Let me be clear guys. I am not picking on PM. I am in my 50’s and I was fascinated by parapsychology in the 70’s. I devoured books about SRI, Rhine, Duke U studies, et al.
I believed it. I spent many hours trying to move objects with my mind to no avail :rolleyes: I remember the CIA experiments (MKULTRA?) Good old daze. I finally realized it was all BS before I became a functioning adult. Hell, I wish it was real!
I wish UFO’s were real! My point is I don’t know how old PM is. I hope he is young and realizes eventually that science trumps dreams for the most part.
I thought the first article was bad. Then I read the second one. The one where Uri Geller compares his plight of being accused of being a liar to Simon Wiesenthal.
[QUOTE=Uri Geller]
My battles with the sceptics have none of the heroism that distinguished Simon Wiesenthal.
[/QUOTE]
Why would a “magician”, as Peter Morris claims him to be, have to battle skeptics?
Oh but then the bullshit goes on, the next article:
[QUOTE=Uri Geller]
For two years I had been testing the world’s depths of open-mindedness, demonstrating telepathy and psychokinesis on live television
[/QUOTE]
Not “tricks” but demonstrating alleged psychic abilities?
[QUOTE=Uri Geller]
I was one of nine children. My eight older brothers and sisters were all aborted before I was born. My father did not want them, so they died. A father has that power
[/QUOTE]
Eight abortions and then his mother had a baby? :dubious:
As they do… ok.
Oh yes, the Aaron DNA test. What? I don’t know even where to start with that one.
From Peter’s posts in this thread, I don’t think that question pertains here. Peter has been saying that he thinks Geller’s stunts are simply magicians’ tricks, not actual paranormal performances.
His point is that somehow Geller is not a fraud because all his statements claiming to be an actual psychic are just part of his performance art.
I certainly don’t agree with that, but that’s what Peter is claiming. Seems to me that a person couldn’t reach that conclusion without a lot of “motivated reasoning” going on. I think I am aware of his motivation, but I haven’t figured out why Ian has been defending Geller. That’s the real mystery here.
Penn and Teller make it pretty clear in the introduction to their book How to Play With Your Food the reason why you don’t hear many magicians come out against Geller is because of his litigious nature. Not because they respect him so much.
“In these descriptions, any particular bumbling spoon-bending has-been may pop into your mind. I guess it might be possible that the example you happen to be thinking of might-could-maybe-possibly be the one-in-a-kachillion-outside-chance-of-a-snowball-lasting-a-month-of-Sundays-in side-a-burning-gas-kiln-in-hell be real. We haven’t seen every spoonbender on every second of his or her life. We just haven’t seen or heard of one of them doing anything that seemed to us like anything other than bush-league sleight of hand. We have to be careful though. When these twerps lose their ability to support themselves with public and private ‘experiments’ (they never call them ‘shows,’ we guess because they’re not entertaining enough), they can decide to turn to litigation. So, let us say right here, Penn and Tell haven’t seen or heard about any real psychic spoon-bending, but if we do, we’ll happily change our collective mind. We’ll want to see it done in front of a panel that is educated in magic, and it should be on videotape and we’d love to see it under oath in a court of law. Maybe by the time this book comes out some of these swine will have had their days in court and proven they have supernatural powers. We’ll be red-faced but we’ll admit we were wrong. You may not notice our embarrassment, however, because everyone will be too busy throwing out all scientific knowledge and starting over. Our lawyer says we need to make it clear that spoon-bending COULD be proved to be a real power. And maybe that same day Porky Pig will appear incarnate and fly around the courtroom. Hey man, it could happen.”
I don’t understand the point behind this post. You have already admitted in this thread that Geller’s tricks are just magic tricks and not the result of powers such as ESP and telekinesis. In what way would watching his act show that he’s not a fraud?
I’ve never seen anyone blindfolded for this particular test. If any were, it would only be because the claimant and tester agreed it was obviously pertinent to a particular special case. Also, if they were getting clues from the local terrain, this isn’t paranormal powers being tested, which is what the whole test is about. This isn’t anything new and groundbreaking what you reveal here about how certain local dowsers can get clues from the terrain and seems common knowledge to most folk. Randi also says the same thing, which is why a special test area has to be built. You’ve had this on your mind for at least ten years. Have you designed a better field test? If so, let’s see it. Show us what would be fair, and be specific.
Very interesting article about the cocoa puffs, which explains another charge PM made against Randi. That article also brings other things to light, and covers other charges PM has made against Randi when it turns out it was due to mistranslation problems in Japanese, with the most prominent being when Randi said: “I said Franklin had a way of shooting himself in the foot.” It got translated: “Wilbur Franklin found out Uri Geller was a fake and shot himself.”
I hope others will take the time to read your link.
He’s flaky about this though, as mentioned in post # 84, just when you think Geller is going to spill the beans, he backtracks on later interviews saying: “…I no longer say that I do supernatural things. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have powers. It means that I don’t say ‘it’s supernatural’, I say I’m a mystifier!’ That’s what I said. And the sceptics turned it around and said, ‘Uri Geller said he’s a magician!’ I never said that.”
Geller has put himself in a precarious situation. He can’t totally give up the gig, which I think could open him up to a whole new line of litigation. He’ll have to maintain this flakiness the rest of his life or risk more potential serious lawsuits, IMO. Which judging from his history, won’t be difficult to do.
Read the reviews, kind of sad to see many people believe in this and get taken in. Worse yet when others get taken for much worse than the price of a book. I wonder if one of these Geller apologists would have an about face, if Geller were to take advantage of one of their loved ones, and it wasn’t just the price of a book, but him exploiting them for much more.
If that’s being slightly naughty, I wonder what he would tell the family of the kidnapped victim he said was going to be found alive and in good health, which was found murdered (post # 66)? Oops.
I suppose PM might respond along the lines of, “that’s just publicity folks, and part of the act, you’ve got to admire him for how he always stays in character. Besides, nobody really believes in this sort of stuff, do they?” He’d probably classify this family as just collateral damage.
WAG: Somewhat interestingly, Ian and Uri have ended up on somewhat similar career paths despite coming from different directions. Ian is a magician who was a debunker of psycics, Uri is a magician who claims to be a psychic. Both gained moderate amounts of fame doing their thing, and both have parleyed that fame into doing “motivational magic shows” where they mix their acts into more traditional motivational speaking gigs for businesses, seminars, etc.
Given that there can’t be that many other “motivational magicians” in the world, I suspect Ian is somewhat wary of people accusing Uri of fraud because he thinks people may generalize it to all motivational magicians (which so far as I know, is just Uri and himself).