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On January 16, 2012 in Hollywood, California, James Randi had a second on-stage conversation with Max Maven at the World Famous Magic Castle, in front of a standing-room-only audience. This is a full recording of that event. You can watch Randi's first Magic Castle conversation with Max Maven and more JREF videos on our YouTube channel.

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About halfway down the spacious hallway between my brain hemispheres, you will see a large, wall-mounted dial. A plaque identifies it as the Critical Thinking Control. Its three settings are marked clearly: ON, OFF and CONVENIENT.  

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Those of us who consider ourselves skeptics and supporters of science, and most especially those of us who are involved at some level in defending good science from the efforts of creationists to water down (or even eliminate) the teaching of evolution, will be familiar with this question. I think the answer is not simple and is much thornier, both philosophically and practically speaking, than many people (including many skeptics) would like to admit.

Let me first take a few minutes to outline some basics of the philosophy of science that are relevant to this discussion. This has to do with the nature of naturalism in science; more specifically, we need to make a very clear distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism.

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In my talk at TAM 2011 Las Vegas, one thing I mentioned is that the anti-immunization movement has science advocates stuck in a bad frame. A frame is a particular way of looking at an issue based on how it fits into a pre-existing narrative. People use frames in order to quickly categorize a complex situation they don’t fully understand by fitting it into a simple story that is easy to understand.

For example, one way of framing the current debates over state budget cuts is that it’s about hardworking public servants who are standing up to protect our state from politicians who want to gut education and vital public services to please their corporate donors. Another way of framing it is to say that it’s about hardworking taxpayers standing up to powerful public sector unions who are holding the state hostage to protect their jobs and ‘Cadillac’ benefit plans. When the conflict is framed around public services, people tend to agree that public services are good and support funding public services. When the conflict is framed around taxes, people tend to agree that taxes are bad and support cuts. The same person may even support opposite sides of the same issue when it is presented to them using different frames. Frames are important.

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It's tempting to laugh when we read about public workers in Zimbabwe who refused to perform needed repairs to reservoir equipment until ritualists cleared the waters of deadly mermaids. When most of us think of mermaids, we think of beautiful human/fish hybrids too busy pining for a set of legs to bother with dragging mechanics and technicians to a watery grave. And even if mermaids did have evil intentions, how dangerous could they possibly be? Even Aquaman could leave the water if he felt like it, and even among Justice League members, he's less respected than Booster Gold, a superhero who could be rendered powerless simply by losing his dry cleaning.

  1. Last Week At Science-Based Medicine
  2. JREF Media Roundup, February 10, 2012
  3. Teaching - And Defending - Pseudoscience In Universities
  4. Grassroots Spotlight: Atlanta Skeptics