An essay I posted a few years ago. I thought of it after a discussion with my neighbor last night about how magicians often make great scientific skeptics:

I love a good magic trick.  I enjoy being baffled by a magician, and I like trying to figure out how they do their tricks.  Since I know virtually nothing about magic, I’m rarely, if ever, successful.  On occasion, friends who know one or two magic tricks will show me how they work and I may recognize the trick when someone else presents it.  Most of the time, however, I have to accept that I was duped and will likely never learn the secret behind any magic tricks that I witness.

I used to think that good magicians could witness any magic trick and explain exactly how it was performed, but I’ve learned that this is not entirely true.  For one thing, there are many different types of magic tricks, and magicians may not be versed in all of them.  It’s a big field of study and even the best don’t know all of the tricks.  For another, there are, apparently, multiple ways to do the same tricks.  James Randi, magician and skeptic, demonstrates this in regards to key bending and spoon bending routines.  He shows how there are several ways to create the illusion that one can bend metal with their mind, and he may not be able to tell exactly which trick an illusionist uses.

A magician witnessing a magic trick may, then, be in one of three states.  First, she may recognize the trick and know exactly how it was performed.  Second, she may recognize the trick and know how to perform it similarly, but not know exactly what tactic the other magician invoked.  Third, she may be unfamiliar with the particular trick or even the type of trick and be just as baffled as I would be.  One thing that the magician will be quite certain of, however, is that the trick was just that: a trick; an illusion.  Only in the first situation can she say, with certainty, exactly what happened on the stage.  In the second situation, she can only suggest what may have happened, and in the third, she can only throw up her hands, declare that she was successfully fooled by another magician’s trick, and apply herself to learning the trick in the future.

Regardless of which state she is in, she can conclude, with great certainty, that the magician on stage did not perform a supernatural act, and she would be justified in this conclusion regardless of whether the magician acknowledged that it was a trick or if he claimed that it actually was a supernatural act of magic.  Can she be absolutely certain that the magician did not invoke the supernatural?  No, but she would still be justified in the provisional conclusion that the magician performed a trick.  She is justified because she has evidence, through experience, that she lives in a world where people can perform seemingly supernatural feats through natural methods.  She does not have evidence, on the other hand, that she lives in a world where people can defy the laws of nature.  Based on this, she can justify the provisional conclusion that the performance was an illusion, without absolute certainty of it.  She lives in a world where the naturalistic hypothesis must be favored over any supernatural hypothesis unless she is presented with overwhelming evidence that a supernatural event actually occurred.

If we then showed a cross section of magicians a brand new magic trick that they had never seen and told them that it was actually magic, and not an illusion, the overwhelming consensus of magicians in the group would conclude that the new trick was an illusion regardless of our claim otherwise.  There may be an odd dissenter or two depending on how large our sample of magicians is, but the consensus would support the illusion hypothesis.  They would be justified in their conclusion, and we, in turn, would be justified in accepting, if not virtually obligated to accept, their position that the trick actually was an illusion.

I had a conversation with someone last night about evolution, and he asked me why I believed in it.  I gave him three reasons: (1) In environments where there is reproduction, variation, threats to survival, and limited resources for survival, either evolution or extinction would be inevitable over long periods of time; (2) evolution through natural selection and other forces such as genetic drift is the consensus explanation for speciation by scientists qualified in a variety of fields, including biology, paleontology, and geology, among others; and (3) evolution is a naturalistic explanation for speciation.

All three of these reasons could be a source for longer explanations and debate, but it is the second and third that are relevant to the anecdote of the magician.  Like the magician, humans live in a world where we have evidence for natural laws, and we have evidence that objects in our world obey natural laws.  We witness this evidence in our daily lives, and we have tested many of them under controlled conditions over time through simple and through technologically advanced experiments.  In contrast, we have nothing remotely constituting reasonable evidence that objects in our world have defied natural laws or have been acted upon by supernatural forces.

Additionally, we live in a world where there are people who have demonstrated reliable expertise in various natural fields.  They have demonstrated the most reliable methods of testing hypotheses such that we can, over time, depend on their conclusions.  The consensus of qualified experts that speciation occurred due to natural selection and other natural forces over time is, therefore, justified.  In turn, we are justified in accepting, and virtually obligated to accept, their consensus conclusions in the absence of any overwhelming and verifiable evidence to the contrary.

Where the analogy unfortunately fails is that our world is not a stage with a performance acting independently of us.  It impacts us and we, to some extent, impact it.  Understanding the methods of the magician can be helpful in navigating our experience of the show and making it as helpful to us as possible.  Luckily for us, the methods and natural explanations are not only useful, but can be more impressive than the illusion.

The laws of nature are talented, and our race is an audience made up mostly of naïve observers, but also of a few novice magicians who are rapidly developing their talents.  When we witness the wonders of our world, there is a fantastic illusion of supernatural intervention.  But our budding magicians continually uncover nature’s secrets and present us with natural explanations that are more awe inspiring and helpful than any unsupported speculation about the supernatural.  To what extent does genetic drift play a role in genetic evolution?  How powerful of a force is natural selection in adaptation?  What, exactly, did the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees look like?  To varying degrees, we’re not entirely positive about the answers to each of these questions, and to varying degrees there is consensus on them.  But there is one thing about which we can be sure: As we witness this performance unfolding, our brightest will not only watch with awe, but will progressively discover the powerful methods invoked by nature.  While some of us throw up our hands and conclude that the magician is beyond our understanding and must be supernatural, others will recognize and support the contributions by the dedicated and talented scientists who reject the illusions and pursue and uncover elegant, beautiful, natural explanations.