The Associated Pest

It was NBC’s version of a mystical Jerry Springer episode last week, when “Mind Freak” Criss Angel called out mentalist Jim Callahan on NBC’s live series Phenomenon. Callahan claimed to be possessed by the spirit of author Raymond Hill. Angel claimed Callahan was a lying bastard and followed his claim with a Million dollar bitchslap to both Callahan and his spoon bending co-host Uri Gellar. All he wanted was one of them to tell him what was in his pocket, or more specifically in one of two rubber banded envelopes his pocket had been preloaded with. This led to a short-lived slapfest leaving viewers feeling approximately one hour older.

As expected, the “fight” was pretty lame, and while the 45^th ranked show is no reason for debate, the truth of real magic might be. From our earliest memories humans have had an innate interest in the supernatural. The Bible is brimming with recollections of magical deeds, and in fact, ALL of the world’s major religions and primitive mythologies are full of mystical events. The world is full of believers.

Yet as long as there have been believers, there have been skeptics. People like Geller’s nemesis, The Amazing Randi. The magician, whose million dollars has been on the table to anybody showing true psychic powers. Since the challenge began in the sixties not one person has passed even the preliminary test. Geller on the other hand who has claimed supernatural powers for decades is not hearing the word charlatan for the first time. Before inviting Uri on the Tonight show, Johnny Carson invited Randi and his team of skeptics to ensure that no props were used. Uri’s performance fell flat.

Despite all, our belief in the supernatural continues, and for good reason as nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems. In J.B. Rhine’s famous Duke University parapsychology lab, many psychokinesis experiments using cards and dice, under stringently controlled experimental conditions were performed in a laboratory setting. The resulting scores were “well above chance” He was followed by the government (almost 40 years later) who in 1972 found similar results. Since then these types of research (and results) have been reproduced by Princeton, Sony, the Cia and many others.

But although there have been many successful tests, none have conclusively proven anything so we are left back in the dark. Evidence can be misconstrued, people can be deceived and mainstream science is usually left years behind current trends. There will always be explanations.

Perhaps the world isn’t ready and God (or whatever you want to call it) doesn’t like tests. Perhaps as some claim, great need or spirit direction is a fundamental part of the equation. Perhaps humans are just exceptionally gullible creatures. Regardless of the evidence one way or another, many people still believe, and always will. And individually, is personal experience not the strongest factor?

Who hasn’t been thinking about some commonly un thought of person seconds before they call, or been a part of a coincidence or string of coincidences so far beyond chance that they can no longer be considered coincidence, or had a dream which later came true, or felt eyes on the back of their heads. So far, these instances cannot be scientifically tested, but are very common.

For that matter, it’s more fun to believe. Whether they’re right or not, true skeptics are generally a bunch of miserable jackasses. Whatever defense mechanism leads them to so strongly believe in nothing, also leads them to be abrasive. Meanwhile we are left spellbound by the sense of wonder and belief that comes so natural to children. We have all experienced the supernatural, we have all seen pictures of the pyramids and crop circles. We are living in a time where our most brilliant scientists spend their days finding the loopholes in Newtonian physics. Pondering a world where energy is matter and vice versa, where dimensions could overlap and wormholes could send us light years in the blink of an eye. But again, the concrete answers remain unknown. So after all of this speculation the only thing we know for certain is that both Criss Angel and Jim Callahan fight like little girls.

Last 5 posts by RiTT da ReDD

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