Divining rods, oy vey!

[John Coloccia]

John that video is down right creepy. I think you should get on board with Chris Angel and start a new tv series. He could levitate and you could dose for kitty's. Come up with a catchy name "Cat freak" or "devine mind" I think you'd be rich.

I reconfigured it ealier tonight to dowse for goldfish but it didn't work. It kept leading me back to the bathroom. All that water must have been interfering with the signal.

On a serious note: the only reason I bother to take a second out of my day for this stuff, other than the mildly light hearted comedic value, is that there are crooks out there selling these sorts of services and devices, ripping people off. That makes me very angry. I do believe that in many cases people can subconsciously pick up on subtle clues. I swear that I was not trying to manipulate the rods at all. I was merely thinking of the rods moving. That was sufficient for a strong effect, even with no practice. That, to me, is fascinating. There's plenty left to learn, but not at a cost of defrauding people. I would be happy if they would simply admit that the rods are a tool for tapping into your own sensitive perceptions of your environment, maybe, and not mystical hocus pocus.

[John Coloccia]

John, were any cats harmed in the production of this video?

Marvin twisted his left-front ankle when he jumped off the roof of the kitty condo. He's an old cat and should know better, but he's very stubborn and still insists on doing all his own stunts.

[Bob Turkovich]

It's OK as I are an engineer and was able to quickly reconfigure it for feline detection.

Wow!!! "Engineer speak" in a thread about divining rods! Go figure.....

BTW - anyone else think John (in the video) looks like a young Norm Abrams? Were those safety glasses?

[Hilel Salomon]

Well, I graduated the U. of Penn as a physicist, got a Ph.D. in history, and consider myself a skeptic. But I also allow for the unknown. In other words I apply skepticism to my own skepticism. Many of the most brilliant scientists were and are very religious people and some of them are mystics as well. Read the experiments on studies of the Paranormal and you might reconsider the concept of ghosts. My guess is that the mind can do incredible things. Wordy introduction to the fact that most of the well diggers in my area of VA use dowsing rods. A few of them fail miserably and are forced to make multiple digs. Some of them stake their businesses on their success ratio and do not charge for failed digs. I have never witnessed attempts to find water lines, but I certainly have witnessed their attempts to find the proper source for a well, and their success rate is absolutely remarkable. The idea that science will always give us an exact answer is, IMO , unreliable. Too many controversies remain controversies despite decades of research and experimentation. Don't get me wrong. If and when we can come up with a scientific method for digging a well, I'll opt for that in a country minute. Until that time, I won't reject dowsing.

[Dan Hintz]

A few of them fail miserably and are forced to make multiple digs. Some of them stake their businesses on their success ratio and do not charge for failed digs.

If it's such a reliable method, they should all stake their business on it, and you should never be charged for failed digs.

I have never witnessed attempts to find water lines, but I certainly have witnessed their attempts to find the proper source for a well, and their success rate is absolutely remarkable.

Based upon what factors? If I cover an olympic pool with sod and go hunting for water, I'll pretty much have a 100% success rate drilling wherever I walk. Does that make the method I use to find water magic or foolproof? Certainly not. But the same thing holds true if they're drilling in an area that is widely populated with pockets/caverns of water... I could drill almost anywhere an have a good chance of hitting a good spot on the first hit... my chances of hitting increase significantly on the second attempt, and so on. Again, the only part of my method that works is perseverance, not some unknown, unmeasurable quantity.

[Greg Peterson]

Many of the most brilliant scientists were and are very religious people and some of them are mystics as well.

And many are not. This fact is irrelevant.

I have never witnessed attempts to find water lines, but I certainly have witnessed their attempts to find the proper source for a well, and their success rate is absolutely remarkable.

I am not challenging your personal observations. But isn't also possible that water existed where they did not sense any water?

The idea that science will always give us an exact answer is, IMO , unreliable. Too many controversies remain controversies despite decades of research and experimentation.

Many of the scientific controversies in the public domain these days can be traced to people or organizations that have a clear ideology or a vested interest in creating a debate where none existed. It's one thing for those within the scientific community to have a debate or challenge a theory. That's what advances our understanding of the world. It's another matter for a public personality, a layman, to parade as some kind of an expert, trumpeting the minorities dissenting opinion as evidence of corruption or conspiracy.

I will not abandon the principles that delivered us our standard of living simply because those same principles fail to validate an article of my faith. YMMV.

[Neal Clayton]

Maybe it's the environment, the person, and the rods, so isolating it to one thing isn't going to prove that it works or doesn't work.

that's not the point. haven't read the whole thread, since i assume most of it is hocus pocus or people laughing at hocus pocus, but here's the point....

until you can prove something to be true, it is assumed to be false.

you don't start with the assumption of a random statement or claim being factual. there is no evidence that people with sticks in their hand can reliably find water. therefore it isn't true. if they could point to any sort of verifiable method by which this works, that could be tested and observed, they could claim a basis in fact. but since there is no method, it's voodoo by default.

speaking of voodoo, the voodoo priests and priestesses in new orleans sacrificed chickens before the first game the year the saints won the super bowl.........

but then again they sacrifice those chickens every year and prior to that year the saints had lost more than they won about 90% of the time.

Science hasn't proven that they do not work.

yes, it has. until something is proven to have a basis in demonstrable fact, it doesn't work! absence of fact = fiction

if everyone had this attitude we would still be wandering around wearing animal skins and making fire by rubbing sticks together.

animal skins work. rubbing sticks together also works. we can demonstrate these things with 100% accuracy. animal skins trap body heat. rubbing sticks causes friction which results in heat.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

It reminds me of the way some atheists are just as reverential, evangelical and often more militantly intolerant of opposing views than the Bible-thumpingest Baptist they claim to be above.

As Donald Rumsfeld once famously said, "Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence."

Just because I have never caught a fish in Crater Lake doesn't prove there are no fish in Crater Lake.

I think to truly approach a question "scientifically," the first thing you have to do is say, "I'll admit every possibility." Closed-mindedness is very un-scientific, IMHO. It stinks of prejudice, bias and subjectivity.

donald rumsfeld is a politician and thus a professional liar. that's pretty much the worst example ever.

that'd be like obama saying he's japanese and by virtue of him being a famous politican, giving that statement an automatic basis in reality.

you could start with the means of approaching something scientifically by re-reading the scientific method guidelines that they taught us all in the first year of high school, and disregarding those who have an ulterior motive to discredit science for personal or political gain. it still applies (believe it or not)!

[Chris Kennedy]

yes, it has. until something is proven to have a basis in demonstrable fact, it doesn't work! absence of fact = fiction

Absence of proof does not make something false. All absence of proof states is that it has not been proven to be true. If this were the case, any theory is false prior to its proof that it is true. Take, for example, special relativity. Special relativity was true long before Einstein was born, let alone developed the theory, let alone it being verified. It didn't suddenly become true.

Proving that something is false is just as much work as proving something is true. You don't get either one by default.

Cheers,

Chris

[Neal Clayton]

yeah, but the problem is you're wrong.

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

walking around with sticks in your hand claiming to find water fails at #2. there is no rational explanation for how two sticks can find water. it fails again at #3. absent a possible explanation as mentioned in #2, there is no testable hypothesis for why two sticks can find water. #4 is moot. there is nothing to test. you cannot skip #2 and #3, jumping straight to #4, and claim that a blind hog finding an acre is proof, nor can you say that lack of proof makes for an equivalent opinion. we're not talking about opinion, we're talking about fact. "I like cheese on my burger" is an opinion. "I find water with sticks in my hand" is not.


this is the way the factual, real world works. give me a reason why two sticks can find water, and we can start over. the reasons will also have to be provable, mind you. "I saw a guy do it" or "I heard about a guy who met a guy who said a guy can do it" is not a valid response. you have to start by telling us WHY it works.

i realize that people have taken and run with what started as a political argument to justify believing in whatever they believe in. i also realize that people who do not subscribe to such pseudo beliefs often don't point out to people who do that they are in fact wrong out of politeness.

but that doesn't change the fact that the real world operates under the rule that if you can't tell us WHY something works and the WHY is provable, you are wrong.

[John Keeton]

Guys, I think all the ideas, thoughts, opinions and attempts to convince on both sides have run their course. The exchange has been informative, but it is time to put this puppy to bed before it goes south.

Thanks!