James Randi is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). He began his career as a magician, as The Amazing Randi, but after retiring at age 60, he began investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims. Although often referred to as a "debunker," Randi rejects that title owing to its perceived bias, instead describing himself as an "investigator." He has written about the paranormal, skepticism, and the history of magic, and has published many books including Flim-Flam!, The Truth about Uri Geller, The Faith Healers, and The Mask of Nostradamus. He was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and was occasionally featured on the television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.
YA Are there people chosen by God to heal bodily ailments through the power of prayer alone? Randi's answer is ``maybe,'' but on the basis of his three-year investigation into faith heal ers, he hasn't found any evidence of it and suggests it may be nothing more than a religious con game. The author, a professional magician, has made it a sideline to expose fraud and miscon ceptions in the realm of the paranormal. Leading evangelists such as Oral Rob erts, Peter Popoff, W. V. Grant, Pat Robertson, and others are all shown to use tactics that are at best misleading, to guide the faithful into believing that they have been supernaturally cured by prayer alone. At worst, some of these men are shown to be cynical frauds preying on the desperation of the seri ously ill. The book is not tightly writ ten, but it can be read for enlighten ment. Karl Penny, Houston Pub . Lib .
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
