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By Root 414 0

so be it—but it is not our goal to convert believers into nonbelievers. From considerable personal experience I can attest to the futility of trying to either prove or disprove God (see Chapter 5). In any case, the process would seem inherently impossible since, by admission of nearly all religions, belief in God rests on faith and means suspending the requirements of proof and logic. When people say they believe in God because it comforts them, because they have faith, because of personal revelation, or just because it “works” for them, I have no qualms with these reasons. But when others say they can prove God, prove that their religion is the right one, prove that we cannot be moral without God, and so forth, such claims demand a scientific and rational analysis. Of course, if the answers to these arguments are as obvious and clear-cut as both theists and atheists think, then why do such debates continue, even in the hallowed halls of theological seminaries and universities, where presumably the question of God’s existence would have been resolved by now? It has not. That fact alone tells us something about the nature of the subject. So, I would have thought that any member of the Skeptics Society would be aware that God’s existence, from a scientific and rational perspective, remains an open question—it cannot be “proved” one way or the other. But I also would have imagined that Schlessinger, who is both highly intelligent and well educated, would have been equally aware and sensitive to this issue.

For those who may still be unfamiliar with her, Laura Schlessinger, best known as “Dr. Laura,” is the star and host of the top-rated nationally syndicated radio talk show program, running neck and neck with Rush Limbaugh for the number-one spot. She is in virtually every radio market in America, has millions of listeners, receives on average upwards of 60,000 calls per day, and in 1997 her program was sold for a staggering $71 million. Her books, Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives, Ten Stupid Things Men Do to Mess Up Their Lives, How Could You Do That?, and The Ten Commandments, were all national bestsellers in both hardback and paperback. She draws huge crowds for her speaking engagements. “Dr. Laura” mugs, T-shirts, and newsletters are promoted daily through the radio program and an ever-growing mailing list of fans. She has been featured on several national newsmagazine and morning programs, and was even satirized in Playboy magazine. This is all to say that Laura Schlessinger is hugely influential. When she speaks, people listen.

We invited Laura to be on our board of advisors in 1994 when she took a skeptical stance about the recovered-memory movement and other “victimization” groups. We admired her courage to make a public statement against what in hindsight turned out to be a bad chapter in the history of psychology. At the time it was a very dangerous thing to denounce. (The “recovery” of distant memories of childhood sexual abuse usually turns out to be nothing more than the planting of “false” memories in patients by well-meaning but irresponsible therapists.) We invited Laura to speak for the Skeptics Society at Caltech. For nearly three hours (and without notes) she paced back and forth across the stage, educating and entertaining a sizeable audience. She was brilliant and funny. Most of all she was controversial. Schlessinger promotes critical thinking, independence of thought, self-reliance, and other attributes certainly admired by most free thinkers, humanists, and skeptics. Although she publicly ratcheted up the intensity of her religious convictions through 1996 and 1997 (when she converted to Judaism), and critical letters came pouring into Skeptic’s office, we continued to defend her because as a general principle we do not believe in excluding people from organizations based on their religious beliefs.

Imagine my surprise, then, when we received another fax four days later from Laura Schlessinger herself, who had just finished reading the issue of Skeptic entitled “The God Question.