What do you think of James Randis' Million Dollar challenge?

i was reading about him and he sounds like a complete arrogant jerk, and has probably broken his promise more than once.

YouTube Link

Wow!

Ouch. Ohh, aww.

Recovering.

What to back of the claims of his arrogancy and broken promises?

[edit on 11-9-2009 by Republican08]

Read his wikipedia page, you'll probably agree with me.

Off the top of my head... I think he got more than a million dollars worth of fame and or advertising from his challenge... so even if he ever loses... he wins.

I read it, and fail to see his "arrogancy" or any other of the claims made.

If you could point out or quote where you found this?

reply to post by Republican08

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I can't remember the exact event, but in 2007 or so he backed out of a challenge.

I think Randi gets high on his own ego.

I'm sorry, but I haven't seen this at all.

If you could find this, I would be glad to see it.

My first interest in the paranormal was Uri Geller, hell Incubus did a song that started out with his name in it "Wish you were here".

But after I went in awe of geller, I came across Randi, and like a shining enlightenment, I realized that all the talk glamour and interesting stories, were all made up bull#, that should of been shut down at the beginning.

reply to post by Resinveins

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IF he'll ever lose - more likely he will just falsify the results... from what i read over the internet, there were people who were rejected without even given the chance to actually prove something...

imho he's just using the whole thing to generate publicity for himself... not to mention he doesn't actually have one million dollars in cash, it's just some kind of bonds which may be worth million, but might also be worth absolutely nothing.

more:
www.mind-energy.net... es-Randi-Million-dollar-challenge.html

www.naturalnews.com...

Is this it, with the homeopaths.

I think it's heresay and especially a bias against randi himself.

He who controls the rules with an iron fist controls the out come.

Kind of like Polls.

reply to post by Donnie Darko

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There are some who claim that Mr Randi has backed out of a challenge, but on his site he denies it. I did see when he challenged a young man who would run up to a telephone book and use his "psychic" powers to turn the pages. After Mr Randi saw him do it, he put styrofoam peanuts all around the telephone book and asked the young man to do it again. Mr Randi had claimed the young man was blowing on the pages and making them turn. The young man claimed he did not have the psychic energy to do his trick again.

I did read Mr Randi's book a while back. It seems when he was young, he caught a preacher claiming to be a faith healer using common magic tricks. He was very upset the preacher was preying on the people who had medical conditions and other problems. I do think that Mr Randi has his heart in the right place by going after the con artists in the field.

I have always wondered about this. Not so much proving a phenomenon, or marketing himself or what not... but the logic behind the challenge.

If you can prove something supernatural/ paranormal/ occult under a repeatable experiment, does that then *not* make it supernatural/paranormal/occult? And therefore what is being tested does not meet the initial conditions of the challenge and so nothing to pay out?

"At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place."

I dunno, have always wondered about that.

WHAT EVER YOU DO AVOID RANDI AT ALL COSTS!

I can tell you from personal experience he is a liar and not a skeptic but someone who enjoys getting off on debunking more than intellectual honesty.

I wasted a year and a half of my life trying to get tested by the JREF. Constant emails every day EVERY FREAKING DAY...Mostly they seemed to want to brush me aside because I was not famous... they referred me to another smaller skeptic organization with a similar challenge but a smaller prize.... I told them I was not interested in this smaller organization with its smaller prize I wanted the whole enchilada.... In response they told me I had to pass the test with someone first even though the rules of their challenge do not state that.

They gave me a run around and in the end ......

In the end After a year and a half of working to get this together despite all the runaround they gave me I proved my talent in under scientific circumstances at a function of the smaller group... but this smaller group... a group of JREF devotees would not admit to it...lest they lose their money...

No instead they denied anything special had happened... we had lunch afterwards and talked about how stupid people who believed in God were...

I KID YOU NOT!

I had lunch with this sub group afterwards because I thought they were gonna do some independent evaluation that would take some time. We had lunch and all they wanted to talk about was How faith was stupid and how atheists were smart.... (No offense to any of my atheistic friends here)

Their seemed to be some kind of correlation between their skepticism and their discontent with the Idea of God........We talked for a long time.. they even invited me to join their skeptic club but I declined. I was their for the money not because I enojoyed debunking other peoples ideas.


I never got the money... No Matter what I did these jerks would not admit to seeing anything special. They are liars and intellectual deceivers. I dont understand why they do what they do... But I do know that when you let those who put the money up be in charge of saying who is paranormal and who aint... well then... If they don't want to lose their money then this is gonna be a very normal world indeed...




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EDIT to add

Only now to I read the whole thread... So mad was I so eager to respond I read the OP and posted away.

After reading Ranswers post

I would like to say that I AM one of those people.

The alternative skeptic group JREF refereed me to refused to aknowledge that they had any dealings with the JREF. I tried to tell them that the JREF had refereed me to them on behalf of the JREF but they just said "no no no that cant be but hey, we do have our own 10,000$ skeptic challenge"

After it was all said and done I realized why everyone warned me against trying to prove myself to them....

The JREF will never lose their million dollar challenge.

It is about the money for them too.

[edit on 11-9-2009 by titorite]