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James Randi's Latest Debunking Operation
An anonymous reader writes "The pair of documentarians behind An Honest Man — The Story of the Amazing James Randi will not only talk to the likes of like Adam Savage, Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Penn and Teller about the life of the famous magician/skeptic, but they'll also follow Randi's latest operation as he assembles 'an Ocean's Eleven-type team for a carefully orchestrated exposure of a fraudulent religious organization.'"
Teh religion and magick is real, it is James Randi whois FAKE!!11!!
I am sorry but the amazing Randi is just another Con Man Media Whore looking for a paycheck.
Let’s face it he has never really disproved a thing, or even followed up his own research that he started.
Now if he ever followed up anything he started that would really be amazing!
TeTalon
You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution, which are you.
[blocked by lawsuit]
Would he not be risking becoming a suppressive person perhaps? And then he might even become fair game...?
OP says title is "An Honest Man", but TFA says it is "An Honest Liar".
Watching the trailer, I could not help notice how old he's become, even compared to the TED video (2007). Dear Randi, please stay with us for a lot longer!
The problem with exposing religious frauds is that True Believers will ignore the evidence and carry on believing in them and sending money anyway. They will see it as a chance to "strengthen their faith" and ignore the evidence even harder.
Randi has gone after a lot of pseudo-religious organizations and they're still lots more to go before you can narrow it down to Co$.
http://www.vediccity.net/ - An entire city and school bought and controlled by Maharishi Mahesh's Transcendental Meditation organization
The Mormon Church - Self explanatory
Raëlism - Wacked out UFO cult founded by a Frenchman in 1974 with anywhere from 2000-5000 followers globally
Moonies - Sun Myung Moons private church where he claims to be Christ (and about every other major religious character) that owns The Washington Times, Kahr Firearms, and many other companies. Personal audience has been given to a few POTUS
Harold Camping's Family Radio - The guy who predicted the rapture a few times in the past couple of years
Lots and lots of possibilities. Co$ would be interesting for Randi to take on but it would be cool to see him deal with any of the above as well
I hope you die painfully and alone.
As opposed to all the non-fraudulent religious organizations?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Since his minions have been astroturfing it on completely unrelated forums for the last week. It's still relatively harmless charlatanism compared to what he investigates, but don't mistake that Randi the corporate entity is all about the money.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
He debunked a lot of things, like that guy on tv pretending to do psychokinetic (he put small light stuff which would fly at any small wind to prove the guy was using his own breath) the group even recentely took part in the debunking of a drowsing mine detector, and he debunked with test some other drowser. You are full of shit.
if he'd taken on some of the really influential cultists - like the Austrian Economics Cult or the "Human Beings are Rational Maximisers" cult...
Alas, he's much more interested in geek adulation than making the world a better place.
Hello, I'm Mohammed. I'm not the son of god but just do everything I tell you to do anyway. Oh , and call all your kids after me - saves that tedious baby naming process that the chicks always win anyway.
It's not his job (or sciences) to disprove the extraordinary things people claim. It is their job to prove it. That's just a basic concept.
Actually it *is* science's job to disprove it.
Science is a philosophy that starts from the premise that you can't prove anything, you can only disprove things. Then we tell ourselves stories to explain our observations (form a hypothesis or theory), make predictions based on the logical consequences of the hypothesis, and then come up with thests (design experiments) whose outcome would prove the story false.
When it comes to debunking, the principle in question is Occam's Razor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor
The corollary is that sometimes we have stories that are simple and elegant and are found to be predictive in a subset of the observable univers (a problem domain), so we use them there, even though we know they don't fit the big picture. Newtonian mechanics is an example of this: for non-relativistic events, they give approximate answers that are good enough, unless you need too many decimal places.
This is also why "creationism" isn't a theory: it doesn't make predictions about future events, so it's impossible to design an experiment to falsify it as a theory: a theory must be falsifiable, or it isn't a theory.
So a story about Randi debunking a religion (:theory") is as relevant to Slashdot as a story about the LHC's search for the Higgs Boson, which is a set of experiments designed to falsify ("debunk") certain theories about the basic nature of the universe (many string theories, in particular).
-- Terry
The paranormal and other frauds claim amazing things that just don't fit in our universe. The most obvious is the capacity for prediction of the future. If you can predict the future, why are you not rolling in money from winning every lottery? Or made it big on the stock market?
The defence against this simple method of proofing your supernatural powers is either that your power can't be monotized OR that you don't think it is ethical.
Randi breaks that defence wide open by given these fraudsters a clear way to monotize their power AND do it in a highly ethical way. So why don't they? Even if you ain;t intrested in the money, you could donate it to a good cause. So why don't people who claim to have powers not claim 1 million dollars that is theirs by rights if they can proof it?
They don't, because they can't. There are no super natural powers. but fools like you can't accept that, you want your beard in the sky and hate anyone who dispels the delusion.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The trailer's worth the visit just to hear Orson Welles say, "Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery, fraud; about ... lies."
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
James Randi is in the best of company in his late career. Harry Houdin became furious with people who claimed his feats of escape and stage magic were done with mystical powers such as teleportation. Harry devoted a great deal of effort to debunking the horrible and clumsy stage magicians who were conning people with seances and mystical powers. In the midst of the industrial revolution, this fascination with the miraculous was infuriating to someone like Houdine, and now to people like James Randi, who've mastered their crafts and see clumsy charlatans using them against innocent people.
This kind of debunking is in the very best scientific tradition: providing an alternative explanation that requires no violation of previous experiment or understood principles is at the basis of how science works, and helps teach us how to verify new claims properly. I genuinely wish more engineers had the time, or made the time, to study debunking to understand better how their own inattention or deceit by other people can confuse their results.
A sudo religion doesn't have root.
fixed, sorry.
to be cherry picking.
When can he start with the humanists, such as Dawkins?
In the face of all historical evidence,I find those who those who have faith in man are just as questionable as those who have faith in god.
If someone could truly use some form of telepathy or telekinesis, why the hell would they expose it for 1 million dollars when they can use it to make billions in investment, trading, or gambling? I am glad that he puts that million dollar barrier up for frauds, but I'm not sure he's ever going to find someone with demonstratable abilities to risk being exposed for a mere million bucks. I know if I had the ability to read minds or see through walls or see into the future or bend spoons with my mind, I'd be playing blackjack or poker, investing in high risk securities or playing roulette respectively.
i am so very tired....
Like, totally, like...
"a carefully orchestrated exposure of a fraudulent religious organization".
Aren't all religions fraudulent? Show me the evidence.
Thats why you need to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster...
Science says the same thing. Facts make people believe even more, especially when they contradict belief.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/
Sorry if it seems I have posted this before, you'd think more people would just let it go implied at this point, as common knowledge.
You and lots of others failed logic 101, as is evidenced by your complete lack of it.
James Randi never said that because those particular dousers could not find water under those particular conditions that all dousers could not find water under those particular conditions or any other conditions ever. He has never laid these out as rules. But you would know that if you actually bothered to understand what exactly Randi has been doing for more than 50 years.
I look forward to Randi debunking that vile fraudulent religion of AGW.
Yes. This is trolling. I am confident that the troll will be well-fed.
There is a difference between a fraudulent religion and a normal religion. Fraudulent doesn't mean that it isn't absolutely true. Fraud is intentional deception. The Pope believes in Catholicism. The Mormons leaders probably believe it too. The Republicans DEFINITELY believe it.
You also cannot prove any of these people wrong. Their main claim is a belief. An untestable and non-verifiable belief. You might find them to be incredibly WRONG, but that doesn't make them fraudulent.
Also, on the topic of things like acupuncture and others(homeopathic medicine, chiropractic medicine). The main crux of the argument against these isn't if they provide any good or "help people". The main argument against them by skeptics is that they are FULL OF CRAP as to how they work. Acupuncture claims it messes with one's qi. Qi doesn't exist. Zinc may actually help with some things, but not because it mimics the symptoms of a cold(which is what homeopathy claims).
Now, I think we could afford to be a bit more empirical with our medicine. If acupuncture does do some real and noticeable good, then we should use it. However, I think it is important to be clear that the previous notion of why it works is wrong. Why? So that it isn't misused.
Your taking offense means absolutely nothing for the validity or non-validity of an argument. You seem to be a sensible person, but please don't use the "that's offensive!" defense. It doesn't belong in any civilised debate.
You say that as if you think that somehow makes it a fifty-fifty proposition.
Lack of evidence of a god when that evidence should be there is in fact evidence that there isn't a god. So I'd say it's overwhelmingly likely that your belief is false. (Of course there are no absolutes, but it seems strange to take the overwhelmingly unlikely position rather than the overwhelmingly likely one when living one's life.)
Unless of course you're worshipping a malicious or trickster god who deliberately hides from you and makes himself/herself/itself immune to evidence. In which case... I'm not sure anyone would wish to worship such a god.
There's also the inconvenient fact that lots of people believe just as fervently in a different god from yours. How do you know that they're wrong and you're not?
HAND.
The only difference is Pseudo-Religion and Clut are used to describe Religions that I/you don't like and won't accept. Suicide-Cluts are just Religions that encourage their followers to commit suicide and sense I cannot accept Suicide under those conditions I feel free to use Cult to describe their Religion. In general I don't like the word Cult or Pseudo-Religion being used to describe someone. Catholics used to call all Christians who weren't Catholic members of a Cult. It's just a way of demeaning another persons beliefs just like the Atheist Cult of Randi.
Islam.
The (cough, cough) religion of (sic) peace.
Arguably the most violent one ever in the history of mankind... even more violent than the medieval Christians.
...next he can take on the members of atheist cult.
There's no solid evidence of any of that. There's even considerable scholarly debate about whether this Jesus character was even an actual person.
Because those of faith use the same sentence as you "my faith teach me to do good things" and they hide behind it (without showing that they indeed learned gfrom those teaching) and then spout some bigoted non sense. How often those good people suddenly are adamant that a mariage is between a man and a woman (hint : it was not that way in the past, not even in christian community, and at a time it was more akin using the kids to merge property, and long time ago it was frgging SECULAR before the priest coopted it). And then they will say their bible somehow with a lotn of contorsion gay are bad people (nevermind that they eat shellfish), that the message is good (nevermind Jesus being agaisnt slavery, or even him cursing a figue tree, yeah yeah I know it can be itnerpreted figuratively, but hey, anything c an be itnerpreted figuratively then, you know that gay condemnation ? it was god figuratively pointing the finger at priest diddling children in the choir). And then the ever attempt of reversing secular decision because they don#t like it, the ever whining of "we are persecuted because of our religion" but so soon a kid make a prayer be removed from a secular building, the outpouring of hate starts.
So yeah. Not all christian are like that, but enough are like that , that every single of us know a few of such example personally. And since msot geek are educated people, and educated people are least religious, you can see why slashdot as a whole is warry of the god bunch.
Now if only they were prqactising the religion the christ preached, instead of being the "church of paulinism"....
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Atheist" simply means "not theist", i.e. does not believe. It does not imply logical proof that there is no god.
That's a nonsense. If god intervenes in the world (as all Christians must believe) there should be evidence -- there is absolutely none. This is consistent with the atheist view. It is not consistent with the Christian view.
HAND.
Well, there goes the credibility. Never was there such a conceited buffoon with such thin credentials. There's a reason he used to be relegated to teaching science to kids; but some idiot had to give him a soapbox.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
you didnt even get the name right! "An Honest Liar"
The more something cannot be true, the stronger your faith must be to believe in it. Also, believing in something that's obviously not true is better proof that you're committed to the group than believing in something that is true.
Play Command HQ online
I really don't see anything wrong with the religious quote from Randi? Too blunt for your tastes? Or just too close to home?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It is not science's job to disprove a supernatural claim made by someone. We need positive proof; repeatable positive proof. That is how science works. We know water boils at 100 degrees Celsius(~at sea level, of course) . And we know it because it has been positively proven countless times by people trying to figure out at exactly what temperature water boils.
OK, let's talk Science witha big "S".
You can only demand the ability to falsify. We have a theory that water boils at 100C at standard pressure. It has yet to be falsified, but it's still a theory, just like the theory that when you let go of things they will fall. If you have a repeatable disproof, present it.
Scientists are the clever bastards who figure out the implications of a theory and then devise a test to decide whether or not the implications follow through. If they do, the theory lives another day, otherwise, it's discredited, and we spend a lot of time to think up a new story to tell ourselves.
PhD = Doctorate of Philosophy. This isn't a mistake, this is an intentional conjoin between observable phenomena and the theories that result (or don't) in additional observable phenomena given a set of initial conditions.
Science is all about prediction of future events based on initial conditions, and if your idea isn't predictive, it isn't scientific, it's faith, or to use scientific terminology to coat it in a respectability it probably doesn't deserve, "conjecture".
Experiments are all about setting up initial conditions, and pressing the "go" button.
Interpretation of experimental results is all about deciding what the conditions do or don't say about the theories: "were the predictions wrong?" Not "were they right?", no one gives a damn about that; a broken clock is "right" twice a day.
Correct predictions only argue about utility of theories under particular conditions. They do not argue for correctness of the theories themselves. The broken clock is "right" at 6:16 every day, and we can't know we haven't accidentally looked at just the right time.
I really think that classrooms should concentrate on experiments with surprising results to teach this to students, but to teach that would be to teach questioning all sources of information, including your teachers, and that ends with ... the people who are going to die before you die losing power over you,
Oops... meant to say "chaos"...
-- Terry
Do not apologise! Many thanks for that link. I like the way it ties in with the "overestimation of one's own level of skill/knowledge" studies so closely - but pushes the scope of them even further (for example unwillingness, or even refusal, to learn).
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863