What has sawing a lady in half to do with global warming?

Paul Johnson

Wednesday, 9th January 2008

At this time of year, exactly 70 years ago, I was taken to my first exhibition of professional conjuring.

Professional conjurors have always hated spiritualists, not just because they are women — though that is important — but because they see them as frauds. The conjuror admits he is doing tricks, even though the mechanics of any particular trick is a closely guarded secret. He entertains by honest deception, just like a novelist or playwright. The spiritualist medium, on the other hand, pretends to be presenting the truth, deliberately deceiving vulnerable bereaved people, although her act too depends entirely on trickery. Anyone who half-believes in spiritualism should study the career of the American conjuror and escapologist Harry Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss in Hungary). He came up the hard way, doing travelling shows across the States, and one of his early acts, performed with his wife Bess, was a ‘tent-show séance’, in which Bess fell into a trance and then transmitted messages ‘from the other side’ to members of the audience. The essence of the trick was secretly to gather information about the lives of the people present, then use it as messages. Houdini learned the trade thoroughly, then gave it up. He said he felt guilty: ‘People were too easily fooled... They really believed in my powers... I did not relish the idea of trading on the sacred feelings of my admirers.’

Having dropped pseudo-spiritualism, Houdini concentrated on escapes, taking advantage of his extraordinary musculature and physical ability, which made his conjuring the most masculine of all. Then, having become world-famous, he concentrated his activities on exposing the frauds of spiritualists, doing it all the more effectually because he knew all of the tricks. What his efforts revealed, however, and it almost made him despair, was that a great many people passionately wanted to believe in spiritualism and flatly refused to accept the truth of its tricks, no matter how comprehensively he exposed them. Worse, they believed he himself had magic powers and denied he had them for perverse reasons of his own.

We all need to believe something, particularly those of us who most hotly deny faith in anything. If you don’t have a proper religion, like Christianity, you are sure to fall for pseudo-scientific patter, like ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’. This appeals strongly to the kind of FRS — physics and biology professors and the like — who once patronised the Society for Psychical Research. Give me honest conjuring any day!

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Peter Adler, Shenzhen

January 12th, 2008 3:52am Report this comment

Interesting points about conjuring and people’s wish to believe in spirituality... and ending in a gratuitous and nonsensical swipe at climate change science. Bring out facts about climate change and argue them, fine; but this ridiculous final-paragraph rhetorical flourish puts you to shame.

Kirk, Homewood, IL USA

January 12th, 2008 11:35pm Report this comment

Sorry to disagree, Peter, I believe the last paragraph is extremely germane. There are plenty of places to go to find serious (not speculative) climate information, but, as the gist of the article points out, many people would rather accept spurious data that conforms with their hopes/fears than look up the opposing viewpoints and trying to make a rational decision. Im my conversations with GW acceptors, they show a remarkable faith in what is clearly speculation, combined with a shocking ignorance of the historical facts (even, I might suggest, an open hostility to any presentation of countering data).

Brian Metcalf

January 13th, 2008 10:41am Report this comment

Kirk is one of those gullible Americans who happily parrot the mountain of misinformation being churned out by Exxon Mobil, the coal and car industry and his hugely amusing President, i.e. those with a vested interest in burning fossil fuels. Keep driving your Humvees Kirk I don't personally care. I am a misanthrope. Everywhere the delicate web of life is being torn apart.. and Planet Earth is about to start serious downsizing of those responsible. Us.