Send in the clones

I'm not sure if it's heartening or discouraging to find out that the United States hasn't cornered the market on counterfactual lunacy.

I mean, that's the way it seems lately.  All I have to do is read the news -- something I've been trying not to do often, because it was having horrible effects on my mood -- and I see dozens of examples of people from my country who fervently believe stuff despite, or in some cases because of, there being no evidence whatsoever.

Or sometimes, even if there's powerful evidence supporting the opposing claim.  Amazing how squalling "fake news" has allowed people to resist even looking at opinions that they'd very much like not to be true.

But I guess people fall for loony claims the world over.  If I had any doubts of that, they were eradicated by a story sent to me by a friend and long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia, which tells about how apparently there are a large number of people in Nigeria who think their president is an evil clone.

I'm not making this up.  President Muhammadu Buhari, who has been the leader of Nigeria since 2015, is gearing up for re-election in 2019, and this seems to have kicked into high gear a claim that Buhari isn't Buhari.  The fact that he was in London for treatment for an undisclosed illness last year was enough to convince a significant number of people that while he was overseas, Buhari was killed and swapped out for either a Sudanese lookalike named Jubril, or an evil laboratory-created clone who has nothing but wicked intent for the people of Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari, or at least so he says [Image is in the Public Domain]

Of course, Buhari claims it's all nonsense.  Also of course, it's had no effect whatsoever.  "It’s the real me, I assure you,” Buhari said in a press conference last Sunday in Poland, where he was attending a United Nations climate conference.  "I will soon celebrate my 76th birthday and I will still go strong."

Which, you have to admit, is exactly what either a Sudanese duplicate or an evil superintelligent clone would say.

The flames were then fueled by Buhari's enemies, who had nothing to lose and a lot to gain by trashing Buhari's credibility.  Nnamdi Kanu, who belongs to a group called Indigenous People of Biafra, has trumpeted the claim on his pirate radio station, Radio Biafra.  And the more Kanu and Buhari's other rivals spread the rumor around, the harder it is for Buhari to say, "Oh, for fuck's sake, are you people serious?" and have anyone listen.

He's still in there swinging, though.  At his news conference, he said, "One of the questions that came up today in my meeting with Nigerians in Poland was on the issue of whether I’ve been cloned or not.  The ignorant rumors are not surprising — when I was away on medical vacation last year a lot of people hoped I was dead."

Well, hoping someone's dead is not really the same thing as thinking he's a laboratory-created clone.  But the fact is, Buhari hasn't really been all that popular, and he's been accused of giving favors to people of his own ethnic group (the Fulani) and ignoring the plight of other groups, especially Christian ones.  Worse, his detractors say he's turned a blind eye to the depredations of Boko Haram, which is still terrorizing the northern part of the country.  The economy has pretty much tanked, with estimates of the ranks of the unemployed up around the ten million mark.

So it's not like Buhari's rivals don't have ammunition enough for criticizing his rule.  Which is probably why there are no fewer than 79 people running in the election, which even exceeds the electoral chaos we typically have here in the United States.  The problem is, it's not like his opponents are squeaky-clean, either; one of the favorites in the election is former vice president Atiku Abubakar, whose motto seems to be "help people when it's expedient and kick 'em in the balls when it isn't."  Abubakar's reputation for the carrot-and-stick approach is evident in the fact that Olosegun Obasanjo, who was himself president of Nigeria from 1999 to 2007, went from saying "If I support Atiku for anything, God will not forgive me" in August and singing his praises last week.

Which makes perfect sense, considering Abubakar's likelihood of winning the election and his penchant for taking revenge on people who criticize him.

So the whole thing is a mess, and is not being helped by the wacky claims about Buhari, or Evil Clone of Buhari, or Jubril of Sudan, depending on which version you went for earlier.

And you know, maybe that would explain a lot about our own political mess.  These elected officials aren't really human beings.  They're holograms that have been sent in by a race of aliens determined to bring down our civilization by making our leaders appear to have lost their marbles.  The problem -- from the aliens' point of view, anyhow -- is that it doesn't seem to be working.  Every time some person in government says something completely outlandish, or idiotic, or outright false, a good third of Americans say, "Exactly right!  You tell 'em!"

So maybe it's my fellow citizens who are holograms.  I just don't know any more.  At this point, I'm ready to throw in the towel and welcome our Alien Overlords.  Can't be any worse that what we've been enduring.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic: Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker.  This book is, in my opinion, the most lucid and readable exposition of the evolutionary model ever written, and along the way takes down the arguments for Intelligent Design a piece at a time.  I realize Dawkins is a controversial figure, given his no-quarter-given approach to religious claims, but even if you don't accept the scientific model yourself, you owe it to yourself to see what the evolutionary biologists are actually saying.

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

Signs and portents

What would it take to convince you that you were wrong?

It was the question that was asked to Ken Ham and Bill Nye in their famous debate, and significantly, Ham replied, "Nothing would."  Any evidence, any argument, the best data available, would be insufficient.  In other words: his worldview is invulnerable.  Which is why the Nye/Ham debate was, at its most fundamental level, not a debate at all.

That inviolability is an all-too-common aspect of the belief system of the devout, where "unshakeable faith" is considered a cardinal virtue.  Even as a child, going every Sunday with my parents to the Catholic church, this attitude struck me as awry.  I remember asking my catechism class teacher, "If you're supposed to have faith no matter what, how could you tell if you were wrong?"

My teacher responded, "But we're not wrong."

Circular reasoning at it's best.  How do we know our beliefs are correct?  Because they're correct.  q.e.d.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

There was a tragic, but vivid, demonstration of this approach to understanding in Lagos, Nigeria this week.  Evangelist T. B. Joshua, the faith healer and self-styled "prophet" whose revival meetings attract thousands from all over Africa, had some 'splainin' to do after a guesthouse owned by Joshua collapsed, killing eighty of his followers, some of whom had come from as far away as South Africa to hear him preach and take part in his "healing ministry."

Turns out Joshua's people had been doing some major renovations, and apparently didn't notice that the floors they were renovating were occupied.  So the whole building collapsed like a house of cards.

After this, Joshua had three possible responses:

1. Shoddy construction, not to mention doing work on the weight-bearing walls of a building while people are living in it, is likely to result in said building falling down and bunches of people dying.  My bad.
2. God is sending me a sign that I'm misleading people and ripping them off.  I better discontinue my revival meetings forthwith.
3. The building collapse was Satan's work.  The fact that the devil is after me and my followers just means that I'm hot on the devil's trail!  Go me!

Three guesses as to which was Joshua's response.

"The church views this tragedy as part of an attack on The Synagogue Church Of All Nations," a church spokesperson said in a press release.  "In due course, God will reveal the perpetrators."  The collapse was due to "demonic forces" that were determined to destroy Joshua, who is a "man of God."  As a result, church members have become even more devoted than ever to Joshua's message.  The collapse, apparently, has activated the rally-around-the-flag response.  "You think you'll get away with this, Satan?" they seem to be saying.  "We'll pray at you even harder!"

All of which supports a contention I've had for some time, to wit: you can't argue with these people.  The devout are coming at understanding from a completely non-evidence-based angle, so there's  no evidence that would be convincing.  It puts me in mind of the quote, variously attributed, that "you can't logic your way out of a stance that you didn't logic your way into."

But I must say that the whole approach is foreign to me.  On a fundamental level, I've never understood this attitude, which is why my stay in the Catholic Church was largely an exercise in frustration both for me and for the priests and nuns who tried to get me to see it their way.  I know that faith is a great comfort to people who have it, but I can't for the life of me comprehend how anyone could get there from the outside.  It boils down to "believe because you believe," as far as I can see, a summation I saw clearly when I was still in grade school.

And forty-odd years later, I still don't see how anyone could find that a reasonable approach to understanding the universe.

Battling the witch hunters

In the latest news from the Unparalleled Chutzpah department, we have a witch hunter from Nigeria who is suing the British Humanist Association for half a billion pounds.

Helen Ukpabio, founder of Christian Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, calls herself "Lady Apostle."  She claims to fight the "spirits of evil," including "gnomes, the witchcraft spirits in charge of the earth."  Ukpabio was targeted by the BHA especially for her exorcisms performed on little children.  "A child under the age of two," she writes, "possessed with black, red and vampire witchcraft spirits... screams at night, cries, is always feverish, suddenly deteriorates in health, puts up an attitude of fear, and may not feed very well."

And such a child, Ukpabio says, may be a witch.  Not, apparently, just a sick toddler, behaving as sick toddlers do, and (most importantly) needing help from a qualified doctor.

The BHA, and a superstition watchdog agency, the Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network, have been urging the British government to ban Ukpabio and others like her from entering the United Kingdom.  Gary Foxcroft, executive director of the WHRIN, says:

This latest court case is the latest in a long line of unsuccessful legal actions that Helen Ukpabio has pursued against me and other human rights activists.  Previous cases were thrown out of court in Nigeria but this time she is looking to take action in a UK court.  I have no doubt that a judge in the UK will reach the same conclusion as those in Nigeria.  Of course, the real question here is whether our government should allow hate preachers such as Helen Ukpabio to enter the UK.  Since her teachings have been linked to widespread child abuse in reports by the UN and various other bodies it would appear that this may not be in the public interest.  This case also therefore provides the Home Secretary and the National Working Group to Tackle Child Abuse Linked to Faith and Belief with a great opportunity to condemn the practices of such pastors, take concrete action and ensure that justice is served.

Which is exactly the right approach.  But now Ukpabio is dragging the BHA into court, claiming that they have committed libel and defamation, and have damaged her reputation by making false claims about her beliefs.  And even if she loses her lawsuit, the BHA will be saddled with the legal costs of defending itself against her claims, costs it can ill afford to bear.

But the case also brings up the awkward question of where to draw the line regarding the religious indoctrination of children in other venues.  Consider, for example, "Jesus Camp," the documentary film about a Charismatic Christian children's summer camp near Devil's Lake, North Dakota.  If you haven't seen the film, you should; it's simultaneously fascinating and highly disturbing.  After watching it, it's hard to think of this sort of thing as anything other than brainwashing.

In other words, emotional abuse.  Which accusation should also be leveled at the Muslims for their practices of child marriage and female genital mutilation.

The threat to "identified witches" in Nigeria, however, is most serious of all, because these children are often killed outright for their "witchcraft."  Leonardo Rocha dos Santos, director of the human rights organization Way to the Nations, says:

Over the past four years, since I've been involved in the rescue mission of the falsely branded children as witches, the number of tortured and killed children has not decreased.  I've seen many cases, and some very dramatic ones.  We are present with our rescue work only in one of the three Nigerian states, the one with the Christian population.  The so-called witch children are tortured and killed also in Cameroon and Angola, and the UNICEF report calls the situation in Congo as critical.  Some international organizations are talking about thousands of stigmatized children. I have met at least 400 cases of tortured, abandoned or killed children.  Only two months ago we rescued four children who were to be murdered together, at the same time.

And about Helen Ukpabio, he minces no words:

The problem has really escalated since 1999 when Helen Ukpabio produced a horror movie, End of the Wicked.  The movie and her exorcism "ministry" have provided a leading inspiration for many deaths of children in Nigeria and surrounding countries.  She is at this time visiting the U.K.  If I were to speak publicly, or in churches in the U.K. or U.S. teaching how to make bombs I would be arrested immediately because bombs kill people.  Yet this woman, whose public work is turning parents into murderers of their own children, has been allowed to visit the U.K. where she is performing her deliverance séances and exorcisms on children at this moment.

Precisely.  The time has come to call out dangerous superstitions for what they are, and to stop these people from hiding behind "it's my religion."  I'm sorry: if your religion is prompting you to victimize children, you need to be stopped.  Period.

I'll end with a quote from the brilliant Nigerian Nobel laureate Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka:

The activities of self-styled exorcists who stigmatize children as witches, vampires, or whatever, and subject them to sadistic rites of demonic expulsion, are criminal, and constitute a deep embarassment to the nation.  That their activities are carried out under a religious banner expose them as heartless cynics, playing on the irrational fears of the gullible.

To which I can only say: Amen.

The cat people

I find myself wondering, sometimes, how people can hear claims without the "Oh, come on, now" reaction kicking in.

The thought occurs to me pretty much any time I turn on the History or Discovery channels, these days, what with their dubious editorial decision to jettison actual history and science in favor of Ancient Aliens, Squatch-Chasing, and the Prophecies of Nostradamus.  In fact, I want to say, "Oh, come on, now," to Giorgio Tsoukalos before he even opens his mouth.

But evidently, that reaction doesn't occur in everyone.  I'm not certain why the World of Woo-Woo, with its pseudoscience and crazy claims and superstition, appeals so strongly to some folks.  I've always preferred science over guesswork and wishful thinking, but I appear to be amongst the minority.

Take, for example, the bizarre little story that appeared in the West African Daily Post, which claimed -- with all apparent seriousness -- that a local warlock was changing children into cats.

[image courtesy of photographer Nicolas Suzor and the Wikimedia Commons]

"Detectives at the Rumuolumeni Divisional Police Station in Port Harcourt, Rivers State are investigating a case involving three persons who allegedly transformed to cats," the story begins, which at least made me glad about the fact that they used the word "allegedly."

The police at Rumuolumeni Station apparently noticed that a particular cat kept running in front of the police station, as cats are wont to do.  But for some reason, they thought this was odd, so they "lay in ambush" for the cat.

Must have been a slow crime day, there at Rumuolumeni Station.

Be that as it may, they caught the cat and decided to kill it, but before they could do so, "it mysteriously transformed into... a twelve-year-old boy."

The remainder of the story is best told in the words of the reporter who wrote the article:

The twelve year old boy later confessed that he was initiated by one aged man named Womadi, adding that there are many of his kind in Port Harcourt, and their mission was to suck human blood and inflict their victims with diseases. 

The paramount ruler of Rumuolumeni in Oibio-Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, Eze Ndubueze Wobo confirmed the transformation of three members of his community into cats. 

Eze Wobo told the Daily Post that one of the men, who is popularly called Papa, confessed to him at the police station that he initiated the people to suck human blood and inflict their victims with diseases. 

Wobo said the victim listed some items which would be used to cleanse initiated children, some which include native alligator pepper, Local gin, Local kola nut and so on.

"Papa" later told police that he had initiated the children using a "packaged beef roll."  About which initiation I was glad the article gave no further details.

I find it amazing, and troubling, that people could read this without their thinking at some point, "This can't be true."  (For me, it happened halfway through the first sentence.)  But they don't, for some reason.

And the darker side of all of this is the rise of a violent strain of Pentecostalism in this part of the world, which was already home to one of the most viciously fanatical religious groups in the world, the Boko Haram movement of Islam.  So we can laugh at these superstitious folks, over here in our safe homes in the industrialized world, but over there, an accusation of witchcraft is a life-or-death matter.

Poster for a Pentecostal revival meeting in Nigeria two years ago [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I sometimes get asked why I rant about what seem like "harmless superstitions," and why I'm so insistent that rationalism and evidence-based understanding are the best ways of approaching the world.

My answer is that superstitions are seldom harmless.  They teach you that the world is a fearful place, behaving by rules that are fluid and mystical, with competing powers that are dangerous, perhaps deadly.  Superstitions lead some people to give their money to charlatans, which on one level falls under the rule of caveat emptor; but worse than that, it causes people to cede their personal power and responsibility to individuals and causes that have little regard for human life and dignity.

On that basis alone, there is no reason to tolerate superstitious belief.  And that includes its being given serious reporting in a national newspaper.

The enemy of my enemy is... wait.

I'm sure that most of you have heard of Boko Haram, the group of Nigerian extremist Muslim nutjobs who hate the secular west's culture so much that they have started preying on their own people.  These are the loons who have, according to Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, killed over 12,000 people, and who were responsible for the kidnapping earlier this year of 234 girls who were students at a government-run girls' school.  As of the writing of this post, the girls have not been returned to their families; Boko Haram leaders promised that they would be married off to devout Muslims.  The "Save Our Girls" campaign, which attracted international attention, accomplished (unfortunately) nothing but allowing Boko Haram to gain a spot on the world stage.

Even the name "Boko Haram" means "Western education is a sin."

So these people are, by any conventional definition of the word, evil.  And anyone who opposes them, by whatever means, is to be lauded.

Even if it's...

The Association of Nigerian Witches and Wizards.

According to an article on the site Bella Naija, the Association (called, from its name in Yoruba, "WITZAN") has issued an ultimatum to Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau; knock it off or face the magical consequences.

"Witches and wizards in Nigeria are deeply worried by what is going on in the country, especially Boko Haram insurgency," said WITZAN spokesperson Dr. Okhue Iboi.  "As stakeholders in the Nigerian project, we can no longer afford to fold our hands while the nation burns.  Enough is enough."  He added that "our fellow brothers and sisters from the three northeastern states pleaded for the emergency meeting, to help cage Shekau and his blood-thirsty lieutenants."

And now that the magicians have gotten involved, Shekau's days are numbered.  He will be captured before December, Iboi said, and will be "paraded on the streets of Abuja and Maiduguri for the world to see."  As for the missing girls, their parents should smile, because "those girls are coming back home.  They will be rescued."

So... yeah.  This puts me in the odd position of being in support of a wizard and his woo-woo pals.  I mean, the WITZAN folks clearly aren't in very solid touch with reality themselves, but for pete's sake, they're preferable to Boko Haram.

On the other hand, maybe this is the right way to go about it.  The Boko Haram folks are themselves deeply superstitious.  The Nigerian government has been fighting these lunatics since at least 2002, using conventional tactics, without much success.  If anything, the radicals have gained strength and confidence; there have been 43 deadly attacks in 2014 alone, and over 2,000 dead.  Maybe if WITZAN can convince the members of Boko Haram that they're being ritually cursed, enough of them will get spooked that they'll desert.

Fight fire with fire, you know?  Maybe they should give it a try.  Nothing else has seemed to work.