What lie? My lie that you didn’t mention the comment you didn’t mention? I’m confused.
The whole of Randi’s relevant quote is:
So he starts with what dowsers claim concerning underground rivers. He then contradict that claim by saying there are no underground rivers, although he then appropriately qualifies that by reference to caves and seepage.
Now let’s have that Missouri quote again:
So they start with what dowsers claim concerning (amongst other things) underground rivers. They then contradict that claim by saying that actually groundwater seeps through soil (ie not in underground rivers).
The Missouri DNR don’t even see fit to qualify their answer by saying that there are some underground rivers albeit not as dowsers suggest. They just flat out say that actually groundwater is not in veins, domes or underground rivers. No qualifications.
But strangely, Randi’s wrong but you don’t suggest the Missouri DNR’s wrong.
Surely a fierce email in Missouri DNR’s direction calling them frauds and liars and telling them they have an insufficient grasp of the relevant facts to be fit to govern is in order, Peter?
The key point is that you are determined to strip Randi’s comment about underground rivers being fictional of all context. You ignore the fact it was preceded by a statement about what dowsers believe. You ignore the fact that Randi qualifies by reference to caves. You ignore the fact that on other occasions Randi has made what he means more clear by saying “the notion of underground rivers that dowsers maintain etc”. You just want to find a sentence that stripped of all context and qualification you can describe as wrong.
Of course a bare sentence that “underground rivers are fictional” is wrong. Any sane person knows that you read things in context. Do you actually, in any other context but Randi, take each sentence you hear or read in total isolation, ignoring nuances about what the speaker or writer is likely to mean going by the topic at hand and other contextual clues?
Are you actually such a crashingly tedious and pedantic bore that in a discussion about Scotland you would call a speaker a liar if he said “Ben Nevis is the highest mountain” because Everest is higher? Would you tell him that his “direct statement and unambiguous statement” was that Ben Nevis was the highest mountain, and that he should stop trying to make excuses?
Perhaps you would. Perhaps it wouldn’t surprise me if you did.
OK, so when you say "my first post, you didn’t mean your first post. Gotcha.
Your frothing Peter. I made the proper qualifications regarding caves. Karst is hardly more than a cave river than hasn’t been cut yet (ask a geologist!). I didn’t list sshifting of water in aquifers either, but I really didn’t feel like typing a whole paragraph of qualifications.
And I wasn’t quoting Randi.
Pete, you might want to wipe off the froth and spittle. Seriously, you are off the deep end here. Those posts were well after your first post and there’s really nothing that wrong with what I said. In fact you have to truncate my line in a desperate effort to make me look bad. Typical of your out-of-context quoting.
It’s not an easy out. Why shouldn’t skeptics request a controlled demonstration of a power. Unless you can give us a good reason why a paranormal effect can’t be demonstrated under controlled conditions.
Or is it just because it’s Randi ? In that case do we need to establish a new prize ?
What if the X prize people put up a million for proof of Dowsing, Remote Viewing, Telepathy, or Telekinesis ? Would that be OK ? Or would you immediately distrust them ?
What if the parapsychology department at Edinburgh University (a highly respected dept. from what I hear) did the same ?
What if I, SpaceDog, offered the money ?
Is it that you don’t believe the Randi challenge is fair ? Or you don’t believe any skepticly organised challenge is fair ?
Oh come on. Yes there’s been a bit of rushing to defend Randi here and there but it’s not ‘hypnotic control’ it’s people arguing what they believe. In any case it doesn’t matter because Randi could be wrong about dry spots, underground rivers, whatever. I don’t really care, the fact that he can make mistakes in no way invalidates the challenge.
People taking the JREF challenge agree with the JREF on the rules and what constitutes a win – they do this fully confident of walking away with the million. They never do !
If you can show where you (or someone else) has approached the JREF and said ‘I have this paranormal ability where I can do X’ and they’ve turned round and said ‘Well we’re not going to test you for it’ then do so and we can talk about it.
The key point is that you cannopt bear the thought of Randi being wrong. You feel compelled to excuse him any damn way you can. Desperately you search for alternative meanings other than the obvious one. Before you came up with your twisted theories, two Randi fans had already posted on the subject. They interpreted the words as meaning “underground rivers are fictional”
You saw no reason to oppose such meaning then, when it was the Randi fans saying it.
Only after I posted information showing that Randi’s error, only then did you try to see what else it might mean.
And the plain fact is that the only people to agree with you are desperate Randi fanatics. Everyone else but you looking at that sentence sees the same meaning as supplied by Miskatonic and Priceguy : underground rivers are fictional.
I posted it to the geologists, asked what they thought the sentence meant. They all thought it meant underground rivers are fictional. On invitation to be as generous to Randi as possible, to see any plausible meaning to those words that would make them correct, the geologists were unable to find one. And this comes from the one person you claim agreed with Randi.
Also, if you look at Randi’s other writings, he makes the same statement without any ambiguity at all. He says DIRECTLY that there are no underground streams AT ALL. He claims flatly that underground water ONLY flows in caves.
** “There are no streams of water flowing underground,” he said. “There are large deposits of water that may seep through sandstone and move at the rate of 200 feet per year. There is no naturally flowing water underground except in caves. These people have delusions about underground rivers.” **
So there’s the evidence:
Randi has on other occasions flatly denied the existence of underground rivers. No other interpretation is possible.
several Randi fans quoted randi as saying “underground rivers are fictional” and used that fact to attack dowsers claims.
Even Princhester saw fit to question that interpretation only AFTER I had proved underground rivers are a reality.
Geologists looking at Randi’s essay though he was saying “underground rivers are fictional”
Here we see Princhester’s favourite debating tactic.
First, he invents a crazy hypothetical situation.
Then he speculates upon what I WOULD say in such a situation.
Oooooh look, he cries, this thing I have made up that Peter would say is so silly. The things he says about Randi must be equally silly. I can’t quite find what’s wrong with them, but I don’t need to. Speculating about what he would say is just as good.
What does that mean? That every word he says is “bollock?” (I’ve never heard of just talking a single bollock, but whatever floats your boat.) Or that he always lies? Does that mean that every word is a lie? Or that only most of what he says is a lie?
Ah, it doesn’t matter. But any standard, your assertion was patently false.
That
makes
you
a
LIAR.
And I’m willing to bet you’re too yellow to admit it without weaselling.
Where you’ve “proven” anything? I’ve read through this whole topic from front to back, and I’ve yet to see any actual proof or reliable cites come from you. Maybe I missed them – if I did, please correct me. (It’s a big thread!) But what are the qualifications of your geologist? Is he with a university? What degrees does he hold, and from where? How much time has he had in the field, and what is his background? Without this information, you’re just posting what “some guy” said.
When you read something like that coming from an organization that exists purely to study what’s under the ground, it carries a lot of credibility and it flies in the face of what you’re saying. Forget Randi. Why should I believe your anonymous geologist over the USGS? Do you have more than one geologist that agrees, and if your geologists are right, why the heck aren’t they trying to set the USGS straight?
What did I say about my first post? I don’t recall metioning it. YOU were the one that posted a link to my first post.
And the fact is, you got it wrong.
yeah, right.
As usual, you have been proved a liar. You claimed that UNDERGROUND RIVERS DONT EXIST. You then tried to deny that anyone had said that.
However you twist it, you got the facts wrong, then lied about saying what you said. You spew out hate because I expose your dishonbesty, but you have no reason logic or honesty.
You are even more of a joke than Princhester is, and that’s saying something.
Randi has ocasionally overstated his point: while underground rivers aren’t fictional, the underground rivers described by many dowsers are fictional. Underground rivers themselves are just extremely rare.
Some people have misunderstood this point, and have misparaphrased Randi.
Does anyone disagree with either of these points?
Daniel
** “There are no streams of water flowing underground … There is no naturally flowing water underground except in caves. These people have delusions about underground rivers.” **
2 ) And underground rivers are not at all rare. They are extremely common.
Peter, until you can explain why any of us should disbelieve the information provided by the USGS in ElectricZ’s post (#229, above), you are in no position to keep arguing. Your position has no support from any reputable source, at least none that you’ve been able to cite. Asserting the same falsehoods over and over and over and over and over and over and over again doesn’t make them any more true. They’re still false.
“Often” imlies to me that he’s denied that, I dunno, often. Can you give me four other cites where he’s denied that, instead of the same cite you’ve given repeatedly?
If you’ve given a cite to this effect, I’ve missed it. Please don’t cite a conversation you had with someone on a messageboard: please give a link to a website devoted to geology or hydrogeology.
Here is one of those denials from Randi, straight from his book “Flim-Flam”, watch how Randi denies and denies when he has adequete space to cover all the scientific ground [/sarcasm]
So, here we have Randi ‘denying’ undeground rivers by saying they exist. By comparison we have Peter Morris saying undeground rivers are extremely common. Who is being deceptive here? It isn’t Randi.
For the record, what makes a river a river and a stream a stream? I think of a river in think of some serious width, large enough to make it a national or state border and I can’t say many of the underground ‘river’ pics I’ve seen seem wide enough
Peter, do you believe that, in Randi’s quote that Miskatonic cited, he was literally and completely correct? If he phrased his dispute with dowsers exactly like this every time he brought it up, would you have a problem with him?