Many people get a lot of attention on the internet for saying or writing things like “Atheist and skeptics are just the same as religious people!”

They go on to say things like “Skeptics like to take down the beliefs of others, but they never question their own beliefs.”

Near the end of the rant, you’ll probably find accusations of elitism and arrogance.

Personally I think there is a confusion between the labels of “elite skeptics” and “elitist skeptics”. There is some overlap between the groups, but from my own anecdotal evidence, not very much.

I have no problem with people who are not skeptical about every one of their beliefs. My problem is with those people who aren’t skeptical of the reasons they THINK they are skeptical.

It’s a tricky concept, but maybe I can explain.

Not everyone can be skeptical of everything. There are loads of areas where I don’t think skeptically at all. This is the only way to get through my day, otherwise I’d never get anything done. I’d spend all the time investigating every tiny detail of every tiny truth claim, and never be able to have an awesome, albeit slightly random, life.

Who can really be that skeptical? Not us everyday people. And yet “skeptics” come under fire for NOT examining every single thing. And because we believe some things without question, and challenge a certain set of beliefs of others, we are called arrogant and elitist.

For that attention to detail we rely on elite skeptics. These can be professional scientists, or they can be trusted journalists or public figures who communicate the current state of scientific thought.

When Ben Goldacre says “Homeopathy is bullshit” I don’t rush out to do my own tests on diluted water. I just take his word on it. There is a virtuous circle of trust among scientists and science writers that allows them to reach a consensus on certain topics.

Yay for the elite skeptics!

My problem is with elitist skeptics, and I have a good working definition of the term.

First, let me state that I have no problems with any single belief or stance on any issue an elitist skeptic might talk about, or browbeat others about. The chances are they are 100% correct on the matter when held against the standards of modern science.

My only problem is the reason that they THINK they are skeptics, and are therefore scientifically right. The reason they believe they skeptics is their own intelligence.

Which leads to them believing everyone who believes something scientifically incorrect is stupid, or at least less intelligence than they are.

THIS is elitist skepticism, in my opinion.

I experienced it many, many times at the TAM London conferences in 2009 and 2010. More so in 2010. There would be a statement from the stage about how stupid religious people are, or how people are stupid for not knowing this scientific fact, and the audience would erupt in applause and cheering. It made me feel very uncomfortable. Same with my brother and sister-in-law, who attended one and two of the events respectfully.

The truth of the matter, as I see it, is that fact that you are a skeptic has nothing to do with your own intelligence. Instead it has everything to do with circumstances of your birth, your upbringing, and the society in which you live.

If this wasn’t the case, we could look at the most incredible minds throughout history, and they’d all be atheists and skeptics.

How about Isaac Newton? Oops. Was totally into alchemy and all kinds of batshit crazy stuff, as well as being a Christian. Same with every other intelligent person up until the Enlightenment.

Also, atheists have no problem saying “If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you’d probably believe in Allah, if you were born in Texas you’d probably believe in Jesus.” Which is totally true. This isn’t a statement about the mental capacity of any religious person, just the admission that people are shaped by their surroundings.

So why do skeptics think they are any different?

I was brought up in a hardcore Christian home, and I’m now an atheist and a skeptic. Is it my intelligence that took me down that path? I’d say no, just a great many incidences and coincidences along the way. My Christian upbringing probably contributed more to me being a skeptic now than other people’s secular upbringing, to the point where they’ve thought as much about the existence of god as the efficacy of Homeopathy. As in, not at all.

I have an identical twin brother who also attended TAM London in 2009 and 2010. He was also brought up in a Christian home, of course, and is now probably more hardcore atheist than I am. Did we reach the same beliefs because we are both as intelligent as each other? Well, no. It could be said that I’m objectively more intelligent than he is, as measured by grades at school. But even our grades at school had more to do with our only very slightly different life experiences up until age 16.

We took different paths to our skeptical mindset, at different paces, but in each case it took a repeated exposure to the skeptical mindset of others, each time totally outside of our control. After a time, by applying skeptical tools we’d picked up to our own beliefs, we came to the same kinds of conclusions. This had nothing to do with our intelligence levels, and way more to do with the fact that skepticism itself works. We didn’t invent it, we only slowly, and by accident, learnt it.

So what next?

Thinking other people are stupid because they are religious or not skeptical is totally misguided. It becomes worrying when these elitist skeptics think they should also be elite skeptics, or worse yet, elite members of society in general.

You may be CORRECT about the topics of which you are skeptical, but that doesn’t mean the “stupid” people should be sneered at and then ignored. They should, instead or at least, be educated.

As a final argument, I’d like to bring up the parallels between elitist skeptics and Randian thinkers on economics.

“I got to where I am today, financially, due to my own skills, intelligence, and hard work! I am the 53%! Pull yourself up by your boot straps!”

The common rebuttal is something on the lines of “Really? You didn’t rely on your parents? Your schooling? The circumstances of your birth? Your parents’ economic standing? Your gender? The colour of your skin? Your reliance on the wider society to provide the safe environment in which you can flourish?”

Soon the claims that someone, anyone, got to their current financial position due to their own abilities falls flat. It involves long chains of coincidence, circumstances outside of the person’s control, and the actions of other people. All these things combine to bring any single person to any point in their life. There is no fate, there is no destiny, there is no god in the machine. If you are a hardcore skeptic, you won’t believe in true free will, only in the illusion of free will. You are only the culmination of matter and energy playing itself out in the universe.

Really.

“I’m a skeptic, and have all the right answers, due to my own skills, intelligence, and hard work! I have the same religious beliefs as all these Nobel Prize winning scientists! If you weren’t so stupid, you’d be just like me!”

My rebuttal is exactly the same as before. “Really? You didn’t rely on your parents? Your schooling? The circumstances of your birth? Your parents’ economic standing? Your gender? The colour of your skin? Your reliance on the wider society to provide the safe environment in which you can flourish?”

Yes, even skin gender and colour. How many black women at TAM London in 2010? Maybe there was one, but she was hidden among the sea of caucasian men. Then again, only middle-to-upper-class people could afford the money and time to attend TAM, and we all know that white men, aged 25-40, only reach that position through their own intelligence and hard work. Ho hum.

To conclude: Some people DO rely solely on their outstanding mental capacity to independently formulate the principles of science and skeptical thought. Good on them. But these people are few and far between. I’m not asking you to defend the ancient philosophers’ intelligence compared to the general population. It’s obvious they had the chops to rise above the rest, and have influenced world history since their times.

No, I’m asking you to defend your OWN intelligence compared to the general population. Is knowing the truth about some subjects, and knowing a method of thought to reach true conclusions on other subjects, reason enough to sneer at everyone else?

I think not.

I got an interesting comment from a listener, which you can read in full here.

I emailed Endre a response, but I thought I’d share it here too…

Hi Endre,

Thanks for listening to my rambling podcasts. The Geeknights one was especially jumbled because I hadn’t actually planned to go into any specific details, and instead we just had a conversation.

“I recently listened to your Geeknights podcast about the historicity of the bible. It is a bit jumbled, and a great deal of it I don’t have any issue with, but I think I would recommend you to reconsider your position on the historicity of Jesus (as a historical person, not a magical saviour that can turn water into wine).”

I think I made it quite clear in the podcast that I’m not convinced either way about the historicity of Jesus. If pushed, I would say he probably didn’t exist, but it’s always a question of probabilities, right? And my main point that is even if the very first story of Jesus, however far back you can take it, was based on a real person, there is no evidence at all that all anything we know about the “character” of Jesus could apply to him at all. The things he said? To me it looks like collections of sayings from the various sects and philosophies of the first century. The things he did? Well, either he did miraculous things, or he did nothing. And if miracles don’t exist, he was nothing but a faker or magician. Or, more likely, the stories told about other characters were applied to him.

So at the root of all the made up stories (which isn’t a pejorative accusation, by the way) what do we have? Some guy, who probably didn’t do anything credited to Jesus, and probably didn’t say anything credited to Jesus. What is the point of even valuing him at that point?

Also, you say:

“My main problem with this issue is that if the stringency and hyper-critical evaluation of sources in examining the historicity of Jesus was to be applied broadly to ancient history, we would pretty much wipe it out as a field of study – our sources on a lot of the ancient world are extremely sparse.”

Here I completely disagree, but in a subtle two-fold way.

First, I think that every claim and story and character should be looked at in a hyper-critical way. And, if it seems there isn’t enough evidence to support their existence without any doubt, what should we do? We should doubt. Doubt is good. Especially with sparse sources. Some characters are more probable more truly historic (Socrates) and some are less probable (Hercules). As a quick side note, I see Jesus much more in the vein of Hercules than Socrates.

And I have good reason to doubt EVERY source, and EVERY claim. You know why? Every time a newspaper reporter has written about me, they have made three or four major mistakes. And every time I ever read any newspaper story about a subject or incident I know a lot about, I see loads of mistakes. So everything I read in the media is through a lens of doubt, because just because I don’t know enough to know WHAT the reporter is getting wrong, I know they are getting SOMETHING wrong.

Also, back in 2001 I created a character on a newgroup called rec.juggling. I think it took just 12 posts under the name of Nigel J. Green, and he was one of the most famous and controversial characters in the online juggling community. At the British Juggling Convention in the spring of 2001, I had Nigel Green write that he would be there, but only during the day as he was staying with a friend in Cardiff (the city where the convention was held). During and after the convention, I heard many people talking about him, and some said they saw someone that was probably him.

Even after I exposed the entire hoax, Nigel Green kept popping up in other situations. And now, 10 years later, in every show I do I talk about “My first juggling teacher when I was a young boy, who was much better than me at juggling at the time, called Nigel Green.” That means every year thousands of people hear about Nigel Green, and they have no reason to presume I’m lying. Why should they? I use the name Nigel Green because the real name of my first juggling teacher was Daniel Cock, and I don’t want to say Cock on stage.

Second, I don’t think holding every element of ancient history to critical evaluation would wipe it out as a field of study. In fact, I think the opposite. Or at least, I think that tracing the ideas and elements and memes of the stories about the characters is just as important and interesting as the historical figures themselves.

As I hinted before, the true Jesus, if he really existed, was probably way more boring than the Jesus we know and understand today. But what I find so fascinating about history is how we’ve come to have the Jesus we know today.

Because the conflicting reports in the gospels doesn’t mean we know less about Jesus, it instead means we know more about the different religions and sects and philosophies and movements of the first and second century. Just using the gospels we can track different formulations of divinity, and see the modes of thought as they developed. Each of the Gospels comments on the others, either directly or by talking about the kind of people who would later compile other gospels.

So we give up Jesus, but we gain people like Polykarp, Simon Magus, James the Just, John the Baptist, Marcione, and so many others. It’s the same with the old testament writings too. We give up pretty much everything before about 700 BC, but we gain new understanding about the true people and religions that developed in Canaan in that time.

And it’s the same with Nigel Green. We give up some guy who bullied other jugglers online, and we gain a new understanding about the story of online and real-life juggling subcultures.

I’m not going to read your sources, as I’ve no intention of delving into online discussion forums. I already know all the problems with the Christ Myth Hypothesis. I have problems with it myself. But I have problems with the wholesale acceptance of him as “probably historical” and then letting that frame any debate from then on. I want people to be honest about this. I don’t have a dog in the fight, you know. I’ve not written books about the subject arguing either way, nor am I religious, nor do I have anything against people with religious beliefs.

I hope you don’t mind such a response to your blog comment! Thanks for letting me clarify my position.

I was a guest on the GeekNights podcast again. We recorded this back in September, so I can’t remember exactly what we covered, but apparently I speak very quickly.

“Tonight on GeekNights, we end the year with a discussion we shared with the incorrigible Luke Burrage on the historical legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the Christian Bible. Of particular interest is the Documentary Hypothesis and a solid book on the subject (The Bible with Sources Revealed).”

While I was in New York, I joined Rym and Scott from the GeekNights podcatst. We chatted for a long time about various topics. We started with the fun topic of Spiritual Experiences from an Atheist Perspective which I also wrote about on my blog earlier this year.

This also puts an extra tick on an already fulfilled Goal and Plan for 2010 (see 4.2).

Preamble:

Last year I went to TAMLondon, a conference on science and skepticism, with a distinct bend towards their portrayal and communication in the media. The scientists who spoke were awesome, so were the doctors, and the skeptics, and the journalists too. Along with all that was a whole load of great entertainment by some really good performers.

All of the above are experts in their field. Brian Cox is a CERN physicist and a fellow of the Royal Society, plus a TV and radio presenter for the BBC. As the opening speaker, it doesn’t get much better for a science geek like me. Adam Savage of Myth Busters? Great! The Bad Astronomer? Cool! Tim Minchin doing a short set? Again, no complaints. Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh, Jon Ronson… it’s a great lineup. All top experts in their fields.

However, the thing I found quite strange was how many of the speakers talked about atheism and religious matters. And all of them, without exception, presented their views on the matter in a sneering way. Some, like Tim Minchin, did it for comedy effect, but in others that sneering and condescending tone was quite harsh.

At one point during a TAMLondon presentation the speaker said something like “And people who believe this are like stupid sheep… like they have a mental illness.” The audience laughed and applauded.

I just sat there, feeling quite uncomfortable.

And what’s worse is that all of them, without exception, seemed to have a very, very shallow view on Christianity, belief, faith, and spirituality. Shallow view? Maybe not the right way to put it.

What I mean is that the way they spoke about such matters betrays a complete lack of understanding on what it means to be Christian, and why people believe what they believe, and why they adhere to the notion of a real God.

To these New Atheists (I guess I can use that as a kind of collective noun), the only question that matters is “Is this claim true?”

If yes, then good. But if not, and such is the case with most religious claims, then that claim is WORTHLESS and anyone who believes said claim is STUPID, or at least NOT AS CLEVER AS US, and need to be told THEY ARE WRONG.

I’m using caps here to demonstrate the vibe I get from these people. It isn’t pleasant.

And worse than that, many had ideas on how to deconvert people from religion which relied almost exclusively on saying “You are wrong to believe in God, and here’s why.”

The spiritual experience.

The individual claims of Christians and other theists, and if they are true or not, simply don’t matter. They are very important to those who hold them, but which particular belief they might hold isn’t important. It isn’t particularly important to the Christian, and it shouldn’t be important to the atheist who wants people to become more rational.

Don’t get me wrong; I am an atheist. But before I became an atheist I was a Christian. One of the reasons I was a Christian is the most obvious; I was brought up in a Christian home.

The second reason, the reason I stayed a Christian, is because to me, just like to many other Christians I know, I had spiritual experiences. These were real experiences, and even to this day they are some of the most profound experiences in my 30 year existence.

So let me share some, and later I’ll get back to why particular beliefs, and if they are true or not, isn’t what’s important to many religious people.

Example number 1:

I remember, aged about 8, deciding to really become a Christian myself, rather than just assuming I was one. I said the sinner’s prayer. Even at such a young age, this was a big deal to me. Afterward I felt different, as though I’d taken a step closer to God, and that God was closer to me.

The reality: It was the first time I’d ever made a big decision about anything. Really. That young, nothing you do or think really matters. Not really. This decision was about my eternal soul. That’s a BIG thing. It wasn’t that God had actually accepted me, and Jesus hadn’t come into my heart. I’d just grown up a bit, and saw the world in a slightly different way.

If I lived in a developing country, and realized I had to go out to work aged 8 to make sure my little sister didn’t starve, I’d go through a similar transformation. Thankfully I lived in England, and I never really had to grow up in that way.

Example number 2:

Aged 12, I had a near death experience. I got stuck underwater, and couldn’t reach the surface. To cut a short story even shorter, I gave up trying to save myself. At that point I had a huge realization: I was going to die, but I had no problem with that, because I knew I was going to heaven.

There were no shining lights or voices from the sky. Just a complete peace, a strange sense of happiness, and complete faith in myself and what I believed.

Needless to say, it was that sense of calm that made me stop panicking, take stock of how I was actually stuck underwater, and work my way to the surface. I’d probably only been underwater a few seconds, but my life was different after that it was before.

The reality: I was, of course, completely wrong. If I died, I’d have just spoiled everything for all the Boy Scouts on their trip to Wales.

However, and this is the key, I was convinced that what I believed was right. I didn’t even think of it as something that I believed, it was more powerful than that. It just was. I was a Christian, I was going to die: I’m going to heaven. Case closed.

Twelve years later a friend of mine said “These Christians all know it is bullshit. If you put a gun to their head and said ‘I’ll kill you if you say you really believe it’ all of them would deny God.”

I told him the above story, to explain how wrong he was. To many Christians, belief doesn’t come into it. I was only 12 years old, there was nothing rational about my position on Jesus and heaven. It just was. To the point I was happy to die, knowing how right I was.

Example number 3:

The first time I strongly experienced the Holy Spirit. I can’t remember how old I was, maybe 13 or so. I went forward during Jesus-Camp-like meeting, and preachers and other people prayed for me. It was really great! Fantastic! Loads of people, standing in a circle, all laying hands your head and shoulders, praying for God to bless you. Who wouldn’t feel something?

I fell over, and was lowered to the floor gently, and people stayed to pray for me until I got up maybe half an hour later.

I had many similar experiences over many years. It’s called being slain in the spirit, among other things.

Once I fell backwards, and nobody caught me. I slammed into the ground, as you would expect. I just bounced a bit, but didn’t hurt myself. I hardly even noticed I had fallen over.

If it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit looking out for me, how could I have fallen over like that and not hurt myself?

The reality: I had never been to a big rock concert. I had never been part of a tribal ritual. I had never been to a hypnotist. There is all kind of psychology going on at a revival meeting, with loads of suggestion of what to do in the situation, what is expected, what is safe, what isn’t, how long it should take before you fall over, how long to stay on the floor afterwards.

The connectedness you feel at a big concert, of being part of something bigger than yourself, is familiar to many people, but just wasn’t something I knew. Not back then.

Back then, the church had a monopoly on all group-based emotional experience. It did in my life, anyway.

Any time I felt something profound, it was in the realms of a Christian church service of some type. So, of course, I presumed such feelings came from God.

Now I have had all kinds of “Peak Experiences”.

Getting a standing ovation at the end of a show. Performing a difficult juggling routine dropless. Breaking a world record. Telling a joke and having 3,000 people laugh. Various sexual encounters. Getting into a fight. Catching a big wave while surfing. Finishing the last page of a novel.

My list can go on and on. I’m a “Peak Experience” kinda guy.

And since 2001, I’ve found that I don’t associate any with God. Before then, especially before about 1996 or 1997, every big emotional experience was dominated by my Christian surroundings.

Example number 4:

I used to help lead worship in church. I played keyboard and guitar and sang in the band, and helped other people have spiritual experiences. I felt God and the Holy Spirit guiding me and the music I played. And when I followed what God was wanting me to do, it got results. People would start speaking in tongues and falling over.

Especially when I played the keyboard.

The reality: I slowly became a good musician. At least passable. I mean, my university degree is in music production…

What I thought was God using me and my musicianship was really just the power of music itself. But again, the church and my Christian upbringing dominated my musical knowledge and experiences. I thought that people only felt a certain way when certain music is played because of God moving through the music, when, in fact, human response to music is near universal. Music is just what us humans respond to best.

Do you see a pattern emerging with these examples?

In every case I experienced something profound, but didn’t know these experiences were something that EVERYONE can feel, regardless of faith in God.

And, importantly, these experiences fulfilled a need. Many needs. Going back to Maslow; the whole top half of the pyramid, even the ones way down from the peak.

The Rational Approach

Next question: how many discussions or conversations or arguments did I have with atheists that helped me shed my childhood faith?

If you think the answer is higher than zero… buzz! Wrong.

The answer is zero. None at all.

I had a very complex view on christian theology, and remember (with fondness) taking part in and leading bible studies about salvation (Romans 6 and 7 was a favorite topic of discussion).

However, the basis of my faith wasn’t the minutia of theology, nor of the nature of God, nor of the actual truth of the claims of God. What I had were the real experiences.

One early step to my deconversion from Christianity was the erosion of the lower levels on that Hierarchy of Need. There was a not entirely peaceful breakup of my Christian fellowship, which sort of spasmed through quasi-cult like stages before falling apart. A fellowship that is no longer a fellowship doesn’t really fulfill that fellowship need. I’m not going to get into this point more here, but for completeness I had to state it.

The more important step is having those peak experiences elsewhere, other than in church. I mentioned some examples above, but here are some specifics particular to my deconversion.

Example number 1:

1998 to 1999, I played in a band. Jamming and performing with a group of like-minded musicians is a great experience. And it was a non-christian band! And the feeling I had were comparable to those I had when leading worship.

As in, when I played a song I wrote on my keyboard, and the singer sang the love-ballad-like lyrics, it made girls cry.

Examples numbers 2, 3 and 4:

During one trip to Cornwall in 1999 I got really, really, really stoned. I thought I was going to die. This is sort of an anti-peak experience, but it was stronger than anything I’d felt in church. It was also the total opposite of getting badly drunk.

Same trip, I watched the complete solar eclipse. Awesome.

Same trip, I caught a perfect wave while surfing. At least it felt perfect, and went on forever.

Example number 5 and 6:

In 2001 I had a near-death experience. The brakes on my camper van failed while driving down the steepest road in England. It freaked me out.

A few minutes later, while pumped up on adrenaline, I juggled 11 balls for 11 catches for the first time ever. At the time only about four people in the world had done this.

Over these years, from about 1997 to 2001, I had many great experiences, many quite profound, some utterly profound. Each time I reflected that the spiritual peak experiences I craved had been fulfilled outside of a church environment. Some of them had been completely under my own physical control (eg: not at the suggestion of a Christian minister or worship leader), and these drove home the point in an even stronger way: what I once thought spiritual was, in fact, merely human.

It didn’t lessen the memory of my Christian spiritual experiences, nor negate their impact, it just showed them to be one variety of many human experiences possible.

The final turning point, when I realized I was no longer a “real” Christian, was the brake failure of my van in 2001.

Unlike the near-drowning in 1992, I didn’t even think of God or Heaven. Instead of happiness that I was about to meet Jesus, I had a simple regret that if I died, I wouldn’t be able to go traveling in my new van (I’d only bought it three weeks before), and I wouldn’t be able to spend my summer busking and surfing and juggling before returning to university that autumn.

My “final” thoughts when my van flipped onto its roof had nothing to do with my past life as Christian, but regret that my future life of new, non-spiritual experiences might not come to pass.

And that was it. Christian spirituality no longer meant anything to me. I didn’t need it to live a full life. I was no longer getting any kind of fellowship from Christianity, that function was coming more and more from the juggling sub-culture. With university came exposure to much more music, and Christian rock no longer cut it. I also realized that I no longer cared for the morality as taught in church, seeing as I was just as moral, if not more so, than many Christians I knew. I also didn’t believe gays were going to hell.

A few months later, when I went to work for GOD TV, I saw the Christianity=Morality connection dissolve even further, but that’s another story.

For a few years I didn’t really think of Christianity much, or what my world view might be. I just got on with living my life, establishing a new identity as an adult, trying to have as many new experiences as possible.

I got to the point where I was nothing more than a wishy-washy agnostic on the matter of god, or maybe some kind of pantheist. Then I had a conversation with a friend (same conversation as I mentioned above) and he pretty much said “It’s all bullshit. Christianity, astrology, lay lines, crystals. One day someone made something up, told someone, and they believed it. Then the next person believed it too. But at the core, it started with someone making something up.”

While I don’t think the truth is that simple, my reaction to this was the thought “Yeah, I’m pretty much an atheist.”

But the key step was in 2001; the step from Christian to no-need-for-Christianity.

The lesson from all this?

Forget trying to argue with people. It’s not going to work. Nobody rationally decides to be a Christian, so trying to use rational arguments to turn them away from Christianity, or any religion, just isn’t going to work.

And it doesn’t need to work. When it comes to personal beliefs, the rationality or intelligence of the vast majority Christians isn’t the deciding factor in their personal faith or belief.

I agree that less religious adherence is probably a good thing. Being tied to millennia-old moral teachings isn’t a good idea, as it used to justify all kinds of bigoted words and actions. Also I think concentrating on helpful actions on behalf of others is better than praying for their non-existent souls.

However, if these New Atheists actually want to deconvert the masses, they MUST provide two things:

1. fellowship comparable to a church group,
2. an equal number of opportunities for spiritual-alternative peak experiences.

The first is already underway, to a limited degree, with the Skeptics in the Pub movement. The second? I’m just not seeing it.

Seriously, if anyone has any suggestions, send me an email. But really, what does “no spirituality” have to compete with “real spiritual experiences”?

Life requires much more than just “not-religious” or “not-spiritual”. It requires something to replace the human urge to experience euphoria and a sublime connection to the world. I experience these through a variety of measures, none of which have any connection to my “identity” as an atheist, skeptic, science geek or rationalist.

I am all those things, but they are not what make me human.