Product Details

From School Library Journal
YA Are there people chosen by God to heal bodily ailments through the power of prayer alone? Randi's answer is ``maybe,'' but on the basis of his three-year investigation into faith heal ers, he hasn't found any evidence of it and suggests it may be nothing more than a religious con game. The author, a professional magician, has made it a sideline to expose fraud and miscon ceptions in the realm of the paranormal. Leading evangelists such as Oral Rob erts, Peter Popoff, W. V. Grant, Pat Robertson, and others are all shown to use tactics that are at best misleading, to guide the faithful into believing that they have been supernaturally cured by prayer alone. At worst, some of these men are shown to be cynical frauds preying on the desperation of the seri ously ill. The book is not tightly writ ten, but it can be read for enlighten ment. Karl Penny, Houston Pub . Lib .
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Fraud, Faith, and the Debunker
Overall, this is an excellent book about the techniques and history of faith healers. These frauds are not solely limited to big-tent, revival healers, but also for the Catholic church, Lourdes, and New-Age psychics. Randi, in addition to his associates, disguises himself and spends countless hours infiltrating the operations of faith healers.

This is not an academic treatise, and Randi is not a professional writer, so the text does wander into tangential stories, but overall, it stays focused on the horribly deceptive and deeply offensive methods used by frauds to give false impressions of healings.

Even more revealing than the facts of the frauds are the responses of the faith healers and their followers to Randi's questions. The healers bend facts every which way and refuse to provide any evidence for their claims. They will boldly assert that they want everyone to challenge their healings, but when Randi does so, they run and hide. Believers who are placed in wheelchairs at the beginning of the service by the evangelist's team and later receive a miracle healing by being able to walk (even though they could the whole time), will insist that they were healed.

Even worse, evangelists like Pat Robertson will "heal" an old man on national television and make him get out of his wheelchair for a few, feeble steps to prove the healing. But he never mentions that the "healed" man dies 10 days later of the very disease for which he was "healed".

These frauds blame the sick when a "healing" does not stick. They insist that there must be some secret sin or lack of faith that caused the disease to return. By doing this, they condemn the sick to wallow in guilt, self-loathing, and grief, as they give away even more of their few possessions to prove their faith and regain their "healing".

Be warned, this book can really make you angry. When you learn how the healers fleece the sickest and the poorest, you cannot help but become angry. Sick individuals pour their hearts out in letters to these evangelists, who promise to read every singe letter, yet in the end, the money is removed from the envelopes, and the letters are sent to the shredder.

This is a very special book. Randi and friends have dedicated their lives to unmasking these frauds and concentrate their years of research into this book. It is a singular, valuable view of how religion can destroy the lives of believers.

Buy this book; read it; read it again, and then start lending it to everyone you know. The lessons of this book can help future believers and skeptics to identify, avoid, and expose the current frauds among us, such as Benny Hinn.

Superb Expose
This is Randi at his finest. Carefully, he lays out his foundational chapters, showing the basic hows and whys of the scams of faith healing. Then he lavishly devotes each following chapter to the main stars of faith healing - he runs through the gamut of Popoff, Robertson, Roberts, and so many more. In each chapter, he methodically lays out their claims, the basic format of their services, the evidence that the healer is a fraud, follow-up interviews with their victims, and attempts (almost always ignored) to provide the healer with a forum to provide evidence of their claims.

To my delight and surprise, Randi also devotes space to explaining the methods behind the tricks of the faith healers - something he usually avoids in his other debunking books, rather than cripple members of his magic profession. In this case, however, the tricks used by the faith healers are unique to the faith healing scam and Randi hurts no one but them in revealing their tricks.

The saddest thing about this book is the number of deaths recorded. Time after time, a faith healer demands that a "healed" devotee fling away their crutches, back braces, or other medicinal aids, and run up and down the aisles for the benefit of the TV cameras. The fact that the victim must be hospitalized the next day for a collapsed spine, heart attack, or other debilitating relapse does not apparently bother these men and women at all. Most heartbreaking of all, however, are the people who are convinced that they are healed and will not listen to their doctors who continue to insist that they have cancer, diabetes, or tumors. I know that this aspect of research would have been very hard for anyone, and I respect Randi greatly for having the strength to carry on the interviews and research necessary to produce this important book in the face of such overwhelming pain and heartbreak.

Not bad but could have been better
The book exposed Peter Popoff, Oral Roberts, and others as the fakes they were/are. What I didn't like was the way Randi simply dismisses Earnest Angley as not an outright fraud, but someone who mistakenly thought he has some kind of powers. I know someone who was a Security Guard during one of Angely's shows. Backstage, the people waiting to be "healed" were all there, perfectly healthy and mobile. During the show, these people walk to the stages with canes, crutches, walkers, etc., and are miraculously "healed". Angely makes anyone working backstage sign an agreement never to reveal what they see backstage. Had Randi investigated this further, he could have had a scandal that would have dwarfed Popoff. So for that, only 3 stars. Oh, and I do believe there are genuine cases of faith healing. Kathryn Kuhlman has at least one documented case that I know of. In 1925 Orr lost the sight in one eye from a steel mill accident, when a piece of molten metal the size of a grain of wheat went into his eye. The injury left a permanent scar on his eyeball (Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry Claim Case #27413). Twenty-two years later on May 4th, 1947, Orr and his wife attended a service led by Kuhlman. Long story short, the scar had apparently "melted" away! Doctors who attended Orr were amazed. They said it would have been more likely for the entire eyeball to dissolve that just the tough scar tissue. This case is well documented and is a genuine miracle. Of course, Randi would dismiss such a case, since it didn't happen right in front of him.

But at any rate, buy the book for someone who wants to send money to a Televangelist (excluding Day of Discovery and a handful of shows that aren't simply con games). In fact, it should be read by everyone. And yes, I am a Christian.