Dr. Steven Novella

So just to clarify, they don't send you a referral now?

Because that's like, you can't even bill technically until you've done that.

Right, right, right, right.

But again, from the specialist point of view, it's like in order to bill as a specialist, you have to have gotten a referral and you have to communicate back to the referral.

If you don't close that loop, the billing is fraudulent.

You have not justified the billing.

So, I mean, you know, the research shows, right, that there are some social benefits to being part of a community.

And so if you ask the question, are people who are part of a religious community happier, do they live longer, whatever, the answer is usually yes.

But my interpretation of literature is that that's because they're part of a community.

Like, that's the key element, not that the community has some magical belief in religion or God or whatever, whatever your belief system is.

Um, so the other component though of skepticism, I think this will address the question is, um, and this is like, again, if we have to boil it down to one word is humility.

Like you can't be a skeptic without being massively humble intellectually.

You have to be intellectually humble.

And why?

Well, because most of the time when you're dealing with a pseudoscientist, a crank, a charlatan, or somebody just promoting nonsense, man, I tell you, after doing this for 30 years, the one feature they all have in common is an utter lack of humility.

And the humility makes you ask the question, yeah, but is this really true?

How do I really know this?

Am I believing this because I want to believe it, because it makes me feel better about myself or about the world, or because it's really true, because it's supported objectively by science and logic?

And that also applies to religion, right?

You're always trying to get outside of yourself, outside of your culture if you can, outside of your belief system, outside of your tribe, everything, and say, yeah, but is it really, really true?