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Fernando Vasconcelos

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His passion for reason is so big he challenged anyone in the world to prove a supernatural power under proper observation conditions and he would give the person one million american dollars. The challenge started in 1996 and was terminated in 2015. No contestant was able to prove any supernatural power of any kind. Verbosity and red herrings were used by the people who tried to prove themselves against the challenge.

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James Randi and the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

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4. He even challenged bible stories and geography

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4. He even challenged bible stories and geography

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In this video he speaks about the willing of some powerful people to prove their beliefs. Former presidents and notable people used bias confirmation to reinforce the ideas contained in their holy book. People either by simplicity or ideology (religion) agrees with the book and with their claims just because they want to see their belief proved at any cost. Even to the cost of truth.

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James Randi Speaks: Questioning the Bible

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This website is dedicated to the James Randi Educational Foundation. The website has the chronology of how Randi became one of the most important persons by encouraging young people to pursuit science. Having acted as a magician, Randi was aware of the tricks that could lead to misinterpretation of the truth. Diversion, trickery and misleading the attention were his allies during the magician times, and knowing his allies he fought against other ones who used them. In the website he also published the Encyclopedia of Claims, which contains all the ridiculous claims he faced through his life.

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JREF: James Randi Educational Foundation

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Anything you might wonder about Randi is here. From lifestyle to awards earned, companies he started, allies, enemies, legal battles, his views on several issues. Even his health conditions. He never had drugs of any kind, never got inebriated so he did not lose his clear reason. He has been wiling to give up some comforts life offers just for live the life exactly as it is. With sobriety and free from diversions and hoaxes. Living without being surrounded by red flags and with no reason for belief (but belief in reason) has been his model. If I may confess, I've been trying to live like him. The reason part, not the giving up on the world's pleasures part.

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James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928) 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).

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This is the way he had more fun with. He loved to expose those who claimed having supernatural powers. Uri Geller (famous psychic) and Peter Poppof (faith healer) were two of his first targets and the most famous ones. People who believed in the fake prophets were emotionally connected and believed in it due to the simplicity.

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James Randi Exposes Uri Geller and Peter Popoff

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Here he shows any person with some training can perform psychic surgeries. He shows how it can be done. People usually are distracted by some other features during the show or do not realize the hidden items the scammers bring to the play. Simplicity, pattern, red herrings and verbosity are all in place during such a show. Instead of asking themselves: "what is this guy doing?", they should be asking: "how else can he do it in a non magical way?". Understand more about the world we are living on is what have transformed the human race in what we are today. Leaving the use of our brains to a second plan is the worst choice we can make.

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Some of these drawing cartoons became common after Randi. Before him it was sort of Taboo to criticize religion or psychics. Again, the use of the brain can save you from a lot of scammers, but even the most skeptical scientists can be fooled by the hands of an experienced magician (Randi did it a few times to prove his point), if the target does not have proper time and manner to scrutinize the claim. The idea of critical thinking and the scientific method helps to get a broad idea when extraordinary claims come to discussion. If put through the scientific method, only what is real will pass. All the rest is belief, and belief does not constitute a solid basis for anything but personal comfort.

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The Variety media news website wrote an article about Randi's life movie film. The movie tells Randi's story, from the magician to the skeptic legend. The website treats him with the respect he always have deserved. It does not say much about the psychics' or faith healers' victims reasons fro belief or red herrings, but it would be more of the same

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"An Honest Liar" is a highly entertaining portrait of James "the Amazing" Randi, a magician-cum-escape artist who, like his role model, Houdini, eventually turned his primary attention to debunking professional mystics, telepathists and other "supernatural" charlatans. Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom's documentary bounces along enjoyably on a sea of archival clips from Randi's high-profile career, with latter-day input from numerous celebrity pals (and at least one famous foe). It gains added dimension from the subject's late-in-life coming out as a gay man, and from a different sort of "coming out" by his longtime lover, who turned out to be hiding a secret identity. Prospects are good for niche home-format sales and limited theatrical release through disturb Abramorama.
Born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge in Toronto, Randi joined a carnival at age 17 as an aspiring conjuror. His magic and escape stunts (he eventually broke several Houdini records in the latter realm) soon made him a popular television guest: The pic begins with a doozy of a 1950s broadcast excerpt, as he writhes his way out of a straightjacket while suspended upside down. (This act takes precisely as long as it does an adjacent chanteuse in an evening gown to sing "You've Got the Magic Touch.") Later he'd make appearances on "The Tonight Show," "Happy Days" and other leading national programs. He even contributed stage illusions to shock rocker Alice Cooper's highly theatrical '70s concert tours.

Yet increasingly, his appearances weren't performances per se, but rather demonstrations of what he'd uncovered investigating those who practiced "magic" in other, less admittedly tricksome ways. He exposed televangelists and faith healers who claimed paranormal powers, yet were revealed as having been fed audience-member secrets via hidden earpieces. A particular target of his ire was spoon-bending '70s "superstar psychic" sensation Uri Geller, who was unable to pull off his usual psychokinetic deeds when Randi covertly tamper-proofed Geller's props before a Johnny Carson broadcast; Randi went around showing audiences how he, too, could bend spoons and such through simple techniques.

After Geller managed to convince curious researchers of his powers in a lab setting, Randi cast younger colleagues as fake mentalists to prove that even scientists could be fooled by basic magician's trickery. While Randi is an unrepentant, even obsessed debunker who'll justify any tactic to prove his point, it's poignant to hear some of these former collaborators recall their eventual guilt over deceiving well-intentioned academics who earnestly believed they were accumulating evidence of the paranormal.

Randi didn't come out of the closet until just a few years ago, at age 81. By then he'd already long been in a relationship with Jose Alvarez, an artist and, briefly, a phony psychic channeler (for an Australian "60 Minutes" expose on spiritualist frauds). "An Honest Liar" gains a surprise element of present-day drama when this much younger partner gets into trouble with the law for a decades-old private deception of his own. (Perhaps an equally surprising development in the film's later going arrives when Geller agrees to be interviewed for a documentary about his archnemesis.)

Now in his late 80s, Randi is an antic, engaging subject with a showman's streak of hambone intact. Other interviewees run an interesting (if almost exclusively male) gamut, including fellow illusionists Penn & Teller and Bill Nye. Lively editorial mix makes the most of a rich archival-footage array, and overall assembly is expert.

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"An Honest Liar" is a highly entertaining portrait of James "the Amazing" Randi, a magician-cum-escape artist who, like his role model, Houdini, eventually turned his primary attention to debunking professional mystics, telepathists and other "supernatural" charlatans.

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10. No amount of belief makes something a fact

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10. No amount of belief makes something a fact

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Exactly! If you believe there is a diamond the size of a fridge buried in your backyard it doesn't make you rich or right. It makes you a believer. For every extraordinary claim it must have an extraordinary evidence. Either you dig that diamond out and show it to me or you will be exposed as a fraud. The thing about criticizing beliefs be a taboo before Randi is beyond reason. How come something can be taken as truth just because of some group ideology. With the advance of technology, people should have already opened their minds to what is real and what is not. If you were born in some areas of our planet, maybe you worship a certain god with 8 arms. By a Christian's view you are doomed to eternal damnation because of that. And you don't even know why you will be damned. It is ridiculous the effort each one of the magical deities does to disprove each other. Ideology, simplicity, verbosity, appeal to authorities have been and will remain being the tricks these people use to spread their word into non thinkers.

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Here are the final thoughts about the course and my evolution.