Still, I was surprised by the quantity of the responses to the blog post (208 comments as of this moment, many of them substantial letters), and also by the fierceness of some of those responses. For example, according to one poster, “you not only pandered, you lied. And even if you weren’t lying, you lied.” (Several took up this “lying” theme.) Another, disappointed that my children’s book does not tell a general youth audience to look to “secular humanism for guidance,” declared  that “I’d have to tear out that page if I bought the book.”

These reactions seem too strong, especially given that some of these same critics like the book a lot. (I noticed one outside blog post that devotes almost 1700 words to criticism of my “ridiculous reasoning,” only to conclude that Evolution “is the best children’s book on the science of evolution written.”)

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that there are not points of legitimate disagreement in the mix — there are, many of them stated powerfully. There are also statements of support, vigorous debate, and (for me at least) a good deal of food for thought. I invite anyone to browse the thread, although I’d urge you to skim some of it. (The internet is after all a hyperbole-generating machine.)

But today I’d like to concentrate on a tiny sub-topic. Some folks have referred to a “sense of betrayal” that a “prominent skeptic” would seem to distance himself from fellow atheists.

Let’s talk about that.

It happens I can relate to this reaction. I’ve felt it. Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate student and unknown Skeptic reader, I drafted a similar-sounding letter to a genuinely “prominent” skeptic I had at that time never met: Michael Shermer. I took exception to Michael’s habit of referring to himself as a “non-theist,” feeling that this left atheists like myself and my loved ones — still a tiny, much-maligned minority with few defenders — out in the cold. (I put a lot of work into that letter, but decided not to send it in the end. I recall that it was a pretty shrill. Worse, I realized I was making assumptions about his motivations, assumptions I couldn’t support. Incidentally, those curious about Michael’s nuanced position on atheism may be interested in his article “Why I Am An Atheist,” as well as this post and this Scientific American article.)

Do I Distance Myself from Atheism?

What about me? Do I distance myself from atheism? Well (and I’ll take this in order), “sort of,” and “not remotely,” and “yes.”

Sort of: Honestly, I’m a bit ambivalent about atheist activism. I’m a big fan of Richard Dawkins, and I’m very grateful that dedicated activists fight for church-state separation and the rights of non-believers, because I’m part of that constituency. Still, religion is not my area of primary interest. Furthermore, I’ll admit that after the last few days I feel a bit disconnected from the atheist movement. (I’ve seen several commenters echo this exhaustion.)

Not Remotely: Be that as it may, I am personally an atheist and a secular humanist. I am not remotely coy about this. I say this directly and frequently in public — even though I am a children’s book author, and might well be better off being circumspect. Atheistic, science-informed, rational secular humanism is the perspective through which I live my life, raise my family, and relate to my loved ones and to humanity.

I lack any belief in any deity. More than that, I am persuaded (by philosophical argument, not scientific evidence) to a high degree of confidence that gods and an afterlife do not exist.

However,

Yes, I do try to distinguish between my work as a science writer and skeptical activist on the one hand, and my personal opinions about religion and humanism on the other. There are several discrete reasons for drawing this distinction, and I want to be very clear that I’m serious about all of them. I’ll list three here, from least to most important:

• Atheism is a practical handicap for science outreach. I’m not naive about this, but I’m not cynical either. I’m a writer. I’m in the business of communicating ideas about science, not throwing up roadblocks and distractions. It’s good communication to keep things as clear, focused, and on-topic as possible.

• Atheism is divisive for the skeptical community, and it distracts us from our core mandate. I was blunt about this in my 2007 essay “Where Do We Go From Here?”, writing,
  

  I’m both an atheist and a secular humanist, but it is clear to me that atheism is an albatross for the skeptical movement. It divides us, it distracts us, and it marginalizes us. Frankly, we can’t afford that. We need all the help we can get.

  I’ve continued to emphasize this practical consideration in my work since that time. In What Do I Do Next? I urged skeptics to remember that

  there are many other skeptics who do hold or identify with some religion. Indeed, the modern skeptical movement is built partly on the work of people of faith (including giants like Harry Houdini and Martin Gardner). You don’t, after all, have to be against god to be against fraud.

  In my Skeptical Inquirer article “The Paradoxical Future of Skepticism” I argued that

  skeptics must set aside the conceit that our goal is a cultural revolution or the dawning of a new Enlightenment. … When we focus on that distant, receding, and perhaps illusory goal, we fail to see the practical good we can do, the harm-reduction opportunities right in front of us. The long view subverts our understanding of the scale and hazard of paranormal beliefs, leading to sentiments that the paranormal is “trivial” or “played out.” By contrast, the immediate, local, human view — the view that asks “Will this help someone?” — sees obvious opportunities for every local group and grassroots skeptic to make a meaningful difference.

This practical argument, that skepticism can get more done if we keep our mandate tight and avoid alienating our best friends, seems to me an important one. Even so, it is not my main reason for arguing that atheism and skepticism are different projects.

If I honestly thought atheism was in scope for skepticism, I would say so. Certainly that would save me some criticism from fellow skeptics. But I don’t. In my opinion,

• Metaphysics and ethics are out of scope for science — and therefore out of scope for skepticism. This is by far the most important reason I set aside my own atheism when I put on my “skeptic” hat. It’s not that I don’t think atheism is rational — I do. That’s why I’m an atheist. But I know that I cannot claim scientific authority for a conclusion that science cannot test, confirm, or disprove. And so, I restrict myself as much as possible, in my role as a skeptic and science writer, to investigable claims. I’ve become a cheerleader for this “testable claims” criterion (and I’ll discuss it further in future posts) but it’s not a new or radical constriction of the scope of skepticism. It’s the traditional position occupied by skeptical organizations for decades.

A lot of the friction I encounter on this point seems to come from people who wish “skepticism” to  refer to a general rationalist outlook. There are books worth of conversation to be had there, but I’ll suggest briefly that we already have other words to mean that, words like “rationalist” or “humanist.” Scientific, investigatory skepticism is something unique and valuable. Merging skepticism with other parallel movements only diminishes that value.

Final Thoughts

In much of the commentary, I see an assumption that I must not really believe that testable paranormal and pseudoscientific claims (“I can read minds”) are different in kind from the untestable claims we often find at the core of religion (“god exists”). I acknowledge that many smart people disagree on this point, but I assure you that this is indeed what I think.

Saying that, I’d like to call out one blogger’s response to my “Standard Pablum” post. The author certainly disagrees with me (we’ve discussed the topic often on Twitter), but I thank him for describing my position fairly:

From what I’ve read of Daniel’s writings before, this seems to be a very consistent position that he has always maintained, not a new one he adopted for the book release. It appears to me that when Daniel says that science has nothing to say about religion, he really means it. I have nothing to say to that. It also appears to me that when he says skepticism is a “different project than atheism” he also means it.

I am just so delighted with this book! Loxton hits the key concepts perfectly, and without being stuffy about it. A wonderful book to donate to your local library.

I was similarly honored to receive positive reviews from Phil Plait and from P.Z. Myers — both among the most popular science bloggers on Earth. I just about did cartwheels when P.Z. unexpectedly urged readers to “order a copy fast for the kids in your life!”

P.Z., did, however, dislike one subsection of Evolution:

I recommend it highly, but with one tiny reservation. The author couldn’t resist the common temptation to toss in something about religion at the end, and he gives the wrong answer: it’s the standard pablum, and he claims that “Science as a whole has nothing to say about religion.”

I definitely would not wish to bellyache about a small part of a very kind (and much-appreciated) review, with which I’m genuinely very pleased. It strikes me, though, that P.Z.’s concern offers a convenient access point for a topic I’ve been meaning to touch upon: the relationship between skepticism and atheism.

Pandering to Religion?

It might be useful at this point if I quote the entirety of this brief sub-section from my book:

What about religion?

This is a question people often ask when wondering about evolution. They want to connect the discoveries of science to their religious understanding.

Unfortunately, this isn’’t something science can help with. Individual scientists may have personal opinions about religious matters, but science as a whole has nothing to say about religion.

Science is our most reliable method for sorting out how the natural world functions, but it can’’t tell us what those discoveries mean in a spiritual sense. Your family, friends and community leaders are the best people to ask about religious questions.

In blogs, tweets, and direct messages, quite a few of my friends in the atheist community have raised concerns about this section, calling it “the pandering paragraph” or “one of the only parts I disagree with in your book.”

My editor was caught off guard by this sharp focus on a minute sub-section, but I knew in advance that this was likely. It follows from an old, old split within the skeptical community. On the one hand, there are skeptics who see god as simply the granddaddy of all paranormal claims; on the other hand, there are those who think the core claims of theistic belief are different in kind from testable paranormal claims, and therefore out of scope for scientific skepticism.

I am part of this latter group. I think skepticism is a different project than atheism. This is the de facto position for most skeptical and scientific organizations, but advocating this in the wake of the new atheism has become a bit of a lonely thing to do.

Cynical Fibbing?

I don’t mean to imply that atheist reviewers are unkind in their critiques of this section of my book. Quite the opposite: a common theme seems to be sympathy that I was (they feel) forced to make this concession. P.Z., for example, writes,

It’s only two paragraphs, and I sympathize with the sad fact that speaking the truth on this matter — that science says your religion is false — is likely to get the book excluded from school libraries everywhere….

Likewise, according to a kind reviewer from New Zealand,

Loxton’s inadequate reply was unavoidable, given the unwritten social rule that religion has a special role in our society. That we are not allowed to criticise religion. Any properly adequate reply would have lead to people being “offended” and campaigns to exclude the book for schools.

This idea — that anything short of a denunciation of religion must entail dishonesty — is quite common among atheist activists. In a fascinating Darwin Day episode of the JREF’s For Good Reason podcast, heavyweight Richard Dawkins remarks,

there are times when I can be persuaded by some of my colleagues that it would be better, for example, for the cause of getting proper science education in American schools if people like me and PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne were a little bit nicer to religious people. But I think it’s OK if some people are like that, but I really do passionately care about what’s true — what’s true about the world, what’s true about the universe. And I’m not one who’s going to compromise on that for the sake of some kind of political expediency. Others can do that, and maybe they’re politically wise to do that — but I can’t go along with that. I care too much about the truth.

Let’s look at that. Are the only two choices confrontation or dishonesty? Does being “a little bit nicer to religious people” necessarily entail a “compromise…for the sake of some kind of political expediency”?

I respectfully submit that the answer is “no.” It has long struck me as strange that atheists and religious fundamentalists share an assumption that atheism and acceptance of evolution are the same thing. This assumption is,  at least in demographic terms, incorrect. Discussions about public attitudes toward evolution typically neglect a remarkable fact:

In North America, most of the people who accept evolution are religious.

And, I don’t mean by a small margin, either. We’re talking about an overwhelming majority. For decades, Americans who think “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process” have consistently outnumbered those who think God had no part in evolution by margin of three to one (or more). Some of these theistic evolutionists subscribe to an Intelligent Design-type belief that is clearly not supported by the evidence, but many mean something altogether more metaphysical (such as the common Catholic idea that god infused immaterial souls into hominids at some point in human evolution, or the notion that all natural processes are divinely ordained).

Given that, I think we can confidently conclude that most people who say evolution is compatible with god say so, not for political expediency, but because this is what they believe.

But I Am Not Religious

Among those who accept evolution, I am not part of that theistic majority. It happens that I am a thoroughly secular atheist. Does Evolution, then, intentionally avoid confronting theism because, as one reviewer suggests, a “clear comment on religion probably would have prevented the book getting into many schools”?

Nope. The statement in the book is simplified more than I’d prefer (the sociology and biology of belief are valid areas of inquiry, and religiously-flavored empirical claims like weeping statues may of course be investigated by science) but it is what I actually think: that evolution happened; that science is our best means of discovering the natural world; and that metaphysics is not my job.

It is my opinion that the core claims of most religions are out of scope for science, and thus for scientific skepticism. No experiment or observation can shed any direct light on the types of religious claims that people care most about — claims such as the existence of souls, god, or an afterlife.

I’m reminded of the exchange in which the Fourteenth Dalai Lama told Carl Sagan it would be “hard to disprove” reincarnation. “Plainly,” Sagan concluded,

the Dalai Lama is right. Religious doctrine that is insulated from disproof has little reason to worry about the advance of science. The grand idea, common to many faiths, of a Creator of the Universe is one such doctrine — difficult alike to demonstrate or to dismiss.

Such ideas cannot even be formulated as scientific questions. Critiquing them is clearly outside the scope of a natural history book for kids.

Then Why Include that Section At All?

P.Z. Myers suggests that “it would have been better to leave it out than to perpetuate this silly myth [that science cannot disprove theism].”

Should I have omitted this sub-section? Perhaps, but I don’t think so. In fact, I fought to include it, arguing that it might be the most important part of the book. After all, the concept of the book was to raise and discuss common concerns. This question, “What about religion?” is, without any doubt the single most common concern people have when they consider the evidence for evolution. I could hardly ignore that.

So, how did I answer this sensitive and nearly universal question?

As simply and honestly as I knew how.

I’m excited to announce the release of my new book Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be (from Kids Can Press). Years in the making, this full-color, illustrated hardcover book based upon Junior Skeptic is available now!

• view the Skeptic.com listing >

(Also available from bricks & mortar booksellers throughout North America, and from Amazon.com)

The Project

Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be is a straight-ahead introduction to the fact of evolution, to its mechanisms, and to the misunderstandings that surround it. The book aims to explain how evolution works — and how we know for a fact that it happens. It is suitable for readers aged 8 – 13.

There are many fine kids books about evolution, but this one is distinguished by its skeptical pedigree. While laying out the evidence for evolution, this book also takes a critical look at common objections to evolutionary theory. Those pseudoscientific notions (“Isn’t there a dinosaur still alive in Africa someplace? Doesn’t that mean evolution didn’t happen?”) are major barriers to understanding for many people. Luckily, getting to the bottom of those sorts of questions is what skeptics do.

The writing is as clear as I can possibly make it — and then some. Nothing teaches you to strip out ambiguity and jargon like writing for kids. After seven years on Junior Skeptic, I’ve had a lot of practice distilling complex ideas for younger readers. All the same, working closely with award-winning editor Valerie Wyatt (veteran of over 100 children’s books) taught me more than a few tricks — and infused Evolution, I believe, with yet further clarity and depth.

It’s a valuable process, but round after round of edits and drafts and versions can leave your head spinning. Is it good? Is it clear and precise, or as colorless as a phone book? It’s hard to tell after a while.

That’s one reason I’m so pleased to hear positive initial reactions! Literary review Quill & Quire calls Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be,

A full-throated defense and explication of Darwin’s theory…kept light and accessible by Loxton’s sense of humour and breezy prose style.

Whew! That certainly is what I was hoping for!

This illustration (created by Daniel Loxton for Evolution) started out as a hand-sculpted, hand-painted physical model.

The Art

Evolution is packed with large, full-color illustrations: cartoons; diagrams; photographs; and, complex scenes featuring photorealistic computer generated creatures like ichthyosaurs and mammoths.

Some Skeptic readers don’t realize I illustrate my own articles. Perhaps surprisingly, in terms of raw hours, illustration and design (such as Skeptic magazine covers and Junior Skeptic layout) are still the largest part of my work in skepticism.

On Evolution, my hand touched virtually every illustration: sometimes metaphorically (as in the digital colors for cartoons) and sometimes much more literally than one might guess. For example, my hominid friend Lucy here started out as a hand-sculpted, hand-painted physical model — with individually hand-punched strands of genuine hair! (I’m not sure I would recommend that technique to anyone!)

But I couldn’t have done it alone. Many of the images in Evolution were created with the help of ace cartoonist and 3D-modeling guru Jim W. W. Smith (who works with me here in the Junior Skeptic studio). Jim was responsible for some of the funniest and cleverest flourishes — and also for a considerable subset of the hard work.

Support the Educational Work of the Skeptics Society

It’s a wonderful feeling to bring a project like this to fruition, because it has the potential (I believe) to do some good in the world. I’d like to thank the Skeptics Society for giving me the opportunity to develop projects of this kind — especially Skeptic co-publisher Pat Linse, this book’s Producer.

I’d also like to thank the many individual donors and subscribers who in turn support Junior Skeptic and the other educational outreach work of the Skeptics Society.

To lend your own support, please let your friends know they may purchase a copy of Evolution: How We and All Living Things Came to Be at

www.skeptic.com/productlink/b136HB

Or, even better: the Skeptics Society will give a copy of the book as a thank you gift to any donor at the $100 level (or higher)! To learn more, visit

www.skeptic.com/donate

“News flash: skeptics hack the Answers in Genesis website!” Or, at least, that was the joke  Skeptic co-publisher Pat Linse made when I read her some pro-natural selection material from the young Earth creationist organization’s slick online portal.

For years, I’ve been surprised how rarely this is mentioned: young Earth creationists need Darwin to be right — and when you press them on it, they often agree that he was.

Doesn’t sound like the creationism you know? It’s not a hacker’s prank, and it’s not a radical re-thinking of creationism. It is, however, a nuance as important as it is surprising: creationist leaders share Darwin’s belief that species routinely change (and even originate) through mutation and natural selection.

Indeed, according to Answers In Genesis’ (AiG) current web feature “Top 10 Myths About Creation,” it’s a straw-man to suppose creationists think otherwise:

A popular caricature of creationists is that we teach the fixity of species (i.e., species don’t change). And since species obviously do change, evolutionists enjoy setting up this straw-man argument to win a debate that was never really there in the first place.

Lest we have doubt about what they mean when they insist that “species obviously do change,” the same AiG article clarifies,

Species changing via natural selection and mutations is perfectly in accord with what the Bible teaches.

Moreover, many creationist organizations agree that new species originate through these well-understood Darwinian processes. As Creation Ministries International (CMI) explains,

Thirteen species of finches live on the Galápagos, the famous island group visited by Charles Darwin in the 1830s. The finches have a variety of bill shapes and sizes, all suited to their varying diets and lifestyles. The explanation given by Darwin was that they are all the offspring of an original pair of finches, and that natural selection is responsible for the differences.

Surprisingly to some, this is the explanation now held by most modern creationists.

Think about that for a moment. Given the super-heated rhetoric creationists use against Darwin, the magnitude of this concession is staggering: it is nothing less than the assertion that Darwin was right.

Nor do creationists merely concede that new species could, in principle, arise from natural evolutionary processes: they assert that this actually happens. For example, this is emphasized in AiG’s Answer magazine article “Do Species Change?”:

To his credit, Darwin corrected a popular misunderstanding. Species do change. Since Darwin’s day, many observations have confirmed this. In fact, new species have even been shown to arise within a single human lifetime. For example, one study gave evidence that sockeye salmon introduced into Lake Washington, USA, between 1937 and 1945 had split into two reproductively isolated populations (i.e., two separate species) in fewer than 13 generations (a maximum of 56 years).

Likewise, Philip Johnson, an architect of intelligent design creationism, argues that

Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence. If a small population of birds happens to migrate to an isolated island, for example, a combination of inbreeding, mutation, and natural selection may cause this isolated population to develop different characteristics from those possessed by the ancestral population on the mainland. When the theory is understood in this limited sense, Darwinian evolution is uncontroversial, and has no important philosophical or theological implications.

This process of adaptive radiation was Darwin’s key Galápagos discovery. It is also, bizarrely enough, essential for those biblical literalists who accept a world-wide flood. The reason, of course, is that the Earth has far more extant and extinct animal species than could possibly fit inside Noah’s ark. CMI explains,

Creationists have long proposed such ‘splitting under selection’ from the original kinds, explaining for example wolves, coyotes, dingoes and other wild dogs from one pair on the Ark.

The need for adaptive radiation puts creationists in the unexpected position of arguing that evolutionary processes are even more powerful than mainstream scientists suppose.

The question of time has, however, been seized upon by anti-creationists. They insist that it would take a much longer time than Scripture allows. … Instead, it is real, observed evidence that such (downhill) adaptive formation of several species from the one created kind can easily take place in a few centuries. It doesn’t need millions of years. The argument is strengthened by the fact that, after the Flood, selection pressure would have been much more intense — with rapid migration into new, empty niches, residual catastrophism and changing climate as the Earth was settling down and drying out, and simultaneous adaptive radiation of differing food species.

Now, before I am accused of quote-mining, let me be very clear: all of these authors and organizations emphatically reject the idea that evolutionary processes are sufficient to explain the diversity of life. All insist that intentional, intelligent design played a creative role in biological history — and that there are strict limits to the amount of biological change that may be generated by Darwinian processes.

As Answers in Genesis puts it,

Modern creationists need to challenge both the unbiblical essentialist ideas that underlie species fixity and the naturalistic ideas that underpin evolution from a common ancestor. The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes: yes, species change, but variation has clear limits.

You’re probably familiar with the distinction creationists draw here, between what they term “microevolution” and “macroevolution.” As Creation Ministries International clarifies,

Natural selection, yes. But to infer that this equates to evolution, in the sense in which we are meant to take it (microbes-to-microbiologists), no.

According to this common view, living things may adapt, through evolutionary processes, in response to new ecological niches, genetic novelty, or environmental conditions — but only so far.

How far? Young Earth creationists hypothesize an additional unobserved cap upon the regular evolutionary processes we observe in nature: living things may vary only “within created kinds.”

That’s easy to say, but elusive as smoke to nail down — because no one knows what a “created kind” might be in practical terms. As used currently, the definition seems completely fluid, meaning whatever is convenient. Sometimes “created kind” means “species,” but sometimes not. Sometimes it seems to go much higher up the taxonomic chain: genus, or family, or even order.

Trying to make heads or tails of this is a creationist project called “Baraminology,” or “creation biosystematics.” This, according to Creationwiki, is an effort “to determine which forms of life are related, and which are not” from a young Earth creationist perspective; that is, to figure out where observed evolution ends and creation takes over.

The fossil record shows no such “created kinds” limit (quite the opposite — common descent is a clear fact of biological history), but let’s set that aside for a second.

As it stands today, biologists, intelligent design creationists, young Earth creationists, and mainstream religious leaders (such as the Pope) agree that species may change and arise through the processes Darwin identified.

Let’s just stop for a moment and enjoy that.

The title, “Religion, Evolution can Live Side by Side,” was written by the CNN editors, but it does capture the thrust of the piece which I concluded by noting that if you are a believer in an eternal god, what difference does six zeros make on when the creation happened — 10,000 or 10,000,000,000 years ago — or by what method of creation was used: spoken word or big bang?

Well, this set off a mild firestorm among some observers of the science-and-religion debate, most prominently the estimable Jerry Coyne, the author of one of the best books ever written on the subject, Why Evolution is True, in his website of the same title called me an “accommodationist” and even a “faitheist” (“faith atheist”?)

I responded to Jerry on my TRUE/SLANT blog, and had a good horselaugh (which according to Martin Gardner trumps 10,000 syllogisms) at the comment by Lewis Grossberger (who also blogs at True/Slant): “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one thing worse than a faitheist — and that’s a fundagnostical. I hope you’re not one of those.”

Continuing in the neologistic theme, “Furcas” says that my writing is “faitheistic accommodationism in its purest and most disgusting form.”

Another good horselaugh was provided by a physicist at his own blog: “Michael Freakin’ Shermer’s heart is not pure enough for Jerry Coyne. If Jerry Falwell’s circle of orthodoxy was, say, 1 meter in radius, then His Worshipfulness The Right Reverend Jerry Coyne’s circle of orthodoxy has a radius of, roughly, a Planck Length.”

This comment well captured my position and needs no further comment:

What Shermer is trying to make peace with are sensible moderate theists, not fundamentalists. It is the people in the middle, not those on the fringes, who will, ultimately, determine the virulence of religion and irreligion. Shermer is trying to reduce religion’s virulence, not embracing fundamentalist ownership of the Bible, and it’s ridiculous interpretations of it. Shermer is right to reclaim the Bible as part of the Western cultural patrimony, and not leave it to fundamentalists to tell us what it means, and the implications to be drawn from it.

How one responds to theists all depends on the context and goals of the response. I think we nonbelievers have fallen into black-and-white thinking on the question of “what is the ‘right way’ to respond?” The answer is that there is more than one way. There are multiple ways, all of which work, depending on the context. Sometimes a head-on, take-no-prisoners, full-frontal assault á la Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, or Jerry Coyne is the way to go. Sometimes a more conciliatory approach á la Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, or your humble servant is best. It all depends on the context and what you are trying to accomplish.

By the way, agreeing with my alleged critics for a moment, I do not actually think that Dawkins and Hitchens are rude or disrespectful. If you read their works or listen to them in public lectures and debates, they are forceful, clear, and unwaivering, but they are not disrespectful. Watch, for example, the recent body slam Hitchens and Stephen Fry gave the Catholic Church for its stance on women’s rights, birth control, and 3rd-world poverty. It was focused and direct, but not disrespectful.

It is my goal, and the goal of the Skeptics Society, to educate as many people as possible about the power and wonders of science and to employ science to solve social, political, economic, medical and environmental problems. As such, we need as many people as we can get on board with a common goal, whatever it may be (starvation in Africa, disease in India, poverty in South America, global warming everywhere … pick your battle). My concern is that if we insist that people of faith renounce every last ounce of their beliefs before they are allowed to join the common fight against these scourges of humanity, we have just alienated the vast majority of the world’s population from our project.

Sometimes religion is the problem — and when it is let’s not hesitate to call it out. I did so myself on the day before Thanksgiving on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show in a debate with Dinesh D’Souza when Hewitt insisted that we thank God for our abundance and that believing in God leads to a prosperous nation like America. I pointed out — without accommodationism, faitheism, or fundagnosticalism — that 99% of everyone in Peru is Christian and yet they are dirt poor. Why? Because of warring political factions, governmental corruption, lack of education, resource depletion, currency debasement, inflation, and especially the lack of property rights and the rule of law.

So let’s not accommodate or pander in those areas where religion is clearly a problem or unmistakably mistaken. But not all (or even very many) social problems are caused by religion, so let’s pick our battles carefully and choose our strategies wisely.

Once upon a time my wife and I sat down for scrambled eggs with Michael Shermer and Julia Sweeney.

We were a little giddy. It was our first time in Las Vegas — and our honeymoon. I was a lifelong skeptic attending my first skeptics’ conference: The Amazing Meeting 2, hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation. (300 skeptics in one room! Imagine it!) And now we were having breakfast with a genuine movie star.

We were chattering away over coffee when Michael clapped his hands together. “Alright,” he said, suddenly all business, every bit the dynamic leader. “Can we get these Junior Skeptic books out this year?”

At that time I was still settling into my role as writer-illustrator for Junior Skeptic (the kids’ science section bound into every issue of Skeptic magazine). Shortly before the conference, Pat Linse (Art Director and co-publisher of Skeptic, and surely the least-known major player in the skeptical movement) had conceived an ambitious plan for me: a series of full-color spin-off books based upon Junior Skeptic. These books would comprise an encyclopedic, lavishly illustrated, multi-volume critique of paranormal claims — attractive, accessible for kids, and with the production values to truly compete in the marketplace of ideas.

“Well,” I said, “Here’s the thing. Pat wants each volume to collect four issues of Junior Skeptic. At book density, that’s probably 124 pages per volume. Each page needs about two illustrations. Times four books, that’s 1000 glossy full-color illustrations.”

We all digested this. ”This isn’t much like a regular academic book project,” I said. “Think of it like making a feature film. I’ll have to hire help somehow, which we haven’t got budget for. I still have to research and write most of the Junior Skeptic material we’re going to adapt. Even at just a few hundred illos, this project will take several years.”

The Long Road

My movie analogy was more apt than I knew. This project was too big to publish in-house. We needed a big commercial publisher, and (just as in Hollywood) that’s the tricky part. You may have Lord of the Rings in your head, but without the right studio, there’s no movie.

And so started a long process with three prongs:

1. I continued to produce Junior Skeptic on the established quarterly schedule (with all art created in book-ready full color, despite Junior Skeptic‘s greyscale format);
2. Pat Linse and I hired cartoonist and 3D computer modeling guru Jim W. W. Smith to help me create hundreds of additional illustrations for spin-off books;
3. Starting with Michael’s contacts and insight, I set to work trying to find the right commercial publisher.

Soon, my weekends and late nights were consumed by this contracting process: cold letters, negotiations, referrals, potential deals. I made rewarding contacts at some of the biggest kids’ publishers in the US — wonderful editors who loved what we were doing, and would have loved to give our project a home. But it was a lot for a publishing house to take on: our proposed series was big, 100% skeptical, with hefty production requirements — and with me (then a first-time book author) at the helm.

Months of such conversations flew by, and then years. And all throughout, we just kept working.

The Dawn of Evolution

We discovered further challenges as we went along. One was that we couldn’t just pick one umbrella topic — say, cryptozoology — and simply make all the content for a book on that topic. Junior Skeptic requires variety: we couldn’t cover the yeti, and then immediately turn around and do an issue on Bigfoot. We needed to mix it up: the yeti, then the Bermuda Triangle, then the Curse of King Tut….

Along the way, I did a two-issue story on evolution. This was a straight science treatment, rather than Junior Skeptic‘s usual direct criticism of paranormal claims. It was intended as a standalone magazine feature. Still, in keeping with our now-established pipeline, we created all the art — computer-generated 3D dinosaurs, cartoons, diagrams, location photography from around the world — in book-ready full color.

It was well-received. Bestselling science author Dr. Donald Prothero even called it “a wonderfully clear, up-to-date, and well-illustrated account of how evolution works.” Which raised the obvious question: why not publish the evolution story as its own standalone book?

And so we found our entities multiplying like Occam’s own nightmare. We began to shop around an additional giant book project: Evolution.

The Perfect Home (Times Two)

Today happens to be the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species. As we shopped Evolution around, the 2009 Darwin anniversary year (a global celebration of arguably the most profound discovery in scientific history) was part of our pitch.

At large US publisher after publisher, the answer was the same: “The book is wonderful, we all love it here in the office. But we think it’s too controversial right now.” This will come as little surprise to Skepticblog readers, but it was crushingly frustrating — especially because the book was not confrontational in the slightest. It just clearly explained the central concept of biology.

Thankfully, this frustration didn’t last. Evolution did find the perfect home: Kids Can Press, Canada’s largest publisher of children’s books (a division of media giant Corus, and home of “Franklin the Turtle” and other popular franchises).

the first Junior Skeptic book, available only to students and museum-goers in Portugal

Even better (if also more complicated): at the same moment that Kids Can Press decided they wanted Evolution, so did a huge philanthropic organization in Portugal. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation wanted their own full-color, Portuguese-language evolution book to distribute free to school kids, as a tie in to their own Darwin 2009 celebrations (including the largest Darwin-themed museum exhibit in the world, and a lecture series opened by punctuated equilibrium co-theorist Niles Eldredge).

Thanks to the gracious public spirit of everyone at both Kids Can Press and the Gulbenkian Foundation, an unusual three-way agreement was worked out. In February 2009, in honor of Darwin’s 200th birthday, the Skeptics Society proudly announced that distribution of the Portuguese adaptation was already underway — putting Darwin’s discovery into the hands of thousands of school kids for free!

Evolution — for release February, 2010

new art Daniel Loxton created for Evolution (Kids Can Press, 2010)

Meanwhile, Evolution was already in full production at Kids Can Press.

This English-language book — for hardcover release throughout North America in February 2010 — is a completely rewritten and expanded new book with a unique life of its own. It features many all-new sections, and tons of never-before-published art. Edited by Valerie Wyatt (author of over a dozen kids’ science books, and award-winning editor of over a hundred) and produced by Skeptic‘s own Pat Linse, Evolution is everything I hoped it would be. It’s accurate, it’s pretty — and it’s a major milestone on a road I’ve spent years of my life walking.

I’m tremendously grateful for Michael Shermer’s ongoing encouragement (and to those who support the Skeptics Society’s educational work with donations).

And I can’t wait — can’t wait! — to finally hold the first hardcover Junior Skeptic-based book in my hands.

(Stand by for details after Christmas, as we near the release of Evolution. And yes: stand by for news about further book projects later in 2010!)

Long long ago, in an environment far far away from the modern world, humans evolved to find meaningful causal patterns in nature to make sense of the world, and infuse many of those patterns with intentional agency, some of which became animistic spirits and powerful gods. And as a social primate species we also evolved social organizations designed to promote group cohesiveness and enforce moral rules.

People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking primates. We connect A to B to C, and often A really is connected to B, and B really is connected to C. This is called association learning. But we do not have a false-pattern-detection device in our brains to help us discriminate between true and false patterns, and so we make errors in our thinking: a Type I error is believing a pattern is real when it is not (a false positive) and a Type II error is not believing a pattern is real when it is (a false negative). Imagine that you are a hominid on the planes of Africa and you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a dangerous predator or just the wind? If you assume it is a dangerous predator and it is just the wind, you have made a Type I error, but to no harm. But if you believe the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator, there’s a good chance you’ll be lunch and thereby removed from your species’ gene pool. Thus, there would have been a natural selection for those hominids who tended to believe that all patterns are real and potentially dangerous. I call this process patternicity (the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise) and agenticity (the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents who may mean us harm). This, I believe, is the basis for the belief in souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspiracists, and all manner of invisible agents intending to harm us or help us.

People are religious because we are social and we need to get along. The moral sentiments in humans and moral principles in human groups evolved primarily through the force of natural selection operating on individuals and secondarily through the force of group selection operating on populations. The moral sense (the psychological feeling of doing “good” in the form of positive emotions such as righteousness and pride) evolved out of behaviors that were selected for because they were good either for the individual or for the group; an immoral sense (the psychological feeling of doing “bad” in the form of negative emotions such as guilt and shame) evolved out of behaviors that were selected for because they were bad either for the individual or for the group. While cultures may differ on what behaviors are defined as good or bad, the moral sense of feeling good or feeling bad about behavior X (whatever X may be) is an evolved human universal. The codification of moral principles out of the psychology of the moral sentiments evolved as a form of social control to insure the survival of individuals within groups and the survival of human groups themselves. Religion was the first social institution to canonize moral principles, and God as an explanatory pattern for the world took on new powers as the ultimate enforcer of the rules.

Thus it is that people are religious and believe in God.

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The "PoTo" Artifact

Some readers may be familiar with the “Coso Artifact”, a 1920-era Champion spark plug found inside a chunk of rock. Young Earth Creationists have pointed to this as evidence against evolution. Skeptics, however, find no such proof in the artifact. When ferrous metals are buried in earth, they often rapidly form iron oxide concretions incorporating the surrounding sediment.

This is a chunk of pipe that my son found in Port Townsend, Washington last week. I presume it’s steel. Note how parts of it are completely eaten away, while other parts have ballooned to the point of filling the center of the pipe completely with just such a concretion.

Uber cool… it’s like our very own Coso Artifact. As it’s from Port Townsend, I’m calling it the “PoTo” Artifact.

A quickie visual inspection by me does not spot any obvious marine shells or fossils embedded within the concretion, as were said to be found in the Coso Artifact (the actual artifact is lost to time and its owner long dead). However, such items are certainly found in the much about Port Townsend, and I would have every expectation of finding them if a thorough examination were done under a microscope.

Strangely, the Creationist claim to the Coso Artifact as evidence against evolution is not what you’d expect. I figured the reason was that it proves mineral formations can form in only a few decades, thus everything we see on Earth is consistent with a young age. But no, that’s not what was said at all. The Institute for Creation Research’s Donald Chittick mischaracterized it as a geode, then went on to say that the Coso Artifact proves ancient civilizations had advanced technology, which is inconsistent with “evolution”.

Will someone please slap me on the forehead, and give me a list of how many things are wrong with that?

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On Thursday June 4, I attended the Cato Institute half-day conference in Century City, California, which started out with a lecture by U.C. Santa Barbara evolutionary psychologist Leda Cosmides, one of the founders of that science along with her husband John Tooby. Cosmides’ talk was on the evolution of cooperation, but for this audience she tailored her lecture toward politics and economics (Cato is a libertarian think tank in D.C.), by asking “Why do free societies arise so rarely and with such difficulty?”

Unfortunately, Leda tried to squeeze about two hours of material and powerpoint slides into a 35-minute talk, and so she was necessarily brief as she blasted through slide after slide, each up on the screen for only seconds, making note taking impossible. That’s too bad because there was a lot of data slides that I think the audience would have liked to absorb (I know I would have). Nevertheless, Leda’s central point was this: our brains evolved for solving specific problems in the EEA (the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation — the Paleolithic), and so we have domain specific programs that help organize our experiences. The problem is that the modern world is so different from the EEA that it causes conflicts. For example, most hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian because they live in relatively resource-poor environments and are often unsure about their safety and nourishment, and so we evolved many cognitive instincts for cooperation, food sharing, and group cohesiveness, because everyone in the group was either related to you or you know very well, so as the political saying goes, we must hang together so that we don’t hang separately. But the modern world is nothing like this.

I’ve written about this problem in my book The Mind of the Market, which focuses on evolutionary economics, whereby the world in which we evolved of small bands of egalitarian hunter-gatherers is radically different from today’s world that is resource rich and with vast disparities of wealth between the richest and the poorest. Thus, we have a natural tendency to resent wealthy people, distrust free markets, and misunderstand the bottom-up process of modern economies and try to control them from the top down, usually with disastrous consequences (e.g., Alan Greenspan and the Fed’s constant manipulation of interest rates sent false signals into the market for the price of money, leading to artificially large bubbles that then burst).

Leda noted the difference between hunting and gathering in terms of risk and uncertainty: Hunting meat is highly variable, success is as much due to luck as it is skill, and 4/10 times the hunter comes home empty-handed. Thus, hunter-gatherers must pool risk to deal with frequent reversals of fortune through food sharing. By contrast, gathering foods is a low risk process that depends on effort, not luck, and the results are mostly shared only within the family and trusted partners, but not to the group at large. Cosmides explained that this evolved psychology can be seen today in which we make distinctions between people in need of our help because they were unlucky (as with the hunters who return empty-handed) versus the gatherers who don’t bring home the vegetables because they were lazy and were loafing on the job. We are inclined psychologically to want to help the former but not the latter.

The political and economic consequences of this evolved psychology can be seen today in debates about healthcare, welfare, social security, etc., which are all attempts to pool risk among everyone in society, but without any distinction between those who suffer because of bad luck versus those who suffer because of laziness or lack of ambition. Modern political states are in the business of redistributing wealth from those who have it to those who do not, and since there is no attempt to discriminate between those who were unlucky from those who were just lazy, the people who earn that money through hard work and talent who then have it confiscated by the government and given to people they do not even know, naturally feel resentful, even though statistically the wealthy are extremely generous in giving to private charities that they voluntarily choose.

Cosmides also noted the psychological difference between working land that you own versus working land that the government owns: the agricultural policy of the USSR allowed 3% of land on collective farms to be private, and it turned out that between 45% and 75% of all food in the USSR was the product of that 3% of private farms.

So, in conclusion, Cosmides noted that there is a mismatch between the ancestral and modern worlds, our minds evolved to navigate family and friends and small groups, certain laws and institutions satisfy the moral intuitions these programs generate whereas other laws and institutions regularly fail in the modern world. Cosmides concluded: “Liberty provides the solution to most social problems, but few appreciate it because of our evolved minds.”

The second talk of the day was by Dan Mitchell, the Cato Institute expert on tax reform, supply-side tax policy, the flat tax, and tax competition. His talk was titled: “America’s Looming Fiscal Meltdown.” We are shifting to a European size welfare state, he noted, dolling out blame to both Democrats and Republicans, starting with George W. Bush, who Mitchell noted in his eight year term increased the Federal budget from $1.8 trillion to $3.5 trillion budget, and then noted Obama says he wants change to even more government, adding another trillion dollars to the budget in his first term, if not more. Mitchell also busted the myth that Bush increased the budget for natural security after 9/11. Not true, he said: most of it was for pork projects for his political cronies.

Mitchell then noted that Keynesianism is bad theory: borrow money and then give it to people so they will spend it — but moving money from the right pocket into the left pocket does not produce more wealth; it’s just redistribution. It does not increase wealth. Only free markets can do that. And in any case, where does the government get the money to redistribute? From us! But they take their cut as the middleman, and therein lies the problem. Bigger government did not work for Hoover or Roosevelt, and all that federal spending to get us out of the depression did not work: we did not get back to 1929 GDP levels until WWII. Neither did federal stimulus plans work for Presidents Ford or Bush I during their recessions, and Keynesianism failed utterly in Japan during the 1990s, when its national debt went from 60% of GDP to 150% of GDP. I.e., Keynesianism does not work, and yet politicians on both the right and the left insist that the only reason it doesn’t work is because: “government isn’t spending enough.” Wrong!

We are on the road to serfdom, says Mitchell, as our federal spending is projected to jump from 22% of GDP today to 45%–55% of GDP in the coming years (mostly because of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid). Unless our GDP doubles along with federal spending (it won’t) the collapse is coming. Well, not a collapse, per sey: America will not become Argentina or Zimbabwe. But we will become France: instead of growing 2.5–3% a year, we’ll grow 1–1.5%, a difference that has enormous long-run implications, lowering per capita GDP 30–40% below what it otherwise would be. More spending means more taxes: more income taxes, payroll taxes, death taxes, double taxation of dividends and capital gains. And this doesn’t work. In 1980 Ronald Reagan cut the top tax rate from 72% to 28%, and between 1980 and 1988 the number of rich people (millionaires) rose from 116,800 to 723,700, and their share of paying for the federal government rose from $19 billion in income taxes to $99.7 billion in income taxes. In other words, lowering taxes on the rich generates more revenue for the federal government, which is counterintuitive.

In the end, however, there are moral consequences to such economic decisions. Mitchell: “Today there are over 2 million people in America who completely depend on welfare: prisoners; well, the welfare state is a prison for the human soul.”

Last night, April 28, 2009, I debated Hugh Ross and Fuz Rana from Reasons to Believe (RTB), an evangelical Christian organization whose mission it is to give people “reasons to believe” beyond the usual faith-based reasons. In this case, it is to scour the annals of scientific discovery in search of findings that seem to gel well with biblical passages; and even if they don’t seem to fit, these gentlemen are adroit at massaging both the research and the scriptures such that in the end they will fit come hell or high water.

I blogged about my previous debate with the RTB boys before, so I won’t repeat their arguments and my rebuttals here, but this was most definitely a larger venue and audience — the basketball arena at the University of Texas at Austin with over 3,000 in attendance — so I made sure that my presentation was especially poignant and lively (first and foremost, I believe, a public speaker must be interesting, have something to say, and say it in a manner that gets people to pay attention and remember). For example, I nailed Ross right off the bat on his claim that the RTB “day-age” model of creation is correct when he said that the use of the Hebrew word “yom” in Genesis means “epoch” (and therefore no matter what scientists discover about the age of the origins of life, the Earth, and the universe, they can say “see, our model predicted that correctly”).

No, sorry gentlemen, yom means “day,” as in, well, a day, a 24-hour day. Yom Kippur, for example, is the “Day of Atonement”. Yom Kippur is, in fact, the 10th and final day of the Ten Days of Repentance that begin with Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur does not mean the “Age of Atonement,” the “Epoch of Atonement,” the “Geological Age of Atonement,” or the “Cosmological Constant of Atonement.” As I pointed this out I could see Mssrs. Ross and Rana scrambling through their Bibles and other works of reference they had on the table with them, but they never did respond so I presume that they have conceded the point.

I also made the general point that their RTB creation models are based on postdictions, whereas science depends on prediction. That is, the RTB models start with what we already know about nature, then search for biblical passages to match them, then predict that we’ll find more of the same. This is exactly what the Nostradamians do, as when they “predicted” 9/11 … after it happened! Sorry gentlemen, that’s not a prediction; that’s a postdiction. For RTB to be science, they must make predictions about things we do not already know!

Ross claims that the Bible — and only the Bible — has a creation story to match that of modern cosmology; that is, the creation of the universe out of nothing, that the earth was without form and void, etc. That’s not true, and I provided several examples from the ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians. But I also found this one that I added to the collection, from the Tao-te Ching 25, 6th century B.C.E.:

There was something undifferentiated
and yet complete,
which existed before heaven and earth.
Soundless and formless,
it depends on nothing and does not change.
It operates everywhere
and is free from danger.
It may be considered
the mother of the universe.
I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

At one point in my presentation I pointed out the supreme irony of an atheist having to explain to theists how to properly read the Bible. The book of Job, for example, is about suffering and the problem of evil and why bad things happen to good people. It is not a book of cosmology. Further, I noted that Bible scholars of all stripes (most of whom are deeply religious) agree that the Bible is an edited volume written by many authors over a long span of time. This helps explain why, for example, in one passage Noah is instructed to take two of every kind of animal on the Ark, and in another passage he is instructed to take 7 of each kind. One version has the flood lasting 40 days and 40 nights, another passage says 150 days. In one passage Noah sends out a raven to find land. In another passage he sends a dove. And on and on. By adopting the methods of Reasons to Believe, you are forced to dismiss all of this scholarship and miss the real meaning of the Bible. The Bible is about how people should get along with one another and about morality and ethics and meaning. By trying to make the Bible fit the current estimates of the Hubble constant (to pick just one among many examples), me thinks you are missing the point of the book, and thus (in your world view) you are missing God’s message.

Is that supreme irony, or what?

In a form of what I call “Literary Patternicity” (patternicity is the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise), in the following passage from the great poet John Donne, it would appear that he anticipated the discovery of the double helix as the basis of life and reproduction:

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.

Wow, incredible, how could John Donne have anticipated the discovery by Crick and Watson centuries later? But more importantly, my point in this exercise in literary patternicity is that you will miss the beauty and power of Donne’s poetry if you try to read into it modern scientific discoveries.

I closed with a set of challenges to Ross and Rana, asking them to tell us, from their scriptural readings, the answers to the following unknowns in science:

1. Did Neanderthals have symbolic language, and what caused their extinction?
2. Is RNA the precursor to DNA, and what came first, cells or self-replicating molecules?
3. Did eukaryotic cells come from prokaryotic cells?
4. When did ID/God intervene in the history of life — never, occasionally, always?
5. Why doesn’t God heal amputees?
6. If it turns out that your testable RTB models are refuted, will you give up your belief in Jesus as your savior?

Interestingly, although Ross said that if his RTB models were refuted he would give up his belief in both God and Jesus, there erupted in the audience a loud chorus of “no” voices, which made my point beautifully: this is not, never was, and never will be about science, because no scientific evidence would ever dissuade believers from their belief. Why? Because such beliefs are not based on science in the first place.

Q.E.D.