SHOW ME THE PROOF GOD IS FAKE
OR BE BELIEVERS IN BULLSHIT WITH NO PROOF
We all love simple, snappy answers because then we don't have to think too much and it makes us feel smart. We like it even more if an "expert" gives us these answers because then we can say "Hey, this guy's no dummy!" Unfortunately, most experts are idiots with expensive suits, a fast lip and nice hair.
MEDIUMS - The Godscience Manifesto
Home vs. Houdini. The most famous medium in British-American history was the legendary Donald Dunglas Home (pronounced Hume). He was born in Scotland in 1833 and moved to America where his aunt adopted him. As a young boy Home started displaying his amazing psychic powers almost immediately—powers that he often couldn't control. He accurately predicted the death of his mother, but when loud raps were heard in the middle of the night and furniture started moving around with no one in sight, his aunt threw him out of the house. He moved to England in his early twenties, almost immediately became one of the most famous men in the world, but then at the age of forty, he suddenly retired because of failing health, which adversely affected his powers.
Home openly stated that he thought most mediums were frauds, refused to associate with them, and harshly criticized any sŽances held in the dark. Because he believed his powers were a special gift, Home never accepted any money for his sŽances. For most of his life he lived as a guest in the homes of the rich and famous, and also relied on their generosity for financial support. His feats are legendary, not so much for his contact with the dead, but for the wide variety of his powers, which he believed were caused by spirits often beyond his control.
Home had the ability to manifest physical projections of the dead, but hundreds of witnesses also saw him levitate, play musical instruments at a distance, and place his hands—even his face—in red-hot coals in broad daylight and well-lit rooms, and when he handed these same glowing coals to guests, they too became instantly immune to injury.
The greatest testimony to Home's short, but amazing career is that he was never once caught cheating, even though many people tried.
One of these skeptics was the great magician, Harry Houdini, who was a counterpart to many of today's blind skeptics. Houdini strongly believed that paranormal powers didn't exist—and he made a career trying to prove it. In short, Houdini hated D.D. Home. He repeatedly accused Home of being a fraud, but could never prove it and when in 1868 Home performed his most famous act of levitation—floating out a third story window of Lord Adare's home in front of some of the most reputable witnesses in British society—Houdini was so outraged that he immediately scheduled a performance at Lord Adare's home to duplicate Home's feat. But for some unknown reason the performance was cancelled and Houdini never rescheduled.
Like many blind skeptics who'd go to any length to disprove the existence of an afterlife, Houdini himself often cheated when he felt threatened by a real paranormal. Once Houdini had a thousand dollar bet that a medium by the name of Margery Crandon was a fraud. "Margery" was one of the most controversial mediums of the twentieth century, who at times produced spirits that were verified by the most astute skeptics, but at other times was caught cheating. In either case, Houdini wasn't taking any chances on losing a thousand dollar bet. He wedged a small eraser into a bell that Margery was supposed to ring without anyone touching it when she went into her trance. Unfortunately for Houdini a spirit from the other side saw what he had done and as soon as soon as Margery went into her trance, the disembodied voice immediately told the audience exactly where Houdini had hidden the eraser—and to add insult to injury, he then threatened Houdini with the following angry outburst:
"Houdini, you blackguard! Remember, Houdini, you will not live forever. Some day you have got to die!"
Donald Dunglas Home not only considered other mediums to be fakes, but he openly invited scientists, magicians and other skeptics to observe his sŽances in broad daylight under strict controls. In fact, after hearing about Homes' levitation at Lord Adare's house, the most famous scientist in the world, Sir William Crookes, who later became president of the Royal Society, volunteered to closely study Home, which he did for the next two years. Crookes devised a number of clever devices to make sure that Home wasn't cheating. First, he set one end of a mahogany board on a table, and the opposite end on a spring scale suspended from a tripod. The scale indicated that in this position the board weighed exactly three pounds. As Crooks looked on, Home lightly touched the end of the board that rested on the table—which at best should have caused the opposite end that rested on the scale to rise—but in fact the board actually dropped, measuring a pull of as much as nine pounds on the scale! This experiment was repeated many times with the same results, often without Home even touching the board.
In another experiment, Crookes placed an accordion in a closed cage and asked Home to make it play. Home fared better than expected. He took the closed cage, placed it on the lap of the person sitting next to him, and then made the accordion play.
After his two-year study, Sir Crookes was convinced that Home possessed extraordinary powers that should be immediately investigated by the scientific community. But when he submitted his report on Home to the Royal Society, the secretary not only immediately suppressed it, he also turned down Crooke's invitation to personally witness some of Home's amazing psychic feats. When word of Sir Crooks' report on Home spread, he was so harshly criticized by his fellow scientists that by the time he was elected president of the Royal Society he had returned to the fold, never again to mention the subject of mediums in public.
Despite his worldwide fame, D.D. Home's life wasn't always a bed or roses. Because he refused to accept money for his sŽances, he often found himself on the brink of poverty. Blind skeptics and scandal-mongers constantly snapped at his heels and twice he barely survived knife attacks by religious fanatics. As summed up by Lord Adare in Experiences in Spiritualism, Home was highly ambivalent about the special, but uninvited powers that controlled his life:
"He was proud of his gift but not happy in it. He could not control it and it placed him sometimes in very unpleasant positions.....ehehehehehehhehehehehehehhe
EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHEHE
oh well
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