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Compare 04/16/2020

2020-04-16 11:22 AM | Thomas
No amount of belief makes something a fact.

  --James Randi, magician and skeptic (b.1928)

(102:3.5) Science, knowledge, leads to fact consciousness; religion, experience, leads to value consciousness; philosophy, wisdom, leads to co-ordinate consciousness; revelation (the substitute for morontia mota) leads to the consciousness of true reality; while the co-ordination of the consciousness of fact, value, and true reality constitutes awareness of personality reality, maximum of being, together with the belief in the possibility of the survival of that very personality.

(102:5.1) Although the establishment of the fact of belief is not equivalent to establishing the fact of that which is believed, nevertheless, the evolutionary progression of simple life to the status of personality does demonstrate the fact of the existence of the potential of personality to start with. And in the time universes, potential is always supreme over the actual. In the evolving cosmos the potential is what is to be, and what is to be is the unfolding of the purposive mandates of Deity.


     James Randi is a Canadian-American retired stage magician and a scientific skeptic who has extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Randi is the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), originally known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He is also the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). He began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively calls "woo-woo". Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from the JREF at 87.
    Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi has said he dislikes the term's connotations and prefers to describe himself as an "investigator". He has written about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, famously exposing fraudulent faith healer Peter Popoff, and was occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
     Before Randi's retirement, JREF sponsored the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which offered a prize of one million dollars US to eligible applicants who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties. The paranormal challenge was officially terminated by the JREF in 2015.[10] The foundation continues to make grants to non-profit groups that encourage critical thinking and a fact-based world view.

Comments

  • 2020-04-24 7:26 PM | Eddie Bryan
    Well, we are taught what we know. What we are taught is often distorted. See James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. Yogis say it is only our belief that makes anything real. It is totally subjective. A fine teacher who passed away last year taught that. He had a strong faith in Yoga Vashishtha. Now if this is the Randy I knew, he claimed to have all this knowledge of eastern teachings. He also is now graduated as they say in the Urantia Book. I have little faith in Randy or Randi as it is put here. It's an ego trip. Randy or go to Hell. Of course UB says there is no Hell, but I am sure Randy did not have any faith at all in UB.
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