It's not so much hate as it see you as no different than people who believe it's possible to talk to the dead or find water underground by passing a bent piece of wood over it.

Whenever I have a mob of neighbors at my door complaining about the noise, I ask myself What Would Lot Do?

Anyone who reads /. for more than a day knows to never trust TFS.

Skeptics have not said the earth is flat. And the people who do (did?) say the earth is flat don't use the shape of maps as evidence.

You have it backwards. The Church is in the position of the psychics. They have not put forward any evidence that Yahweh exists. Not in 2,000 years. So what does that mean we should do with the claims of the existence of Yahweh?

The same guy could also spin a pencil WITH HIS MIND. When I saw the whole thing I thought that this guy has the most pathetic telekinectic powers ever.

"The static from the peanuts, you see, the peanuts are creating static electricity, and that's keeping the pages down." LOL, he also had the most pathetic excuses.

Funny, RationalWiki doesn't mention any of this. Do you have a link that doesn't go to a kook site, and preferably describes the process without making the writer come across as illiterate?

So if you assume water as memory then you can prove water as memory. This doesn't sound circular at all.

Randi didn't butt in. The editor of Nature asked him to participate. He also didn't act unilaterally, he was part of a four man team, one of whom expressed disappointment that they didn't find anything.

Randi has stated that if someone does win the money, they can designate a charity to recieve it instead. He explicitly made this offer to Sylvia Browne when she backed out of the challenge, after saying she would accept it, by saying that she's not in it for the money (despite all evidence to the contrary).

How does he know the fakes from the "real" psychics before he tests them? He only makes an explicit offer to high profile people like Sylvia Brown and John Edward, but anyone is free to contact him if they think they can prove their claims.

The exact nature of each test is proposed ahead of time to each claimant. The test doesn't go forward until there is complete agreement on both sides. This is to prevent an exposed psychic from saying things like "these lights were interfering". If the lights are going to interfere with your gift then you have the chance to have them switched out with lights that won't.

They set up a double blind test. Not only does the douser not know where the water is, neither does the observer. This is to prevent the douser from picking up any subconciously displayed non-verbal cues from the observer.

As billybob said, if the dousers' claims are true then a 15' airgap will not prevent them from finding the water.

Your false equivocation fails. The example would be valid if the person you were testing said they could set a piece of paper sealing on fire in a vacuum with a match. Of course, if you were to test such a claim you would find that it doesn't hold up.

Only to an extent. Incorrect usage is never correct. No matter how many times TV journalists say "begs the question" instead of "raises the question", they're still wrong.