Teller, I Barely Know... Okay, This Joke Is Old Now

I had every intention of catching a midnight showing of Up and posting some immediate reflections. There are, however, no such showings in my area. Which is a little weird, but it is a children's movie and all.

So that will have to wait.

I enjoy Penn & Teller immensely. In addition to being excellent illusionists, first-class showmen, and funny, funny men (their Vegas show was one of the highlights of Abby and my wedding jaunt), there is an underpinning to their material that is potently patriotic, wonderfully pragmatic, and more-or-less Libertarian. Their quasi-philosophical nature has led to the creation of a television show call Bullshit, in which they debunk popular mythology. It's like Mythbusters, only with bigger balls.

Which is not to say that they don't get things wrong--I have some serious issues with their treatment of addiction--but they're at their best when they confront snake-oil salesmen and new-age-y healers trying to improve the world or a person's life via fraudulent means. Be it crystals, hypnosis, or channeling the spiritual energy of dolphins, P&T are there to point out and ridicule the practitioners.

The question forming in your head right now may be "Why?" or "What's the harm?". So what if someone chooses to believe in something that doesn't make any sense?

Well, on the surface, nothing. Nobody is doing any harm by believing that crystals or hypnosis will realign their energy and make them healthier. But, as Penn and Teller point out early on, there is a great deal of harm done when people with serious medical issues spend their money on crystals and hypnotists instead of medicine.

And there are no shortage of real world examples.

I read recently about a woman who's newborn infant needed a routine-but-critical operation. She decided to forgo the operation and take the child to a faith healer who was scheduled to be through the town in a few months. The infant died before the faith healer arrived. There have been several stories about hardcore vegans effectively starving their babies to death by denying them milk. There was a story not too long ago about a family of Scientologists whose son was extremely mentally unbalanced and in need of anti-psychotic medication, but they refused to allow him access to treatment and he killed them all. There was a recent story in the news about a woman denying her 13-year-old son cancer treatments on religious grounds.

I've gotten onto a child-killing kick I see, but the list goes on and on. And on the one hand, it's sort of like natural selection in action. On the other...

As Heinlein once said, (I'm paraphrasing) all shaman and sooth-sayers should be considered guilty until proven innocent. I'm not setting out to harp on religion specifically, here. Any belief based on anything other than evidence and reason is a potentially dangerous waste of well-intentioned resources. So you'll see that I get understandably nervous when Glen Beck goes on TV and says "even if it's wrong, believe in something".

And I sympathize. I used to think that the pursuit was meaningful, even if the ends were ultimately meaningless. Now I realize that a road to nowhere just keeps you from advancing on a road to somewhere.

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