Tim Minchin uses comedy to open a door to rationalism

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor

(Image: Cameron Tandy/Newspix/Rex Features)

With his heavy eyeliner and quirky act, comedian and musician Tim Minchin considers himself a "gateway drug" to science, philosophy and rationalism

Your comedy is often about scepticism and rationalism - why?

Any understanding of science I have is reverse-engineered from my suspicion about belief systems: I don't think this medicine works, and how can I prove that to myself? Over the last 10 years I educated myself in science and stats a little bit. For some reason it sits very nicely for me in what comedy should be about.

What made you such a fan of science?
I was educated at art college in Western Australia in the 1990s, where relativism was sort of a given. My problem with relativism - the idea that there is no absolute truth - is that, in the end, you have to say so what? It doesn't matter that you can't prove that we're not the dream of a genie because it's functionally uninteresting. I get frustrated that it's culturally acceptable to place opinion on a pedestal that doesn't seem to relate to information. Science is a structure in place to stop people imposing personality onto the pursuit of knowledge. Pragmatically, it's the best system. Nothing else predicts anything, or generates anything.

With so much information out there, how do you decide who or what to trust?
It is entirely appropriate to appeal to authority, in life. For pragmatic reasons, you can't know everything. If you say 90 per cent of scientists believe this, that's an appeal to authority. Sure, that's not good enough on its own, but you always have to appeal to an authority. Your job is to figure out what a good authority is.

So, what makes a good authority?
People in newspapers constantly put inverted commas around the word expert, and it irritates me. We have experts on stuff, and they don't deserve scare quotes. They're experts because they are the people with the credentials to examine something who have also examined it most closely. In the absence of my own knowledge of a particular thing, I am going to find the best authority I can. Science as a tool allows us to try and generate a really good authority. Now, there are a whole lot of problems with funding and vested interest and the anthropological principle but pragmatically, it is the only system that even bothers to try to minimise bias. So as an authority it is head and shoulders above the rest.

Are you on a mission for science?
I'm a gateway drug into philosophy and scepticism, because I'm the moron version of it. But I use terms like causation or confirmation bias that kids can go and look up if they're interested. I refuse to hold a banner up too much, though. It's incredibly obvious that I'm an atheist and a rationalist and a sceptic, but you won't often hear me calling myself one. The longer I can just be quirky, wacky and arty in the public eye the better. I play piano and I make people cry, and people don't walk out calling me an atheist. And that's incredibly valuable, because I get to sneak in the message. It's naughty really.

So you use comedy as a back door to introduce your ideas?
Absolutely... I'm the back-door man, ideas-wise. Anti-magic ideas don't look as nice at the outset. So you've got to find a way to get past that. All people want is to feel good about what they think. Music and laughter both disarm foreground defences. We're incredibly susceptible to taking in messages that come in song or make people laugh: you want to get laid, you make someone laugh. It's an opener.

Which of your songs has had the biggest impact?

Storm, [a song about a dinner party encounter with someone who believes in pseudoscience] is one of my gateway videos in the US. The majority of my fans over there are screaming atheists, and incredibly emotional. I had people with tears in their eyes come up and say, "I flew up from Kentucky to see you. We're both school teachers and we're the only people in our whole town who are atheists. We're basically outcasts."

Sounds like you have a loyal following...
I'm exactly what a preacher is. The difference between me and a preacher is that I didn't start out intending to change people's minds. I'm just saying here's a place where I'm going to talk about my ideas. Do you want to come? There'll be lights.

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Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1a4458fa/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A110C110Ctim0Eminchin0Euses0Ecomedy0Eto0Eopen0Ea0Edoor0Eto0Erationalism0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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