Criss Angel
Jim CallahanYou can imagine my surprise and disapointment when in 2007, in the TV program Phenomenon aired on NBC, Angel showed a raving pseudoskeptical side when attempted to debunk the work of one of his fellows magicians, the illusionist Jim Callahan, who made a trick where he supposedly communicated with dead persons.
This caused an altercation between both of them.
Wikipedia provides a summary of the event: "Starting in October 2007 he appeared as a judge on Phenomenon, with Uri Geller and in a CNN interview about the show he told Larry King "no one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead. And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust [him] live and on television."
On the October 31, 2007 episode of the reality show Phenomenon, Paranormalist Jim Callahan performed a summoning, purportedly of author Raymond Hill, to help discover the contents of a locked box.[18] Although fellow judge Uri Geller praised the performance, Angel called it "comical" and subsequently challenged both Callahan and Geller to guess the contents of two envelopes he pulled out of his pocket, offering a million dollars of his own money to whoever could do so. This led to an argument between Callahan and Angel, during which Callahan walked toward Angel and called him an "ideological bigot", with the two pulled apart as the show promptly went to a commercial break. Angel has since revealed the contents of one envelope and at the unveiling he challenged Geller one more time. Geller was unsuccessful, and the envelope was revealed to contain an index card with the numbers "911" printed on it for September 11, 2001. Criss' explanation was this: "If on 9-10 somebody could have predicted that 9-11 was going to happen, they could have saved thousands of lives". The other envelope's contents was scheduled to be revealed on the first episode of Season 4 of Criss Angel: Mindfreak. However, the contents of the other envelope were never revealed and remain a mystery to this day"
You can watch by yourself what happened in that altercation in this video:
Let's to make some comments and reflections:
1-In the wikipedia's link mentioned above, Angel says that: "no one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead."
Angel, like any other person, is free to have whatever beliefs he wants. This is not the point that I want to criticize here.
What I want to criticize is Angel's logical inconsistency. Angel says that he is not aware of someone having supernatural powers. From this premise, he deduces that such powers don't exist (this is obviously a non-sequitur. Ignorance of X is not evidence against the existence of X).
This fallacious inference explains Angel' next comment: "And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust [him] live and on television"
Note that Angel has not interest at all in discover whether supernatural powers exist or not. He doesn't want to research the truth about the supernatural, because he doesn't believe in it (or more exactly, because he BELIEVES that such powers don't exist).
He assumes IN ADVANCE that such powers don't exist (because he's not aware of anybody having them) and, as consequence, if someone claims having them, such person is a liar and a fraud and deserves proper and public debunking (or "busting").
But Angel's assumption is true only if metaphysical naturalism (which excludes the supernatural) is true. However, according to his interview with Larry King before Halloween in 2007 said he still believes stronglyn God.
Note that, according to his own concession, HE IS A BELIEVER IN GOD (and therefore, he believes that a supernatural entity like God exists).
In other words, being a supernaturalist, Angel cannot exclude, in advance, the existence of supernatural powers existing on some human beings. Such powers could or not to exist, but the point is that if God exists, the supernatural exists, and therefore you cannot pose a priori arbitrary limits on where or who will possess such powers (after all, God could give to some particular person the power of being psychic or talking with the dead. Is not part of God's supernatural power the possibility to do that?)
2-But even if the supernatural doesn't exist and metaphysical naturalism is true, does it justify Angel's aggression, in TV, against a fellow illusionist/magician?
It's well known that many illusionists use ambiguous language when refering to their "powers". They try to appear like real psychics while saying or hinting that they're magicians only. This is part of the misdirection that is essential to the working of many illusions (magicians need to use psychological tricks to predispose the public in their favor).
As comments George Hansen in his paper "Magicians who endorsed psychic phenomena" : "Some magicians’ positive statements regarding psychic phenomena might be looked upon with some skepticism. In the mentalist literature, performers are frequently urged to claim genuine abilities even if they don’t believe in them. In other instances, magicians might make positive statements for publicity purposes. Such practices have led some to doubt any positive opinions magicians claim on the matter" (Emphasis added)
So, charitably, we have to understand Callahan's claims (in the context of his presentation) as part of his magic show. It's part of the misdirection and psychological methods common in magicians, mentalists and illusionists.
Why did Angel try to cause damage to Callahan's presentation and professional image with his silly and irrelevant "closed envelope" test? Professional jelousy? A need to discrediting the tricks of competing magicians?
3-Angel's attempt of debunking consisted in asking Callahan (and Geller) to "guess the contents of two envelopes he pulled out of his pocket, offering a million dollars of his own money to whoever could do so"
Leaving aside the ridiculous Randi-like million dollars challenge, the point is that such test doesn't disproves supernatural powers in general. The fallacious assumption is that if supernatural powers exist, then you can know by supernatural means the contents of Angel's envelopes. And given that (according to Angel) no one can do that, then supernatural powers don't exist.
You don't need to be a philosopher to see the simplistic and extreme fallacious nature of Angel's assumption.
For example, talking with the dead doesn't imply having the ability of being able to read a close envelope. Therefore, failing to see Angel's envelope is not evidence against the proposition that someone can talk with the dead. (Failing to pass Angel's test is evidence only against the specific proposition that the individual claimant is able to read or see the contents of a close envelope)
So, failing to pass Angel's test doesn't count as evidence against the existence of supernatural powers in general, or specific paranormal powers like psychokinesis or telepathy.
4-Even being able to see or read, or get an approximate to the contents of the envelope wouldn't convince a person like Angel that something "supernatural" is working. In the following video, what seems to be a Geller's fan, defends that Geller could actually discover the contents of Angel's envelope in that show:
For the record, in my opinion, the above video has not evidential value. And I think that Geller doesn't have paranormal faculties (he's a good illusionist).
But I also think that Angel's "closed envelope" test to Callahan and Geller is ridiculous and worthless and out of place.
5-Jim Callahan called Angel an "ideological bigot". I don't know if Angel is an actual bigot or not, but their behaviour in that show supports that hypothesis. He seems so biased against the existence of paranormal (or supernatural, in Angel's jargon) powers that he's emotionally intolerant of everything related to psychic faculties.
See Angel, Geller and Callahan's comments after their altercation, in this video:
Instead of worrying about magicians claiming supernatural powers, Angel should be worried by magicians who'd exposed his own tricks. For example, Val Valentino, known as the Masked Magician, has exposed the tricks of Angel (and other magicians) in a TV series called Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed.
For example, Angel is famous by his trick of walking on water:
The Masked Magician has exposed his trick here:
So with many other tricks. Angel should be worried about it, rather than engaging himself in pseudoskeptical and biased attempts of debunking of supposed parapsychological phenomena by magicians.
If Angel has a real interest in scientific evidence for psychic phenomena, he should read Dean Radin's books, Chris Carter's Parapsychology and the Skeptics book, or in Charles Tart's The End of Materialism book.
Links of interest:
-George Hansen's paper "Magicians and the Paranormal"
-George Hansen's paper "Magicians who endorsed psychic phenomena"
-Jim Callahan's website.
-Chris Angel Mindfreak's website.
Additional comment:
Callahan has offered $5,000 to James Randi if he fails Randi's test. Read the full story here.
So it seems that Callahan actually believes he has some psychic powers that he can prove under controlled conditions. But it seems Randi doesn't want to test him. (Perhaps Angel's attempted debunking in Phenomenon was a kind of trap to discredit Callahan, so Randi can dismiss him too).
In any case, regardless of whether Callahan has paranormal powers or not, in my opinion Angel's behaviour was incorrect.
In spite of all of this, I'm still a great fan of Angel's first class illusionism.
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