Originally Posted by
Tins
I'll assume that you all believe that dogs can't smell cancer, or old wives knew nothing about childbirth, right?
No. Dogs can and do smell changes in biological processes, and it is quite credible that they can smell changes from cancer. Certainly they can smell many infections. And "Old wives" knew a significant amount about childbirth - but when science became involved in the late nineteenth century, infant and mother mortality dropped dramatically - "old wives" were not that knowledgeable about infection control, that only became accepted practice after Pasteur's germ theory was accepted.
Science proves everything, right?
No. Science proves nothing. It works by disproving things. You propose a hypothesis and then seek evidence (data) that could support of disprove it either, by designing an experiment to test the hypothesis or simply collecting and looking at data already available. If there is no data that disproves it becomes an accepted theory, and remains the "accepted science" until data is found that is not consistent with the theory but is more consistent with an alternative hypothesis. In this case we have proposed the hypothesis that water divining works. Both experiments designed to test this, and collected data such as the table I posted above disprove this hypothesis. Individual examples of where it appears to work are consistent with collected data showing that even random drilling is likely to find water.
Talk about closed minds. Even the title of this thread is off. Why do I have to be one thing or the other? Nobody can prove to me that divining works, but, equally, nobody can prove, no shadow of a doubt, that it doesn't.
Nothing can be proved beyond a shadow of doubt. But most of us run our lives, either consciously or unconsciously, on the basis of accepting evidence - if we eat when we are hungry, we stop being hungry and so on. All science is is simply a way of dealing with evidence in a consistent and rigorous manner, and accepting the result.
It's like believing in God ffs. Can you PROVE it one way or the other? I'll bet the answer is NO.
This is an old discussion, and the general consensus is that it is not within the domain of science because if god is omnipotent, how can you conceive of any evidence or experiment that could disprove His existence?
Why put down a belief that is contrary to yours?
A belief that reality is not what evidence shows is harmful, as can clearly be seen by looking at the pandemic in the USA and UK compared to here, where governments (and the population) have largely followed the advice of science (i.e. reality) not beliefs.While belief in water divining is not much more harmful than is belief in a flat earth, both encourage distrust of science and is the sort of thinking that leads to results such as we see in those countries.
Wars revolve around thinking like this, and in fact most wars RELY on thinking like this.
Most wars have little to do with beliefs as such, even if these are used as smokescreens, and decisions about war are rarely supported by evidence.
Live and let live, people. The other person is just as likely to be right as you are.
No - some have real evidence on their side. In almost all cases one side is more likely to right than the other.
For the record, I have seen dowsing "work". Can I prove it? No. Does that make me believe in it absolutely? No. Was what I saw fake? Possibly. I don't know, and neither do you.
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