There are those who generally don’t like the hard work it takes to fill in those ruts, so they construct huge works of fiction. Intricate and fantastic tapestries to lay over the ugly pitted truth of reality. The holes we should be exploring and working hard to fill are instead covered with a thin and beautiful, albeit fragile veneer. Looking out at the perfectly sculpted and smooth landscape, they’re content to dust off their hands and commend themselves on a job well done. But the holes are still there, obscured and treacherous. But because it looks good, they are perfectly happy to hand this botched and hazardous mess off to their kids.

I know… I, like many of you have broken through the beautiful lie, to lay dazed for a time, on the uneven ground below. It’s terrifying, exciting and far more interesting than anything I was told to accept as “true” up there.

There’s a funny idiom that comes to mind – ‘it’s always in the last place you look.’ – It’s funny to me because, once you found something why would you keep looking, right? But in this case it’s a double edged sword. Because of the sheer amount of misinformation out there, what if all you found was a fabrication or a lie? Can you imagine the tragedy of living that life thinking you no longer had to seek truth because the veneer explained it all? Progress and enlightenment would come to a standstill, leaving us all stagnant, boring, and laughing inanely at Jersey Shore.

There is a symbol in mathematics as well as written language. It’s simple, concise, inspiring, limitless and humble; It’s the perfect placeholder for truth but it isn’t used nearly enough in this age of information and answers.

http://agnosticthinking.blogspot.com/2010/07/andy-rooney-prayer-e-mail-is-hoax.html

(original email is below my response)

And now my response: (Please forward this to everyone you know as well!)

As an atheist, I’m not offended by people praying. I’m offended by loud, unwavering, misinformed ignorance. Christians are hardly the “silent” majority. The most extreme christians are often the ones who get the most airtime. There is a christian undercurrent in every aspect of our North American lives. There are entire media networks dedicated to preaching and spreading the “good news”. And there are a lot more christian churches than any other religion represented in North America.

But North America was founded by immigrants, and continues to receive an influx of various cultures and religions from around the world. It’s extraordinarily ignorant for North American christians to presume that all these people, with drastically different backgrounds and cultures, are prepared to “accept” the majority around them and let their distinctiveness melt away into the pot of christian mediocrity. Why should the non-christians sit idle to humour the christians while they make entire stadiums and sports networks pray to a god that not everyone holds dear.

Prayer should be a silent affirmation of faith and should be kept between the believer and their deity of choice. To shout, caterwaul and carry on in public, about the injustice they’ve suffered because a few people around them don’t share their beliefs, is objectionable.

Furthermore, a christian’s right to practice their religion is not being taken away. They have the freedom to shout fire and brimstone sermons and prayers at the top of their lungs at ANY PUBLIC VENUE they want. But they will look crazy, and make those around them uncomfortable, so it’s not about what is illegal, but what is in good taste. What the faithful do in their own places of worship and in the sanctity of their homes is their business (provided nobody gets hurt). But once the faithful are in public, it’s not in the majority’s best interest to segregate the growing portions of non-christian population by proclaiming the christian spiritual opinion to be superior to everyone else’s; if they do, it’s silly to think the loudest christians won’t be challenged, and obtuse to call foul when they are.

I understand that a lot of christians feel threatened by people of differing faith, differing sexual orientation, and differing opinions, but that’s where the word tolerance comes in. If we all spent a little more time considering the other person’s point of view, instead of whining about the hassle of having to turn the other cheek, we might actually learn something, feel a little more at peace with our selves and our surroundings, and be able to function as a better and more compassionate people.

Not everything is US vs. THEM. The world is changing, and diplomacy is becoming more and more important. Christians need to learn to think and adapt, instead of lashing-out for every knee-jerk reaction to change. Ignoring the our present situation and ‘wishing’ for the sterile 1950′s to make a comeback isn’t going to solve anything. Learning the wisdom and value of the phrase “There is a time and a place for everything…” is a good start.

Can’t we all just get along?

Dave

On 02-14-2011, at 8:47 PM, Pat Lewis wrote:

Subject: YESsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

HEAR HEAR HEAR!!!
Pray if you want to!

CBS and Katie Couric et al must be in a panic and rushing to reassure the White House that this is not network policy.

Folks, this is the year that we RE-TAKE AMERICA & CANADA
********* Get  Ready *********

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Keep this going around the globe.
Read it and forward every time you receive it…
We can’t give up on this issue.

Andy Rooney and  Prayer
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Andy Rooney says:

I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but I’m not going to sue somebody for singing a Ho-Ho-Ho song in December.
I don’t agree with Darwin , but I didn’t go out and hire a lawyer when my high school teacher taught his theory of evolution.

Life, liberty or your pursuit of happiness will not be endangered in any way because someone says a 30-second prayer before a football game.

So what’s the big deal?

It’s not like somebody is up there reading the entire Book of Acts. They’re just talking to a God they believe in and asking him to grant safety to the players on the field and the fans going home from the game.

But it’s a Christian prayer, some will argue.

Yes, and this is the United States of America , andCanada , countries founded on Christian principles. According to our very own phone book, Christian churches outnumber all others better than 200-to-1.
So what would you expect –
somebody chanting Hare Krishna?

If I went to a football game in Jerusalem ,
I would expect to hear a Jewish prayer.

If I went to a soccer game in Baghdad,
I would expect to hear a Muslim prayer.

If I went to a ping pong match in China ,
I would expect to hear someone pray to Buddha.
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And I wouldn’t be offended. It wouldn’t bother me one bit.

When in Rome ……

But what about the atheists? Is another argument.

What about them?

Nobody is asking them to be baptized.  We’re not going to pass the collection plate. Just humour us for 30 seconds.  If that’s asking too much, bring a Walkman or a pair of ear plugs.  Go to the bathroom.  Visit the concession stand.  Call your lawyer! Or, just exercise your right to leave this country!

Unfortunately, one or two will call their lawyer.
One or two will tell thousands what they can and cannot do. I don’t think a short prayer at a football game is going to shake the world’s foundations.

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights.
Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep.
Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing.
Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.

God, help us.  And if that last sentence offends you, well, just sue me.

The silent majority has been silent too long.  It’s time we tell that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority doesn’t care what they want!

It is time that the majority rules!

It’s time we tell them, “You don’t have to pray; you don’t have to say the Pledge of Allegiance; you don’t have to believe in God or attend services that honor Him.
That is your right, and we will honor your right;
but by golly,
you are no longer going to take our rights away.
We are fighting back, and we WILL WIN!”

God bless us one and all…Especially those who denounce Him, God bless America and Canada , despite all our faults, we are still the greatest nations of all.
God bless our service men who
are fighting to protect our right to pray and worship God.
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Let’s make 2011 the year the silent majority is heard and we put God back as the foundation of our families and institutions. And our military forces come home from all the wars.

Keep looking up.
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If you agree with this, please pass it on.
If not delete it.

BUT REMEMBER SHOULD YOU DELETE IT,

that’s one reason why this world is in the mess we’re in now.

WE JUST SIT BACK & LET IT HAPPEN!!

I remember when I thought that being a skeptic was a bad thing. Watching the X-Files as a kid, I always thought Scully was a stick in the mud and Mulder was by far the star of the show. Granted, this was just a TV show, but at the time I wondered why Scully couldn’t believe her own stupid eyes! There were space aliens, CHUDS, vampires, teens with super-human speed—the list of extraordinary things goes on and on; yet she always approached every investigation with a grain of salt, and the end of every episode her findings were “inconclusive.” Understatement of the century!

I was a just kid when I watched that. I bought into it hook, line, and sinker. I loved paranormal investigation movies and read all the books of mystery: The Healing Power of Pyramids, Bermuda Triangle, The Search for Atlantis, How to Increase Your ESP, etc. It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me that such things exist. But as I got older I found that no matter how much I exercised my pineal gland, I couldn’t read minds; no matter how many cups of milk I put into my pyramid, I never got yogurt. My reality had become vastly different from my beliefs, and all I had to show for it was a sore forehead and an unlimited supply of sour milk (with or without maggots).

What happened? Why are there so many books and TV shows dedicated to these things if they don’t actually exist? I think I can sum it up in one simple phrase.

Everybody loves a good magic act.

Penn & Teller are awesome for this reason. They give enough of the process away in their stage show to let you know that you’re witnessing a “trick” or some slight of hand, but they still capture the whimsy of the crowd by keeping some of their act a secret. Magic is all about control and deception: if done in an innocent fashion for entertainment purposes, it’s very cool. Unfortunately, with this in mind, it’s not so cool that purveyors of magical thinking know full well what “magic” is all about and have perfected many ways to control and deceive you without your knowledge and/or consent.

I suppose the best general rule to follow in order to make sure you’re not being taken for a ride is to ask questions. If something doesn’t feel right about the line someone is feeding you, just keep asking questions until it makes sense for you. If it doesn’t make sense, you’re probably getting swindled in some way and should probably graciously back away.

Relax….

There are no “100% risk-free” opportunities that only come along once in a lifetime that you can’t live without. A lot of these ‘opportunities’ require you to make split-second decisions regarding your finances. If you feel pressured to make a purchase to hand over your cash or credentials for a service you don’t understand, or don’t remember applying for, then you’re probably about to become a trophy on some con artist’s wall.

Watch out for conversational ‘shotgunning’

Beware of people who talk too fast and don’t listen to the responses to their questions — they’re ‘shotgunning.’ This line of attention control makes it impossible for you to keep up, but they seem to know what they’re talking about by the sheer amount of drivel they’re spilling. Only after their rant, when you have a moment to go over the glut of information and misinformation they’ve fired your way, will you be able to discern what they were talking about and what their arguments were really full of. These conclusions often come too late to act on and usually after you agreed with the person just to shut them up. When confronted with people like this, it’s best to back away slowly. Unless you can fit a word in edgewise and you’re really familiar with their arguments, you stand a good chance of getting owned when attempting to debate or rationalize with them.

So who should you trust?

You, ya turkey! We don’t live in a dictatorship. We should be able to look into anything we want, especially if it’s going to cost us our health or life savings. If something in your life comes into question, look into it. Is there a way for you to test the claims a group, corporation, or product makes? Absolutely! Get creative, ask for a demo, look at public forums, look into suspect industries, see what your peers are saying. Is there consensus, or is there a huge divide between the claims mentioned by the parties in question and the actual people using the products and services of interest? If so, ask questions. And keep asking questions.

It seems that, the only way to make an argument against either side is to throw a straw man arguments at your opponent hoping the opposing side will burst into flames, since both sides refuse to deal with the core arguments of the other. Allow me to illustrate:

Science side: Everything I’ve uncovered shows that we, as a species, are the result of a hugely complex system that evolved over billions of years. And billions of years before that everything was born from a single point of space and energy. A “Big Bang” if you will.

Intelligent Design side: What about all the stuff you haven’t uncovered yet? You can’t prove that the stuff you don’t know didn’t come from God!

Science side: B-but, I didn’t even mention Go…

Intelligent Design side: Let me stop you right there, you are talking about things I have no interest in and therefore reject as being a part of my reality. God created everything, this is what I KNOW!

Science side: How do you know? Can you come up with a single piece of evidence to support this claim? Can you write it down in an equation and predict a real-world outcome, to backup a statement like that? I have no interest in things that can’t be measured, therefore I reject your reality. I don’t yet know what created everything, but I’m going to keep looking.

Intelligent Design side: STOP LOOKING, God exists! I KNOW IT! Be humbled by my knowledge. You can’t measure Love, but it exists, you can’t measure pleasure or pain… or time! The earth is 6,000 years old! And to deny THAT is to pay for, and stamp, a one way ticket to H. E. Double hockey-sticks!

Science side: Why are you yelling at me?  And what’s this business about time? You can’t expect me to belie…

And so on… You get the picture. The arguments are coming from completely separate worlds. People can speak the same language but completely misunderstand each other, because the context of the arguments is so far removed from each side’s experience. One’s life is based on careful observation, record keeping and patience, while the other is based on tradition, obedience and emotion. To both parties, the world they live in is absolutely real, and the other’s is a work of fantasy and delusion. The irony is both sides fear the other is leading our whole species toward certain doom by corrupting the minds of our youth.

Now, I must admit, I do lean toward the science side of the spectrum, but I also remember my days as a born-again christian (seems like a lifetime ago); as much as I hate to admit it, the religion side has a point when viewed from their perspective. Join me there for a moment please, this will all make sense in the end.

Narrator: Meet Joe Christian. He’s an average man, with a good job 2.5 kids and a loving wife. He’s thankful for the level of comfort he enjoys in his life and shows his thanks every Sunday in church with his family. His church community has frequent fund raisers and gives their time and money to charity on a regular basis. Joe’s family and his community is running in a beneficial way for the rest of the people in this world, and as long as he walks the strait and narrow, works hard and only asks questions when necessary, Joe will have a long and happy life.

One day Joe meets Charles at a bus stop. Charles doesn’t go to church, doesn’t have a family and lives very successfully as a scientist at the local chemical plant. Just on a whim Joe strikes up a conversation with Charles by asking him how his walk with the Lord is going. Charles looks back astonished at the friendly yet forward question and answers honestly, by saying “I don’t believe in God, so my walk is going rather smoothly, a little quiet at times but not too bad over all.”

Joe now has mixed feelings, how can Charles say he doesn’t believe in God? To Joe, who never questioned his religiously peppered education or his place in society, and who lived a pretty privileged life, God was responsible for everything he held dear. That’s like saying he doesn’t believe in air, or light. It doesn’t make any rational sense. So, what should he do with this information?

1. He can follow up with Charles and ask him to clarify his statement.
2. He can end the conversation and forget about everything.
3. He can get offended with Charles and try to teach him a thing or two about God, to try to show him a little humility.

No matter what the outcome, the damage is done. Joe’s faith has been shaken with one simple statement from an outsider. Now if Joe starts to investigate further into this matter, he’s going to have way more questions crop up than answers, those questions lead to talk, and then more and more people in his community will be asking questions that the church can’t answer. The church will eventually lose is members, and the members will lose their common bonds and all the good they did in the past will cease. All because, one person asked too many questions.

Thankfully most good creationists aren’t like Joe, in that the fear they have for their immortal souls keeps them from digging too deep into the control mechanisms of the Church, and most of them can go on living somewhat fulfilling lives, never knowing, and never wanting to know a more complex and beautiful world. It’s this fear that keeps them in check, and it’s this fear that makes them respond with anger when challenged.

If a person is going to be receptive to an argument from the side of science, then they will have already dealt with some serious doubt and would be on the fence with their faith already. In a world where faith is seen as a blessing and a strong character trait, there aren’t many who have the courage to make it that far down the rabbit hole of science, without running screaming back into the blissfully ignorant and comforting arms of the church.

For me, looking back, I remember a time when I was certain God was watching over us all, and I took comfort in “knowing” all rhetorical questions had absolute answers. I thought I knew it all. But I see now, that the world is much larger and more intricate than I ever imagined. I finally understand the power of unanswerable questions. Take, for instance, the question “Is there a God?”. The only suitable answer to this question for me now is … stillness. I find a lot of comfort in that reflection.

I think you have to be a certain kind of person, if you’re going to be a scientist. Or a science enthusiast. You need to have a rare and innate curiosity, that most people lack. These precious few are the ones keeping our progress running forward instead of backward. The depths of science shrouds the true intentions of our actions to the people who live very surface lives. This seemingly enigmatic existence scares the hell out of a lot of people and leads to conspiracy and rumor.

What’s the point of debating with group of people who have no intention of listening? I think we need each other; with each debate both sides walk away with a clearer understanding of what they’re fighting for. So, we fight to hone our own skills, but if we intend to win the battle of science vs. ignorance, we need to remember that we aren’t dealing with people who want to learn. Therefore the dance steps need to be different when dealing with these arguments. They attack because they feel you are contradicting everything they believe to be true. You seem like irrational fools when compared to the awesome power of a deity they’ve deluded themselves into seeing everywhere.

I know, nothing irks me more than some some low-brow chuckle-head laughing at my “arrogance” (book smarts), thinking he’s out witted me with a non sequitur God bomb, when in truth he’s only proven his own limitations. It doesn’t make him evil, or crazy. Just limited… held back and misguided, and standing up for what he believes to be right.

A battle of wits is best won in even tones, not loud retorts. It’s not up to us to change their minds or educate them, just plant a single seed of doubt and see if it takes root.

You will notice the NASA ambassador interviewed in the video clip viewed the event as pretty minor and nothing to freak out about. But to read the article on this page associated with the video clip and you would think we’re all about to die! What’s more… The difference in tone between the written article and the video makes me feel that there is more to the story than meets the eye.

As I commented to fox news-All I have to say is, do your math people! When the space shuttle broke up in the atmosphere it was much larger than a bus, and didn’t cause devastating consequences for life on our home planet. The MIR space station was brought down and didn’t interrupt breakfast for anyone… Heck, we get thousands of meteors zipping through our atmosphere every day, some the size of basketballs to volkswagon buses, and none of them have been on the news.

You get one crackpot with a theory based on his own improper interpretation of data and and you’re ready to throw the doomsday switch into overdrive. Ask an astrophysicist if a meteor the size of a bus would ruin anyone’s day on a global scale. Try selling the news with the facts instead of the hype, and maybe we won’t be so freakin’ terrified to look up.

http://www.news3news.com/wpo4.html

http://www.channel7daily.com/

You may notice that every link you click on takes you to the same product page, regardless of whether you want to check the latest hockey scores or the local weather. This is known as a microsite or landing page. It’s a pretty common practice to have ads pointing to such pages so that companies can market their products in a more enticing way than a puny banner ad allows. Most of the time landing pages present clearly branded messaging so you know you have clicked on the correct ad.

In the case of the examples above, the landing pages offer testimonials for products that shouldn’t exist yet and try to convince visitors to click on links to “free trials.” Clicking on these links will result in the actual product page. And then the fun begins.

The site that the faux news article takes you to (http://www.antioxwine.com), actually claims in the fine print on the Terms and Conditions page that the product it is selling may do nothing for you at all (although they have complete faith in it):

“D. We do not warrant or represent that Our Products will provide You with any particular benefits, or that Your results will match those of others who consume Our Products. Individual results will vary from person to person.”

The product page is designed very cleverly and is completely legal. It has an almost hypnotic way of advertising one product while selling visitors another by confusing them with two completely different but similar messages. It talks about Resveratrol and ResVmax, never once claiming that Resveratrol is present in ResVmax. Their actual claim is: “One pill = approx. 1000 glasses of wine,” without actually disclosing the exact ingredient they’re pumping you with at 1000 times a regular dose. There is actually no nutritional information on the site at all.

When buyers place their order they must provide their phone number, mailing address, and e-mail address. The purveyors now have enough information to pummel you with unwanted outreach. Again, in the Terms and Conditions they claim (in legalese) that they will send your information to third-party companies and offer you no opt-out preference. Most likely, they’re compiling a list of gullible people and selling it to the highest bidder to use in shady marketing schemes. If you want a lot more spam, junk mail, and intrusive phone calls, then simply buy this product!

The “free trial” will cost you a paltry $3.95 for shipping and handling, but they really start price-gouging with their opt-out ordering plan. The extremely confusing ordering policy automatically charges CAD$240 per month if you don’t contact them within 15 days of placing your free trial order.

This company is based in England, so if the order takes 16 days to arrive, you will automatically be charged $240. If you don’t contact them to cancel the order, they will continue to charge you every month.

This is a common scam, but it is worth reminding folks to always read the fine print!

I first got wind of this “miracle of water” experiment, after seeing a small segment on “What The Bleep Do We Know?“. A movie released in 2004. I actually bought into the hype at the time. But there was always something unbelievable, and ultimately untrue about a lot of the ‘science’ presented in this film. Let me just say this to all you people NEW to the skeptical community. Don’t believe everything branded as science and “edutainment” on TV.

Even though this is a thinly veiled piece of new-age fiction sold as fact. You have to admit, the cinematography and post production are pretty tight. That being said, let’s try to point out some of the inaccuracies in this short promotional video, shall we?

Time code: 2:03
Water is referred to as a “secretive, amazing element”. What do we truly know about this “element”?

Well for starters, water is a molecule, composed of 2 elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen not an element unto itself. Between 0ºC and 100ºC it’s liquid, below that, a crystal solid and above that a gas. (at 1 atmosphere). It can’t be compressed in it’s liquid form, and is a solvent for many gasses and other molecules. When it freezes it creates hexagonal crystals. That’s about all I know about water… there’s probably a lot I don’t know regarding it’s special fluid dynamics, surface tension properties and such… but to say that it’s somehow mysterious, magical and possesses some unexplainable spiritual properties is ludicrous.

Time code: 2:05
Introducing Rustum Roy! He brings to the table an impressive array of books and degrees, revolving around material sciences and an unwavering, self proclaimed understanding of “water memory” or Homeopathy. He often refers to the scientists who routinely debunk his claims as “homeophobes” (some of the comments on this article are enlightening).  He speaks with authority, but that doesn’t make his claims accurate or true.

Time code: 2:26
Some religeous guy named Kirill. Patriarch Kirill I to be exact. He’s the big cheese in the Russian Orthodox church. I’m not sure why he’s in here, I guess just to bridge the gap between pseudoscience and religion… Not much of a gap there. He is a respected authoritative figure with a lot of connections which is supposed to lend some credibility to this film.

Time code: 2:36
Kurt Wuthrich… well, he didn’t say anything inaccurate… come to think of it, he didn’t really say anything of substance at all. His resume is extensive though. Kurt is a Nobel Prize winner! I wonder what he’s doing in this film? It should be noted that a lot of the true scientists that appear in pieces like this are there under the premise of lending a hand in the scientific approach to the film… However a lot of them are shocked at the final piece when they see their own words, edited, distorted and messed-with, in order to give them the appearance of blindly agreeing with the very flawed argument into which they were originally trying to inject reason.

Time code: 3:05
Konstantin Korotkov, Mr. BioElectrography himself. This dude is a throw back to the good ol’ days of Kirlian photography. Since mainstream science has identified the existence of Aura photography or Kirlian photography as a well known phenomenon called coronal discharge back in the 70′s and debunked it’s spiritual claims, it needed a new name so it could be sold to a whole new generation of new-age believers. He’s all about life energy. In this short clip he claims that the strongest element of influence for water is the presence of human emotion. Although even in the actual video he’s really unclear precisely how the water is affected. (I thought that heat or air pressure are pretty effectual on water, but what do I know?)

Time code: 4:13
Ah, the star of the show, Emoto Masaru. “I hope to show people, through my research, that water has a memory of it’s own.” Born in Yokohama, Japan, Emoto graduated from Yokohama Municipal University with courses in International Relations, and in 1992 he received certification as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine from the Open International University for Alternative Medicine in India, an unaccredited institute with minimal academic requirements. With a resume like that… well whatever. At least he’s a doctor… of sorts.

Okay folks, strap into your skeptic pants, we’re going for a ride!

Movie claim: Emotions, projected from a group of people onto a flask of water, can drastically change the properties of that water.
Real life: How would you shield the water from the influence of additional emotions during the experiment. Also, what properties changed? Was it still wet? Did it still make waves? Could it still dilute things? Was the freezing point the same? Wiggly bar graphs aren’t evidence of anything if they aren’t explained.

Movie claim: Love increases the energy level of the water and stabilizes it.
Real life: The definition of the phrase ‘Energy Level’ is “the fixed amount of energy that a system, such as a molecule, atom, electron, or nucleus, can have.” Fixed amount of energy! Which means you can test for it. Love can’t increase energy and hate can’t remove it. It’s thermal dynamics, a process in physics that is very well understood and has been shown time and again to balance out.

How is the water “stabilized”, exactly? Does it change any measurable property of the water, or does it just make the wiggly graph go up rather than down? They keep referring to “radical changes in the water” without specifying what these radical changes are. We are presented with some crystallized water drops that look like snow flakes that have been allegedly “charged” with different human emotions.

In Emoto’s experiments, Happy emotions look like perfectly symmetrical crystals, whereas Sad emotions are half-melted, crappy looking crystals. But you only see one example of each. It would have been more compelling evidence to see more than one case of this working. Like a whole series of beautiful Happy snowflakes, and a whole series of crappy Sad snowflakes. But we’re instead presented with a very cherry-picked data set of one, which statistically proves nothing. What about all the Happy snowflakes that looked crappy? Were there any? You never get super clear results like that in any scientific endeavor, if they were following a scientific process you would expect to see some anomalies. But nope, instead you get an extremely clear picture that conveniently supports their initial hypothesis, no flaws and no exceptions presented.

What’s with all the secrecy, Emoto?
After doing a little poking around online I’ve found out that the bulk of controversy over Emoto’s claims aren’t the claims themselves, but rather, his lab refuses to release detailed experimental information showing how to recreate these findings independently in any other lab. This is a problem when claiming something as huge as finding the source of “Life itself”. You can’t just say, ‘Trust me, I found it”. You actually have to show people how you found it. Where you found it. What apparatus you used to find it. What conditions were present when you found it. What materials you used. etc.

Also, it’s a little telling that you aren’t presented with a bunch of “love” snowflakes, and a bunch of “hate” melty blobs. Instead you’re presented with a test bed of one each. Everyone knows you need more than one of any test result to confirm a claim, to ensure your test results aren’t just random. Not to mention that measuring the aesthetics of water crystals is a very subjective and one sided way to interpret data in an experiment. Leaving your findings completely open to the personal tastes of your lab assistants is completely pointless and worthless.

Instead of making multi-hundred thousand dollar promotional videos showing some of his work, it would be a lot more fascinating to see his full data-sets to see once-and-for-all that we are on the cusp of a new spiritual and scientific understanding of nature and life itself. Without a common understanding of the brief and physically unreproducible experiments he’s presented in this video, we will never know if Mr. Emoto was on to something, or if he was just drumming up business for his own coffers and fame.