A friend asked me about psychics, and clairvoyants - and more specifically mediums.
Are there any real ones?
What resources are available to show her that there are none?
I don’t believe that there are spirits, so how can anybody communicate with something fictional?
"Psychics" of all shapes and descriptions fall in to many categories, the main two however are frauds and well meaning self deluded idiots.
There maybe others, there may even be some form of actual psychic energy, I have never come across any proof or evidence, however that has not stopped NASA, the CIA, MI5 &6, Mossad and the KJB to mention but a few investing lots and lots of public funds in to studies in to telepathy, remote viewing, mind control, psychokinesis and even black magic.
There are billions of brain cells out there, where are they, matter does not disappear ?
I was told years ago everyone has one brain cell from Julius Caesar in them perhaps these psychics have more.lol
I like magic there are some great illusionists out there .We know its not real but makes you think how it was achieved.
I was going to suggest a few Amazing Randi videos, too - Randi was (he's retired now) an extremely talented and successful stage magician who used his skills to expose how so-called psychics and others who claim their "powers" are real use trickery to fool people.
As @AnneWimsey mentions, the educational foundation Randi set up offered a prize which reached $1,000,000 for anyone who could demonstrate any sort of psychic ability under controlled laboratory conditions. The prize was on offer for 51 years between 1964 and 2015; during that time around a thousand people attempted to win it, but nobody ever managed to win it.
I’m skeptical of Randi.
Well, perhaps it is because these these things from the beyond no longer experience the world in the same way we do, or because the people who purport to be psychics merely have a very sharpened sense of intuition?
My mother once when I was young took me to a psychic healer who could heal people just by hovering his hands over certain parts of the body. He also said he knew things about people just by looking at them, and asked my stepfather about his difficult birth (he was pulled by his head with forceps from the birth canal and his mother nearly died).
So I’m not going to say there is nothing there... the world is full of subtle and unusual things.
Refer her to the writings, youtube, etc. of The Amazing Randy...why has no one ever claimed the $1,000,000.00.....it has been Decades
I’m skeptical of Randi.
@WilliamFleming and yet, he put up His Own Money.(one million dollars!)...unclaimed for Decades now.....can't be any more sincere than that!
And going back further, to a more credulous time, Houdini set up a code word, for after his death...anyone who could provide it would get a Huge $$$ reward...also unclaimed.
Are you saying you believe in spiritualism?
@AnneWimsey I don’t know anything about spiritualism but I lean toward accepting the findings of legitimate paranormal researchers such as Dean Radin. There is a reason that one million dollar prize was withdrawn. Modern researchers show precognition to be valid to astounding odds.
Dutch psychologist Dick Bierman applied for that million dollars and was ignored.