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Questions to ask spooks

I've used a standard question to throw voodoo spooks when they start babbling excessively for many years now (so long I can't cite the original idea) -

Why aren't there any psychics barred from casinos ?

Surely, if casinos can instantly spot and eject card counters, it shouldn't be too hard to deal with psychics ?

More recently, I've come up with another one -

Why don't professional dowsers volunteer their services to clear third world landmine fields ? Not enough faith ? Or do they simply don't care for humanitarian work ?

Anybody have any other ideas ? This would be useful for atheist-fu when dealing with nutjobs.

Tags: mumbo-jumbo, new age, nutjobs, occult, spooks, supernatural, voodoo

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Permalink Reply by Joey on June 17, 2009 at 9:06am

I love the psychics and casinos one. First time I've ever heard it.

It's pretty fun to act like you're starting to believe, then ask them a question that makes their entire position look as silly as it actually is.

"You can heal people of anything through the power of God? Wow. That's absolutely amazing. So I know this guy that's an amputee...."

"Water has memory? It remembers every substance it's ever come into contact with, no matter how long ago and how much it gets diluted? It shares its memory with other water it comes into contact with too? Amazing. So absolutely every drop of water on the planet is homeopathic medicine then, right?"

"Magnets accelerate the body's healing etc etc." "Amazing. If that's the case, shouldn't an MRI cure people of what we're trying to find?"
"Copper accelerates the body's healing..." "Why bother with a bracelet? Go buy a few hundred feet of wire and wrap yourself in it. You'll live forever!"
"Crystals accelerate the body's healing..." Usually said while they're waving a quartz crystal around "Then why doesn't going to the beach heal people?"

"The government has mind control drugs in the water/air/airplanes/whatever? Wow. So how do I know they aren't controlling you right now? How did you avoid control when it supposedly worked on everyone else?"

A fun general purpose question for conspiracy theorists is "What do they stand to gain?"
"People are being poisoned by X!" "Why? What would be the point? What, exactly, would pharmaceutical companies/government get from poisoning people at random/entire world?"