Category Archives: Critical Thinking, Reason, & Skepticism

The MMA – Skepticism connection

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It has been a busy summer to say the least. After teaching across Canada I went to Ireland and then back to the UK. Great trips, great friends, and a reminder of how fortunate I am. This was followed by the weekend at the Mundials (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world championships), where SBG managed to bring home a pile of medals, including several golds, and a new world champion from my own Portland Gym. All in all, lets just say life is pretty tremendous.

Between my above mentioned schedule, and the continuing work on my book, it’s been tough to find much time to write on other topics. I have however been involved with a few things, including a podcast I did two weeks ago on the topic of MMA, skepticism and faith. The show was Strange Frequencies, and also featured physicist Lawrence Krauss, his interview on a Universe from ‘nothing’ is excellent.
You can listen to the podcast here

MMA, Skepticism & Faith with Matt Thornton
To new readers or people unfamiliar with the parallels that exist between traditional martial arts and religion/superstition, these two subjects might seem a bit unrelated. However, as those who’ve investigated this topic know, with the exception of course of religion, and ‘perhaps’ alternative medicine, few sub cultures remain as embedded with irrationality.

The last twenty years of my career have in one way or another been about the promotion of skepticism, critical thinking and the application of reason within the martial arts, and I don’t think this has been in vein. Most of this work was done with the intentional introduction of a one word meme which, and I say this with some satisfaction, has taken hold worldwide. That word, as most of you probably know, is Aliveness. If someone really ‘gets’ what that means, then they can easily discern between what is fantasy, and what will align itself with reality once someone else actually begins fully resisting. Like critical thinking itself, it isn’t the conclusion, or the technique that defines whether someone can actually pull off a movement against a non-cooperating opponent, but the process one used to arrive at that conclusion, in this case the training method, that makes all the difference in the world.

That practical skill set, whether it’s learned within the martial arts or a critical thinking class, can easily translate into all the other areas of our lives. We can learn to engage reason and rationality to improve the well being of ourselves, and the world at large.
Occasionally I still get hit with questions like, “why bother explaining Aliveness at all, people will either get it or they won’t?”As well as, “Since the advent of MMA everyone ‘gets’ Alive training now don’t they?” Let me briefly address both.

For those who feel that explaining Aliveness at all is a waste of time because those that fall for the traditional fantasy based martial arts, thinking them efficient, are either stupid or lazy, and therefore deserving of their fate, let me just say I don’t share that opinion.
About four times a year I guest lecture at the local university in a critical thinking class. This class covers everything from faith healers, astrology, alternative medicine, and fantasy based martial arts. You can probably guess which topic I am there to discuss. We start with various clips taken from people like George Dillman (famous for his “no touch” knockouts), Aikido, yellow bamboo kung fu, Silat, and other related delusions; and then follow with a discussion on the distinction between Alive combat sports and these type of dead pattern fantasy arts. As a skeptic I find that sharing critical thinking skills on these topics is both rewarding, and important; and anyone that thinks distinguishing between reality and these sorts of superstitions is”common sense”, just hasn’t spent enough time looking at the data, or talking to the average student.

As for the second comment, that everyone now “gets it” and therefore the need for discussion about these old training methods is moot, let me point out that the assumption that it is easy for those of us who’ve spent a lifetime in combat sports to understand what Aliveness really means, is simply that, an assumption. The reality is that the comments made, questions asked and classes taught by many of these people demonstrate that this isn’t the nature of the situation. I still hear comments like “boxers skip rope”, or “baseball players have batting practice”, as if these comments relate in any way to what is meant, or not meant by Aliveness, and this is coming from people within combat sports. For those of you familiar with what Alive training means, these comments make it self-evident that even within our own functional arts, many people still don’t understand what the conversation, or epistemology is actually about yet.
*If you are unfamiliar with Alive training I’d suggest starting here:

http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/movie Sandy Wexler 2017 download

Finally, lets not forget that although training in functional martial arts is certainly on the rise thanks in large part to the sport of MMA, the Gracies and others, we are still in the minority. The superstition of fantasy based martial arts is still very much the majority.

So is Aliveness common, or always understood even within the combat athletics field, no, but that doesn’t, by itself, explain why it’s worth bothering with any form of critical thinking, or advocacy of reason.

Let me explain why I bother with that.

Because standing up for reason is important. The parallels between the promotion of reason within the martial arts and the promotion of reason as it relates to religion or other faith based topics, are nearly endless. One clear example, is the nature of the criticism that tends to get thrown at you. Anytime you tell the truth in plain spoken, non obfuscated language, about anything, martial arts or otherwise, you will end up offending some people. It’s just part of the process. But what is important to realize is that these people are not offended because they think what we are saying is factually untrue, they are offended because we are saying something that is factually true, which they don’t think we should say. And that is a very different matter all together.
Speaking up about rationality is principal. People deserverespect, compassion and understanding. We need to strive to befully present, truly listening, if we want them to ever really hear us. However, these same values should not be applied to ideas.People deserve respect, ideas do not. When the philosophy of tolerance is applied to ideas themselves, the result is toxic. We create an environment where reason cannot be used to differentiate between good and bad concepts. If we refuse to admit that our preferences do not determine reality the we create a climate where reality cannot be improved. This is why we should never be timid when it comes to articulating why a bad idea is just that, bad. Because while blunt and authentic dialog might be offensive to some, stupid and dangerous ideas can be fatal to all of us.

If you have a taste for authenticity, if truth in the fact sense of that word is valuable to you, if you, like me, want to have your beliefs align with actuality as much as possible, if you’ve outgrown the desire for comforting delusion, if you find the polite but insincere distasteful at this point in your life, then feel free to pick up the banner of a free thinker; because reality is way cooler than any fairytale we can make up about it.

And that’s why the promotion of skepticism, critical thinking and reason is important, regardless of the field you first apply it in.

Enjoy the podcast.

The Faith Hope shell game

The Associated Press recently announced that it is now accepting sentences that begin with the word ‘hopefully’.To those of us who may not be grammar experts this may seem like an odd announcement to make, but my guess is that the majority of us, myself included until I read the story, probably didn’t know that the original and proper English usage of the word ‘hopefully’ operates much the same as the word ‘joyfully’ does.

“We rode in the car joyfully.”

“We went swimming in the ocean hopefully.”

Through American slang the common usage of the word ‘hopefully’ changed to mean ‘I hope’, as in, “hopefully it won’t rain today”. It became a desire rather than a description.

How many times have those of us within the skeptical community been assailed with one or another variation of the falsehood that goes something like this;

“You defined faith as ‘belief without evidence’, however, don’t we all use faith in one form or another?”

“Don’t you have ‘faith’ in science and reason?”

“Isn’t trusting reason itself a matter of faith?”

I have heard this bit of casuistry time and again from believers of all manner of superstition/religion/woo-woo. As I wrote in:

http://thorntonsguerillablog.blogspot.com/2012/01/faith-based-reasoning.html

equating faith based thinking to reason, rationality, or the scientific method is a fallacy, always.

Believers in superstition like to assume that everyone, at some point, needs some form of faith. In order to rationalize this assumption they play between what amounts to three fuzzy descriptions for the term ‘faith’. The first is to define faith as something akin to a positive attitude, as in, “have faith, you’ll do fine”.

The second is in my opinion technically the same, but takes a slightly different tone, and could easily be defined as wishful thinking, as in,“I have faith that tomorrow will be better than today.” Note carefully that in both definitions the word “faith” could easily be replaced with the word “hope”, and the meaning, context and sentence structure would require no modification.

The third use of the word faith is the problematic one. It is a claim to knowledge. For example someone says, “I know Jesus is the one true God” , and when asked to present evidence for this extraordinary claim they state, “It is a matter of faith”. Note that in this case the word ‘faith’ could not be replaced with a word like ‘hope’, or at the very least we can safely say that believers in superstition tend not to replace it with such a word.

Ask yourself the following, when was the last time you heard a Christian minister say anything like this, “We hope that Jesus is Lord and savior”?

When was the last time the Mormon Church declared, “We hope Joseph Smith actually did find golden tablets”?

When was the last time the Catholic Church stated: “We hope Jesus was born of a virgin”?

Have the Jehovah’s Witnesses ever said, “We hope 144,000 truly is the number of people elected to rule in heaven”?

Does the Dalai Lama say that he “hopes” he is the 13th reincarnation?

When was the last time a Mullah got up in the mosque and said that he “hoped” Allah was the one true God?

All of the statements above could be said without any required dishonesty, and if religion came to mean hopes and desires, rather than claims to knowledge, then religious superstition in all its forms would be a lot less problematic for the planet; but religion by its very nature is dishonest. All religions, East and West, make claims to knowledge that we know they cannot possibly know. As such, the use of the word ‘hope’ doesn’t enter into these sorts of assertions that these traditions make.

Here is the sneaky part, when non-believers use the word ‘hope’, believers want to be able to perform a slight of hand shell game and pretend that this too is a knowledge claim. As we can see from the examples above however, this simply isn’t true. If I state, “I hope there is life after death” I am not pretending to know something I do not know, I am simply stating my own desire for how I wish reality to be. However, if, like a preacher I claim, “The soul survives death”, then I am positing an affirmative rather than just a hope, I am pretending to know something I do not know, I am lying; and it is in these situations, when pressed for evidence for these outrageous assertions, that believers are forced to play the ‘faith’ card.

It may seem like I am painting a pretty devious picture of how believers handle argument, but I don’t think it is always that simple. The conflating of faith and hope is nothing more than a confidence trick, one that most likely evolved as many things within religious traditions evolve, as a defense mechanism against critical thinkingand the questioning of dogma. To be clear, all manner of superstitions rely on this particular bit of chicanery, from traditional religions, to alternative medical quackery, to New Age sophistry; and believers in these faiths may not even know they are engaging in the artifice, or even understand that it is a form of deceit. In fact, they are probably just thoughtlessly repeating the mistake.

Speaking of solipsists, I had a run in with new age Guru Deepak Chopra where, when called on an outrageous faith claim he was making, he attempted to play the very same card. My twitter ID isaliveness_ape, here is the conversation:

aliveness_ape: until you produce some evidence that consciousness can exist absent the brain, the “cosmic” consciousness talk remains silly.

DeepakCopra: brain exists in consciousness not the other way around.

aliveness_ape: where is your evidence for that statement? Absent evidence for the brain existing ‘in’ consciousness, all you have is an irrational superstition.

DeepakCopra: where is your evidence that your mother loved you, or that you can feel joy?

aliveness_ape: you’re comparing that for which we have lots of evidence, primate love for offspring, to something with no evidence-irrational. The idea that my mother probably loved me, is not a radical hypothesis. The idea that consciousness exists absent a brain, is. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Produce some, or all you have is theology-superstition.

Deepak’s follow up, none, I think we reached the end of his reasoning ability.

When I asked what evidence Deepak had for his extraordinary claim,had he answered, “I have no evidence, but I ‘hope’ it is true”, I may not have had a disagreement with him. In truth, I find Deepak’s own Vedantic leanings to be a far more pleasant hypothesis than I do the celestial dictatorship of a sky God.

However, that is not what Deepak said is it? In fact, that is not what any religious or superstitious person says or means when they play the faith card. By definition the introduction of the faith card by the person being asked to present evidence for their claim is an admission of defeat. It is the answer you give when you have no reason, and yet still pretend to know.

This brings me full circle to the point of my essay. The word ‘faith’ is only required when we are pretending to know something we do not actually know. And rather than a virtue, this is a very dangerous character flaw. In a rational world, not pretending to know things you do not know would be considered a moral advantage. After all, the alternative is lying.