Back in the 1980s, I used to write articles for Fate Magazine, adding a little extra money to my teaching job at Warren College as I was attending graduate school at the University of California, San Diego. Eventually, I was asked to become a part-time book reviewer for the publication. It was a great gig since they would send me the latest books that they received in the office. Most of the texts dealt with excursions into the paranormal—ranging from Edgar Cayce readings to near-death experiences. Usually, given the questionable content and speculations that were common in such tomes, my reviews tended to be highly critical, and sometimes downright harsh. Perhaps the best example of the latter is when I read W.H. Church’s Many Happy Returns, where the author readily confessed that he “fictionalized” many of the recollections which detailed the numerous past lives of Edgar Cayce. Simply put, the book wanted to be taken as a serious study of reincarnation, but it was anything but. I ended my review with an impolite pun, “The only happy return for this book is at the refund counter".

Ironically, during those five or so years publishing with Fate Magazine, I was much more sympathetic to parapsychology and borderline science. But one book I was asked to review made me rethink my more romantic tendencies concerning all things psychic. It was Paul Kurtz’s 500-page work, The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal, which was first printed in 1986 and has subsequently been revised and gone through several editions. Kurtz’s book is a rationalist, but impassioned, plea to think clearly and critically when it comes to analyzing metaphysical or supernatural claims.

It is not that the transcendent cannot exist, but only that the evidence for it is insufficient. If something is indeed true, it will easily accommodate our proffered skepticism. Thus, there is absolutely no need to believe in something simply because it is our cultural tradition.