Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety

by Wendy Kaminer

In Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials , social critic Wendy Kaminer illuminates the various ways in which society has come to value emotion over reason, faith over fact, and argues that declarations of intense belief have largely taken the place of rational discourse. In a world in which "How do you feel," seems to be a more frequently asked question than "What do you know," Kaminer's examination of the rise of spiritualism, the mushrooming junk science, and the habitual merging of political and evangelical speech, blazes with relevance and incisive wit.

Probing the amusing and ominous implications of rampant credulity in our age, Kaminer raises important questions, and provides a thoughtful and eloquent perspective on the perils of present-day irrationalism.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Science, Sociology, Politics, History, Psychology

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 1999

Reviews

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The contrary willingness to accept untested personal testimony as public truth is at the heart of the irrationalism that confronts us today. . . Generally, the only proof offered for a fantastic belief is the passion it inspires in believers.” Kaminer’s new book decries the influence that irrational belief has on public policy. In the introduction she humorously ridicules her going to a homeopath, recognizing that it has no scientific validity, and she knows the result is due to the placebo effect, yet that effect is real to her. She argues, however, that others should not take her testimony at face value. Objective evidence should be required.

Kaminer discusses the public’s eagerness to join in the hysteria over satanic ritual child abuse, mass mourning for celebrities, how junk science and personal prejudice have influenced public policy decisions related to drugs, school vouchers, and classroom prayer. We are in danger of losing our skepticism, she argues, and that is dangerous for a democratic society. She acknowledges the personal need of many for divinities, but she suggests that a society that wears its piety in the public square craving for angels and alien abductions, not to mention Saint Diana, is more likely to look for miracles than face the challenges of living in a pluralistic society.

And she comes down quite hard on religious faith as feeding the irrational. “What’s the difference between crossing yourself or hanging a mezuzah outside your door and avoiding black cats. Believing that you’ve been abducted by aliens or that Elvis is alive is, on its face, no sillier than believing that Christ rose from the dead. . . People who believe that God heeds their prayers have probably” waived the right to mock people who talk to trees and guardian angels or claim to channel the spirits of Native Americans.” One man’s superstition is another’s sacred.

Kaminer blames the media for much of this, they quail in the face of the supernatural. Skepticism is edited out of journalistic reporting and she doubts H. L. Mencken could publish many of his antagonistic remarks about religious silliness, arguing that we risk becoming less religiously free than during the Victorian era. She is a fervent advocate of religious freedom. “Separation of church and state does not desire, much less mandate, the banishment of religious faith from public life, as right-wing rhetoric sometimes suggests. . . .The right of religious people to organize and mount political protest is, in par, a right of private association, which the government is bound to accommodate, but not support.” But she cites numerous instances of religious viewpoints appearing in work and school settings, almost universally those of Protestant Christianity.

Kaminer’s examples are witty and eerily disturbing. Together they present a rather disturbing vision of the future and she ends with a plea for a return to science, skepticism, reason, and freedom of inquiry.

“The rights and interests of individual believers clash with religious institutions when the institutions seek sponsorship of the state. Crusades to breach the boundaries between church and state constitute a much greater threat to religious tolerance than any number of evangelical atheists. Theocracies throughout history have made that clear.”

As I was reviewing some of Kaminer’s magazine articles I stumbled upon a very recent commentary which I quote in its entirety:

“Sometimes I put my faith in sectarian rivalries, which helped derail the most recent proposed school-prayer amendment to the Constitution. Last year, an organization in Arkansas, Put God Back in Public School, decided not to press for the introduction of school prayers in Arkansas (instead, they demanded state funding for special Christian schools). The group reconsidered the value of school prayer after its founder Kathy Smith, consulted with God: ‘I asked God, “Do you want me to change the law to put prayer in the schools?” He said no. If you do that, kids would have the right to pray to other gods, too. They could pray to Buddha. God doesn’t want that. There is only one God.’

What more can I say but ‘Amen’.”

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Joel Osteen book listed on Goodreads has 616 ratings. This book has 22. Now it has 23.

A trip to the bookstore yesterday showed Osteen's book prominently displayed -- by the door, with the bestsellers, etc. There were rows and rows of self-help books, new age books, prosperity books. Over and over and over again, people find ways to market New Thought, Positive Thinking, the Law of Attraction, the Law of Reciprocity, and the Prosperity Gospel. It strikes me as peculiarly American -- see the book "Madame Blavatsky's Baboon" for a relevant American history lesson.

If you're into mainstream Christianity, there's the Prosperity Gospel -- God wants you to be rich. If you're not rich, attend my church to expand your faith and my pocketbook, and soon the money will come pouring in. If you're into New Age spiritualism, there's the power of the mind to attract what it wants through focused spiritual seeking -- read my book to find out how. If you're a fundamentalist, Pat Robertson will teach you the Law of Reciprocity.

There is a cyclical remarketing of these same ideas to the reading public who seek personal improvement or advancement in some way. The purveyors may or may not believe it -- but why wouldn't they, look how rich they're getting selling you books on the subject! I'm reminded of an observation about highly specialized professors in theoretical areas -- the practical (marketplace) value in learning what they have to teach is almost exclusively in becoming a teacher of the same material. Which is a way of saying the only way to profit from their ideas is to become another purveyor of them -- not by actually "applying them." It's a somewhat poor analogy, since many professors in abstract research areas have contributed over time to engineering breakthroughs and the like. A better analogy is the chiropractor who believes a spinal adjustment can cure every known ailment, from schizophrenia to cancer -- at $50 a pop! They seem to be true believers -- but it's easy to be a true believer when you benefit financially.

Wendy Kaminer's observations in this book helps one to step back and view all of these phenomena together and understand the forces that allow these purveyors of prosperity porn to proliferate. Her subjects range across mainstream religion, the New Age marketplace, the recovery movement, and many more of the intersecting pop religion sects that have integrated with the American gold rush culture to create the omnipresent Oprahfied world of American popular culture today. Read it and join the "reality-based community." (A group famously denounced by a Bush administration insider who claimed that the government's job was not to fret about reality but to visualize whatever it wanted in the world and then go create it. With bombs and deregulation if those are the tools God has placed at our disposal. Look how we've prospered!)

Kaminer's book is probably more grounded in issues of belief and the will to believe in supernatural forces as a psychological phenomenon -- with less focus on pervasive marketplace consequences than my review suggests. There -- I've tried to represent the reality of the book a little more closely, with a little less personal spin on what I want it to be about.

[Seth Arnopole · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a way, Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials is a time capsule of social concerns that gripped the US in the 1990s: conservative evangelicals gaining political power, the New Age movement, a public culture of confession and therapy/recovery, militias, the X-Files, conspiracy theories galore. The Clinton impeachment was very fresh in the public memory, and going “on-line” (as it’s spelled in the book) was still a novel activity. The era of blogs was just about to begin, 9/11 and the war on terror was right around the corner. One might think that the essays here would be dated, but the issues raised are still relevant, even if many of the specific examples are no longer at the forefront of people’s memories. Each essay here is worth revisiting, with the chapter about the internet providing challenges for the establishment of what is true, and who is an expert, particularly prescient.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Instead of an in depth exploration of specific cults or extraterrestrial groups and their wackadoo beliefs, this was more of a cogent, sober, wry examination of irrationalism circa year 2000, with the perils and pleasures of the internet just beginning to beckon, and the US' slide into nationalism just around the 9/11 corner. While indeed many of the arguments are dated, many are still all too relevant. Anyone who values the separation of church and state as I do will feel their blood boil during certain chapters as Kaminer lays down examples of egregious behavior by schools and governments. While I wasn't planning on civics discussion reading this book, I'm the better for it, despite my brain being tired.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh damn, this book is hilarious. Scathing, too. Kaminer argues that postmodernism — too much subjectivity — evangelical Christianity, and forms of New Age religion are going too far in rejecting science. It's OK to think this stuff in private, Kaminer writes; a little irrationality now and then might be good for the soul. It's a problem, however, when private irrationalism shapes public policy. Kaminer is an avowed skeptic, and she reads like Christopher Hitchens, if Hitchens were more willing to accommodate and acknowledge doubt. Occasionally Kaminer's denunciation of postmodernism and therapeutic politics skews toward the reactionary, but for the most part I found her argument persuasive. If any religion, New Age or old age, leads toward dangerous behaviors, or if the government enforces religious values, somebody usually winds up suffering.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. A bit outdated but I enjoyed it! I especially liked how Wendy Kaminer called BS on Deepak Chopra and other spewers of pseudoscience.
....

"The challenge for atheists is to make the case for not believing in God without falling into the pit of moral certainty squirming with believers."

[Mark Dunn · Rating 5 out of 5]

College students have recently called for the end of ,or as they say, "The decolonization of Western science" we also have ,safe spaces and speech codes. The author is probably not an agnostic as she claims but perhaps secretly an Oracle of some esoteric black arts. This would explain how the principles of her book are so up to date.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like reading Kaminer because she is so intellectually honest. This book is from 1999 but she nails the therapeutic culture and foresees the college campus PC wars.

[Rory Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 1999, this remains a surprisingly topical overview of some key issues of rationality, as they arise in policy and popular discourse. Whether it be Pop Spirituality, Gurus, Junk Science, or weird conspiracies on the internet, readers will quickly notice that many of the problems of 1999 are still very evident in the society of today.

What the book does well is to probe the underlying assumptions and reasoning of some of the irrationalities which it cites. Thus, some of the confusions surrounding arguments about prayers in US schools can be understood by recognising that people are making a distinction between Religion (adherence to a particular belief system) and Spirituality (adherence to belief). Distinctions like that led some advocates of Spirituality to call for prayer, while simultaneously insisting that they are not promoting any particular religion (11%). But, as the author notes, that position is incoherent, as there cannot be spiritual beliefs which have no religious implications. It is like insisting that a wall must have ‘colour’ while simultaneously denying that it is going to have any specific colour (like blue, red, etc).

Another thoughtful point made by the book is that it is nonsensical to expect politicians (or anyone else) to distinguish between private religion and public action. Of course, a politician who believes (privately) in the healing power of crystals is going to vote (publicly) for alternative medicines (24%). To do otherwise would be irrational by being inconsistent

One disappointing feature of the book is that it sometimes seemed to over-simplify issues and unfairly characterise those the author disagreed with as irrational. For example, in Chapter 5 the author noted that people who oppose drug decriminalisation are ‘irrational.’ There may indeed be some irrationality in some of the discussions about this issue. But the practical issues and consequences of decriminalisation are also a lot more complicated than the author allowed for. We can see this in contexts such as California, where increases in social problems have led some people to call for tougher enforcement of drug laws. These issues are genuinely very complicated. They are far too complicated for one side of the argument to be simplistically written off as ‘irrational.’

Another disappointing feature of the book is the author was occasionally too ready to disparage others. For example, the author refers to the ‘painful stupidities that people embrace to ease their fears of death’ (51%). However, it is one thing to refer to people’s beliefs as irrational, but that does not necessarily make it stupid to hold those beliefs. The author herself gives an example of how this can be the case when she states in the preface that she takes advantage of alternative medicines even though she knows that it is irrational to do so. Why is her recourse to non-rational beliefs fine, whilst other people’s recourse to non-rational beliefs is stupid?

On a more general note, the book has aged a little in that its 1999 focus does not (entirely understandably) match aspects of the modern situation. Thus, issues like Flat Earth and Vaccine Denial would probably have a higher profile in a more modern book, than they had in this book. Similarly, issues of Satanic worship in sexual abuse (and recovered memories) would probably feature much less in a more modern book, as they are less in the public consciousness than they were in 1999.

Overall, this is book which gives lots of good examples of irrationalities in public life and debate, so it deserves to be read by anyone who is interested in those issues. However, its 1999 publication means that some of its examples are a little dated. Some readers may also find the author’s tendency to disparage others as a little off-putting.

[Meika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't the most exciting skeptical treatise I've read, but so far, it's the most methodical and lucid. It's not as inflammatory as some others, which makes it less of a call-to-arms, but might make it more accessible to someone who doesn't feel like rejecting God or other things they've accepted on faith. She actually makes an accommodation for faith, which is good. Essentially, she says, "In the end, faith needs to be contained in the realm of the unknowable. It is an inapt basis for understanding the material world, as reason is inapt in finding God or inadequate in resolving emotional conflicts." She does say, later, that reason is essential in *understanding* emotions, but I don't think it's contradictory to say that.

A couple of the reviews I read about her book said that she's "all over the place," but that's not really fair. Her themes are clear. She attacks religious credulity, and the use of religion to justify political actions (prayer in school is her favorite example). She attacks the new-age use of pseudoscience - Deepak Chopra and the like using some conclusions from quantum physics to explain ludicrous extrapolations among others. She attacks therapeutic pseudoscience, pop psychology and a host of other touchy-feely self-helpy things that people rely on to feel good. She does say that she acknowledges the benefit in these things (and religion), as they help individuals feel better, regardless of proof. Her attack isn't on therapy, its on the foundations of some therapeutic practices that ultimately cause harm, or are used to justify policy and legislation. Her last attack is on the use of junk science to define law. Junk science, she says, lies at the foundation of most drug policy, and is responsible for the gross abuse of statistics to explain just about everything.

So, the thematic organization of her arguments is very clear. She does cover a broad spectrum of examples and issues that are impacted by these themes and that coverage is sometimes difficult to track. It's worth the effort of following her though and reading the chapter headings should help.

I especially appreciate that she doesn't attack the credulous masses for their acceptance of ideas (I should say "our acceptance" because I'm in a few of her categories). She attacks the purveyors of snake-oil and explains WHO is vulnerable and why. She admits her bias (my bias as well), and then digs into my personal favorite topic: pseudo-feminism. She attacks the Mars vs. Venus rot and explains the gross abuse of statistics and scientific method to justify clinging to the bullshit theory that men and women have different brains, categorically. Science, she says, proves that individuals have different brains and the use of sex as a significant variable is bullshit. Exactly. Bravo. She also dances around the topic of believing the victim who claims abuse. She says it is possible that abuse "victims" are not what they say they are, and that attacking someone who is skeptical of a victim's claims should not automatically be dismissed. Thin ice, but she skates over it nicely.

Overall, not an easy read. Maybe not the most compelling book, but in the end I think the lack of compulsion suits the themes she's arguing for to begin with.

[Charlie George · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoy Wendy Kaminer's writing, but I waited entirely too long on this book and it dated itself. Also she's a militant agnostic, to the detriment of atheism.

Her attacks on New Age and therapeutic culture were sound and welcome.

[Jrobertus · Rating 4 out of 5]

she is one tough minded skeptic - i loved it. although humorous, the description of religious fundamentalists, ufo types, and new agers surrounding us all is unsettling.

[Kari]

Lots of hogwash - just a random person's opinions on a vast array of topics about which she knows nothing.

[m · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend these essays by Wendy Kaminer.

[Devi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Author raises some interesting points.