James Randi, a professional magician known as "The Amazing Randi," urged people to "encourage critical thinking, especially among young children," as he addressed the American Atheists 25th National Convention yesterday.

"Critical thinking should be taught particularly to young children," Randi said, "because they are going to run the world after we are gone."

Around 150 atheists attended the convention in Piscataway to support atheist youth and families, said Ellen Johnson, the organization's president. One of the main concerns of the group is unconstitutional religious expression in public schools, said Johnson. "We are also against child circumcision in the name of religion."

Johnson, a second-generation atheist, said the convention also had seminars for parents and children on how to cope with intolerance and harassment for being different. Nationally, there are about 2,000 Amerian Atheists members.

The reason Randi was chosen as one of the speakers was because he believes in rational thinking and has debunked many preachers and evangelists, Johnson said.

"I am in a very peculiar business of telling people what they should already know," said Randi.

There are two kinds of faith, he said: One is based upon previous experience and the other is blind faith, which could be in the occult, the supernatural. This kind of a belief is based not upon evidence or reason but is usually a preferred belief - one that is used for comfort.

People who watch evangelists on television also watch professional wrestling and soap operas, Randi said. "What do these things have in common? They are all morality plays. The conclusions are black and white, and that's what they want."

Randi also spoke about trying to confound the famous physicist, Richard Feynman, with his tricks. "He was a genius, and I was jealous of him. So I was cruel and malicious in trying to fool him," he said. "But he never failed to solve any of the tricks eventually."

The main focus of his speech, however, was his work in investigating the claims of supernatural, occult and paranormal powers, in particular his exposures of the TV evangelists and "psychics."

He showed the audience a clip of his appearance on the "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson, where he said he exposed a TV evangelist who claimed to treat people with his touch. The man, who had a hearing aid attached to his ear, would be fed with information on the people waiting to see him by his wife. He then would go up to people and call them by their names. People, believing that a divine intervention had occurred, would immediately submit to the reverend.

People who believe in healers primarily belong to three classes, Randi said.

First, there are people who never had the disease in the first place. He spoke of a woman who believed that because her mother had throat cancer, she had it, too. After meeting with a "healer," she was convinced that she was cured of "a disease she never had to start with," he said. Then there are people who are not fully cured but believe they are, and the third group of people "could not be reached because they were dead before I got there," he said.

Randi, who was appointed to the Hall of Fame of the Society of American Magicians in 1988, also spoke of "psychic surgery," for which many people go all the way to the Philippines.

"It may seem funny," he said. "but people who go there do not realize that it is a fake and end up losing their lives to quackery."

Source: Home News Tribune
Published: April 04, 1999