Who Are the Outstanding Skeptics of the Century? - Brief Article

There are many heroes of the skeptical movement, past and present. As the century draws to a conclusion, we thought it would be interesting to honor those considered most outstanding by their peers. We asked the Fellows and Scientific Consultants of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, publisher of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, for their choices. We provided no lists of names and offered no specific guidelines. They could choose anyone they wanted from any field of endeavor. They could choose their own criteria. The results are in this issue

Our feature on the outstanding skeptics of the twentieth century identifies the ten most outstanding skeptics. Five of them are still hard at work on behalf of science, reason, and skepticism. Three herald from earlier parts of the century. Two were taken from us prematurely in the 1990s.

Fifty people in all received votes. They all--and many, many others besides them--have made notable contributions to science and skepticism. We are interested in your own brief opinions and comments, and will publish them in a future issue.

Can those who hold paranormal beliefs be divided into two neat categories? Are people who believe in the physical reality of heaven, the reality of angels and the devil, and the validity of special or biblical creation compartmentalized from those who, on the other hand, believe in ESP, psychokinesis, prophecies, astrology, UFOs as alien space shapes, crystal power, synchronicity, and so on? In a notable article in these pages in 1980 and in another in American Scientist, Bainbridge and Stark showed evidence that where one realm of belief is strong, the other is weaker, and vice versa. Their evidence indicated that in regions of the country where traditional religion is weakest, New Age type beliefs were strongest; where traditional religion had its strongest hold, the other kind of paranormal beliefs were weaker. More recently, Taylor, Eve, and Harrold (1995), also in these pages, likewise distinguished two separate dimensions of paranormalism, creationism and fantastic archaeology, with mutually exclusive domains that serve different functions, have different origins, and adherents who hold to different rules of evidence.

In this issue sociologist Erich Goode of the State University of New York at Stony Brook reexamines this question. He presents the results of his own 100-item survey of 484 students enrolled in three undergraduate courses at his university. Four questions concerned belief in Christian conservatism, traditionalism, or fundamentalism; five questions dealt with our usual conception of paranormal beliefs. When he cross-correlated the answers (20 tables of data), he found something surprising: For 18 of the 20 tables, respondents agreeing to the religion question were also mote likely to agree to the paranormal questions. "In almost every case," he says, "respondents who believed in angels, heaven, divine creation, and the devil, also believed the reality of extraterrestrial vehicles, ESP, astrology, lucky numbers, and King Tut's curse." His data indicate a positive, strong, and significant, relationship between measures of traditional or fundamentalist Christian faith and specific tenets of paranormalism.

Goode suggests some possible reasons for the differences between his results and the previous studies. But, he says, "The parallels between religious faith and paranormal belief are more than abstractions or artificial constructs; they seem to have emotional resonance in the lives of many believers."

KENDRICK FRAZIER

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