James Randi has a reputation as a stage magician, but over the last four decades he has become better known as a challenger of pseudoscience, occult, and the paranormal. He’ll be in Calgary on Saturday, September 24th and Edmonton on the 25th to discuss why it’s important to challenge claims of the supernatural and the occult.

It’s so important that in 1996 he set up the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) with its mission "to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas so widespread in our society today."

"We believe we can help people defend themselves from paranormal and pseudo-scientific frauds of various kinds that the media is selling to us all the time," he recently told GayCalgary & Edmonton Magazine. He thinks we need to educate people to think critically about the world. The feedback Mr. Randi gets from younger people is they – along with some older folks - particularly are very susceptible to the media’s manipulation of their thoughts on tales of the supernatural.

These tales of supernatural powers need to be examined scientifically for many reasons. Some of these people are charlatans, claiming they are faith healers or psychics who will help you out in your time of need "for a modest fee." Some may give dangerous advice. At any rate, "...if there is one person out there who is what I call a woo-woo, that is, someone who accepts all of these things without any question whatsoever, that person’s vote neutralizes mine on any important matter. That means that’s a person I believe is not thinking rationally, and I don’t want my vote cancelled out that way."

People are not thinking critically, he asserts. Instead, they use this fantasy viewpoint to run their life, which means they are then lost and deaf to critical thoughts and ideas. "I want to do the most I can, as often as I can, to relieve the...ignorance in the world. It’s not stupidity necessarily – not at all. In some cases it is stupidity, but in most cases it’s ignorance. People simply don’t know any better. I want to try to make sure they do know better, so I put the information out there. They can pick and choose from it. They can accept it or they can reject it. That’s what we call freedom of speech and freedom of expression."

Unfortunately, for some, ignorance from new ideas is bliss. They don’t want to have to think and re-examine their worldview. Contrarily, Mr. Randi enjoys having his concepts challenged. "I’m delighted when a new idea or concept comes along for my consideration. It doesn’t mean I’m going to accept it right away. I’m going to think about it. But certainly, I welcome any new aspect of life and view of how the world really works. I always welcome it. Many people don’t. They’re afraid of it because they don’t want the status quo to change. That disturbs them somehow."

Still, the proudest moments Mr. Randi or the JREF has brought about are when a little sliver of open-minded, questioning rationality shines through. "You hear someone say on a particular subject, I may be wrong...I’m going to think about it. That’s all you can hope for...for someone to learn to doubt, to accept that they might be wrong. I don’t ask others to believe everything I say, or everything the James Randi Educational Foundation says. I ask them to think about it."

Which is not to say be cynical, it’s to say don’t accept everything that comes up in front of you. Especially, as Mr. Randi says, if the media are pushing it. "Remember...the media don’t really care whether something is true or not. They’re only interested in whether or not this will put 15 lines of text on the screen that night on the internet, or whether it will give a host of some news show something to say – whether it’s true or not... As long as it fills time, affects the media in some way, gets into a magazine, gets into writing someplace or is announced on radio or on television. That’s all they care about, and as soon as that’s done, bang, they’re finished, and they go to the computer; they start to peck out a new story for tomorrow night. The media is a whore, when it comes right down to it. It’s been said many times in the past."

Despite what the media portrays, what is encouraging are the growing ranks of rational thinkers and sceptics who don’t accept there are gods, ghosts and demons involved in our lives; rather they believe in scientific progress and expanding our understanding of the world."Every day we know a little bit more about how the world really works. We’ve got to keep up on that sort of thing," says Mr. Randi.

An example of how a rational, rather than supernatural approach has benefited the world: mental disorders which may cause hallucinations (visual or aural) are now being treated as a health issue, not as a reason to call out the witchdoctors. People are attacking situations rationally. They’re asking if these odd events were caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, or external influences either on the person’s body or on the environment. Unfortunately, as Mr. Randi told me, most people can’t imagine they would suffer from these stressful situations and may then reject rational, real reasons for their condition.

"Oh, I’m immune to that, they think. I don’t have hallucinations. But how do you positively figure out that you don’t have hallucinations? Because hallucinations, by definition, are things that don’t happen, but that seem to happen to you. So how could you say Everything that happens to me is real, therefore I don’t have any hallucinations? That’s ridiculous."

The internet has been a big help for fostering rational discussion, however, as Mr. Randi says, it can also be a breeding ground for falsehoods. "Communication is one thing, but what is it communicating? Is it communicating the truth, or an approximation of it, or falsehoods? The internet is used as much by liars as it is by truth-seekers, I would say, and people who want to sell you products - or ideas, or philosophies, or religions, or whatever - are very active on the internet because they realize it’s a very potent weapon."

He went on to mention Wikipedia as an example of how it can work both ways. Wikipedia doesn’t say its contents are absolutely true, they tell you because of the different editors from around the world who each have different languages/cultures/points of view/motivations, you have to be your own judge in accepting or rejecting their data.

"I think that’s a very wise attitude to take. Wikipedia is very useful particularly because it can be corrected by people who see errors in the entries. And my own biographical information on Wikipedia I have to check about every 4-6 weeks just to make sure there’s no real howler in there." His point is to be sceptical about  information coming from ANYWHERE.

That being said, if you do read James Randi’s Wikipedia entry, one recent fact is absolutely true. Over a year ago, at the age of 81, he decided to publicly "out" himself as a gay man. He did expect some people to question why he waited until now to reveal it to the world.

Yet, he was never really "in" the closet.

"I’ve always been out – certainly to my family, to my friends, to my colleagues, and my business partners. People like that. Everybody who knows me at all well – even more than fifteen minutes or so – becomes aware of this, and I’ve always been very upfront about it. But I’ve never advertised the fact, anymore than I advertise the fact that I’m right-handed. I don’t think I would have a bulletin going out on our webpage going Oh, by the way, I should tell everyone I’m right-handed. I don’t think it’s important in that way either."

He was expecting some of his critics to have their "a-ha!" moment, but the reaction was very positive. Not one member of the "woo-woo" crowd touched it. He wondered whether in this day and age they knew better than to go there, nevertheless, "I literally did not get one woo-woo out there who has said, for example, Oh, now I know the kind of person you are...."

However, what really surprised him was the positive reception he got from GLBTQ youth:

"I got a lot of email from young people. I’m talking about teenagers and even younger folks who had access to that information. They all thanked me for giving them just a little bit of inspiration—maybe not to come out right away, but to be comfortable with themselves and with the idea of coming out, so they’d be a little more ready when their time came to do that. That really edified me to no end. I was very, very pleased to see that. It was an unanticipated bonus for me."

I did speculate with Mr. Randi that the rise in a more rational, scientific approach to life has helped lead society toward being more accepting of the GLBTQ community. He agreed.

"When I was a teenager, I had to hide this fact. If I didn’t I would have been stoned in the street by my neighbours. That was just a hated thing. That was like admitting you had ambitions of being a mass murderer. It really was a different thing altogether. When I was a teenager, I had to conceal the fact – I didn’t go through a lot of pain to do it, mind you – but I just didn’t advertise it, and I certainly wouldn’t come out in that particular atmosphere."

"I think even in the last 6 to 8 years things have improved so much for the gay community. I think it’s a bit astonishing to me...a bit of a surprise, and certainly a delight to see that is the situation, and that it continues to develop in that direction."

Seeing the ranks of sceptics growing, thanks to people like James Randi, is certainly a delight to a lot of people. It may not happen overnight, but much as gay rights have progressed to move us away from hate, one day we will be free from seeing minds enslaved to superstition.

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