Running Head: JAMES RANDI 1

James Randi Assignment

Q1) What are your thoughts on psychic or paranormal?

Psychics are people who claim to have some sort supernatural powers that normal people don’t have. Psychics can read your mind and tell your
future, or they observe supernatural forces that normal people cannot. Recently I came across a type of psychic called clairvoyant; I heard that
they can imagine things related to a person, place or thing. They have this special third eye that allows them to visualize in their head about what
is happening in an individual’s life or what is going to happen. Similarly, there are so many other variants of psychic people.

Paranormal are activities that are beyond the vision of a normal person or scientific understanding. Ghost and spirit activities come in
paranormal. Paranormal is real sometimes.

Q2) Do you believe in psychic or paranormal or are skeptical like James Randi?

It is not easy to give a definite answer as to whether I believe or am skeptical about them. They astonish and confuse me at the same
time. They leave me questioning as to how they do it, how is this even possible? Is it real or just a form of illusion or perception? The question
also arises has God really created humans with supernatural powers and perceptions. The video that I have watched about James Randi makes be
believe that this is all illusion to fool around with people, you can make people believe what you want; you just need some practice and an
intelligent tricky mind for that. I can think of a real life e.g. here. My father went to meet a gentleman at his house for the first time. My father
had heard something interesting about him, which was that he has some God gifted powers and he can treat people without even touching them,
like a spiritual therapist you can say. He served coffee to my dad, dad told him that he is diabetic and probably, normal sugar is added to this
coffee, so he can’t have this coffee. He told my dad to not worry about the sugar in the coffee; just go ahead and have it, he also added that once
you get home do check your sugar, I promise you it will be lower than pervious, and this is what exactly happened, my dad checked his sugar
level to find out it was lower than pervious, now the question is, my dad probably never checked his sugar level immediately before leaving the
house to meet his friend, so does my dad actually remembers the exact value of his previous sugar level (whenever that was taken) or is it just a
bias perception.

Q3) Pick two psychics that Randi encounters in the documentary that you found most interesting and discuss your thoughts on the events
surrounding those people

The first one that I found interesting was this psychic named Peter Popoff (1980s). He claims that he can heal and treat people’s ailments
and illnesses through his psychic powers, he has divine powers gifted to him by God and that God communicates with him and gives him the
power to heal people just by touching them or so. He knows some of the names of the people in the audience, also knows the ailment they have
and some of their personal details. I have seen and heard about such people. In my opinion, if this is happening on television, it’s fake, they
probably set up the whole thing before they come live on television. And if anyone claims that they have experienced this in person and has
benefit from it, then I would say that it’s just a bias perception of mind. You benefit from it because it’s there in your brain, or maybe they
temporarily hypnotize you so that you get unaware of your pain or the problem, at least for some hours or so.

The second example of psychic that amazed me in the video is the psychic surgeons from Philippines. They perform surgeries with their bare
hands without the use of any surgical instruments. This is so impossible to perform a surgery on any living being without giving them an
anesthesia and without the use of any surgical instruments. It is merely an illusion and a game of hand. They position and make use of their
hands in such a way that it looks like they have dissected a human being.

Q4) Is it helpful or harmful to be a believer or a skeptic?

I think we should not have a strong believe on things that do not have any scientific reasoning, though there is no harm in trying any of
these psychic therapies, to see if you benefit from them. But overall, I think you should not completely rely on these psychic therapies for any of
your problems. Neither be a die heart believer nor a strong skeptic; just give them a try for the sake of experiment. Let me give an e.g. here, my
sister had pain in her left lower arm, she accidently went to a reiki master, they performed their psychic energy related stuff on her, and boom!
She was healed, her pain was gone and never came back, but this does not mean that she would now go the reiki master even for her delivery or
some major surgery, so what am trying to say is don’t get serious about these things, if you have any major health or psychological issue, seek a
proper health practitioner, but you can try these psychic therapies along with it. If they benefit you, good for you, if they don’t, that’s fine. As far
as the magicians are concerned or people who perform similar illusionistic actions, we should watch them just for entertainment and not believe
them to be real. Having strong believes in unrealistic perceptions kind of drives us away from the real world.