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EXAMINING EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS & PROMOTING SCIENCE SINCE 1992. VOL 27 NO 2 2022 $6.95 US & CANADA SKEPTIC.COM

The Science of Abortion

ABORTION MATTERS SKEPTIC RESEARCH CENTER

A Data-Driven Look
The Case for Choice and The Case for Life Into Men’s Attitudes
Toward Abortion

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Big Pharma’s Cynical Search for a Female Sex Drug •
David Copperfield’s History of Magic • Deep Fakes: How to Know a Photograph,
Video, or Audio Recording is Real • Havana Syndrome Hysteria: 60 Minutes’ Sensational
Reporting on White House “Attacks” • Gimbal Video: Genuine UFO or Camera Artifact? •
Holy Grail, Spear of Destiny, and Ark of the Covenant • How Science & Reason Can Give Us
Objective Moral Truths Without God • Debate: Is Belief in ESP Irrational?
 EXAMINING
Co-Founder, Skeptics Society
Pat Linse, 1947–2021
30 YEARS
EXTRAORDINARY
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Michael Shermer

Editor-in-Chief
Michael Shermer

Strategy Director
CLAIMS & PROMOTING
Alexander Reiman

Art Director & Webmaster

SCIENCE SINCE 1992
William Bull

Senior Editor A Letter From the Editor on the Topic of Abortion

Frank Miele
There is arguably no more controversial subject in American politics and
Senior Scientists
David Naiditch
society over the past half century than Abortion. Ever since the 1973 United
Claudio Maccone States Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade that guaranteed the right
Liam McDaid of women to have an abortion during the first trimester efforts have been
Thomas McDonough
made to curtail those rights, culminating this year in the pending Supreme
Contributing Editors Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, regarding the
Tim Callahan constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi state law—the Gestational Age Act—
Harriet Hall, M.D. which bans any abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy except “in
Donald Prothero
medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality.” Many legal experts
Carol Tavris
consider this case to be a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade that, if overturned,
Editorial Assistants the legal right to an abortion would revert to a states’ rights issue. Some states,
Diane Fisher such as California and New York, will guarantee full abortion on demand,
Sara Meric
while other states have passed laws that would ban abortion from the point of
Office Manager conception. An additional 21 states are poised to ban or severely curtail access
Nickole McCullough to abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned. This decision is expected to come
down from the Supreme Court mid-2022, so we are publishing this special
Photographer
David Patton
section on Abortion Matters to lay out the key terms of the debate under
the banners of Pro-Choice and Pro-Life. We have done our best to present
Audiovisual Services the best arguments on both sides so that readers can decide for themselves
Brian Dalton what they should think about this contentious issue. —Michael Shermer
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EDITORIAL / ADVISORY BOARD

Arthur Benjamin
Professor of Mathematics,
Harvey Mudd College, Magician
CONTENTS
Roger Bingham
Science Author & Television Essayist
ABORTION MATTERS
K.C. Cole
Science Writer, Los Angeles Times

Richard Dawkins
4 SkepDoc
Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford The Science of Abortion
BY HARRIET HALL, M.D.
Jared Diamond
Professor of Geography &
Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA
8 Abortion
Clayton J. Drees The Case for Choice
Professor of History, VWU
BY MICHAEL SHERMER
Mark Edward
Professional Magician & Mentalist
18 Anti-Abortion
Gregory Forbes
Professor of Biology, Grand
The Case for Life
Rapids Community College BY DANIELLE D’SOUZA GILL

John Gribbin
Astrophysicist & Science Writer 18
William Jarvis
President, National Council Against Health
Fraud, Professor, Loma Linda University

Lawrence M. Krauss
Theoretical Physicist, Arizona
State University

Christof Koch
Professor of Cognitive & Behavioral
Biology, California Institute of Technology
28 Inequality & Rejection
William McComas A Data-Driven Look Into
Director, project to advance Science
Education, University of Arkansas Men’s Abortion Attitudes
BY KEVIN MCCAFFREE & ANONDAH SAIDE
Bill Nye
Executive Director, The Planetary Society

Leonard Mlodinow
Physicist, California Institute of Technology

Donald Prothero
COLUMNS
Professor of Geology, Cal Poly, Pomona

Nancy Segal
30 A Closer Look
Professor of Psychology, CSU, Fullerton Big Pharma’s Cynical Search
Eugenie Scott for a Female Sex Drug
(Retired) Executive Director, BY CAROL TAVRIS
National Center for Science Education

Julia Sweeney
Writer, Actor, Comedian
58 The Gimbal Video
Genuine UFO or Camera Artifact?
Frank Sulloway
BY MICK WEST
Research Scholar, MIT

Carol Tavris
Social Psychologist, Author

Stuart Vyse COVER ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN HOLCROFT

Behavioral Scientist, Author
 REVIEW ARTICLES

38 The Discoverie of Magic 32 60 Minutes

Review of David Copperfield’s Whipping Up “Havana Syndrome”
History of Magic by David Hysteria, Airing Sensational
Copperfield, Richard Wiseman, Segment on White House “Attacks”
and David Britland BY ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW

BY MICHELLE AINSWORTH
32
38

63 Meta Ethics
DEBATE Toward a Universal Ethics—
How Science & Reason Can
46 ESP Debate Give Us Objective Moral
Is Belief in ESP Irrational? Truths Without God
STEVEN PINKER BY GARY J. WHITTENBERGER

50 Pinker and the Paranormal 68 Holy Relics,

Some Critical Comments Holy Places,
BRIAN D. JOSEPHSON; PINKER RESPONDS Wholly Fiction
BY TIM CALLAHAN
46
68

EXCERPT
78 Authors & Contributors
52 Deep Fake
How to Determine if a 52
Doctored Photograph, Video,
or Audio Recording is Real
BY TIM REDMOND
 ABORTION MATTERS

SKEPDOC
The Science of Abortion
BY HARRIET HALL, M.D.

Abortion is controversial but ubiqui- light. He promptly changed his tune, could you possibly say to justify your
tous: 1 in 4 American women will have arranging for his daughter to have choice to the mother whose new-
an abortion by the age of 45,1 and, an abortion rather than have her life born baby you have chosen to let
around the world, 40–50 million preg- ruined by an unwanted pregnancy. die in the fire? Won’t she call you a
nancies2 end in abortion every year. This reminded me of Animal Farm, murderer, or, at least, morally and
where all animals are equal, but legally culpable through inaction?
Anti-abortion activists have long in- some are more equal than others. Did
voked moral and religious arguments that father believe that all abortions Since most women who request abor-
to convince others that abortion is are equally wrong but that they are tions don’t think of themselves as mur-
wrong, wrong, wrong, equating it somehow less equally wrong for his derers, anti-abortion activists needed
to murder. And, for some pro-lifers, own progeny than for other women? a more persuasive deterrent, so they
not just abortion, but anything that have come up with a new tactic:
interferes with the development of Someone came up with a clever claiming that abortions lead to serious
a potential human life is considered thought experiment designed to help adverse physical and mental health ef-
murder, even masturbation. This led people clarify their thinking about fects for the mothers. Never mind that
to the reductio ad absurdum of Monty potential human lives: A hospital is science has extensively studied poten-
Python’s song “Every Sperm Is Sacred.” on fire. You have only a brief window tial adverse effects and has proclaimed
of opportunity to get in and out safely. legal abortion safe. The findings of the
Some abortion activists seem not to If you turn left, you can go to the studies were mostly negative, and the
have thought this through carefully. nursery and rescue a newborn baby. results of the few positive studies were
In a book I read long ago about an If you turn right, you can go to the questionable because of methodolog-
abortion clinic, one of the most vocal lab and rescue six embryos frozen in ical flaws, such as unreliable self-re-
demonstrators picketing the clinic liquid nitrogen. If you really believe ports, outdated surveying procedures,
was a man adamantly against all those potential lives are valuable, and failure to consider possible
abortions until he found out his own wouldn’t it make more sense to save confounders. Perhaps the activists
teenage daughter was pregnant. That six lives instead of one? What would have some reason to believe the posi-
was too close to home for comfort. you do? How would you feel about tive studies are accurate despite their
It made him see things in a different it? If you rescue the embryos, what obvious flaws. Motivated reasoning?

4 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Illustration by Jess Suttner

Perhaps they think it is acceptable by the first sperm, preventing pene- fetus. Aristotle believed that the soul
to lie. Maybe they believe the ends tration by other sperm. The sex of the entered a male embryo at 40 days
justify the means if lives are saved. fetus is determined by whether the and a female embryo at 90 days; this
sperm has an X or a Y chromosome. claim was not based on evidence and
Science has recently learned that the makes no sense. As abortion became
When Does the Fetus egg can help determine which sperm legal in some jurisdictions, lawyers
Become a Person and succeeds3 by releasing chemicals into got into the act and muddied the
Have Human Rights? the follicular fluid that surrounds the waters. A convenient legal criterion
When Does Life Begin? egg. The sperm contributes centrioles asked whether the fetus could survive
that facilitate cell division. As the outside the body of the mother. This
These questions remain mired in con- zygote divides, the DNA of egg and is not a workable solution, because
troversy. Many people hold that life sperm are combined, and genes are as technology advances babies are
begins at the moment of conception. exchanged to create a unique indi- enabled to survive at ever-earlier
But conception is not a moment, it is a vidual that inherits genes from both gestational ages and ever-lower birth
process that unfolds over several days. parents. After several days, the fertil- weights. Another suggestion was
After ejaculation, millions of sperm ized egg travels down into the uterus, that life begins with “quickening,”
move up through the woman’s genital burrowing into the uterine wall in when the mother becomes aware
tract. The lucky one that wins the the process known as implantation. of fetal movements; but this is too
race meets an ovum in the Fallopian variable to be of any practical use.
tube, where the two join to form a sin- The Catholic Church holds that life Some have argued that life begins
gle-celled zygote, which then divides begins with ensoulment, but “soul” is when the baby takes its first breath.
to become a multi-celled embryo. The a religious concept, and, in any case, Theologians, philosophers, scien-
pellucid zone, a membrane surround- there is no way to determine whether tists, lawyers, and others have never
ing the egg, hardens after penetration a soul is present in an embryo or been able to reach a consensus.

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 5

 Legal vs. Illegal Abortions the risk of complications from • mental health disorders;
medical versus surgical abortions6
Legal abortions are safe. Illegal abor- found adverse events in 20 percent • premature death.
tions are not. 19 million women have of medical abortions and 5.6 percent
unsafe abortions each year and 68,000 of surgical abortions. Adverse events After pointing out the limitations
of them die, mostly in developing included heavy or prolonged bleed- of the literature due to selective
countries. Causes of death4 include: ing, infection, physical damage, and recall bias and other methodolog-
incomplete evacuation of the uterus ical flaws, the report summarizes
• incomplete abortion (failure to requiring another procedure. The what the research has shown about
remove or expel all pregnancy study showed no differences between each area of potential harm.
tissue from the uterus); medical and surgical abortions in the
rate of infection, thromboembolic dis-
• hemorrhage (heavy or ease, psychiatric morbidity, or death. What Science Says About
prolonged bleeding); Risks From Abortion

• infection; Long-Term Adverse Effects Abortion does not have adverse conse-
quences for subsequent pregnancies. It
• uterine perforation (caused when the Anti-abortion activists tend to avoid does not cause secondary infertility. In
uterus is pierced by a sharp object); talking about short-term complica- fact, research found just the opposite.
tions and instead focus on creating A large registry-based study in 2016 in
• damage to the genital tract and fears about long-term consequenc- Finland8 compared women who had
internal organs as a consequence es that have been largely rejected had an abortion to women who had
of inserting dangerous objects by scientific studies or questioned not. Those with a prior abortion were
into the vagina or anus. because of poor methodology. significantly less likely to be treated for
infertility (1.95 versus 5.14 percent).
Legalizing abortion doesn’t significant- In 2018, the National Academies
ly change the number of abortions, published an extensive report7 from a Abortion does not increase the risk of
but it does increase their safety: only committee tasked with reviewing all ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy
is known to be associated with upper
genital tract infection, but serious
infection after abortion is rare, espe-
cially now that antibiotic prophylaxis
WHATEVER THE RISKS OF GETTING is standard practice. Several literature
reviews have concluded that abortion
AN ABORTION, IT’S FAR RISKIER is not associated with an increased
risk of ectopic pregnancy, although
NOT TO GET AN ABORTION. admittedly all the published reviews
were methodologically flawed.

Abortion is not associated with an

increased risk of preterm birth in sub-
two deaths5 were reported among the published data about the safety sequent pregnancies. Several studies
legal abortions in the U.S. in 2018. and quality of abortion care in the found no association with adverse
U.S. as of 2018. It focused on four outcomes in subsequent pregnancies,
putative areas of potential harm: including a large 2013 Scottish study9
Short-Term Complications that the committee said had a number
• future childbearing and pregnancy of strengths compared to other studies.
Most abortions today are medical, outcomes (e.g., secondary infertility,
done with the drugs mifepristone spontaneous abortion and stillbirth, Abortion does not increase the risk of
and misoprostol, rather than surgical, preterm birth, low birthweight); hypertension of pregnancy or eclamp-
with vacuum aspiration or dilation sia. In fact, a 2013 study9 found that
and curettage. A study comparing • risk of breast cancer; women who had had an abortion had

6 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 a lower risk of hypertensive disease mental health than delivering and that legal abortion of an unwanted
and a lower risk of preeclampsia. parenting a child that she did not pregnancy “does not pose a psycho-
intend to have or placing a baby for logical hazard for most women.”
Numerous studies have shown no link adoption.” Further, the “postabor-
between breast cancer and abortion. tion traumatic stress syndrome” that
The odds appeared to be lower10 for activists say is widespread is not What They Don’t
women who had had a prior abortion. recognized by either the American Want You to Know
Psychological Association (APA) or the
The committee said, “As a result of American Psychiatric Association. Anti-abortion activists are happy to
the inability to control for the many frighten women with the alleged
ways in which women who have un- In 1987, President Reagan directed risks of abortion, but they are careful
wanted pregnancies differ from those U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop not to divulge this crucial informa-
who do not, no clear conclusions (known for his strong opposition tion: whatever the risks of getting
regarding the association between to abortion when he was appointed an abortion, it’s far riskier not to get
abortion and long-term mortality in 1981 to be the nation’s top public an abortion. Pregnancy is known
can be drawn from these studies.” health doctor by a president strongly to be hazardous to health, and the
supported by the Religious Right) to risks of continued pregnancy and
Likewise with mental health. Since examine the studies on the health ef- childbirth are well documented.
the science is so clear about the fects of abortion and prepare a report.
physical safety of abortion, activists Fifteen months later, Koop wrote a According to an article in Obstetrics
have focused on alleged mental health letter advising the President that he and Gynecology,12 “Legal induced
consequences such as depression, would not be issuing a report because abortion is markedly safer than
anxiety, post-traumatic stress, “the scientific studies do not provide childbirth. The risk of death asso-
and suicide. But, according to the conclusive data about the health ciated with childbirth is approxi-
Guttmacher Policy Review,11 “Neither effects of abortion on women.” At a mately 14 times higher than that
the weight of the scientific evidence congressional hearing, Koop said it with abortion. Similarly, the overall
to date nor the observable reality was clear to him that the psychologi- morbidity associated with child-
of 33 years of legal abortion in the cal effects of abortion are “minuscule” birth exceeds that with abortion.”
United States comports with the idea from a public health perspective. In
that having an abortion is any more 1989, an American Psychological Those are evidence-based facts, not
dangerous to a woman’s long-term Association review determined political or religious dogma.

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/3JBLEAo The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care A register-based Cohort Study
2 https://bit.ly/3D0jwEM in the United States. Washington, DC: in Aberdeen, Scotland. BJOG: An
3 https://cnn.it/3N9Zqwv The National Academies Press. International Journal of Obstetrics &
4 https://bit.ly/3ugusdy 8 Holmlund, S., Kauko, T., Matomäki, J., Gynaecology, 121(3), 309–318.
5 https://bit.ly/355FolE Tuominen, M., Mäkinen, J., & Rautava, 10 Goldacre, M. J. (2001). Abortion and
6 Niinimäki, M., Pouta, A., Bloigu, A., P. (2016). Induced abortion—impact breast cancer: A case-control record
Gissler, M., Hemminki, E., Suhonen, on a subsequent pregnancy in first- linkage study. Journal of Epidemiology
S., & Heikinheimo, O. (2009). time mothers: A registry-based study. & Community Health, 55(5), 336–337.
Immediate complications after BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 16(1). 11 https://bit.ly/3Nd01NR
medical compared with surgical 9 Woolner, A., Bhattacharya, S., & 12 Raymond, E. G., & Grimes, D. A.
termination of pregnancy. Obstetrics Bhattacharya, S. (2013). The effect (2012). The comparative safety of
& Gynecology, 114(4), 795–804. of method and gestational age at legal induced abortion and childbirth
7 National Academies of Sciences, termination of pregnancy on future in the United States. Obstetrics &
Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). obstetric and Perinatal Outcomes: Gynecology, 119(2, Part 1), 215–219.

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 7

 ABORTION MATTERS

ABORTION
The Case for Choice
BY MICHAEL SHERMER

Abortion is back in the headlines with above-the- states are poised to ban or severely curtail access to
fold coverage of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health abortions.3 The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson WHO,
Organization case now on the docket of the Supreme expected to come down from SCOTUS mid-2022,
Court of the United States (SCOTUS). It tests the will be a game changer of historic proportions.
constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi state law—the
Gestational Age Act—which bans any abortion after What follows is the case for choice based on: (1) the
the first 15 weeks of pregnancy except “in medical binary-thinking fallacy of the pro-life argument that
emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality.”1 human life and personhood begin at conception (a
continuous-thinking analysis shows that they do not),
Most legal experts consider this case to be a direct (2) even if we agree that a fetus is a human being, what
challenge to the 1973 SCOTUS decision in Roe v. Wade we have then is a conflicting-rights issue between the
that guaranteed the right of women to have an abortion rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus, so (3) if
during the first trimester, until fetal viability at around rights are to be legally protected for one over the other,
23 weeks, after which the state could protect its interest a stronger case can be made for a woman than a fetus
in the “potential life” of the fetus and regulate abortion because, (4) an actual human being and rights-bearing
to that end, including banning it altogether in the third person must take precedence over a potential human
trimester save for the life or health of the mother.2 being because, (5) the fundamental right of bodily
autonomy is one that has historically been expanding
If overturned, the legal right to an abortion would to include all adult humans regardless of race or gender
revert to being a states’ rights issue. Some states, because, (6) left unprotected, rights-bearing groups
such as California and New York, would, no doubt, tend to restrict the freedoms of those in non-rights-
guarantee full abortion on demand, but a dozen states bearing groups, historically most notably of men over
have passed laws that would ban abortion from the women. In the end, I believe we can find common
point of conception. And according to the Guttmacher ground between pro-life and pro-choice advocates by
Institute, as of December 2021, an additional 21 focusing on how to reduce unwanted pregnancies.

8 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Illustration by Izhar Cohen

the word means the wrongful killing of one human

The Personal and the Political being by another). What they disagree about is whether
aborting a fetus constitutes murder. This apparent
There has been, arguably, no more contentious moral moral question is actually a factual question, because
issue of the past half century than abortion, where abortion can only be considered murder if it means
morality, politics, and science are confoundedly taking the life of a human being, and when a fetus
conflated. Moral issues are personal. Political issues becomes a human in this sense of a legally protect-
are social. Scientific issues are factual. Herein lies ed person is a question that is difficult to resolve, as
confusion. Pro-choicers believe that whether a woman Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun noted in his
decides to abort a fetus or not is a personal moral issue decision in the SCOTUS 7–2 majority ruling in the 1973
in which the rights of the mother take precedence Roe v. Wade case: “When those trained in the respec-
over the rights of the fetus.4 Pro-lifers want to make tive disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology
it a political-moral issue in which the rights of the are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary,
fetus take precedence over the rights of the mother at this point in the development of man’s knowledge,
and that society determines what a woman can or is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”6
cannot do with her body when it comes to her fetus.5
The issue, it seems to me, is more one of logic than
When pro-lifers and pro-choicers square off to debate, it is of knowledge. Moral and political decisions
they are often talking at cross purposes. Pro-lifers are grounded in binary logic in which unambigu-
speak of the “murder” of innocent fetuses and attack ous yeses and noes determine political truth, ei-
their debate opponents on the grounds that murder ther at the ballot box or in the legislature. Science
is wrong, as if pro-choicers accept murder as mor- is grounded in the continuous thinking of fuzzy
al. In fact, pro-lifers and pro-choicers all agree that logic in which ambiguous probabilities determine
murder is immoral (and, by definition, illegal, since provisional truths. Let’s unpack this further.

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 9

 When Does Life Begin? not possible.9 It is not until 28 weeks, or approximately
77 percent of full-term development, that the fetus ac-
A major obstacle to answering this question is the quires sufficient neocortical complexity to exhibit some
binary thinking that forces us to pigeonhole into one of the cognitive capacities typically found in newborns.
of two distinct categories a problem best conceived Fetus electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings with
as a continuous scale. Pro-life proponents argue that the characteristics of an adult EEG appear at approxi-
human life begins at conception; before concep- mately 30 weeks, or about 83 percent of full-term.10
tion there is no life—after conception there is. It’s a
compelling black and white argument gainsaid by the What about pain perception and consciousness? In a
reality of life’s continuity in which we may assign a 2018 article on “Personhood and Abortion Rights” in
fractional probability to human life—before concep- SkEPTiC, psychologist Gary Whittenberger presents
tion 0, the moment of conception .1, multi-cellular substantial medical and scientific evidence that the per-
ception of pain does not develop until
around 20–24 weeks of gestation, and
something resembling consciousness
POTENTIALITY IS NOT THE SAME does not develop until 28–36 weeks
of gestation.11 Although medical
AS ACTUALITY, AND MORAL advances may extend fetal viability
by a few days or weeks (a 2015 JAMA
PRINCIPLES MUST APPLY FIRST AND article reported that only 11 percent
of babies born before 24 weeks sur-
FOREMOST TO ACTUAL PERSONS vived “without major morbidity”12),
along this continuum, we see that the
OVER POTENTIAL PERSONS. fetus’s capacity for anything like hu-
man cognition does not appear until
well into the third trimester. Since
blastocyst .2, one-month old embryo .3, two-month abortions are almost never performed after the second
old fetus .4, and so on until birth, when the fetus trimester—and before that period there is no evidence
becomes a 1.0 human life (and legal person). It is a that the fetus is a thinking, feeling human individual—
continuum from sperm and egg, to zygote, to blas- it is reasonable to provisionally conclude that abortion
tocyst, to embryo, to fetus, to newborn infant.7 is not comparable to the murder of a conscious sentient
being after birth. Thus, there is no rational or scientific
While the step from 0 to .1 may intuitively seem justification for equating abortion with murder.
qualitatively different from what came before—egg and
sperm—neither the zygote nor the blastocyst is an indi- One objection to this line of reasoning is that science
vidual human (much less a person) because they might and technology have so “fuzzified” the boundaries
split to become twins, or develop into less than one in- between what were once reasonably discrete categories
dividual and naturally abort.8 Although an eight-week- (even in my fuzzy analysis) that it becomes difficult to
old embryo has recognizable human features such as justify precisely any specific point in time at which to
face, hands, and feet, neuroscientists now know that at draw the line. Unborn babies are now being treated as
that stage neuronal synaptic connections are still de- patients, with complex surgeries being performed in
veloping, so anything even remotely resembling human the womb for such maladies as spina bifida (an opening
thought or feelings is impossible. After eight weeks, in the spine through which the spinal cord dangerously
embryos begin to show primitive response movements, emerges), congenital diaphragmatic hernia (the fetus’s
but between eight and 24 weeks (six months) the fetus abdominal organs merge into the chest), and congen-
could not exist on its own because such critical organs ital cystic adenomatoid malformation (cysts in the
as the lungs and kidneys do not mature before that fetus’s lungs). Fetuses that would have been aborted
time. For example, air sac development sufficient for before are now being saved, and they are treated med-
gas exchange does not occur until at least 23 weeks af- ically as little people.13 On the other end of the spec-
ter gestation, and often later, so independent viability is trum, there are adults whose cognitive capacities are so

10 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

severely compromised through brain damage that they Consistency in applying the principle of bodily
cannot think at all. They may even lie comatose, com- autonomy and self-determination should further
pletely brain dead, and yet still retain rights as humans. nudge pro-lifers toward the pro-choice position.

My response to this argument is that most fe- Herein, we find another important distinction to
tal surgery is done well into the third trimester, make in the abortion debate, and that is the difference
when abortions are rarely performed anyway. And between a human and a person. A human is a member
brain-damaged adults already retain rights as hu- of the species Homo sapiens. A person is a member of a
mans, so their rights cannot be taken away. social group or society with legal rights and responsi-
bilities and with moral value. Even if one could justify
a fetus as being a human (even if only a potential hu-
Potential Lives, Actual Lives, man), that still does not make it a person. What makes
and Bodily Autonomy it a person is the granting of legal rights and responsi-
bilities and moral value by the laws governing that so-
Still, the argument is made that a fetus is a potential ciety. Pro-lifers are encouraged by changes in the law
human being, since all of the characteristics that in many states that grant personhood rights to the un-
make us persons are front-loaded into the genome and born, in cases where a pregnant woman has been mur-
unfold during embryological development. Yet, poten- dered and the fetus dies as well. No less than 28 states
tiality is not the same as actuality, and moral principles now criminalize harm to a fetus, and many more are
must apply first and foremost to actual persons over moving to pass the Unborn Victims of Violence Act,
potential persons. Given the choice between grant- which in 2003 was renamed the Laci and Conner’s
ing rights to an actual person (an adult woman) or a Law after the notorious murder trial of Scott Peterson,
potential person (her fetus), it is rational to choose the charged with double homicide in the killing of his wife
former on the grounds of both reason and compassion. and unborn child.14 Legally, if killing a mother and her
We know adult women can think and feel; we don’t fetus is double murder, then killing a fetus by itself
know that about fetuses. Although more than half is single murder. This would make abortion a crime
the states in the US now have laws to protect unborn of murder. This is a very knotty problem to unravel.
victims from violence—as in the Unborn Victims of
Violence Act that treats the killing of a pregnant wom- All of this ratiocination, it must be said, is not to claim
an and her fetus as a double homicide—the law does that abortion is moral, only that is it not immoral. And
not treat fetuses and adults alike in any other manner. this brings us back to where we began in making a
Once again, binary thinking lures us into treating a distinction between individual and political morality.
mother and her fetus as the same, whereas continuous If abortion is not murder, then it is not illegal from a
thinking allows us to see the substantive differences. political position. But if a woman decides that even
though having a child may burden her physically and
The reason has to do with bodily autonomy, or the financially it is still more important to her to grant life
right to self-determination of oneself. The abolition and liberty to her unborn child, then that is her choice
of slavery and torture was ultimately brought about to make, not the state’s. In other words, one may be
by the recognition and acceptance of the right to politically pro-choice and personally pro-life. In the
bodily autonomy and self-determination, as was the end, abortion must remain a personal moral choice.
expansion of rights during the movements to achieve
civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and broad-
er LGBTQ rights. What I do with my body is no one Hardness of Life not Hardness of
else’s business, and the pro-life movement embraces Heart: Infanticide and Abortion
this principle in most other areas. Conservatives
and Christians, for example, resist vaccine man- Anthropologists and historians tell us that infan-
dates under this principle—as witnessed in the ticide has been practiced by all cultures every-
“my body, my choice” signage during the COViD-19 where in the world throughout history, including
pandemic—and they hold the Second Amendment and notably by adherents of all the world’s ma-
right to own guns for self protection as sacrosanct. jor religions. Historical rates of infanticide have

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 11

 ranged from 10–15 percent in some societies to practiced in ancient Greece and Rome, and the
50 percent in others, but none lack it entirely.15 Catholic Church’s prohibition against it goes back
to Middle Ages.18 During the historical period of
Like all human behavior, infanticide has multi- the early rights revolutions, both church and state
ple causes, and the evolutionary psychologists tried to do something to curb infant killings without
Martin Daly and Margo Wilson unearthed some of addressing the underlying causes. Injunctions were
the reasons in their study using an ethnographic approved and laws were passed, but just as in the
database of 60 societies around the world. Of the old pre-Roe days of back alley abortions, if a woman
112 cases of infanticide in which anthropologists didn’t want her baby, there was little anyone could
do about it. Mothers would “accidentally”
roll over on top of their infants during sleep
(called “overlying”), or they dropped them
off at foundling homes where the business
THERE IS NO RATIONAL OR of infant disposal was swift and private. Wet
nurses and “baby farmers” were also tasked
SCIENTIFIC JUSTIFICATION with the business of baby removal. It was
reported that in mid-19th century London,
FOR EQUATING ABORTION public parks and other spaces were the site of
as many dead babies as dead dogs and cats.
WITH MURDER.
While it may seem unlikely that if Roe v.
Wade is overturned and most states ban
the practice that we will see the return of
infanticide, but given our species’ history it is
recorded a motive, 87 percent supported the “triage certainly not impossible, so this too must be factored
theory” of infanticide, which posits that mothers into the abortion debate, along with the more likely
must make hard choices when times are hard (i.e., prospect of illegal abortions on a black market. We
they kill their children when resources are too should remember what happens when people want
scarce to support another infant), a concept well something and there is no free market exchange for
captured in Edward Tylor’s 19th-century anthropo- it: black markets develop in response (prostitution
logical observation that, “Infanticide arises from and drugs being the most salient examples). Banning
hardness of life rather than hardness of heart.”16 abortion will not end the practice. What will?

Nature is not infinite in its resources and not all organ-

isms that are born can survive. When conditions are Problem Solving Instead
difficult, parents, especially mothers, must decide who of Issue Moralizing
is most likely to survive—including future potential
children who may fare better when conditions are However one frames the issue of abortion—pro-
improved—and sacrifice the rest. Daly and Wilson’s life, pro-choice, or pro-life personally and pro-
survey turned up these reasons for infanticide: disease, choice politically—the more important question
deformity, weakness, a twin when parents have only in the context of moral progress is identifying the
enough resources for one, an older sibling too close problem to be solved. The problem is not abortion
in age for resources to support both, hard economic per se, but unwanted pregnancies that lead peo-
times, no father to help raise the child, or because the ple to choose abortion or infanticide, or if carried
infant was fathered by a different sexual partner.17 to term, orphanages and adoption agencies.

In Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Reinke- What can be done to attenuate unwanted preg-
Hannemann notes how widely infanticide was nancies? In brief, contraception and education.

12 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 The Relationship Between Abortion and Contraception
90

80

70
contraception
per 1000 women
60
abortion
per 1000 women
50
total fertility rate
per 1000 women
40

30

20

10

0
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000

Figure 1. This data set from South Korea demonstrates how granting women the right to use contraception caused a dramatic decrease in the
number of abortions, along with the fertility rate, which has additional benefits for the progress of humanity in creating a sustainable world.20

A comprehensive international study on the relation- Figure 1 demonstrates this for South Korean data.
ship between contraception and abortion conduct- Abortion rates there took some time to start their
ed by Cicely Marston from the London School of decline because for a few years women relied on more
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded: traditional but significantly less effective methods
of birth control, such as withdrawal. But when sup-
In seven countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, planted by reliable methods, pregnancy rates tum-
Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Turkey, Tunisia and Switzerland— bled, thereby lowering the demand for abortions.
abortion incidence declined as prevalence of modern
contraceptive use rose. In six others—Cuba, Denmark, A similar effect occurred in Turkey when abortion rates
Netherlands, the United States, Singapore and the dropped by almost half between 1988 and 1998 (from 45
Republic of Korea—levels of abortion and contraceptive to 24 per 1,000 married women) even though the overall
use rose simultaneously. In all six of these countries, rate of contraceptive use remained stable. A study con-
however, overall levels of fertility were falling during the ducted by Pinar Senlet, a population program advisor at
period studied. After fertility levels stabilized in several the U.S. Agency for International Development, however,
of the countries that had shown simultaneous rises in revealed that there was a shift from traditional, often
contraception and abortion, contraceptive use contin- unreliable forms of birth control to more modern, and
ued to increase, and abortion rates fell. The most clear- therefore, more reliable methods. “Marked reductions in
cut example of this trend is the Republic of Korea.19 the number of abortions have been achieved in Turkey

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 13

 through improved contraceptive use rather than Just Say No?
increased use.” In short, Turkish couples abandoned
natural and unreliable birth control methods in favor of Why can’t people “just say no” when it comes to
condoms and more effective means of contraception.21 sex—that is, use abstinence as a form of birth control,
or time their sexual encounters for when it is “safe”
Like all social and psychological phenomena, rates of during a woman’s natural monthly cycle? They can, of
contraceptive use and abortions are multi-variable— course, and some do, but as the old joke goes: “What
many factors are operating at once, which makes infer- do you call couples who use abstinence, withdrawal,
ring direct causal links problematic. When it comes to or the rhythm method of birth control? Parents.”
human behavior, it is almost never as simple as “when
X goes up, Y goes down,” and that is certainly the case In theory, abstinence is a foolproof method of prevent-
for contraception and abortion. Different nations and ing pregnancies just as starvation is a foolproof method
states have different laws and regulations that affect of preventing obesity. In reality, the desire to love
accessibility to both abortions and birth control tech- physically and to bond psychologically is fundamen-
nologies. Some countries have higher rates of religios- tal to who we are as human beings; and the sex drive
ity than others, and this too influences to what extent is so powerful, and the pleasures and psychological
rewards so great, that recommending
abstinence as a form of contraception
is, in fact, to recommend pregnancy
I BELIEVE WE CAN FIND COMMON by default. In a 2008 study descrip-
tively titled “Abstinence-Only and
GROUND BETWEEN PRO-LIFE Comprehensive Sex Education and
the Initiation of Sexual Activity and
AND PRO-CHOICE ADVOCATES BY Teen Pregnancy,” the University of
Washington epidemiologists Pamela
FOCUSING ON HOW TO REDUCE Kohler, Lisa Manhart, and William
Lafferty found that among never-mar-
UNWANTED PREGNANCIES. ried American adolescents aged 15–19
years, “Abstinence-only education
did not reduce the likelihood of
engaging in vaginal intercourse, but
women or couples use family planning techniques. comprehensive sex education was marginally associat-
Socioeconomic forces and poverty rate differences be- ed with a lower likelihood of reporting having engaged
tween countries and states also confound conclusions. in vaginal intercourse.” The authors concluded:
“Adolescents who received comprehensive sex educa-
But as I read the data and analyses, here is my tion had a lower risk of pregnancy than adolescents
interpretation: when women have limited reproduc- who received abstinence-only or no sex education.22
tive rights and no access to contraception, they are
more likely to get pregnant and this leads to higher A 2011 PLoS article analyzing “Abstinence-Only
fertility rates in a country and more abortions when Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates” in 48 U.S. states
the pregnancy is unwanted. When women’s repro- concluded that “increasing emphasis on abstinence ed-
ductive rights are secure and they have access to ucation is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy
safe, effective, and inexpensive birth control, as well and birth rates,” controlling for socioeconomic status,
as access to safe, legal abortion, they rely on both educational attainment, and ethnic composition.23
strategies to gain control over their family size. So,
for a period of time after the legalization of abortion Most revelatory is a 2013 paper titled “Like a Virgin
and access to contraception, both rates increase, (mother): Analysis of Data from a Longitudinal, U.S.
in parallel. But once fertility rates stabilize—once Population Representative Sample Survey,” published
women feel confident in controlling their family size in the British Medical Journal, reported that 45 of the
and their ability to raise a child—contraception alone 7,870 American women studied between 1995 and
is often all that is needed, so abortion rates decline. 2009 said they became pregnant without sex. Say what?

14 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Illustration by Izhar Cohen

Are we to believe that Biblical-level miracles are afoot When we had sex, we couldn’t use condoms, because
in the bedrooms of teenage girls? They were twice having them around would have been admitting
as likely as other pregnant women to have signed a an intent to sin or an expectation of fallibility. For
chastity pledge (but apparently not an honesty pledge), the same reasons, I couldn’t take birth-control pills
and they were significantly more likely to report that or use any other form of contraception. To prepare
their parents had difficulties discussing sex or birth to sin would be worse than to break in a moment
control with them. Although the researchers admit- of irresistible desire. To acknowledge a pattern of
ted that, “Scientists may still face challenges when repeatedly breaking, of in fact never failing to break,
collecting self-reported data on sensitive topics,” my would have meant acknowledging our powerless-
point in citing this data is that young women who are ness, admitting we could never act righteously.
pressured to “just say no,” rather than having been Our faith trapped us: We needed to believe we
given solid information to avoid pregnancy should could be good more than we needed to protect
sexual intercourse occur, are more likely to both ourselves. As long as I didn’t take the birth-con-
get pregnant and to lie about how it happened.24 trol pill, I could believe I wouldn’t sin again.25

Here is how Merritt Tierce explained the absti- Such programs don’t work because our present selves
nence-only problem in a 2021 New York Times who commit to not having sex in the future collide
magazine cover story on “The Abortion I Didn’t with our future selves who become weak in the passion
Have.” Attending a Christian college and headed of the moment. As with diets, it’s easy to commit to
for Yale Divinity, she found herself attracted to a foregoing sweet, rich, and fatty foods when you’re
“kind, gentle, handsome, friendly, warm and fun- satiated or the next meal is some significant time
ny” fellow student that led to a sexual relationship, in the future. Filling out the hotel meal card in the
for which their religion failed to prepare them: evening for breakfast tomorrow it is easy to check

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 15

 the boxes for oatmeal and fruit, but go down to the account of this tragedy that should be read by
buffet and feast your eyes (and nose) on the bacon, anyone with pretentions toward social engineering
sausage, eggs, bagels with cream cheese, and all and the restriction of women’s right to choose.26
self-control weakens. As it is with the basic hunger
drive, so it is, only an order of magnitude greater,
for the equally basic sex drive. Filling out the reli- Why You Should Be Pro-choice
gious abstinence-only pledge on a Sunday morning as a Christian or Conservative
is one thing; fulfilling that pledge in a passion-filled
Saturday night is another thing entirely. As Augustine While I’m citing statistics, one more is relevant to
of Hippo declared to the almighty, “Lord, make me this discussion: according to the National Institutes
chaste and celibate—but not yet.” Or as Oscar Wilde of Health, childbirth is 14 times more dangerous
admitted, “I can resist everything, except temptation.” than an abortion.27 This fact provides a rebuttal to
the argument “What if a young woman aborts a baby
The opposite of an abstinence-only program would be who would have gone on to become a doctor and find
a reverse test of my thesis, and here we could not find the cure for cancer?” A rejoinder is, “What if a young
a better social experiment than in then communist woman who would have gone on to become a doctor
Romania. When the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu came and find the cure for cancer dies in childbirth?”
to power in 1965, he hatched a scheme for national
renewal by severely restricting abortions and the use of If conservatives and Christians want to put an end to
contraception in order to increase his country’s popu- the termination of fetuses and infants, the best path
lation. It worked. When abortion had earlier been le- to take is that of education, contraception, and the
galized in Romania, in 1957, 80 percent of pregnancies recognition of full female rights—which are simply
were aborted, primarily because of the lack of effective human rights—including, and especially, reproduc-
contraception. A decade later the fertility rate had fall- tive rights. In the United States alone, studies show
en from 19.1 to 14.3 per 1,000, so Ceaușescu made abor- that safe, effective, and inexpensive contraception has
tion a crime unless a woman was over 45, had already prevented approximately 20 million pregnancies in
delivered (and raised) four children, was suffering dan- 20 years, and given the rate of abortion during that
gerous medical complications, or had been raped. The time, this means that around nine million fetuses were
birth rate promptly shot up to 27.4 per 1000 in 1967. never aborted because they were never conceived.

Despite the dictator’s punishments for “childless Of course, many people ignore arguments demon-
persons” (monthly fines withheld from wages) or strating the positive impacts of contraception and
for those with fewer than five children (the imposi- education, because their sole concern is the right to
tion of a “celibacy tax”) and rewards for especially life of the unborn fetus which, in their view, trumps
fertile mothers with a “distinguished role and noble the rights of an adult woman, and that leads to a
mission” (state-sponsored childcare, medical care, deeper problem in the abortion debate, one identified
maternity leave), if the people don’t want more by the physicist, meteorologist, and applied math-
babies, you can’t stop them. The result was a social ematician Lewis Fry Richardson and noted in his
catastrophe of epic proportions, as thousands of babies documentation of the decline of deadly conflicts:
were abandoned and left to the care of a state that
was inept, corrupt, and broke. More than 170,000 For indignation is so easy and satisfying a mood that
children were dumped into over 700 stark state-run it is apt to prevent one from attending to any facts
institutional orphanages, and over 9,000 women died that oppose it. If the reader should object that I
due to complications from black-market abortions. have abandoned ethics for the false doctrine that “to
understand all is to forgive all,” I can reply that it is
The effects are still being felt today as many of only a temporary suspense of ethical judgment, made
those orphaned children are now adults with se- because “to condemn much is to understand little.”28
verely impaired intelligence, social and emotional
disorders, and alarmingly high crime rates. The It’s time we all put our indignation aside and opt
book Romania’s Abandoned Children is a moving for understanding over condemnation.

16 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/34oWdrg 10 Flower, M. (1989). “Neuromaturation and the

2 https://bit.ly/3KpZvdh Moral Status of Human Fetal Life.” In Abortion
3 Ibid. Rights and Fetal Personhood. Doerr, E. and
4 Wolf, N. (1995, October 16). Our Bodies, Our Souls. Prescott, J. (Eds.). Centerline Press, 65–75
The New Republic. In this issue feminist author Naomi 11 https://bit.ly/34qOJ77
Wolf shocked the pro-choice movement by claiming that 12 https://bit.ly/3HVcFNR
the fetus at all stages is a human individual and therefore 13 https://bit.ly/3L0C6iK
abortion is immoral (although she still supports free 14 https://bit.ly/36ePAsH
choice). In Wolf’s 6,700-word essay, however, there 15 Williamson, L. (1978). “Infanticide: An Anthropological
is not a single scientific fact presented in support of Analysis.” In Kohl, M. (Ed.) Infanticide and the
her claim for fetal human individuality. Instead we get Value of Life. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
emotional references to “lapel pins with the little feet,” 16 Quoted in: Milner, L. (2000). Hardness of Heart,
“framed sonogram photos,” and “detailed drawings of the Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide.
fetus” from the popular pregnancy book What to Expect New York: University Press of America.
When You’re Expecting. With similar shortcomings, in a 17 Daly, M. and Wilson, M. (1988). Homicide.
1995 PBS Firing Line debate, Arianna Huffington claimed New York: Aldine De Gruyter.
that scientists have proven that life begins at conception, 18 Ranke-Heineman, U. (1991). Eunuchs for the
yet no facts were offered in support of this claim. Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the
5 Roy Rivenburg, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, Catholic Church. New York: Penguin.
succinctly summarized the pro-choice and pro-life 19 https://bit.ly/3lyvfCQ See also: Marston, C.,
positions: https://lat.ms/3JA5vQH. For a more recent & Cleland, J. (2003). Relationships between
pro-life defense see: https://nyti.ms/3dsWpXf contraception and abortion: A review of the
6 https://nyti.ms/3tGyoUv evidence. International Family Planning Perspectives,
7 See, for example, the Amici Curiae Brief in Support 29(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.2307/3180995
of Appellees (1988). https://bit.ly/3qvcP8z 20 Ibid.
8 See, for example: Pleasure, J. R. (1984). What 21 Senlet, P., Cagatay, L., Ergin, J., & Mathis, J. (2001).
is the lower limit of viability? : Intact survival of Bridging the gap: Integrating family planning with
a 440-g infant. American Journal of Diseases of abortion services in turkey. International Family Planning
Children, 138(8), 783; https://doi.org/10.1001/ Perspectives, 27(2), 90. https://doi.org/10.2307/2673821
archpedi.1984.02140460073024; Milner, R. D. G., 22 Kohler, P. K., Manhart, L. E., & Lafferty, W. E. (2008).
Beard, R. W., Dunn, P., & Lashford, A. (1984). Limit Abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education
of fetal viability. The Lancet, 323(8385), 1079–1080. and the initiation of sexual activity and teen pregnancy.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(84)91488- Journal of Adolescent Health, 42(4), 344–351. https://
0; Behrman, R. E., Koops, B. L., Morgan, L. J., & doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.08.026
Battaglia, F. C. (1982). Neonatal mortality risk in 23 https://bit.ly/3hQtgYr
relation to birth weight and gestational age: Update. 24 https://bit.ly/373Nf3A
The Journal of Pediatrics, 101(6), 969–977. https:// 25 https://nyti.ms/3MKkR7c
doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3476(82)80024-3. 26 Nelson, C. A., Fox, N. A., & Zeanah, C. H. (2014). Romania’s
9 Beddis, I. R., Collins, P., Levy, N. M., Godfrey, S., & abandoned children: Deprivation, brain development, and
Silverman, M. (1979). New technique for servo- the struggle for recovery. Harvard University Press.
control of arterial oxygen tension in preterm 27 https://bit.ly/3vQMipH
infants. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 54(4), 28 Richardson, L. F. (1960). Statistics of Deadly
278–280. https://doi.org/10.1136/adc.54.4.278 Quarrels (p. 35). Pittsburgh: Boxwood Press.

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 17

 ABORTION MATTERS

ANTI-ABORTION
The Case for Life
BY DANIELLE D’SOUZA GILL

Abortion is one of the most relevant issues of our time. Myth: “You must be religious
As with many other subjects capable of arousing strong to be pro-life.”
emotion, people tend to assume that the U.S. public is
evenly divided, in this case between the “pro-choice” In the 2000s, I had the pleasure to get to know the famous
and “pro-life” positions. And some frequently cited atheist and prominent writer Christopher Hitchens
polling would lead you to believe that it is indeed the when my father and Hitchens engaged in a number of
case. For example, a recent Gallup poll found 49 percent public debates on the existence of God. In the January
self-identify as pro-choice and 47 percent as pro-life.1 1988 issue of Crisis Magazine, Hitchens wrote an article
But I consider these data to be misleading, seeing that titled “A Left-Wing Atheist’s Case Against Abortion.”4
more nuanced research paints quite a different picture. Hitchens was not only an atheist but a materialist, by
A 2021 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC which he meant that he believed the material body is
Center for Public Affairs Research shows that while 61 all there is. “As a materialist I hold that we don’t have
percent of Americans agree abortion should be legal in bodies, we are bodies,” he asserted. “And as an atheist, I
some or most circumstances in the first trimester, the believe that we don’t have the consolation of an afterlife.
vast majority of Americans (80 percent) oppose abor- We have only one life to live. So it had better be good.”
tion in the third trimester, and a significant majority (65
percent) even oppose abortion in the second trimester.2 Precisely because of that, Hitchens argued, we have
to give human life, including developing human life,
Such polling numbers help to clarify this issue and show protection. In other words, if we truly have only one
that most Americans do not align with the most extreme life to live, and that is this life on Earth, to stamp out
pro-choice view, which supports the right to even late someone’s existence is to commit the ultimate crime. If
term abortions. I am pro-life, and in my 2020 book, we are truly only bodies and without a soul, then every
The Choice: The Abortion Divide in America, I countered child that has been killed has not gone on to Heaven but
21 of the most common pro-choice arguments, from only to the grave. Those who do not believe in an afterlife
“a fetus is a cluster of cells” to “my body, my choice” would call this “pure annihilation.” It literally is, in every
to “abortion empowers women.”3 Here I will address a sense, the end. And this is irrevocable not only for the
few of the strongest of these arguments, and in so doing physical signs of life—your pulse, your brain waves—but
make the case against abortion, and thus, for life. also your consciousness, thoughts, experiences, and

18 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Illustration by Izhar Cohen

future; it ends your whole life story. Hitchens rightly they obviously are not. Every time we argue about
states that taking away someone else’s existence, without whether a human is “really human,” they always are.
cause, is unacceptable. Remarkably, Hitchens wrote:
When asked whether he would like to see Roe v. Wade
Look, once you allow that the occupant of the womb is overturned and the issue returned to the states, Hitchens
even potentially a life, it cuts athwart any glib invoca- said, “If the unborn is a candidate member of the next
tion of “the woman’s right to choose.” If the unborn is a generation, it means that it is society’s responsibility.”
candidate member of the next generation, it means that Thus, he concluded, “I would prefer to see abortion as a
it is society’s responsibility. I used to argue that if this is federal issue.” In fact, Hitchens believed that there should
denied, you might as well permit abortion in the third be a federal prohibition of abortion, with exceptions for
trimester. I wasn’t as surprised as perhaps I ought to rape, incest, and the life of the mother. “We need a new
have been when some feminists—only some, and partly compact between society and the woman. It’s a progres-
to annoy—said yes to that. They at least were prepared sive compact because it is aimed at the future generation.
to accept their own logic, and say that the unborn is It would restrict abortion in most circumstances. Now
nobody’s business but theirs. That is a very reactionary I know most women don’t like having to justify their
and selfish position, and it stems from this original circumstances to someone. ‘How dare you presume to
evasion about the fetus being “merely” an appendage. subject me to this?’ some will say. But, sorry, lady, this is
an extremely grave social issue, it’s everybody’s business.”
Hitchens also discusses the fact that so many pro-choice
advocates argue that the fetus behaves in ways that are Hitchens argued so persuasively, and I agree with
inhuman, drawing attention to how it doesn’t have the him, there must be a federal ban on abortion. We
same complex thoughts as we do. To this argument need Roe v. Wade overturned as well as a federal ban
Hitchens replies: “Dialectics will tell you that you can’t on abortion in the form of an amendment to the
be meaningfully inhuman unless you are also poten- Constitution. Just as the Thirteenth Amendment
tially human as well. It’s pointless to describe a rat or ended slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment gave
a snake, say, as behaving in an inhuman fashion.” We equal rights, the Fifteenth Amendment gave blacks
don’t argue about whether rats are human because the right to vote, and the Nineteenth Amendment

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 19

 gave women the right to vote, we need an amend- writing “Congratulations!” or “I’m so excited for you!”
ment that protects the rights of the unborn. Soon-to-be parents have gender-reveal parties and baby
showers, inviting their loved ones. People feel the tum-
A child in the womb must be protected from inten- my of the woman, and when they feel a kick, they say,
tional violence and killing. If the fetus truly is a person “She’s going to be an active one!” or “What a big guy!”
in the meaningful sense of the word, no state should
be allowed to invalidate its personhood and take its Are we all simply delusional? Should we say, “You are
life. The idea of abortion as a state’s rights issue does with fetus” or “Nice cluster of cells?” When it comes to
not line up with the nature of the fetus, which is the the abortion debate, we act like what’s inside the woman’s
fact that it has universal human dignity, just as you or tummy is a big mystery; meanwhile, as we debate this
I do. I recognize that Roe v. Wade must be overturned issue and go back and forth, babies are born every day.
They come into this world with
their pudgy faces and scrunched-
up eyes. Then, before you know
IF THE FETUS TRULY IS A PERSON it, they’re crying, laughing, and
walking, and they keep growing
IN THE MEANINGFUL SENSE OF until they are the same size as the
rest of us. To act as if the nature of
THE WORD, NO STATE SHOULD the entity in the womb is entire-
ly unknown to us is absurd.
BE ALLOWED TO INVALIDATE ITS
The abortion debate often revolves
PERSONHOOD AND TAKE ITS LIFE. around the question of when life
begins. Let’s take a step back from
the abortion issue and think about
first, and the issue will then be a state’s issue, and that life as such. We begin with these basic questions: What is
will be the first victory. But we must not stop there. A pregnancy? and What does it mean to be pregnant? When a
federal ban is needed in order to protect the unborn. woman takes a pregnancy test and the little stick comes
up pink or is marked with a plus sign, what does this
I begin this case for pro-life with Christopher Hitchens mean? Clearly something in her body has changed. We
because I know that he is widely respected and admired can all agree on that. She is getting morning sickness, her
by readers of SkEPTiC magazine. Importantly, Hitchens period stops, she’s feeling tired, and her belly is grow-
was not just indulging his sometime tendency to be the ing. Let’s take a look inside. Wow, the ultrasound shows
“rebel, even among rebels,” nor was Hitchens alone in a tiny human in there! So, what is happening here?
his views. Another forceful advocate for the pro-life
position was the atheist and human rights activist Nat Consider the first trimester. According to the Mayo
Hentoff, who argued that all human rights need to be Clinic, in the first trimester alone, the baby’s toes,
unequivocally protected, and if we compromise on hu- fingernails, bendable elbows, nose, head, hormones,
man rights of any group, we endanger all human rights.5 and heartbeat develop.6 Much has been made recently
I know that many pro-choice advocates assume that the of detecting the fetus’s heartbeat at around six weeks.
only basis for the pro-life position is religious. Not so. In fact, there is evidence that it starts beating earli-
er, but in any case, from that point onward, the heart
never stops beating until the moment the person passes
Myth: “A fetus is a cluster of cells.” away, a continuity from beginning to end. In just the
span from conception to birth, the baby’s heart beats
People routinely post pictures on social media, an- about 54 million times.7 The blood its heart pumps
nouncing “I’m pregnant” with captions such as “Family is not blood from the mother but blood the baby has
of 3” with a photo of an ultrasound. Many couples post produced.8 The heartbeat is the point at which we
photos throughout the pregnancy and keep people unequivocally know there is life there. To say that the
updated as their baby develops. Friends and family hit baby is not a person when it has a heartbeat goes against
the “Like” button and comment on the photos, usually science and our intuitions of how we “determine life.”

20 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

About six weeks after conception, modern technology their ultrasound. But pro-choice advocates will often
can detect the baby’s brain waves.9 The heartbeat and argue for the opposite—that it is better that a pregnant
brain waves are both commonly referred to as “vital woman not see the child in the womb before proceeding
signs,” that indicate whether or not someone is alive. If with an abortion. While they claim this is “cruel” and
someone’s heart stops beating and they are brain-dead, “inhumane,” the real reason they don’t want her to see
then they are dead. However, the absence of only one the ultrasound is that once a woman sees her baby, it will
of these vital signs means the person is still alive, and make her reconsider going through with an abortion. In
not dead. For example, if a person’s heart is beating other words, science, truth, and conscience all point her
but their brain is not functioning, they are alive. When in the direction of allowing the baby to live. Often, while
a person’s heart has stopped and needs to be revived the abortion doctors can hear the baby’s heartbeat go from
while the brain is functioning, that person is considered a beating pulse to silence, the woman does not hear this
alive. So for us to categorize a baby with a beating heart and is thus shielded from the reality that there’s a tiny
of its own, along with its own brain waves as “nothing human inside her. The abortionist can see the baby’s gen-
more than a cluster of cells,” is factually incorrect. der, but the woman does not. Women are purposely led
through the abortion process so that they remain in such
By week six, the baby’s fingers have formed on the hands.10 denial, and so only later in life, long after the procedure
Even though the woman usually doesn’t feel it until later, and upon reflection, do many women realize the loss of
the baby begins to move around five to six weeks into the the child that would have been their son or daughter.
pregnancy. The baby can hiccup by seven weeks, and the
diaphragm muscle is completely formed, with intermit- Pro-choice advocates used to make the “it’s a cluster
tent breathing motions beginning. About eight weeks into of cells” argument, but to be honest, that argument is
pregnancy, touching the baby will typically lead to squint- outdated. No modern person who accepts science as their
ing, jaw movement, grasping motions, and toe pointing.11 basis for reasoning can deny that the child in the womb is
in fact a human being. It is particularly telling that when
At about nine weeks, the baby has developed a unique the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case was being argued
set of fingerprints and doctors are able to distinguish before the Supreme Court in December of 2021, neither
the sex of the baby. This is typically when the parents the Justices nor Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar
find out the gender and you find gender announce- (representing the Biden administration) disputed the
ments and gender reveals posted on social media. The fact that we are talking about a human life. No member
baby is now producing its own reproductive cells. If it of the High Court, neither Justice Kagan, nor Justice
is a girl, she is already developing a uterus and ova- Sotomayor, implied that the fetus is a cluster of cells.13
ries. At about 10 weeks in, the kidneys and gallbladder
are functioning. By the 12th week, the baby can cry.12
All this development occurs in the first trimester. Myth: “There is a difference
between a human being and a
By the end of the first trimester, the fetus now has every person. Even if the fetus is human,
organ it will ever have, throughout its life, and devel- it is not a person with rights.”
opment of these organs merely continues. Terms such
as “fetus” merely describe the stage of development Once the above analysis is understood, the pro-choice
the human is in, not unlike later stages of develop- argument often shifts from the “cluster of cells” argu-
ment: infant, toddler, teenager, or adult. We continue ment to the “it may be a human, but it’s not a person”
to develop for many years, and the brain is not finished argument. As such, it concedes the humanity of the
developing until our mid-20s. If a person is at a different unborn (member of the species Homo sapiens) but
developmental stage, then what we are discussing is an denies its personhood. This lays the groundwork for
issue of form, not an issue of nature. A child does not pro-choice advocates to argue that the Founders never
“become human” as it grows older. It already is human. intended for rights to apply to the unborn. When we
read the Constitution, for example, it speaks of persons.
We don’t have to take this on faith—we can see this hu- The Fifth Amendment, for instance, talks about the due
man with the naked eye thanks to the power of the ultra- process rights of persons. The Fourteenth Amendment
sound. If pro-choice activists truly valued science as well speaks of equal protection of the laws, which applies to
as transparency, then they would insist on women seeing persons. This creates an opening for abortion advocates

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 to say that human beings are different from persons. Those who are pro-life found this morally wrong and
While being human is a given, “personhood” is a emotionally cold. Even those who are pro-choice and in
special status. So, our rights—to life, liberty, and the Secretary Clinton’s camp criticized her for the mistake of
pursuit of happiness—accrue not to human beings per referring to the unborn as “a person,” because they know
se but only to persons as understood under the law. that as soon as you refer to someone as a person, even
by accident, it becomes problematic to argue that the
In this view, our rights are conferred by the law, which person can be lawfully killed. This pro-choice argument
is to say, by the Constitution. And so the law, and indeed denies the notions of intrinsic or inalienable rights.
society, can determine who has rights and who doesn’t. There are only the rights that are conferred by the state.
Roe v. Wade, in a sense, pro-
claims the non-personhood
of the fetus prior to viability.

BY THE END OF THE FIRST TRIMESTER, What is the difference

between a “human being”
THE FETUS NOW HAS EVERY ORGAN and a “person”? If we really
think about these two terms,
IT WILL EVER HAVE, THROUGHOUT we realize that they are
indistinguishable. When it
ITS LIFE, AND DEVELOPMENT OF comes to your human rights
or your basic or natural
THESE ORGANS MERELY CONTINUES. rights, all human beings are
persons, and all persons are
human beings. As soon as
we differentiate between
Rights become something that is granted not by a higher “humans” and “persons,” we set the stage for humanity’s
power but by the state. And if the state decides that some most perverse horrors, such as when slave owners argued
people should have rights, then they do; and if the state that blacks are humans but not persons, and therefore
decides others should not have rights, then they don’t. can be owned property. By saying someone is a human
Pro-choice advocates typically see personhood as some- but not a person, you are saying this as a justification
thing that can be debated, as something that is arbitrary. to do with them as you wish—torturing them, killing
them, using their skin for lampshades. And indeed,
A common pro-choice argument is that personhood this is exactly what pro-choice activists believe can be
begins at birth—a human fetus spends nine months in done to the human in the womb, airily saying that “it
the womb as “a cluster of cells” and then poof, he or she may be a human, but it doesn’t embody personhood.”
is a person at the moment of birth. Others say person-
hood is achieved when the baby becomes “viable”—a What we’re talking about here is an important distinction
point that is always shifting around on the gestational between natural rights on the one hand and civil rights
timetable. Still others say it is a continuum, where the on the other. Civil rights, of course, are rights conferred
fetus gets more rights as it develops. By this reasoning, by the state. But here I want to focus on natural rights,
a baby who is one month old has less value than a baby which are different from civil rights. Natural rights are
who is eight months old because the eight-month-old rights that we have by virtue of being human; just by vir-
has been around longer. And so rights, in a sense, only tue of being a person. These are rights that we have, you
become manifest at the time that suits the advocate. may say, prior to being part of a civil community. These
Only at that moment does this human become a person are rights that we have, as the early modern philoso-
and attains rights. Before that, they have no rights. phers used to say, in the state of nature. That’s why the
Declaration of Independence calls these rights—the right
Hillary Clinton has stated that she believes that rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—inalienable.
of personhood begin only at birth. Here is what she They’re inalienable in the sense that we can’t sell them
said when she was running for president in 2016: “The or barter them away, even if we wanted to. America’s
unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.”14 very foundation is rooted in these inalienable rights.

22 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher who conceived intervening in choice and I think this skepticism of
of a virtually all-powerful state in his highly influential government makes sense because most things are better
1588 Leviathan, says that we turn over our rights to the resolved by the local community and by the individual.
state when we enter a social compact. But, he argues, It seems, then, that Mill’s argument would fall on the
we only owe allegiance to the state when it protects our pro-choice side. But not so. He says, “No one pretends
life and safety. And if the state doesn’t give us the right that actions should be as free as opinions.”15 To limit
to life, then we have every cause to rebel and resist. In the mind is to limit individuality and uniqueness, so it
other words, we confer some of our rights to the state in should never be limited. However, he finds that there is
exchange for protection of life, but when that protection a limit to freedom of action; it can never be absolute.
is withheld or denied, then the deal is off. The right to
life is the fundamental right. It is the right that ultimate- The central tenet of libertarianism states that my right
ly makes all other rights possible. Without it, we have to swing my arm only extends as far as your face. In
nothing. It is the most natural of natural rights and the other words, my rights stop when they begin to harm
most human of human rights. These reasons are why we or affect others. So freedom is paramount, but to a
speak of the Right-to-Life movement. It is a movement point. Why to a point? Because harming someone or
that is fighting for the most basic right of all—life. killing them is to take away that person’s freedom. You
cannot, in the name of freedom, take away anoth-
er’s freedom. So while the government should stay
Myth: “My Body, My Choice.” out of most things in order to allow for maximum
individual freedom, a true libertarian would have to
If I had to pick a single mantra we hear most often agree that if there’s one thing the government must
from pro-choice advocates today it is “my body, my stop, it is the killing of other innocent people and
choice.” They try to muddy the waters by arguing that the robbing of their freedom. Rand Paul, one of the
the woman is exercising power and exercising choice most outspoken libertarians today, says, “I am 100
over her body alone. But is it only “her body” she is re- percent pro-life.”16 Abortion comes to the forefront
ferring to? Is it her body she wants to abort? Of course of our minds when we think of the fact that today in
not. Here she is referring to the fetus’s body. She’s not America, people can be legally killed at whim, their
talking about removing an appendix or tonsils. A fetus freedom and future obliterated. It might seem as if we
is not a body part but rather a living being with its own wouldn’t be able to think of a similar scenario, where
heartbeat and body parts. No matter in which devel- the side that strangely advocates for a horror such
opmental stage the fetus, at no point is it “an organ.” as this calls themselves “pro-choice.” But we can.
The “my body, my choice” argument breaks down when
we realize that during pregnancy, there are two sets When we think about American history, we find a
of body parts—those of the mother and those of the parallel that is almost identical to the abortion debate
child. The fetus is inside her body temporarily during today—the debates over slavery leading up to the
the nine months of pregnancy, but it is not “her body.” Civil War, most notably those of Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen Douglas.17 Both men were running for the
Let’s turn to the issue of choice. We have a whole Senate in Illinois, which turned out to be a preview of
movement that calls itself not the “pro-abortion their presidential campaigns against each other four
movement” but “the pro-choice movement.” And pro- years later. Lincoln was the Republican; Douglas—the
choice, on the face of it, is basically the notion that Democrat. With regard to slavery, we might think of
choices are good and choices should be wide open. Douglas as pro-choice. In these debates, he made clear
Each individual should be able to make her or his own that he’s neither for slavery nor against it, and instead
choice, the argument goes, particularly on something proposed a democratic solution of agreeing to disagree
as important as pregnancy. The ultimate champion of and embracing the principle of choice through what
choice, and champion of freedom, is the philosopher Douglas called “popular sovereignty.” By this he meant
John Stuart Mill. He articulated these ideas in his to let every community, territory, and state decide for
1859 work On Liberty. As one of the fathers of utilitar- itself if it wanted slavery. In this way, Douglas contin-
ianism and libertarianism, he lays out the doctrine of ued, we’re able to have a society in which different sets
limited government and maximal individual freedom. of values can coexist. By affirming a pro-choice slavery
There’s a wise libertarian suspicion of the government position, Douglas saw himself building a framework that

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 23

 is very consistent with the core principle of America The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep, for
and of the Founders: the principle of freedom. which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his Liberator,
while the wolf denounces him for the same act as
Let’s now consider Lincoln’s refutation of Douglas the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the
because Lincoln makes, I think, one of the strongest wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.19
arguments not just against slavery but, as it turns out,
for the pro-life position as well. Lincoln agreed that Ultimately, then, the pro-choice position is a con-
choice is a good thing, but choice always depends on tradiction in terms because it legitimizes a choice
what it is that is being chosen. If a Black man is like that cancels out the choices of people who have
a hog, then sure, it makes sense to choose whether not even had a chance to make any choices in the
you want to buy or sell it. But on the other hand, if world at all. Regardless of personal belief in God, the
the Black man is a human being, that same argument taking of an innocent life is a case where the govern-
now collapses. Why? The answer is in the difference ment should intervene. Why? Because it is the core
between a human being and a hog. For Lincoln, the function of government to protect our right to life,
difference is this: we do not, as human beings, have upon which all other rights flow. The right to life,
the right to use choice to deny others their life choices. liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as outlined in
We don’t have the right to use our choice to cancel out the Declaration of Independence, is sacrosanct.
the choices of other people. As he famously said, “As
I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”18
Myth: “Abortion is never an ideal
This argument applies with equal force to abortion as choice, but I give preference to the
it does to slavery. We don’t have the right to choose woman, the person already here.”
to enslave others, and neither do we have the right
to choose to kill others. If we do claim this right, the This argument concedes that abortion is evil, but it’s the
right to enslave or the right to kill, Lincoln argued lesser of two evils. It goes like this: there’s something
worse than an abortion, and
that is destroying the emotional
and personal life of the mother.
This argument is typically made
“NO ONE WANTS AN ABORTION AS not by the woman having the
abortion but by a third party
SHE WANTS AN ICE CREAM CONE defending the woman’s right to
have an abortion. I’ll often hear
OR A PORSCHE. SHE WANTS AN something along the lines of
“We can’t really understand what
ABORTION AS AN ANIMAL, CAUGHT she’s going through. We can’t
fully grasp her situation. She’ll
IN A TRAP, WANTS TO GNAW OFF make the best decision for her
circumstances. Admittedly, she
ITS OWN LEG.” —Frederica Mathewes-Green might have made decisions that
have put her in this predica-
ment, but we aren’t perfect;
people make mistakes. Women
that what we’re embracing is the right of the powerful shouldn’t have to live with a mistake. No one should
to exploit the vulnerable. And, worse still, is that this be made to raise children against their will.”
exploitation is then masked in the language of freedom.
Lincoln very poignantly said that the wolf and the sheep This is one argument that Michael Shermer makes in
both use the language of freedom, but they mean two his article defending the pro-choice position in this
different things by it. For the wolf, the freedom is the issue, and I’ve heard similar arguments from others,
freedom to eat the sheep. For the sheep, freedom is such as Dave Rubin, host of The Rubin Report, who has
the freedom to be free of the wolf. To quote Lincoln: described himself as “begrudgingly pro-choice.”20 They

24 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

agree that the fetus does have a claim to life, but they emotional pain of having the abortion itself. Let’s
say that when weighing the claim of the fetus against compare adoption and abortion, since those are the
the claim of the woman, the woman takes precedence, two options women typically consider in the case of
that is, the woman’s life should be prioritized over the an unwanted pregnancy. Should anyone be forced to
child’s. Here you have two lives pitted against each raise a child against their will? Of course not. No one is
other, and while they acknowledge that abortion is forced to because there’s always the option of adoption.
not ideal, they believe that forcing the woman to go
through an unwanted pregnancy is worse. After all, Frederica Mathewes-Green, a writer and former pro-
they say, she knows herself better than anyone else so choice feminist herself, noted poignantly, “No one
we must leave this up to her. Here the woman’s right wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a
not to be forced to complete her pregnancy has greater Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a
weight than the unspoken claim of the fetus to live. trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”21 Many women who
get an abortion choose to do so because they feel they
It reminds me of the old conundrum of two people in have no other option. Abortion clinics do a dishonest
a lifeboat. The lifeboat is not strong enough to hold service to frightened women who are in a desperate
both. One person has to go overboard. It’s not going situation and looking for answers by not promoting
to be easy, but you try to choose the lesser evil. It may the option of adoption more. Many women, especially
seem shocking that pro-choice people compare life among the poor, don’t even know how to go about giving
in this way. It seems like a heartless and crude utili- their child up for adoption, and most of these clinics
tarian calculus. How can you really weigh the value don’t educate them on it. When it comes to abortion,
of one life against another? When someone says, “I many women tell themselves they just want to get in
choose to side with the person already here,” they are there, get it done, get it over with, and forget it ever
saying they choose the woman because if the child happened. But this is nothing more than the memory
is aborted, then the woman is freed up to do other trying to erase itself, almost as if through consumption
things. Favoring her, the argument might go, is better of alcohol or drugs one can numb oneself and blot out
for society. But this utilitarian comparison is not fair. reality. Of course, memory doesn’t disappear in this
First, this is not a lifeboat situation where there are convenient way. It stays with many women for the
two people and only one can survive. We’re not in a rest of their lives, even when they don’t want it to.
“death-guaranteed scenario” where one party must die.
If you take away another person’s life, if you become
Leaving aside here such cases as pregnancies with their judge, jury, and executioner, that is going to
medical complications in which the fetus is a deadly be a source of deep, emotional pain, very likely far
threat to the life of the mother and there is no way both more than if you had birthed the child and given it
can survive, for most cases we are not comparing the up for adoption. If you know that you are choosing
death of the mother, on the one hand, with the death of the death of your child intentionally and directly for
the fetus, on the other. We’re comparing the emotional your own benefit, don’t forget to factor in the emo-
pain of the woman, on the one hand, with the death of tional burden you will bear for making that choice.
the fetus, on the other. That’s what’s on each side of the I know many women who have lived the rest of
scale, and it seems rational to conclude that death is a their lives with this painful skeleton in their past.
far worse consequence than temporary emotional pain.
At least after nine months of pregnancy, you can know
that in giving up the baby for adoption, it is going to
Myth: “Carrying out an unwanted people who want the child. Even if those nine months
pregnancy causes too much are the worst of your entire life and you truly believe you
emotional pain for the woman.” are enduring deep emotional suffering, this will possibly
produce less emotional pain for you than killing the
What about the emotional pain of a woman with an child. Among women who have given their child up for
unwanted pregnancy? The problem when we hear adoption, almost none say they wish they had aborted it.
this argument is that it examines one type of emotion-
al pain—the emotional pain of having a child—but As a result of this lie, the emotional toll associated
doesn’t compare it to its counterpart, which is the with abortion is often buried deep or hidden behind

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 25

 closed doors. Pro-choice advocates often don’t want The fact that there are 36 families waiting to adopt
to talk about women who suffer emotionally from a child for every 1 child available shows that there
abortion because they don’t want women to think is a vast desire for adoption.22 While abortion is on
too much about what abortion actually is. If wom- demand, adoption is at least a yearlong process. It’s
en do suffer emotionally from an abortion, they sad that adoptive parents wait so long to adopt a child,
will say that’s just a personal feeling and it doesn’t hoping that a mother picks them. The CDC reports
bear any weight on a woman’s “right to choose.” Is that over 57 percent of couples who struggle with
it ethical for doctors who perform abortions to lead fertility treatments consider adoption, and yet many
women through those doors and into that operat- of these couples never get to adopt because there is
ing room without explaining what the emotional such a shortage of children being given up for adop-
tolls of the procedure may be? No, it is not. tion.23 If organizations like Planned Parenthood were
truly focused on “parenthood” as their name suggests,
While abortion and adoption both provide an answer, as well as on women’s health, then they should be
these two options have entirely different results. promoting adoption as a viable alternative to abortion.
While abortion leads to death for the child, adoption
results in life. Abortion takes the woman’s current
situation, already difficult, and makes it worse by Myth: “The debate is between
leaving her emotionally scarred. Adoption offers a the religious and the secular.”
solution for both mother and child. While abortion
is punitive and involves permanent loss, adoption is To return to where I began this analysis on the matter
redemptive and allows for the child to have a life. of religion and pro-life arguments, some pro-choice
advocates dismiss pro-life arguments on the (incor-
The reality is that both options—abortion and adop- rect) assumption that they are based solely on religious
tion—tug on the heartstrings and are emotionally dogma. They say pro-life advocates based their position
difficult for the mother. No one denies this. And even upon the Bible, or some other religious text or dogma,
setting aside the difficulty of abortion, adoption isn’t and so to impose that argument on the public violates
easy. It takes strength to give up your child to another the norms of democracy and specifically violates the
family and to say goodbye. Adoption is a form of love doctrine of separation of church and state. Liz Hayes,
because it involves self-sacrifice. Whenever we look at who writes for Americans United, puts it this way:
“The aggressive abortion ban bills
being considered in states across the
country may not explicitly mention
EVEN IF YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN religion, but it’s clear that these
bills and the restrictive policies they
GOD, YOU CAN BEGIN WITH YOUR propose are religiously motivated.”24

INTUITION THAT HARMING OR Some of what Hayes says here is true,

inasmuch as when you go to a pro-life
KILLING OTHERS IS WRONG. demonstration or rally you do see a
lot of religious people there—nuns,
people saying the rosary, evangelical
Christians praying to end abortion. If
situations of adoption, we see that many people were you listen to pro-life speeches, you will hear references
putting thought into this child: the mother who chose to God. Clearly, there is a religious aspect to this debate.
to have the child and sought out a plan for its future, The Catholic Church has consistently opposed abor-
the adoption agency or organization that facilitated tion throughout its history, and evangelical churches
the process, and the family that adopted the child represent a similar perspective. Orthodox Jews are
and awaited its arrival. So we see that lots of love and strongly pro-life as well. So there certainly is a religious
thought were poured into this child and its welfare. contingent within the broader pro-life coalition.
In both situations (abortion and adoption) you are
separating from your child. But taking away the child’s But I want to take a step back from religion as such,
life is entirely different than giving it a better life. and instead think about morality. We must remember

26 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 that there is a sense of morality in each of us that the back or on the thigh. Our laws acknowledge this
precedes a belief in a religion. When we think about intuition, and killing a woman and her unborn child
morality, we can think of the morality that comes from is charged and adjudicated as a double homicide.
revelation or sacred scripture, or you might say from
“on High,” and then there is the morality that comes
to us from conscience. The morality that comes to us My Appeal: Let’s Unite
from conscience is innate to every human being. Those
who lack a conscience are considered sociopaths or In the many rights revolutions we have witnessed in
psychopaths; in fact, in legal terms, if extreme enough recent centuries, we have heard activists say that civil
we don’t hold them accountable for their behavior rights and women’s rights are human rights. Well, I
because we find them incapable of knowing the dif- argue that abortion is a human rights issue because
ference between right and wrong. Most of us don’t fall fetus’s rights are human rights. In this sense, every-
into this category (and the insanity plea in the crim- one can be pro-life because of what we see, because of
inal justice system is rarely successful). Morality and scientific and medical facts, because of observation,
conscience are part of the human experience, whether because of empathy, and because of conscience.
or not we choose to be religious. We all have that little
voice in our head telling us not to do something bad. My challenge to atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and hu-
This doesn’t mean we listen to it; we may ignore it, manists reading this article is, after careful and critical
even contort it, but the voice is in there somewhere. thinking upon all the evidence and all the reasoning,
to take up the pro-life torch. Join forces with your
The Judeo-Christian worldview argues for the dignity religious neighbor on this unifying issue. I often hear
of every person, including and especially every child, atheists and humanists argue in debates that they
but even if you do not believe in God you can begin don’t need religion to be “good people,” so my chal-
with your intuition that harming others or killing them lenge to them is to act on this retort! If you want to
is wrong. You see someone kicking a dog, you recoil. be a good person, then fight for a person smaller and
Beating an old lady over the head…you know that’s weaker than yourself. Prove to Christians, Jews, and
wrong. You know this naturally, in a sense, without other religious people that you aren’t the cold, heart-
even having to think about it. If you see a man with less person your opponents may paint you out to be.
a knife stabbing a pregnant woman in the belly you Demonstrate to them that you do in fact value human
know that this is something more than stabbing her in life—even and especially that of the most vulnerable.

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/3JR9OqE Clinically oriented embryology. Elsevier. 18 Lincoln, A. (1858/1953). In R. P.

2 https://bit.ly/3tHtZSj 10 Sproul, R.C. (2010). Basler (Ed.), The Collected Works
3 D’Souza Gill, D. (2020). The Choice: 11 Moore, K., Persaud, T.V.N., of Abraham Lincoln (p. 532, Vol.
The Abortion Divide in America. Center & Torchia M.G. (2020). 2). Rutgers University Press.
Street/Hachette Book Group. 12 Sproul, R.C. (2010). 19 Lincoln, A. (1864/1992). In G. Vidal
4 https://bit.ly/3JFNJLD 13 https://bit.ly/3JKuznX (Ed.) Selected Speeches and Writings
5 https://bit.ly/3Dza5fX 14 https://nyti.ms/35eV71G By Abraham Lincoln (pp. 422–423).
6 https://mayocl.in/36roJty 15 Mill, J. S. (1859/1978). On Liberty New York: Vintage Books.
7 https://bit.ly/3Lld528 (p. 53). Hackett Publishing. 20 https://youtu.be/
8 Sproul, R. C. (2010). Abortion: A 16 https://bit.ly/3NpDspi s9IwamztdqA?t=4193
Rational Look at an Emotional Issue (p. 17 Jaffa, H. (2009). Crisis of the House 21 https://bit.ly/3JQjz8H
54). Reformation Trust Publishing. Divided: An Interpretation of the 22 https://bit.ly/3qChndd
9 Moore, K., Persaud, T.V.N., & Torchia Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. 23 Ibid.
M.G. (2020). The developing human: University of Chicago Press. 24 https://bit.ly/36QV2Sv

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 27

 ABORTION MATTERS

INEQUALITY
& REJECTION
A Data-Driven Look Into
Men’s Attitudes Toward Abortion
BY KEVIN MCCAFFREE & ANONDAH SAIDE

Although abortion is often framed as a women’s issue, In short, on the typically Republican pro-life side,
men make up half of the electorate and are more often advocates maintain that abortion is an act of vio-
pro-life.1 The legislative branch of the U.S. government lence—murder—carried out on a (developing) hu-
is predominantly male: there are currently 125 women man being. They argue that once a human being is
serving in the House (28.7 percent) and 24 in the Senate developing in a woman’s womb it ought to be con-
(24 percent),2 and five of the nine justices serving on the sidered legally independent of her and therefore
Supreme Court of the United States are men, four are has its own rights to be protected from harm.
women. So, understanding the correlates of men’s support
for—or opposition to—abortion is certainly worthwhile, On the typically Democrat pro-choice side, advocates
though often overlooked in the public discourse. Scientists maintain that whether or not to have an abortion is a
collaborating with the Skeptic Research Center are not medical decision to be made by the mother and that,
medical doctors or experts in embryology. We cannot absent safe access to abortion, many women would be
begin to adjudicate the tense and important debate about forced to resort to dangerous and unregulated methods to
abortion, but as social scientists we hope to shed light on end their pregnancies. They make the counterargument
some under-reported findings that may help the public that women’s ability to pursue long-term educational
and policymakers better understand this complex issue. and career goals would be compromised if control over
their reproductive decisions were unduly regulated.
The stakes here are undeniably high. Depending on
which side of the debate one takes, either women’s bodily To help advance the national discussion on abortion
autonomy or acts of murder hang in the balance. To find attitudes, we report here on attitudes toward abor-
some empirical ground on which to make a firm decision, tion along two dimensions often left out of studies
activists debate the degree of humanness inherent in on this topic: the degree of inequality one perceives
embryos and fetuses. Pro-choice advocates insist that em- in society and one’s sensitivity to social rejection. We
bryos in early stages of development are not consciously measured both respondents’ perceived level of inequal-
aware, whereas pro-life advocates maintain that a mea- ity and their social rejection sensitivity using estab-
surable heartbeat early in development is a sign of life. lished index measures developed in prior research.

28 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 Average Perceptions of Inequality Average Sensitivity to Rejection

High Sensitivity
High Inequality

Low Sensitivity
Low Inequality

Disagree Unsure Agree Disagree Unsure Agree

“Abortion should always be the woman’s choice.” “Abortion should always be the woman’s choice.”

Figure 1: All three groups were different from each other at p < .01. Figure 2: The “disagree” group was different from the other two
The relationship between perceptions of inequality and abortion groups at p < .01. The relationship between sensitivity to rejection
attitudes was small-to-medium based on interpretation conventions.* and abortion attitudes is small based on interpretation conventions.*

The data for this brief inquiry came from the Skeptic further research and discussion. The data indicate that
Research Center’s Social and Political Attitudes Survey. men’s attitudes about abortion are related, in part, to
This survey was conducted in October 2019 and included their general perception of social inequality, not just as
a nationally representative sample of 731 adults. After regards “women’s issues.” Attitudes about abortion, then,
narrowing the sample to include only men, our remain- may be one node in a nexus of political attitudes oriented
ing pool for analysis included 360 people. These men toward reducing perceived levels of inequality in society.
were roughly evenly distributed based on their political The finding regarding rejection sensitivity, though small,
orientation: 28.6 percent identified as “liberal,” 36.6 was also intriguing. One possibility is that men, fearing
percent as “conservative” and 34.7 percent as “moderate,” romantic rejection from women, tend to conform their
and were an average age of 48 years. Nearly half (46.9 political attitudes to be in line with what they think the
percent) of our sample had obtained a bachelor’s degree “typical” woman around them would prefer. Another
or higher and the median household (not individual) possibility is that pro-choice attitudes are now more
income for the sample ranged between $75,000–$99,999. prevalent than are pro-life attitudes—in general, amongst
Relative to national averages, our final sample of men most people—conferring a social “normativity” to the
is less formally educated3 but slightly higher in house- former over the latter (though data indicate that attitudes
hold income.4 See our supplemental materials for are fairly evenly split1). If this is the case, those men
more information about our sample and measures.5 who are more rejection-sensitive may be conforming to
what they perceive to be general societal consensus.
We found a significant effect for inequality perceptions,
such that men who perceived society as containing greater *Error bars in figures represent standard error.
amounts of inequality expressed stronger agreement that
abortion should always be a woman’s choice (Figure 1). We
were also able to detect a small but statistically significant
effect of rejection sensitivity on men’s attitudes toward REFERENCES
abortion. Men who reported higher levels of sensitivity
to social rejection were also more likely to believe that 1 https://bit.ly/36hdxzz
abortion should always be a woman’s choice (Figure 2). 2 https://bit.ly/3Lv2Atd
3 https://bit.ly/3D6IZfM
While not drawing any broad conclusions from these 4 https://bit.ly/3qxlE1H
results, we do offer the analysis as a means for stimulating 5 https://bit.ly/36ino8j

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 29

 COLUMN

A CLOSER
LOOK
Big Pharma’s Cynical Search
for a Female Sex Drug
BY CAROL TAVRIS

I’ve been thinking about sex late- for women. Finding such a drug is the way, it “failed to improve sexual desire
ly, and so have you. Well, only in Holy Grail of Modern Medications, measured with a daily electronic diary.”
an appropriately skeptical way, of and if you can get FDA approval, that
course. It has always fascinated me, as adds three or four mini-miracles, all Boehringer’s failure begat Sprout
a social scientist, that for an activi- in one little pill. Thanks to tireless pharmaceuticals, which bought the
ty allegedly so “natural”—a simple activism by skeptical, scientifical- rights to flibanserin and resubmitted it
biological activity like eating, singing, ly-minded sexologists and researchers, for FDA approval in 2013, only to have
or walking—that sex is so compli- organized by Leonore Tiefer and the it rejected yet again. The FDA again
cated. If it’s a “normal” part of life, New View Campaign, “Challenging concluded that treatment differenc-
let alone “simple,” why do people the Medicalization of Sex,” the es between women on the drug and
throng therapists’ offices and buy nine first such drug, Procter & Gamble’s those on a placebo were trivial and
zillion books to answer their question, Intrinsa (a testosterone patch), failed that any possible benefits did not
“Am I normal?” Yes, you are, buddy, in 2004 to get FDA approval because “clearly outweigh safety concerns.”
and also no, you aren’t. Compared it didn’t work and wasn’t safe.
to whom, when, and where? Sprout’s failure begat renewed determi-
Procter & Gamble’s failure begat nation, and the company resubmitted
A few years ago I wrote an essay for Boehringer Ingelheim’s efforts to get flibanserin to the FDA in 2015. This
this column on the manufacture of approval for flibanserin (now known time the FDA approved the drug—even
“female sexual dysfunction” and, as Addyi) in 2009. The FDA’s advisers though there was no new evidence of
forgive me, the cockamamie statistics voted unanimously against the drug the drug’s benefits or safety. Within
being used to justify it. I know that because it increases “substantial som- two days, Valeant Pharmaceuticals had
readers have been panting ever since nolence and dangerous interactions bought flibanserin for one billion dol-
for a followup on the pursuit by Big with alcohol and other drugs” com- lars.1 According to a 2018 meta-analysis,
Pharma to find a libido-boosting drug pared with placebo. And oh yes, by the women taking flibanserin “experienced

30 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

0.5 more satisfying sexual encounters can the FDA not approve your next is to stop Americans from worrying
a month and scored 0.3 points higher ineffective drug without withdrawing that they aren’t normal and that they
on a 5-point sexual desire scale.”2 approval for the former one? There shouldn’t have to take anything less
was no public advisory committee than 100 percent sexual satisfaction
I’m not making this up. hearing for bremelanotide, apparently lying down. Although lying down
because once the FDA had approved might be a good place to start.
Once again, the mere fact that em- Addyi by the slimmest of margins, on
pirical research doesn’t give you the the scarcest of evidence, every other
answer you want doesn’t deter you new drug for “female sexual dysfunc-
from persisting, especially with one tion” would have to get a pass as well. REFERENCES
billion dollars at hand. Accordingly,
in 2019, the FDA approved a new The mindless reliance on precedent, 1 Agarwal, R., & Baid, R. (2018).
formulation, bremelanotide (Vyleesi), even when a drug is shown to be Flibanserin: A controversial drug
a drug that a woman must inject into ineffective and potentially harmful, for female hypoactive sexual desire
her abdomen or thigh an hour or so should be a wakeup call for skeptical disorder. Industrial Psychiatry
before sex (now that’s fun foreplay awareness, because it is so easy to rely Journal, 27(1), 154–157. https://
for you), in spite of its adverse side on precedent for decisions, practices, doi.org/10.4103/ipj.ipj_20_16
effects, the most common of which are and beliefs rather than have to re-in- 2 Jaspers, L., Feys, F., Bramer, W., Franco,
nausea (40 percent), facial flushing terrogate them at regular intervals. O., Leusink, P., & Laan, E. (2016).
(20 percent), and headache (11 per- But wait, wasn’t this drug approved Efficacy and Safety of Flibanserin
cent). Four in ten women who take this some years ago? It must be fine now. for the Treatment of Hypoactive
drug feel nauseous? That’s an erotic Sexual Desire Disorder in Women.
high for you. “Although the trials met The irony is that there actually is JAMA Internal Medicine, 176(4),
statistical significance for change in a medication that improves sexual 453–462. https://doi.org/10.1001/
sexual desire elements and distress functioning for women in menopause jamainternmed.2015.8565
related to sexual desire, the clinical and beyond: estrogen.5 Approximately 3 Mayer, D., & Lynch, S. (2020).
benefit may only be modest,” said 80 percent of midlife women suffer Bremelanotide: New Drug Approved
one review.3 Actually, women scored from menopausal symptoms for an for Treating Hypoactive Sexual Desire
slightly higher on desire but did not average of 7.4 years, including loss Disorder. Annals of Pharmacotherapy,
have more satisfying sexual experiences. of sexual desire and vaginal atrophy, 54(7), 684–690. https://doi.
“Modest” benefits, I have learned, which causes pain during intercourse. org/10.1177/1060028019899152
usually means “fuhgeddaboudit.” Women were scared off estrogen in 4 Mintzes, B., Tiefer, L., & Cosgrove,
2002 because of the Women’s Health L. (2021). Bremelanotide and
Here’s the punch line in that review: at Initiative’s claims that it causes breast flibanserin for low sexual desire in
least flibanserin “led to an average of cancer, dementia, stroke and “all-cause women: the fallacy of regulatory
only one additional sexual experience mortality,” but, without headlines precedent. Drug and Therapeutics
every two months.” Bremelanotide… or fanfare, the WHi has since walked Bulletin, 59(12), 185–188. https://doi.
to none. Both can cause serious harm. back virtually every one of those scare org/10.1136/dtb.2021.000020 1.
“A politicized industry-sponsored stories.6 Now they say that estrogen is 5 Pines, A. (2010). Guidelines and
advocacy campaign and conflicted the best and safest treatment for meno- recommendations on hormone
patient and expert testimony likely pausal symptoms, from hot flashes to therapy in the Menopause. Journal of
influenced flibanserin’s approval at vaginal pain, and the FDA has approved Mid-Life Health, 1(1), 41–42. https://
its third attempt. Bremelanotide, its use.7 And by the way, it increases doi.org/10.4103/0976-7800.66990
with even weaker efficacy, capital- longevity by three to four years. 6 Bluming, A., & Tavris, C. (2018).
ized on the regulatory precedent set Estrogen Matters. Little, Brown Spark.
by the approval of flibanserin.”4 What a challenge for skeptics: being 7 Flores, V. A., Pal, L., & Manson, J.
wary of ineffective drugs that are A. E. (2021). Hormone therapy in
Note those words: regulatory prece- hyped by Big Pharma, without reflex- menopause: Concepts, controversies,
dent. If you can get your ineffective ively rejecting medications that are and approach to treatment. Endocrine
drug over the low bar of approval, you effective. To be sure, when it comes Reviews, 42(6), 720–752. https://
have set a precedent. And how then to sex, the most difficult challenge doi.org/10.1210/endrev/bnab011

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 31

 ARTICLE

60 MINUTES
Whipping Up “Havana Syndrome”
Hysteria, Airing Sensational Segment
on White House “Attacks”
BY ROBERT E. BARTHOLOMEW

“I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can the White House when she suddenly felt a piercing
exist with details omitted.” —Robin Hobb sensation on the right side of her head, vertigo, and
nausea. She said it was as if “she had been physically
On February 20, 2022, one of the most storied names struck” by an outside force that rendered her dis-
in broadcast journalism—the CBS news magazine 60 oriented and struggling to stand. She compared it
Minutes, aired a segment on “Havana Syndrome”—a to a panic attack and wondered if she was having a
cluster of mysterious health complaints among U.S. stroke. She even worried it might be a brain tumor.
and Canadian diplomats and their families in Cuba About a year later she experienced another episode
that have been attributed to a microwave weapon. while walking to her car at the White House when
First reported in Havana in late 2016, over 1,000 she was overcome with dizziness and vertigo. “I
cases have since been recorded around the world. felt like I couldn’t really walk…I had a depth per-
The episode was rife with dramatic claims includ- ception issue where I couldn’t figure out where the
ing the suggestion that a nefarious foreign power ground was. And I would start walking. And I felt
is behind the “attacks” and may have breached like I was just gonna fall right into the ground.” Later
White House security with the capacity to zap the she experienced a third episode. She never sought
President and his cabinet with an incapacitating treatment or reported it to authorities at the time.
energy beam. At least 20 children of diplomats were
said to be possible victims, some on American soil.1 That alone should set off skeptical alarm bells. Just
imagine—you are a national security advisor to the
Vice President of the United States. One day you are
“Attacked” near the White House walking near the White House and you believe you
may have been hit with a mysterious energy beam
Former homeland security advisor Olivia Troye told that leaves you incapacitated and barely able to walk,
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that during the and your response is to do nothing—you neither seek
summer of 2019 she was descending a stairwell near medical attention nor report it to your superiors.

32 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Illustration by Izhar Cohen

This reaction raises the possibility that the symptoms subsequently diagnosed with “traumatic brain injury.”
may have been unconsciously embellished over time. It’s all very nebulous as no details of their injuries were
Her symptoms are neither unique nor extraordinary. given or how they knew it was an attack. Another
There are a host of common conditions that could victim was Robyn Garfield who claimed that while
account for her symptoms which affect the vestibular stationed in China in 2018, he and his wife and two
system of the inner ear, which is responsible for hear- children were “attacked” in their home over several
ing, balance and spatial awareness including depth per- months. After being evacuated stateside where they
ception. It is estimated that 35 percent of all adults over were receiving treatment for their “injuries” at the
40 will experience vestibular dysfunction, and Troye’s University of Pennsylvania, he said his family was
symptoms are among those most commonly reported.2 again targeted at a nearby hotel. “I saw an extremely
As medical students are taught: if you hear hoof steps, eerie scene where both were thrashing in their beds
think horse, not zebra. There are many well-known asleep…kicking and moving pretty aggressively,”
medical conditions far more common than secret he said. Could this have been a sonic or microwave
sonic weapons, which as far as we know do not exist. weapon at work? A more mundane explanation is sleep
or night terrors, which affect up to half of all children
and are triggered by an array of factors including
Children Stricken in Their Beds stress.4 When he leaned down to lift his children from
their beds, he was mystified by a noise that resembled
60 Minutes reported that over 20 children of diplomats “rushing water.” While the implication was it may
abroad have experienced “unexplained neurological have been a secret weapon, the Medline Plus Medical
ailments” that were attributed to Havana Syndrome.3 Encyclopedia reports that tinnitus is often perceived as
In one case, a mother was supposedly attacked “water running.”5 One audiologist even wrote an article
while breastfeeding and both mother and baby were about it titled “Is the Water Running or is it Tinnitus?”6

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 33

 Again, what’s more likely: tinnitus or a secret have qualified as being impaired.8 The study was
sonic weapon of unknown origin or existence? so flawed that the editorial board of the respect-
ed journal Cortex called for it to be retracted.9
A Canadian diplomat stationed in Havana in 2017
told 60 Minutes that on three separate occasions, her A 2019 study in the same journal found brain
daughter woke up with heavy nose bleeds and later anomalies, which is not unusual in small cohorts,
developed migraines, tinnitus, and “spotting in her and is not the equivalent of brain damage. The study
vision” (eye floaters). Her son complained of hearing authors even admitted that the changes could have
problems and dizziness. These are common symptoms been caused by individual variation between patients.
experienced by millions of people every day. In this Of even greater concern was the absence of a suit-
case, after the Canadian diplomats had been alerted to able control group, as 12 of the affected diplomats in
the threat of a mysterious weapon by their American Cuba had histories of concussion compared to zero
counterparts, they were primed to redefine an array in the healthy controls, and could thus account for
of common ailments under a new label—Havana the differences between the groups.10 The bottom
Syndrome. This case highlights the broad range of line: both studies were poorly designed and nei-
symptoms that are said to make up the condition: ther demonstrated brain damage despite continued
headache, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, depression, widespread claims in the media to the contrary.
nose bleeds, disorientation, confusion, forgetful-
ness, insomnia, tinnitus, difficulty balancing, trouble
concentrating, ear pain, head pressure, hearing loss, The Outlier
concussion-like symptoms, and brain damage. The lat-
ter three complaints have never been demonstrated in Dr. David Relman, who headed a National Academy
published patient studies of the U.S. diplomats in Cuba, of Sciences committee on “Havana Syndrome,” told
and when you remove them from the list, what is left 60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley that his panel found “clear
are the classic symptoms of mass psychogenic illness. evidence of an injury to the auditory and vestibular
system.” The panel looked mainly at the U.S. diplomats
in Cuba. But Neurologist Robert Baloh examined
Omissions of Inconvenient Truths the same patient studies and is unconvinced. Baloh
wrote the standard textbook on the vestibular system
The 60 Minutes segment was devoid of alternative and created some of the tests used to study the U.S.
explanations from skeptics, and made numerous diplomats in Cuba. “The hearing tests were normal
references to brain injuries, including to the more than and the vestibular test results are non-specific and
two dozen U.S. diplomats in Cuba who were affected. impossible to interpret without appropriate controls,”
Physicist James Benford was touted as an expert on he said. “As an expert in the audio-vestibular system, I
microwaves, who said there were portable microwave see no convincing evidence of damage to that system
transmitters that were capable of damaging brain based on any of the data that has been published.”11
tissue. Yet there is no evidence that microwaves can
injure the brain without affecting external tissues, Relman’s panel looked at a small subset of cases where
and the damage should show up on MRi scans. there was an abrupt onset of pressure or vibration
in the head that was sometimes accompanied by the
As well, the CBS program failed to mention that the sudden onset of sound. They latched onto the point
authors of the very first study of Havana patients that several patients told them the sound or feeling
published in 20187 found no brain damage. While of pressure “came from one direction and focused
there were white matter tract changes in 3 of 21 in one location.” For instance, Miles Taylor said the
patients, these are common in many conditions, sound was “continuous” and “only changed based
including migraines and depression. The findings on my location.” Both Baloh and Cuban neurologist
are what one would expect in a group of 21 ran- Mitchell Valdez-Sosa point out that these reports are
domly selected people. They also botched their not unusual as it is the nature of sound to be perceived
assessment for impairment, defining it as any test as coming from one direction. Valdez-Sosa observes
score under the 40th percentile of normal respons- that in the cases of anomalous health incidents that
es. In other words, 4 out of 10 people tested would the Cubans were allowed to study, the sources of the

34 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

unusual sounds turned out to have prosaic sources such only investigations to reach the conclusions they have
as water pumps, the humming from streetlights, etc. about the likely involvement of microwave radiation,
“Angst about these ‘directional sounds’ had linked them brain injury, and the presence of a foreign actor.
in the patient’s minds to symptoms. The ‘special cases’
who felt ill in Havana all knew each other and shared
their fears and theories” resulting in real symptoms The ECREE Principle: Extraordinary
from ordinary medical conditions and psychogenic Claims Require Extraordinary Proof
induction, he said.12 An analysis of eight recordings
of Cuban “attacks” conducted by auditory scientists Relman’s advisory panel claimed there were four fea-
concluded they were the mating calls of crickets.13 tures reported by a small number of victims indicating
As for the likelihood that the audio recordings of the something remarkable occurred: 1) the sudden onset of
sounds heard were associated with microwaves, it is sound or pressure; 2) “nearly simultaneous” symptoms
not possible to make audio recordings of microwaves. such as vertigo, loss of balance, and ear pain; 3) “a
strong sense of locality or directionality” to those symp-
toms; and 4) the absence of any known environmental
The CIA Reports or medical conditions that could have caused them.
The panel noted that the combination of all four “is dis-
On January 20, 2022, the contents of an ongoing CiA tinctly unusual and unreported elsewhere in the medi-
investigation into “Havana Syndrome” were made cal literature, and so far have not been associated with
public; it held that there was no evidence that a a specific neurological abnormality.” Yet these cases
foreign power was involved in a campaign to target may have a social patterning. It is important to remem-
U.S. personnel. After reviewing over 1,000 cases of ber that the victims in Cuba, and later globally, were
“anomalous health incidents,” it found that most primed to think that they may be the targets of an at-
could be explained by an array of factors ranging tack and to be vigilant for the signs of an energy weap-
from anxiety to pre-existing health conditions. In a on that was believed to prompt health complaints—a
small number of cases there was not enough in- weapon that supposedly involved an unfamiliar sound.
formation with which to make an assessment, and
these cases were classified as unexplained and are In our book on Havana Syndrome, Professor Baloh and
still under investigation.14 This is reminiscent of I reviewed the literature on “The Hum,” a mysteri-
past studies of UFOs by the U.S. Government where ous sound that has been heard all over the world.
a small number of cases have been flagged as “unex- Many people report experiencing an array of health
plained” due to a lack of information. Unexplained complaints after hearing it. The sound is widely
does not mean extraterrestrial. Conversely, the accepted to have a variety of natural causes, rang-
presence of unfamiliar sounds should not be assumed ing from industrial machinery to tinnitus. Dr. Baloh
to be confirmation of a secret energy weapon. recently re-examined the cases and found remark-
able similarities with the descriptions in Relman’s
About two weeks after the interim CiA findings were advisory panel. “People would suddenly develop
released, a small outside advisory panel to the CiA and even awake with strange sensations of pressure
concluded that the most likely explanation for the and vibration along with the noise which had many
small number of unexplained cases was “pulsed elec- different descriptions. Many described the sensations
tromagnetic energy.” While an official familiar with as so severe they could not stand it. They experienced
the report said the involvement of a foreign actor was the same symptoms reported by the Havana syndrome
“more than theory—we were able to obtain some level patients and they noted that if they left the room
of evidence,” they were forced to admit that “significant the symptoms improved or resolved only to recur on
information gaps” existed.15 These findings mirrored reentering the room. Often others in the same room
those of the National Academy of Sciences report of did not hear the sounds or develop symptoms.”17
December 2020. Curiously, the head of the advisory
panel was the same person who oversaw the Academy’s David Relman is a microbiologist; he is not an expert
committee—David Relman.16 In statistics, an outlier on microwave weapons, auditory neurology or mass
is a data point that varies significantly from other ob- psychogenic illness—which may explain why his
servations. Conspicuously, Relman’s two panels are the panels have reached different conclusions to the

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 35

 main CiA working group, the FBi, and a group of elite Recent examples include mobile phones, powerlines,
scientists known as the Jason group. While Relman’s windfarms, WiFi, and 5G. The present panic involves
advisory panel claims to have identified a perplexing claims of a secret weapon that uses sound or micro-
pattern in a small number of special cases, the main waves to zap people anywhere in the world. Given
CiA investigation looked at the same information the sensational nature of the 60 Minutes episode with
and drew the opposite conclusion—that the symp- suggestions of White House attacks, and ongoing
toms reported were not caused by pulsed microwave political tensions with Russia—the suspected culprit,
radiation or a hostile foreign actor. The FBi reached a it would not be surprising to see a cluster of cases in
similar conclusion and implicated mass psychogenic the vicinity of the White House—or other govern-
illness—something that Relman’s panel said “cannot ment institutions as officials working there have been
account for the core characteristics.”18 A 2021 report primed to be vigilant for anomalous health incidents.
by the Jason scientists found no evidence for “a novel
medical syndrome” and “no strong evidence” of trau- For the past five years, the investigation of Havana
matic brain injury—directly contradicting the findings Syndrome has been mired in politics. The time
of Relman’s advisory panel.19 Relman also claims there has come to listen to the voices of the intelli-
was clear evidence of damage to the auditory and gence community and put the episode to rest.
vestibular systems when specialists who have devoted After all this time, a weapon has yet to be identi-
their careers to studying these systems, are adamant fied. There is no smoking gun. There never was
that no evidence of damage has been demonstrated. one. There is only smoke and mirrors generat-
ed by bad science and poor journalism.

The Bigger Picture

“Havana Syndrome” is the latest in a long list of

health scares involving the fear of new technology.

REFERENCES

1 https://cbsn.ws/3MfZaLR sensory phenomena in Havana, Campaign’ by any foreign power

2 https://bit.ly/3IEsRnQ Cuba. JAMA, 319(11), 1125. https:// behind mysterious ‘Havana
3 https://cbsn.ws/3IF3X7q doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.1742 Syndrome.’ Washington Post.
4 Moreno, M. A. (2015). Sleep 8 https://bit.ly/35ilMLg 15 https://nbcnews.to/3vx0bZV
terrors and sleepwalking. 9 https://bit.ly/344Nydm 16 Harris, S. (2022, February 2).
JAMA Pediatrics, 169(7), 704. 10 https://bit.ly/3vwuVKT “External energy source may explain
https://doi.org/10.1001/ 11 Baloh, R. (2022, February 23). ‘Havana syndrome,’ panel finds,
jamapediatrics.2014.2140 Personal communication. renewing questions about possible
5 https://bit.ly/3Ck3sgV 12 Valdez-Sosa, M. (2022, February foreign attack.” Washington Post.
6 https://bit.ly/3IFYi0T 28). Personal communication. 17 Baloh, R. (2022, February 23).
7 Swanson, R. L., Hampton, S., Green- 13 Acoustic Signals and Physiological Personal communication
McKenzie, J., Diaz-Arrastia, R., Effects on U.S. Diplomats in Cuba, 18 Harris, S. (2022, February 3). “Panel
Grady, M. S., Verma, R., Biester, R., November 2018. Declassified says radio energy may explain
Duda, D., Wolf, R. L., & Smith, D. H. U.S. Government study conducted ‘Havana Syndrome.’” Washington Post.
(2018). Neurological manifestations for the State Department. 19 https://bit.ly/3ulZBMs
among US government personnel 14 Harris, S., & Missy, R. (2022, January
reporting directional audible and 20). CIA finds no ‘Worldwide

36 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Artifacts belonging to French magician Alexander Herrmann (1844–1896), exquisitely displayed in David Copperfield’s private museum showcasing
memorabilia from Houdini, Thurston, Blackstone, and others. Better known as “Herrmann the Great,” Alexander was married to American magician
Adelaide Herrmann (1853–1932), the “Queen of Magic.” Photo by Homer Anthony Liwag, courtesyVOLUME
of Simon &27 NUMBER
Schuster. Used 2 2022
with SKEPTIC.COM
permission. 37
 REVIEW

The
Discoverie
of
Magic
Review of David Copperfield’s
History of Magic by David Copperfield,
Richard Wiseman, and David Britland
BY MICHELLE AINSWORTH

David Copperfield’s History of Magic is a concise and are of artifacts that have been exquisitely displayed in
lavishly illustrated history of stage magic from the late Copperfield’s private museum and photographed in
19th century to the present. It is told in David’s voice, color by his talented design director, Homer Liwag.
so I applaud Mr. Copperfield for giving equal credit to
coauthors Richard Wiseman and David Britland. Their The first chapter can be seen as a prelude, as it is from a
book is fabulous, in part, because it is more than a much earlier time than the rest of the book. The Discoverie
series of biographies. Although most of the famous U.S. of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot was controversial and
magicians are featured (Houdini, Thurston, Blackstone), well known when it was published in 1584 because the
the book is organized around artifacts of the perform- author took a skeptical stance against witchcraft and
er or topic, a novel approach that gave me a greater its prosecution. To argue this fully, Discoverie includes
sense of what it was like to see the great magician two chapters generally believed to be the first signifi-
perform than did the biographical chapters in wordi- cant discussion of magic tricks in the English language.
er histories. While a few well-chosen common images One is on specialized props visible from a distance.
have been included, most of the book’s illustrations However, the other, on handheld magic, was more

38 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

influential among would-be magicians, partly as a However, a visitor to Copperfield’s museum noticed
result of having been plagiarized for the next cen- something significant in the notebooks that was new
tury. A history of magic devoting a whole chapter to me, and to their credit, the three authors of David
to this seminal book is uncommon, but merited. Copperfield’s History of Magic give him the credit.
Nonetheless, they rightly concentrate on Hoffmann’s
To its credit, David Copperfield’s History of Magic hugely influential books, which, unfortunately, most
features the choice of devoting a whole chapter to the magic histories do not give the attention they deserve.
1876 book by Professor Hoffman, Modern Magic, and
its sequels. Even those earlier books that did not rely Aside from the Scot, most histories of magic also limit
on Scot’s Discoverie were not much more than exposés discussion of magic tricks done with handheld objects,
of magic secrets. Hoffman’s books, however, were the known within the trade as “close-up” magic (or “micro
first to teach magic, and they sold well. Focusing on magic” in Europe). I therefore applaud Copperfield
the unique notebooks of the author was the only time et al. for devoting one later chapter to the 20th century’s
I found the artifact vehicle to be a bit of a stretch. most influential single book on card tricks, and two

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 39

 other chapters to celebrated closeup performers. first general history of magic to give him a well-
Although first published in 1902, Artifice, Ruse, and earned whole chapter. Max Malini, a leading 19th
Subterfuge at the Card Table, remarkably remains in century closeup performer, also earns a chapter.
print (as The Expert at the Card Table). While much
of its influence is due to its new techniques, it is also Copperfield’s Magic also has chapters on two leading
famous for having an author, S.W. Erdnase, who admit- magic prop retailers, which is especially poignant
ted to using a pseudonym and to being a card cheat. as magic retail shops are fading with the profession
moving online. One, Martinka’s, peaked a century ago
When the leading magician’s magazine asked sub- and is gone. The other, Tannens, started mid-century
scribers to rank the top ten of a pre-selected list of and played a large role in Copperfield’s teenage years,
100 magicians who most influenced magic in the 20th and is still in business. As with the chapters devoted
century, David Copperfield came in at #3 (deserved- to books, the inclusion of shops in this history gives
ly the highest ranked living magician), the ubiqui- readers a wider introduction to the culture of magic
tous Houdini at #2, and Dai Vernon at #1. How did than one finds in most general histories of the subject.
a relatively unknown magician—outside of magic Shops are also complementary to the props featured
circles, that is—beat Copperfield and Houdini? For in many of the chapters about specific performers.
the last quarter of the 20th century, Dai Vernon was
very well-known within the magic community as Most of Copperfield’s 28 chapters are nonetheless
a teacher of sleight of hand. His two most famous about leading stage performers. Two spotlight famous
pupils were Ricky Jay and Doug Henning. Vernon 20th century female magicians, Adelaide Herrmann and
had also been paid high fees to perform card tricks Dell O’Dell. Adelaide’s husband Alexander was so well
for the rich and famous. Copperfield’s book is the known that he was the prototype of the magician’s look,
with top hat, wand, mustache, and goatee, but his ca-
reer is shoehorned into the chapter on his widow. After
he died, Adelaide successfully performed solo magic for
another two decades in vaudeville. During the mid-20th
century peak of nightclubs, Dell O’Dell was in demand.
Her act was quirky but successful, often featuring a
bunny rabbit, groan worthy rhymes, and a running
gag of dubbing a bald man in the audience “Curly.”

SkEPTiC readers may be especially intrigued by the

chapters discussing magicians who simulated psychic
phenomena. The chapter on “Alexander, the Man Who
Knows” focuses on his turban, which defined his on-
stage persona and secretly facilitated then-new radio
communication of information from his assistants
that he used to awesome effect. He was one of the
highest paid performers in vaudeville and received
significant additional income, including through the
use of unethical and illegal means. The chapter ends
with Copperfield’s lament that some magicians pass
themselves off as being genuinely psychic. A famous
mid-century English theatrical and television mind
reader, Koran, is given a chapter as well, not to be
confused with the earlier U.S. psychic performer of
the same name who appeared most prominently on

40 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

the radio. Mind reading magician Joseph Dunninger pioneered by just two people, Dick Cardini and
may be more famous, at least in the U.S., than are Channing Pollock. Giving each a chapter of his own
some of the performers given a chapter of their own. is another decision that I applaud. I should note that
the Barnes and Noble bookstore exclusive edition
From the 1930s through the end of the 20th centu- includes an additional chapter about Orson Welles’s
ry, tuxedoed magicians in night clubs, theaters, and little remembered performances as a magician.
late-night television talk shows captivated audiences
with silent tricks using cigarettes, birds, and end- My biggest concern is that the cover illustrations and
less quantities of playing cards seeming to appear title of David Copperfield’s History of Magic could give
from midair. This stereotype of the magician was the erroneous impression that the book is about

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 41

Artifacts of American stage magician Howard Thurston
(1869–1936) who ran away to join the circus, where his future
partner Harry Kellar also performed. Deeply impressed by magician
Alexander Herrmann’s show, Thurston was determined to become his
equal, and eventually became the most famous magician of his time. Thurston’s
traveling magic show was so large that it needed eight train cars to transport.
 The Discoverie of Witchcraft (above) by Reginald Scot is generally believed to be the first significant discussion of magic tricks in the English
language. The book, written in 1584, was controversial because the author took a skeptical stance against witchcraft and its prosecution.

Mr. Copperfield’s extraordinary career. The opposite for decades. On the other hand, it is reasonable that
is true: the lead author is being modest by giving the book has a U.S. focus and almost no coverage
himself only a few more pages than he gives to of magicians from the 17th through mid-19th centu-
other performers. ries, which simply limits it to the industrial age.

David Copperfield’s History of Magic is up to date Not getting bogged down in detail can be seen as a
and thorough in its research, such as the exclu- strength of David Copperfield’s History of Magic. The
sion of the notion that magician Robert-Houdin most available and comprehensive complementary
used a magic trick to avert a war, and the authors’ history book is still Milbourne Christopher’s long
citation of a specialist periodical of only 100 cop- and lucid text The Illustrated History of Magic, which
ies. Citing that article is also to the authors’ credit Copperfield recommends. Readers looking for fewer
because it critiques the main text’s acceptance of names and more intellectual context might want to
the larger-than-life stories of little-known magician read Copperfield’s book before consulting The Secret
Harry Cooke. I only spotted one error in the book: History of Magic by Peter Lamont and Jim Steinmeyer
it is stated that a particular magician performed (2018), which I reviewed in SkEPTiC (Vol. 25, No. 1).
in the U.S., even though he never did, according to
the book the authors cite as their main source. In sum, David Copperfield’s History of Magic is a very
good introduction to the history of performance
Although most major magicians of the late 19th and magic, exemplifying how a book that is more than
20th centuries are covered, the authors faced difficult half photos can also be strong in its text. People
decisions regarding whom to include or exclude. already familiar with magic history will still want
For example, Cooke was surely less impactful than the book for its glimpses into the world’s foremost
John Henry Anderson, and it might seem odd that collection of magic’s most well-known artifacts.
the book has a full chapter on non-magic novel-
ty act “Loyd, the Human Card Index” rather than, All photographs in this review by Homer Anthony Liwag,
say, on the popular pseudo spiritualist Davenport courtesy of Simon & Schuster. Used with permission.
Brothers, whose work influenced leading magicians

44 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Harry August Jansen
(1883–1955) was a Danish-
born magician who traveled
the world under the name
“Dante the Magician.”

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 45

 DEBATE

ESP DEBATE
Is Belief in ESP Irrational?
STEVEN PINKER VS. BRIAN D. JOSEPHSON

The following is a three-part debate between Steven Pinker and in the “deep state,” or that jet contrails are mind-alter-
Brian D. Josephson, initiated from a private email exchange in which ing drugs dispersed in a secret government program.
Josephson challenged Pinker’s claims in a BBC radio program that there
is no rational reason to believe in ESP. Here, Pinker makes his case, There’s fake news, such as Joe Biden Calls
followed by Josephson’s critique, and Pinker’s response to that critique. Trump Supporters ‘Dregs of Society’ and Yoko
Ono Had an Affair With Hillary Clinton.

Steven Pinker And there’s paranormal woo-woo, such as

beliefs in possession by the devil, extrasen-
When I taught my Harvard course Rationality,1 sory perception, astrology, and spiritual en-
wrote my book Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems ergy in mountains, trees, and crystals.
Scarce, Why It Matters,2 and hosted my BBC Radio
and podcast series Think With Pinker,3 I got a good How can we explain this pandemic of poppycock?
sense of people’s curiosity about human rationality.
They don’t care so much about logical fallacies like After the episode aired, this admittedly purple
Denying the Antecedent or statistical biases like prose drew objections from the biologist Rupert
the Gambler’s Fallacy or Base Rate Neglect. They Sheldrake and the Nobel prize-winning physicist
want to know why, as Michael Shermer’s book title Brian Josephson.5 Belief in extrasensory perception
puts it, “people believe weird things.”4 So, I began (ESP) does not belong in that list, they said. There is
one episode of the BBC series with this flourish: evidence from everyday experience and controlled
experiments that dogs can sense when their own-
Our species is smart enough to have plumbed ers will return, people can sense when they’re being
the nature of the universe, life, and mind. stared at from behind, and, in famous studies done or
But then why do so many of us believe in inspired by the social psychologist Daryl Bem, people
so much quackery and flapdoodle? can “feel the future,” by predicting where a random
algorithm will display an erotic photo on a computer
There are conspiracy theories, like the idea that screen or improving their performance in a memory
COViD-19 was a subterfuge by Bill Gates to implant test by rehearsing the words after the test has been
trackable microchips in people’s bodies, that Donald given.6 Josephson directed me to a 2022 talk delivered
Trump fought a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles at Hereticon (“A Conference for Thoughtcrime”) by

46 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Illustration by John Holcroft

the writer Mitch Horowitz called “Case Closed: ESP is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testi-
Is Real.”7 To dismiss ESP in the face of this evidence, mony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be
they asserted, was itself irrational. Doing so flouted more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to
my own advisory to examine the evidence with an establish.” It was stated more pithily by Pierre-Simon
open mind and admit when one is wrong—which I Laplace: “The weight of evidence for an extraordi-
should do, they said, in a public retraction on the BBC. nary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.”
And it was boiled down to five words by Carl Sagan:
Josephson and Sheldrake are certainly correct that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
belief in unpopular, controversial, or even mistak-
en ideas is not in itself irrational. For a belief to be In the case of ESP, the empirical case would have to be
irrational, it must flout a normative canon of rea- stupendous to outweigh the overwhelming prior odds
soning, such as a law of logic or principle of proba- against ESP existing. All of our experience, and all of our
bility. But by these standards, I maintain, belief in understanding of the physical universe, speak against
ESP really is irrational, given everything we know both the possibility of the future affecting the past, and
about the world and how to reason about it. against an ability to sense the state of the world without
the transmission of information by physical energy. If
*** ESP really existed, not only would the laws of physics
have to be overturned, but life would be unrecogniz-
The normative canon in question has been stated in able. The knowledge afforded by telepathy or precog-
many ways, most precisely in the eponymous theo- nition could easily be exploited to bankrupt casinos,
rem of Thomas Bayes: one’s degree of credence in a undermine poker tournaments, and make fortunes
hypothesis should be estimated by starting with the in financial markets, making them obsolete. Experts
prior probability of the hypothesis—how well sup- who developed their ESP would be snapped up by the
ported, credible, or plausible it is before looking at the intelligence community, weather forecasting, and the
evidence—multiplied by how likely the evidence would criminal justice system. This is not the world we live in.
be if the hypothesis is true, scaled by how common
that evidence is across the board (i.e., how easy it is Of course, we can’t give precise numerical estimates
for that evidence to turn up whether the hypothesis to our prior credence in the existence of precogni-
is true or false). It was expressed in different words tion or telepathy, but as the psychologist Eric-Jan
by Bayes’s contemporary David Hume: “No testimony Wagenmakers and his colleagues point out, even

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 47

 rough napkin estimates show what the hypothesis of physics is incomplete and yet-to-be-discovered
of ESP is up against.8 Consider a flawless, well-de- laws might explain how psychic powers are possible?
signed experiment that provides strong evidence for Though many phenomena at extreme scales of space
ESP—data, say, that are 19 times more likely if ESP and energy—near the Big Bang or a black hole, at
exists than if it does not. If our prior belief is very low, the size of a photon or of a galaxy—are incompletely
say, 00000000000000000001, then the experi- understood, this cannot be said about the physics of ev-
ment requires us to update it to a posterior belief of eryday life. As Sean Carroll shows in The Big Picture, on
00000000000000000019—far higher, yes, but still these scales, from nanotech to moon rockets, the laws
leaving us pretty confident that it does not exist. More of physics are completely understood. We aren’t in need
charitable priors, up to any reasonable estimate, still of strange new forces or fields to explain how a bicycle
require extraordinarily strong evidence—far stronger works, or why eclipses happen. Carroll takes the argu-
than shown in any experiment or meta-analysis. ment a step further: our understanding is so complete
that if there were as-yet unidentified fields in addition
*** to those underlying gravity, electromagnetism and so
on, we would be able to detect them, and we don’t.
To be fair, one can challenge the priors. As Josephson
pointed out to me, the fact that Wall Street hasn’t Of course, one can always go meta meta, and con-
been destroyed by clairvoyant stock pickers may cede that maybe our entire understanding of physics,
show only that ESP is rare, not that it doesn’t exist including its implications for what we do and don’t
at all.9 As he put it, “Crossing a valley on a tight- understand and may or may not discover, is fallible,
rope is possible, but most people would end up in and that we can never rule out yet another scientif-
the valley if they tried. Some people may do well ic revolution. But does anyone really think that the
in the stock exchange through precognitive abili- most radical revolution in human understanding in
ties that most people don’t possess for example.” four centuries will be fomented by the claim by dog
owners that their pets can sense when they will come
But in fact it would take only a few percentage points home? Or is it more likely that the claim is fishy?
of accuracy above the base rates to make a killing in
Las Vegas or in the stock, commodity, or currency ***
markets. (Imagine, for example, if instead of antici-
pating whether some porn will appear on the left or Which brings us from the priors to the evidence.
right of a computer screen, a psychic trader predicted There are many reasons to suspect that the evidence
whether a stock price will go up or down, and sold long adduced for ESP can be explained by more mundane
or short accordingly.) Is there even a single person who causes, inflating the denominator of Bayes’s frac-
has gotten rich—or for that matter made a living— tion and yanking the posterior down still further.
from the markets through precognitive abilities?
To begin with, we’re talking about a phenomenon
It’s also true that that many phenomena in physics that, if it existed, would be tiny in magnitude, on
challenge common sense, so our intuitions about the order of one tenth of a standard deviation.10
what is physically possible can’t be taken at face Moreover, the instances of “paranormal” phenome-
value to set a Bayesian prior on ESP. But that doesn’t na are, by definition, identified post hoc, as anything
mean we can point to some counterintuitive physical and everything we can’t explain by what’s “normal.”
phenomenon from quantum mechanics or relativity They are a miscellaneous collection of oddities and
and conclude that any weird thing is possible. This anomalies rather than a systematic phenomenon
is what Horowitz did at the end of his talk when whose conditions and outcomes are identified a
he invoked time dilation near the speed of light in priori. Small effects identified after the fact look
special relativity to explain how a student might suspiciously like random happenings that no one has
effectively study for an exam after it’s over. To call this the patience or resources to get to the bottom of.
“physics for poets” would be a disservice to poets.
Also, the classic claims for ESP in controlled experi-
But should we go meta, and adjust the priors to ments cited by Horowitz, such as those of J. B. Rhine
acknowledge the possibility that our understanding and his intellectual descendants, have been exposed

48 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 as artifacts of investigator bias, leakage of infor- Lakens in his article “Why a meta-analysis of 90 pre-
mation, selective reporting, overinterpretation of cognition studies does not provide convincing evidence
coincidence, questionable research practices (such as of a true effect.”17 Contradicting Horowitz’s summary
post hoc data exclusion), and outright fraud.11,12,13,14 of “90 replications in 33 labs,” Lakens notes that “only
18 statistically significant precognition effects have
The temptations to engage in such chicanery, conscious been observed in the last 14 years, by just 7 different
or unconscious, are obvious. From time immemorial labs…72 studies reveal no effect.” He concludes:
people have devoutly wanted paranormal phenomena “The results are clear: the estimated effect size when
to exist, as we see in the miracles recounted by the correcting for publication bias is 0.008 [in standard
world’s religions. These desires may be motivated by a deviations], and the confidence intervals around this
longing for immortality, for contact with the dead, for effect size estimate do not exclude 0. In other words,
a realm in which divine justice might be meted out, there is no good reason to assume that anything more
and for an expansion of the horizons of consciousness. than publication bias is going on in this meta-analysis.”

Finally, there are the notorious Bem experiments. The I conclude: when we follow the normative standard
2010 originals were shown to be tainted by ques- of Bayesian reasoning, use the facts and physics of
tionable research practices, and the first published everyday life to estimate the prior probability of
replication attempts failed.15 Horowitz’s “closed case” paranormal powers existing, and consider the myriad
thus rests on Bem’s own meta-analysis of subsequent ways in which the evidence claimed in their support
studies, most of them unpublished, and itself an- could have other explanations, we must conclude that
nounced in a self-publishing platform rather than a there is no good reason to believe ESP exists, and that
conventional peer-reviewed journal.16 This meta-anal- insisting that it does is irrational. That is why I have
ysis was then examined by the psychologist Daniel not asked the BBC for airtime for a retraction.

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/36oM5Qa H. L. (2011). Why psychologists mental phenomena. J. Sci.

2 Pinker, S. (2021). Rationality: What must change the way they Explor. 10, 321-352;
It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why analyze their data: The case of 13 Hyman, R. (1994). Anomaly or
It Matters. New York: Viking. psi: Comment on BEM (2011). Artifact? Comments on Bern
3 https://bbc.in/3wuNbos Journal of Personality and Social and Honorton. Psychological
4 Shermer, M. (1997/2002). Psychology, 100(3), 426–432. https:// Bulletin, 115, 19-24;
Why People Believe Weird doi.org/10.1037/a0022790 14 Milton, J. and Wiseman. R. (1999).
Things. New York: Holt. 9 Email from Brian Josephson to Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication
5 Emails from Brian Josephson to Steven Pinker, February 22, 2022. of an Anomalous Process of
Steven Pinker, February 5 and 17, 10 Bem, D., Tressoldi, P. E., Rabeyron, Information Transfer. Psychological
2022, and from Rupert Sheldrake T., & Duggan, M. (2016). Feeling Bulletin, 125(4), 387-391.
to Brian Josephson cc’d to Steven the future: A meta-analysis of 90 15 French, C. (2012, March
Pinker, February 17, 2022. experiments on the anomalous 15). “Precognition studies
6 Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the anticipation of random future and the curse of the failed
future: Experimental evidence for events. F1000Research, 4, 1188. replications.” The Guardian.
anomalous retroactive influences https://doi.org/10.12688/ 16 Bem, et al. (2016).
on cognition and affect. Journal of f1000research.7177.2 17 Lakens, D. (2022). “Why a meta-
Personality and Social Psychology, 11 Blackmore, S. (1987). The elusive analysis of 90 precognition
100(3), 407–425. https://doi. open mind: ten years of negative studies does not provide
org/10.1037/a0021524 research in parapsychology. convincing evidence of a true
7 https://bit.ly/3iefA9P Skeptical Inquirer 11, 244-255; effect.” The Winnower.
8 Wagenmakers, E.-J., Wetzels, R., 12 Hyman, R. (1996). Evaluation
Borsboom, D., & van der Maas, of a program on anomalous

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 49

 DEBATE CONTINUED

PINKER and the

PARANORMAL
Some Critical Comments
BRIAN D. JOSEPHSON RESPONDS TO STEVEN PINKER

In a talk in his BBC Radio 4 series Think with the bookies take note, responding to the threat that
Pinker, Steven Pinker asked “why do so many of they pose by imposing limits on how much they are
us believe in so much quackery and flapdoodle?”, allowed to bet. As a result, we cannot safely infer
characterizing extrasensory perception as “paranormal that there are no people who can use their para-
woowoo”. I can imagine such language slipping normal abilities to win large amounts at betting.
out in the course of casual conversation, but on
the BBC, in a programme where the text must What about the second? In an email Pinker wrote:
have been carefully thought out in advance?
When in my book Rationality I cite Sean Carroll’s
Something must have led to this being said in arguments in The Big Picture in support of the
such an uncritical manner. So, I thought I’d email claim that ESP is incompatible with the laws of
Pinker to find out what had led him to speak physics, this is not an argument from authority.
in this way in regard to the paranormal. In re-
sponse he came up with two arguments. That may be so, but the fact is that Pinker’s po-
sition presumes the validity of Carroll’s analysis.
The first has, at first sight, a degree of plausibility, and Was that analysis valid in fact? In response to my
is the following: if there really are people with the asking for more detail, this was his response:
claimed paranormal abilities, they could use these to
win consistently at betting, and we would learn about It starts from the commonplace observation that in
that. However, as described in a recent Guardian everyday phenomena at humanly relevant scales,
article, it seems this does not happen, because when from nanotech to moon rockets and everything in
such people start to win significant sums of money between, the laws of physics are completely adequate.

50 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 We aren’t in need of strange new forces or fields as the Skeptics Society and this magazine, whose
to explain how my bicycle works, or why eclipses Bayesian approach presumes with inadequate support
happen. Carroll’s argument, explained in the book, that there are genuine reasons for regarding the
is that the understanding is so complete that we can paranormal as essentially impossible. Where such
go one step further, that current laws predict if that reasons cannot be produced, the application of the
if there were as-yet unidentified fields in addition to Bayesian method amounts to little more than an
those underlying gravity, electromagnetism and so assertion “I don’t believe it, therefore it is not true.”
on, we could be able to detect that, and we don’t.
The QAnon organisation, critiqued by Gabriel
Is that a good argument? No. It happens all the time Gatehouse in his BBC series The Coming Storm,
in science that people consider, on the basis of the propagates its “truths” in a rather similar way, a
evidence available at the time, that they have a good situation highlighted by aphorisms such as Paul
understanding of some particular state of affairs. But Simon’s “a man hears what he wants to hear, and
then something new comes up that doesn’t fit the disregards the rest” (The Boxer), or The Coming
existing scheme, and as a result the models have to be Storm’s “He or she who drives the narrative drives
adjusted to take them into account. Future physics just the outcome,” and Marshall McLuhan’s “the
cannot be predicted on the basis of the past in this way. Medium is the Message.” We deserve better.
Furthermore, physicists derive their laws by studying
situations where some model of concern is easy to test,
and this tells us little about the general situation. Thus
the idea that we can have “complete understanding” of REFERENCES
nature in a particular domain is a misconceived one.
1 https://bbc.in/37Ej2sm
Pinker is far from being the only one to dismiss the 2 https://bit.ly/34Q4BQV
paranormal on the basis of inadequate reasoning in 3 Carroll, S. (2016). The Big Picture: On the Origin of Life,
this way. In part this is the outcome of this kind of Meaning, and the Universe Itself. New York: Dutton.
reasoning being promulgated by organizations such 4 https://bbc.in/3wk3ILE

Pinker Responds to Josephson like slot machines or lotteries, that would be dif-
ferent. And of course, financial markets, where ESP
I thank Professor Josephson for his reply. But the fact would reap billions, don’t handicap winners at all.
that the gambling industry clamps down on success-
ful sports betters cannot explain why we don’t see Josephson is welcome to dispute his fellow physicist
anyone using psychic powers to make a killing from Sean Carroll on whether our current understanding of
gambling or investing. Outcomes in sports are not physics rules out undiscovered fields that apply at the
random. Successful betting on cricket or the horses scales of everyday life. But it’s a cherry on top of the
depends not on “feeling the future” but on deploying Bayesian argument, which requires only that psychic
information that is unavailable or imperfectly factored powers are incompatible with the laws of physics as
in by the oddsmakers. The Guardian article made it we now understand them. Carroll, mindful of the
clear that the winners penalized by the bookies enjoy dangers of premature triumphalism, tops it off with
their edge through clever but decidedly ordinary a carefully reasoned argument why those laws are
means: seeing outcomes on TV or at the venue almost certainly not going to be replaced by something
seconds before it gets to the bookies; bribing trainers completely different. But even if his meta-argument
or stable hands for inside information; arbitraging is wrong, at present there is no reason to doubt those
imperfectly estimated odds. If the casinos needed to laws. Causes precede their effects; information is
handicap uncanny winners in truly random gambles transmitted by patterns in matter and energy.

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 51

 EXCERPT

DEEPFAKE
How to Determine if a Doctored
Photograph, Video, or Audio
Recording is Real
BY TIM REDMOND

In 2016, I wrote a piece on critical thinking and politics In short, the book is a guide to help citizens become
for SkEPTiC (Vol. 21 No. 4) titled “Political Obfuscation: critical political thinkers. The following excerpt
Thinking Critically about Public Discourse.” In my from the book, on deepfake videos, audio recordings,
research on the topic since then I have discovered and photographs captures well the problem we are
that much of the obfuscation comes from partisan facing and, hopefully provides some solutions.
tribalism that has grown ever more powerful over the
last two presidential election cycles. In my new book— I don’t think we can sustain a democratic society
Political Tribalism in America: How Hyper-Partisanship if citizens can’t distinguish fact from fiction.1
Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It—I describe —EMiLy THORSON
how our partisan attachments motivate us to acquire,
perceive and evaluate political information in a biased False information has been present throughout
manner, and how that results in an electorate that is American political history.2 Yet, the emergence of
more extreme, hostile and willing to reject unfavor- new digital technologies has all but ensured that the
able democratic outcomes. The book also provides future of false information will include a heavy dose
feasible strategies that are designed to reduce the of fabricated photographs and altered audio and video
influence of political tribalism in our lives, includ- files. Unfortunately, recent research suggests that
ing instructions for plumbing the depths of political our ability to distinguish real images and files from
views; evaluating sources of political information; false ones is, to say the least, underwhelming.3 This
engaging in difficult political conversations; apprais- trend is a problem. For as the political scientist Emily
ing political data; and assessing political arguments. Thorson contends in the epigraph above, our inability

52 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Illustration by Jeff Drew

to discern fact from fiction may severely threaten the You Know It’s True?, “Photo manipulation used to be
well-being of our body politic. However, there are some a tricky business, requiring thousands of dollars in
simple steps that we can take to exercise our critical darkroom equipment, airbrushes, and some pretty
political thinking skills and strengthen the constitu- specialized artistic talent to pull off properly.” But
tion—with a lowercase “c”—of the United States. now, thanks to image-processing software such as
Adobe Photoshop, “Anyone with a camera and a
computer can attempt it, and with a little talent…
Evaluating Doctored Photographs can do a very credible job.”7 As a consequence,
American politics has become flush with fake pho-
A few weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, tographs. Consider just a few recent examples:
2001, an email containing a photograph from a camera
allegedly found in the rubble remains of the twin • In 2002, an altered image of George W. Bush
towers began to circulate online. The snapshot, which depicted the President holding a children’s book
featured an unsuspecting tourist posing for a picture upside down while reading to a group of stu-
on the roof of the World Trade Center as a hijacked dents at a charter school in Houston, Texas.8
airliner approached in the distance, was a fake—a
crude forgery created by none other than the photo’s in • In 2008, a widely circulated email during the
the figure to morbidly amuse his friends.4 Nevertheless, Democratic presidential primary included a doctored
the haunting image was passed from inbox to inbox, re- photograph of then-Senator Barack Obama holding
minding its recipients both of the horrors borne on that a telephone upside down, and the statement: “When
awful day and the power that altered pictures possess. you are faking a pose for a camera photo opportu-
nity, at least you can get the phone turned in the
Photo manipulation is nothing new. Indeed, “The right direction! And he wants to be President???”9
history of fakery in photography is as old as the me-
dium itself.”5 Yet the quantity and quality of doctored • In 2012, an altered image of Mitt Romney—
images have undoubtedly increased with the passage one of the wealthiest presidential candi-
of time.6 According to Charles Seife, author of Virtual dates in U.S. history—appeared on Facebook.
Unreality: Just Because the Internet Told You, How Do The photograph featured the Republican

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 53

 nominee posing with a line of children whose we run the risk that fake photographs will recon-
shirts spelled out the phrase “R-MONEy,” instead struct our old memories or even fabricate new ones.
of the well-heeled candidate’s last name.10

• In 2017, a photoshopped image of President Donald Make Use of Reputable Fact-

Trump with a diarrhea stain down the back of Checking Organizations
his golf pants appeared online accompanied by
the claim that Mr. Trump was incontinent.11 On August 29, 2008, the presumptive Republican
presidential nominee John McCain announced Alaska
• Soon after Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas in Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candi-
September 2018, a doctored photograph of President date. Two days later, a photograph of Palin posing in
Trump reaching over the side of a raft to distribute a an American flag bikini while holding a rifle began
MAGA hat—rather than a helping hand—to a stranded to spread online. By the following week, the image
flood victim began to make the rounds on Facebook.12 had become a topic of conversation on cable news, as
a guest panelist on CNN wondered whether “people
• In 2020, a photoshopped image showing then former [will] say, yes, she looks good in a bikini clutching an
Vice President Joe Biden groping a female journalist Ak-47, but is she equipped to run the country?”17
went viral. The image was coupled with a report that
Mr. Biden had “denied any impropriety, claiming The photo was a fake. A FactCheck.org investigation
that he was merely ‘checking her sources.’”13 found that the image was the handiwork of a twenty-
seven-year-old website editor in New York City who
• In 2021, an altered image of President Joe Biden had simply photoshopped Palin’s head onto another
asleep at his desk in the Oval Office behind a woman’s body and posted the composite on Facebook.
pile of executive orders was posted on Facebook And from there, the image was copied, shared, and
with the message: “AMERiCA iN DECLiNE: This spread like wildfire.18 But we don’t have to contribute
decrepit old grifter works MAyBE five hours a to the conflagration. Instead, we can inquire about
day. We traded in a workhorse, for someone that the authenticity of an image by checking in with the
belonged out to pasture or sent to the glue fac- fact-checkers at FactCheck.org, Snopes, PolitiFact.
tory a long time ago. Nothing says we threw in All we need to do is visit their websites, enter a few
the towel better than this nauseating image, the key words related to the image into the search bar,
‘commander in chief’ can’t even stay awake.”14 hit return, and read their results. It must be noted
that a skeptic best not assume that those organiza-
What’s most disconcerting is the fact that fake images tions are always correct or never make mistakes.
can have real effects. For instance, an analysis by
Dario L. M. Sacchi, Franca Agnoli, and Elizabeth
F. Loftus found that doctored photographs of the Conduct a Reverse Image Search
1989 Tiananmen Square protest affected the way
the study’s participants remembered the event.15 Of course, if we stumble upon an image that hasn’t
And a study led by Steven J. Frenda revealed that been investigated by a reputable fact-checking orga-
nearly half of those who were shown fake images of nization, we will have to verify it on our own. We can
incidents that never occurred—such as President do so by performing a reverse image search, a process
George W. Bush entertaining major league baseball that allows a user to search for images rather than
pitcher Roger Clemens at his ranch in Crawford, text. One simply uploads an image, or provides a link
Texas during Hurricane Katrina or President Obama to an image that can be found online, and the search
shaking hands with Iranian President Mahmoud engine will find similar images on other websites. For
Ahmadinejad at the United Nations—“reported that instance, in 2017, NewsFeedObserver.com posted a
they remembered the false event happening.”16 These story containing a picture of a judge and the headline,
results are sobering and should serve as a clarion call “Muslim Federal Judge Rules Two Items of Sharia
to handle politically-tinged images with care. If not, Law Legal.” The article claimed that Judge Mahal al

54 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Alallaha-Smith issued a ruling that a Muslim man program. The file, which had been converted into an
in America may “beat [his wife] in a non-life-threat- audio waveform and transcribed sentences, was pro-
ening manner” and marry his first cousin because jected onto the auditorium’s silver screen. Jin pressed
such actions are “prescribed by the Koran.”19 play, and the audience erupted in laughter as Key said,
“I jumped on my bed and I kissed my dogs and my wife,
Yet, if one were to left-click on the image, copy its in that order.” Then, the research scientist proceeded
URL, paste it into the search bar on TinEye.com, and to erase certain portions of the transcript and type out
press return, that search would yield an identical new phrases. Within seconds, VoCo altered the file and
picture from CNN’s website, with one telling excep- made Key say: “I kissed my wife and then my dogs,”
tion—the judge’s nameplate. In truth, the photograph “I kissed Jordan and my dogs,” and “I kissed Jordan
came from a news report about Los Angeles Superior three times.”23 It was both flawless and terrifying.
Court judge Halim Dhanidina titled “Being a Muslim
judge in the age of Trump.” NewsFeedObserver.com, One shudders to think of how this technology—dubbed
which bills itself as a satirical website, lifted the “Photoshop-for-voice”—could be used for more
photo from CNN and digitally manipulated the nefarious purposes. Imagine an audio file from one
plaque by replacing Dhanidina’s name with that of of Barack Obama’s audiobooks being transmogrified
an imaginary federal judge.20 Conducting a reverse into a recording of the former president admitting
image search is simple, fast, and extremely effec- that he was born outside of the United States, or an
tive. As such, critical political thinkers should have audio file from one of Donald Trump’s campaign rallies
this tool at the ready, and faithfully use it to ex- being used to generate a confession that he worked
pose any fake photos that might come their way. closely with the Russians to hack ballot boxes in the
2016 election. Synthetic audio undoubtedly has its
benefits. It gave the film critic, Roger Ebert, his voice
Evaluating Fake Audio and back after thyroid cancer had taken it away. And let’s
Video Recordings be honest, audio deepfakes can be wildly entertain-
ing. I mean, who wouldn’t want to listen to a gaggle
Unfortunately, advances in digital technology have of former U.S. presidents rapping “F--- Tha Police” by
also engendered the rise of deepfakes, manipulated N.W.A.?24 But this technology also has its costs, and
audio and video files that make a person appear to they might just be more than our politics can afford.
say something he never said, or do something she
never did. As of now, this technology is in its infancy. Similar fears have been aroused by the rise of deep-
However, as deepfakes become more sophisticated fake visuals—“videos in which one person’s face is
and widespread, our ability to distinguish between a swapped out for another, often so seamlessly that it
real recording and a fake one will surely be tested.21 can be difficult to tell that they have been altered.”25
As it stands, several computer software applica-
An audio deepfake occurs when a person’s voice is tions, such as DeepFaceLab and Zao, allow users to
“cloned” to produce synthetic audio that’s indistin- make altered videos and post them online. Some of
guishable from the original.22 In 2016, the computer the recordings are benign. For instance, one deep-
software company Adobe held its annual conference in fake video swapped the face of actor Nicolas Cage
San Diego, California. During the MAX Sneaks segment with that of actress Amy Adams as she sang “I Will
of the event, Adobe’s Kim Chambers and the American Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, while another showed
actor, comedian, and filmmaker Jordan Peele intro- actress Jennifer Lawrence speaking at the Golden
duced Adobe VoCo, an unreleased software prototype Globes with the face of actor Steve Buscemi.26
with the ability to not only edit audio files but to also
use their phenomes to generate words from scratch. Yet others are downright disturbing—such as those
During the big reveal, Adobe research scientist Zeyu that have swapped the faces of famous actresses, like
Jin pasted an audio clip—featuring Peele’s friend and Gal Gadot and Scarlett Johansson, onto the bodies of
co-actor Michael Key humorously recalling his reaction pornographic movie stars without their knowledge
to being nominated for an Emmy—into the VoCo or consent.27 What’s more, consider the impact that

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 55

 deepfake videos could have on domestic politics and in- said, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping
ternational affairs. What would happen, law professors after it.”36 Second, researchers fear that these efforts
Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron wonder, “if a fake will inevitably result in a sort of arms race, in which
video of a white police officer shouting racial slurs or the methods used by those attempting to identify
a Black Lives Matter activist calling for violence” went deepfakes will simply be incorporated and circum-
viral? Or how many recruits and acts of terror could vented by those generating them. As such, the political
iSiS inspire if they created “a video depicting a U.S. scientist Brian Klass argues that, “Ultimately, the
soldier shooting civilians or discussing a plan to bomb solution lies with us… If better forgers are coming, we,
a mosque?”28 Or what about an altered video depict- as citizens, need to…become better detectives.”37 The
ing “emergency officials ‘announcing’ an impending tips described below will help us begin to do just that.
missile strike on Los Angeles or an emergent pandemic
in New York City?”29 As digital forensic expert Hany
Farid notes, the fact that such “nightmare scenari- Again, Make Use of Reputable
os…aren’t out of the question…should scare us.”30 Fact-Checking Organizations

Yet the problem with deepfake technology isn’t just its In 2020, a video of then-Democratic presidential
ability to present a lie as the truth, but also its capacity frontrunner Joe Biden lolling his tongue began to make
to provide cover for those seeking to dismiss the truth the rounds on Facebook. The video wasn’t realistic,
as a lie. When a public figure is accused of having said nor technically even a deepfake.38 Nonetheless, an
or done something inappropriate, and that allegation investigation by PolitiFact offered definitive evi-
is supported by a genuine audio or video recording, dence of its fraudulent nature, including a link to
he or she may try to cast doubt on the authenticity the app that was used to doctor the video and a link
of that evidence by dismissing it as a deepfake. This to the original, unaltered recording. That same year,
phenomenon—which Chesney and Citron call the liar’s a video of President Trump appearing disoriented
dividend—is already rearing its ugly head in American on the White House lawn appeared on Instagram.
politics.31 In November 2016, the Washington Post But PolitiFact once again proved that the twelve-sec-
released a recording of then-presidential candidate ond clip—which was accompanied by a message
Donald Trump vulgarly bragging about groping women claiming that Trump was “deep into his degenera-
to an Access Hollywood correspondent on a hot mic in tive neurological disease”—was a fake.39 In short,
2005. Although Trump publicly acceded to the authen- the fact-checkers at FactCheck.org, Snopes, and
ticity of the tape and apologized for his comments in PolitiFact, do commendable work, and our efforts to
the final days of the campaign, he later claimed that verify suspicious recordings should begin with them.
it was not his voice on the tape after all.32 Likewise, in
the wake of an assault on the U.S. Capitol by hundreds
of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, President Attempt to Verify a
Trump delivered an address in which he promised to Recording on Your Own
punish the rioters and acknowledged President-elect
Joe Biden’s victory. Soon thereafter, however, a post However, if we stumble upon an audio or visual
appeared on Facebook claiming that the broadcast was recording that has yet to be investigated by a reputable
fraudulent. “That’s not real,” the message exclaimed, fact-checking group, we will have to do our best to
“That’s not real guys. Something’s wrong with this verify it on our own.
video. This is a deep fake.[sic]”33 The post went viral.
• First, if a recording shows a politician in an
Although it’s been possible to alter audio and video files unduly negative light, we should be skepti-
for decades, doing so took time, skill, and a lot of mon- cal. It’s not a deal breaker—politicians say and
ey.34 This high bar is no longer the case. Fortunately, do dumb things all the time. But, again, if it’s
numerous efforts to develop deepfake-detecting too good (or bad) to be true, it probably is.
software are currently underway. Yet these programs
will never be foolproof. First, a deepfake that goes viral • Second, we should seek the source of the
will likely be seen by millions of people before it’s ever video. If one is lacking, that’s a good in-
debunked by such software,35 for as Jonathan Swift dicator that it could be misleading.

56 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 • Third, we should paste the video’s link into In Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of
tools like Amnesty International’s YouTube Information Overload, press critics Bill Kovach and
Dataviewer or the InVid browser extension and Tom Rosenstiel argue that we’ll increasingly have to
gather information on the recording’s origins. rely on ourselves, rather than the press, to evaluate
information.43 We are our own editors, and we must
• Fourth, we should take a screenshot of the video, take this responsibility seriously. As they write:
upload it to Google or TinEye, and conduct a “Democracy stakes everything on a continuing dia-
reverse image search to see if it appears elsewhere logue of informed citizens, and that dialogue rises or
online, particularly in an unadulterated form.40 falls on whether the discussion is based on propagan-
da and deceit or facts and verification.”44 Using the
• Finally, we should make a habit of watching as simple strategies described here can improve our abil-
many deepfake videos as possible, so we can learn ity to distinguish fact from fiction, and thereby con-
how to discern a real recording from a fake one.41 tribute to the well-being of our democratic society.
The differences can be hard to place, but the
more we watch deepfake videos, the more we’ll Excerpt from Political Tribalism in America: How Hyper-Partisanship
be able to detect slight movements of the mouth Dumbs Down Democracy and How to Fix It, by Tim Redmond, published
or the head that just don’t seem quite right.42 by McFarland Press (June 2022) www.mcfarlandbooks.com

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/3qsr9ic 13 https://reut.rs/3txb2Sm 27 https://bit.ly/3tw868A

2 Boller, P. F. (1996). Presidential 14 https://bit.ly/37SjHGK 28 https://fam.ag/3D0sCRW
Campaign (pp. 9–13). New York: 15 Sacchi, D. L. M., Agnoli, F., & Loftus, 29 Chesney, R., & Citron, D. K.
Oxford University Press; See E. F. (2007). Changing history: (2018). Deep fakes: A looming
also https://bit.ly/3IvRIcv Doctored photographs affect challenge for privacy, democracy,
3 https://wapo.st/3qsrjpO; see memory for past public events. and national security. SSRN
also Köbis, N., Doležalová, B., Applied Cognitive Psychology, Electronic Journal. https://doi.
& Soraperra, I. (2021). Fooled 21(8), 1005–1022. https:// org/10.2139/ssrn.3213954.
twice—people cannot detect doi.org/10.1002/acp.1394 30 https://bit.ly/3N9a6vg
deepfakes but think they can. 16 Frenda, S. J., Knowles, E. D., 31 Chesney, R., & Citron, D. K. (2018).
SSRN Electronic Journal. https:// Saletan, W., & Loftus, E. F. (2013). 32 https://nyti.ms/3IwU8ra
doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3832978 False memories of fabricated 33 https://reut.rs/3NePVMi
4 https://bit.ly/36GKm8A political events. Journal of 34 https://cnn.it/3LnPgqv
5 https://nyti.ms/3qrCrmZ Experimental Social Psychology, 35 https://brook.gs/3JzZq6C
6 Farid, H. (2007). Digital 49(2), 280–286. https://doi. 36 https://bit.ly/3ujtNrN
doctoring: Can we trust org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.10.013 37 https://wapo.st/3ujtKfB
photographs? Darmouth. 17 https://cnn.it/3BUQm9j 38 https://bit.ly/3wznKCd
7 Seife, C. (2014). Virtual unreality: 18 https://bit.ly/3wrcFmz 39 https://bit.ly/3D4Fx5l
Just because the Internet told 19 https://bit.ly/3tvc3KC 40 https://bit.ly/3JxKtC1
you, how do you know it’s true? 20 https://cnn.it/3HmzWHZ 41 https://bit.ly/3tssffH
(pp. 100–101) Viking. 21 https://wapo.st/3JwIxtF 42 https://bit.ly/3NcyMTH
8 https://bit.ly/3qvkoft 22 https://bit.ly/3umaBcG 43 Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T.
9 https://bit.ly/3NeSVs8 23 https://bit.ly/36ysOvv (2011). Blur: How to know what’s
10 https://bit.ly/3iqNFUb 24 https://bit.ly/3umaBcG true in the age of information
11 https://bit.ly/351Zo8z 25 https://bit.ly/36dxaIQ overload (p. 7). Bloomsbury.
12 https://bit.ly/353A2HB 26 Ibid. 44 Ibid., (p. 197)

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 57

 COLUMN

The

GIMBAL VIDEO
Genuine UFO or Camera Artifact?
BY MICK WEST

In recent years, whenever you see a Leslie Kean (author of a bestselling For the first 20 seconds of the video,
story on UFOs, it almost invariably UFO book). The online version of the not a lot is going on. But around 23
includes images from the “Gimbal story was headed by an embedded seconds weird things start to happen.
video,” a blurry monochrome clip version of the video described as “an There’s a little bump of the camera, and
of what vaguely looks like a flying encounter between a Navy F/A-18 Super the object rotates a little counterclock-
saucer. Gimbal has rapidly become Hornet and an unknown object.” wise. This happens three more times.
the dominant icon of the UFO/UAP During a particularly long rotation, one
(Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). This now-ubiquitous video is indeed of the pilots in the plane says, incredu-
Just keystroke “UFO” into a Google interesting. It shows the view from lously, “look at that thing! It’s rotating!”
image search and a quarter of the the targeting pod on the F/A-18, which The object continues to rotate until
results will be a frame from Gimbal. I’ll refer to as “the jet.” It’s thermal it’s past vertical, and inexplicably
camera footage, so it is filming some- appears to slow down to a near stop.
The video first came to the public’s thing that’s very hot in the middle
attention in December 2017, in a New of the screen, which I’ll refer to as If this were simply a video some guy
York Times article1 authored by Helene “the object.” The object is roughly the took in his backyard, then it wouldn’t
Cooper (who covers the Pentagon for shape of a classic flying saucer and have received much attention outside
the Times), Ralph Blumenthal (who appears to be flying rapidly to the of the UFO community. But Gimbal
authored a biography of John Mack, left, just above the clouds. It seems was radically different to anything the
a psychiatrist who studied those who as if it is surrounded by a bubble media had ever seen before. Here was a
claimed to be alien-abductees), and of cold air—termed “the aura.” video not only being showcased by the

58 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 There are many questions we can
attempt to answer about the Gimbal
video. How big is the object? How
far away is it? How fast is it moving?
What is it? Why is it there? Who—if
anyone (or anything) is on board?
These are difficult questions to answer
because of the lack of information.
We might theorize it’s a misidentified
small plane, but that’s difficult to
prove or dismiss. So instead, I want
to focus on those aspects of the video
that seem, as some have claimed, to
defy the limits of known aeronau-
tic technology…and perhaps even
physics itself. Let’s concentrate on
what we can actually see and mea-
sure in the video—the flying saucer
shape, the aura, and the rotation.

Still from the “Gimbal video”. First showcased by the New York Times, and directly attributed to the
Department of Defense, it has become the holy grail of UFOlogists. A Cold Aura?

Right out of the gate a mystery arose

New York Times, but also directly at- difficult and complex to perform, and that seemed to defy physics. The
tributed to the Department of Defense. even harder to understand. Even when New York Times included it in the
It became, therefore, nothing less than the data set is adequately analyzed, headline (“Glowing Auras and Black
the holy grail of UFO videos, an “offi- sufficient ambiguities remain so Money”) precisely because it was so
cial” video of an actual UFO; not simply that we cannot provide a convinc- seemingly inexplicable. In the story
some dot in the sky, but an actual flying ingly definitive, mundane answer, they said the Gimbal was “an aircraft
saucer defying the laws of aerodynamics. thus leaving open the possibility of surrounded by some kind of glowing
UFOlogists were understandably elated, some unconventional explanation, aura”—leaving unsaid the obvious
believing that at long last they had which usually means “aliens.” point that no human aircraft does this,
definitive evidence of alien visitation. nor is there a physical mechanism
Skeptics recognize this problem possibly responsible for it. Others have
as a form of the “God of the gaps” described the aura as a “Possible energy
It’s Complicated argument for the existence of God. or resonance field of unknown nature.”
Science has not answered every
UFOs are often described as “uniden- question about the universe, and However, it was soon apparent that
tified” because conventional explana- many mysteries remain to be solved. the aura was in fact simply a common
tions—Identified Flying Objects—are Those mysteries, though shrinking in artifact of infrared cameras. Several
sometimes difficult to pin down. number, are taken by those “seek- other examples of the “cold” aura were
Usually this is simply because the ing something more” as evidence of found, including around red-hot jet
data are insufficient, but sometimes something beyond science, i.e., God. engines and people. The effect could
it’s because the analysis required is And if not “God”, well, at least “Aliens.” easily be duplicated with a common

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 59

 background (the horizon, clouds, etc.)
does. Since we don’t want the rotation,
the dero de-rotates the entire image
back. Since the glare has not rotated,
this dero action means the horizon
does not rotate, but the glare does.

This is complicated, and hence some-

what difficult to explain. Over the
last few years, I made several videos
to help people understand what’s
actually going on. While I convinced
some people, others remained un-
moved. I think this was largely due
The apparent “aura” is a common artifact of infrared cameras. This effect can be duplicated with a to the difficulty in understanding
common image-sharpening technique called an “unsharp mask.” what was happening, along with my
failure to explain it adequately.

image-sharpening technique called an A big clue here is the official name of

“unsharp mask.” It’s not mysterious the video: “Gimbal.” A gimbal system A New Analysis
at all, defies no laws of physics, but means one axis is mounted inside
is simply a property of the photo- another. The simplest version being Four years after the video came out
graphic process and equipment. a Pan-and-Tilt camera, which can it was still going strong as the poster
rotate to pan left-right, and then tilt child for UFOs. Most new UFOlogy
up and down. The ATFLiR is similar, stories featured it, at least as a
It’s Rotating! except it’s mounted horizontally, so background graphic. So I felt I had
instead of panning, it rolls. This is to do something more and different.
The object in Gimbal looks like it’s presumably done to make it more Given my background in 3D graphics
rotating. But is it? streamlined, but has the unfortunate (a former videogame programmer),
effect of causing the image to rotate I decided to brush the cobwebs off
The first thing to note is that the pilots when, as in the Gimbal video, you my 3D-math and create a new tool
are looking at the same thing we are track something from left to right. to simulate, analyze, and demon-
looking at—a video. The event took strate what is going on in the video.
place after dusk, and the object was So, might the U.S. Navy actually have
not visible to the naked eye. So, when figured it out? Is the rotation simply With the help of others on Metabunk,
someone exclaims “it’s rotating,” he’s the result of the ATFLiR’s Gimbal I extracted as much data from the
just giving his instant impression of a mounting? I investigated further (with video as was possible. The numbers
small video (the cockpit screens are the help of others on Metabunk) and on screen (the speed, heading, and
tiny) that we’ve had the benefit of we found that the ATFLiR camera had elevation) were relatively simple—just
analyzing frame-by-frame for many a “derotation” mechanism, called a scrolling through the video and typing
hours on much larger screens. “dero.” The dero corrected any unwant- them in. The bank angle of the jet was
ed rotation in the image by making extracted using feature that tracks
Back on December 19, 2017, just two sure the horizon in the image was the the ends of the artificial horizon. The
days after the publication of the video same as the horizon out the window. angle of the actual Gimbal “object”
by the New York Times, I suggested that (the saucer shape) was extract-
the rotation might be a camera artifact. This correction process produces a ed using a combination of image
I wrote: “I wonder if [the rotation] curious side effect. Camera glare (the analysis and manual keyframing.
might be a function of the way the shape of light spilling out around a
Raytheon ATFLiR works.” I then started very bright or hot object) is relative to With this data, I created a mathe-
on a series of experiments to try to es- the camera. When you rotate the cam- matical model of the ATFLiR camera
tablish how this could have happened. era, the glare does not rotate, but the mounting—and a 3D graphical model

60 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 to display it in the simulator. I showed taken into account, the amount of And when you look at the steps in the
how the tracking of the camera from roll was reduced even more, and we graph, you see that it’s what you would
left to right would cause it to rotate. arrived at the graph reproduced below. expect if the roll only kicked in when
Now we could test the hypothesis: if the error gets above a certain level.
the rotation on screen was actually The blue line is the expected roll,
from the camera rotating, then the the red line is the rotation of the The result is a remarkable correlation.
angle of the camera roll should match object (the glare). They follow very It means that if the rotating shape
the angle of the object. At first, while closely. But it’s actually a lot clos- is the shape of a real object (and not
we could see it was all going in the er than it looks. The differences in just the glare from a real, non-rotat-
right direction, it seemed as if the roll (as much as 20°) result in very ing object) then it’s an object that
object was not rotating enough—and small angular differences in the rotates in a way that matches exactly
it was rotating in successive steps, actual line of sight of the camera. the amount needed to stay within
rather than in a smooth curve. The amount of the error is shown by three degrees of a gimbal system
the gray line and remains under 3°. tracking the target, while minimizing
We then noted two critical factors roll—but just from this one plane, at
missing from our simulation: the Why the steps? The ATFLiR also has this pitch, and at this bank angle.
jet’s own roll, and the pitch angle of internal gimballed mirrors that can
the jet. Since the jet made some roll correct for small differences in the There are other observables in the
motions in the same direction the line of sight without having to use Gimbal video. I used the simulator
pod would need to roll, this reduced the heavy and inaccurate roll motors. to try to explain all of them. Briefly,
the amount of pod roll needed. Then, These can account for 5°, so 3° is safely they are (1) the lack of rotation of the
when the correct pitch of the jet was within the amount to be expected. object in the first 20 seconds (when

Pod Roll Angle vs. Glare Angle

120

110

100

90
pod roll angle
80
Angle (degrees)

70
glare angle
60

50
angular error
40

30

20

10

-10

-20
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Time (seconds)

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 61

 it should rotate with the background to more mundane possibilities, such as willing to change their minds, as
because the jet is banking); (2) the a misidentified jet. For a more detailed in this comment: “I’ll never forget
small camera bumps that occur before analysis see my analysis at Metabunk: the day of the Gimbal video drop. I
the rotation; and (3) a noticeable “Gimbal UFO—A New Analysis.”2 thought that everything had changed,
rotation of patterns of light in the then your rebuttal video slapped my
sky during rotation of the object. ego down. It was very bittersweet.”
It also looks like a glare, with typi- Reactions
cal right-angled diffraction spikes. While not a giant step for all skepti-
Combined with the official name Not everyone agrees. Passions run cism, still a small step forward for
“Gimbal”, it seems like case closed. high in the UFO community, and critical thinking.
some members have continued to
Our analysis did not identify what push back against the rather down-
the object is, but it disproves much to-earth explanation offered here.
ballyhooed media assertions, such as A few simply drop the “rotating” REFERENCES
To the Stars Academy (TTSA) claim that evidence, and claim it was never
“the object’s orientation and perfor- important anyway, with comments 1 https://nyti.ms/3iL0j0g
mance seem to defy current principles such as: “nothing more than a waste 2 https://youtu.be/qsEjV8DdSbs
of physics to include atmospheric of time and effort. It adds no value
resistance and normal aerodynamic and reaches no conclusion other than
forces,” or even the New York Times’ saying well it’s a glare and rotating.”
more restrained observation that it is
“rotating as it moves.” Careful analysis Some insist that the analysis is flawed
demonstrates there’s no evidence of and try to convince others in every
new aerodynamics, and opens the door way. Others, fortunately, have been

Terminology

Angular Error Pod

The angle between the 3D line pointing at the target, The ATFLIR Targeting Pod. An Infrared
and the line made using the glare angle for pod roll. camera on an F/A-18 fighter jet.

Glare Angle Pod Roll

The amount the UFO object (or glare) is rotated on screen. Rotation of the ATFLIR pod around the horizontal axis.

Pitch Angle
The amount the nose of the jet is raised up in flight.

62 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

ARTICLE

META ETHICS
Toward a Universal Ethics—
How Science & Reason Can Give Us
Objective Moral Truths Without God
BY GARY J. WHITTENBERGER

Illustration by
Ryan Garcia
 William Lane Craig is one of the world’s foremost in religious doctrines, in the laws of states, nations,
Christian apologists. He has presented this well- and international organizations, and in, perhaps at the
known argument for the existence of God: pinnacle, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.2

1. If God does not exist, objective Craig believes that a moral rule is objective or at
moral values do not exist. least can be objective, but what does this mean?
Because “objective” and “subjective” both have
2. Objective moral values do exist. different meanings in different contexts, I will set
out what meanings I believe they have for the moral
3. Therefore, God exists.1 realm. A subjective assertion is a claim for which
the truth or correctness can be verified only by the
Are you persuaded? I’m not. Sure, the logic is valid person making it, e.g., “I have a headache,” or a claim
per modus tolens (If P, then Q. Not Q. Therefore, not P.) made solely by one person, or a claim which has not
but the first premise is false and so the conclusion yet been evaluated by anybody else. On the other
does not follow. As I shall argue here, even if God hand, an objective assertion is a claim for which the
doesn’t exist, objective moral rules still can and do truth or correctness can be verified not only by the
exist; God is superfluous. Craig does not give a clear person making it but also by other persons prop-
and precise definition of “moral values,” but I would erly situated, e.g., “The Earth is round, not flat.”
imagine that this category includes moral rules. A
moral rule is any proposition, claim, or assertion which Are assertions about moral rules subjective or objec-
guides or governs the interactions of persons with tive? I think they are objective, and so on this point
respect to some end or objective. Moral rules may be I am in agreement with Craig. Take the moral rule
properly expressed in at least three different ways: mentioned earlier—“Any person X ought not rape any
person Y.” Intuitively, that seems correct, and most per-
1. Normative Way: “Any person X ought not sons would probably agree that it is correct, but in what
(or should not) rape any person Y.” thought process might different persons engage to each
reliably reach the same conclusion? To answer this we
2. Descriptive Way: “It is immoral (or morally need to overcome David Hume’s objection that we can’t
wrong) for any person X to rape any person Y.” derive an “ought” statement from an “is” statement.3

3. Imperative Way: “Don’t rape another person.” I view an “ought” statement as both a contingent
prediction and an encouragement. If I say “You ought
Throughout this essay I will express moral rules to shop at the grocery store today” then I am predicting
in the normative way, all the while keeping in that if you shop at the grocery store today, then you
mind that any rule formulated this way can be will have a good outcome for yourself and perhaps for
just as easily formulated in the other two ways. others, and so I am now encouraging you to go there.
This reduces the “mystery of the ought.” If we think
carefully about the first component, i.e., the contin-
What is Objective Morality? gent prediction, we may understand that it is really
based on two “is” statements. It “is” a fact that in the
A moral or ethical code (I will use “moral” and past when you have shopped at the grocery store, you
“ethical” interchangeably) is simply a coherent set of have almost always had a good outcome, and it “is” a
moral rules. Moral codes have existed since ancient fact that when under similar circumstances you have
Mesopotamia and Egypt and likely go back to hunt- not shopped at the grocery store, you have almost
er-gatherer cultures. In tribes or groups of probably less always had a bad outcome. The second component
than a hundred individuals, there had to be rules for is also an “is” statement, i.e., it “is” a fact that I am
sharing the hard-earned bounty from the hunting and right now encouraging you to shop at the grocery
gathering. These rules would have constituted a prim- store today. Thus, the original “ought” statement is
itive moral code. However, as plants and animals were derived from three “is” statements, two about the
domesticated and humans congregated in cities, moral record of past events and one about encouragement.
codes became more extensive, sophisticated, and com- We can derive “ought” statements from “is” statements,
plex. In our modern world moral codes are formulated but we must do it carefully by the use of reason.

64 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

This kind of analysis can also be applied to moral rules. of moral decision making by Joshua Greene,6 the
Let’s see how it would work. “You ought not rape any- social psychological Moral Foundations Theory of
body” is both a contingent prediction and an encour- Jonathan Haidt,7 and the well-being moral systems of
agement. If you will rape anybody, then you will have a Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, and Michael Shermer. A
bad outcome for yourself and for others. But if you will utilitarian analysis of morality could be well found-
not rape anybody, then you will have a good outcome ed on either “the well-being of conscious creatures”
for yourself and for others. In the past when some (Harris in The Moral Landscape8), or “principles that
persons have raped other persons, the outcomes were maximize the flourishing of humans” (Pinker in
bad for the perpetrator, the victim, and the community. Enlightenment Now9), or “the survival and flourishing
But when persons have avoided raping persons, the of sentient beings” (Shermer in The Moral Arc10).
outcomes were good for everyone in the community.
And so, I encourage you to not rape anybody. Here Let’s start with the idea, explained earlier, that “ought”
the “ought not” statement is derived, as before, from implies a contingent prediction. If a person X rapes an-
three “is” statements. This moral analysis is based on other person Y, then the outcomes will be much worse
a utilitarian or consequentialist moral framework. I than if X does not rape Y, and so we must encourage
claim that all other moral frameworks, i.e., deonto- X to not rape. But what outcomes? There are many
logical ethics, virtue ethics, divine command theory, which could be chosen for evaluation such as happi-
etc. are all reducible to the utilitarian framework, but ness (Jeremy Bentham11) or the wellbeing of sentient
defense of that claim is beyond the scope of this essay. creatures (Harris, Pinker, and Shermer). Those have
merit, but I propose that we evaluate a little different
outcome—the fulfillment of the basic biological values
Are Moral Rules Invented of survival, reproduction, well-being, and advancement
or Discovered? for all persons. All or nearly all persons, whom we
know to exist and who might exist elsewhere, do value
Let’s briefly examine the ontological nature of moral these four things. This is an important fact that can
rules. I assert that moral rules are cognitive inventions, be verified with scientific surveys, brain studies, and
not discoveries. They exist not in the physical realm, behavioral observations of large samples of persons.
but in the mental realm. You can’t see, hear, or touch
them, but you can see their results in the behavior of To be more specific, if person X does not rape person
persons who comply or don’t comply with them. A Y, the outcome for all relevant persons in terms of
moral code is like a set of instructions. There is no good well-being in particular, the third of the four men-
evidence for a Platonic realm in which moral rules tioned biological values, will be better than if X does
exist. And they don’t exist in nature per se. Without rape Y. Part of well-being is being free of restraint,
persons, moral rules would not exist at all! They just injury, and pain, and of course rape does or might
exist in the minds of individual persons. Every moral impair all of these. We can know about the differential
rule begins as some person’s opinion, whether that outcomes of following different moral rules by examin-
person might be human, alien, robotic, or divine. ing history and life stories, conducting social psychol-
The opinion is “This moral rule is probably correct” ogy experiments, arranging thought experiments, and
or “This moral rule will probably work better than its running computer simulations. But could any one of
converse or any similar competing rule.” This view us be mistaken in our predictions of outcomes? Yes,
may be classified as a form of moral realism inasmuch we could be mistaken because we are fallible human
as moral rules exist in minds of billions of persons, beings. This is where verification by others comes in.
even though minds are fully dependent on brains.
A moral rule is objective if its truth or correctness can
If a moral rule is objective, then its truth or correct- be verified not only by the person originally devis-
ness must be subject to verification by many persons, ing it but also by other persons properly situated.
not just one. How can this be done? It’s not easy, but Correctness and objectivity are not the same thing.
I suggest we follow the scientific or quasi-scientific A moral rule may be correct, but not objective, and
approach of a number of thinkers working in this area, it may be objective, but not correct. Because I have
including the evolutionary ethics of primatologist used reason to devise the moral rule “Person X should
Frans de Waal,4 the group selection theory of evolution- not rape person Y,” the rule is probably correct. But
ary biologist David Sloan Wilson,5 the neuroscience if nobody else evaluates the rule or if most of a group

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 65

 of others, also using reason, concludes the rule is Whether or not God exists, the moral rule “Any
incorrect, then the rule is not objective. A consensus group N should not exterminate any group J” is both
is required for objectivity. Suppose one scientist does correct and objective. God is totally unnecessary for
research and concludes that the burning of fossil a proper grounding of moral rules. In fact, if God
fuels has caused a warming of the Earth. We would did exist and he devised a moral rule on his own, the
not trust this report without verification. But if nine rule could not be objective without verification by
scientists independently conduct research using the other minds. If any god were to command that we
same methods and if at least seven of the nine did follow a particular moral rule, e.g., God command-
agree with the original conclusion, then we have the ing Abraham to kill his son Isaac,13 then we would
verification from a consensus. This same approach have a duty to evaluate its correctness. We ought not
can and should be used with respect to moral rules. just accept it on faith, as Craig implies we should.

Objective Morality Correct Universal Ethics

William Lane Craig’s idea of objectivity in morality The moral codes of the different nations and cultures
is different from mine. He says “When I speak of of the world vary widely. In some places the moral
objective moral values, I mean moral values that are rule “Parents should authorize the clipping or cutting
valid and binding whether anybody believes in them of the genitals of their child daughters” is faithful-
or not. Thus, to say, for example, that the Holocaust ly followed. In other places governments enforce
was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even the moral rule “Any person convicted of murder
though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it should be executed.” Some moral rules are incor-
was right and that it would still have been wrong even rect, unreasonable, relativistic, and/or nonobjective.
if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in This state of affairs results in unnecessary harm to
exterminating or brainwashing everyone who disagreed persons every hour of every day. What shall be the
with them. Now if God does not exist, then moral val- future of morality? I propose that we aim towards
ues are not objective in this way.”12 According to Craig’s establishing a Correct Universal Ethics (CUE).
account, the moral rule “Group N should not extermi-
nate group J” is correct whether anybody believes it is CUE would be a comprehensive moral code for all per-
correct or not. But this just can’t be true! Somebody sons devised from the ground up by a qualified panel of
needs to believe that the moral rule is correct. Moral persons. Desired qualities of CUE would include clarity
rules do not exist independent of the minds of persons. rather than obtuseness, specificity rather than general-
Craig is being disingenuous in his analysis. When he ity, simplicity rather than complexity, objectivity rather
says “whether anybody believes in them or not” the than subjectivity, rationality rather than irrationality,
“anybody” to which he refers is any human person. breadth rather than narrowness, stability rather than
He rests the belief in, or knowledge of, the moral rule malleability, universality rather than relativity or paro-
only in the mind of God, thereby shifting the objectiv- chialism, and circumstantialism rather than absolute-
ity of the moral code from natural to supernatural. ness. Perhaps a “blue ribbon” panel could assess ethical
codes and moral values and issue white paper state-
However, the moral rule we are discussing here is both ments meant to advise governments and legal systems.
correct and objective because a consensus of thinkers
using reason confirms that it is correct. The Nazis, or There are many different possible ways by which such
at least some of their leaders, strongly believed that the a panel could work. For example, the panel could use
converse moral rule was correct, i.e., “Group N should a variety of moral reasoning tools, such as John Rawl’s
exterminate group J.” This rule, however, was based on “Veil of Ignorance,”14 Immanuel Kant’s “Categorical
at least two false premises—that group J was geneti- Imperatives,”15 Peter Singer’s “Expanding Circle,”16 and
cally inferior to group N and was responsible for most Pinker and Shermer’s “Principle of Interchangeable
or all of the problems in the world. The Nazi leaders Perspectives.”17 I suggest it also use a thought experi-
were not properly situated to judge the correctness ment I shall call “Island Dyad.” Imagine two persons,
of their odd moral rule; they were not using reason. X and Y, ship-wrecked and stranded on an island by
They were wrong, and they had to be defeated by force. themselves, not knowing if they will ever be rescued.

66 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 They are forced to live together. They need some moral Thus, any person X should not kill any person Y,
rules to govern their interactions. If they use reason, except under a few special circumstances, e.g., when
then what rules will they devise? Suppose they resolve it is necessary as a last resort to protect oneself or
to establish a rule on killing. There are four options: a third person Z from serious injury or death.

1. Person X should kill person Y.

A Community of Rational
2. Person Y should kill person X. Thinking Persons

3. Person X should kill person Y, and person Y should William Lane Craig has claimed that although atheists
kill person X. (This could happen if they wounded might behave in moral ways, they have no ground-
each other and then both subsequently died later.) ing for their morality. There is no moral authority
to obligate them to follow moral rules. Of course,
4. Person X should not kill person Y, and person Y Craig believes the moral authority to obligate rests
should not kill person X. in God himself. But as I have demonstrated, God’s
existence is not necessary. We just need an authority
If the two people use reason to devise the rule on on which to ground our morality. I suggest that it is
killing, then which of the four alternatives would they simply the community of rational thinking persons.
adopt? Moral rule #4 of course! Selection of that rule
would maximize the survival, reproduction, well-be- In this essay I have shown that William Lane Craig
ing, and advancement of the dyad, compared to the is mistaken about morality, how to solve the prob-
other three alternatives. Similarly, a rule regarding lem of deriving an “ought” from an “is,” and how to
attempting to kill could also be devised. This kind provide a foundation for Correct Universal Ethics that
of moral reasoning can be generalized to the eight is consistent with secular humanism. I think we now
billion people living on Earth, no gods required. have a proper meta-ethics for the 21st century.

REFERENCES

1 Craig, W. L., & Sinnott-Armstrong, 6 Greene, J. D. (2013). Moral Tribes: 11 Bentham, J. (1789/1948). An
W. (2004). God? A Debate Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Introduction to the Principles of
Between a Christian and an Atheist. Us and Them. The Penguin Press. Morals and Legislation. Macmillan.
Oxford University Press. 7 Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: 12 Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, op. cit.
2 https://bit.ly/31stujU Why Good People Are Divided by 13 New International Version
3 Hume, D. (2009). A Treatise of Politics and Religion. Pantheon. Bible. Genesis 22:1–19.
Human Nature (D. F. Norton, 8 Harris, S. (2010). The Moral 14 Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of
Ed.; Reprint with corrections). Landscape: How Science Can Justice (Rev. ed). Belknap Press
Oxford University Press. Determine Human Values. Free Press. of Harvard University Press.
4 De Waal, F. B. M. (1996). Good 9 Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment 15 Kant, I. (1785/1895). Fundamental
Natured: The Origins of Right and Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Principles of the Metaphysic of
Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Humanism, and Progress. Viking. Morals. Pantianos Classics.
Harvard University Press. 10 Shermer, M. (2015). The Moral 16 Singer, P. (1981). The Expanding
5 Wilson, D. S. (2019). This View Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral
of Life: Completing the Darwinian Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, Progress. Princeton University
Revolution. Pantheon Books. and Freedom Henry Holt and Co. Press. Op. cit. Pinker, Shermer

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 ARTICLE

Holy Relics,
Holy Places,
Wholly Fiction
BY TIM CALLAHAN

The Spear of Destiny

I recently watched a television show alleging the
fascination Hitler, Himmler, and the Nazis had Before considering the validity of the physical evi-
for certain holy relics and their desire to possess dence, let us examine the origin of the legend of the
them. Among these were the Ark of the Covenant, Spear of Destiny. In the account of the Crucifixion in
containing the stone tablets Moses brought down the Gospel of John, a Roman soldier thrust his spear
from Mt. Sinai; the Holy Grail, the chalice Jesus into the side of the (apparently) already dead body
drank from at the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Jesus as it hung on the cross (John 19:31–34):
of Arimathea caught the blood of Christ at the
Crucifixion; and the Spear of Destiny, the lance that The Jews, therefore, because it was the day of
pierced the side of Jesus during the Crucifixion. preparation that the bodies should not remain
upon the cross on the sabbath day (for the sabbath
Of course, the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy day was a high holy day) besought Pilate that their
Grail call to mind two of the Indiana Jones mov- legs might be broken and that they might be taken
ies, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the away. Then came the soldiers and broke the legs
Last Crusade. While these films are acknowledged as of the first and the other which was crucified with
fiction, the three relics the Nazis supposedly de- him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that
sired are thought by many to be real. And throwing he was dead already, they broke not his legs; but
in Nazis is a convenient hook to hoist up sales in one of the soldiers, with a spear, pierced his side,
just about any medium on just about any subject. and forthwith came there out blood and water.

68 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

This incident is recorded only in the Gospel of And I will pour upon the House of David and upon
John. There seems to be no point in the soldier the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and
spearing Jesus in the side, since the soldiers had supplication; and they shall look unto me because
already determined he was dead. Rather, the rea- of him who they pierced, and they shall mourn for
son this gospel adds these specific details of Jesus’ him as one mourns an only child and they shall
legs not being broken and him being speared is so grieve bitterly for him as one grieves a first born.
that the author could claim (in John 19:36, 37) the
fulfillment of two Old Testament prophecies: This is how the passage is rendered in the Masoretic
Text (MT), the official body of the Jewish scripture.
For these things were done that the scripture However, since the MT was only edited between
should be fulfilled. A bone of him shall not be CE 600 and 900, its rendering of the passage may
broken. And again, another scripture sayeth not represent the original form. It is rendered in
they shall look upon him who they pierced. the Septuagint (LXX), the Jewish scriptures trans-
lated into Greek for the benefit of Jewish diaspora
The first such scripture is Exodus 12:46. communities of the Hellenistic period that had
It describes how the flesh of the roast- become culturally and linguistically Greek, as:
ed Passover lamb is to be eaten:
And I will pour upon the house of David, and
In one house shall it be eaten. You shall not upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of
carry forth any of the flesh out of the house; grace and compassion: and they shall look upon
neither shall you break a bone thereof. me, because they have mocked, and they shall
make lamentation for him, as for a beloved and
Early in this gospel, John the Baptist, upon see- they shall grieve intensely, as for a firstborn.
ing Jesus, exclaims (John 1:36), “Behold, the Lamb
of God!” Thus, the author of John’s gospel seeks In both of these renderings of the passage the people
to symbolically depict Jesus as the Passover lamb. are looking either to or on God (“me”), one who is not
the one they have pierced.
The rendering of the pas-
sage is notably different in
WHAT IS PURPORTED TO BE Christian versions. Here is
how it is rendered in the
THE SPEAR OF DESTINY, OR AT King James Version (kJV):

LEAST ITS POINT, NOW RESIDES And I will pour upon

the house of David, and
IN THE HOFSBURG MUSEUM upon the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, the spirit of
IN VIENNA AS PART OF THE grace and of supplica-
tions: and they shall look
HAPSBURG ROYAL TREASURY. upon me whom they have
pierced, and they shall
mourn for him, as one
His death represents sacrifice on behalf of human- mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness
ity, atoning for our sins. And so, if he is to be the for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
Passover lamb, Jesus’s bones cannot be not broken.
Here, the “me” is now the one they have pierced, rep-
While this allusion to Exodus 12:46 stretches the resenting Jesus as God incarnate, a Christian spin on a
symbolic nature of Jesus as seen by the Gospel of Jewish scripture. The word “me” is, however, eliminat-
John to fit the literal treatment of the Passover ed in the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the passage:
lamb, the reference to the Roman soldiers looking
“on him who they pierced” pulls another prophecy, And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and sup-
Zechariah 12:10, completely out of context. It reads: plication on the house of David and the inhabitants

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Illustration by Ástor Alexander
 of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one What is purported to be the Spear of Destiny, or at
whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for least its point, now resides in the Hofsburg Museum
him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep in Vienna as part of the Hapsburg royal treasury. The
bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. earliest verifiable account of this particular artifact
is that it was used in the coronation ceremony of
Regardless of whether or not a Christian gloss is put Rudolf I as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in
on the prophecy in Zechariah, those looking on “him 1273. He was the first Hapsburg to attain that office.1
who they pierced” are the people of Jerusalem, not The artifact is a bronze spear point, part of which
Roman soldiers. Clearly, the author of the Gospel of has been wrapped in gold. However, the lance or
John has taken this passage out of context in order pilum used by the Roman army was a javelin over six
to force upon the reader his invention of the Roman feet in length that consisted of an iron shank—not
soldiers spearing Jesus as the fulfillment of a prophecy. bronze—about two feet long that fitted over a wooden
shaft. In most battles it was hurled just before the
So, the scriptural underpinnings of the “Spear legion closed with its enemy. However, at the Battle of
of Destiny” are tenuous at best. Despite that, an Pharsalus in 48 BCE, Julius Caesar ordered his troops
elaborate extra-biblical mythos grew from this not to throw their spears, but to hold them and thrust
passage in the Gospel of John. Not only does the them at the faces of Pompey’s cavalrymen. The spear
legend involve the spear, but also the Roman sol- point in the Hofsburg Museum bears no resemblance
dier wielding it. One of the sources of this legend to this Roman weapon. It is, therefore, as lacking
is a work in Latin titled Gesta Pilati, or, in English, in substance as the legend on which it was based.
The Deeds of Pilate. The work seems to have been
written in stages, and the earliest parts may have
been written as early as the late second century. The Holy Grail

Gesta Pilati identifies the Roman soldier who pierced Even more tenuous in its connection to the gospels and
the side of Jesus with a lance as Longinus. The name their Passion narratives than the Spear of Destiny is
Longinus is probably derived from longche, Greek for the Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus drank wine
“lance.” As the extra-biblical legend of Longinus grew at the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Arimathea
during the Middle Ages, he was conflated with the caught the blood of Jesus shed during the Crucifixion.
centurion witnessing the Crucifixion who, in Mark In popular modern fiction, the Grail is either the cup
15:39 and Matthew 27:54, says, “Truly, this man was of Christ now residing in the Near East and guard-
the Son of God.” He was also represented as being ed by a mysteriously long-lived crusader (as in the
nearly blind. When he speared Jesus, blood from the 1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), or a
wound spurted into his eyes, curing his blindness. living descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (as
Thus, metaphorically, he was spiritually blind until the in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code). The
blood of Jesus made him see. Finally, he converted to plot of Brown’s novel is largely based on the theory
Christianity, was martyred, and became St. Longinus. expounded by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and
Henry Lincoln in their 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy
The spear itself, according to legend, was subsequently Grail. These authors argued that the medieval French
possessed by various notable kings and conquerors. San-graal (or san-gréal), meaning “Holy Grail” was
The Emperor Constantine supposedly wielded it at the actually a corruption of sang réal, meaning “Blood
Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 where he defeated Royal”. The “vessel” containing the royal blood of
Maxentius, his rival for the office of emperor. It was Jesus was the womb of Mary Magdalene. This theory
reputed to have fallen into the hands of Attila the Hun. is based on legends that, after the Crucifixion, Mary
Since he was a pagan, it didn’t afford him any success Magdalene fled Judea and was brought to southern
and he cast it aside. It later came into the possession France by Joseph of Arimathea, who, in the legend,
of Emperor Justinian (482–565). Others, including finally brought the Grail to Glastonbury in England.
Charlemagne and the Anglo-Saxon king Athelstan also
eputedly owned the spear. Believing the legends—or so The legend of the Grail can be easily traced through
its proponents would have us believe—both Napoleon its paper trail. The earliest tale of the Grail was an
Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler sought to possess it. unfinished poem by Chrétien de Troyes written in Old

72 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

French circa 1190 titled Perceval ou le Conte du Graal journey. He meets a maiden who upbraids him for
(Perceval, the Story of the Grail). In this story, Perceval, not asking the Fisher King whom the graal serves.
an ingenuous young man who, though of noble birth, Had he done so, he might have found the way to
was raised by his mother in a forest in Wales, becomes heal the Fisher King. The vessel in this tale contains
a knight at the court of King Arthur. He has been a single communion wafer that sustains the king.
warned by a mentor not to speak or ask questions in
social situations, so as not to reveal his ignorance. The Grail became the vessel bearing the blood of
While journeying to visit his mother, Perceval meets Christ in Joseph d’Arimathie ou le Roman de l’estoire du
the Fisher King who is lame and spends his time fishing Graal; (Joseph of Arimathea, the Romance of the history
in a boat. The Fisher King invites Perceval to his court, of the Grail) a poem written in the 1200s by Robert de
where the young knight witnesses a strange procession Boron. In the story, Joseph of Arimathea used the cup
in which young men and women bear various objects from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper to catch
some of the savior’s blood
at the Crucifixion. This
association of the blood of
THE MYTH OF THE GRAIL Christ with the cup from
which he drank wine at the
IS OF ENTIRELY WESTERN Last Supper comes from the
institution of the Eucharist
EUROPEAN ORIGINS AND WAS in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor.
11:24, 25, bracketed material
UNKNOWN BEFORE THE HIGH added for clarification):

MIDDLE AGES. THERE NEITHER And when he [Jesus] had

given thanks, he broke
IS—OR EVER WAS—AN ACTUAL it [the bread] and said,
“Take, eat. This is my body
RELIC OF THE CUP OF CHRIST. broken for you. Do this
in remembrance of me.”
In the same manner, he
from one chamber to another. First, a young man en- took the cup, when he had supped, saying, “This
ters carrying a bleeding lance. This is followed by two cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do you
boys carrying a candelabra. Then, a beautiful young as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.”
girl enters bearing an elaborately decorated graal.
Finally, another maiden passes carrying a silver platter. So, by having Joseph catch the blood of Jesus in the
very cup he drank from at the Last Supper, Robert
The object referred to as a graal is a shallow vessel used de Boron made the symbolic blood of Christ (the
for serving fish at medieval banquets. The word may be wine) physical. Joseph, in the poem, along with
an extreme corruption of the Greek word krater, which his sister and her husband, flee Jerusalem and
was Latinized as crater and further altered to cratalus, eventually end up in England at Glastonbury.
then corrupted in medieval Latin to gradalis and to
graal in Old French. Finally, its spelling was altered It is possible that the grail originated as a pagan vessel,
to “grail”. Another possible origin of the word is the either a cauldron or platter in which rested a severed
Latin gradus, meaning “step,” which in medieval Latin head. This is how it is presented in the story Peradur,
became gradualis, the source of our word “gradual.” Son of Efrawog.2 The names of both Peradur and
In reference to banquets, this would refer to multiple Perceval derive from the Welsh root per, meaning “cup.”
courses, served gradually, of which one would be fish. The surviving written versions of this story come from
the fourteenth century, among them the White Book
As instructed by his mentor, Perceval remains of Rhydderch. However, the story does hearken back
silent during the procession. The next morning, to pagan Celtic motifs and could derive from ancient
he awakes to find himself alone and resumes his oral traditions. Regardless of whether Chrétien derived

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 73

 his story from pagan sources or not, the myth of the melted down the brass. While this account details
Grail is of entirely Western European origins and was the temple’s utter destruction, it doesn’t mention
unknown before the high Middle Ages. There neither the Ark, thus leaving its fate open to speculation.
is—or ever was—an actual relic of the cup of Christ.
That, at least, is the case for the Masoretic Text (MT).
Since the Protestant Old Testament (OT) is based on
The Ark of the Covenant the MT, it too, lacks any further mention of the fate
of the Ark. However, the Roman Catholic Douay
Compared with both the Spear of Destiny and the Bible’s OT is based on the Septuagint (LXX), which
Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant has far more contains a number of books excised by the editors of
substance as a historic artifact. In his 2017 book the MT. Among these are 1 and 2 Maccabees, which
The Exodus, Dr. Richard Eliott Friedman makes the case deal with the revolt of the Jews against the Seleucid
that the Exodus was a historical event, only minus the Empire, ruled at that time by Antiochus Epiphanes,
plagues devastating Egypt, and Moses himself parting and 2 Maccabees does contain a passage concern-
the waters of the Red Sea, and instead involving only ing the fate of the Ark (2 Maccabees 2:4–7):
the Levites.3 Among the evidence that Levites—who
became a priestly tribe among the Israelites and did It was also contained in the same writing, how the
not hold a tribal territory—originally came from prophet, being warned by God, commanded that the
Egypt are the prevalence of Egyptian names in that tabernacle and the ark should accompany him, till he
tribe, and the similarity of the Ark of the Covenant came forth to the mountain where Moses went up,
as described in Exodus 25:10–15 to ceremonial and saw the inheritance of God. And when Jeremias
boats carried in Egyptian religious processions. The (Jeremiah) came thither he found a hollow cave: and
placement of the Ark in the first temple is described he carried in thither the tabernacle, and the ark, and
the altar of incense, and so stopped
the door. Then some of them that
followed him, came up to mark the
ETHIOPIAN CHRISTIANS CLAIM place: but they could not find it.
And when Jeremias perceived it,
THE ARK STILL RESIDES IN he blamed them, saying: The place
shall be unknown, till God gather
THE CHURCH OF MARY OF together the congregation of the
people, and receive them to mercy.
ZION, GUARDED BY A GROUP
The Maccabean revolt took
OF VIRGIN MONKS, WHO, ONCE place from 167 to 141 BCE, and 2
Maccabees is estimated to have been
ORDAINED, ARE FORBIDDEN TO written between 150 and 120 BCE.
Thus, the assertion that the prophet
LEAVE THE CHAPEL GROUNDS Jeremiah hid the Ark in a cave on
Mt. Sinai is a late and unreliable
FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. tradition. It is not, however, the
latest tale of the fate of the Ark.

in 1 Kings 8:6–9. In 587 BCE, the Chaldeans, under According to the Ethiopian national epic, Kebra
Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, sacked the Nagast (Glory of the Kings), written sometime in the
city, deported its population, and utterly destroyed fourteenth century, the ruling dynasty of Ethiopia was
the temple housing the Ark. This is described in founded by Menelik I, son of Solomon and Makeda,
2 Kings 25:8–16. Not only did the Chaldeans de- the Queen of Sheba. She gave birth to him after she
stroy the temple but, according to 2 Kings, they also returned to Ethiopia. Thus, he grew up not knowing
smashed the various priestly brass implements and his father. However, as a young man, he traveled to

74 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

Jerusalem and was united with King Solomon. His Holy Landmarks of Jerusalem
father wanted him to stay and rule over Israel as his and the Moon
heir. However, Menelik wished to return to Ethiopia.
So, Solomon gave his son the Ark, which Menelik Along with the fascination many people have for
transported to Aksum, then the capital of Ethiopia.4 these holy relics is the veneration they show for holy
places. For example, if you to go to Jerusalem with
Ethiopian Christians claim the Ark still resides a group of evangelical Christians, tour guides might
there in the Church of Mary of Zion. There it is well show you the upper room where Jesus and his
guarded by a group of virgin monks, who, once disciples ate the Last Supper. They might also take
ordained, are forbidden to leave the chapel grounds you along the Via Dolorosa (the Way of Sorrows), the
for the rest of their lives. Since these guardians path along which Jesus is said to have made to walk
are the only ones who are allowed to view the Ark, bearing his cross on the way to the crucifixion. They
the validity of this claim cannot be verified.5 will also guide you to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
alleged to contain the notably empty tomb of Christ.
The story of the romance between King Solomon and
the Queen of Sheba is itself an elaborate embroidery The one thing all these sites have in common is that
of a tantalizing passage in 1 Kings about her visit to they are utterly bogus. In the year CE 70, the Roman
Jerusalem (1 Kings 10:1–13). In that story the Queen army, under the direction of Emperor Vespasian,
of Sheba (most likely the ancient kingdom of Saba in utterly flattened Jerusalem, the final devastating
present day Yemen) at the head of a fabulous caravan, loss that marked the end of the Jewish revolt that
visits King Solomon. She asks him many questions, began in CE 66. Flavius Josephus, chronicler the
which he, in his celebrated wisdom, answers. After revolt, wrote of this in his Wars of the Jews:7
this display of Solomonic sagacity and after view-
ing its possessor’s worldly riches, the Queen is left Caesar now gave orders that they should demol-
breathless (or in the language of the Bible, verse 5, ish the entire city and temple but should leave as
“There was no more spirit in her”). She then gives many of the towers standing as were of the greatest
him gold, spices and precious stones, he gives her “all eminency; that is Miriamne, Phasaelus and Hippicus
her desire” (v. 13), and she returns to her country. and so much of the wall as enclosed the city on the
west side. This wall was spared in order to afford a
In the Targum Sheni of Esther and in the Qur’an, camp for those as were to lie in garrison; as were the
the story of Solomon and Sheba is greatly expand- towers spared in order to demonstrate to posterity
ed. Targums are translations of books of the Jewish what kind of city it was, and how well fortified,
scriptures into Aramaic, with various elaborations. which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the
The earliest likely date for this one is sometime in rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with
the fourth century CE and may date from as late the ground by those that dug it up to the founda-
as the eleventh century. The story as told in the tion that there was left nothing to make those that
targum is roughly paralleled in Surah 27 Al Naml came thither believe it had ever been inhabited.
(“The Ants”) in the Qur’an. However, the latter
makes no mention of carnal relations between So, there was no upper room left standing af-
Solomon and Sheba, while the former does.6 ter the year 70. Likewise, whatever path Jesus
might have walked on his way to be cruci-
Since the story of Menelik taking the Ark to fied was obliterated at the same time.
Ethiopia in Kebra Nagast hinges on his being the
son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, an ex- As to the tomb of Christ, family tombs at that time
tra-biblical elaboration on a biblical story of were often dug into hillsides, with a main chamber in
doubtful historicity, it is—like the stories of the which the body of a recently deceased family mem-
Spear of Destiny and the Holy Grail—historical- ber was laid on a raised slab and left there to decay.
ly unsubstantiated. The most likely fate of the Once the body was reduced to disarticulated bones,
Ark of the Covenant is that it was destroyed along these were placed in limestone boxes called ossuaries,
with the temple that housed it in 587 BCE. which were then placed in niches.8 According to the

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 75

 gospels, the body of Jesus was laid in just such a tomb, (Q54:1). It would seem to refer to the day of judg-
freshly carved into stone and belonging to Joseph of ment. But the interpretation varies, as can be seen
Arimathea.9 Any such tomb in Jerusalem would have by comparing three translations of it into English:13
been buried in the rubble of the flattened city. It would
be virtually impossible to locate a specific family tomb The Hour has come near, and the moon has
in such a situation.10 Also, though the gospels say split [in two]. (Sahih International)
that Pontius Pilate gave the body of Jesus to Joseph of
Arimathea for burial, it is quite likely that the Romans The Hour (of Judgment) is nigh, and the
would have left the bodies of those crucified hanging moon is cleft asunder. (Yusuf Ali)
on their crosses to rot and be eaten by vultures in
further degradation and humiliation as a deterrent to The Hour of Resurrection drew near, and the
would-be malefactors. Whatever remains remained moon split asunder. (Abul Ala Maududi)
after several days would likely have been disposed of
into the valley of Gehenna, Jerusalem’s garbage dump.11 So, according to the Qur’an, the moon being split in
two may refer to the time of the Last Judgment, which
In fact, the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in is also a Christian concept. However, according to at
the year 70 would have obliterated all sites as- least one hadith, the split refers to an episode in the
sociated with the Passion of the Christ. Any re- life of Muhammad, in which, to convince skeptical
maining evidence of the event that might have members of his tribe that he was indeed the true
existed would have been further eradicated when messenger of Allah, the prophet, by his words alone,
Emperor Hadrian built a Roman city called Aelia split the moon in two and then fused the halves
Capitolina over the ruins of Jerusalem in CE 130.12 together (Sahih Muslim book 39, hadith 6725):

This hadith has been transmitted on the authority of

Abdullah b. Mas’ud (who said): We were along with
Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) at Mina,
THE ONE THING ALL that moon was split up into two. One of its parts
was behind the mountain and the other one was on
THESE SITES HAVE IN this side of the mountain. Allah’s Messenger (may
peace be upon him) said to us: Bear witness to this.
COMMON IS THAT THEY
Muhammad died in CE 632, and there is no
ARE UTTERLY BOGUS. written evidence of any astronomical observa-
tions made in the seventh century (or any other
time in history) that can be construed as a re-
cord of the moon seeming to be split in two.
Of course, not all holy places are in Jerusalem. Perhaps
the most unusual site of an alleged miracle is…on the While Muslims consider the Qur’an to be the word
moon! In response to the publication of photographs of God transmitted to Muhammad, the hadiths are
of the lunar surface taken by the Apollo 11 mission, a said to be transmitted by Muhammad to his compan-
number of Islamic websites have claimed that one of ions. Not surprisingly, there is considerable contro-
them confirms the miracle of Muhammad splitting the versy within Islam regarding the hadiths, including
moon in two. The source for this claim is an interpreta- disputes between Sunni Muslims and Shi’a Muslims
tion of a verse in the Qur’an and its possible reference as to which hadiths are valid. Also, some Muslims,
to a legendary episode in the life of Muhammad, as calling themselves “Quranists,” reject all hadiths.
recorded in one of the hadiths, a collection of tradi-
tions containing sayings of the prophet Muhammad. The failure of observers in Muhammad’s time to wit-
The passage in question can be found in the Qur’an, ness the splitting of the moon and the subsequent fus-
in the first verse of Surah 54, Al Qamar “The Moon” ing of its two halves, and the rather meager scriptural

76 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

 support for it from the Qur’an notwithstanding, con- two, either by natural forces or by Muhammad.
siderable number of Islamic websites have claimed This fact has yet to dampen the enthusiasm shown
that photos of the Ariadaeus rille are evidence that by these Islamic websites any more than the report
Muhammad did indeed split the moon in two. Rilles, by Josephus of the total destruction of Jerusalem
from a German word for “groove”, also called by the in CE 70 has had on Christians touring modern
Latin word rimae, are long, narrow depressions in Jerusalem. It appears that the grip holy places, like
the lunar surface resembling channels. Here is what holy relics, hold on the minds of their respective
reporter Mohamed Ali wrote in Jafariya News:14 believers is not grounded in any verifiable facts.

NEW yORk, United States: Recent scientific ***

research has confirmed the miracle of Prophet
Muhammad Al-Mostafa (peace be upon him and The myths and legends surrounding holy places
his holy progeny) regarding “moon splitting”. and holy relics become more opulent seemingly
It has been proved through a picture captured in inverse proportion to their historical validity.
by NASA which was published throughout the So, there are today ardent seekers after the Holy
world. The photo from NASA using Apollo Grail and the Ark of the Covenant, as well as
10 and Apollo 11 shows a clear indication (a earnest pilgrims who flock to Jerusalem to visit
line) that the Moon was split in the past. sites associated with the Passion of Jesus or waltz
into Vienna to view the Spear of Destiny. Modern
The Apollo 11 photograph referred to above was purveyors of pseudohistory in quest of book sales,
of the Ariadaeus Rille, which is 300 km (186.4 television ratings, or internet hits, can always add yet
miles) long. Since the circumference of the moon another layer of nacre to the pearl of legend grown
is 10,921 km (6,786 miles), the Ariadaeus Rille up from the irritating sand of dubious history. We
comes nowhere near girdling the moon and is are, so it has been said, a story-telling species.
hardly evidence of the moon having been split in

REFERENCES

1 https://bit.ly/3tdhdJS & Sheba. Phaidon Press. remnant of the Jerusalem Temple.

2 This story can be found in: 7 Flavius J. (circa CE 70). Wars of the In fact, it is part of the retaining
Rolleston, T. W. (1910). Myths Jews. Book 7, Chapter 1, item 1. wall of the platform and foundation
and Legends of the Celtic Race. 8 Ronny, R. (1999). “Jewish Burial upon which that temple, its courts
3 Freidman, R. E. (2017). The Customs in the First Century.” and enclosing wall were built.
Exodus. Harper One. Jerusalem Perspective. and Lemaire, 11 Ehrman, B. D. (2014). How Jesus
4 Ullendorff, E. (1974). “The Queen A. (2002). “Burial Box of James Became God: The Exaltation of a
of Sheba in Ethiopian Tradition.” the Brother of Jesus” Biblical Jewish Preacher from Galilee (pp.
In J. Pritchard (Ed), Solomon Archaeology Review 28:4. 133–165) HarperCollins.9
& Sheba. Phaidon Press. 9 Mark 15:4; Matthew 27:59, 12 Metcalf. W. E. (2012). The
5 Raffaele, P. (2007). “Keepers of 60; Luke 23:53; John 19:40. Oxford Handbook of Greek
the lost Ark?” Smithsonian. 10 The Western Wall, also called the and Roman Coinage (p. 492).
6 Silberman, L. H. “The Queen Wailing Wall, an important site of Oxford University Press.
of Sheba in Judaic Tradition.” pilgrimage and religion devotion 13 https://bit.ly/3BQieM5
In J. Pritchard (Ed), Solomon for Jews is often described as a 14 https://bit.ly/3BU58gF

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 77

 AUTHORS & CONTRIBUTORS

Michelle Ainsworth holds an MA Saint Martins College of Art and Design Ryan Garcia is an illustrator from
in History and she is currently in London. His work has been published Toronto, Canada. His work has been
researching a cultural history of stage in the Sunday Times, Times, New York featured in the New York Times,
magic in the United States. She is a Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, WIRED, and the Wall Street Journal.
humanist and lives in New York City. Guardian, Reader’s Digest, Prospects, and
the Wall Street Journal. He regularly John Holcroft has been an editorial
Ástor Alexander is a figurative illustrated Michael Shermer’s “Skeptic” illustrator since the 90s and has
illustrator and painter. He specializes column in Scientific American. He worked in a variety of mediums and
in portraits and he’s a big fan has taught in Israel and Paris. He styles. In 2001 he started working
of the American illustrators of and his family currently reside in Tel digitally, but it wasn’t until 2010 that
the 60s. His work can be seen at Aviv, Israel. His work can be found he created his current ‘screen print’
behance.net/astoralexander online at izharcohen.wordpress.com style inspired by 1950’s poster ads.
and on Instagram @izhar_cohen. John’s clients worldwide include: BBC,
Robert E. Bartholomew is an Reader’s Digest, Financial Times, Walker
Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Jeff Drew, oddly enough, likes to books, The Guardian, The Economist,
Department of Psychological Medicine draw. Born in 1973 on the east coast Haymarket, Condé Nast, TES, Radio
at the University of Auckland in New of Indiana, he became an illustrator Times, Cathay Pacific, Experian,
Zealand. He has written numerous who has created dazzling covers for Informa PLC, New York Times, Honda,
books on the margins of science alt-weekly newspapers and magazines Wall Street Journal and many more.
covering UFOs, haunted houses, across the USA. His work has graced
Bigfoot, lake monsters—all from a the pages of Playboy, The Boston Globe, Harriet Hall, MD, the SkepDoc, is
perspective of mainstream science. Village Voice and been collected in a retired family physician, former
He has lived with the Malay people in several volumes of American Illustration. flight surgeon, and retired Air Force
Malaysia, and Aborigines in Central His retro-inspired artwork seems to Colonel who writes about medicine,
Australia. He is the co-author of have time traveled from the 1950s, pseudoscience, alternative medicine,
two seminal books: Outbreak! The to appear here, slightly augmented, in quackery, and critical thinking. She
Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social the 21st century. Jeff currently resides is a contributing editor and regular
Behavior with Hilary Evans, and in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his columnist for both Skeptic and
Havana Syndrome with Robert Baloh. wife, who is a teacher, and their three Skeptical Inquirer magazines as well
dogs, who don’t do much of anything. as a columnist for the Committee
Tim Callahan is religion editor of for Skeptical Inquiry online and an
Skeptic. His books include Secret Origins Danielle D’Souza Gill is a young editor at ScienceBasedMedicine.org,
Of the Bible, and Bible Prophecy: Failure author, commentator, and the host of where she has written an article every
or Fulfillment? He coauthored the award Counterculture with Danielle D’Souza Gill Tuesday since its inception in 2008.
winning UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens. He on Epoch Times. She is the author of She wrote the book Women Aren’t
has also researched the environmental two books, most recently The Choice: Supposed to Fly: The Memoirs of a Female
movement, and his article The Abortion Divide in America. Her Flight Surgeon. The full texts of all her
“Environmentalists Cause Malaria! articles have appeared in Newsweek, many hundreds of articles can be read
(and other myths of the ‘Wise Use’ The Daily Caller, American Greatness, on her website www.skepdoc.info.
movement)” appeared in The Humanist. and others. She has also filmed videos
for PragerU, has been a Turning Point Brian D. Josephson is a British
Izhar Cohen was born in Ra’anana, USA ambassador, and appeared physicist whose discovery of the
Israel. He studied at the Bezalel on various TV and radio networks Josephson effect won him a share
academy of art in Jerusalem, the including Fox News, One America, (with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever) of
École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Newsmax, and Salem Radio. She is the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics. He
Décoratifs in Paris, and the Central a graduate of Dartmouth College. was professor of physics at Trinity

78 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022

College, University of Cambridge, Dr. Michael Shermer is the Publisher for her efforts to promote science and
from 1974 until his retirement of Skeptic magazine, the host of the skepticism, including an award from
in 2007. He sometimes refers to podcast The Michael Shermer Show, the Center for Inquiry’s Independent
himself as the “Resident Heretic” in and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman Investigations Group; an honorary
view of his support of a number of University where he teaches Skepticism doctorate from Simmons College for her
topics that have yet to be generally 101. For 18 years he was a monthly work in promoting critical thinking and
accepted by mainstream science. columnist for Scientific American. He gender equity; and the Bertrand Russell
writes a weekly Substack column. Distinguished Scholar, Foundation
Dr. Kevin McCaffree has a Ph.D. He regularly contributes opinion for Critical Thinking, Sonoma State.
in sociology from the University of editorials, book reviews, and essays
California, Riverside. He is an assistant to the Wall Street Journal, the Los Mick West is the author of Escaping
professor at the University of North Angeles Times, Science, Nature, and the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk
Texas and co-directs the Worldview other publications. He’s appeared on Conspiracy Theories Using Facts,
Foundations Research Team. The Colbert Report, 20/20, Dateline, Logic, and Respect and the host of the
Charlie Rose, and Larry King Live (but, podcast: Tales From The Rabbit Hole.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone proudly, never Jerry Springer!). His Both focus on developing tools for
Family Professor of Psychology at two TED talks, seen by millions, were understanding and helping people
Harvard University and the author of voted in the top 100 of the more than who have been sucked into conspiracy
numerous bestselling books including 1000 TED talks. He holds a PhD from theories. He’s a retired videogame
The Language Instinct, How the Mind Claremont Graduate University in the programmer who helped make the
Works, The Blank Slate, The Better History of Science. His latest book Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Franchise.
Angels of Our Nature, Enlightenment is: Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections Mick also runs the website metabunk.
Now, and Rationality: What It Is, Why of a Scientific Humanist. Follow him org, where he investigates conspiracy
It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters. on Twitter @michaelshermer. theories, debunks pseudoscience,
and analyzes UFO videos.
Dr. Timothy J. Redmond is an award- Jess Suttner is an illustrator and visual
winning educator who teaches history, green thumb. He enjoys marrying Dr. Gary Whittenberger, PhD,
government, and critical thinking at strong concepts with engaging is a freelance writer and retired
Williamsville East High School and visuals. He was born and raised in psychologist, living in Tallahassee, FL.
Daemen College in Buffalo, NY. He Chicago, educated at California He received his doctoral degree in
is the author of Political Tribalism in College of the Arts in the Bay Area, clinical psychology from Florida State
America: How Hyper-Partisanship Dumbs and is currently based in Queens, University after which he worked for
Down Democracy and How to Fix It. NY with his fiancé, dog, cat, and an 23 years as a psychologist in prisons.
Redmond, who received his PhD in assortment of plants. You can see more He has written many published
political science from the University of of his work at www.jsuttner.com. articles on science, philosophy,
New York at Buffalo, is also a Jackson psychology, and religion, and he is
Center fellow and associate director Carol Tavris, PhD, is a social a member of several freethought
of the Academy for Human Rights. psychologist and writer. She has written organizations, including Humanists
Follow him on Twitter @tjredmo hundreds of articles, book reviews, and of Tallahassee. He is the author of
op-eds on many topics in psychological two books—God Wants You to be an
Dr. Anondah Saide has a Ph.D. in science. Her books include Mistakes Atheist: The Startling Conclusion from a
psychology from the University of Were Made (But Not by Me), with Elliot Rational Analysis and God and Natural
California, Riverside. She is a visiting Aronson; Estrogen Matters; and The Disasters: A Debate Between an Atheist
assistant professor at the University Mismeasure of Woman. A Fellow of the and a Christian. He may be reached by
of North Texas and co-directs the Association for Psychological Science, email at [email protected].
Worldview Foundations Research Team. she has received numerous awards

VOLUME 27 NUMBER 2 2022 SKEPTIC.COM 79

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Cosmic Queries: The Parasitic Mind:
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The End of Gender:
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21 Lessons for the The Elect: Neoracists Posing
21st Century as Antiracists in America