After having a bit of an epiphany because of the unfortunate and, in my opinion, deranged hypothesis of the youth pastor and the peers I shared the class with, I sort of just let it go. I reconginzed the significance of that Sunday morning, but I honestly never really pursued anything that I would truly consider to be a skeptical endeavor until several years later. It would be fair to say that I was more cynical than I was skeptical at that particular time. Although, I was certainly wiser for the experience and more outwardly embraced a scientific way of thinking while more actively rejecting superstition and pseudoscience. I more consciously started to stop watching UFO Files on the History Channel because I thought it at least could be true and started to be more inquisitive. Instead of just believing what whatever Ufologist they had on, I started to look things up and ask questions. If I didn’t know the answer, I looked to people who were better educated on the subject than I and tried to learn from them.
The more I began paying close attention to claims being made by the “experts,” the more the bits of token skepticism that were thrown in on those shows gained value for me. It was because of that change in attitude that I began trying to figure out just who people like, say, Joe Nickell were.
High school was also the time in my life where I began more openly engaging in debates. Not necessarily being a shy person, I never had much of a problem with engaging people in discussions or letting them know when I disagreed with what they had to say. However, it was not until I really began to engage in debate in class (and writing what passed for a research paper in high school) that I had to do research to support my arguments and, as a result, began dismantling my own thoughts and opinions and those of others as well.
I’ve always had a knack for noticing small things and nitpicking which, honestly, could have led me down the path to neurosis and becoming a real life George Costanza. Rather, because I started getting interested in debates and doing a little research here and there, I started taking a path that allowed me to nitpick and dismantle arguments and ideas. This is in no way to imply that I am or was always right. I wasn’t and am not. But, I learned how to apply the skills I began to gain to discussions, debates, and claims—modifying and correcting my ideas along the way as I learned more and/or was corrected by others.
The point is I liked it. I still like it. Nah, screw that. I love it. I love arguing and debating and learning and because of the character traits already had and the new types of assignments I was getting in school—coupled with the nutty experience I had at church—and being put in a position where I had to apply those traits in a serious way. I had to start to think about the way I thought and how I applied what I knew, or thought I knew.
In the beginning this manifested itself not just in the classroom, but in my thinking on politics, and friendly political debates with peers and on message boards online. While the debates on message boards were nigh-masturbatory because it’s rare that one anonymous person is going to convince another anonymous person of much of anything, especially in something that can be so heated as politics. I say they’re nearly masturbatory because in so many instances it just ends up being a couple of people saying why what they think is right, you’re wrong, and often ends up being some sort of catharsis for each individual so that they can justify their beliefs without really thinking about them. Effectively they often turn into these little flame wars and individual struggles; and some people turn out to just be looking for either attention or some sort of group approval of their beliefs or attitudes. That being said though, it did help me to hone my debating and critical thinking skills, again, because I had to think about what I was saying and what others were saying.
As I honed myself throughout high school, I quickly discovered in college that there are A LOT of smart people out there in classrooms, bars, and internet message boards who have challenging ideas. I encountered opinions that dissented from my own as often, if not more often, as I encountered those that matched my own. In broad terms, the time it took me to learn more and evolve my thinking was pretty negligible. But in those moments where I changed, the changes seemed pretty substantial.
Getting in long, and occasionally fruitless, debates about politics and economics was a lot of fun for me. It still is. They made me think. They forced me to be knowledgable. They encouraged me to learn how to spot logical fallacies and dismantle arguments. They helped me learn to hone all of the skills that I admired in so many of the people that I would end up counting amongst my heroes.
For as much as I watched paranormally focused TV shows and specials, the name James Randi never really stuck with me and I, frankly, had no idea who he was. Now, to be fair, I was aware of people like Joe Nickell and, of course, Carl Sagan and their contributions. Sagan seems rather obvious, but Nickell I mostly remembered from the examination he helped perform on the Shroud of Turin, exposing it as a medieval fake (I desperately wanted him to be wrong and the Shroud real for a long time because it would have justified my beliefs at the time).
It’s kind of funny that I had never caught on to Randi before and, hell, I’m sure I probably had seen him on television more than once, but the times when I would have seen him I was either too young to recognize what was going on or too bamboozled by superstition to pay attention to him. But, eventually I did find him and instantly became interested in and fascinated by him.
How I discovered Randi was a result of Penn and Teller’s Bullshit!, which began airing while I was in college. Bullshit! was the show that FINALLY gave a name to all of the doubts that I had about the paranormal and the questions I had about specific topics and they’re purveyors. That name was Skepticism. At long last I had a name, an abstraction, that properly defined all of the things that had been nagging at me for so long. Questions and doubts about Bigfoot, Nostradamus, Y2k (snicker), ESP, copper bracelets for balance, all of those things that didn’t make sense to me. All of those things that didn’t seem to have any supporting facts or evidence. I finally had a name for my concerns and it helped me focus those concerns. Instead of frantically moving from one bizarre topic to the next, I could focus and more adequately apply the scientific method and critical thinking, instead of automatically dismissing those extraordinary claims.
Because of Randi’s appearance on the first season of Bullshit! and the enthusiasm that P&T reinforced, I rushed out and bought two of Randi’s books. I bought The Faith Healers and Flim-Flam!, both of which are wonderful reads with not just great stories about his investigations but are terrific primers for putting together your own baloney detection kit and for what it really means to be a skeptic and an investigator.
Randi’s books opened up a whole new world to me and showed the practical application of testing paranormal claims; as well as the despicable effects the purveyors of pseudoscience can force upon others. What I learned from reading Randi’s books is invaluable and truly helped me become a better critical thinker, a person who has abandoned all of the damage and hardship of superstition, and it reinvigorated my sense of wonder about the world around us and science. He, along with some occasional help from Penn and Teller’s Bullshit!, also opened my eyes and led me to read works by Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Robert Park, Robert Price, and on and on.
Randi’s books also helped me eliminate the smallest of superstitions that I was hanging on to, but he also helped me eliminate the biggest superstition I was holding on to. But that will wait until next time when I conclude this series of blogs.
To be concluded!
