Yes, definitely!
I was a "woo" for 20 years. In fact, I was raised with it. My journey from believer to skeptic started when I found out that Sylvia Browne, for whom I was a minister for a brief time, was a fraud, which was when I stumbled upon the first major contradictions in her trance tapes. That was a little over two years ago. I went online to see if there was anything else out there to back me up, and that happened to be right around the same time RSL had started his web site. But at first I believed that con artists like her were rare, and I still believed in all the rest of it. I remember e-mailing Robert and telling him that I still believed in John Edward and James Van Praagh, asking if he did. And I could just hear the face-palm in his polite response back which basically said as far as he was concerned these guys couldn't have been more obvious phonies! Now, 2 years later, I get it. I agree. But I had to research it to figure it out.
Through Robert, I wound up here on the forum. At first I came just to see what the other ministers were saying about Browne - for the gossip, I guess you could say! But then I began lurking and looking for threads on various topics I believed in, just to see what the skeptics had to say.
One thing: I was determined NEVER to be gullible and uninformed enough to be duped that way again. I think that is the one thing that kept me going.
Around that time, I asked Robert to recommend a few good "skeptical" books, and among others he recommended Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. It's funny because I have shared that book with others since, and they have found it dull or uninspiring, but for me that book had a major impact on my thinking. I was skeptical of skepticism for awhile, in the sense that I was open to these new ideas but I still tentatively believed in spirits and psychic dreams and angels, etc., so my conversion to skepticism did not happen overnight. I had to research everything for myself, and I had a lot of material to cover!
I was raised with a mother who believed in lots of New Age type woo. She still consults her pendulum to make decisions. The smartest person I knew as a child was my uncle, a mathematics major, and he was convinced his wife was a trance channel. The other smartest person I knew was my dad, and he was something of a skeptic, but I remember how often he'd try to introduce a note of skepticism about some "woo" topic being discussed and be shouted down or accused of being a cynic or "negative." Now that I'm a skeptic, I know how he feels!
I was always skeptical in some ways. I was skeptical of the claims of religion from a young age, and it was partly that skepticism and an obsession with wanting to find out the "truth" about human existence and our purpose here that led me to the New Age.
I found it frustrating for a long time to be on a spiritual path, to want to live a life dedicated to God and helping people, and not to be able to figure out who had the truth. It seemed most spiritual teachers contradicted each other, and in big, important ways. Someone had to be wrong. Isn't it illogical that so many people could all disagree?? But how could I tell who had it right? Eventually I picked two (Edgar Cayce, believe it or not, and another) who seemed to agree, who seemed to have good values and integrity, and decided that I would trust them. It never occurred to me that they all disagreed because they were all either self-deluded or making stuff up! Interestingly, I was skeptical at that time, but I was only skeptical of anything that was not supported by the teachings of Edgar Cayce.
So maybe I had the makings of a skeptic all along; I was just completely uninformed and unaware of the massive amount of material out there debunking the things I believed in. And I lacked the critical thinking tools that would help me sort it all out.
But I'd rather believe nothing than believe something that is untrue - I guess I've always felt that way.
So I went on a marathon of reading skeptical and scientific literature to see which of my beliefs held up to scrutiny. I went back through all the events of my life that I had considered paranormal and analyzed them to see if they just might have had a non-paranormal explanation.
So, it was very sadly that I discovered that not only did a few of my beliefs not hold up, but a majority of them didn't.
So in a lot of ways, I have this forum to thank. As hard as it is to see a lifetime of belief go by the wayside, at the same time it's liberating to be free of silly beliefs that had no basis in fact, and even more liberating to know how to think critically. It's also nice to have a place like this to come to a few times a day for moral support.
I have now read books on just about everything skeptical I could get my hands on: James Randi's books, several by Carl Sagan, most of Richard Dawkins, Craig Harris, other popular atheist writers, autism/vaccination issues, homeopathy and alternative medicine, books written by other famous magicians, all of Michael Shermer's books, quite a few introductory science books, Susan Blackmore, critical thinking books, and the list goes on and on. I'm making up for lost time, I guess! All of these skeptics have had a major impact on this former believer.
How many people would take things as far as I did and as enthusiastically in a search for truth that was at times so uncomfortable and discouraging? I don't know.
At any rate, that's the long version of my story! Some parts many of you already know, some may be new, but that's enough rambling for one day!
