This is a really good video that exposes how psychics really get information about the spirits they contact... google! and amazingly it works even when the people are just made up!
If there was a proof that truly did disprove God's existence, would the theist be able to accept it, given that his presuppositions are in opposition to the non-existence of God? In other words, given that the theist has a presuppositional base that there is a God, in order for him to accept a proof for God's non-existence, he would have to change his presuppositional base. This is not easy to do, and would involve a major paradigm shift in the belief structure of the theist. Therefore, a theist is presuppositionally hostile to any proofs for God's non-existence, and is less likely to be objective about such attempted proofs.
Captain Disillusion, superhero/digital hoaxbuster comes up against a brick wall. Finding no digital trickery in the panrty ghost video, he almost hangs up his coat, but he is magically transported into the Isaac Asimov library at the James Randi Educational Foundation, where Randi shows CD that spurious videos don't always have to be digitally manipulated. Trap doors, air pressure and good old fashion humbug set CD back on the right path.
There's also quite a hat-tip to 'The Amazing Meeting', a 3 day skeptic conference in Las Vegas. We won't be going this year, but we have sent some minions to spread the aussie charm.
In this video James Randi, the uberskeptic debunks one of Uri Geller's Six tricks. Randi tells us of two of them, the compass trick and suing anyone who annoys him, but I was left thinking, "what are the other four?
Obviously, Uri Geller bends spoons, so that's three. By the way, the trick to spoon-bending is in the name ;) To bend a spoon, you get a spoon and bend it!
Geller also mucks about with watches, draws hidden images and makes stuff fly about. So now we're at six. Having a look through his repertoire, it seems he also dabbled in prediction and dowsing, among other things.
I'd like to know what the five tricks Randi is referring to are. Perhaps some of the ones described above can be collapsed into categories...
In this video, a very young James Randi puts a 'Psychic Investigator' to the test. It is from a TV series of his called James Randi: Psychic Investigator.
I think we would all agree with her statement at 2:52
The real question is why would a self-aware fraud put themselves through a test like this on national television? There can be a few answers.
She may truly believe in her 'power', which sounds like a difficult thing to do, but it is actually quite easy for someone to give it a go, get some positive feedback (whether true or not), which becomes a self perpetuating feedback loop. It is not often that such a person would be tested and they then have the blinkers of the old 'counting the hits and ignoring the misses' fallacy. Thinking that she has a good chance to be able to display her powers to the public and change some people's minds, she decides to give it a go.
Or she may be a fraud who thinks that she can outwit James Randi (watch out, he's pretty sharp!) with some Barnum statements and cold reading techniques. Out of the three items that she 'receives psychic energies' from, one, she says may have been used for something innocent (which covers her for both a crime situation, or a mundane one), the hammer 'makes her feel glass', which isn't a stretch, using a hammer to smash glass is probably the most common use of the item in a crime situation. She also goes out on a limb with the axe/pick, saying that it makes her think of a heavy vehicle tyre. This could mean it was used to damage such a tyre, that it was transported in such a vehicle, that the crime was committed near one, or that somebody involved in the crime owned such a ehicle. It sounds specific, but has cast the net pretty wide, increasing the chance of a hit. I would say that in a less controlled situation, where she would be able to discuss back and forth abit, it wouldn't take long before she hits on some information that sounds pretty amazing (if you'll pardon the pun, Randi) but is actually no different to a cold reading, fortune cokie or astrological reading.
Have a think about whether she is truly self-deluded, or a charlatain. Enjoy her explaination at 2:52.
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