Category | Arts & Living

Coalition embraces skeptics and believers alike

Published on February 2, 2010 by Berlin Sylvestre

All 22 faces at Thursday’s meeting of the Student Coalition for Inquity were alight with amusement when a surprise performer rose from his desk and stood to face them.

Mick Stone, the evening’s guest entertainer, performs streetside. During the SCI meeting, Stone answered volunteers’ questions that were sealed in envelopes. Photo from centerforinquiry.net

In a demonstration of the mesmeric powers of seasoned trickery, Mick Stone, a conjurer and “only street magician who isn’t homeless,” opened the event with a spectacle of abracadabra.

Stone asked four audience members to write a question concerning their future on a small card and to conceal it in an envelope. Once collected, Stone held the still-sealed cards in his hand. The first one was pulled from the deck.

Looking at audience-member Jesus Nerio, he answered: “Not until you graduate.” Stone then opened the envelope and read Nerio’s question aloud: “Will I be deployed?” Eyes grew large and his enthralled audience shared astonished looks as, one by one, Stone gave appropriate responses to each sealed question.

Stone’s look into the future was an unscheduled part of the SCI meeting held last week. The event was centered around James Randi’s 1994 Nova expose, “Secrets of the Psychics.” Randi, an internationally acclaimed magician and escape artist is perhaps most famous for his Million Dollar Challenge. Oopen to the public for nearly 50 years, the challenge asserts that if anyone can prove under controlled scientific observation that they are psychic, a $1 million prize is theirs. Many contestants have entered, but none have gone home with the money. In fact, most contenders don’t make it beyond their own preliminary test, designed to their own specifications.

The film’s focus is the debunking of popular scam artists like Peter Popoff of Peter Popoff Ministries. The head of a multimillion dollar televangelism empire, Popoff claimed to heal the sick and save the dying. Divinely blessed with the Lord’s strength, his “laying of hands” supposedly enacted medical miracles on live tv that included the removal of cancer and abolishment of arthritis. In front of stunned audiences, Popoff’s direct pipeline to God provided random names and ailments from audience members who he’d never met. “God” even offered Popoff their correct mailing addresses so he could recite them aloud to amazed believers, further proving his Heavenly connection. As it turned out, “God” was Popoff’s wife, Elizabeth, who, via a wireless earpiece, fed Popoff information from prayer cards that were filled out by attendees before the show. Once exposed, the ministry folded and Popoff went bankrupt.

“These people aren’t falling for these things because they’re stupid,” revealed graduate student Terry Jorgensen, an SCI coordinator.”It’s because people that can pull this off are really smart.”

While some consider Randi a “killjoy” for pulling the plug on acts like Popoff or exposing the secrets of “spoon bender” Uri Gellar, most see the revelation of these snake-oil salesmen as an act of public service.

“Why people have always been drawn into the irrational has always puzzled me,” Randi confesses in the film.

The evening of intelligent discussion brought together people with a preference for rational thought over superstition. The assembly, enjoying the company of at least one professor, was comprised of students whose majors varied from international business to nursing.

Jorgensen, who is no stranger to openly challenging his peers on how their beliefs get in the way of fact, leads the meet-ups regularly to discuss a variety of often taboo subjects. Students attending SCI meet-ups can expect riveting topics and impassioned discussions on issues that those of the non-confrontational persuasion might avoid. The widely disapproved rebutting of the fallacies in religion, for example, is an on-the-table subject as is the hysteria generated by the non-vaccination crowd. The secular SCI provides a forum for students who love to talk shop on a variety of scientific musings without the interference of offending an association’s ecclesiastical beliefs.

“The goals I focus on for the discussion groups are to promote a skeptical point of view and to create a campus community where open discussion can take place,” Jorgensen said. “SCI is here for anyone who is interested in science. We want all the agnostics, atheists and nonbelievers at KSU to know that there are many more of us to connect with.”

The coalition will host a friendly trivia challenge in which SCI will play against the Reformed University Fellowship. The challenge will take place Wednesday at 7:45 p.m. at the Mellow Mushroom on Chastain Road. For more information on SCI and its events, visit ksusci.com or join its Facebook group.