As
Chairman of the Center for Inquiry in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst, Paul Kurtz
has a big job. His organization hunts down and attempts to annihilate
fraudulent ideas. Last week, Kurtz shared his skeptical ideas about religious
beliefs and other aspects of our culture. Our discussion continues with a look
at some of the more absurd claims that have nevertheless gained a firm foothold
in the public consciousness.
Over the past 30 years, movies like The Exorcist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Carrie, The Sixth Sense,
and Signs have made a lasting
impression on western culture. Although most people recognize them as works of
fiction, Kurtz says a portion of the population is taken in. And he sees larger
repercussions for a society that does not make decisions based on logic and
reason. The primary mission of Kurtz’s various organizations is to confront
pseudo-scientific claims with rational scientific explanations.
The Skeptical Inquirer, a bi-monthly
magazine published by The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims
of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is perhaps Kurtz’s liveliest outlet for refuting
superstitious beliefs. The current issue includes an article titled “Circular
Reasoning: The ‘Mystery’ of Crop Circles and Their ‘Orbs’ of Light,” and
another dealing with the popularity of The
X-Files. Other issues have dealt with historical instances of
pseudo-science in articles like “Mark Twain Debunks Phrenology.”
City: I’d like to get your comments on common beliefs in the
supernatural, starting with astrology.
Kurtz: Astrology has
no basis in fact and it’s false. And I say this having spent years
investigating its claims. It’s based upon ancient astronomical theory in which
the Earth is the center of the universe, not the sun. The point of astrology is
that the moment of birth defines who you are, not the moment of conception. A
lot of people today have Caesarians. How do you deal with that?
City:UFO sightings?
Kurtz: A lot of
people have had those sightings and I’ve had them. The real question is, are
they extraterrestrial? There’s no hard evidence that any of these sightings
come from outer space. The one I saw turned out to be a planet. A lot of people
mistake planets on the horizon for UFOs. Rockets, meteor showers, weather
balloons, geese. They can be given a more pedestrian explanation.
City:What about alien abductions?
Kurtz: Thirty years
ago, two men in New Hampshire said they were abducted. What surprised us was,
suddenly people started believing in abductions about 15 years ago. Even Dr.
Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist, published a book on this. A number of people
claim this; otherwise reasonable people. There’s missing time, flashing lights
in the sky, you fall asleep and seem to have an out-of-body experience. Our
explanation is this is a kind of psychological and sociological phenomenon, and
it’s part of the geist. In the old days, they saw angels. Now they see UFOs.
You can have eyewitness testimony about anything. I have met people who really
believe in vampires and exorcisms. After Close
Encounters of the Third Kind there was a big wave of sightings. After Signs we’ll see what happens.
City:Carl Sagan was a member of your group.
Didn’t he help popularize the notion of aliens?
Kurtz: No. He was a
skeptic. He was a fellow of CSICOP and a member of our Academy of Humanists. He
was an atheist, an agnostic. He said we want to look for life in outer space
and I agree with that. I think the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is
very important. But do this scientifically.
City:There have been many variations of the
Lochness Monster myth.
Kurtz: I have not
investigated the Lochness Monster, but we did investigate the Lake George
Monster. There was a picture in Time many years ago of the head coming out of the water. In our view, that was a
loon, not a monster.
City:What aboutBigfoot?
Kurtz: I investigated
Bigfoot in Lewiston. There was a report about 18 years ago that Bigfoot was
sighted there. We had a hearing in the town hall. We had a professor of
anthropology and theology, and the head of the science museum. Somebody had
found what looked like a carcass of some animal that had been eaten by dogs. We
had a five-hour inquiry. The result was someone had shot a bear in Canada and
had come across the border with a bearskin and dumped it. The head of the
museum specialized in bears and he identified it. The day after we complete the
inquest, there’s a pro-Sasquatch disciple, Eric Beckjord, who appears on Good Morning America and is interviewed
by the New York Post, and he says,
“Bigfoot found in Lewiston, New York.” That’s the way they sensationalize this
stuff.
City:Some religions involve so-called miracles.
Can all of the supposed miracles over the centuries be explained?
Kurtz: I think so —
those that we’ve investigated. A miracle is a confession of ignorance. You
believe it’s a miracle because you don’t know the cause. Look for the natural
cause and you can find it. Bleeding statues don’t bleed. Often it’s a hoax
where someone puts blood on it, or olive oil if it’s a tearful statue. But
there’s a natural explanation. One thing we investigated at Free Inquiry was faith healers. We found
no clear case of a miraculous faith healing. We had about 100 people going
around.
City: What was your method?
Kurtz: I went to
Rochester, to the Convention Center, and W.T. Grant was there. W.T. Grant
claimed that he could cure people. He would ask people in wheelchairs to get
out of the wheelchair, and then he’d push the wheelchair away and he’d scream,
“They’re healed!” What we found was he carried about 100 wheelchairs with him
and, if somebody would come in who was hobbling a bit, they’d put him in a
wheelchair and put them up front. They could walk and he would proclaim a
miracle. We did the same thing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We followed
people out afterward. One man said, “I had a bum leg and they made me sit down.
I was glad to.” We said, “How do you feel now?” He said, “It ain’t no better.”
City:And yet, thousands of people go to Lourdes
each year.
Kurtz: There is a placebo effect with some people, if
it’s not physiological. I investigated Lourdes. I think there were 64 so-called
cures. There have been millions of people who have gone to Lourdes. My wife is
from France and she went to French Catholic School. Her class went to Lourdes.
She said she thought more people got infections from being put in that cold
water than got cured. Even with those 64 cases — we investigated 23 of them
— you can find perfectly normal explanations.
City:Voodoo can look pretty convincing.
Kurtz: You hear about
people who are scared to death by that. I have not investigated those cases,
but it’s clear that if people believe something, they will behave accordingly.
If they’re so frightened that this demonic event will occur, they may bring it
to bear. It’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s no evidence of
voodoo.
City:What about the devil? The Catholic Church
still performs exorcisms.
Kurtz: The theory is
this involves psychological or emotional disorders. They didn’t know how to
explain diseases, so they said people were possessed. It’s an ancient
explanation of bizarre behavior. But I think there’s no evidence that a person
is possessed, nor that an exorcist will be able to get rid of the possession.
There is a tragic case of a girl in Florida that I did look into. I debated
this on Larry King Live. The girl
would curse involuntarily. I think she may have suffered from Tourette’s
Syndrome.
City:I remember when “The Exorcist”came out. I had
friends who were totally convinced.
Kurtz: Looking into
that, we did an investigation on the novel by [William Peter] Blatty. That was
purely fabricated, as was The Amityville
Horror. The Sixth Sense was a
dangerous movie. It was very, very well done. But to have people think you can
talk to dead people and see dead people…
City:But even Shakespeare used ghosts. You’re not
against people using their imaginations to create fantasies, are you?
Kurtz: I’m not
against fantasy, but I worry about people who really believe it. Some of these
fantasies are taken as true by a lot of people. That’s the problem in America
today. What’s the difference between fantasy and reality? When you have
religion unexamined — you’re not allowed to examine religion today publicly
— paranormal myths accepted, witchcraft and everything else, then how do you
know what’s true or false?
How do you know if Iraq is
dangerous, or if the terrorists are really going to destroy us all, or any
other claim unless you’re using hard evidence and not hysteria? You need to be
in some cognitive touch with the world. I believe in the arts, the power of
music and poetry, the visual arts. They provide enjoyment and aesthetic
delight. Fantasy can provide insight. But the problem is when people think
fantasy is a substitute for truth and believe it.
City:Maybe the problem is the technology. Special
effects are so convincing now in movies. The illusions can seem so real.
Kurtz: Movies are the
sacred temple, particularly for the young. People may not go to church, but
they go to movies and they are overwhelmed by the music, the sound. It’s
powerful, but you have to know when it’s true and when it’s false. What would
life be without imagination? But deception is another matter.
City:And the ultimate deception in your view is
political.
Kurtz: Yes. The media
now are owned by a few conglomerates. They dominate book publishing, the
movies, television, newspaper chains. Increasingly, it’s one voice. And the
media has become the propaganda ministry for the corporate state. We need
second points of view. What I fear in this country, more than at any time in my
life, is that dissent is being blotted out, alternative points of view are
being suppressed, and critical, rational understanding is being bypassed.
That’s very dangerous. I fear for the future of our democracy, particularly
with the Bush administration and Mr. Ashcroft and the Patriot Act and the
frenzied propaganda.
I’ve been to Europe 150 times. I
travel back and forth, and I now see how our friends have turned against us. At
one time America was admired throughout the world — our generosity, the
American outlook. Now they consider us dangerous, the macho superpower. Why is
that happening? Media is spilling out propaganda. They’re all saying the same
thing and you don’t get dissent. You have to read the Manchester Guardian or Le
Monde. Public television doesn’t give it to us. Where would we be without
NPR? But we don’t have sufficient alternatives.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2002.
