since you mention it, you are the person I talked about here :
http://www.proverandiwrong.net/pre%20application.aspx
And since you suggested it, you deserve it. Go buy yourself a nice new boat.
Yes indeed.
And do you know why? 
The evidence is that he is an accomplished magician, lecturer, author, runs a succcessful Foundation and website.
You’re obviously obsessively jealous of him.
Actually this shows you are really sad. :rolleyes:
Randi’s claim is:
94 percent of the Earth’s surface has water within drillable distance
Your ludicrous ‘evidence’ is that he said:
94% of the Earth’s surface has water.
I could tear the rest of your rubbish posting to shreds, but I have better things to do. 
I’ve no idea on the reality of the 94% number, but the fact that he’s offering a million dollars to dowsers (or anyone to prove something paranormal or within “pseudoscience”) fairly well proves that he is daring dowsers, and that they haven’t won.
But whether he is a lying ass or not is rather irrelevant to your goal. And personally I don’t care one way or the other.
The problem is, if you’re trying to prove that dowsing works then, simply, that’s already been disproven.
And if you’re trying to prove that there’s underwater rivers that aren’t in caves, moving through porous materials, or that 94% isn’t realistic a number, then I doubt that you’re going to come up with a definition of any of these terms that both of you will agree upon. It’s a simple battle of semantics. “If you dig deep enough, there is water under 94% of land” leaves it open to dig to China, even. While as requiring that the well be able to sustain all crops for five miles in either direction, plus keep a zoo fed, or else it’s a “dry spot” is similarly unrealistic. But either way all you will conclude is that it depends on what definition you feel like using–and you’ll never see a jot of money since the challenge isn’t to prove that Randi uses poor, misleading, or wrong examples. It’s to come up with a test for something that he believes is unprovable.
Coming up with a very restrictive definition of “wet ground” doesn’t make dry ground provable. Dry ground is proven, the only question being how much of it there is.
samclem, he made exactly this claim in the previous thread. I immediately quoted him the passage from Randi in which Randi says that “real underground streams can occour.” Peter continues to claim that Randi says there are no underground rivers.
Is this what you mean when you say that he’s sincere? Because the necessary delusion would have to be a grand delusion that prevents him from seeing the words that he quotes.
I guess it’s possible, and to be honest, “liar” is not that much more plausible an explanation: it’s such a foolish lie, one that your average five year old would realize would be ineffective. Maybe I just don’t understand delusions well enough to recognize one when I see it.
I am interested in the idea that maybe he suffers from a linguistic abnormality; maybe there’s something going on in his language processing centers of his brain that mixes up modifiers. Of course this is pulled-out-of-my-butt speculation, but it could almost be something akin to dyslexia, some sort of specific learning disorder. It would account for a lot of his errors.
Daniel
Daniel
no, because many of his stories are sheer fiction, like the one quoted.
how do you know they haven’t succeeded? Randi lies about the tests he conducts.
This is pointless. Peter Morris reminds me of an old roommate I had who would hang onto the most ridiculous arguments for god knows what reason and fight passionately, tooth and nail to prove he was right. I once casually mentioned to him that chrome on cars has gone in and out of style over the years and he literally turned red in the face and barked for hours that chrome has always and will always be in style on cars. When he fervently argued that chrome on the outside of a car was just as functional as a rear-view mirror I almost punched him.
That was 3 years ago this month. I am still friends with that guy but I told him that night that we were getting seperate apartments and I have not argued with him since about anything. It is completely fruitless, just like arguing with Peter Morris.
I have a feeling I’m going to regret this, but I give to you Lost River Caverns, in Hellertown, PA.
There’s also (sorry, no site) a river that runs through Lynchburg, TN, which, after it flows under the Jack Daniels distillery, where it used to run the water wheel, disappears under a rock formation and cannot be tracked thereafter.
Not saying this proves anything, just saying.
I can show several places where Randi says that.
The fact that he may have said something different occasionally doesn’t change that.
Actually, I am relatively certain that Mr. Morris believes in Dowsing. The whole wet/dry, underground rivers that aren’t in caves thing is similar to the holocaust denier/moon landings conspiracist method of ignoring the whole “Multiple, unrelated, and impartial data sources all come to the same conclusion”-thing, and instead focussing on one particular data point or study that is indefinable, and making the shakiness of this one item (out of all the other items of proof) become a proof that the whole thing doesn’t exist.
Peter,
Why do you think that drilling and consulting surveys are equivalent methods of determining the location of water?
Cite. I meant no cite.
Thread over, you lose.
Peter Morris is ignoring the FACT that Mr. Randi acknowledges the existence of such places.
Unless the word “that” should be in quotes, I don’t believe you. But please, prove me wrong. Show me several places (at least three) where Randi says, “there are NO underground rivers.”
I’m not interested in seeing other quotes, where you’ve misunderstood modifiers (e.g., where he’s said that the underground river theory that dowsers espouse is false). Show me several places where he said, “there are NO underground rivers,” without qualifying modifiers.
Or shut up.
Daniel
… Well, i’m convinced you’re an idiot.
“Look, he says this here!”
“He says something else here, though.”
“Who cares what he says?!”
FWIW, no one in this thread or the other one disputes the existence of water flowing underground. Hell, The Talking Heads proved it already.
But, you, are ignoring the FACT that Randi has **denied ** the existence of such places far more often.
Shoulda pasted this, for those unwilling to click. Oddly preternatural.
*Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.
*
SPOOKY.
Cite?
Daniel
Bump.