How We Believe, 2nd Ed.

by Michael Shermer

  3.

  Hot Reading. Mentalist Max Maven informs me that some mentalists and psychics also do “hot” readings, where they obtain information on a subject ahead of time. I do not know if Van Praagh does research or uses private detectives to get information on people, but I have discovered from numerous television producers that he consciously and deliberately pumps them for information about his subjects ahead of time, then uses that information to deceive the viewing public that he got it from heaven. Leah Hanes, for example, who was a producer and researcher for NBC’s The Other Side, explained to me how Van Praagh used her to get information on guests during his numerous appearances on the show (interview on April 3, 1998]:

  I can’t say I think James Van Praagh is a total fraud, because he came up with things I hadn’t told him, but there were moments on the show when he appeared to be coming up with fresh information that he got from me and other researchers earlier on. For example, I recall him asking about the profession of the deceased loved one of one of our guests, and I told him he was a fireman. Then, when the show began, he said something to the effect, “I see a uniform. Was he a policeman or fireman, please?” Everyone was stunned, but he got that directly from me.

  Deception or Self-Deception?

  When I first began following Van Praagh I thought perhaps there was a certain element of self-deception on his part where, giving him the benefit of the doubt (he does appear likable), he developed his cold- and warm-reading techniques through a gradual developmental process of subject feedback and reinforcement, much like how gurus come to believe in their own divinity when enough of their followers tell them they are divine.

  Human behavior is enormously complex, so I suppose it is possible that Van Praagh is both deceiving and self-deceiving, but over the years I have observed much more of the former than the latter. During the Unsolved Mysteries shoot, which lasted ten hours and was filled with numerous breaks, Van Praagh would routinely make small talk with us, asking lots of questions and obtaining information, which he subsequently used to his advantage when the cameras were rolling.

  Is it possible he does not consciously realize that he is doing this? I contacted numerous mentalists about Van Praagh and they assured me that it is very unlikely he is self-deceiving because these are techniques that they all use, and they do so consciously and purposefully. I was told that I was being naive in trying to give Van Praagh the benefit of the doubt. I spoke to an individual who works a 900-number psychic hotline, who knows Van Praagh and many of the people who work with him in that industry. and he assures me that Van Praagh is not self-deceived. The psychic industry consensus, this source tells me, is that James Van Praagh knows exactly what he is doing.

  That may be so, but as a general principle self-deception is a powerful tool because if you believe the lie yourself your body is less likely to give off telltale clues, making it more difficult for an observer to detect deception. I am fully convinced that cult leaders, after being told for years by hundreds and thousands of followers that they are special, at some point begin to believe it themselves, making them all the more convincing to other and potential followers.

  Caught Cheating

  Even for seasoned observers it is remarkable how Van Praagh appears to get hits, even though a closer look reveals how he does it. When we were filming the 20/20 piece for ABC, I was told that overall he had not done well the night before, but that he did get a couple of startling hits—including the name of a woman’s family dog. But when we reviewed the videotape, here is what actually happened. Van Praagh was failing in his reading of a gentleman named Peter, who was poker-faced and obviously skeptical (without feedback Van Praagh’s hit rate drops significantly). After dozens of misses Van Praagh queried: “Who is Charlie?” Peter sat there dumbfounded, unable to recall if he knew anyone of significance named Charlie, when suddenly the woman sitting in back of him—a complete stranger—blurted out “Charlie was our family dog.” Van Praagh seized the moment and proclaimed that he could see Charlie and this woman’s Dad taking walks in heaven together. Apparently Van Praagh’s psychic abilities are not fine-tuned enough to tell the difference between a human and a dog.

  The highlight of the 20/20 piece, however, was a case of hot reading. On a break, with a camera rolling, while relaxing and sipping a glass of water, Van Praagh suddenly called out to a young woman named Mary Jo: “Did your mother pass on?” Mary Jo shook her head negatively, and then volunteered: “Grandmother.” Fifty-four minutes later Van Praagh turned to her and said: “I want to tell you, there is a lady sitting behind you. She feels like a grandmother to me.” The next day, when I was shown this clip, one of the line producers said, “You know, I think he got that on the break. Too bad we don’t have it on film.” After checking they discovered they did, so Van Praagh was caught red-handed. When confronted by 20/20 correspondent Bill Ritter with the video clip, however, Van Praagh demurred: “I don’t cheat. I don’t have to prove … I don’t cheat. I don’t cheat. I mean, come on … .” Interesting. No one said anything about cheating. The gentleman doth protest too much.

  As an example of the power of the Belief Engine, even after we caught Van Praagh cheating, Barbara Walters concluded in the wrap-up discussion: “I was skeptical. I still am. But I met James Van Praagh. He didn’t expect to meet me. He knew that my father’s name was Lew—Lewis he said—and he knew that my father had a glass eye. People don’t know that.” Ritter, doing his homework on this piece to the bitter end, explained: “You told me the story yesterday and I told you I would look and see what I could find out. Within a few minutes I found out that your father’s name was Lew and that he was very well known in show business. And this morning I was looking in a book and found a passage that says he was blind in one eye—an accidental incident as a child—and he had a glass eye. If I found that out, then he could have.” While Walters flustered in frustration, Hugh Downs declared without qualification: “I don’t believe him.”

  Where have we heard all this before? A hundred years ago, when mediums, seances, and spiritualism were all the rage in England and America, Thomas Henry Huxley concluded, as only he could in his biting wit, that as nonsensical as it was, spiritual manifestations might at least reduce suicides: “Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a ‘medium’ hired at a guinea a seance.”

  The Tragedy of Death

  The simplest explanation for how James Van Praagh can get away with such an outrageous claim on such questionable techniques is that he is dealing with a subject the likes of which it would be hard to top for tragedy and finality—death. Sooner or later we all will face this inevitability, starting, in the normal course of events, with the loss of our parents, then siblings and friends, and eventually ourselves. It is a grim outcome under the best of circumstances, made all the worse when death comes early or accidentally to those whose “time was not up.” As those who traffic in the business of loss, death, and grief know all too well, we are often at our most vulnerable at such times. Giving deep thought to this reality can cause the most controlled and rational among us to succumb to our emotions.

  I experienced the full force of this reality on April 2, 1998. The events of that day prompted me to consider what I would say to someone who is grieving. The ABC television program 20/20 came to my home and office, then followed me to Occidental College to shoot some background footage in my critical-thinking course. I thought I would ask the students to respond to a question I routinely receive from journalists: “What’s the harm in what James Van Praagh does?” The students had plenty to say, but one woman named Melissa told a personal story about how her Dad had died when she was ten and that she had never really gotten over it. She was sad that her father never got to see her play volleyball or basketball, or to see her graduate from high schools. Her opinion of James Van Praagh was less than charitable, to say the least. She could not imagine how such a performance could make someone feel better about death. In a maturity beyond her years,
she expressed her opinion that one does not really get over such a loss; one just learns to live with it: “When my dad first died I just wanted to get on with my life and not let it bother me too much, now I’m just trying not to forget him. Next year when I turn twenty I will have lived ten years with my Dad and ten years without him … so I guess that is when my life will begin … like a new chapter or something.” At this point she was fighting back her tears. It was a very touching moment.

  When I returned home I was preparing to send Melissa an e-mail expressing how tragic it must have been to lose her Dad at such a young age, when I read this e-mail from my sister:

  I was thinking of Dad today on this 12th anniversary and how proud he would have been of you and all you have accomplished with your life. For some reason, I have really been missing him lately, more than I have in a long time and it’s still so hard to be without him. I really hope there is a heaven, even though I know otherwise, but the thought of never seeing him again, ever, is almost too hard to bear.

  Love you, Tina.

  Our father died twelve years ago that day, April 2, 1986, and it is probably a good thing I had not realized that in class as it would have been very difficult to remain composed.

  This was such a peculiar conjuncture of events that it prompted me to give some thought about what I would say to someone experiencing grief. Having watched James Van Praagh now for more than five years, I would imagine he might say something to this effect:

  It’s okay Melissa, your Dad is here now in the room with us. He’s telling me he loves you. He says he watches over you. He loves watching you play basketball and volleyball. He saw you graduate. He is with you always. Don’t be sad. Don’t cry. You will get to see him again. Everything is fine.

  My response to Melissa, and to everyone who has ever received a “reading” from Van Praagh, is as follows:

  First of all, no one knows if any of this is true, but even if it is, why would your loved one talk with this guy you don’t even know? Why would he choose to make his appearance in some television studio or at some hotel conference room with hundreds of other people around? Why doesn’t he talk to you instead? You’re the one he loves, not this guy getting $40 a seat in a hall with 400 people, or $200 a private reading, or two million dollars for a book filled with this sort of drivel. Why do you have to pay someone to talk to your loved one?

  In the St. Louis Post Dispatch (March 1, 1998) Van Praagh called me a “rat fink.” I take this as a compliment because to “rat” on someone is to tell the truth about them. In Mafia circles it means a crime has been exposed. On the 20/20 show Van Praagh offered this view of the difference between my work and his: “He makes his life beating people down, putting people down. I make my life healing and bringing people up. I’m not a circus act. I’m not a side show. It’s God’s work.” By now nearly everyone in America has heard what James Van Praagh says to aching hearts. Here is what I might say. It is not God’s work, but you judge who is putting people down or bringing them up. To Melissa, to my sisters, Tina and Shawn, and to my own daughter, Devin, should I die before my time. I close with this statement:

  I am sorry this happened to you. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair at all. If I were you I would feel cheated and hurt; I might even be angry that I didn’t get more time with my Dad. You have every right to feel bad. If you want to cry, you should. It’s okay. It’s more than okay. It’s human. Very human. All loving, caring people grieve when those they love are gone. And all of us, every last one of us, will experience this feeling at some point in our lives. Sometimes we grieve very deeply and for a very long time. Sometimes we get over it and sometimes we do not. Mostly we get on with our lives because there is nothing else we can do. But loving, caring people continue to think about their loved ones no matter how far they have gotten on with their lives, because our lost loved ones continue to live. No one knows if they really continue to live in some other place—I suspect not—but we do know for sure, with as much certainty as any scientific theory or philosophical argument can muster, that our loved ones continue to live in our memories and in our lives. It isn’t wrong to feel sad. It is right. Self-evidently right. It means we love and can be loved. It means our loved ones continue to live because we continue to miss them. Tears of sadness are really tears of love. Why shouldn’t you cry for your Dad? He’s your Dad and you love him. Don’t let anyone try to take that away from you. The freedom to grieve and love is one of the fundamentals of being human. To try to take that freedom away on a chimera of feigned hope and promises that cannot be filled is inhuman. Celebrate your love for your Dad in every way you can. That is your right, your freedom, your humanness.

  Chapter 4

  WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE IN GOD

  An Empirical Study on a Deep Question

  The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals. It is however impossible, as we have seen, to maintain that this belief is innate or instinctive in man. On the other hand a belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal; and apparently follows from a considerable advance in the reasoning powers of man, and from a still greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity and wonder.

  —Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Vol. II, 1871, p. 395

  Several years ago I attended a most unusual conference at the Santa Monica Miramar Sheraton Hotel in Southern California, sponsored by the Extropy Institute. Founded in 1988, the “Extropians” are dedicated to studying “transhumanism and futurist philosophy; life extension, immortalism, and cryonics; smart drugs and intelligence-increase technologies; machine intelligence, personality uploading, and artificial life; nanocomputers and nanotechnology; memetics (ideas as genes); effective thinking and information filtering; self-transformative psychology; rational market-based environmentalism; and probing the ultimate limits of physics.” Limited in scope Extropians are not.

  Led by Max More and Tom Morrow (not surprisingly, these are pseudonyms), the Extropians, one might reasonably assume, are a bunch of kooks on the lunatic fringe. They are not. The Extropians are on the cutting edge between science and science fiction, fact and fantasy. Conference speakers included Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) artificial intelligence guru Marvin Minsky, University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) pathologist and aging expert Roy Walford, and University of Southern California (USC) fuzzy logic founder Bart Kosko. They presented a mix of hard, scientific facts and soft, fanciful hopes about the future. Slides illustrating data were blended with inspirational orations. After Kosko gave a fact-filled summation of the science of fuzzy logic, a gentleman named FM-2030 (his legal name) delivered a sermon that would have been the envy of Billy Graham. By the year 2030, FM explained, nation-states will be obsolete, money will be purely electronic, computers will have near-human intelligence, and it will be possible to achieve considerable life extension in the range of hundreds or thousands of years, if not actual physical immortality. I spent several hours with FM and found him to be a most fascinating man, globally conscious (he has no permanent residence), open to all peoples and cultures (he refused to identify his race or accent, simply stating that he is human), interested in any science or technology that can be used to the betterment of humanity (he is eagerly awaiting his global cellular phone number), and ceaselessly optimistic about the future (he figures he will make it to 2030, and thus into centuries and millennia to come). If there was anyone for whom I would say that hope springs eternal it would be FM-2030, Max More, and this colorful band of Extropians.

  What is perhaps most striking about this group, however, is the quasi-religious nature of their beliefs, including an almost faithlike devotion to science as a higher power. Scientism is their religion, technocracy their politics, progress their God. They hold an unmitigated confidence that because science has solved problems in the past, it will solve all problems in the future, including the biggest one of all—death. Why not f
ollow the curve of scientific progress to its ultimate end, they argue? Medical science has cured many of the world’s major diseases—why not eventually all of them, including aging? They point optimistically to “Moore’s law” (in 1965 Gordon Moore, founder of Intel, accurately predicted that the density of transistors on integrated circuits would double every eighteen months) and speak fondly of nanotechnology, where some day computers will be the size of cells, capable of being injected into our bodies to repair organs, maintain tissues and systems, and eradicate cancers and other destructive agents.

  Since death is something most of us would like to transcend, we must be particularly skeptical of claims that play on this deepest of all human desires, be it religiously or scientifically based. It is doubtful that the Extropians are right in their prediction that one day we will live into the thousands of years, if not achieve actual immortality. But I must admit it is fun to think about and occasionally, in quiet moments, I wonder … what if they are right?

  In his 1996 book Leaps of Faith, psychologist Nicholas Humphrey speculates that true believers are in search of “supernatural consolation.” There is what he calls a “paranormal fundamentalism” among the faithful who maintain “an unshakable conviction that no matter what the evidence, ‘there must be something there.’” I would take this a step further and suggest that for all of us it is tempting to believe that “there must be something there.” For secular religions like Marxism, Something There is the force of linear history inexorably marching through the stages of economic development toward communism. For capitalists, Something There is the invisible hand gently guiding markets to produce higher-quality products at lower prices. For Extropians, Something There is the vision of a paradisiacal future of longevity, intelligence, health, and wealth, delivered on the wings of scientific imagination. For some, science, or more precisely scientism, is a secular religion in the sense of generating loyal commitments (a type of faith) to a method, a body of knowledge, and a hope for a better tomorrow. Perhaps seeing Something There is partly hard-wired in us all.