The Incredible Skepticism of the Legendary James Randi

James Randi, one of the top-tier magicians in the entertainment industry, MacArthur award-winning magician who turned his daunting shrewdness to scrutinize affirms of spoon bending, mind reading, fortunetelling, ghost whispering, water dowsing, faith healing, U.F.O. spotting and heterogeneity of baffle, bunco, chicaner, flimflam, flummery, humbuggery, mountebankery, pettifoggery and out-and-out quackslavery, died on Tuesday at his home in Plantation, Fla at the age of 92 due to age-related causes as per the announcement by the James Randi Educational Foundation.

Canadian born Randi earned public respect as one of the world’s premier skeptics matters from ghosts to UFOs. He was a promoter of healthy skepticism and rational thought. His performances influenced hordes of aficionados, including the likes of TV and stage illusionist Penn & Teller.

James Randi hated tricking people.

The Amazing Randi, he yanks off amazing escape acts and dexterities maneuvers faster than you could see- but it was all in service of proving that he wasn’t magical in any sense of the world. He hated tricking people so much he made a career out of debunking so-called psychics, faith healers, and fortune-tellers and all sorts.

At 17, he dropped out of school altogether. He became an escape artist. At 60, he retired from stage magic entirely. By then he had built a parallel career investigating claims of the paranormal, much as Houdini had done. In 2016, Mr Randi recalled that in Sunday school they started to read to me from the Bible. He interrupted and said, “Excuse me, how do you know that’s true? It sounds strange.”

Once at the age of 15 he saw a clergyman at the front was performing a trick where he professed to read the minds of people in the audience. People were there weeping real tears and getting very emotionally disturbed. They were actually believing that this man had supernatural powers. So he walked up on stage, interrupted the performance, and showed the audience the workings of the trick.

Clergyman’s wife called the police and he had to spend four hours in a cell. He made up his mind in that four hours that there would come a day that I would have the prestige, the knowledge, the platform on which to stand to denounce these people if they were fake. He never said that magic, faith healing, fortune-telling wasn’t real. But these peddlers weren’t doing any of these things. They were actually fooling people with claimed to have such superpowers.

One of his most famous targets was Uri Geller,

who claimed to be able to psychokinetic metal bending, or twisting spoons and forks, what brought Randi to world attention. Geller sued Randi numerous times. Randi later stands up for Geller that he didn’t arraign on fraudulence, but merely bespoke that bending cutlery could be performed by a conjurer, usually by pre-treating the utensil and using sleight-of-hand. He published a book, The Truth About Uri Geller in 1982. He has written numerous books on paranormal, pseudoscience and supernatural claims like Flim-Flam! (1980), The Faith Healers(1987), An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural(1995).

Randi always jogs the audience’s memory that his acts were based on tricks and not magic, and soon his attention debunking claims by others who claimed paranormal powers. In 1974, Randi pulled off a Guinness World Record for lying naked in a slab of ice for 43 minutes and 8 seconds. He has held another Guinness World Record for beating Harry Houdini’s time for being sealed in an underwater coffin, one hour and 44 minutes. Throughout the 60s and 70s Randi appeared on stage as an illusionist and escapologist.

He founded the James Randi Educational Foundation in 1996. Through this, he offered a prize of $1m to anyone who could demonstrate evidence of any such supernatural powers. This challenge was officially closed in 2015. A documentary film about Randi, An Honest Liar, was released that year.

As public interest with the paranormal increased in the 1970s, Randi, in company with sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov and astronomer Carl Sagan, co-founded Committee for Skeptical Inquiry to investigate claims of paranormal and promote scientific inquiry.

In the scientific community, he remained commended figure to the end. Amid of honours, he had a minor planet named for him, Asteroid 3163 Randi, discovered in 1981. Randi did have a juncture plan for the hereafter. He told New Times in 2009, “I want to be cremated and I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller’s eyes.”

James Randi in the 1987 Fresh Air interview said, “I can’t do real magic. I think there’s more magic in the opening of a morning glory than anything I or any charlatans in history has ever done, is doing, or will ever do. “His campaign was against such pseudoscience and claimed faith healers who keep deluding people. He was the prince of reason and had a true skeptic mind.

Atomic Dhruvi