What’s So Amazing About Randi?

Andy Rau over at ThinkChristian , a smart blog hosted by Gospelcom.net, has a fun post with a serious intention on the Amazing Randi’s evisceration of con artist Peter Popoff.

James Randi has also taunted so-called psychics Sylvia Browne and Allison Dubois (the inspiration for the TV show Medium ), and has a standing offer of a million dollars to anyone who can “show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.” (Does the success of Deal or No Deal count?)

To follow up on Andy’s question to his readers: Is it possible to challenge Randi on the supernatural? I guess it would depend what ” proper observing conditions” means. And how easy would it be for Randi et al. to dismiss such events as “coincidences” or “natural phenomena” simply because they are observed as occurring within the natural realm?

In any event, I think a challenge, something on the order of Elijah vs. the priests of Baal, in which a righteous man of great faith calls down an unmistakable sign of God’s power to shock and awe idolators, would be an act of impiety in light of the Cross. Yes, the Resurrection was an event in history—but Scripture says that the Risen Christ appeared only to believers. It was the Cross that was visible to scoffers. But in the Cross, as Luther repeatedly reminds us, God is hidden in the suffering of Jesus.

The only thing that will convict an atheist or skeptic of the truth of Christianity is the transforming power of the gospel itself. The real challenge is to present the Cross to the unbeliever, again and again and again. You may not win a million dollars under Randi’s terms, but you may be a witness to a regenerated life—the only miracle that matters in the end.

P.S. Randi also writes for Skeptic magazine, edited by Michael Schermer, an ex-evangelical and one of the more reasonable and temperate of the New Atheists (although he hates such labels).