Homage to James Randi
James Randi has the mission to educate people against delusions and irrational beliefs. I admire him for his never tiring of his battle against woo-woo.
He has even sacrificed one million dollars, which anybody could get by producing scientific evidence for anything, that Randi considers as woo-woo. Even though the probability, that anybody will ever get that money is near zero, he has sacrificed the money, as it is in a bank and not his anymore. All my kudos to James Randi.
I have no mission. When I am confronted with someone's belief in woo-woo, I feel tedium and repulsion, I do not want to even hear it. I have been reading atheists' and skeptics' discussions, and I was amazed every time, when someone reported his success in using logical reasoning to make someone doubt his or her delusion. I have no clue, how they manage to get through. Maybe they just triggered doubts, that there had been already.
Like most skeptics and atheists, I had my share of being in contact with people, who were ardent christians, because they experienced their prayers to have been answered, who believed in homeopathy, because they experienced their dog getting better while it was given to him, who believed in their own immortal soul because of an own near-death-experience. Instead of me making any impact with reasoning upon them, they usually had condescension for my defect of disbelieving.
I am capable to teach people, what they want to learn, when it is a paid job. I suspect that to have any impact on a belief, one has to be a person, who radiates some kind of authority and charisma. Since I am lacking this, I have given up any futile attempt to use reason against woo-woo.
That is the reason, why I am so grateful for the existence of the one-million-dollar offer of Randi. It spares me any futile arguing, because it is the one super-argument, that makes any other arguments redundant. Whenever I am getting contacted now by any man, who refers in his profile or email to astrology, to be a Reiki master, to be selling magnetic devices for improving the efficiency of a car's engine, or to any other woo-woo in his life, then all I need to do is tell him to apply for the million dollars as evidence for his belief.
Even though this does not make any difference to them, it is a good and effortless way to end the contact with such hopeless cases without me thinking to have not given them the chance to reconsider. Anybody, who at the age of above 60 still believes in woo-woo, is doomed to die believing in it. I have no reason to waste my time with them.
James Randi has the mission to educate people against delusions and irrational beliefs. I admire him for his never tiring of his battle against woo-woo.
He has even sacrificed one million dollars, which anybody could get by producing scientific evidence for anything, that Randi considers as woo-woo. Even though the probability, that anybody will ever get that money is near zero, he has sacrificed the money, as it is in a bank and not his anymore. All my kudos to James Randi.
I have no mission. When I am confronted with someone's belief in woo-woo, I feel tedium and repulsion, I do not want to even hear it. I have been reading atheists' and skeptics' discussions, and I was amazed every time, when someone reported his success in using logical reasoning to make someone doubt his or her delusion. I have no clue, how they manage to get through. Maybe they just triggered doubts, that there had been already.
Like most skeptics and atheists, I had my share of being in contact with people, who were ardent christians, because they experienced their prayers to have been answered, who believed in homeopathy, because they experienced their dog getting better while it was given to him, who believed in their own immortal soul because of an own near-death-experience. Instead of me making any impact with reasoning upon them, they usually had condescension for my defect of disbelieving.
I am capable to teach people, what they want to learn, when it is a paid job. I suspect that to have any impact on a belief, one has to be a person, who radiates some kind of authority and charisma. Since I am lacking this, I have given up any futile attempt to use reason against woo-woo.
That is the reason, why I am so grateful for the existence of the one-million-dollar offer of Randi. It spares me any futile arguing, because it is the one super-argument, that makes any other arguments redundant. Whenever I am getting contacted now by any man, who refers in his profile or email to astrology, to be a Reiki master, to be selling magnetic devices for improving the efficiency of a car's engine, or to any other woo-woo in his life, then all I need to do is tell him to apply for the million dollars as evidence for his belief.
Even though this does not make any difference to them, it is a good and effortless way to end the contact with such hopeless cases without me thinking to have not given them the chance to reconsider. Anybody, who at the age of above 60 still believes in woo-woo, is doomed to die believing in it. I have no reason to waste my time with them.
