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Skeptical Odysseys: Personal Accounts by the World's Leading Paranormal Inquirers

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This is a collection of essays from skeptics, edited by Paul Kurtz and issued on the 25th anniversary of CSICOP (the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal). I especially recommend it to paranormal researchers and those who consider themselves to be believers, to really think about what it is they believe and consider evidence of the veracity of that belief. The essays are as follows:

Introduction: The Founding of the Skeptical Movement (Paul Kurtz)

=I. Twenty-Five Years of CSICOP
1. From the Editor's Seat: Thoughts on Science and Skepticism at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century (Kendrick Frazier)
2. Science vs. Pseudoscience, Nonscience, and Nonsense (James Alcock)
3. Never a Dull Moment (Barry Karr)
4. The Origins and Evolution of CSICOP: Science is Too Important to Be Left to Scientists (Lee Nisbet)
5. My Personal Involvement: A Quarter Century of Skeptical Inquiry (Paul Kurtz)

=II. Parapsychology
6. Why I Have Given Up (Susan Blackmore)
7. The Magician and the Think Tank (Leon Jaroff)
8. From Fate to Skeptical Inquirer (Barry L. Beyerstein)

=III. UFOs
9. UFOs: An Innocent Myth Turned Evil (Philip J. Klass)
10. The Odyssey of a UFO Skeptic (Robert Sheaffer)
11. Roswell Alien Descendants Come of Age (Bill Nye)
12. Metamorphosis: A Life's Journey from "Believer" to "Skeptic" (Gary P. Posner)

=IV. Astronomy and the Space Age
13. Killer-Comets, Pseudocosmogony, and Little Green Men (David Morrison)
14. Certain Uncertainties (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

=V. Astrology
15. Does Astrology Work? Astrology and Skepticism 1975-2000 (Geoffrey Dean and Ivan W. Kelly)
16. The Battle Against Pseudoscience: The Case of Astrology (Jean-Claude Pecker)

=VI. Popular Investigations
17. Adventures of a Paranormal Investigator (Joe Nickell)
18. Diary of a Canadian Debunker (Henry Gordon)

=VII. Creationism
19. My Favorite Pseudoscience (Eugenie Scott)

=VIII. Alternative Medicine
20. "Alternative Medicine": How It Demonstrates Characteristics of Pseudoscience, Cult, and Confidence Game (Wallace Sampson)

=IX. Skepticism Around the World
21. A Dozen Years of Dutch Skepticism (Cornelis de Jager and Jan WIllem Nienhuys)
22. A New Hope: From a Good Idea to Real Change (Massimo Polidoro)
23. A Skeptic in a Strange Land (Mario Mendez-Acosta)
24. Skepticism in Russia: Past and Present (Valerii A. Kuvakin)
25. Liberation from the Dark Dungeons of Blind Belief (Sanal Edamaruku)
26. Scientists, Educators, and Journalists Against the Demon's Temptation (Luis Alfonso Gamez)

=X. Some Personal Reflections
27. Skepticism and Science (Vern L. Bullogh)
28. Let Us Reflect: How a Thoughtful, Inquiring Watchman Provided a Mark to Aim At (Michael Shermer)
29. The Importance of Skepticism (Steve Allen)
30. When Corporations Embraced "Transformational Technologies" (Bela Scheiber)

=XI. Religion
31. Confessions of a Skeptic (Martin Gardner)
32. The Breath of God: Identifying Spiritual Energy (Victor J. Stenger)
33. Skepticism About Religion (Antony Flew)
34. Beyond the Bible Code: Hidden Messages Everywhere! (David E. Thomas)

=XII. From Skepticism to Humanism
35. In Retrospect: From Skeptic to Humanist (Robert A. Baker)

This is a wonderful and broad collection of outstanding essays on skepticism and the paranormal. However, in another sense, the situation is sad, in that literature about the paranormal is often divided into two philosophical camps, the literature of the believers and the literature of the skeptics. Most books are either the believers' "WooWoo du Jour" (channeling, UFOs, ghosts, etc.) -- a vast region of thousands of fringe books, or the books are in a much smaller scientific materialist camp of under a hundred books. And sadly, neither camp SERIOUSLY considers the literature of their rivals. For example, athough right 90% of the time, skepticism often ends up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as in native herbalism cures sometimes classified these days as "Alternative Medicine."

The fact is, whether one believes in such things or not, these things are embedded in human culture over thousands of years, and mythological thinking is part of how the human mind thinks...that is the key. One should not lump together the deceivers and outright hoaxes, with the self-deluded or cases of paradolia, as skeptic literature often does. People seek meaning and pattern in all times and all cultures. Until/unless scientific materialism can merge its accuracy and veracity with some kind of meaning/philosophy that can fulfill the human needs for myth and emotion as well as intellect, it will not succeed in replacing the myths of this age or any other. The great thing about the late Carl Sagan, is that he was one of the few scientific materialists/skeptics able to communicate in an emotionally resonant way the kind of mythic narrative that is needed, as in his immortal Cosmos: Carl Sagan (7 DVD Set) series.

Personally, I am a subscriber to the "Night Eyes-Day Eyes" philosophy, that reality is the same thing, there is both a sun in the sky and there are stars in the sky (and the sun is of course a star as well!) but which one you see depends on whether it is day or night. But they are both always there, whether we see them or not, because reality is always liable to reason. Belief and reason based on empiricism are not incompatible, but need to inform each other to achieve veracity.

After reading this book, I wonder how few people think rationally and how many fewer still think scientifically? Defining what those mean would be a start. Many contributors to "Skeptical Odysseys" seem dismayed how few people understand the scientific method.

At a time when a teaching of "intelligent design" may be entering Kansas public science classes, it seems a good time to appreciate how much each of the contributors to this book has struggled in the name of science against "pseudo-science, non-science, and nonsense". The nuttiness just keeps coming in one form or another. Often enough a discredited notion, like intelligent design, comes back in much the same form. So one thing these skeptics describe is their patience.

If you just hear mention of astrology, UFOs, ESP, and creationism, you may dismiss just how much work has gone into combatting these unproductive areas. Reading each of these skeptics helps drive home just how much work remains. Each of the skeptics describes his/her work as a skeptic. Some that made the biggest impression on me were:

* The editor of this book and famous humanist, Paul Kurtz himself. Among other things he mentions people who claim to talk to the dead: here in the 21st century, one can turn on TV and see John Edward or Sylvia Browne claiming to be doing this.
* David Morrison, who had been a student of Carl Sagen. He goes over the Velikovsky "Worlds in Collision" claims , which both Sagen and Morrison challenged scientifically.
* Geoffry Dean (technical writer) and Ivan Kelly (educational psychologist) on scientific challenges of astrology.
* Eugenie Scott (anthropologist) discussing the nature of science and from that, just why creationism isn't scientific.
* a surprise, Steve Allen, the long-time TV celebirty but also skeptic, writing with considerable insight.

That's just a few of 36 contributors, each of them adding to a message of the importance of rationalism and scientific method. Consider just in medicine how much we rely on good scientific research. Do you really understand the scientific method? After reading this book I wonder if I do.

Paul Kurtz edits Skeptical Odysseys, a vivid collection of personal accounts by the world's paranormal inquirers. This gathers the personal statements and views of the leading skeptics of the world, considering paranormal and spiritual claims and including a healthy dose of autobiography as well as reflections on paranormal research and theories. The list of distinguished contributors sets this apart from others.

One of the offshoots of religion is paranormal phenomena. That includes everything from parapsychology, the shroud of Turin, UFOs, creationism, astrology, and other topics.

Some of my favorite authors wrote articles for this volume, among them, Joe Nickell, Phil Klass, Henry Gordon, Martin Gardner, and Robert Sheaffer.

Skeptical Odysseys is a good place to hear the personal stories from said authors.