I have listed numerous lies the man has told in one short article. Just because you keep twisting his words to alter their meanings doesn’t make them true.
And using terms like “shitforbrains” shows the level of desperation you have sunk to. Unable to come up with ANY rational argument, you resort to name-calling, and nothing else.
Thank god I’m not you.
I’m a dowser. I can also bend spoons. You just have to look away. For a little while. :rolleyes:
And I say: There are underground rivers ALL OVER the place.
AND
It takes a dowser to find one.
So there.
Lekatt, meet Peter Morris. Peter, meet Leroy. You two should have a fabulous and spiritual time together.
Oh, what the hell.
As a bonus, from the same cite on the ability of Dowsers to find water in pipes:
There’s one example. You want more?
Try these:
This site, while detailing what dowsers can locate, puts “Flowing Water” at the top of the list.
Primary water doesn’t come from rainwater. It is created down in our Mom’s [i.e. “Mother Earth”] belly as a by-product of various chemical reactions. Then it is forced under great pressure towards the surface of the Earth, but most of the time it never gets there. Instead it comes up through a neck which dowsers in the U.S. call a dome, or a blind spring in Britain. When it reaches an impermeable layer of rock or clay the water goes out as veins at different depths. From above, this dome might look like a spider with an odd number of legs coming out of it." (This fellow was also taught how to dowse by his mother, using the water pipes in their home.)
Is that enough? I’ve got more where that came from. All I did was enter “Dowsing underground river” into Google and BAM. More than 800 hits. Is that enough evidence that at least a significant number of dowsers believe that underground rivers are a fairly common phenomena?
Okay, to recap:
Many dowsers claim that there are rivers running underneath most land.
Most dowsers claim to be able to find water running through pipes just as easily as water in an underground river.
Geologists tell us that underground rivers are an unusual phenomena that are usually only found in mountainous or volcanic terrain.
James Randi, testing under scientific conditions, found that dowsers cannot reliably detect water running through pipes.
So far, nothing you’ve accused Randi of has withstood even cursory examination. Do you have any further complaints, or are you done being schooled?
Miller, you beat me to it. As I was finding copius references to dowsing/underground rivers by use of google, I got sidetracked. So I will quote only from Kenneth Roberts, in his 1953 book The Seventh Sense, page 6, unfortunately not available in Internet form as far as I know:
(italics in the original)
Some clarifications, as I see them:
“Groundwater” does NOT equal “underground river”.
There is, indeed, usable water at some depth or other under nearly every bit of ground out there. Locally, one can drill, in some cases, as shallowly as 20 feet and hit drinkable water (though they usually go down past that to help assure cleanliness.)
Most groundwater, however, either does not “flow” or flows relatively slowly.
For example, here in town (a small city overlooking Cook Inlet) waterwells can be drilled as shallowly as 30 feet to get potable water, yet the bluff overlooking the beach is between 50 and 60 feet high.
Water does indeed ooze out of the exposed bluff wall, but it doesn’t “flow”- it could hardly be called a trickle, lt alone a “river”.
Rapidly-flowing underground water tends to create sinkholes, since the water tends to carry away soil. A ‘river’ also assumes there’s some place for the water to go to- an undergound cavern which eventually empties into an aboveground river or lake, for example. (Obviously that assumes changes in elevation between the two.)
Basically, groundwater is nearly everywhere, while underground rivers are pretty rare and subject to unique geological formations.
I can’t speak for the Lower 48, but up here, with very few exeptions, one could blindfold a stoned monkey, spin him around a dozen times, and drill wherever he happened to throw up, and you’d hit potable water between 30 and 90 feet down. Guaranteed.
Any half-assed jerk with a pointy stick could pass themselves off as a dowser and have nearly a 100% sucess rate- this, obviously, however does NOT mean that dowsing is an authentic skill, or that said dowser-jerk found the Fabled Underground River. I strongly suspect that the majority of the States would provide similar results.
Pete- you’re picking apart a bit where Randi stated essentially what I just explained, as a mild, offfhand remark, and extrapolating that into a huge web of lies and deceit somehow.
Just to humour me a bit, perhaps you could catalogue a few of these additional “lies” or fraudulent claims, other than his supposed disbelief in “underground rivers”.
Let’s see, you’ve made several false and misleading attacks on Randi. You’ve been called on all of them Your arguements have fallen to tatters, and you claim that Princhester is lacking rational arguements?
You’re in your own little world, and even there nobody beleives you.
<Looks at Miller’s excellent work>
Does your foot taste good Peter?
I typed all this, then couldn’t get onto the boards, and in the meantime others have done my work for me. But anyhow:
I did my homework.
Check out this and this and this and this.
Seem to be a hell of a lot of claims out there that dowsers find underground rivers. None of them say precisely the words “underground rivers are all over the place” but given the frequency with which dowsers claim to find them, they must think that such rivers are common. Indeed, in the Australian Dowsing test page (to which you used to be fond of referring till it became clear that it didn’t support anything you said) it is reported that two dowsers claimed to have found underground rivers (in different places) in a single non-descript patch of land. What an amazing day the dowsers had, finding two (of what you say they regard as) rare things in one day in one area?
You attempted to list “numerous lies”. At least two posters, myself included, pointed out what a load of crap your alleged lies were. One of which even you had earlier admitted Randi never said, but then you rather bizarrely brought it up again.
You have never responded rationally in that respect, point by point, to explain why our complete debunking of your alleged lies is wrong. You just keep repeating that Randi is a liar and a fraud.
It is precisely because you just keep repeating the same old crap, (even crap you have earlier admitted is crap) that you are a shitforbrains.
Explain to me how you can call Randi a liar on the basis of a particular comment, then admit that Randi never made that comment, then later again accuse Randi of being a liar on the basis of the same comment that you have admited Randi never said, without you objectively fitting the criteria of a shitforbrains?
Your pretence that it is me that is not able to come up with rational arguments is utterly transparent. Can I remind you that this is the pit. I started this thread to give you a much deserved roasting regarding certain behaviours of yours in the CCC thread. I did not start it to provide a forum for debate regarding Randi. You were the one who chose to continue the Randi debate here.
Meanwhile, Irishman started a specific thread in GD so we could continue to have a civil, rational debate with you regarding Randi. He, I and several others have put rational, clear points forward in that thread, but you have never even put in an appearance, let alone made any rational response. Why have you stayed away? Who knows, but an epithet involving the words “heat” and “kitchen” do come to mind.
So don’t give me any shit about me being the one who has run out of rational arguments.