William Cohen-Kiraly
William Cohen-KiralySSS Member since: 1996
Occupation: Graphic Designer and Computer Consultant
Education & Background: Previous to working in graphic design,
spent 10 years as newspaper reporter/photographer. B.A. in Government and
Economics from University of Virginia.
E-Mail: wkiraly@apk.net
Home Page: www.junior.apk.net/~wkiraly
I come to skepticism, as I do most things, the long way around and from
a slightly different angle than your run-of-the-mill, orthodox skeptic.
In my time, I have met and interviewed numerous psychics and other believers
in the course of my work as a reporter. Skeptics often gripe about a credulous
media and by doing these articles, I suppose I fed into that credulity a
bit though there was always a kernel of skepticism in my mind and my writing.
Certainly they were fun articles to read as well as write.
I have always been fascinated by what and how people believe and as part
of that curiosity, I have visited many different churches, synagogues, psychic
readings, new age meetings and have read many books on religion and the
paranormal as well as science. I even learned how to read the Tarot (from
books) with the view in mind of doing readings while I traveled cross- country
as a way of making quick money on the road. But I realized I couldn't violate
my own intellectual honesty by doing that and I never have read for money.
But I have done readings for people at parties and it is fascination how
a little luck, showmanship and flim-flammery can fool the moderately skeptical
and completely befuddle the already susceptible.
Reading the Skeptical Inquirer and the writings of such great authors as
Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Laurence Krauss, Adam Smith, (the modern
economist, not the 18th century on though he was good too) and many, many
others gave me the intellectual framework to begin to evaluate claims of
the paranormal and junk science. I think I saw my first copy of the Skeptical
Inquirer when I was in my early twenties and was impressed even then by
its point of view but I did not start subscribing until only a few years
ago. I have always been a voracious reader of both junk and intelligent
books.
Belief in magic and the paranormal, I believe, stems much from our desires
not to accept the limitations of reality. With magic (or religion, or hyper-technological
aliens) there is always an out, a way to magically force the cosmos to fit
our desires when reality has set a limit or reason tells us something we
don't want to hear. The desire for this illusion of hope and power is strong
in all of us and cannot and, perhaps, should not, be obliterated.
My relationship with religion, is perhaps a little more complicated than
other members of our group. I grew up in a house with a little lip service
given to religion (I was baptized "just in case") but no real
church affiliation. I think both my parents do actually believe in God in
some form or another but our house was not only non-religious but had a
very materialistic, definitively non-spiritual flavor. Even in high school,
I felt we were missing a proper awe for creation and I envied both the assured
faith and the "connectedness" of the believers I knew. Though
I could not and cannot accept the mythology of Judaism, Christianity or
any other religion, I, like everyone else, want this deeper "connectedness."
For me, the answer has been joining a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
The best way I can describe UUism is as a religious community without a
religious dogma. Members include atheists (even an atheist minister I met
in New York City), Christians, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, and many others.
(One of the the more telling jokes is that a Unitarian Universalist is an
agnostic with kids.) Though I have some strong disagreement with some of
the political and social positions the denomination takes, it provides me
an intellectual home where anything and everything is fair game for thought
and questions while still supplying a caring, supportive, religious community.
So I have a real mixed view on the role of religion in our personal lives
and in society as a whole. On the one hand, I want to shake silly the people
who believe the world is 6000 years old despite such overwhelming evidence
or that some TV minister can pound you on the head and really cure organic
diseases. On the other hand, I think freedom of religion is rightly placed
in the first amendment alongside freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
The freedom to believe however you want and communicate that belief to others
is the cornerstone of a free and decent society. My freedom to not believe
is directly related to believers' freedom to believe—you cannot assure
one without the other. On this point, I think, I disagree with many fellow
skeptics and secular humanists. I believe the current drive to remove any
and all religious symbolism from public life to be far more damaging to
the cause of rationality and to the fabric of our society than some form
of reasonable compromise.
I don't believe God wrote the ten commandments but legal action to remove
them from a judge's courtroom seems ludicrous to me. I don't believe you
talk to a super magical being when you pray but I don't find it offensive
either. A law or court decision that bans prayer from public meetings is
as intolerant, insulting and antagonistic as a law or decision that requires
it.
To me, the first amendment is pretty clear. It says "Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof..." It is a very long stretch in my mind to construe
this to mean that schools cannot say a prayer at commencement. Click here to see
the essay on my web page about the Creationism/Evolution debate.
I am only a relatively recent member of the South Shore Skeptics and
I greatly enjoy my association with the group. It is a wonderfully diverse
group of people with a lot of fervently held opinions. If nothing else,
the meetings are fun because of the impassioned debates and colorful rhetoric.
They can be both intellectually stimulating and very entertaining depending
on the topic and make up of the crowd that evening.
But, my hope and vision for the South Shore Skeptics is for the group to
expand its activities from solely holding informational meetings into being
much more of a community resource and advocate for rational thinking. This
web site, is a good first baby step in that direction but we will need more
people and more activism from our members to become what we should be.
The matter of tactics on how we approach our goals is also dear to my heart
and puts me at disagreement with at least some other members of the group
and of the skeptical "movement." At the first meeting I ever attended,
some of our members were planning to "crash" a meeting of UFO
believers (personally, not as a formal activity of the SSS) and heckle the
speaker with questions about the admittedly bizarre and baseless claims
of alien abduction. While this activity might have been rather fun, it is
also pretty pointless. If someone believes that little green men are transporting
people up to their flying saucers and impregnating them, they are not likely
to be swayed by an antagonistic heckler at a public meeting (or by any rational
argument, for that matter). Our best tactic, as I see it, is to actively
build ability and credibility as a community resource and to evangelize
our message to potentially more receptive audiences in schools, libraries,
universities and any other public forums we can finagle. I would have us
use humor, calm rational argument and simply presence rather than antagonism
and attack.
The job of the skeptics movement is not to convince everybody of our point
of view, that can never happen. We must realize that the desire to believe
in magic in any of its forms is within us all. Because the debate is not
winnable once and for all, we must know that we are in it for the long haul
and that vigilance against superstition, junk science, credulity and irrationality
will always be required even when we may not be able to completely define
what fits those terms among ourselves.