People often lay claim to a belief that in fact they cannot hold. A belief needs to be defensible. Anyone who claims to believe everything in the Bible, for example, only thinks he believes these things. Since parts of the Bible flatly contradict other parts, it just isn’t possible to believe all of it. This is true of many beliefs that come in packages. It is sometimes said that an opinion is what someone says he has when he is still willing to argue his case, and to be persuaded that he is wrong; or that faith is, as H. L. Mencken put it, “an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” But in fact there’s a whole spectrum of belief-words, and there’s no way of ranging opinions, claims, notions, views, tenets, gut reactions, and viewpoints into any kind of foolproof order from the most airy of hunches to the most passionate of convictions. Nor does firmness of belief equate with probability of truth. In the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “a casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

To avoid drowning in a sea of warring definitions, I propose to label them all opinions (of varying strengths). This allows one to extend the line of inquiry by asking another question: Does a man have a right to his opinions? In a democracy, the answer yes is often taken for granted, and is defended with arguments about personal freedom. But the thoughtful answer is: “not necessarily.” The square root of forty-nine is not a matter of opinion. To put it more strongly, no one has the right to believe that it is eight, since this is an opinion that cannot be defended.

Readers of this newsletter will not need reminding that the fourth letter of CSICOP stands for the word “claims.” Indeed that concern is itself a claim. And sometimes skeptics with a misguided notion of tolerance assert that any claim whatever ought to be fully investigated. The purveyors of quack medicine have always been quick to pick up this point of view, and agree that (in the name of the open mind) medical researchers should drop whatever they are doing and spend their time endlessly testing and retesting pyramid power or faith healing or prayer. It is a common assumption that for any given subject, people must have an opinion; and furthermore that people know what their own opinion is. Neither of these assumptions need be true.

A survey organization once asked the simple question: “Have you ever heard of the Taft-Johnson-Pepper Bill on veterans’ housing?” Fifty-three percent of the respondents said yes. It can hardly be denied that these people had no right to their opinion, since the bill in question does not exist, and was simply invented for the purpose of the survey. Pollsters know that “the good respondent answers yes.” (People have learned that the answer no is often followed by disagreeable requests for justification.) When Britain’s Consumers Association asked people what they thought of the complementary medicine they had tried, 51 percent of them claimed it had improved them, and 31 percent claimed it had cured them. Notice that these people were not just saying they felt better: they were specifically claiming that the treatment was the cause of their improvement or cure - an opinion they had no right to (and that the Consumers Association had no right to ask them). It was a neat illustration of the philosopher Wittgenstein’s comment: “If there were a verb meaning believe falsely, it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.”

Tiny changes in wording can affect people’s stated opinions. One survey wanted to find out whether people favored limiting the president to one term in office. When asked if they favored doing this by “adding to” the Constitution, 50 percent said no. When asked if they favored doing it by “changing” the Constitution, 65 percent said no. Answers without responsibility also give notoriously poor quality opinions. If asked, “Would you like a free Skeptical Briefs with your copy of The Times?” most people would say yes. This would not show that most people like Skeptical Briefs. (Those who hated it could give the copy to someone else, or just throw it away.) The mention of even a small fee would change the answers drastically.

Respondents can’t even be relied upon with plain facts. In an Australian census, one-third of respondents claimed to have no ethnic origin at all. In a repeat American census, more than a third gave a different ethnic origin between one survey year and the next. When asked what they valued about a job, people ranked “good pay” first when asked an open-ended question, but they ranked it last when asked to choose from a list.

Lists themselves can affect answers. The last item on a list attracts about 10 percent more responses than when placed as the first item. A response can be affected by the response to the previous item. People claim to be much happier with their marriage if the response follows a previous question about happiness with things in general. In an agree-disagree question, about 22 percent will shift to “don’t know” if they are given that added option. People tend to agree with what they imagine the interviewer is thinking, even this involves contradicting themselves. They will agree that when it comes to crime, social conditions are more to blame than individuals; and later in the same interview they will agree that individuals are more to blame than social conditions. It is a reminder that “being positive” about something is often, in the words of Ambrose Bierce, “being mistaken at the top of one’s voice.”

The tourists who had come to see this tri-weekly performance solemnly took their places on tiers of wooden benches set up on three sides of the bare dance floor. The fading sunlight and a couple of weakly lit bulbs allowed us to see the front of the temple, serving as a backdrop and an entrance point for the dancers. We settled down to wait. A few of us on the back benches stood in the dim shadows to get a better view, leaning on the bamboo fence running the perimeter.

It quietly started. A few voices began chanting off to the side. One hundred barechested men with black and white checkered sarongs and red sashes silently filed in from the temple to seat themselves in a circle on the bare floor in front of us, the candelabrum their focal point. Kechak had begun. In fractured English, the program read, “Kechak is the most unique balinese dance which is not accompanied by any orchestra/gambelan but by a choir of hundred men. It has its origin in an old ritual dance: ‘Sanghlyang’ or trance dance. Using the dances as a medium, the deities or ancestors convey their wishes, in the 1930’s the old Indian epic ramayana was included into the dance. Briefly the story runs as follows.”

True to the description, we were treated to a few episodes of the epic drama of the Ramayana edited for tourist consumption-it normally lasts for hours-with colorful costumes and many comings and goings of Lord Rama, Queen Sita, Hanuman the monkey god, and the Golden Deer. We were witnesses to a kidnapping, a war between good monkeys and the evil ogre Rahwana, and an escape by Rama assisted by Garuda, the king of the birds. It was a tale no more fanciful than most of our recent television scripts in the USA and a lot more spiritually uplifting. This was accompanied by marvelous chanting and rhythmic swaying of the male chorus. There were moments which any devotee of old B-movies would recognize-men, arms uplifted, chanting around the burning flames. This part of the program ended with Rama and his wife, Sita, happily reunited.

A few moments later, after the candelabrum was cleared and the men had wandered off stage, a women’s chorus began to chant accompanied by a smaller group of men from the temple. This was the Sanghyang Dedari Dance performed by two prepubescent girls dancing to drive evil spirits away from the village. The young virgins were said to be in a trance as they swayed and swooned in the shadows. Skeptic that I am, I noted a lot of peeking going on by the young girls, whose eyes were supposed to be closed throughout. A priest splashing holy water about did not allay my doubts nor did the fact that one of the young misses clearly was interested in smoothing out her sarong when she was reputed to be in a dead faint on the floor.

After the virgins retired with a surprisingly light step for two girls who seconds ago were dragged off the floor in a trance, the climax of the evening was to begin. This was the fire dance-one that tourists always talked about. The Sanghyang Jaran Dance. The program read: “An entranced boy dance on a horse (jaran). Behaving like horse. He dance around a bonfire made from coconut husks. If the sanghyang sung leads him to fire, then he will dance on fire.” That’s what it was supposed to look like.

This is the way I saw it: After the dance of the virgins, the central dirt floor was cleared of flower debris and a dirty tarpaulin. A “stage-hand"-or perhaps more appropriately called a temple assistant-dressed in street clothes, hauled in a large sack of coconut husks and dumped them unceremoniously in the center of the floor, making a three-foot circle about a foot and one-half high. As the spectators watched, he splashed what seemed to be kerosene on the husks, then another assistant dropped a match. Soon, a roaring blaze was lighting the dance floor, the assistants spreading the fire about with bamboo strips and fanning vigorously. This was certainly impressive. A few minutes later, one of the assistants began raking the embers and firebrands into a wider area, about a six-foot diameter circle.

The male and female choruses on either side of the temple front began their counterpunctual chanting. The audience was spellbound. A young man entered the area from the temple. He too wore a sarong sash and was barechested. His feet were bare, a point which spectators quickly noted, because after all he was going to dance on the fire, wasn’t he? Balanced over one shoulder he carried a crude six-foot stick and grass figure which looked vaguely like a horse. He held the shaggy head bobbing in front of him, the tail to the rear. The dance, if one could call it that, consisted of the man shuffling around the arena getting ever closer to the smoldering embers with vigorous chants to encourage him. After a few circuits, he plunged into the center of the firebrands and smoking charcoal bits, kicking them skittering across the dirt floor. A few stopped precariously close to the feet of anxious spectators. The assistants quickly raked the embers back into a pile. Again the dancer shuffled into their midst, sparks flying in all directions among the shadows. This was repeated half a dozen more times, then with little ceremony the horseman wandered close to the spectators lining the first row benches and slumped to the ground, conveniently in a small pool of light thrown by a weak light bulb.

A temple priest who had figured briefly in the earlier dances emerged from the temple once more with water glass in hand. He strode to the feet of the dancer who was seated leaning against his horse on the ground, legs splayed out. The priest cast holy water over the dancer as the chanting stopped. A dazed sickly smile was on the horseman’s face as the priest gestured for nearby spectators to inspect the soles of the dancer’s feet. As a few spectators gave tentative pokes to his dirty soles, a man announced that the evening performance had ended. Soon an enthralled cluster of spectators had gathered about the prone dancer with oohs and ahs and much shaking of wondering heads and sympathetic gestures over another mystery of the Far East.

The secret? As with most great conjuring tricks, the secret is deceptively simple. First, the psychological preparation is important; by reputation, people had heard and expected something wonderful and mysterious to happen-man will dance on fire. The setting is dark, with religious overtones. Chanting and dancing along with incense, costumes, and mythical story completed the preparation.

The building of the fire clearly captivated the audience, raising their expectations as flames reached into the night, casting flickering shadows across the floor. Fire is dangerous and we know it. In fact, some of us glanced upward wondering what would happen if the high bamboo ceiling were to ignite. However, as all firewalkers realize, there are different kinds of fires. Prepared from the loose fibers of coconut, this one was quick and bright, with many sparks. It burned for less that ten minutes (I timed it) before the flames were snuffed out as the glowing coconut husks were raked about. Then, with little delay, our dancing horseman shuffled into their midst, kicking a spectacular showing of sparks across the floor. And here was the key to this maneuver: He didn’t pick up his feet. He simply slid his feet across the dirt floor banging into the loosely heaped glowing husks with his toes. There was no chance of stepping on any of the coals, for they bounced out of the way. The ground was hardly warm to the touch. His shuffling gait did not attract attention, for that was excused as part of the entire dance. He was supposed to be in a trance, and, after all, one doesn't leap around with a clumsy horse over your shoulder. So it was nothing out of the ordinary to see our performer shuffle into the glowing coals-perhaps a little more vigorously than before. He was in more danger of stubbing his toe against the coconut husks than he was of getting burned. I had no inclination to join the throng examining the thick soled soot and ash covered feet of our “exhausted and emotionally drained” horseman. Obviously, I was in the minority. Unfortunately, too often that is the lot of a skeptic.

How do we reply to those challenges and inquiries?

• STEP ONE: When we started out, we stumbled with our replies. Our thinking was skeptical and logical, but we lacked specific information for quick replies. Being bright students, we quickly learned that we had better do our homework.
• STEP TWO: Armed with information, our replies became detailed and specific. We learned to cite pertinent scientific studies, as well as examples from the history of science. We learned to think on our feet. We did rather well with this approach.
• STEP THREE: Somewhere along the line we concluded that a response that is brief, and is also snappy, pithy, humorous, and/or challenging beats hands down the elaborate, tedious, detailed reply we had used in Step Two.

Three examples should suffice to make the point.

Example One:

I addressed a group that had a large proportion of believers in the paranormal. My presentation was titled “ESP - A Demonstration.” I posed as a psychic, and convinced the overwhelming majority of the audience that I am indeed psychic. Then I told them that I am a professional magician, and that everything they had seen had been done by normal means.

In the question and answer period that followed, someone asked about my background. I inquired: “Are you asking about my credentials?” The person responded that he was.

I quickly assessed the situation. Do I answer his question in the expected manner? Hmmmm. I'm a Fellow of CSICOP, was National President of The Society of American Magicians, am on the Board of Advisors of the National Association of Bunco Investigators, am on the Board of Directors of the National Council Against Health Fraud, and more. Hmmmm.

Nope. I decided on a different approach. I replied: “A significant credential is that I was able to convince many in this audience that I am indeed psychic. But to specifically address your question: There are no credentials in a field that studies something that does not exist!”

That succeeded. They did not know how to argue with or refute that statement.

Example Two:

I was fascinated by astrology. When challenged, I could cite studies that had failed to validate the existence of astrology. I could explain that the gravitational pull of the hospital itself at the time of birth is greater on the baby than the sum of the gravitational pull of all stars and all planets, save only the Sun and Moon. I had an estimate of the number of stars in the universe, provided to me by a brilliant astronomer (thank you, Andy Fraknoi). That enabled me to point out the absurdity of presuming that a handful of stars governed one’s entire life, throughout life.

I was frequently a guest on The Jim Eason Show, in San Francisco. Jim is an alert radio talk show host. He was familiar with my views, and had heard some statements I had made about astrology.

On one appearance on his show, Jim’s very first question to me, at the top of the program, was: “Bob, you have defined astrology in just three words. What are those three words?”

I replied: “Astrology is bigotry!” And all the phone lines lit up. A lively interview followed. There was never a lag in callers wanting to get in on the action.

That was a defining moment in my education. Jim’s keen knowledge of what plays well with an audience was passed on to me during that program. I realized that those three words brought more response and raised more passion in the listeners than did my previous offerings along the lines of: “Astrology has been frequently tested in the scientific laboratory, and has consistently failed to demonstrate its validity.” Jim had picked up on an offhand comment that I had made, recognized its significance, and moved it to center stage, where it belonged. Thank you, Jim Eason.

Example Three:

A self-proclaimed clairvoyant addressed a group in San Francisco. I was invited to attend, not as a presenter, but as an audience member.

The clairvoyant had people write questions on slips of paper. The folded papers were passed up to the front of the room. I watched carefully but did not detect any trickery. Other than using accomplices, which certainly had to be considered, I could not think of any way the presenter could have learned what was on the papers.

Then came her demonstration. She postured as though she were answering the questions that she had picked up “clairvoyantly” from the papers that she had - apparently - never touched and to which she never had access.

Then she decided to challenge me. She requested, nay, dared me to come up to explain to the audience how she had cheated, and how she had gotten access to the information on the folded slips of paper.

I declined her invitation. But she insisted. That sequence repeated twice more.

Finally I said: “This is your show. I am an audience member. I do not want to come up and take over the stage.”

At that, her dare turned into a demand and a challenge. She told the audience that I was Chair of Bay Area Skeptics, that I was a professional magician, and that I “always tell people” that clairvoyants use trickery to learn what is on the folded slips of paper.

As I came to the front of the room, I reminded her that I did not want to come up, and that I was coming up at her insistence.

I pointed out that she had “divined” that someone in the back left corner of the room had misplaced or lost some jewelry. No one responded affirmatively to her statement. I pointed out that she had then expanded it to “someone in the audience.” I explained to the audience how broad and general her statement was: In a room of 100 people, it was highly probable that someone had misplaced a piece of jewelry within the past month. However, of the 100 people in this audience, not one of them had lost any jewelry. Then someone in the right front corner of the room piped up: “Last week I lost my car keys.” I then evaluated her “reading": “That was a miss!”

I referred to a woman in the audience on whom the performer had done a reading. The reading was that the woman was having trouble with a younger woman in her life: perhaps her younger sister, or perhaps her daughter. I called attention to the fact that that too was a very broad and very general statement - a statement that would apply to a large number of people in virtually any audience. I then stated, as the woman had stated, that her written message was asking about her future employment: “Would she get a raise? Would she get a promotion?”

I evaluated that “reading": “That also was a miss!”

I summed up: “No, you did not cheat. No, you did not gain access to the questions on the folded slips of paper. But you missed! You did not answer the questions on the sheets. There is nothing for me to explain.”

Then, returning to my tried-and-true method of preferring a pithy summary, I explained to the audience: “Before you even begin to try to explain how something happened, you must first determine whether it happened. In this case, it simply did not happen. She did not respond to what was on the slips of paper. There is nothing for me to explain.”

That carried the day.

The third example happened several years ago. Recently I told the story to Paul D. Johnston, Executive Director of the International Society for General Semantics, Concord, California.

Paul, who with undue modesty describes himself as a “humorist novitiate,” came up with a better final conclusion than I had summoned up at the time of the event. His statement forced in me a “Gee, I wish I had said that” reaction.

I should have definitely summed up with my statement and explanation that:

Before you even begin to try to explain how something happened, you must first determine whether it happened. And then I should have added the icing on the cake, concluding with the splendid words of Paul D. Johnston:

You don’t have to cheat to get it wrong!