James Randi is an older man, whois mainly passionate about psychic fraud in his speech. He feels that these people who claim they have contact with the dead and the ability to uncover hidden facts are magicians. They have the tools and the knowledge of how to deceive their audience. And, they do this at a high financial and emotional cost to their customers. His foundation offers support to "ruined" psychic customers and a million dollar prize to a psychic who can prove their ability.
As someone interested in the spiritual, supernatural, and the like I was interested in hearing these men's point of views. I felt that an element of my disbelief was cemented for good, especially when Shermer played the clip of Led Zeppelin backwards asking for us to hear the specific Satanic lyrics.
I was at a lecture for one of my college courses in the occult. A guest speaker was explaining how she talks with the deceased through a special technology invented not too long ago in Europe. She records an empty room, or a silent space and then plays it over a chopped up bit of random audio taken from a TV commercial for example. Then, she'll listen to the audio segments, which are put in random order, with the recorded blank space over it. She first played us some of the clips she'd found, to which I heard just mangled sounds. Then she asked us to listen for the sentence she had deduced, and played it again.
"Oh ok, I can kind of hear that, ...I guess," I thought skeptically.
It wasn't obvious at first, but she found what she was looking for. Why? Because she wanted to, and her desire and belief were strong enough to find something meaningful in the garbage and come and lecture to us about it.
Not to be judgmental though, because although her "speaking with the dead" machine was unconvincing to me, I do have some strange beliefs of my own.
Randi and Shermer are skeptical to the core of their beings. They deal with the cold hard facts of life: the tangible, the seen, and the obvious. If something can't be proved under these headlines they aren't viable. Those are their beliefs, and the power of belief is most powerful. Their point of view is more scientific than anything. They need the problem to work over and over again to be true, and most of what they oppose does not work in this way. The power of belief works for them in conjunction with tangible objects and facts. Is it fair to say that psychics etc. are choosing to believe in something unseen, and this extreme opposition disturbs the skeptics?
I'd like to take the section of Randi and the homeopathic pills as an example. He swallows the entire bottle, and still he doesn't falter at all during his talk. He seems to rob the homeopathic industry of legitimacy. It's not a very thorough investigation into it though. This part caused me to pause and think for a minute. I am one who chooses to believe in the power of medicinal herbs. And the power of belief is extremely strong for the human mind. It is the most important element to our lives I feel I can say with almost one hundred percent certainty. Let me argue with the case of placebos standing on my sideline. We've all heard this one: in experiments a doctor will administer a placebo sugar pill, and the actual medicine to two patients within a study. In the end result, both patients say they feel an affect. This is the power of belief in action.
So, in conclusion, there are scientific elements as well as spiritual elements to our world. Both are extremely powerful to our societies nowadays. In some cultures, even when the two contradict each other no one blinks an eye, because both are so real and hold so much clout to the people of that society.
The power of belief people, don't you forget it.
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