In short, I think just about everything that Wagner told Black Belt Magazine and you the consumer, is really way flakier than hell. EVERYTHING. When the dust settles, if you stay with him and trust him out there? I can't help think you are fucking fool and low in the IQ department.
Consider the following:
1- "Reverend" Peter Popoff.
During his appearances at ministry conventions in the 1980s, Popoff routinely and accurately stated the home addresses and specific illnesses of his audience members, a feat he allowed them to believe was due to divine revelation and "God given ability".At the time of his popularity, skeptic groups across the United States printed and handed out pamphlets explaining how Popoff's feats could be done. Popoff would tell his audience that the pamphlets were tools of the "devil".
His earlier claims were debunked in 1987 when noted skeptic James Randi and his assistant, Steve Shaw, researched Popoff by attending shows across the country for months. They discovered that radio transmissions were being sent by Peter's wife, Elizabeth Popoff, where she was reading information which she and her aides (Volmer Thrane, the brother of his manager Nancy Thrane, and Reeford Sherrill) had gathered from earlier conversations with members of the audience. Popoff would simply listen to these promptings with his in-ear receiver and repeat what he heard to the crowd. After tapes of these transmissions were played on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Popoff's popularity and viewing audiences declined sharply, and his ministry declared bankruptcy later that year.
As Randi explained in The Faith Healers, he originally took his research to the United States Attorney's office, but never heard back from them. This led Randi's friend Johnny Carson to invite Randi on the show to explain how Popoff operated. Popoff at first denied that he used the tactics Randi claimed even asserting "NBC hired an actress to impersonate Mrs. Popoff on a 'doctored' videotape." However, as the media pressed with more questions, "on day three Reverend Popoff admitted the existence of the radio device, claiming, that 'almost everybody' knew about the 'communicator.' And, he added, 'My wife occasionally gives me the name of a person who needs special prayers'." However, Randi appeared on CNN previous to this claiming Popoff used a transmitter, but Popoff said this was false and he got the information from God.
Popoff's shows also featured audience members who were brought on stage in wheelchairs and then rose dramatically to walk without support. Two in particular were celebrities Kyle Ellsworth and Petrina Dy. These were some of Popoff's most incredible "healings," but what believing audience members and television viewers did not know was that wheelchairs were used by Popoff to seat people who were already able to walk.
2-Jose Alvarez: "The Great Carlos"
Randi was involved in a famous channelling fraud here in Australia. In fact he could be recognised as the Father of the Great Carlos.
(Randi) I was approached by Channel 9 in Australia to see if we could come up with something that would prove to Australians that maybe channelling was doubtful. So I came up with the idea of creating a channeller. I said, 'I will create from anybody you choose, just somebody off the street, a channeller.' And they said, 'Well, we'll get you an actor', I said, 'No, no, we don't need an actor, we want just to show that anybody can do it.' They said, 'Well have you got somebody in mind?' and my friend Jose Oliver who is an artist, was standing nearby at the time and I asked him, 'Do you want to go to Australia?' He said, 'Yes', and I said, 'You'll have to do something strange.' He said, 'What's that?' I said, 'You have to be a channeller', and he said, 'A channeller? What's that?' I said, 'That's fine, you're perfect.' So I turned to the phone, I said, 'Yes, I've got exactly the guy.'
We trained him to be a channeller. All he had to do was look at videotapes of other people speaking in strange voices, and he picked it up right away, and eventually we got it into the Sydney Opera House with a fair audience there, all handling crystals and beads and whatnot, and with charmed looks on their faces, attracted and enthralled by this man out on stage, Jose Oliver doing the Spirit of Carlos that was 35,000 years old.
He felt like an awful fool doing it, especially since all of the material that we produced was spurious. In the press releases we invented magazines, we invented towns and cities and radio stations and TV channels and whatnot, that didn't exist. And one phone call by the media back to the United States, would have revealed the whole thing as a hoax.
(Paul Willis) You made sure that Carlos threw a glass of water over George Negus. That had to be calculated.
(Randi) It was. Now you'd be surprised what will get headlines on a slow day. And so we came up with the idea of Jose just threw a glass of water right at George Negus' face. And the next day the headline 'Negus attacked on TV' and poor George was sitting there, dripping wet in the picture, and I don't know if he ever forgave us particularly. And I should like to find out: George, I'm very sorry, we apologise, in case we haven't done that already.
He went down to the beach on one occasion and he caused them to walk into the water up to their waists with all the TV equipment and the microphones on booms when he recharged his crystals. Now he was just in a white robe and sandals, he couldn't care less, and they're walking in with their trousers and their wallets, all the equipment getting wet and such; they followed him into the ocean.
(Paul Willis) What was the point of the whole Carlos stunt? Was it really to show how weak the media can be, or was it to show how gullible people can be in wanting to believe, or how easily people can be taken in by a well-calculated charlatan?
(Randi) Essentially all of those things, but particularly to show that the media can and will be manipulated. If you give them the right kind of impetus, they salivate immediately. We constructed a booklet called 'The Wisdom of Carlos'. It had statements in it like 'Gravity is not hard to explain; you see it's easier for things to fall down than to fall up.' Now we were saying nonsensical things. Sentences weren't complete, grammar was bad, things were not continued on the next page and such, but that didn't make any difference to them; they excused any errors, anything was accepted because it was the words of Carlos.
(Paul Willis) You must have been torn between dismay at how easy it was to dupe people and a bit of devilish delight that it was such good fun.
(Randi) Oh, I've got to admit it was good fun, but it was pretty sad at the same time. That's the story of this whole business, I must say, the business of being sceptical and of teaching critical thinking. You want younger people to start thinking critically. It's a little bit, well, amusing to see what you can reveal to them and they get a good laugh out of it, but you have to stop them laughing at a certain point and say, 'Wait'. People do take this seriously, they really believe that someone can look at a spoon and cause it to bend. We are thinking creatures, but often we forget that we have this power to think rationally, to come to our own conclusions. We find it easier to accept something that's already predigested, so we turn to the media and we accept whatever seems to be attractive at the moment. That's the easy way. If you go through your whole life that way, you're going to find that you are a sucker and you're going to be taken advantage of. Look around, and your skin's gone.
My point?
In both these cases people were duped, fraud was publicly exposed, and MANY PEOPLE CHOSE TO REMAIN BELIEVERS. In the case of Jjim Wagner, sadly many people will believe his BS simply because they read it first, and are emotionally commited to their ideas.
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Topic: Jim Wagner of Black Belt, Training (Read 32231 times)