John edwards live?

Question

Hello everyone! I just got home from a live taping of John Edwards: Cross Country. Let me tell you what happened. I waited in line, no mustery man came up to me and no crew man asked me to fill anything out. I got to the studio about 1PM. By 1:45PM we were seated. At like 2PM John Edwards came on stage. He gave a short death speech then called out some people. I didn't notice anything scam-artsy about him. I think he's the real deal. What do you think?

Answer 1

John Edwards must be happy that there are still so many naive and gullible people out there willing to pay to see his shonky sideshow.

Answer 2

I think that everything that he has done fits exactly into the mold of a cold-reading (or sometimes hot-reading) charlatan. I also think it's much easier for someone to deceive another person into thinking that they have psychic abilities than to actually have them, since psychic abilities have yet to be conclusively demonstrated and since the history of psi is filled with fraud. And when Edward is using the very same cold-reading technique that psychic frauds have always used, and demonstrating no ability that can't be explained by cold reading, why believe it is not cold reading? If it walks like a duck, etc.

Based on this, I think its highly likely that Edward is a lying, immoral fraud. Can I prove it absolutely?  No. But there's no reason to sit on the fence about what's probably going on when ALL the evidence is leaning one way, to an extreme degree.

Answer 3

please not Randi again...some people just wouldnt bother going to Randi, maybe they dont need his money, or want it..or just wouldnt bother with Randi at all, i certainly wouldnt waste my time....Im not into psychics, but i did see a news story recently about John Edwards, some one in australia hired him to contact her dead husband (steve irwin) and they testedJohn Edwards, and compared his claims against a person who just guessed... John Edwards got 95% right, compared to other people who got around 35 to 45 %, .. they put John Edwards in a different room from his clients he was reading for.... he even picked the colour of the sweater the woman was wearing.. they even hooked him up to some machine that was reading him when he was contacting the dead, that gave great results...... did anything happen to you while you were there... id be interested in going to something like that, just to see what goes on, as in entertaining....Im pretty sure Terri Irwin got great results from him, contacting Steve Irwin..

Answer 4

Many skeptics throw around anecdotal stories involving charges of fraud, scams, and other claims of dishonesty while producing no evidence of these allegations. Then they in the same breath deny all of the scientific evidence (there is none according to them) and claim that people's testimony for paranormal claims can not be trusted.

Quite frankly more psychics should be filing defamation of character law suits.

I have no evidence of John Edwards one way or the other so I in the spirit of good science reserve my judgment.

I do know that he has participated with the VERITAS program which suggest to me that at least he believes his abilities are real. Imagine a psychic that wants to cooperate with a scientist to confirm and understand his abilities rather than perform for a magician with no training or education in any field of science that has known prejudices (and admitted dishonesty) against paranormal phenomena and researchers.

Supporting links below.

Psi

Answer 5

I've heard other testimonies from people who went to his shows.  They would sit outside and talk amongst themselves about why they were there, and then somehow John Edwards seemed to pick up on the exact same things.  Almost like they were bugged or something!  Then he would do a taping which lasted several hours, but then was reduced to a 30-min show of his 'greatest hits' from that taping.  How long was your taping?  How long will the resulting show be?  

I've noticed he doesn't seem to call on foreign people very often.  Maybe because they don't have easy-to-guess names like Americans do?  Basically, I think he's a scam artist.  Especially since he's perfectly happy to spend his days charging people to tell them about their dead relatives, but won't submit to a simple test to prove he can do what he claims to without cheating.  Frankly, if your doctor claimed he could heal you but wouldn't show you his credentials or any proof that he could, would you pay him?  Would you trust him?  Why?  Especially if he kept turning down the state medical boards for licensing?  A quick test by this guy http://www.randi.org would establish easily whether or not Edwards is for real.  Since he refuses to take it, we have to assume he's not.

Answer 6

Did he give you a reading?  If not, then perhaps it's because you weren't part of the group that gets scammed.  (Arguably everyone present gets ripped off, but I'm talking about directly.)

I think just because you weren't selected doesn't mean other people haven't been.  It's not possible for him to scam everyone.  And if the scamming were obvious then it wouldn't work, would it?

Check out all of the critical articles at the bottom of his Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward

EDIT: Once again certain people--I won't name any names--display their eagerness to be fooled.  It's no wonder Edward's so successful given how many true believers are so willingly bamboozled.  I bet even Edward himself is puzzled by how they are complicit in his scam.

P.S. Edward was friends with Steve Irwin, so of course he knows personal information about him.  Duh!

Answer 7

I guess the thing to do is..KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!! If you don't talk to ANYONE...then how could he find out anything about you?That way..you'll have a better chance of knowing if it's real or not...if he calls on you. This is the thing...to have someone who wants to talk to you bad enough to make him call on you. EVERYBODY  would have to keep from talking though. I would think that he would tell everybody to do this..to help him prove that he isn't cheating.

   I'm sick of hearing about Randi too. He 's a magician. Even if you really were a true psychic..he could do his "magic" and make it look like you  weren't. Who could trust HIM?? I sure wouldn't.

Answer 8

I can't tell if he is a fake or the real thing, I do know that you should not make money on that sort of thing.  Anyone who wants to get paid for a reading is most likely a scammer.

Answer 9

They wouldnt be called confidence men if they were obvious. He uses a technique called cold-reading. If he wasn't convincing, he would not be where he is today. Mostly the people who dont believe him are the people who understand how he does his tricks.

Look up some of the tactics of cold-reading online and you will see all the tricks you saw John Edwards doing.

They start out with "Shot Gunning", all mediums who speak to groups use this to feel out the audience.

Trust me on this one, nothing he says is coming from the land of the dead.