James Randi

Everyone has certain regrets in life. One of mine is that I’ve never made the trek to The Amazing Meeting, a get-together for skeptics, rabblerousers, atheists, and debunkers, originally organized and hosted by James “The Amazing” Randi. Randi is 81 now and has intestinal cancer, so the sad reality is that he will likely be leaving us before we’re ready to let him go. But his legacy, the influence he has had on thousands, is undeniable and will last for decades to come.

During my first year of high school, I found his book Flim Flam in the school library. The book exposed all sorts of frauds, such as the cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young girls who had supposedly photographed fairies in their garden. Many people were fooled by the hoax, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame.

Randi also revealed the chicanery behind all sorts of paranormal claims, such as mindreaders and psychics, and showed how easy it is for someone with the right kind of skills to fool people into believing almost anything. Even scientists, who were supposedly too smart to be duped. But duped they were. Repeatedly, in fact.

Shortly after that, I saw a NOVA special where, among other things, he demonstrated the techniques astrologers and religious “faith healers” use to deceive an unwitting public (watch some segments on YouTube). Suddenly, I was looking very differently at all the things I had, to some degree, believed in. Information wasn’t as abundant in those days, and if you weren’t looking for it, chances are you wouldn’t come across it. It was easy to remain intellectually idle about the weird and wonderful things we saw in magazines, tabloids, and daytime talk shows.

But Randi taught me that things aren’t always as they seem. The mind and the eye can easily be fooled, and we must always approach any extraordinary claim with a demand for extraordinary evidence. It wasn’t too long before religion also found itself under a more scrutinous eye, and my feet were planted firmly on the road to secularism.

Whether it is seeing him face off against “psychics” on talk shows, reading his columns in Skeptic Magazine, or recognizing his influence on shows such as Penn & Teller’s excellent Bullshit, Randi has been educating and entertaining me and countless others for years.  He truly is a legend of the skeptic community and his works have left a lasting impact, one that will no doubt continue to reverberate for generations to come.