The Happy Sceptic: What's your game then, eh? A sort of manifesto.

What's your game then, eh?

Many people think of scepticism as a negative world-view in which the sceptic is a wretched, cynical creature who doubts everything and can know nothing. (It does not help that most dictionaries misleadingly define it in such outdated, Pyrrhonic terms.) Happily, the reality of rational scepticism is somewhat different. I am a sceptic, yet sometimes I am very jolly indeed. Here is some stuff that I don't believe in.

Some stuff I don't believe in

Astrology/horoscopes. Call me a thickie, but I'm not sure how my destiny can be shaped by the whereabouts of extremely distant lumps of gas and rock at the moment I plopped out of my mum's front-bottom. But maybe if she'd held me in for a bit longer, I'd be rich by now.

As for generic horoscopes, you share these with some 1/2 billion others. They utilise the Barnum Effect. The next time someone tries to guess your starsign (many people are strangely deluded that they can do this with some accuracy), try this: If they get it wrong (a 11/12 chance), look amazed and say "Wow, how did you know that?!". If by fluke they get it right, tell them they are wrong and give a bogus sign. Either way, they will say something like "Yes, I knew it - you are such a typical <sign>", and then go on to describe your character at length. Tell them that you lied and give another bogus sign. They will repeat their performance. Keep lying until they start to look foolish and get pissed off. It may make them ponder how ridiculous the whole thing is. But I doubt it.

An Afterlife. Worshipping isn't easy. You give a lot of time to your god(s), and bags of money to his/her/their reps. You toe the line and take the occasional divine slapping when you stray. You do things that you don't want to do, and you don't do things that you want to do, because that's what it says in the Handbook. But that's cool, because otherwise what purpose does life have? And what's a few years kow-towing to the Invisible Man when your reward is eternal bliss? Imagine: all the shandy you can drink; everyone with all their own teeth; no atheists or other weirdoes; Harry Potter books growing on trees. Beautiful.

Except what probably really happens when you die is this:

the electrochemical pathways in your brain cease, as cellular processes fail;
it was the unique connection of these pathways that defined 'you' - this was your 'mind', 'soul', 'anima', 'spirit', whatever;
your 'mind/soul' is therefore no more, in any form (natural or otherwise);
your body is now a big slab of meat;
this matter is recycled to the biosphere via worm poo, ashes etc.

The Bible code. Yes - and 'Moby Dick' predicts JFK's assassination (no, it does, honest).

Channelling. Don't you just hate it when a 35 000 year-old spirit decides to use you as it's meat-puppet? Not when the bugger earns you millions of quid for spouting shite in a dodgy accent, no.

Dowsing. "Look, mummy! I can find hidden treasure and underground rivers using just this twig!" Stop it right now. It's called the ideomotor effect. Controlled tests of dowsing give chance results.

ESP/Psychokinesis. If you had amazing powers that defied the laws of physics, would you use them to bend small bits of metal? Psychics are sensitive souls. Get the buggers in a controlled environment, e.g. with protocols established by an experienced stage magician, and their powers mysteriously fail (apparently, the sceptical vibe dissipates the ESP energy). Watching them squirm in such a situation is one of life's great joys.

Faith healing/ psychic surgery. Recover from your illness and it's a miracle. Hallelujah! Die, and your faith was lacking. Either way, you probably still forked out a wad of cash for the privilege. As some perceptive chap once said when shown a big pile of discarded crutches, hearing aids etc. at Lourdes as proof of faith healing: "Where are all the artificial limbs?"

Father Christmas. Facetious? Not really - there is as much evidence for, and reason to believe in, Santa as for any of the other stuff here. And you don't believe in him, do you?

Fortune telling. As a youth, I used to spend hours pondering my fate: "How long would I live?"; "Who will I marry?"; "Will I be happy?". How stupid of me to waste my time when I could have just nipped down to the local funfair for enlightenment. Because all that time the answers were encoded in the random creases on my hands where the skin had folded against itself. For a fiver, a decryption expert by the name of Gypsy Rosy Lee could have unlocked these secrets. She could also decode random patterns in chopped, brewed plant leaves and scary picture cards. Uncanny.

Ghosts. My theory is that all ghosts are crazed janitors dressed in bed sheets, with two holes cut out for eyes and covered in luminous paint. Just like in Scooby Doo. And you can't disprove it, so it must be true.

God. I'm an atheist. Now, I personally consider that to be an unambiguous statement, but I have found that folk often think that I can't really mean what they think I might mean, or that I might mean something else. So I will make it simple: I don't believe in god. Any god. This has been known to upset people, perhaps because:

they feel threatened, as though my 'non-belief' is a direct attack on their own religious convictions. This is odd, because atheism is not anti-religion, nor is it a religion in itself;
they equate the absence of belief with the absence of conscience/morals, and wonder why I do not become a drug-crazed child-molesting fiend, without the fear of divine retribution to curb my animal instincts;
they are simply uncomfortable with the fact that I live a normal, happy life without needing to ask a deity for help, justification and forgiveness at every turn;
they are scared by the implicit suggestion that we are here by accident, and for no special purpose (this does not mean that you cannot have a bloody good laugh in the meantime...).

Mediums. Do you really believe that people can talk to the dead? Honestly? (Not that dead people tell you anything bloody useful. Who gives a toss if "The five pound note is in the old tea caddy"? If I was talking to an omniscient dead geezer, I'd ask for next Saturday's lottery numbers.)

New-age 'theories' e.g. The Celestine Prophecy, morphogenic resonance (these geezers are laughing at you, all the way to the bank...).

Past life regression. Is your life really so dull that you have to make believe you were a pox-ridden, lousy, Elizabethan whore? Oh, it is. Fair enough.

UFOs/ Space Aliens. Once, when I was 16, I returned home at 5 a.m. dishevelled, bruised and confused about the last six hours of my life. All I remembered were bright lights, a struggle and liquid being forced down my throat. It all started coming back - I must have been abducted by Space Aliens! I recounted to my dad how they had experimented on me, and I described the creatures and their ship exactly. ("It was amazing! They looked just like the ones from Close Encounters!"). My dad slapped me round the head and told me not to be so effing stupid, that I'd clearly got pissed on snake-bite, had a fight and slept in a ditch.

You've got Occam's Razor and five minutes to decide which of the two hypotheses might more reasonably account for my experience.

And any other extraordinary claim for which there there is no evidence. Oh, yes - if you can prove these or any other psychic, supernatural, or occult power or event then you are laughing mate, because you will be over 1 million dollars richer.

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