[Editor’s Note: “Your Skeptic Stories” is an ongoing series written by readers like you, people who have, through one means or another, discovered skepticism and critical thinking. These stories remind us that we all started somewhere and some of us are still finding our way as skeptics. Please send your story of around 1000 words, along with a 2-3 line bio, to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


Today’s story comes from Wendy]

I am a child of the Sixties; it seemed normal to demonstrate against war; experiment with controlled substances and listen to beautiful ballads about love and long hair. Other phenomena that my generation embraced like music and munchies, were superstitions and Eastern religion. Nobody I knew had ever conducted a double blind experiment with fake horoscope readings -- but I had grown up near Griffith observatory, so I was familiar with the pattern of the solar system, and the difference between the moon, the planets and stars. When I finally saw one of the little booklets used for casting horoscopes, and read the explanation for "Mars in retrograde," I knew that was not the way the planets worked.  

I married young, had a baby girl, and was housebound. My best girlfriend and I talked on the phone endlessly over the years to keep one another company. We talked about Egyptology, Jacob Bronowski, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and science fiction - and even conducted little experiments. If ESP existed, we were so close that it would work for us. We made up a protocol, and concentrated. I couldn't read her mind.  

I'd had a Reform Jewish upbringing; my family didn't perform Sabbath rituals nor give me a Bat Mitzvah party, but we were forced to endure Sunday School until Confirmation at age 16 or so. An instructor taught a comparative religion class; that was how I learned whatever I knew about religious traditions other than Judaism. I also didn't know about the Holocaust until I was in college - and then only because an Israeli friend took me to see a French film, Night and Fog, with Nazi footage of the concentration camps. Until that time, I didn't even know I was a minority.  

My first husband and I attended a Unitarian church where many veterans of the Spanish Civil War would meet and visit on Sundays - my father-in-law was a vet. The sermons at the church were more political than religious; I don't even think there was a crucifix anywhere on the property. That was the first time I knew that church could be something other than a place to worship. It was a place to network, have friendships, celebrate life milestones.  

So - I was different from my hippie peers; didn't really know a lot about Jewish tradition; was not of the American WASP mainstream. I got used to being different.  

My daughter was raised without religion or Sunday school, although we never denied being Jewish; we were mostly gustatory Jews. My father was only in his 70s, and had congestive heart failure. As a lone small "a" atheist, I didn't have a way to deal with my father's mortality. My ex-sister-in-law offered to introduce me at a nearby congregation of Jewish mystics - modern Hasidim. They welcomed me as a new member; I learned all the information I'd never been taught about the history of Judaism - I joined the Saturday morning Torah study group and read the Old Testament for the first time in my life. During those Saturday morning meetings, the group would chant for the good health of anyone whom a member of the group requested -- I always asked for my father to be included.

I read a really detailed and well-written book review  of Richard Dawkins'  book The Blind Watchmaker. I considered asking about it at Torah study; but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Members of that group were Holocaust survivors -- and it seemed disrespectful to ask if what we were studying was true, then how this other conflicting information could also be true; but I never forgot. I thought about it privately.  

At the local Community College, I could speed up my adoption of my Jewish identity by taking some Jewish History classes and a Hebrew class. My daughter and I also happened to sign up for an Argumentation class in the Speech Department. We were just planning to have fun together in night school, but this was a Critical Thinking class that made a big impression on me. My daughter was accumulating units to transfer into the University system; I was learning to apply the lessons from that class to the real world, along with what I was learning in Sociology classes, a Geology survey course, and some Anthropology classes. What I was learning as an adult was no less transformative than if I'd been planning to finish a degree instead of dabbling in low cost academia.  

By the time my father died, I'd figured out that I was an Atheist (large A). After the grief of my father's death had dissipated, I realized I could no longer continue to be so dishonest with myself nor with the congregants by continuing with the group of mystics. I accepted my Jewish ethnic heritage, but I really didn't believe in a supernatural being who answered prayers and ran things.  

I was lonely, but it was a relief to not have to overlook what Richard Dawkins wrote about, nor the evidence of the fossil record as I'd learned in my Physical Anthropology and Geology classes; nor the myriad cultural explanations for why things were the way they were as I'd learned in my Sociology classes.  

On the radio one day, Dr. Dean Edell talked about Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World. In it, Sagan wrote lovingly about Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I received a subscription solicitation for Skeptical Inquirer, and I figured if it was good enough for Carl Sagan, it's good enough for me. For my birthday my daughter gave me a copy of SKEPTIC magazine and Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, because by that time she identified me as a skeptic. On the Skeptical Inquirer magazines, there was a display ad for the various Center for Inquiry branches, one just seven miles from my home.  

The main difference between Skeptic Society lectures at CalTech and the Center for Inquiry is that for me, CFI provided some continuity, opportunities to network, celebrate life passages, and most of all, chances to give back by volunteering and opportunities to put critical thinking skills into practice with a grassroots skeptics group, the Independent Investigations Group.**  Those things are not important to everybody, but it was the replacement for the network of friends I'd left behind when I could no longer attend religious services with the Jewish mystics. I'd found a place to be and a group of people with whom I could interact where nobody was going to ask me my sign.  

I have served on committees at CFI and in the IIG. I've met some heavy hitters in the skepticism movement, even Richard Dawkins; I never told him how much that review of The Blind Watchmaker meant to me, nor Michael Shermer how much Why People Believe Weird Things reverberated with me. I don't know if this story will resonate with anyone else who has discovered their skepticism identity - but I consider each of our stories unique and important because it's hard, in this society, to "come out" as an Atheist or skeptic. But as I said, I am used to being a minority.  

 

 

Wendy Hughes is a late blooming skeptic; an ardent volunteer at the Center for Inquiry in Hollywood; an investigator of claims of the paranormal in the Independent Investigations Group. Her favorite skepticism project is the blog: www.theoddsmustbecrazy.com created with fellow IIG members to compile stories of coincidences.