Zombies, asteroids, and apocalypse buckets

Is it just me, or has the Religious Right completely lost the plot?

And surprisingly, I am not referring to their continuing support of Donald "Two Corinthians" Trump.

To be fair, I've never been a fan of the Evangelicals.  I was in college during the height of the Jerry Falwell/Moral Majority years, when they seemed to follow the Puritan doctrine of disapproving of anyone, anywhere, having fun.  But back then, they had a sense of decorum.  I didn't agree with their beliefs, but at least they were consistent and articulate, and were able to sustain some glancing connection to reality.

Now?  To see how the Evangelicals have completely gone off the rails, look no further than Jim Bakker, who despite setbacks up to and including spending time in federal prison for fraud, is back to raking in the dough.  His program The Jim Bakker Show has millions of viewers, and while I'd like to think some of them watch it for the "what the fuck is this guy gonna say next?" factor, I'll bet it's a small minority.

(It bears mention that Jerry Falwell himself, shortly after he forced Bakker to hand over control of his church and shortly before Bakker went to prison, called him "The greatest scab on the face of Christianity in the entire two thousand years of our history."  That assessment doesn't seem to have cost Bakker anything in the way of viewership -- or monetary profits.)

This comes up because of a link sent to me by a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia, that appeared on the YouTube channel Telltale a couple of days ago.  And in it, Bakker is interviewing prominent Evangelical speaker Steve Quayle, and the topic is...

... zombies.

At first, generous soul that I am, I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and thought, "Oh, they're using the term metaphorically, for someone who is brainwashed or mindlessly acting under the influence of someone else."  Which would be ironic coming from them, but at least not batshit insane.

But no.  They're talking about literal zombies.  Like Dawn of the Dead. 

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gianluca Ramalho Misiti from São Paulo, Brazil, Zombie Walk 2012 - SP (8149613310), CC BY 2.0]

Bakker says to Quayle, "Zombies that are on the Earth are a disease like any other disease that affects people, and they become like zombies.  Is that right?"

And instead of saying what any normal person would say to a question like that, which is, "Time to lay off the controlled substances, bro," Quayle responds -- completely seriously -- in such a way as to make Bakker sound almost sane:

Forgive me, but that's only part of the story.  Zombies also have the evil spiritual entity known as demon possession, ok?  Because there is no rationale with a zombie...  The best way to explain zombie bloodlust is this: the appetite of demons expressed through humans.  It should be astonishing to people that the richest people in the world, not all of them but some of them, are into occult ceremonies where they have to drink, you know, blood that's extracted from a tortured child.  Now that's sick, but that's the appetite of demons expressed through humans ...  What I'm saying, Jim, is they can induce zombieism.  At least the appetite for human flesh.

Oh, and you'll never guess how Quayle and Bakker say the rich demon-people are turning their innocent victims into zombies.

Go ahead, guess.  You'll never get it.

They say that the contagion is being introduced into unsuspecting Americans via the nasal swabs they use to test for COVID-19.

I wish I was making this up, but listen to the clip I posted, which comes along with highly entertaining commentary from the guy who runs Telltale.  You will see that I am not exaggerating one iota.

Zombification from nasal swabs.  And yet another reason for the Religious Right not to trust the CDC and the medical establishment, and refuse vaccination.  Which makes it even more likely that the Evangelicals will contract COVID and get weeded out of the population by natural selection.

Speaking of irony.

If zombies aren't bad enough, another guest of Bakker's, one Tom Horn, says that we're going to be hit in ten years by the asteroid Apophis (we're not), that it's carrying an alien virus (it isn't), and that it's the "star Wormwood" mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

Oh, and he pronounces "contagion" as "cawn-tay-jee-on."  Which isn't relevant but is kind of hilarious.

What amazes me here is not that some wingnuts said something loony.  That, after all, is what wingnuts do.  What astonishes me is that the other three people sitting at the table with Bakker kept nodding and frowning, as if this was the most reasonable, rational philosophical discourse they'd ever heard, instead of doing what I'd have done, which is to burst into laughter, say, "You people are out of your ever-loving minds," and walk off the set.

But concerned head-nodding is, apparently, the reaction of the lion's share of Bakker's watchers, who not only now believe that we're at risk from demonic, blood-drinking, flesh-eating zombies and killer cawn-tay-jee-on-carrying asteroids, but have two more reasons to purchase his "Apocalypse Buckets" containing food to tide them over during the End Times (from which apparently he makes money hand over fist).

Anyhow, that's our dip in the deep end of the pool for the day.  I'd be discouraged to hear that Bakker has anyone who believes what he says; that he has millions of devoted viewers is kind of devastating.  It points up how far we have to go here in this country to counter the deeply-ingrained irrational, fearful, anti-science beliefs held by a significant number of people who live here -- and, unfortunately, who vote.

It also gives us further evidence that ignorance and fear combined with someone determined to profit off it is a very, very dangerous combination.

****************************************

Ever get frustrated by scientists making statements like "It's not possible to emulate a human mind inside a computer" or "faster-than-light travel is fundamentally impossible" or "time travel into the past will never be achieved?"

Take a look at physicist Chiara Marletto's The Science of Can and Can't: A Physicist's Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals.  In this ambitious, far-reaching new book, Marletto looks at the phrase "this isn't possible" as a challenge -- and perhaps, a way of opening up new realms of scientific endeavor.

Each chapter looks at a different open problem in physics, and considers what we currently know about it -- and, more importantly, what we don't know.  With each one, she looks into the future, speculating about how each might be resolved, and what those resolutions would imply for human knowledge.

It's a challenging, fascinating, often mind-boggling book, well worth a read for anyone interested in the edges of scientific knowledge.  Find out why eminent physicist Lee Smolin calls it "Hugely ambitious... essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of physics."

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

 

Viral nonsense

Some days, optimism is just a losing proposition.

Today's reason for repeated facepalms has to do with COVID-19, better known as Wuhan coronavirus.  It's not that the virus isn't scary enough by itself; there are currently 75,000 cases of confirmed COVID-19 worldwide, just over 2,000 of which have died of the illness.  So the mortality rate still isn't as high as that of this year's influenza strains, but it's enough to be worrisome.

So I suppose it's an understandable enough impulse -- to ascribe some kind of underlying reason for an event that otherwise just appears to be an unfortunate example of the chaotic nature of the universe.  But for fuck's sake, can't we try to restrain that a little bit?  Because the nonsense about this epidemic is really beginning to piss me off, and (I suspect) piss off the legitimate researchers, as well.

First, we have the evangelical wingnuts weighing in.

Rick Wiles, of TruNews, who has been something of a frequent flier here at Skeptophilia, jumped into the fray with the statement that the coronavirus was God's "death angel" sent to visit destruction upon us because of the push in the United States for LGBTQ rights, and also for all the "filth" in television and movies.  When the topic was raised of why (if that was so) the vast majority of cases were in China, Wiles didn't hesitate.  It's because China has a "godless communist government that persecutes Christians."  "God is about to purge a lot of the sin off this planet," he said.

Then there's the ever-entertaining Jim Bakker, who said that yes, coronavirus is bad, but it can be "cured in twelve hours" by a solution of colloidal silver.  That, coincidentally, he's selling by the bottle on his television show ("Call now to get yours!  Only forty dollars!").  Never mind that colloidal silver doesn't do a damn thing for a viral infection, and also has a permanent side effect -- it turns your skin a bizarre blue/gray color, a condition called argyria.

Maybe he's hoping that if all his followers turn blue, they won't feel so awkward supporting a politician who is orange.  I dunno.

Then the conspiracy theorists got involved.

It couldn't possibly be that the COVID-19 was introduced into the human population in the usual fashion -- via accidental contact with an animal vector.  This is virtually always the cause of so-called "emergent viruses," from the deadly Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa fevers to diseases like chikungunya, which usually doesn't kill you but makes you wish it did (the name comes from the Makonde language of Tanzania, and means "doubled over with pain").  But no, that's too prosaic.

It has to be biowarfare.

COVID-19  [Image is in the Public Domain, courtesy of the CDC]

The first piece of the conspiracy theory came when Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University's Department of Chemistry, was arrested and charged with "making a materially false statement" regarding funding received from China.  So far, big news to academics, but not of much interest to the rest of us.

Until it came out that some of the funding came from Wuhan University.

Well, no way was that a coincidence.  Then a Chinese researcher was arrested trying to smuggle 21 vials of "biological substances," so of course there was no way it could be anything else but coronavirus, because Chinese + biological samples = deliberate viral terrorism.

Cue all the conspiracy fans to start having multiple orgasms.

Okay.  Where to start?

First, Lieber's arrest had nothing to do with coronavirus, and neither did the arrest of Zaosong Zheng, the Chinese researcher/smuggler.  And if you dig a little deeper, you find out that Zheng was trying to smuggle the samples out of the United States and back to China, not the other way around (which is what you'd expect if there was some kind of horrible plot by the Chinese to cause a pandemic using a manufactured bioweapon), and... most importantly... the "biological substances" weren't even virus cultures.  They were cancer cells that he was hoping to get back home so he could publish the data from the cultures under his own name and scoop the American researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he'd stolen them from.

But even that information didn't make much of a dent.  So The Lancet decided to respond.  One of the most prestigious and respected medical journals in the world, The Lancet published a couple of days ago a statement by 27 medical researchers, epidemiologists, and health professionals saying that there was nothing artificial about COVID-19.  They write:

The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins.  We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.  Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens.  This is further supported by a letter from the presidents of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and by the scientific communities they represent.  Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.  We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture.

There you have it.  The people who have actually studied this stuff have spoken authoritatively.  So when this came out, you would expect that the conspiracy theorists would chuckle in an embarrassed sort of way and say, "Wow, what a bunch of goobers we are."

You would be wrong.

This just reinforced their conviction that something big was afoot, because now they had proof that not only was COVID-19 a Chinese-manufactured bioweapon, the evil scientists responsible were covering it up.  How did they know this?

Because there was no evidence.  Duh.  You think evil super-conspirators are dumb enough to leave evidence?

And because the whole story wouldn't be complete without an American politician getting involved, just a couple of days ago Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas -- who is in some kind of contest with Matt Gaetz and Louie Gohmert to see who has the lowest IQ in Congress -- stated that "we have to keep our minds open:"

I'm suggesting we need to be open to all possibilities and we need to demand that China open up and be transparent so a team of international experts can figure out exactly where this virus originated.  We know it didn't originate in the Wuhan food market based on the study of Chinese scientists ...  I'm not saying where it started, I don't know.  We don't know because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won't open up to international experts.  That's what we need to do so they can get to the bottom of where the virus originated and hopefully can effect a diagnostic test and vaccine for it. 

Let's take the professor [Professor Richard Ebright of Rutgers University]  He was ...in fact today cited in the Asia Times saying that it was quite possible that it was a laboratory incident.  That's not saying this is a bioweapon, but we do know they were investigating and researching coronavirus in that laboratory.  It could've been an accidental breach, it could've been a worker that was infected.  My point is that we don’t know until we get all the evidence from the Chinese Communist Party, it is only responsible, not irresponsible, to keep an open mind about the hypotheses.

Okay.  First of all, we already have fucking international experts.  27 of them, in fact, who have stated unequivocally that COVID-19 is of natural origin.  Second, if you actually read the Asia Times article (or in Cotton's case, have a staffer read it to him), you find out that Ebright said "there was no indication that the virus had been artificially modified," but "there was no way to rule out" that the epidemic hadn't started in a lab accident.

Which is an example of typical scientific caution.  You can't rule something out for certain unless you have proof.  No proof = there's still a possibility.  But this is a far cry from Cotton's statement that "it's quite possible that it was a laboratory incident."

The whole thing is making me grind my teeth down to nubs.

But that's the problem with conspiracy theories.  The more you argue, the more convinced the conspiracy theorists become.  And if you're arguing, you're either a dupe or a shill.  It's kind of the opposite of the scientific method; with conspiracy theories, the less evidence you have, the more likely it is.

Because those conspirators are just that sly.

Anyhow, that's the latest on coronavirus.  It's bad, but not as bad as the flu, which we deal with every single year without people having complete meltdowns.  It'll probably dwindle, the way most epidemics do -- no one I've talked to who knows about viruses and epidemiology is particularly concerned that this is going to be the next Black Death.

But try to convince the evangelical lunatics, conspiracy theorists, and Tom Cotton of that.

*******************************

This week's book recommendation is a fascinating journey into a topic we've visited often here at Skeptophilia -- the question of how science advances.

In The Second Kind of Impossible, Princeton University physicist Paul Steinhardt describes his thirty-year-long quest to prove the existence of a radically new form of matter, something he terms quasicrystals, materials that are ordered but non-periodic.  Faced for years with scoffing from other scientists, who pronounced the whole concept impossible, Steinhardt persisted, ultimately demonstrating that an aluminum-manganese alloy he and fellow physicists Luca Bindi created had all the characteristics of a quasicrystal -- a discovery that earned them the 2018 Aspen Institute Prize for Collaboration and Scientific Research.

Steinhardt's book, however, doesn't bog down in technical details.  It reads like a detective story -- a scientist's search for evidence to support his explanation for a piece of how the world works.  It's a fascinating tale of persistence, creativity, and ingenuity -- one that ultimately led to a reshaping of our understanding of matter itself.

[Note: if you purchase this book from the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

This week in lunacy

Is it just me, or have the evangelicals as a group completely lost their damn marbles?

I was a college student in the height of Jerry Falwell Sr.'s "Moral Majority," when the elder Falwell made the case that the United States had gone off the rails morally.  Unsurprisingly, given the Religious Right's continual obsession with what people do with their naughty bits, a lot of it had to do with the acceptance of LGBTQ individuals and the increase in swearing and sex in movies and television.

But at least it was consistent, and (on some level) reality-based.  LGBTQ individuals were gaining a greater voice, and there was more edgy stuff coming out of Hollywood.  A lot of us, myself included, had no real problem with that -- I've always wondered why in film ratings, nudity and sex were equated with violence and gore, as if a naked human body was as horrifying as a dismembered one -- so I disagreed with their assumptions.  But the definition of morality Falwell and others were pushing at least didn't seem to be coming from some sort of bizarre fever-dream.

Which is more than I can say from today's evangelicals.  Here's a sampler of rants from prominent spokespeople on the Religious Right, just in the last week:

• "Christian Prophetess" Kat Kerr told everyone that they shouldn't be sad about the deaths of family and friends because in heaven there was a "portal," sorta like a balcony, where all of the deceased love ones could peer down at us.  "Literally, these are all over heaven," Kerr said.  My general feeling about this is that it's more creepy than comforting -- I know there are times I would really prefer it if Great-Aunt Marie weren't watching.  But Kerr doesn't seem to think of this, and says that the dead are especially likely to be there on special occasions.  "On your birthday, they go to this place," she says.  "They look down… and sing 'Happy Birthday' to you even though you cannot hear them."

• Right-wing commentator Rick Wiles called Hillary Clinton the "queen of sleaze" and claimed that had she been elected, she would have rounded up conservatives and put them in concentration camps.

• Dave Daubenmire, of Pass the Salt Ministries, created a new confection of nastiness by mixing evangelical Christianity with racism and adding a dash of pure lunacy, accusing Meghan Markle of "poisoning the royal bloodline of the crown" because she's "half black," something that's especially awful because "the royal family is the seat of Christianity."

• None other than Vice President Mike Pence said he was "honored to represent President Trump" at a church service wherein LGBTQ people were said to be "demonic spirits working for the devil."

• White House religious advisor Paula White made the news twice this week, first for saying that she had a vision of how Trump was going to participate in the End Times.  "God came to me last night and showed me a vision of Trump riding alongside Jesus on a horse made of gold and jewels," White said.  "This means he will play a critical role in Armageddon as the United States stands alongside Israel in the battle against Islam."  She hit the news again with a response to the bounty offered on Trump's head because of his authorization of the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, saying Trump was going to be fine because she'd invoked the "superior blood of Jesus Christ" to protect him.  White, you may recall, is the one who last year at about this time said good Christians should "donate their entire January salaries" to God (i.e., write a check to her as God's spokesperson) so that they'd receive blessings in the coming year.  

• The ever-entertaining Jim Bakker issued a dire warning that a number of cities were going to be destroyed by the wrath of God because of their wickedness, and expects people to take him seriously even though he has an exactly zero percent success rate in predicting previous divine smitings.  Named specifically as targets are New York City and Long Island in New York, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana in California, New Orleans, Louisiana, Washington, D.C., Bangkok, Thailand, Tel Aviv, Israel, and some unnamed "North New Jersey Towns."  As far as why we should believe him, he says, "I know I'm not wrong."

That's in the last week.

The craziness gets passed along to the followers.  Just a couple of days ago, a woman in Pennsylvania named Nadedja Reilly drove her car into oncoming traffic to "test her faith."  She herself wasn't hurt (hallelujah) but two people in other cars were, something that didn't bother her in the least.  "Reilly related God took care of her by not having her injured," wrote Trooper Bruce Balliet in the arrest affidavit. "Reilly expressed no concerns or remorse for the victims.  Reilly also stated she did not care if the other people were injured because God would have taken care of them."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons HoppingRabbit34 at English Wikipedia, Baptists-against-jews, CC BY 3.0]

If it's not clear from what I've written already, yes, I know it's not all Christians.  I have a great many Christian friends of various denominations, and I'm sure they'd be as appalled as I am at all this.  But my point is that in the last couple of years events have revealed a deep streak of batshit lunacy in the Religious Right, beyond the intolerance, self-righteousness, and homophobia that has been evident for as long as I can remember.  And all too few people recognize this as the same kind of insane extremism and disconnect from reality that exists in radical Islam -- despite the fact that many of the same people who love Pence and Wiles and Bakker et al. consider the outrageous, bigoted, and violent statements made by fundamentalist Muslim spokespeople to be deeply and thoroughly evil.

Maybe they should reread the injunction from Matthew 7 to remove the beam from your own eye before you attempt to pluck the splinter from your neighbor's.  Or the message to the Pharisees -- the Religious Right of Jesus's time -- in Matthew 23, where Jesus referred to them as a "brood of vipers" for their pious, hypocritical self-righteousness.

None of that seems to occur to them.  A selective reading of the bible is also one of their specialties.

It's all very well to laugh at these people; Bakker in particular is so out in left field that he's almost begging to be ridiculed.  But there's the danger that if we poke fun at them, we lose sight of two facts: (1) they're completely serious; and (2) they have a great many followers who believe every word they say.

How to fight against this, I have no idea.  Knowing about it is a start, which is why I'm writing this today.  But that gets us no closer to eliminating this frightening streak of fanaticism that seems to be getting louder and louder.  It puts me in mind of the quote, often misattributed to Sinclair Lewis (its actual provenance is unknown): "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

*********************************

I don't often recommend historical books here at Skeptophilia, not because of a lack of interest but a lack of expertise in identifying what's good research and what's wild speculation.  My background in history simply isn't enough to be a fair judge.  But last week I read a book so brilliantly and comprehensively researched that I feel confident in recommending it -- and it's not only thorough, detailed, and accurate, it's absolutely gripping.

On May 7, 1915, the passenger ship Lusitania was sunk as it neared its destination of Liverpool by a German U-boat, an action that was instrumental in leading to the United States joining the war effort a year later.  The events leading up to that incident -- some due to planning, other to unfortunate chance -- are chronicled in Erik Larson's book Dead Wake, in which we find out about the cast of characters involved, and how they ended up in the midst of a disaster that took 1,198 lives.

Larson's prose is crystal-clear, giving information in such a straightforward way that it doesn't devolve into the "history textbook" feeling that so many true-history books have.  It's fascinating and horrifying -- and absolutely un-put-downable.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Notes from the multidimensional realm

In today's episode of Missives From Insane People Who Still Somehow Get A National Platform, we have: Paul McGuire, self-styled "End Times author," who appeared last week on the Jim Bakker Show.

It bears mention that Bakker himself is nuttier than squirrel shit.  Bakker, you may remember, is the one who predicted a couple of years ago that we atheists were imminent to start publicly beheading Christians.  As of right now, my total is a shameful Zero Christians Beheaded, which either means Bakker is a fucking loon or else I'm way behind on my Decapitation Quota.

Then, last year, Bakker railed against liberals for "blaspheming against Donald Trump."  Direct quote, that, despite the fact that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English says that "blaspheme" means "to speak irreverently about God or sacred things."  Which elevates Trump just slightly beyond his station.  Oh, and if that weren't enough, Bakker's also the one who claimed that the U. S. government was being run by witches.

So it's not like Bakker himself is exactly a pinnacle of normality.  But his guest, Paul McGuire, makes Bakker look like Mr. Sane Rationality 2018 by comparison.

Although it bears mention that Bakker treated everything McGuire said as if it were revealed truth, so maybe they're not that far apart after all.

In any case, here's what McGuire had to say:

President Trump is currently engulfed in the greatest spiritual battle in the history of all mankind...   The physical battles that we see in our world and nation right now are a direct manifestation of the spiritual battles going on in the invisible realm...  There are people very high up in what is called the globalist occult or globalist Luciferian rulership system, and this rulership system consists of what used to be called the Pharaoh-God Kings, it’s what Aldous Huxley called "The Scientific Dictatorship," and these are advanced beings who know how to tap into supernatural multidimensional power and integrate it with science, technology, and economics. 

The highest level of the pyramidic organizational structure in which the highest ranking officers, if you will, of the New World Order and Mystery Babylon are ruling the earth through an organizational structure that looks like the pyramid on the back of the U.S. dollar.  And they control the world because they understand that the true control of the world is done through supernatural mechanisms.

So there you have it.

You know, I have to admit that if I were a Luciferian multidimensional being in charge of Mystery Babylon, I would definitely use my supernatural Pyramid Powers to smite the shit out of Donald Trump.  It may seem petty of me, and there are probably more worthy targets, but I'd love to use occult magic to seal his mouth shut.  Or make it so every time he tweets, no matter what he writes, it comes out "I [heart] the New World Order."  Or attach a thousand-watt LED to his forehead that lights up every time he tells a lie.

Of course, it'd be lit so often that it'd interfere with air traffic.  So that'd be bad.

Looks like Lucifer has been hitting the gym lately.  (Fallen Angel, Alexandre Cabanel, 1847) [Image is in the Public Domain]

But what strikes me about McGuire's claim is that despite all of his dire warnings... nothing is happening.  Trump is still in office, his toadies in Congress are looking like they've greased the rails for Brett "Documents Withheld" Kavanaugh to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and the administration as a whole has undone decades of progress on environmental and social issues without anyone being able to stop them, or even slow them down.  So if there really are Luciferian multidimensional beings, I would be really glad if they'd get off their asses and do something about this.  Because it's increasingly looking like we've invented time travel, and transported the entire nation back to 1830.

In any case, that's the view from the lunatic fringe for today.  Now, y'all'll have to excuse me, because I'm late for a meeting of the Pyramidic Organizational Structure.  I hope one of the other Invisible Realm Operatives brings donuts.

*********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is part hard science, part the very human pursuit of truth.  In The Particle at the End of the Universe, physicist Sean Carroll writes about the studies and theoretical work that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson -- the particle Leon Lederman nicknamed "the God Particle" (which he later had cause to regret, causing him to quip that he should have named it "the goddamned particle").  The discovery required the teamwork of dozens of the best minds on Earth, and was finally vindicated when six years ago, a particle of exactly the characteristics Peter Higgs had described almost fifty years earlier was identified from data produced by the Large Hadron Collider.

Carroll's book is a wonderful look at how science is done, and how we have developed the ability to peer into the deepest secrets of the universe.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Questioning the holy man

I know I've said this before, but one of the most baffling things for me about the Trump presidency is that evangelical Christians (most of them, at least) not only voted for Trump, but consider him to be the Anointed One of God.

You would think that listening to Trump for five minutes would be enough to disabuse you of that notion.  The man is a crude, vulgar, greedy, grasping, dishonest, misogynistic, narcissistic philanderer.

To put not too fine a point on it.

Okay, I know people make a deal with the devil in politics sometimes.  You vote for someone who agrees with you on some cause you are passionate about, and overlook his/her faults in other realms.  But that doesn't seem to be what this is.  These people not only agree with his agenda -- especially regarding restricting the access to abortions, eliminating LGBT rights, American isolationism, and protecting the rights of churches to discriminate based upon their religious precepts -- they actually seem to think that he's some kind of modern-day holy man, without fault, appointed by God to bring our nation back from the brink of hell.

Consider, for example, the recently-released book by David Brody and Scott Lamb called The Faith of Donald Trump: A Spiritual Biography, which claims that Trump's agenda is "spiritually motivated" and his rapacity and apparently insatiable libido are evidences of a "quest for God."  You'd think no one would be able to read this without guffawing -- and hearteningly, 42% of the reviews are one-star -- but one reviewer said:

Great biography of a man of God.  Well written to understand about D Trump's character and can see clearly who he is in Christ.  I don't question anymore why he speaks & act such a way but trust him as loving person in depth.  No one can be without fear if the person does not stand on God's truth.

Recall that Trump is the same man who was asked if he ever asked God to forgive him for sins, said that he couldn't remember ever doing that.  "When I drink my little wine -- which is about the only wine I drink -- and have my little cracker," Trump said, "I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed."

The people who espouse the view that Trump is Jesus's right-hand man believe this with a fervor that borders on obsessive mania.  Consider the photograph of the back of a car that has been making its way around social media in the last week:

Well, honestly, he "left his great life" primarily to make sure that legislation gets passed that lines his own pockets and those of his cronies.  Trump and his family are using his position as a way of bringing in cash -- witness Ivanka's recent win of exclusive trademarks from China -- followed by her father rewarding them by promising to bail out Chinese telecom firm ZTE.

Because that doesn't violate the Emoluments Clause, or anything.

But no one exemplifies the bizarre characterization of Trump as Savior better than televangelist Jim Bakker, who steadfastly refuses to Go Gently Into That Good Night even though he appears to have completely lost his marbles.  Last week, Bakker had End Times prophet Paul McGuire on his show, and McGuire warns that because Trump is God's representative on Earth, the Forces of Darkness are amassing to fight back:

America right now is in the greatest spiritual battle in the history of all of mankind.  In fact, in America, we are undergoing the greatest spiritual battle in the history of the world…  So this is it.  We don’t get another chance.  This is it.  We’ve arrived at the moment Jesus told us we would, the Old Testament prophets told us we would.  We are at that time, somewhere near the return and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth.  We are very close! 

Since we’re in the greatest spiritual battle in the history of mankind, one would think that the majority of God’s people, who claim to have Jesus living inside them, would be awake to the reality that we’re in the greatest spiritual warfare of all time. 

President Trump represents the one last chance to cry out to God in repentance and see God intervene... we are the last generation of Americans… before the return of the Lord... 

The physical battles that we see in our world and nation right now are a direct manifestation of the spiritual battles going on in the invisible realm.  There are people very high up in what is called the globalist occult or globalist Luciferian rulership system, and this rulership system consists of what used to be called the Pharaoh-God Kings, it’s what Aldous Huxley called ‘The Scientific Dictatorship,’ and these are advanced beings who know how to tap into supernatural multidimensional power and integrate it with science, technology, and economics.

Well, all I can say is, if hating Trump qualifies you for supernatural multidimensional power, sign me right up.  But I've hated Trump for ages, and I don't have wings or telepathy or the ability to turn invisible or anything.

I feel kind of ripped off, frankly.

(It does bear mention, however, that one of the people who responded to this story wrote, "I think Paul McGuire has been smoking way too much covfefe lately.")

Anyhow, it's all kind of baffling to me.  I mean, this goes way beyond the sunk-cost fallacy and wishful thinking right into the more rarefied atmosphere of complete self-delusion.  I suppose, given how much evidence you had to ignore to support Trump in the first place, I shouldn't be surprised.  It never was about rationality in the first place.

But it still leaves me feeling like I want to board the next spaceship to Alpha Centauri.

***********************

This week's featured book is the amazing Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, which looks at the fact that we have two modules in our brain for making decisions -- a fast one, that mostly works intuitively, and a slower one that is logical and rational.  Unfortunately, they frequently disagree on what's the best course of action.  Worse still, trouble ensues when we rely on the intuitive one to the exclusion of the logical one, calling it "common sense" when in fact it's far more likely to come from biases rather than evidence.

Kahneman's book will make you rethink how you come to conclusions -- and make you all too aware of how frail the human reasoning capacity is.

Pancakes for Jesus

Because ultra-religious televangelist Jim Bakker is totally not about making money, today we consider his "Faith-based Home Shopping Network."

This was one of those links I was hesitant to click, but I'm glad I did, because when I landed there the first thing I saw was a video clip of a guy selling "13 Extreme Warfare Survival Bottles" for $250, which, if you buy them right now, come with "14 Bonus Christmas Ornaments."  Which was kind of wonderful for the juxtaposition, if for nothing else.  (I suppose even if we Evil Unbelievers are waging Extreme Warfare on the Christians, and the Beast with Seven Heads is chomping up the devout right and left, you still shouldn't neglect to set up your Christmas tree.)

So I poked around on the site a little.  There were baseball hats featuring crosses, some nutritional supplements containing colloidal silver (which has little health benefit although it does turn your skin blue), and some oddments like a camp shower and a sippy cup for toddlers.  But I noticed something interesting in the food category; virtually all of the foods offered are large-quantity freeze-dried goods and big containers of packaged mixes.

Apparently, Bakker is certain there's going to be a horrific apocalypse, but he wants to make sure that at least during the carnage we can chow down on a nice big stack of pancakes.

Bakker really wants his listeners to buy his stuff, because, he says, his network costs "$17,000 an hour to operate."  Which is intended to sound impressive to people who failed fifth-grade math.  Because his network is on 24/7, and if it really cost $17,00 an hour, he'd have to cough up $148,920,000 per year.

That, my friends, is a lot of pancakes.

Bakker's empire, of course, is built on two things: (1) donations, and (2) fear.  He has his followers convinced that Christianity is under attack (both in the figurative and literal sense) from secular people like myself, despite the fact that all the atheists I know just want to be able to live their own lives without government-supported religion being rammed down our throats.  Oh, and having people like Bakker and his ilk denying rights to others based on their beliefs and sexual orientation.  But I guess in his mind, this constitutes a frontal attack.

I suppose it's to be expected that I think the situation is actually the other way around.  Without even trying hard, I found the following stories this morning:

• The GOP is lobbying hard to repeal a law prohibiting churches from publicly endorsing political candidates, while maintaining their tax-free status.
• Violent right-wing loon and accused pedophile Roy Moore is currently ahead in the race to fill Jeff Sessions's senate seat in Alabama, and in fact has received an endorsement from Donald Trump, despite stating outright that homosexuality should be illegal, and spouting racist bullshit, most recently referring to Native Americans and Asian Americans as "reds and yellows."  Despite all this, The Federalist recently claimed that Roy Moore was "chosen by God" to win the election.
• Ultra-Christian conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles gave a fiery sermon last week in which he said the recent sex scandals engulfing many public figures were due to the "left [waging] a vicious war against Christianity for the last fifty years," instead of attributing it to its actual cause, which is that for centuries powerful men of all stripes have had trouble keeping their dicks in their pants, and count on their status to keep their accusers silent.  (Allow me to point out that both Roy Moore and Jim Bakker, and many other evangelical figures, have been involved in sex scandals of their own.)
• People who believe in separation of church and state are once again having to fight a public school employee (in this case, a football coach) who demands that his team members pray with him before games.  

And that's just from the last couple of days.  So if there really is a war on Christianity, Christianity seems to be winning.

So, to put it bluntly, Bakker and company are lying.  They're capitalizing on people's fears so they can obtain money and power.  Which is kind of odd given their other professed beliefs.  Didn't someone once say that the way to salvation begins with giving everything you have to the poor?

Hmm.  Wonder who that was.

Even so, Bakker doesn't seem to be losing any of his followers.  Neither have the other multi-millionaire televangelists like Kenneth Copeland, Franklin Graham, and the ironically-named Creflo Dollar.  Instead, such hypocritical money-making schemes seem to be making these religion-for-profit scam artists filthy rich.

Praise the lord and pass the pancakes.

Mocking vs. smiting

A couple of days ago, televangelist Jim Bakker announced that he has it on good authority that god will smite anyone who makes fun of him.

When God says something to you, you don’t always know the exact time it’s going to happen.  [So] stop beating up the prophets because God says, "Woe unto you when you beat up on the prophets." 

God is speaking to his people.  The only ones who probably aren’t talking to God these days are mean people in America, people who just are anti-Christ. 

If you don’t want to hear it, just shut me off.  Especially you folks that monitor me every day to try to destroy me.  Just go away.  You don’t have to be there, you don’t have to hear it.  But one day, you’re going to shake your fist in God’s face and you’re going to say, "God, why didn’t you warn me?"  And He’s going say, "You sat there and you made fun of Jim Bakker all those years. I warned you but you didn’t listen."

What I find especially comical about all of this is that I have mocked Jim Bakker for years.  Here are a few of the things I've said about Bakker in various posts:

• Is it too much to ask that people leave their bizarre mythology out of politics?  I mean, our political situation at the moment is surreal enough.  We don't need anything to make it more embarrassing to the world at large...  Which is a message that needs delivering to televangelist Jim Bakker.  Bakker hosted an interview with Robert Maginnis, of the Family Research Council, a far-right evangelical organization that was classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010 because of their stance on LGBT issues.  In the interview, Bakker opined that President Obama was showing his preference for Muslims by appointing Abid Qureshi to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (in Bakker's mind, "one out of hundreds of federal appointments" apparently constitutes a "preference").  [Afterwards, Bakker] made an even wackier pronouncement -- that our federal government is being controlled by witches.
• [P]eople like Bakker and Wiles never let a little thing like reality interfere with their message...  Lying for Jesus, is how I see it...  [And this comes from] a guy who resigned from his first ministerial post because of a sex scandal (in which he offered to pay $279,000 to the victim to keep silent), and in a separate incident was imprisoned for five years on fraud and conspiracy charges.
• Bakker himself said that by "blaspheming against Donald Trump," we're hastening the End Times.   Which, honestly, I can't say is a particular deterrent for me at the moment.  Considering the news lately, the Dragon With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, and the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons sound like a distinct improvement.
• [Apropos of Bakker having a fit over Starbucks changing their holiday coffee cup design]  What strikes me about this tempest in a coffee cup is that these are, by and large, the same people who scream bloody murder about "political correctness" whenever someone objects to derogatory language being directed toward minorities, and yet they consider a change in a coffee cup design to be the moral equivalent of carpet-bombing Whoville.  So I guess their blathering about political correctness translates to "you can't take offense to anything I say, but I'm still entitled to get my panties in a twist over absolutely nothing."

So I haven't exactly been complimentary.  You'd think that if anyone has a target pasted on top of his head, it'd be me.

And yet, here I sit, unsmote.

Go ahead, Jimmy Boy, do your worst.  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Bakker is constantly claiming that various awful events are due to god's wrath, most recently the terrorist bombing in Manchester, England during an Ariana Grande concert, which he said occurred because  concert-goers "literally invited the attack by mocking god."  Of course, since these claims are always made after the fact -- god never tips him off about a shooting or bombing or what-have-you before it happens, which is kind of odd if he's a "prophet" -- he can attribute them to any supernatural agency he wants, and there's no way to prove him wrong.  If he said that Hurricane Maria was caused by the god Lagomorphus, Who Doth Appear Unto Mankind As A Giant Bunny Rabbit, and that he triggered the storm by farting toward the south Atlantic, it's not like there's anything you could respond to effectively contradict him.

Other than science, logic, and common sense, of course.  But if you are fond of magical thinking, you've sort of abandoned those three in any case, so it's not like that'd do any good.

In any case, let me hereby make it clear:  Jim Bakker, I am officially mocking you.  You are a narrow-minded, hypocritical, bigoted, homophobic loon whose pronouncements are such a combination of weirdness and sheer nastiness that it's a wonder anyone still listens.  So there you are.  I invite you to use your connections to see to it that I get smote.  Who knows?  Maybe it'll happen.  Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Egg wars and chosen candidates

Some days I really feel sorry for my Christian friends, who are (one and all), logical, thoughtful, and intelligent.

The reason I say this is that so many of the most visible spokespeople for Christianity appear to be, to put not too fine a point on it, complete loons, and that gives the impression that all Christians think that way.  It's as if you were trying to get a good handle on the stability, temperament, and brainpower of actors, and you were only allowed to look at Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, and Kim Kardashian.

This comes up because of a trio of stories, of increasing wackiness, that I ran into just in the last two days.

Let's start with the outcry by the Church of England and British Prime Minister Theresa May over the fact that a nationwide chocolate egg hunt, sponsored by Cadbury's, has been named the "Great British Egg Hunt" instead of last year's title, the "Easter Egg Trail."

"This marketing campaign … highlights the folly in airbrushing faith from Easter," said an official statement from the Church of England.  May concurred.  "I think what the National Trust is doing is frankly just ridiculous," May said in an interview with ITV News.  "Easter’s very important.  It’s important to me, it’s a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world."

Because Theresa May has nothing more pressing to worry about at the moment, apparently.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Okay, can we get one thing straight right from the get-go, here?  Neither the Easter egg nor the Easter Bunny is mentioned anywhere in the bible.  While the use of the egg as a symbol of rebirth (and thus resurrection) has been part of Christian practice for centuries, it almost certainly is originally of pagan origin.  German folklorist Jacob Grimm writes:

But if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara has the strongest claim to consideration...  The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in matter of bonfires.  Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate: I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people's amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences.

So what we have here is some hypersensitive types overreacting to an attempt to make a national event more inclusive, sort of like the coffee drinkers who got their knickers in a twist last December when Starbucks elected not to write "Jesus Jesus Jesus" all over their holiday-season paper cups.

And they call the liberals sensitive snowflakes.

Then we had conservative activists Don and Mary Colbert on the Jim Bakker Show, and they were asked about their support of Donald Trump.  Mary Colbert responded with a dire warning for all of us who dislike the Donald:

It’s not that Donald Trump is all that perfect of a guy.  We all know he’s not.  And we know that he’s not necessarily perfect in every way that we would like.  That’s not how God works.  He works through the ones he chooses.  We don’t choose them. 

All we have to do is recognize them and when you recognize a chosen one and you have the discernment to know that they’ve been chosen and know that that’s the will of God, then your life will be blessed.  And if you come against the chosen one of God, you are bringing upon you and your children and your children’s children curses like you have never seen.  It puts a holy fear in me.

Okay, just hang on a moment.

"We don't choose them?"  Um, yeah, actually we do.  It's called "having an election."

"Donald Trump is not all that perfect?"  We have a narcissistic, egomaniacal sociopath in the Oval Office, who appears to be very nearly amoral, who lies every damn time he opens his mouth, and who is a serial adulterer and likely sexual predator to boot, and you call that "not all that perfect?"  That's like saying that Joseph Stalin was "a bit of a control freak on occasion."

And last, if we don't support Trump, we are bringing curses on our "children and children's children?"  Look, lady, the closest I have to grandchildren at the moment is that one of my sons owns a pair of ferrets.  You're telling me that my prospective grandchildren, and probably my grandferrets as well, are cursed because I dislike Donald Trump?

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, Bakker himself said that by "blaspheming against Donald Trump," we're hastening the End Times.  Which, honestly, I can't say is a particular deterrent for me at the moment.  Considering the news lately, the Dragon With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, and the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons sound like a distinct improvement.

Last, no post about religious nutjobs would be complete without a contribution from Pat Robertson, who went on record this week as saying that he's tired of being "dominated by homosexuals."  After laughing for about ten minutes at the mental image this evoked, I went on to read Robertson's explanation of what he meant:

We have given the ground to a small minority.  You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population.  That’s all.  That’s statistically all.  But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities.  It’s just unbelievable what’s being done.  A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference.  The majority — it’s time it wakes up.

Oh, you poor, poor majority.  What is it that you're being deprived of?  The right to run Christian candidates for damn near every public office in the land?  The right to have your houses of worship in every village, town, and city?  The right to found your own universities?  The right to have "In God We Trust" on our currency and "One Nation, Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance?

In other words, the right to dominate every fucking sphere of influence in the entire country?

No, what Robertson and his ilk object to is that LGBT individuals are now demanding to be recognized as having rights, including the right to be free from discrimination.  That, apparently, is "domination" in Robertson's mind.

So anyway.  After that last one, I need to go have a cup of coffee and calm down for a while.

I must say, however, that I'm heartened by the fact that there are Christians who speak up about all of this nonsense.  I just wish they were louder, sometimes.  Or at least louder than people like Mary Colbert, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson.  But unfortunately, at the moment the loons are the ones who are getting all the press -- and they're the ones who will continue to be in the limelight until their followers say, "Okay, enough.  You're talking bullshit, and you need to shut up."

Witch politics

Is it too much to ask that people leave their bizarre mythology out of politics?

I mean, our political situation at the moment is surreal enough.  We don't need anything to make it more embarrassing to the world at large.

Which is a message that needs delivering to televangelist Jim Bakker.  Bakker hosted an interview with Robert Maginnis, of the Family Research Council, a far-right evangelical organization that was classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010 because of their stance on LGBT issues.  In the interview, Bakker opined that President Obama was showing his preference for Muslims by appointing Abid Qureshi to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (in Bakker's mind, "one out of hundreds of federal appointments" apparently constitutes a "preference"), when Maginnis made an even wackier pronouncement -- that our federal government is being controlled by witches:

I know that there’s demonic forces in that city.  I have personally met people that refer to themselves as witches, people that say they advise the senior leadership of the country.  We invite within the federal government people to advise us, and often some of those advisers, I think, have evil motivations, things that you and I would not approve of.

Honestly, I doubt the current trend of micromanagement in our federal government has anything to do with witches.  The whole modern Wicca religion has as its principal motto "As long as it harms none, do what you will," which is about as opposite to the government's approach as any I can think of.

But a statement being ridiculous never seems to deter these people.  Because whether it was spurred by Maginnis's remark about witches or not, last week a bunch of evangelicals at the Midwest Vision and Values Pastors Leadership Conference in Cleveland decided to protect Donald Trump from demonic attack by laying hands on him.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Darrell Scott, pastor of New Spirit Revival Center, who hosted the conference, told the audience that a "nationally known minister told Donald Trump that if you choose to run for president, there’s going to be a concentrated Satanic attack against you...  He said there’s going to be a demon, principalities and powers, that are going to war against you on a level that you’ve never seen before and I’m watching it every day."

So to ward off this nasty demonic stuff, Scott’s wife led some of the attendees in a "laying on of hands."

"God we ask you right now that Your choice is this choice," she said.  "God, I ask that you would touch this man, Donald J. Trump.  Give him the anointing to lead this nation."

I have to admit that I find it baffling that the evangelical wing of Christianity has flocked to Donald Trump the way they have.  Aren't adultery and divorce, not to mention hoarding money and refusing to pay people who work for you and admitting in a televised debate that you don't pay your federal taxes, considered sins?  Okay, I get that the right wing Christians would disapprove of Hillary Clinton's stance on gay marriage and pro-choice.  But Trump as a person seems pretty antithetical to everything Jesus preached, including "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's".

Okay, I'm an atheist, so what do I know?  But still, even from my perspective outside of the system, it strikes me as bizarre.

No more bizarre, of course, than claiming that the government is being run by witches.  So I guess whatever else you can say, you have to admire their consistency.  Even if what it means in this case is "consistently batshit."

Lying for Jesus

Keep 'em scared.  Convince people that their way of life, their very existence, is threatened.  Tell them that if they don't fight back, the Bad Guys will win, will erase every trace of their culture and belief systems from the country.

After all, fearful people do two things that are very useful.  They double down on their beliefs -- and they are easy for the unscrupulous to manipulate.

That's a lesson that evangelical preacher Jim Bakker and his pal Rick Wiles, host of the ultra-Christian radio show TruNews, have learned all too well.  Despite the fact that 83% of the citizens of the United States self-identify as Christian, Bakker and Wiles have taken it on as their mission to convince that overwhelming majority that they are a desperately embattled minority who faces persecution and eventual extinction if they don't, for god's sake, do something.

Lying For Jesus, is how I see it.

Jim Bakker [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

In an interview last week on TruNews, Bakker and Wiles make it abundantly clear how this extermination plan is going to go.  Bakker said:

Be ready.  Be ready.  Are you ready to serve God if they're gonna cut your head off?  Years ago, God spoke to me, and I was supposed to start preaching it, but nobody would accept it.  How are you gonna tell people that the church needs to be ready to have their heads cut off, to say, "I'm willing to die for the gospel of Jesus Christ?"  There is such fear in the church... I mean, fear.  Not just fear of ISIS, not just fear of one thing, but fear of not being politically correct.  I tell you, you will be murdered if you preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Wiles, of course, agreed, instead of doing what I would have done, which is to point out that not only has no one been murdered in the United States for preaching the bible, but church attendance seems to be as strong as ever, and just last week the Religious Right successfully sledgehammered their views into law in North Carolina, making it legal for Christians to discriminate against LGBT individuals in the name of "religious freedom."

But people like Bakker and Wiles never let a little thing like reality interfere with their message.  Bakker goes on:

It's over, people!  The gospel is over in the United States of America!  We have turned our back on the Bible.  We can't preach the Bible anymore.  I could tell you stories that would curl your hair... If I told you what I have been through and what I go through and what I am facing, because of what we would call the old-fashioned gospel, which is simply the Bible.  Anyone who wants to stand on the absolute word of God -- you don't have much...  Everyone's talking about Donald Trump.  Who would have thought that we would have a man running for president who needed to say, "Next Christmas, we're going to say 'Merry Christmas' again?"

Well, that got lots of applause from the studio audience, given how evidently in their pretend world the 17% of us who aren't Christian are winning a war on the 83% of the United States who are.  The only possible response, of course, is to fight tooth and nail to maintain the hegemony they have had for over two hundred years, and which is showing no sign of going away any time soon.

And speaking of lying, Wiles then suggests that whenever you go to a store and have to give your name to be called for an order, you should say your name is "Merry Christmas" so the clerk has to say it over the microphone.  Because, apparently, lying outright to a clerk is exactly what Jesus wants you to do.

This idea also got lots of applause.

Seeing the support he got from that point, Bakker decided to pursue it:

How can this be a point on which to run for president?  How can it be?  How can it be almost illegal to say "Merry Christmas?"

"Almost illegal?"  Sort of like "almost pregnant?"

Rick Wiles then asks a question:

Going back to the spiritual uprising; who is telling us that we can't say "Merry Christmas?"

Exactly, Rick.  Good question.

But Bakker, of course, has a response:

[If you prayed or said "Merry Christmas" in public] they would threaten to arrest you.  They would threaten to mow you down with a machine gun. 

Even Wiles seems to realize that they're on shaky ground at that point.  He asks:

They're gonna come in with guns, into a high school graduation, and shoot you for saying the Lord's Prayer? 

But Bakker hasn't gotten where he is by backing down:

Not right now, but they will.  They will if we don't stop them. 

Ah, yes.  "They."  By whom he means, apparently, atheists like me.  Who, by the way, could not care less how much time Bakker, Wiles, or anyone else spends in church, how many times they thump the bible, or what they preach on the street corner.  We honestly don't give a rat's ass if they stand on their roofs in July, stark naked, shrieking "Merry Christmas!" at passersby all day long.  All we want is for Bakker and his ilk to keep their beliefs out of our schools, laws, and public buildings.  Beyond that, they can believe any damn fool thing they want to.

The frustrating thing about all of this is that Lying For Jesus works.  If you tell people often enough that they're embattled and besieged, they'll believe it.  Even if the messenger is a guy who resigned from his first ministerial post because of a sex scandal (in which he offered to pay $279,000 to the victim to keep silent), and in a separate incident was imprisoned for five years on fraud and conspiracy charges.

But don't let that dissuade you from believing everything he says.  Especially if what he says is "be afraid."

There's a part of this fear, though, that is very real.  And that is the fear of rational people that the rest of the citizenry is going to make decisions based in irrational fears like the ones Bakker and Wiles are peddling.  We've got an election coming up, and more than one of the candidates is capitalizing on that sense of being constantly at risk.  So ask yourself: do you want the voice of reason to be swamped by people who are accepting the fact-free scare-talk of a huckster who somehow, bafflingly, still gets people to listen to him?

Because if that comes to pass, maybe there's a reason to be afraid, after all.