James Randi, state magician and skeptic. By Terabyte at de.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 2.0 de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/de/deed.en), GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons
After listening to another great interview by Jim Harold on the Paranormal Podcast, I decided to take a deep breath… and order Randi’s Prize: What sceptics say about the paranormal, why they are wrong and why it matters, by Robert McLuhan.
Here’s the description from Amazon:
James ‘The Amazing’ Randi is a stage magician who says he has a million dollars for anyone who can convince him they have psychic powers. No one has even come close to winning, proof, say sceptical scientists, that there is no such thing as ‘the paranormal’. But are they right? In this illuminating and often provocative analysis, Robert McLuhan examines the influence of Randi and other debunking sceptics in shaping scientific opinion about such things as telepathy, psychics, ghosts and near-death experiences. He points out that scientific researchers who investigate these things at first hand overwhelmingly consider them to be genuinely anomalous. But this has shocking implications, for science, for society and for even perhaps for ourselves as individuals. Hence the sceptics’ insistence that they should rather be attributed to fraud, imagination and wishful thinking. However, this extraordinary and little understood aspect of consciousness has much to tell us about the human situation, McLuhan suggests. And at a time when militants are polarising the debate about religion, its mystical, spiritual element offers an optimistic and enlightened way forward. Randi’s Prize is aimed at anyone interested in spirituality or those curious to know the truth about paranormal claims. It’s an intelligent and readable analysis of scientific research into the paranormal which, uniquely, also closely examines the arguments of well-known sceptics.
I’ve got a couple of books in line ahead of this one, but I’ll keep you posted. Has anyone out there read it?
January 3rd, 2015 at 10:42 am
I understand Randi’s point of view, but my thought is that you can never prove the existence of the non-physical, because it involves a different type of matter, and physical instruments simply do not pick it up. Sally B
January 18th, 2015 at 12:34 am
Sounds good to me. I look forward to getting to this book though.
January 4th, 2015 at 8:03 am
I have an extremely hard time dealing with close-minded people and so don’t even waste my time with folks like Randi or Hill. If you think you can stand the hurt feelings that are sure to come from that woman, I say go for it. You must have more patience for their troll-like nonsense than the average paranormal researcher.
January 18th, 2015 at 12:36 am
I’m glad you aren’t afraid to tell us what you think. 🙂 Ha! Yeah I may or may not have reconsidered the Hill idea… for now, at least.
January 19th, 2015 at 1:06 pm
Thank you Patrick. 🙂 Yeah…I don’t say much but when I do I’m gonna say what I think.
January 4th, 2015 at 3:08 pm
I love Randi and I love how the exposes the frauds, but have also noticed that he tends to go after the easy targets. There’s a lot of genuine stuff out there that never gets a mention. I’m not sure if this is by design or something else is at work.
January 18th, 2015 at 12:38 am
You’re right about the genuine stuff. What do you have going on over on your site now? I’ve been absent for too long.
January 22nd, 2015 at 2:31 am
Still on the Omen series. It’s reaching its last few entries, sadly. Doubt I can get much more from him at this point of time.
January 26th, 2015 at 10:57 pm
Wow. I assumed Omen would have peaced out by now. 🙂
January 26th, 2015 at 11:40 pm
He’s been quite busy. I don’t think I’ll get any new stuff for a while.
January 10th, 2015 at 8:47 pm
I have not read this book. Randi could offer ten million and he’d never have to dish it out because, no matter what evidence you presented to him, he would not believe. Believing is a choice. Some examine evidence with reason, but most people continue to follow their preconceived notions regardless of evidence. Until someone has a personal experience that shocks them and causes a paradigm shift, they’ll believe what they want to believe.
January 18th, 2015 at 12:43 am
I think you are right… Well said. This needs to be a quote in a meme.
February 7th, 2016 at 12:55 pm
Review of Randi’s Prize on the website of the Society for Psychical Research:
http://www.spr.ac.uk/publication/randis-prize-what-sceptics-say-about-paranormal-why-they-are-wrong-and-why-it-matters