The X-Files Friday Feature: Skepticism

I read this article on Discovery the other day, and it seemed like the perfect timing as I'm writing about watching The X-Files.

Spookily, it also references a book written by a man named Chris Carter, and while that's an incredibly common name that the creator of The X-Files shares with many people, I found it interesting that he shares it also with someone who has written books attempting to discredit scientific skepticism. (Of course, I also found it ironic that someone is essentially trying to debunk skepticism.)

So obviously, as a rather skeptical person myself, and one who has been known to demand proof of things that are not immediately apparent to me, I found myself intrigued.

I know that Agent Scully is at least somewhat religious, as she wears a cross around her neck. This had to have been a deliberate choice by the writers, because a cross is a significant enough piece of symbolism that it's not the kind of thing you can accidentally allow a character to wear and then later decide, "Whoops, maybe not." Obviously I don't know her entire background yet.

But I don't think that religious faith is necessarily contradictory with scientific rigour. While I do not believe in any gods or supernatural beings, I think it's possible to maintain a separation between that rigour and one's religion - I'm sure that even if Scully is a religious and observant Christian, she's not likely, say, a young-earth creationist. She's clearly found a way to reconcile the two.

I never did. I don't know that I ever really believed in god. I did all the usual religious things growing up - Hebrew school, Bar Mitzvah, attending High Holy Day services, Passover seders - but as a child simply accepted what I was told without ever really giving it a second thought. Once I did give it a second thought, I saw an awful lot of holes in it, and eventually stopped believing entirely. There simply wasn't enough evidence that any of the religious stories I'd been brought up with had any shred of truth to them.

Lest you think I'm singling out the Judeo-Christian God with my disbelief, I should point out that I don't believe in leprechauns, either. Or ghosts, or spirits, or ESP, or telekinesis, or deep government conspiracies. Show me the proof. Hell, show me some evidence. And evidence isn't "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw a UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico," either.

I need something that is demonstrable, and more importantly, repeatable. If you can get something to happen once, that may well just be coincidence. Even two points only make a line rather than a pattern. But if you can reliably repeat an experiment and verify your conclusions, and others can repeat the steps you took and reach the same conclusions, well, that's science, and no longer blind faith. The truth has been demonstrated.

So this is where I really identify with Scully. She's not unwilling to believe, and I don't think she ever really was. She's not afraid of the truth. Even long before she put her hands on solid evidence, she was always willing to accept the idea that there were some things that could not be verified using the scientific method, and that could not be tested empirically. But she would only accept those possibilities once all scientific explanations and experiments had been ruled out.

That doesn't sound to me like a rejection of the paranormal activity Mulder so easily accepts - a person rejecting it outright would be unwilling to test it in the first place. If anything, Scully is expressing what all scientists do, which is a desire to know the truth, regardless of what it is or how unsettling it may be.

And Scully was sent to join Mulder initially because the higher-ups at the FBI believed she was not simply a scientist and not simply a skeptic, but someone who rejected out of hand any notion of paranormal activity. They believed she would simply discredit Mulder's work, but instead, her scientific inquiry led her to discover things that did upset her worldview, and led her to understand what is at stake, and that the people in charge who she once trusted and believed and be neither trusted nor believed.

The FBI bosses (or whoever's pulling their strings) are like the mistaken skeptics referenced in the article. They were the ones who did not want their worldview disturbed, and they assumed Scully would take the same position and automatically discredit Mulder and the X-Files.

And now they, like all oppressive regimes, have given their biggest enemy - Mulder - the tools he needs - Scully - to uncover the truth and bring them down.

All because they failed to understand how science actually works.