Mystery, certainty, and heresy

I've been writing here at Skeptophilia for fourteen years, so I guess it's to be expected that some of my opinions have changed over that time.

I think the biggest shift has been in my attitude toward religion.  When I first started this blog, I was much more openly derisive about religion in general.  My anger is understandable, I suppose; I was raised in a rigid and staunchly religious household, and the attitude of "God as micromanager" pervaded everything.  It brings to mind the line from C. S. Lewis's intriguing, if odd, book The Pilgrim's Regress: "...half the rules seemed to forbid things he'd never heard of, and the other half forbade things he was doing every day and could not imagine not doing; and the number of rules was so enormous that he felt he could never remember them all."

But the perspective of another fourteen years, coupled with exploring a great many ideas (both religious and non-religious) during that time, has altered my perspective some.  I'm still unlikely ever to become religious myself, but I now see the question as a great deal more complex than the black-and-white attitude I had back then.  My attitude now is more that everyone comes to understand this weird, fascinating, and chaotic universe in their own way and time, and who am I to criticize how someone else squares that circle?  As long as religious people accord me the same right to my own beliefs and conscience as they have, and they don't use their doctrine to sledgehammer in legislation favoring their views, I've got no quarrel.

The reason this comes up is, of course, because of the election of a new Pope, Leo XIV, to lead the Roman Catholic Church.  I watched the scene unfold two days ago, and I have to admit it was kind of exciting, even though I'm no longer Catholic myself.  The new Pope seems like a good guy.  He's already pissed off MAGA types -- the white smoke had barely dissipated from over St. Peter's before the ever-entertaining Laura Loomer shrieked "WOKE MARXIST POPE" on Twitter -- so I figure he must be doing something right.  I guess in Loomer's opinion we can't have a Pope who feeds the poor or treats migrants as human beings or helps the oppressed.

Or, you know, any of those other things that were commanded by Jesus.

The fact remains, though, that even though I have more respect and tolerance for religion than I once did, I still largely don't understand it.  After Pope Leo's election, I got online to look at other Popes who had chosen the name "Leo," and following that thread all the way back to the beginning sent me down a rabbit hole of ecclesiastical history that highlighted how weird some of the battles fought in the church have been.

The first Pope Leo ruled back in the fifth century, and his twenty-one year reign was a long and arduous fight against heresy.  Not, you understand, people doing bad stuff; but people believing wrongly, at least in Leo's opinion.

Pope Leo I (ca. 1670) by Francisco Herrera [Image is in the Public Domain]

The whole thing boils down to the bizarre argument called "Christology," which is doctrine over the nature of Jesus.  Leo's take on this was that Jesus was the "hypostatic union" of two natures, God-nature and human nature, in one person, "with neither confusion or division."  But this pronouncement immediately resulted in a bunch of other people saying, "Nuh-uh!"  You had the:

• Monophysites, who said that Jesus only had one nature (divine);
• Dyophysites, who said that okay, Jesus had two natures, but they were separate from each other;
• Monarchians, who said that God is one indivisible being, so Jesus wasn't a distinct individual at all;
• Docetists, who said that Jesus's human appearance was only a guise, without any true reality;
• Arianists, who said that Jesus was divine in origin but was inferior to God the Father;
• Adoptionists, who said that Jesus only became the Son of God at his baptism; and
• probably a dozen or so others I'm forgetting about.

So Leo called together the Council of Chalcedon and the result was that most of these were declared heretical.  This gave the church leaders license to persecute the heretics, which they did, with great enthusiasm.  But what occurs to me is the question, "How did they know any of this?"  They were all working off the same set of documents -- the New Testament, plus (in some cases) some of the Apocrypha -- but despite that, all of them came to different conclusions.  Conclusions that they were so certain of they were completely confident about using them to justify the persecution of people who believed differently (or, in the case of the heretics themselves, that they believed so strongly they were willing to be imprisoned or executed rather than changing their minds).

Myself, I find it hard to imagine much of anything that I'm that sure of.  I try my hardest to base my beliefs on the evidence and logic insofar as I understand them at the time, but all bets are off if new data comes to light.  That's why although I consider myself a de facto atheist, I'm hesitant to say "there is no God."  The furthest I'll go is that from what I know of the universe, and what I've experienced, it seems to me that there's no deity in charge of things. 

But if God appeared to me to point out the error of my ways, I'd kind of be forced to reconsider, you know?  It's like the character of Bertha Scott -- based very much on my beloved grandmother -- said, in my novella Periphery:

"Until something like this happens, you can always talk yourself out of something."  Bertha chuckled.  "It’s like my daddy said about the story of Moses and the burning bush.  I remember he once said after Mass that if he was Moses, he’d’a just pissed himself and run for the hills.  Mama was scandalized, him talking that way, but I understood.  Kids do, you know.  Kids always understand this kind of thing...  You see, something talks to you out of a flaming bush, you can think it’s God, you can lay down and cry, you can run away, but the one thing you can’t do is continue to act like nothing’s happened."

So while my own views are, in some sense, up for grabs, my default is to stick with what I know from science.  And the fifth century wrangling by the first Pope Leo over the exact nature of Jesus strikes me as bizarre.  As former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin put it, "Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything."

Be that as it may, I wish all the best to this century's Pope Leo.  Like I said, he looks like a great choice, and a lot of my Catholic friends seem happy with him.  As far as my own mystification about a lot of the details of religion, it's hardly the only thing about my fellow humans I have a hard time understanding.  But like I said earlier, as long as religious people don't use their own certainty to try to force me into belief, I'm all about the principle of live and let live.

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Thus sayeth the prophecy

I've wondered for years why people fall for conspiracy theories.

My surmise -- and admittedly, that's all it is -- is that when bad things happen, any explanation is better than there being no explanation other than the universe being a chaotic and capricious place.  Blaming the latest tornado outbreak on weather manipulation by the Bad Guys at least means there's a reason why communities were destroyed and lives were lost; otherwise it just appears that shit happens because shit happens, and nice people sometimes die and the world can be dangerous and unfair.

Which brings us to the death of Pope Francis, who died three days ago at the age of 88.

Even for many non-Catholics, Pope Francis seemed like a pretty cool guy.  He embodied tolerance, gentleness, humility, and a deep concern for our environment.  I didn't agree with his theology (obviously) but I did have a lot of respect for him as a person and a spiritual leader.

Now, it's not like his death was unexpected.  He'd been ailing and in a slow decline for months, and recently came out of a long hospital stay for double pneumonia.  Even so, the world's Catholics are in mourning -- and understandably anxious, in our current volatile world situation, about who will be chosen next to lead the world's 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.

And... also not unexpected... almost as soon as he died, the conspiracy theories started.

The first was that his death had something to do with a visit from Vice President J. D. Vance, who is nominally Catholic himself but embodies the exact opposite list of characteristics from those I listed for Pope Francis: intolerance, viciousness, arrogance, and a complete disregard for the environment.  I've seen a number of claims -- some tongue-in-cheek, others apparently quite serious -- that Vance did something to hasten the Pope's death because of Francis's condemnation of many of the Trump administration's policies.

I'm a little dubious, but I think we should deport Vance to El Salvador just in case.  He recently said he's fine with the "inevitable errors" that will come with eliminating due process, so he should have no problem with it, right?

Even more out there are the people who are now leaping about making excited little squeaking noises about the Prophecy of St. Malachi.  This curious document is a series of 112 phrases in Latin, each of which is supposed to refer to one of the Popes, in order, starting with Celestine II (who led the church from 1143 to 1144).  It was published in 1595 by Flemish Benedictine monk Arnold Wion, but Wion said it was actually from Malachi of Armagh, a twelfth-century Irish saint.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Andreas F. Borchert, Malaquías de Armagh (cropped), CC BY-SA 4.0]

Most modern scholars, however, think the whole thing was made up, if not by Wion, by someone in the late sixteenth century.  So any accurate passages that apply to the Popes from prior to 1595 or so shouldn't be looked upon as anything even close to miraculous.  It is, after all, easy to prophesy something after it's already happened.

Aficionados of the prophecy, though, have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to make the lines referring to events after 1595 fit to the Popes they allegedly are about.  #83, for example, which would correspond with Pope Alexander VII, translates to "Guardian of the Mountains," and Alexander's papal arms had a design of six hills.  Pope Clement X, whose line is "From a Great River," was allegedly born during a flood of the Tiber.  

When you get into the eighteenth century, however, things become dicier, because by that time the Prophecy of St. Malachi had become widely popular, so some of the Popes apparently did stuff to fit the prophecy rather than the other way around.  Pope Clement XI, for example, corresponds to the line "Surrounded by Flowers," and Clement had a medal created with the line "Flores circumdati," which is a pretty blatant attempt to make sure the Prophecy applies to him.

The reason the conspiracy theorists are getting all excited is that there are a total of 112 passages in the Prophecy, and -- you guessed it -- Pope Francis is the 112th Pope since Celestine II.  So, without further ado, here's the passage that's supposed to apply to Pope Francis:

Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the City of Seven Hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people.  The End.

It's hard even for the most devoted conspiracy theorist to see how Pope Francis could be "Peter the Roman."  He's not Roman, he's Argentine; neither his chosen papal name nor his birth name (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) contains any form of the name Peter.  The best they've been able to do is to say that his chosen name (Francis) is after St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Francis's father was named Pietro, but even for a lot of woo-woos this is stretching credulity to the breaking point.

Be that as it may, there are still a lot of people who think the Prophecy is serious business, and they are especially focusing on "the City of Seven Hills will be destroyed" part.  Because now that Pope Francis is dead, that means the rest of the prediction is imminent, so Rome is about to be hit by a massive earthquake or something.

I'm thinking it's probably not worth worrying about.  I mean, for cryin' in the sink, this is worse than Nostradamus.  Plus, it's not like we don't have enough real stuff to lose sleep over.  I'm not going to fret over a prophecy that couldn't even get the name and origin of the Pope right.

But for some reason, this kind of stuff thrills a lot of people, and I really don't see the appeal.  I guess it gives some mystical gloss to day-to-day events, rather than things happening because the world is just kind of weird and random.  In any case, to any of my Catholic readers, my condolences for the loss of your spiritual leader.  He did seem like a pretty cool guy, and I hope they can find a suitable replacement to step into his shoes.

But for those of you who live in Rome, no worries about the city burning down or anything. 

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Snake in the grass

Okay, now I've heard everything.

If you ever run across a more ridiculous claim, I do not want to know about it.  This one already lowered my opinion of the average intelligence of the human species by ten IQ points.

You've probably heard the conspiracy theories about COVID-19 -- that it was deliberately started by the Chinese, that the vaccine contains microchips so The Bad Guys ™ can keep track of us, and so on.  But none of them can hold a candle to what one Bryan Ardis is saying.  Ardis is allegedly a "chiropractor, acupuncturist, and medical researcher," but after you hear his claim, you will probably come to the conclusion that his medical degree came from Big Bob's Discount Diploma Warehouse.

Ready?

Ardis says the Catholic church created the COVID-19 virus from cobra venom, and is using it to turn us all into Satan worshipers.

So far, it's just a wacko guy who came up with a wacko idea.  Nothing special, because after all, that's what wacko guys do.  What sets him apart is that radio broadcaster Stew Peters took him seriously enough that he made a documentary about Ardis and his idea -- a documentary called "Watch the Waters" which has already gotten 640,000 views and is trending on Twitter.

I'd like to hope a significant chunk of the views are by people who are saying, "Whoa, listen up to what this nutcake is saying," but chances are, there are enough people who believe him that it's troubling.  Here's what Ardis says, which I feel obliged to state is verbatim:

The Latin definition historically for virus—originally and historically, virus meant, and means, "venom."  So, I started to wonder, "Well, what about the name ‘corona’? Does it have a Latin definition or a definition at all?"  So I actually looked up what’s the definition and on Dictionary.com, it brings up thirteen definitions: ‘Corona, religiously, ecclesiastically, means gold ribbon at the base of a miter.  So, this actually could read, "The Pope’s Venom Pandemic."  In Latin terms, corona means crown.  Visually, we see kings represented with a crown symbol.  So put that together for me: king cobra venom.  It actually could read, "King Cobra Venom Pandemic."

I actually believe this is more of a religious war on the entire world.  If I was going to do something incredibly evil, how ironic would it be that the Catholic Church, or whoever, would use the one symbol of an animal that represents evil in all religion? …  You take that snake or that serpent, and you figure out how to isolate genes from that serpent and get those genes of that serpent to insert itself into your God-given created DNA.  I think this was the plan all along; to get the serpent’s—the Evil One’s—DNA into your God-created DNA.  And they figured out how to do this with this mRNA [vaccine] technology.  They’re using mRNA—which is mRNA extracted from I believe the king cobra venom—and I think they want to get to that venom inside of you and make you a hybrid of Satan.

 Probably needless to say, I read this whole thing with this expression on my face:

It does leave me with a few responses, however:

• Satan has DNA?
• Linguistics is not a cross between free association and a game of Telephone.  
• When mRNA is injected into you (e.g. the COVID vaccine), it degrades in only a couple of days.  By that time, if the vaccine worked, you've begun to make antibodies to the protein the mRNA coded for (in this case, the spike protein).  It doesn't get into your DNA, nor affect your DNA in any way.  So if the COVID vaccine was engineered to turn us into demons, we'd all turn back into ordinary humans a couple of days later, which now that I think of it could be kind of fun.
• Injecting king cobra venom into you would kill you within minutes, given that this is basically what happens when you get bitten by a king cobra.
• "Corona" is Latin for "crown," that bit is correct.  But coronaviruses are a big family of viruses that has been known to scientists since Leland Bushnell and Carl Brandly first isolated them in 1933, and were named not for the pope's miter but because the rings of spike proteins on the surface look a little like a crown.
• Is Bryan Ardis stark raving loony?  Or what?

So there you have it.  We are now in the Pope's King Cobra Venom Pandemic.  Despite these dire warnings, my wife and I have both been vaccinated three times, and we haven't turned into hybrids of Satan.  But we have, so far, avoided getting COVID, which is kind of the point.

But I will end with reiterating my plea: if you find a crazier claim, please don't tell me about it.  Reading about this one made countless cells in my cerebral cortex that I can ill afford to lose die screaming in agony.  From now on in Skeptophilia, I think I'll focus on happy bunnies and rainbows.  We'll see how long that lasts.

Hopefully a while, at least.  The last thing we need is my brain cell loss contributing to a further drop in the average human IQ.

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