.
And that's what leads to genocide and wars and conflicts, even homicides.
You know, 90% of homicides are moralistic in nature.
The guy deserved to die.
Well, he scratched my car, he insulted me, or he stole my girlfriend, or you know, whatever.
There are always these kind of moralistic reasons.
So, there was an interesting commentary on this recently about the interest in Trump and other strong leaders, and then reflecting back on the interest in Mussolini and Hitler back in the 30s, and George Orwell writing about this, saying, I really get this, you can see the passion in the people.
It's not just that Hitler or Mussolini said, I will give you economic prosperity and jobs and three square meals a day.
It's that we are going to change the world.
We are going to make Germany great again or Italy great again.
So how do we, and this is I guess really what you've done sort of more than anyone else, how do we wrestle that conversation back and get it to a place where people are willing to extrapolate ideas and open them up and get in there and really figure out what's going on?
Well, you do what we're doing now, but most people don't sit down like this.
You go to a bar or whatever and it's much more black and white.
In part, I think the diffusion of culture through the internet and all the radio stations and television stations helps.
You know, despite the, say, History Channel 2 with the ancient alien stuff, you know, it's like, formerly all Hitler all the time, now it's all conspiracy, then it's all Bigfoot, then it's all aliens.
It's good to remember television is a series of commercials with blank spots in between that have to be filled with something interesting to keep you from the clicker.
So, well, and then literacy rates, you know, the more literate people are, the more they read, the more options they have.
So, it's true, Twitter, 140 characters, but you can embed a link to an article that maybe is 3,000 words, and then maybe from there you go to the 10,000 word analysis, from there you go to the book.
So it's interesting, you're talking about why people have done bad things in the name of morality, but how do we get morality then without religion?
How do we, using science, and this is what you've written a lot about, how do we use science to get some sense of morality so we don't end up doing the same things that the religious people are doing?
So there is some place that you could use both of those things to come up with... Well, I think what religions discovered this by trial and error over thousands of years, there are certain things that we shouldn't do because most people don't like it.
You know, so, you know, killing and, you know, this kind of thing, even though there's a lot of bad stuff in the Bible, they kind of figured out, look, we're a community, so we need a set of rules.
You know, maybe we disagree about the rules, but dang it, we need the rules and everybody has to obey them.
And if not, then there'll be punishments.
And if you think you got away with it because there was no one around, there's an eye in the sky.
You know, this is in a way the basis of God beliefs.
In part, there's multiple reasons for God, but that's one of them.
There's, you know, there's a moral eye in the sky keeping track.
Now, if you're a psychopath and you don't care, well, all right, it's not going to work for you.
But for the bulk of the population, that would work.
And so in a way, you know, the conservative Christian belief in the sinful nature of humans is in a way a Darwinian model as well, because yes, we're greedy, and if we think we can get away with it, we might.
So it's sort of like a prisoner's dilemma or a game theory type model.
tit for tat, and okay, I'll start off cooperating, and if you cooperate, I'll cooperate again.
But if you defect, then I'm gonna nail you for that.
So that desire to nail you, to get justice for the thing you did that was wrong,
that's actually a good strategy.
You know, the Gandhian turn the other cheek, Jesus turn the other cheek,
that's not a good game theory strategy, 'cause that just means you'll be exploited by other people.
Well, it turns out to be a byproduct, but I think there's evolutionary arguments you can make that that actually really is good for the group.
Not a group selection argument, just that the more of us individuals that are cooperating within our group, our group will be better off for that.
The group is not the target of selection, still the individuals.
But societies are better off.
And so what I argue in the moral arc is that over the centuries, tweaking social, political, and economic systems this way and this way, we've been kind of Hovering around this idea that there is a better way to live in a utilitarian type of way.
More of us will be better off and live longer and prosperous and healthy lives if we do this rather than that.
A democracy versus a dictatorship.
Relatively free markets of trading and allowing people to do their thing versus a command and control economy like in North Korea.
Or having a set of rules and a rule of law and a police force is good.
What do you make of people that would believe everything that you've said, that live their lives in a secular way, using science and reason and their own personal morality to guide their lives, but at the same time Do take that leap of faith and still believe in some crazy stuff, still believe that maybe there's someone upstairs watching them.
Because I think that's probably where most people fall, that they do live their lives based in secular ideas.
But at the same time, if you really sat them down and said, well, you know, because people want to believe at the end that they're going to go and play tennis with God at the end of the day or something, right?
They're just like, well, I'm doing this because it says so in the Bible, and I'm a Christian, and Jesus, you know, it was like that He said, you know, Jesus should love all the gays and blacks and so on.
It's like, where does He say that?
And where are you getting this?
Well, I know where they're getting it.
They're getting it from culture that's been shifting for decades.
From the bottom up, just from everybody changing the way they talk and think about how shows are presented, how scripts are written, novels, books, and so forth.
All of us have expanded our moral sphere to be more encompassing.
And so the standouts like the Donald Sterlings of the world who insults African-Americans as the owner of the Clippers.
His life is just ruined for these idiotic statements.
But most old guys back in the 50s used to think like him.
Yeah, is that one of the scary things about societies changing too quickly?
I mean, I know I follow you on Twitter and you do push against some of this regressive left stuff and some of the social justice warrior stuff, because in a way, they're going to come for us too.
Things will keep changing and then some of the things that you're saying right now that don't sound controversial at all to me, depending on the way we evolve and depending on the way ideas, you know, the way that they move throughout time, someone 20 years from now could look at this and say, ah, you see, Shermer was a real bigot.
Well, we don't know because we're buried in the culture.
It's just hard to say.
I will say, you know, just projecting forward, maybe the rights of the unborn, and here I don't mean fetuses, I mean future generations to inhabit an earth that's habitable.
That is, there's resources available and so on.
So the environmental movement, I think, is part of that.
That would be one area.
Artificial intelligence is maybe another one.
Is data a person?
Do they have personhood?
Those kinds of things I think we can think about, although those are not particularly controversial.
The social justice warriors, so-called, and regressive left, it's an interesting term that's really caught on.
That was Majid Nawaz.
So I think it's very effective.
That's an example of how far, first of all, how far we've come.
How much moral progress we've made.
That the biggest thing on your plate as a college student is to protest Halloween costumes.
So is that the part that we need to focus on more then?
Because I do think that, you know, we all get in this big worked up frenzy over this stuff and they sent out this letter and, you know, they didn't want them to wear offensive Halloween costumes or something.
So to that, if you just look at it in that narrow view, it's like, oh shit, free speech is really being attacked.
But if you look at it, and I think this is what you're saying, if you look at it from the broader spectrum, it's like, look what's left.
Now we're just fighting over Halloween costumes.
So in that sense, things really have progressed really well.
Sure, and doesn't that hitch defending him, you debating these people and allowing for these terrible ideas, right?
We all know the Holocaust happened, this is a terrible idea to deny it, but doesn't that show you that the secularists are pretty consistently on the right side of things, that we are the ones that are defending ideas, even when they are scary to us and things that we don't like?
And when you actually have to do it, like this in the case of debating creationists, boy, I really sharpened my skills about how do I know evolution happened?
What are the four best arguments we have?
And it's actually kind of a good exercise in that sense.
But mostly it's just let this guy talk and the whole room can see how idiotic these arguments are.
Because there's a fear of debating these people, because then you could end up debating every crackpot ever, right?
Because there's always, and we see, this is something I see, you know, every now and again I'll see you argue with someone on Twitter, or some of the other people that I admire arguing with somebody, and it's like, man, how much energy, and I'll do it sometimes too, how much energy should we put in to debating people either that have, you know, just ideas that are terrible, or aren't debating from an honest place, or that you know are gonna twist your words after, and there's a certain opportunity cost with that.
David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a denier.
Now here's an interesting sociological thing because I've always called David Irving a Holocaust denier, but he likes me because we've gone out for beer and dinner before.
That you got to know the guy, you were able to sort of unravel some of the arguments, and I would guess that it's one of those things where you can just get, when you pull out one little pin, the rest of it starts to fall.
Yeah, you know, so Trump was just at Liberty University and this is a guy who by any estimation that I've ever seen has no real religious Religiousosity to him, that's not even a word.
But he was up there and he's quoting... Yeah, there was definitely an extra S in there.
But he's in there, he's at Liberty University, and he's quoting scripture wrongly, apparently.
He mucked up a couple things.
But I was thinking, this is really what's wrong with our political system, really, in the most perfect way.
Because here's a guy who, for whatever... All the reasons that people like him is because he's saying things very clearly, whether it's true or not.
He's just saying... And here, even he, Who says, I'm beholden to no one, has to pander still to the religious right.
But yeah, you have to have a little bit of it, but it's not, that's not what's going to win the election.
I think it's going to be the centrist votes this time, which is more secular, just more real world problems, you know, that kind of thing.
Anyway, so, but still there, it's another interesting, you know, it seems to be the Republicans, the right, are the ones identifying You know the problem of terrorism what what's behind it,
you know certain religious beliefs that are behind it now.
It's true I know some of the Isis fighters are young men out for
money and sex and adventure and whatever But but underneath it is you know, that sort of apocalyptic
in otherworldly utopian society this you know, this kind of really quasi
religious beliefs that are driving them and And it's the left that doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that.
They're so afraid.
Again, political correctness run amok.
So afraid to use the word.
Our own president won't use the word, and he's a guy I admire.
He's obviously very bright and thinks that he's a type 2 thinker all the way.
Well, because, as Steven Pinker points out in The Blank Slate, the blank slate model that culture determines everything and otherwise people are equal, that's more of a left-wing than right-wing view of human nature.
Conservative Christians have more of a realistic, what Steve calls a realistic model of human nature, that is, it's both genetics and culture.
And second, again, this all-inclusiveness, we don't want to offend other people because look what we were doing to blacks in the 50s and 60s and Jews in the 30s and 40s and that was really bad.
Okay, so that's sort of taking a principle and then running with it.
And so therefore it would be wrong to stereotype all Muslims.
But it gets to the point where even if you say, if you preface every sentence with, of course most Muslims are good and nice and moral people that would never do this, but Then you can't even get past that.
Right, it gets twisted into something and I'm not defending what he says at all and that's also why language is so important to this because we've gotten so afraid of saying anything the wrong way or writing anything the wrong way that you'll immediately be labeled a bigot and a racist and the rest of it when all you're saying is We should have some decent screening to figure out who's here.
I wasn't planning on going here, but I'm glad we're taking this road.
That Germany, a lot of people are saying, and I've had a lot of people email me about this, that they're saying that the reason that they opened the borders the way they did was because there's this incredible guilt because of the Holocaust.
So they don't want to see people, you know, if they can help, they want to help.
But now it's gotten out of control, and now what this is going to do is help the far right.
We're seeing hints of this here with Trump and xenophobia, and we're seeing this all over Europe now.
So again, it's when the left doesn't deal with things honestly that we allow the right.
I mean, if the left wants to defend their position, they should do the opposite of what they're doing, because it's the right that are going to sweep in.
So my wife tells me that the sentiments in Germany about this, and before this, attitudes toward Israel, and the Middle Eastern conflicts is that we just have to
bite our tongue because what we did was so bad that we just have to always support Israel. And even
though there's numbers of people and branches in the society that do not support Israel, they
can't say anything.
And even though there are debates about Palestinians and who's doing what and who's the real terrorist.
No one has perfectly clean hands in that conflict.
But in Germany you can't say this because of the guilt.
There's a lot of guilt.
And they've paid reparations to Israel for a long time.
You know, so Merkel's trying to navigate around is very difficult to do.
And so in part there's that, but also they're the strongest nation of the EU and she was trying to set a precedence.
And I see why she was trying to do that, but I just think it's probably gone too far.
And now there's a lot, my wife tells me, there's a lot of these strong right, you know, Nazi type groups that are now bubbling up saying, see, I told you, I told you.
Yeah, well actually next week I have Tommy Robinson on, who's the former head of the EDL, who Majid Nawaz, who you mentioned earlier, at one point helped get him out of the EDL because he felt it was too far right and there were some neo-Nazi elements.
And he had emailed me about coming on the show and I had a real sort of debate within myself whether here's someone who I know a lot of people think he's just a racist, and then I get a lot of people that say, you know, he's talking about things that people don't want to talk about.
And I felt, well, if I talk to him, are people going to think I'm a racist?
And then that was why I felt like I had to do the interview.
And I have to do the interview because I can't be afraid of just the conversation and where that's going to place me.
And, you know, so in Germany and Europe, you know, they've made a major transition from 500 years of very tribal and balkanized, constant in conflict history to a completely different kind of society.
But could ideas that dangerous ever have gestated without religion?
Because almost all, if you think, you know, Holocaust, pogroms, what's happening right now in Europe, all of these things, there's a religious underpinning to all of them.
So could this type of mass stuff ever happen without religion?
Yeah, well let's move off politics for a little bit, get to some of the sort of more out there stuff and fun stuff.
Because you do talk a lot about conspiracy theories, and I've seen you talk about aliens and JFK assassination and all this stuff.
It's fun to debunk this stuff, right?
It's sort of fun to think about them, you know, even 9-11, thinking, you know, at least entertaining the ideas, whatever they may be, that our government did it, or this or that, whatever it is.
It's sort of fun to always entertain those ideas, but basically you come down on all this stuff that, I think what Carl Sagan would say, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Is that, did I sum up your view on how to deal with this stuff?
So it is the same thing as religion, because that feels nice.
If you if you could sort of wrap yourself around that, that that's how the world actually operates, it's sort of the same thing as saying, oh, well, then there's a God and I'm going to believe that because it is like a God or committee of gods or something that's pulling the strings.
Okay, so this is that the government is, you know, pulling the strings and doing these things because of oil and the war.
So it's after the fact reasoning.
It's the hindsight bias.
So we went to war.
It was a big, bad idea, but we did it for oil.
Therefore, we must have triggered the war in the first place.
Don't conservative and Republican administrations do those sorts of things?
Yes.
So do Democratic.
Roosevelt could not get America into the war to help Churchill, who he wanted to help, because of the American firsters.
were very powerful in the late thirties and they could all see the Nazis rising and Roosevelt and Churchill wanted to do something about it and uh... but uh... Charles Lindbergh and the American Firsters were very powerful.
Pearl Harbor and the story were going to war.
So isn't that an example of using an event that you didn't orchestrate to do something politically you want to do?
So even going back to the Cologne thing, I saw that day a fairly well-known feminist saying this was probably the work of anti-immigration people.
You know what I mean?
That allowed this to happen because she didn't want to really deal with the world as it was and deal with the difficult questions related to immigration and race and religion and all of that stuff.
So instead you kind of use it for your own purposes and then you just open up another conspiracy theory and then that gets retweeted enough and then you've opened up a whole other... In that case it's okay to just call it bullshit.
Well that's what I did.
This is a bridge too far.
Let's do a little more on politics though because you consider yourself a libertarian, correct?
I'm more of an issues guy, but I've leaned libertarian most of my life since college.
But I've changed my mind on certain issues that libertarians are not too happy about.
And the reason I avoid using the term so much now is because It pigeonholes you into a category, and then it makes it more like a religion.
Like, okay, so libertarians, so you can't believe in any gun controls, right?
It's like, well, no, actually, I think maybe background checks are a good idea, and, you know, magazine clips should be a certain, you know, just a few things, you know.
Yeah, does that show you, that's a good example of how politics and religion and just rationality
It all gets mucked up.
So I hear you because a lot of people, you know, I have always considered myself a liberal.
And now I see, I get emails and tweets every day, people going, ah, Dave's on his way to becoming a libertarian because I will always stand up for liberty.
And I believe that the individual person ultimately, I think you could, you know, for gay marriage, for example, while I can defend it from a liberal point of view, because I think people should be allowed to marry who they want.
It's also very easily defended by a libertarian point of view, right?
Or medical marijuana or things like that.
So that's a place where I like that I think classic liberals and libertarians can sort of come together.
And I do think that that concept is sort of where politics should go in general.
I'd love to figure out a way to sort of get those principles out there more.
Even though, as I just said, I don't need the label for myself, but I think you can make a lot of strong moral arguments not using religion through the libertarian lens.
So the gun argument's kind of interesting because I think there is a certain element of conspiracy theory with the people, the people that are totally pro-gun to the point that you should be allowed to have whatever it is you want and that one day you're going to have to rise up and fight the government and all that stuff.
And I understand, you know, I've said on the show many times, like, I get it, we left England, you know, because we didn't want to live under a king and a tyrannical government and no taxation without a resident agent and all that stuff.
But there's an element of conspiracy to that, that the government is coming to get these people, right?
So the more that the government tries to get their guns, the more they want their guns, right?
So as long as we're talking guns, let's knock out a couple other just hot-button political things and see if we can figure out the moral argument for them before we wrap up.
So something like abortion, which as a general rule I'm for the woman being able to make decisions about her body, but at the same point I would understand that having an abortion at eight months Yes.
Yes.
I'm pro-choice.
or even six months, in my opinion, you're definitely destroying a human life.
Now, if you're, people don't wanna have that conversation.
People are afraid to have that conversation.
So what moral argument can you make that is for, I assume, I'm guessing you're for abortion.
Well, I think the law has tracked this fairly closely to our intuitions that a third trimester abortion is wrong.
The gray area in the second trimester No, Gary, in the first trimester, kind of tracking our sense about whether it's an individual or not.
Is it a person that's thinking, cognizant, can feel and suffer?
And so there, I think you can make the case, I try to in the moral arc, that the freedom of adult women to have control and choice over their own bodies slightly trumps the rights or whatever of the fetus, just barely.
I'm not pro-abortion, I am pro-choice, and it would be better if the numbers got down.
But on that, if it's our goal to decrease the number of abortions, the best thing you can do is get women educated, prosperous, and access to birth control, and the numbers just go down.
Right, and that's where we really fail as a society, right?
Because the same people that don't want abortions also cut sex education, and then it's like, you know, and then they cut social services so people feel like if they're gonna have a kid and not have money for it, well they don't want that kid.
So it's like, again, it's another one of these never-ending cycles.
Then the other argument I make in the moral arc is a historical one, that historically men have always lorded it over women, particularly about sex and paternity and so on.
And if you just look at the history of marriage and the history of men and women's relationships for thousands of years, it's always men trying to control women.
And there's good evolutionary reasons for this.
Pinker argues about this in The Blank Slate.
A whole chapter on sex and all that stuff.
Men are obsessed with controlling women's sexuality.
And this is one of the big things that have helped the women's movement is to break those chains and give women the freedom.
So that's my final argument, is that in addition to the rights of the fetus and so on and all those, but just in the long run it's better to give women more freedom than less and to keep men out of that area of control.
Well listen, I could have done this for another three hours, so you're definitely gonna have to come back because I barely got to any of the stuff on my notecard, so I thank you.
And I want to thank Michael Shermer for joining me, and you can check out his work at skeptic.com and at michaelshermer.com.