Karla McLaren

[ciphergoth]

Rarely have I hung on every word of an essay like I did with these two. A former prominent New Age speaker and author, Karla McLaren became a skeptic in 2004, and she has some very harsh words for the culture and communication of skeptics:

Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures, the article she wrote for Skeptical Enquirer in 2004.

I have a selfish reason for asking these questions, because one of my first ideas was to make my own Web site a culturally sensitive portal to the skeptical sites - yet I cannot find a way to do so. I've got a Web page mock-up brewing in my files - a page that I've rewritten maybe fifty times or more-that tries to introduce the concept of skepticism in an open and nonthreatening way. I'd like to include links to the brilliant urban legends site (snopes.com), to Bob Carroll's online Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com), to CSICOP and the Skeptical Inquirer (csicop.org), and to The Skeptic (skeptic.com). I also really wanted to include Quackwatch (quackwatch.org) and James Randi's site (randi.org) - but I just can't find the words. Sure, I can use my site to prepare people for the journey, but I know from experience that they would be in for quite a shock once they clicked on the links. I mean, it's one thing to find out that much of my culture and belief system was based on gossamer and hearsay, but it's another thing altogether to see people like myself being denigrated and pitied.

Her 2007 update

I wish she had a blog!

Comments

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Thank you for recommending that - a lot of it feels very like some of the things I've been saying less cogently over the years.

One experience I would strongly recommend to skeptics I know is to watch as much as you can stand of the Penn and Teller Bullshit show on climate change. I found the experience very like what I imagine a committed and non-fraudulent new-age practitioner gets from some of the other skeptical shows.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I've read plenty of climate-denier stuff and I think I know what you mean.

I watched Dawkins's "The Enemies of Reason" and found it very frustrating. I wasn't hoping it would convert the former Karla McLaren's of this world, but with that tone it would make very ineffective evangelism even for the people who half-believe without really having seriously considered whether it was true. I wanted to take the images and re-dub it with my own soundtrack that was intended really to persuade. And of course it wasn't that I disagreed with barely a single word of it.

It's funny; I've never heard him criticized for being strident about general superstition, while he gets the harshest words about his supposed stridency specifically about religion. In fact, he goes a lot easier on religion than he does on superstition, but people expect it about the latter and not about the former. That could be an argument that it's important to be more strident than people expect about religion, and less strident than they've got used to and tuned out on about superstition.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

climate-denier

Which would be either 10 or 40 depending on whether we lose the gulf stream or not?

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Now I like P&T, but Bullshit's more of a mocking show than a debunking show, and when it gets into that Cato Institute crap it shows; there isn't any serious attempt to prove the point, and that does help when their point is unprovable.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree - and I find it noteworthy that few skeptics will point this out when the mocking is in their favour. (And the show does claim to have evidence, of course.)

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I rather went off Bullshit when more than a few of the season 2 episodes were mocking tragically deluded individuals rather than cynical moneyspinners, but I certainly remember saying "well, yes, but such-and-such doesn't actually follow..." once or twice.

I think it would be a mistake to hold Bullshit up as a shining example of skeptical rhetoric. If I don't make that mistake I don't really feel obliged to point out every time the rhetoric is weak. :-)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the precession error mskala is talking about above is very similar to the climate change experience you're discussing.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Somewhat. Or people who think the old testement says Pi=3