talkmagic.co.uk

right who's up for defrauding uncle albert out of his mullah.......I think the collective fenius of TM could pull it off

Think of it as oceans eleven but with magicians....at the very least theres got to be a film script in the making

starring....me as billy....sorry danny ocean (im kidding)

but theres got to be a way gadnammit


[size=7](please please please dont turn this into a pointless psychic vs sceptic debate)[/size]

The problem is Randi has final and ultimate say. Secondly, the catch phrase within the contract centers on his ability to Replicate said effect/demonstration as well.

Jim Callahan has been challenging Randi for the past five years or so, to step up to the plate but the reality is, there is no Million... it's more akin to $100,000.00 in cash and the rest in some kind of bond that pays out X per year over so many years and even that's questionable according to those that have investigated this game.

Randi is a bitter, lonely old perv whose only claim to fame is being an average to poor performer with a big mouth and a hot temper.

You should listen to the stories others have about this man, his boys and his jealousy over others (like Steve Baker) who actually were world renown escape masters who performed REAL escapes... in one instance in fact, Randi made certain Steve was racing for his life against the flames... but we'll not go into that... ask Steve (Mr. Escape) if you want the facts.

Let's just let the old curmudgeon fade from existence and stop beating a more than dead horse even further.

Sorry, I don't quite understand what any of this is but it sounds interesting.


Anyone care to explain a little?

EDIT*
No worries. I found it. After a number of posts i figured out which bits to google.

but intheory if you pinned him down legaly it would have to be paid or he would be publically a liar...........im telling you i think it can be done (theoritically of course otherwise it would be conspiracy) ............i bet you something really simple could work a treat.....?

I wouldn't say that Randi is an "average to poor performer". In actual fact I think he is (or rather was) rather good.

I agree about the temper. I don't know about the "perv" or " his "boys" as Craig puts it. I am terribly old fashioned about these matters and I would prefer to see a bit of proof before joining in such terrible denunciations.

As a psychic reverend myself I have no reason to favour Randi. However fair is fair.

I'll not go round and round on this front again. There are court transcripts available along with numerous "young" mage from the 70s that can support the fact that the old geezer had little to no cooth when it came to approaching them when they are 15 and 16 years old.

There are a few here that have seen the transcripts from just his phone conversations with a couple of lads, taken off his own phone's answering service.

As they would say on the X-Files... the truth is out there...

As to his performances; I can only go by what I've seen in person my self and the fact that his show was viewed as a laughing stock when it came through Chicago long ago, in the days of my youth.


When it comes to forcing his hand with the Million Dollar Joke... he will not accept any contract offered by the challenger, only his own contracts e.g. he has all the safeguards he needs for "legally" getting out of "the deal". Which is also why anyone that's come close to qualifying to move into the second phase of study, never seems to get there in that Randi, as a certain Mr. Auerbach would say, tucks his tail and runs... Loyd's dissertation on the Randi challenge being heralded by the SCIENTIFIC and SCHOLASTIC communities as the most sound and credible of any argument put forth, exposing the "game" as it were (http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/controversies/Auerbach_Randi.htm)

Other Sources You May Look At Include:

http://www.dailygrail.com/features/the-myth-of-james-randis-million-dollar-challenge

[url]pear-cable-calls-james-randis-1-million-offer-a-hoax-307473.php[/url]

http://www.skepdic.com/randi.html

Craig Browning wrote:Randi is a bitter, lonely old perv...

I'll not go round and round on this front again. There are court transcripts available along with numerous "young" mage from the 70s that can support the fact that the old geezer had little to no cooth when it came to approaching them when they are 15 and 16 years old.

There are a few here that have seen the transcripts from just his phone conversations with a couple of lads, taken off his own phone's answering service.

Craig, what are you suggesting? I am NOT asking for a debate on this, nor do I ask you to "prove" or "justify" these allegations. Let's just agree that it's not for TM to debate that.

back to the JREF Challenge.

You have questioned it's legitimacy and offered 3 links as evidence:

the first written by Loyd Auerbach who is noted as being a "Director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations" and has a web site of his own...
http://www.mindreader.com/
I can't imagine he would benefit by having this sort of thing proved c*** (not the best) and Randi shown to be right.

the second a web page that features advertising that includes businesses that offer to "Test your psychic mind", and "develop your psychic power" etc.

Your final link shows that Randi has added the following criteria to his challenge:
(1) The applicant will have to have a media profile.
(2) The applicant's abilities will need to be endorsed by an academic as being factual to their best knowledge.

So, what's wrong with that? Anyone with a media profile can be scrutinised and their so called "gifts" studied. Someone can't just "walk through the door" and claim some obscure "power" from left field. Let's face it, we're talking about Geller and Edward here, not the tarot reader at the school carnival fundraiser.

Getting an endorsement from an academic simply serves to make someone with a "reputation to lose" go on record as saying they BELIEVE. Well... either the applicant can "do it" or they cant so what's the problem?

On the other hand, there is no doubt The JREF Challenge is heavily waited toward the applicant failing (or, not being able to just do a "magic" trick) so I can see how people could get the idea it's a waste of time... but fair's fair and there is absolutely no balance in at least 2 of your links either.

Just as Theologians have been able to argue and discredit their contemporaries within a "different" sect than their own slant as being wrong, cracked, unwise, etc. so we see in the "scientific" and even "political" realms; if one team of experts "prove" something, you will find another team of "experts" to prove to the contrary e.g. everyone finds what they want to buy into... or so it would seem.

CSICOPS was caught red handed changing testing results some years ago... I find it odd how quickly and readily that's both, forgotten and swept under the nearest rug along with other findings by noted members of the academic world, even a nobel price winner or two I believe, that support the likelihood of Telepathy and "related" talents and too, with the aid of technology to "amplify" and/or "extend" natural mental function, we've seen demonstration of Telekinetic potential... even in games in which one must "meditate" (essentially) in order to control the air hockey puck

Randi's Challenge is not legit in the least and that's even been expressed by noted members of the Skeptic's world like Joe Nichols. For starters, you have someone that's not a scientist heading things up and having final say. How is that remotely fair... unless you suffer from George W. Bush syndrome, it's simply unrealistic.

Now I've gone round and round with all the "experts" in magic land for years. I prefer not to go through such a game again; intellects will not believe in anything outside their own delusion of supremacy for the most part. While many an educated and honored individual have received high accolades for thousands of years simply due to the strength of their faith and how, through that faith, miraculous things occurred.

I fully believe that most all things "Magickle" and even that which ties itself to religious miracle status, probably hosts some kind of scientific explanation. At the same time, I do not believe our technology has evolved sufficiently to fully sustain that position e.g. support the validity that finer "invisible" energies do exist and do bring about genuine influence of various types. I believe that it is very natural (no boogiemen or fairy folk or dead relatives) and I believe all of us could and will, in time, have access and understanding to and of it. My views being much more down to earth than what one may encounter in the more traditional New Age/Pagan world.

As to the Randi campaign; it was just a means of generating a tax free sense of income and personal support of an angry old man that wanted to promote atheism... he is the Billy Graham of the Atheist movement it would seem, and of course, a good Marxist as well (his radical Communist views causing him a nice load of headaches back in the 70s as well.)

There's just too much around and about the man that people go out of their way to keep "hidden" and well played down. In my book a "wise" person would ponder why this is so... but that's just me

Craig Browning wrote:Randi's Challenge is not legit in the least and that's even been expressed by noted members of the Skeptic's world like Joe Nichols. For starters, you have someone that's not a scientist heading things up and having final say.

Was it not the fact that scientists were running the show that enabled "Steve Shaw" to demonstrate is psychic "gifts" and be thought of as legitimate?

Back to spudgun's question, I really don't think it would be possible to bluff your way to a Million of JREF's dollars. It seems it would be tough even for a legitimate "gifted" person, let alone a "shonk".

I didn't realise that Joe Nickell said Randi's challenge was a load of tosh. Of course if he did so he was right. Nobody in the psychic world believes a word of it. It has no credibility whatsoever and most psychics ignore it. I did meet one chap though who told me that he won fair and square but Randi didn't pay out. Of course you don't have to be a psychic to figure that one out.

Incidentally Joe Nickell used to sell svengali decks for me. He would not be suprised to find out that I have now become psychic.

From Craig's "Scepdic" link:

In 1922, Scientific American offered two $2,500 awards, one for the first person who could produce an authentic spirit photograph under test conditions and the other for the first medium to produce an authentic "visible psychic manifestation"... The first to announce she was ready to be tested was Elizabeth Allen Tomson, but after she was caught with twenty yards of gauze taped to her groin, flowers under her breasts, and a snake in her armpit, she was never formally tested.

Hilarious!

But more seriously, it's an edifying experience to read the reasonable and well-thought-out "Skeptical Investigations" article, and then Randi's responding blog (linked to within that article). Randi seems to spout nothing but ad hominem attacks. Anything outside the hardest core of accepted science -- from psychic abilities to acupuncture -- he waves aside as "woo-woo". Anyone expressing an interest in such topics, or even an interest in their scientific investigation, is dismissed as a "grubby". He also seems delighted to dig out the loopiest cranks on the internet as examples.

When I was a teenager, I took out a subscription to The Skeptical Enquirer on the basis of its title, hoping to find reasoned articles investigating fringe topics with an open mind. What a disappointment! Even subjects as legitimate as the possibility of undiscovered animal species, or life beyond Earth, were dismissed out of hand. (How CSICOP reacted to all the new large mammals found in Vietnam in recent years is something I would like to see. Or the current investigations of Martian water.)

Anyone wishing to find a magazine with a true sceptical bent is recommended to try the Fortean Times. Which Randi would instantly dismiss as a load of "woo-woo".

EDIT: I've been thumbing through the back-issue articles posted on the website for The Skeptical Enquirer, and am happy to say they seem to have become more investigatory and less strident in the past few decades. Well done to them. (I still prefer the FT, though.)

The difficulty Randi, or in fact anyone trying to logically and genuinely test for such things as psychic "powers" must face is... do you give a Million Dollars to someone who does something that we accept is a "miracle" today, only to discover there is a genuine, logical and SCIENTIFIC explanation in the future.

I am sure there was a "witch doctor" who at one point claimed he had the power to "Let there be light". He gained fame and relative fortune by using his gift daily from around 6 in the morning until 7 - 8 each nite. By some people's preferred rules, he would have won the Million.

Randi of course would ask the witch doctor to repeat the effect at 2 in the morning, a request no doubt met with a "the JREF Challenge" is RIGGED by the true believers, and a wry smile by everyone else.

I don't think spudgun or any of us have chance to win Randi's Million... even Geller couldn't do it and he's a better magician than most of us here.

It certainly makes a better more entertaining argument that the challenge is "rigged", than to admit one's so called "gift" is infact total "gobble-dee-gook".

Robbie

THANKS! This is (in part) my point with most that call themselves "skeptics" who are in truth CYNICS with minds about as opened as a rusted closed steel trap and like most fundamentalist (which is what they really are) everything is laid out in black & white extremes that leave no room for anything outside their dictates -- as you've noted, such a dogmatic attitude requires a bit of back peddling here and there i.e. the discoveries you noted of animal species along with microscopic "proofs" that life has/does exist elsewhere in our own galaxy let alone the universe... just not "life" as we'd typically define it.

As I've noted, it is nearly impossible to turn anyone's point of view once they've bought into and convinced themselves of the validity this or that cult has to offer. They will go out of their way to support the "divinity" of their guru whether we're talking about the Pope or in this instance, a disenfranchised Canadian citizen that's been forced to live "on the lam" as it were, for at least 30+ years as the result of his predatory penchants... something his followers ignore, deny and constantly want to conceal though it is a well establish truth (and yes, I know "the case" got thrown out of court... I also know that there are more than that one instance).

My personal "gripe" with Randi stems from more than the validity of the Millions (which is just a PR stunt) or his perverseness when it comes to little boys. His views are shut & dry and through his actions I feel that he's not just hurt countless individuals of faith in our world due to his adamant lack thereof and condemnation of such, but he's likewise hurt magic by creating an "unwritten" law that every newbie seems indoctrinated into i.e. Magicians Do Not Believe in Anything Outside of Logic, Science and Human Intellect; We Do Not Believe in Any Kind of Divine Sentient Personage or Intelligence nor Invisible/Unmeasurable Fields of Energy.

Add to this perspective the seeming edict that we are "required" to taunt and mock persons who do have faith or a testimony of any form that supports ideas outside these more Atheistic points of view; a point of view that has been purposefully set into the world of magic for the sake of promoting the ego-centered delusion that Human Kind is all there is and we are the "Supreme" being.

As I've already stated, I take a strong pragmatic view towards the idea of spirits, ghosties and psychic manifestations. I am a realist -- an actual skeptic and not a cynic. As a human being I've witnessed far too much from the miracle column that cannot be replicated, nor does it have to be. If it could be it would not be seen as a "miracle" just technology or knowledge... a skill we've yet to master. Though I sincerely believe that 90% of the "Fantastic" can be explained or will be, sometime soon, I will never allow myself the audacity to say in the term of total absolutes (which is the way of JREF patrons) that this or that simply "isn't". Especially when it comes to something as immature as the Million Dollar pissing match.

This and most of the magic forums throughout the World Wide Web are rife with thread after thread addressing this very same topic (in so many words). Though TM should be rewarded for having the most civil of discussions on the subject (vs. the flame wars that typically unfold) we've had our moments as well. The truth being that none of us will change our elected point of view for whatever reason; for many (sadly) it's the ego-based idea that "Intelligent People Don't Have Imaginary Friends Whom They Worship" and for others, it's the fact that they've simply encountered far too much in the course of life that science/magic will never replicate or readily explain away.

Folly can be found on either side of this chasm, as can fact. But again, we find the "politics" of it all in which the supporters of one position go out of their way to prove that the patrons of the conflicting position are quacks and fools and air-heads. It's a get nowhere scenario in which the paradigm refuses to shift in that most all of us are too stubborn to even consider even a hint of validity exists in the other's contention.

We're all fools in one way or another, it's time we just started accepting that as fact

Whenever I look at this debate, I'm reminded of the tale of the blind men and the elephant. It really is a fantastic metaphor for things like this.

I think Craig is treading on dangerous grounds with the "little boys" remarks. Does he want this website to get sued?

I have also heard these rumours in the past but have never seen a whit of evidence about it. And the boys weren't that little either. Big enough to punch him on the nose if they felt molested. Sorry. I don't buy it.

If these allegations were true I am surprised that he isn't in jail by now. Anyway I did see that Thomas Baxter (known as Entity on the magic cafe) gave quite a convincing and detailed rebuttal of these rumours. I am even less of a fan of Baxter than I am of Randi but I think on this occasion he made sense.

Besides I am not sure what the hell it has to do with whether psychics are real or not.