Photo: Rohit Chalwa
By Jerry Johnson
In what I’m sure will be one of the most prominent highlights of my entire life, I had the rare opportunity to meet the iconoclastic and charming James Randi—the atheist, skeptic, magician, and author.
Long before the “four horsemen” of atheism made their debut, James Randi was already going around in his inimitably witty style debunking self-proclaimed god-men, psychics, medical frauds, homeopaths, televangelists, and peddlers of new-age spiritualism.
He is now 84 years old, but his mind is as incisive as ever. He visited India for the first time this November to be a speaker at the THiNK 2012 conference in Goa. Practically, 90 percent of the attendees at the conference did not really know who James Randi was—or if they had heard of him, knew him a little more than a famous magician.
This, in a way, was a blessing in disguise for me: because, it gave me many different occasions when I could speak to Randi at length without having to vie for his attention from others.
It was during one of my many chats with Randi that I decided to spontaneously record our conversation about another iconoclastic atheist: Ayn Rand. Here is the transcript of the recording. Below, you can also listen to the actual audio recording; however, since this was an unplanned recording using just my phone, be warned that the sound quality is poor, there is plenty of ambient noise and some words are too distorted for clarity. Nonetheless, I have tried my best to transcribe the conversation accurately.
Jerry Johnson: Have you heard of the novelist and author Ayn Rand?
James Randi: Oh yes!
Johnson: Very famously atheist as well.
Randi: Oh yes!
Johnson: What do you think of her views and her defence of atheism?
Randi: I never studied her work in any depth, but I think I would generally agree with her. But she gets into politics and such, and it’s not my specialty. Ethics, yes, but I think I would generally agree with her [garbled].
Johnson: One of her core arguments about atheism was that it falls in the category of the arbitrary, and that anything arbitrary cannot be taken, cannot be accepted just because it is a proposition. For example, agnosticism she claims is the most difficult position to defend because it would require you to respect the arbitrary.
Randi: Yes, but, uh, I disagree with her basic premise. I don’t think there’s much arbitrary about that. I am an atheist because I don’t see any evidence to believe in a deity. I don’t see it necessary for the universe to continue without a deity or come into existence without a deity.
But I’m an atheist of the second kind. The reason I say that is, Webster’s dictionary defines an atheist as a person who denies the existence of a god. Now, I can’t do that because I don’t have any proof of a negative. But the second meaning of it in the dictionary is one who does not see any evidence for god’s existence, the existence of a deity. That’s what I accept. I don’t see enough evidence; I don’t see any evidence, for the existence of a deity.
Johnson: And (Rand) would claim that the proposition that a deity exists is an arbitrary proposition, because what is [sic] the evidentiary standards you would use to judge it.
Randi: That’s true. That’s right, and I would agree with that.
Johnson: And the other premise she functions on is that reason is the most fundamental, based upon which she defends her atheism. Would you say that atheism is defended most fundamentally on reason and philosophy or science and empiricism?
Randi: I think reason and philosophy. I see very good reasons for being atheist, and I don’t see good reasons for being religious. Really; that’s what it comes right down to. They’ve offered all kinds of excuses for religion but they don’t work.
Excuse me.
Johnson: Thank you very much!
Listen to the audio recording here
