Four Tips for Dating Believers
Date: September 2, 2008 | Author: Rebecca WatsonCategory: Skepticism | Comments: 15 » |
People, I am exhausted. I spent the weekend in New York, hitting Coney Island with Wendy, Eve, Waltdakind, and Goodguyseatpie, and the wedding of NYC Skeptic Matt McCarthy. Sure, it wasn’t Dragon*Con, but at least I kept busy and had a blast.
Now I’m back at work and loaded down with deadlines, a circumstance made even more tragic by the fact that my work friends all quit last week and now I get to eat lunch alone at my desk. Suffice it to say, I’m having some trouble getting my skepticism on. In search of inspiration, I turned to the in-box and found this note from Skeptics’ Guide listener Neil:
My question for you is not of a sceptical nature but I think many of your listeners can relate to my predicament. My girlfriend has recently, and for the first time, expressed a belief in woo-woo. In particular it was a belief in pseudo-scientific psychic card reading tests and a healthy fear of ghosts. Apart from this she is non-theistic but never calls shenanigans, which I do quite often. I am concerned that if I don’t reason with her the beliefs will snowball and suddenly I’ll find myself in an angel shop buying energy crystals. However, reasoning with her may shake the apple-cart as I’ll appear to be blithely shooting down her beliefs.
I realise that these are both slippery slopes and that the middle-ground is to gently sit her in front of James Randi on YouTUbe, but…
How would the SGU panel, as activist sceptics, deal with a situation like this? And have you any advice for listeners in the same situation?
Thanks for the interesting question, Neil! First, let me just say that I don’t have a lot of experience with this exact problem due to my pretty good track record of dating skeptics (probably because psychics can psychically foresee that I will dump them as soon as I find out they’re psychics). However, a lot of what applies to romantic relationships can also apply to other relationships, and so I give you these tips, which I’ve mentioned elsewhere in various forms but are collected here for your convenience:
1. Don’t Have All the Answers
I was at a bar Saturday night where my fellow skeptics told the bartender about Skepchick. The bartender then insisted upon telling me story after story about her paranormal experiences, pausing to stare and demand I give a more rational explanation for each one. Her tone was pretty aggressive. One story was about a friend of hers dying and sending her a message through the spilled wax of a candle. She said, “Tell me how else you can explain that.”
I pointed out that there’s just no way I could ever know what happened, much less give her an explanation that would satisfy her, since I wasn’t there. I explained that when I say I don’t believe in ghosts or psychics, I mean that I have yet to see any evidence to suggest otherwise, and that every story I’ve come across that sounds convincing at first has become a lot less convincing the more it is investigated. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and unfortunately an anecdote told over a bar just won’t be enough to overcome mountains of evidence suggesting there’s no such thing as the paranormal.
When you have the courage to admit you don’t know the answers for sure, you can worry less about angering someone. You’re no longer shooting down their beliefs — you’re taking them on an investigation where you both learn together.
2. Do Have a Sense of Humor
The number one way to convince someone that you’re not just being a cynical jerkhole (sidenote: Firefox recognizes “jerkhole” as a properly spelled word) is to not take yourself too seriously. Laugh at yourself, and earn bonus points if you can make her laugh, too. My conversation with the bartender got a whole lot better when I switched it to talking about good (and fun) science, like Richard Wiseman’s search for the world’s funniest joke. That got us all telling really, really bad jokes and laughing like idiots, and it got my bartender to relax a bit. When she felt like I may be challenging her beliefs or telling her she’s a loon, she was more on edge and ready to (verbally) fight it out. When she was laughing and realizing that I’m just interested in talking about things, she was back to being a fun, easy-going girl who was pouring me more delicious, delicious beer.
3. Do Know When to Drop It
You won’t convince a person of much of anything over the course of one conversation. When you’ve both had your say, try telling her you’ll send her some links to back up some of the things you were talking about. That could be a link to a Skepchick article, a Captain Disillusion video, or whatever. Then, drop it. The skeptical talk didn’t go on all night at the bar Saturday — eventually we all just laughed it off and changed topics. If I were to run into that bartender another day, I bet she’d be willing to chat again because our talk about skepticism was just one chunk of a larger conversation that was rather enjoyable. Another chance to talk is another chance to impart some critical thinking lessons. In your case, Neil, it might be another chance to get some nookie, which is important in a relationship.
4. Do Follow Up
Look, you gotta be you, so don’t drop it forever. If you start avoiding issues that you find interesting just because your friend or lover is a believer, you’re going to be miserable and you’re going to end up hating her, and she’s not even going to realize why. Instead, learn more about her particular belief. Read the studies, and if you can, do some simple tests yourself. Include her and talk about the results. Give her the skeptical ammo she needs, and you may be pleasantly surprised when one day she shoots down a crackpot theory on her own.
So Neil, I hope that helps. Anyone else out there have experience dating someone with a weird belief? Let us know how you deal by commenting below!
15 Responses to “Four Tips for Dating Believers”
By revmatty on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
Excellent advice. I dated plenty of girls with weird beliefs, but the one I married didn’t seem to believe in anything unsupported by the evidence. But her mom never met a woo she did embrace wholeheartedly and as my wife has gotten older and we’ve had kids she’s tending to be less skeptical. Much to my horror she is reading The Secret (her mom bought copies for everyone she knows, and frequently leaves DVDs like What the Bleep Do We Know that we’ll never watch).
Sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.
By TomWoolf on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
I had married a woman who was a theist of sorts – not a church goer, but she believed in a god. Our discussions concerning god basically ended up being descriptions of what we were and were not, and in the end casually happily agreeing to disagree.
I liked your explanation of not having seen any evidence, yet leaving it open to the possibility that woo exists, just that the evidence has to be provided (yet has not),
By kevwood on Sep 2, 2008 | Reply
I’ve found a good approach is to find some common ground. Even the most hardcore believers are usually skeptical about something. Ask them what they think is absolute woo-woo and discuss together their reasons for dismissing whatever it is. You’ll still be friends and with a bit of luck they’ll start to think about other things the same way.
By Geo-Steve on Sep 3, 2008 | Reply
I’ve actually dealt with this type of thing on a number of occasions. My mother is a religious person who has completely drank the kool-aide on angels, ghosts, and especially psychics. She knows about cold readings, she knows about Randi, but still buys John Edward hook, line and sinker. She directly relates my skepticism with my atheism and has expressed her utter disappointment with me for the latter, to the point of tears.
My now ex-girlfriend is a bit superstitious and prone to belief in wacky things. Years ago, before I became a skeptic, she had me taking Airborne and echinacea when I had a cold. She is Jewish, but became less devout over the ~3 years that we dated. And she believes that if a mirror breaks, someone will die in her family (apparently that belief comes from previous “experiences”). Once I became an atheist and a skeptic, the religious conversations became fights and the skeptical conversations almost never happened. She hated talking about such things. I struggled a lot with what to do and where to go, even writing e-mails to the rogues asking similar questions and trying to get advice. I’m hoping that my next experience turns out a bit better. Now that I’m a grad student in planetary science, I’m hoping to find someone in the scientific community and a bit more skeptical.
This is still a topic that concerns and troubles me greatly. I would love any additional advice and would gladly trade more specific details for some thoughts from any of the rogues on how they have dealt with family members, relationships and your own skepticism.
By Steve Page on Sep 3, 2008 | Reply
Occasionally, when confronted by statements containing complete nonsense by those close to me, I find it very difficult to let things go, or to be diplomatic. However, I think that, at least in part, it’s due to my refusal to treat their beliefs as untouchable. I had a conversation with my mother last year that ended up with her yelling at me that I had no right to tell people what to believe, to which I calmly replied that I wasn’t telling her what to believe, just not to expect me to grant respect to something that I believed to be wholly fallacious. The point is that because I refused to just take “It’s what I believe” as a conversation-closer, she was enraged. I pointed out that if I’d said something racist, sexist or factually inaccurate and then said, “Well, it’s what I believe”, she wouldn’t accept that as an answer, so why should she expect me to do the same because she believes in something that I see as equally inaccurate? On that occasion, I found it very difficult to just shrug and say “Okay, whatever.”
Fortunately, my wife is as skeptical as I am about woo, so I don’t have to worry about offending her.
By cebolla on Sep 3, 2008 | Reply
It’s certainly tricky. A girl once refused to date me because I was Sagittarian, whatever that means. Dodged a bullet there.I went out with (dated for you americans) a couple of creationists. I remember evolution cropping up in conversation and she, with a condescending smile, said “You don’t believe that rubbish do you?”. It was a Twilight Zone moment. I laid it all out for her, but people don’t like their cosy worldviews punctured with the kill-joy ‘evidence’, or the harlot ‘proof’.
Having said that, an uber-catholic work colleague has downgraded recently (I’d like to think thanks to my gentle reasoned arguments coupled with derision and blunt invective) …but is now embracing various ‘pyramid’ woo…aliens, psychics and hallucination realism (which was a new one for me). So I’ve still got some work to do. I’m going to try to market scepticism to him…after all, I think he’s just looking for a worldview, and that of the sceptic has the added benefit of being right.
By gwenwifar on Sep 3, 2008 | Reply
I am an atheist and a skeptic who grew up surounded by believers – and I mean surrounded. I must have been one of about 10 skeptics in the entire town, and most of those 10 were deists. I discovered my atheism while being made to go to confession once a month, to church every Sunday, and to walk down the isle for my confirmation. That was what you call truly ironic. An atheist, albeit one in her early teens, being confirmed into the kingdom of god. I laugh about it now, but it was tough then. I felt like a fake and a liar, but what could I do when I was slapped around for being 20 minutes late coming home from school?
A big important piece of advice is missing in this post. Pick your battles. Understand that sometimes the people who are important in your life are going to have beliefs you don’t understand or even respect. If they are important to you, if you can respect them, the whole person that they are, you will respect their right to be who they are, even if you cannot respect their opinions.
There weren’t very many opinions or beliefs among the people around me that I could respect. Yet I knew then for good, decent people, however misguided. I knew them to be more tolerant than their belief system. I could respect that.
Sorry, I’m about to get philosophical. I’d be willing to wager that if I asked the average skeptic “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees or hears it, did it really fall?” the answer would be a resounding yes. A philosopher would say no. Both would be right. It’s all in the perspective and interpretation. Funny thing relativity. It applies to a lot of the fields of human endeavor.
That’s why picking your battles is so important. All my life I was surrounded by people who tried to convert me, save me from eternal damnation. They all had the best of intentions, they all wanted me to be saved. They all were trying to show me the truth. Their truth. I liked mine better.
Skepticism is just another truth. The fact that it’s my truth doesn’t make it better than anyone else’s. There is no Truth, because we cannot look at anything, anywhere, without adding the bias of our perception and how we chose to interpret it, however we may try.
End of philosophical spiel.
Bottom line: people are more than just reason and logic. They have emotions, blind spots, baggage. If you respect the person, give them space. Absolutely present your point of view, but make sure you don’t do it as if they were idiots to believe as they do. Once you have done that, back off. It’s their mind to make up. If they want to know more, they’ll come to you. If there is a good reason (the psychic will cure their cancer so they don’t need to see a doctor or something along those lines) put on your armor and put up a fight. Pressing the point beyond that just turns you into another kind of missionary.
By jonny_eh on Sep 4, 2008 | Reply
“if a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees or hears it, did it really fall?”
I don’t understand, you just said it fell, and then asked if it fell.
I hate philosophy 101 BS.
By champagnej on Sep 4, 2008 | Reply
““if a tree falls in a forest and nobody sees or hears it, did it really fall?” the answer would be a resounding yes. A philosopher would say no. Both would be right. It’s all in the perspective and interpretation. Funny thing relativity.”
jonny_eh beat me to it, but I find this sort of relativity to be completely outrageous. I couldn’t just leave that comment hanging out there.
Nobody was there when Earth was formed. Did it really happen?
(the answer starts with y and ends with es)
The facts surrounding trees falling are not subject to drum-circle philosophy.
By Mariner on Sep 4, 2008 | Reply
Coincidentally, a recent Skeptoid episode is entitled “How to be a skeptic and still have friends.” http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4116
Check it out for some more good tips…
By gwenwifar on Sep 4, 2008 | Reply
“if a tree falls” explained:
*yes, it’s philosophy*
All we know is perception. All I will ever know are the things I perceive in some way, things I see, hear about, read up on, touch. I know there are millions of other things out there I will never perceive, and though they exist in the physical sense, out there somewhere, they don’t exist in my world, they don’t exist in any specific sense for me. All things and events you don’t know about don’t exist in your world. Then you add other people. There are things in their world than do not exist in yours, and vice-versa. We cover each other’s gaps. You might say we figure out what our reality is by adding up all the individual realities and critically examining what we get.
If nobody knows that this tree fell, then the event did not happen in anybody’s world, it is not part of anybody’s reality. Hence, it did not happen at all. Not until someone happens by and sees that the tree is down.
We know the Earth was formed because we are all on it, we have pictures of it, we can touch it, smell it, even taste it.
champagnej -
There is much more to the world than facts. As I stated above, facts are by necessity influenced by our perception and interpretation of them. Philosophy is all about finding the answers, all about the whys and the hows and about how we know the whys and hows. Philosophy, the love of knowledge and wisdom, is the mother of science, of critical thought. Science without a touch of philosophy is as blind as faith.
By Geo-Steve on Sep 5, 2008 | Reply
You’re taking this perception thing way to far. There is a stark difference between not knowing something happened and that event not having happened. What you’re implying is that a supernova millions of light years away, in reality, never happened because we don’t know about it. Well, whats the case when we finally see the light from that event? Does it transition somehow from having not happened at all to suddenly being a real event? No, of course not, that’s silly. Our perception of the universe does not dictate reality, it dictates the extent of our knowledge of reality, which exists whether we perceive it or not.
By gwenwifar on Sep 5, 2008 | Reply
“Our perception of the universe does not dictate reality, it dictates the extent of our knowledge of reality, which exists whether we perceive it or not.”
Philosophically speaking, really does not exist at all, except as a mental construction based on our perceptions.
I once had a dream in which I was looking at a soldier on horseback. Suddenly, in my mind a feeling of recognition popped up and I was ticking off all the things I knew about this guy. His name, his date and place of birth, siblings, where and when he went to school, how he had come to be at that place, about to go into battle, and even what his plans for the future were. I knew everything. It was as if I was looking in a mirror.
Just yesterday I was watching, for pure entertainment value a show called “I was a teenage Darwinist” and I couldn’t believe a lawyer could be so incredibly uneducated as this guy proved himself to be as he “debunked” evolution. As I sit here and type this, I know he was wrong about pretty much everything he said. But you know what I don’t know?
I don’t know that I didn’t just fall asleep and dream the whole thing, my whole day or even my whole life, for that matter. Maybe I’ll wake up, and find out I’m a soldier, wounded on that battlefield, deliriously dreaming about this weird woman in fleecy pjs and ticking off all the things he knows about her.
By Pikatron on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
Rebecca, thanks for the great tips you’ve provided in this article. It’s apparent to me that this has further applications than just dating, of course. Though I’m not in a relationship of that sort, said tips are going to make getting along with true believers of any sort much easier than has been in the past to this newbie skeptic. It should also specifically make discussions with believers much more constructive than is sometimes the case, much more frequently. Good post.
By squix on Sep 13, 2008 | Reply
I’ve been looking for some good advice in this arena. I’m married to a Pastor. Many topics are a sore subject and its a balancing act of when to discuss/let it go. The good news is shes very open minded. She also recognizes her beliefs defy logic but to her thats what faith is. I’ll never quite understand that mentality. It was logic that shook me from my faith.
Thanks Rebecca!