James Randi 1 Million dollar challenge

doktor_phibes · **Posted:** Tue Jun 07, 2011 9:38 am

What would actually happen if a 'medium' passed the James Randi 1 million dollar challenge? Would this be enough to prove that mediumistic abilities were genuine or would it just prove that they had past the challenge?

Jay · **Joined:** Sun Jul 09, 2006 10:28 pm **Posts:** 10488

He'd just move the goalposts ...

doktor_phibes · **Posted:** Tue Jun 07, 2011 9:54 am

so you think the challenge is impossible?

Jay · **Joined:** Sun Jul 09, 2006 10:28 pm **Posts:** 10488

I think for 2 reasons Randi would make it impossible ..

1) because he doesn't want anything of a paranormal nature to be "true"

2) because he doesn't want to lose $1 million

Probably the latter is more important to him tho - so I think he'd just move the goalposts like even some hard-nosed debunkers on here have sometimes done .. Human nature .. he believes strongly in what he believes and he'll cherry pick his evidence to support what he believes .. so, if a medium passed, he'd ignore that evidence and move the goal posts.

doktor_phibes · **Posted:** Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:04 am

Well if the terms of the challenge were agreed between the tester and the subject before hand, and a contract is signed, then I suppose he'd be legally bound to pay the prize money. I don't for one minute think that he would validate the psychic though.

I agree that he doesn't want the paranormal to be a reality and I think this is the case with a lot of the uber skeptics. They're always banging on about how people want to believe in the paranormal and that this clouds their judgements. This is true of course, but so is the reverse, and they don't seem to want to see that.

I wonder why so many people don't want to entertain the fact that paranormal stuff may go on. Fear? Fear of ridicule by their peers?

Jay · **Joined:** Sun Jul 09, 2006 10:28 pm **Posts:** 10488

doktor_phibes wrote:

They're always banging on about how people want to believe in the paranormal and that this clouds their judgements. This is true of course, but so is the reverse, and they don't seem to want to see that.

I wonder why so many people don't want to entertain the fact that paranormal stuff may go on. Fear? Fear of ridicule by their peers?

Because people more than anything want to be right. People don't give a damn about truth, evidence, reality or justice on a personal level - they just want what they believed, confirmed. Its like what we've asked before when people post a photo and ask what it is - they don't really want to know, they just want us "experts" to tell them its a ghost because thats what they want it to be.

Its a very rare thing that somebody changes their mind about one of their core beliefs .. they're ingrained within them and have shaped their entire personality and life - so, to suddenly be face with a reality that goes against one of those core beliefs, people reject it and do everything possible to re-strengthen their belief .. so, as I may have said before but I'll repeat it here incase I didn't, they : Cherry Pick evidence and information that supports their beleif system and ignore everything that contradicts it.

To be faced with a reality that goes against everything somebody believes in, first and foremost, screams at them that : THEY ARE AND HAVE BEEN WRONG!!! ... that is more scary to a lot of people that any ghost or any different reality that goes against their belief, they may face. We all like to think that what we believe and how we live our life is right - so to be faced with something that blows a hole in that view is scary.

Being "WRONG" is probably a worse fate, for Randi for instance, than ghosts / the paranornal being a seen to be a reality. Being WRONG goes way back genetically within us to a time when being WRONG regularly could mean the difference between life and death - and so why today we still cling onto the notion that we are right despite all the evidence against it and we do that by cherry picking ...

"forget what everyone else thinks, at least if I can convince myself I'm still right and everyone else is wrong and to blame, then, despite everything to the contrary, I'll still be ok and right .. "

James Randi 1 Million dollar challenge

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