More than any other public figure (except maybe Richard Dawkins, and who in their right mind wants to be associated with him? Ah...), Derren Brown has made a career out of debunking mysticism and spirituality, taking a thoroughly atheistic and rational approach to all of his performances. He draws on old superstitions like hypnotism, mind reading and being able to talk to ghosts, but he recreates all of these phenomena using confirmed, real psychological and scientific techniques. He's a jolly clever man who has no time for religion, as evidenced by the Messiah series where he went around America tricking a bunch of evangelical Christians into believing he was capable of miracles and the like. Turns out that Brown had an ace up his sleeve when it came to conning these poor religious types: he used to be one of them. Now famous for his humanistic beliefs, Brown was actually raised as an evangelical Christian, something which he spoke of at length in the Dawkins documentary The Enemies Of Reason. His faith was at its strongest during his teenage years, which is coincidentally when he first got interested in and involved with stage magic; he sought to strengthen his belief and discover answers to common criticisms of religion by closely reading the Bible and other religious texts. Instead he found no answers, and instead ended up concluding that his belief had no basis in reality. And so, he gave it up. Which, considering his burgeoning sexuality, was probably good timing.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
