The strange tale of Clarita Villanueva

When I was a kid, I was big fan of books with names like Strange True Tales of the Supernatural and World of the Weird.  These books often had seriously nightmare-inducing cover illustrations, stories that were (to a twelve-year-old, at least) pantswettingly terrifying, and that important little word on the spine: "Non-fiction."

I still enjoy many of those stories, all these decades later, but now it's solely for their entertainment value.  (I've recounted a number of them here, as long-time readers of Skeptophilia know.)  Some of the most memorable ones have all of the hallmarks of a great Tale For Around The Campfire -- a scary monster or ghost, an innocent victim, brave people trying to combat the forces of evil and bring order back to the world.  

One of the ones of that ilk that I still recall to this day is the story of Clarita Villanueva.

According to the best-known version, Clarita was a young Filipina girl in her upper teens, living in poverty in Manila in 1951.  One night in May, she was found on the street by a policeman, having an apparent seizure.  The policeman took her to the local jail to "sleep it off" (you have to wonder why the words "seek medical attention" didn't occur to him).  But during the middle of the night, the girl began to shriek, claiming that a "bug-eyed man" wearing a hooded black cloak had floated through the bars and was biting her.  The policeman ran to her cell, and found the girl writhing on the floor, and bite marks -- surrounded by saliva -- were appearing on her arms, and in one case, on the back of her neck.

Whatever was biting her, though, was invisible to everyone but Clarita herself!

The policeman got the girl calmed down, and summoned the medical officer on duty in the jail, one Dr. Lara.  Dr. Lara arrived just in time to see the girl go into hysterics again, this time saying that the bug-eyed guy in black had returned, this time bringing a friend.  The doctor, too, saw bite marks appear on her skin.

The doctor, in an understandable state of fear, had the girl transferred from jail to a local hospital, where he saw to it that her wounds were treated.  She gradually relaxed, and the attacks weren't repeated.  She remained at the hospital for six weeks, gaining strength, and her fear of the strange creatures diminished.  Eventually, she was released, and (as far as the story tells) led a completely normal life thereafter.

The reason for the attacks, and who the mysterious creatures were, were never explained.

So, anyway.  See why this one scared me?  Everything about it is classic backbone-shivering horror, even down to the fact that no one ever figured out who her attackers were.  But now, fifty-odd years later, I've come to think of this as the perfect example of why skeptics should not rely on anecdotal evidence.

Because if you do a search for "Clarita Villanueva," you'll come up with (literally) hundreds of different versions of the tale.  The one I've related was the one popularized in those books I was so fond of as a child, but it's not the only one.

You have your religious versions.  Those seem to have been launched by a Christian evangelistic minister named Lester Sumrall, who had worked in Manila and probably heard the story there, but who claimed he actually saw, and treated, the girl.  In his version, Clarita Villanueva was a prostitute whose mother had been "a fortuneteller by vocation... holding seances, communicating with the dead, and using clairvoyance to predict to sinful people what they could expect in the future."  In his account, Clarita was not just being tormented by the monsters, she was (more or less) possessed by them; at one point, she shouted out "in a cold and inhuman voice" at one of her jailers, "You will die!" and the guy obligingly dropped dead four days later.  Dr. Lara finally called in a minister -- in Sumrall's original version it was Sumrall himself, but in others it's a Catholic priest -- and the minister after a "three-day confrontation with the devil inside her" expelled the evil spirits, and she fell to her knees with a smile and said, "The evil one is gone."

Then you have the "Reptilian Alien" version of the story, in which Dr. Lara is female (her first name is given as "Marianna"), doesn't work for the jail but for the hospital where Clarita ended up, and the creatures are "interdimensional aliens from another world."  Cautions are given that these extraterrestrials are "non-emotional creatures intent on performing acts that are considered by humans as evil or malicious."  In this version, no religious folks of any kind were involved; the attacks subsided on their own, presumably when the aliens decided that unwashed human doesn't taste all that good, and buggered off to their own "dimension."

A third version takes a psychic angle on the whole thing.  Here, Clarita Villanueva was a vagrant who was arrested for living on the street, and only experienced the seizures and attack (or whatever they were) once she was already in jail.  It occurred in 1952, not 1951, as the other versions claimed, and the attending doctor was male again -- "Dr. D. Mariano Lara."  In this version, she also was given an exorcism, but before that was apparently receiving information as well as bite marks from the creatures -- prior to the exorcism she was speaking in English, but afterwards didn't understand the language at all!

And so on.  Some versions call her "Carlita," "Carla," "Carlotta," or "Clara," not "Clarita."  The girl's age varies from 15 to 23.  The outcome differs wildly, from her returning to her poverty-stricken existence, to her finding Jesus and devoting her life to religion.  Even the inimitable Jack Chick took a crack at the story, in his bizarre über-Christian "Chick Tracts:"

All of this is why anyone who is interested in more than a quick scary story -- i.e., fiction -- needs more than anecdote to be convinced.  Human memory being what it is, not to mention the human capacity for embellishment and outright lying, a story by itself proves nothing.  In order to believe something -- or even to determine if there's anything there to believe -- we need hard evidence, something beyond the vague reports of one, or ten, or even a hundred people.

And the problem goes deeper than that, because (of course) these aren't all independent reports.  A researcher, with adequate time and energy, might be able to track all of these versions backwards and see where they'd come from, developing (as it were) a cladistic tree for this odd urban legend.  Ultimately, we might find the Last Universal Common Ancestor (the urtext, if you prefer a musical analogy) of all of the versions of the Clarita Villanueva story, and see what form it took.  (Regular readers might recall that I wrote a few years ago about some anthropologists who published a lovely piece of research doing exactly that, creating a family tree for the story of Little Red Riding Hood.)

But even if someone did find out where the story started and what form it originally had, there's no guarantee that it was true in the first place.  There may have really been a girl named Clarita Villanueva who lived in Manila in the early 1950s and had some bizarre experiences; but if she did, my bet is that she was either epileptic or schizophrenic, and everything else about the story (including the bites on the back of the neck) were later additions to add a nice frisson to the tale.  The fact that it's still making the rounds, seventy years later, doesn't tell you anything about its truth or falsity.

As author Gary Taubes put it, speculations and assumptions do not become the truth simply because they are endlessly repeated.  And anecdotes, however much they are embellished, and however often they end up in "non-fiction" anthologies, remain tall tales without much in the way of real value to skeptics.  In science, we need more than just a good story to convince us.

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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.

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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!]

 

Cracked mirrors and haunted websites

I know there are a lot of reasons why people believe weird shit.  It's tempting to settle on the self-congratulatory solution of "Because they're dumber than I am," but I always hesitate to go there because (1) there are lots of inherent biases in our cognitive systems that you can fall for even if you're perfectly intelligent, and (2) I know all too well that I fall for those same biases myself if I'm not careful.

That said, I was sent a link by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia describing something apparently some people believe that left me saying, "Okay, that is incredibly stupid."

The link was to a story by Brent Swancer over at Mysterious Universe called "The Bizarre Tale of the Haunted Website."  You should check out Swancer's article, which goes into considerable detail, but the bones of the story are as follows.

In the eighteenth century, there was a little girl whose name was "Repleh Snatas."  Repleh had a birthmark on her face that the locals said was the mark of the devil, and people started looking askance at the entire family.  The dad became convinced that his daughter was possessed, and locked her in a room full of mirrors to drive the demons out (as one does), but every morning when he'd check on her the mirrors were all cracked and she was as evil as ever.  Ultimately he killed the girl and his wife and finally himself.  The locals refused to give any of them a proper burial, but tied the three bodies to a tree all facing in different directions and let 'em rot right there.

Once again, as one does.

But Repleh was not so easily vanquished.  She disappeared into mirrors, and if you look into a mirror at night sometimes it will crack and in the fractured reflection you'll see her standing behind you.  Then someone started a website about her, and it does weird stuff like not loading properly or actually crashing your computer.  Even if it loads it's still freaky, with collages of scary photographs of creepy children and hair-raising horror-movie-style background music.  And if you go there, you risk getting Repleh's attention, because she's still hanging around apparently, and if she thinks you're getting too curious she might kill you.

Reading this elicited several reactions from me:

• "Repleh Snatas" has to be the least convincing fake name I've ever seen.  A third-grader could figure out that it's "Satan's Helper" backwards.  
• The whole girl-in-the-mirror thing is just a variation on the old kids' game of "Bloody Mary," wherein you stare into a mirror at night and say "Bloody Mary" five times, and nothing happens.
• A website not loading properly wouldn't indicate much of anything to me, because my computer does weird things like random slowdowns and page crashes pretty much all the time.  My guess is that it has nothing to do with mirrors or creepy ghost kids, but it may mean that I need a new computer.

I went to the website, which is (unsurprisingly) www.replehsnatas.com, and got the following message:

Before going to replehsnatas.com, there's one more step.  By clicking the button below you'll go through a standard security check, after which you will be redirected to Chrome store and will be given the option to install Secured Search extension.  This extension will offer you a safer web search experience by changing your default search provider.

And my response to that was, "How exactly stupid do you think I am?"  I closed the window, meaning that I never got to see the actual page, but was better than getting whatever malware or virus this was pointing me toward, which would undoubtedly result in my computer running even worse than before.

Despite all this, apparently there are tons of people who think Repleh Snatas is real.  Over on Reddit there's a whole discussion of Repleh and how you shouldn't mess around with her website because she's eeee-vil.  

Even though I wasn't successful at getting into her website, I was able to find a couple of photographs that are said to be of the wicked Repleh Snatas.  (Yes, I know she supposedly lived in the eighteenth century, before the invention of photography.  Stop asking questions.)  Here's one of them:

The only problem is that this is actually a photograph of Princess Juliana of the Netherlands (who eventually became Queen Juliana).  This would be more obvious if the people who created the Repleh website and added the image hadn't photoshopped out the handwritten words "Princess Juliana" which are (I shit you not) written across the top of the original.

Here's the other one:

And this one is a still-shot of the actress Helena Avellano from her movie Moondial.

So old Repleh is kind of batting zero, here.  This has not stopped dozens of people from writing about her on True Tales of the Paranormal websites, which I will leave you to find on your own, and wherein you will read multiple accounts of the evil Repleh showing up in mirrors and generally scaring the bejeezus out of people.

As I said, I'm not usually going to point fingers at people for slipping into occasional credulity, as long as they're open to correcting themselves when they see what is actually going on.  We all do it; it's part of human nature.

On the other hand, to believe in Repleh Snatas, you have to have the IQ of a PopTart.  I've read some unbelievable paranormal claims before, but this one has to win the prize for sheer goofiness.  So my tolerance of people's foibles can only be stretched so far.

So I'm issuing a challenge to the supernatural believers out there: c'mon, folks.  Up your game.  You can do better than this.  Hell, a sufficiently motivated elementary-school student could do better than this.  The quality of your claims has really been falling off lately.  I'm expecting some better material to work with.

Get with the program, people.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is about our much maligned and poorly-understood cousins, the Neanderthals.

In Rebecca Wragg Sykes's new book Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death, and Art we learn that our comic-book picture of these prehistoric relatives of Homo sapiens were far from the primitive, leopard-skin-wearing brutes depicted in movies and fiction.  They had culture -- they made amazingly evocative and sophisticated art, buried their dead with rituals we can still see traces of, and most likely had both music and language.  Interestingly, they interbred with more modern Homo sapiens over a long period of time -- DNA analysis of humans today show that a great many of us (myself included) carry around significant numbers of Neanderthal genetic markers.

It's a revealing look at our nearest recent relatives, who were the dominant primate species in the northern parts of Eurasia for a hundred thousand years.  If you want to find out more about these mysterious hominins -- some of whom were our direct ancestors -- you need to read Sykes's book.  It's brilliant.

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

No hell below us, above us only sky

I think my problem is that I really don't understand religion.

I understand, or at least think I do, religious people.  I have a lot of religious friends, and mostly we get along fine, even if I am a fairly outspoken godless heathen.  I've been in many a discussion with my religious friends, and from what they've told me they believe for a variety of reasons -- it's their culture/the way they were raised to believe, it makes sense of the world around them, it's comforting, and (for some of them) they have had experiences that they interpret as being in contact with the divine.

So far, no problem.  I may not share this framework for interpreting the universe, but as long as they don't try to force it on me and I don't try to force my atheism on them, it's not a problem for either of us.

But what I don't understand is some of the pronouncements from religious leaders, who take their own convictions about the nature of the deity and feel obliged to make sure that everyone else believes the same way.  Especially given that (1) each of said religious leaders is telling us something different, and (2) even the same religious leader can seriously change his tune from one moment to the next, as if suddenly the entire cosmos shifted and only he was aware of it.

It's this latter one that I want to address today, given Pope Francis's recent pronouncement that hell doesn't exist.  Now, let me say up front that my impression is that the Pope is a pretty cool guy.  We (obviously) don't agree on much in a doctrinal sense, but he seems like a genuinely kind and moral person.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But sometimes he does say things that leave me scratching my head.  In an interview in La Repubblica conducted by Eugenio Scalfari, the Pope said the following:

They [people who die without confessing mortal sin] are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear.  There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.

Which is a little cheerier than the prospect of the Fiery Furnace.  However, there's the problem that it runs counter to The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which you think would be fairly authoritative:

The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity.  Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire.'  The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

So that's awkward.  The Vatican scrambled to do damage control, and a day after the interview went public, issued the following statement:

The Holy Father Francis recently received the founder of the newspaper La Repubblica in a private meeting on the occasion of Easter, without however giving him any interviews.  What is reported by the author in today’s article [in La Repubblica] is the result of his reconstruction, in which the textual words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted.  No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.

So, basically, "you weren't there and you can't prove that's what he said."

Apparently, however, it was too late, as only a few hours after the article was published, some big chunks of the ceiling of St. Peter's Basilica broke off and fell hundreds of feet to the cathedral floor.  No one was injured, but the faithful said it was a message from God that you better just forget the whole "hell doesn't exist" episode ever happened.

What I wonder about is if Pope Francis is right and hell doesn't exist, how does the Vatican justify exorcism?  Because if hell doesn't exist, then how can Satan and demons and all?  I would think that they would be first on the list of "did not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven," and would have vanished along with the rest of the sinners.  But that hasn't stopped the powers-that-be in the Catholic Church from launching a new program to train exorcists, spurred, they say, by a sudden uptick in demonic possession.  The number of possessed people in Italy alone, they say, has risen to 500,000 a year.

Which is a shitload of demons.  So from April 16 to April 21, the church is sponsoring an exorcism training course at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome.  One of the course instructors, Father Cesare Truqui, said:

The fight against the evil one started at the origin of the world, and is destined to last until the end of the world.  But today we are at a stage crucial in history: many Christians no longer believe in [the devil’s] existence, few exorcists are appointed and there are no more young priests willing to learn the doctrine and practice of liberation of souls.

Pope Francis has said he agrees:

If a priest becomes aware of genuine spiritual disturbances that may be in large part psychic, and therefore must be confirmed by means of healthy collaboration with the human sciences, he must not hesitate to refer the issue to those who, in the diocese, are charged with this delicate and necessary ministry, namely, exorcists.

 Now just hang on a moment.

I'll admit that I might not be the right one to try to figure this all out, given my aforementioned godless-heathen status.  But how can all of this fit together?  That is, if Eugenio Scalfari reported what the Pope said accurately, which (I note) the Pope himself hasn't denied.  Hell doesn't exist, and souls that disobeyed God simply vanish, but there are demons loose in the world who disobeyed God and didn't vanish, and they can take over humans, and if they're not exorcised by a priest said human/demon hybrids will die in sin, and vanish again, presumably for good this time.

Is there something I'm missing here?  I'm willing to admit I may just be confused.

Anyhow, that's today's missive from the world of religion.  Allow me to reiterate that I'm not trying to offend any of my religious readers; if I come off as sounding snarky it's because I'm genuinely perplexed at how someone could reconcile all of the above.  So I'm gonna just throw this out there, and go back to thinking about something that's easier to make sense of, like quantum physics.

UIPDATE:  Apparently there's a significant possibility that the interviewer might not be very reliable -- Snopes is calling his claim "unproven" and says that it's not the first time he's claimed the Pope has said something like this, without any facts to back him up.  So we'll file this one in the "well, maybe" folder for now.

Poker face

A wag once said, "Artificial intelligence is twenty years in the future, and always will be."  It's a trenchant remark; predictions about when we'd have computers that could truly think have been off the mark ever since scientists at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project in Artificial Intelligence stated that they would have the problem cracked in a few months...

... back in 1956.

Still, progress has been made.  We now have software that learns from its mistakes, can beat grand masters at strategy games like chess, checkers, and Go, and have come damn close to passing the Turing test.  But the difficulty of emulating human intelligence in a machine has proven to be more difficult than anyone would have anticipated, back when the first computers were built in the 1940s and 1950s.

We've taken a new stride recently, however.  Just a couple of months ago, researchers at the University of Alberta announced that they had created software that could beat human champions at Texas Hold 'Em, a variant of poker.  Why this is remarkable -- and more of a feat than computers that can win chess -- is that all previous game-playing software involved games in which both players have identical information about the state of the game.  In poker, there is hidden information.  Not only that, but a good poker player needs to know how to bluff.

In other words... lie.

Michael Bowling, who led the team at the University of Alberta, said that this turned out to be a real challenge.  "These poker situations are not simple," Bowling said.  "They actually involve asking, 'What do I believe about my opponent’s cards?'"

But the program, called DeepStack, turned out to be quite good at this, despite the daunting fact that in Texas Hold 'Em there are about 10¹⁶⁰ decision points -- more unique scenarios than there are atoms in the universe.  But instead of analyzing all the possibilities, as a program might do in chess (such an approach in this situation would be, for all practical purposes, impossible), DeepStack plays much like a person would -- by speculating on the likelihood of certain outcomes based on the limited information it has.

"It will do its thinking on the fly while it is playing," Bowling said.  "It can actually generalize situations it's never seen before."

Which is pretty amazing.  But not everyone is as impressed as I am.

When Skeptophilia frequent flier Rick Wiles, of End Times radio, heard about DeepStack, he was appalled that we now had a computer that could deceive. "I'm still thinking about programming robots to lie," Wiles said.  "This has been done to us for the past thirty, forty, fifty years -- Deep State has deliberately lied to the public because they concluded that it was in our best interest not to be told the truth...  What's even scarier about the robots that can lie is that they weren't programmed to lie, they learned to lie.  Who's the father of all lies?  Satan is the father of all lies.  Are we going to have demon-possessed artificially intelligent robots?  Is it possible to have demonic spirit to possess an artificial intelligent machine?  Can they possess idols?  Can they inhabit places?  Yeah.  Absolutely.  They can take possession of animals.  They can attach themselves to inanimate objects.  If you have a machine that is capable of lying, then it has to be connected to Lucifer.  Now we’re back to the global brain.  This is where they’re going.  They’re building a global brain that will embody Lucifer’s mind and so Lucifer will be deceiving people through the global brain."

So there's that.  But the ironic thing is that, all demonic spirit bullshit aside, Wiles may not be so far wrong.  While I think the development of artificial intelligence is fascinating, and I can understand why researchers find it compelling, you have to worry what our creations might think about us once they do reach sentience.  This goes double if you can no longer be sure that what the computer is telling you is the truth.

Maybe what we should be worried about is not a computer that can pass the Turing test; it's one that can pass the Turing test -- and chooses to pretend, for its own reasons, that it can't.

I mean, the last thing I want is to go on record as saying I agree with Rick Wiles on anything.  But still.

So that's our rather alarming news for the day.  It's not that I think we're headed into The Matrix any time soon; but the idea that we might be supplanted by intelligent machines of our own making, the subject of countless science fiction stories, may not be impossible after all.

And maybe the artificial intelligence of twenty years in the future may not be as far away as we thought.

The possessed microwave

Spurred by my post a couple of weeks ago debunking claims that microwave ovens are unsafe, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me an email saying, "Ha.  A lot you know.  Your microwave has just lulled you into a false sense of security.  Because, you know... demons."

Along with the message, he sent me a link to an article from Empire News called "Paranormal Investigators Confirm Poltergeist Possession of Microwave."  And as soon as I saw the title, I knew this was gonna be good.

[image courtesy of photographer Christian Rasmussen at apoltix.dk, and the Wikimedia Commons]

Turns out that Bill Michaud, of Louisville, Kentucky, has been having trouble with his microwave oven.  "We found [the microwave] in the attic when we moved in a few months back," Michaud said.  "Didn’t have one, so figured, ‘what the hell,’ might as well try it.  I tell you, the thing heats up the food real nice.  Sometimes it beeped or turned itself off in the middle of cooking, though.  Then really weird things started happening.  It zapped at food as if we were putting shards of metal in it.  I couldn’t figure it out."

Michaud's wife, Betty, concurs.  "It turns on by itself.  It turns off by itself, too," she said.  "It’s like it’s messing with me.  No matter how many times I popped the door shut, the minute I leave the room it pops open again.  One night, really late, I walk into the kitchen and I’m about to open the fridge, and the microwave door flies open, lighting the whole kitchen up in a horrible, scary lightning-blue color.  It’s like it wanted to electrocute me."

Well, I know what it's like to own a mechanical device that appears to be not only sentient, but evil.  I feel that way about my lawn mower, which seems to have a sensor that detects how long the grass is, so it knows when to break down.  One time this summer, when the grass had gotten so long that my only other choice would have been to rent a flock of sheep, the Possessed Lawn Mower decided that this would be a fine time to stop working.  So it let me back it out of the garage, and get all the way down the hill into the back yard, and then in rapid succession (1) the blade suddenly stopped turning, (2) the engine stalled, and afterwards would only make obscene farting noises when I turned the key in the ignition, and finally (3) it simply decided to stop responding entirely and became the world's largest paperweight.  Because (4) the wheel release is broken, and the brakes engage whenever the motor isn't running, the Possessed Lawn Mower was left out in the back yard in the rain, with the grass slowly engulfing it, until the mower repair guy had time to come fix it three weeks later.

But I digress.

Bill and Betty Michaud certainly had reason to stop using the microwave, not to mention a good explanation as to why the previous owners had tossed it up in the attic.  But that didn't stop them from continuing to use it, until one day when Bill was heating up some leftovers.  "[I]t went off like the food was done," Michaud said, "and when I looked over, the damn thing was still going and said 6:66."

Well, that was enough for him.  Instead of doing what I would have done, which is throw it out and buy a new microwave, he called in some paranormal investigators.  They got Kevin Young, a professional ghost hunter, who got permission from the Michauds to spend the night in the house.

"The Michauds didn’t want to go without a microwave, or risk upsetting the spirit by taking it out of the house," Young said.  "My wife, who is also on my squad, is highly empathic.  As we warmed up TV dinners in the microwave, she sensed a presence.  As soon as she mentioned it, the microwave started beeping repeatedly.  The door flung open, and my 'Hungry Man' dinner went flying across the room.  We pressed the off button.  We unplugged it.  It beeped several times after we cut off the power.  Of course our digital recording became corrupted, which often happens when there is such strong energy."

Of course.  And you have to admit that the spirit crossed a line when it threw Young's 'Hungry Man' TV dinner across the room.  In the words of the inimitable Bugs Bunny, "Of course you know: this means war."

So Young called in the big guns, namely an "authority on mechanical possession," one Carl Richards.  Richards confirmed the presence of a poltergeist in the microwave, but cautioned the Michauds against simply throwing the oven out and getting a new one.

"It is important to remember, the malevolent presence does not strictly ‘live in’ the microwave," Richards said.  "Getting rid of the machine will not solve the problem.  It has the ability to travel throughout the electrical wiring in the house."

Which is pretty scary.  God forbid a poltergeist should get into the coffee maker or something.

In the end, Young and Richards advised the Michauds to stop paying attention to it.  "It is best not to engage the being," Young told them.  "Try not to be fearful.  Always remain calm.  If you’re facing a poltergeist in your kitchen devices, just ignore its outbursts, and it will not be able to feed off your energies."

Myself, I'd have been more worried about the damn thing malfunctioning and burning down the house.  But that's just me.

The Michauds still use the microwave, which "heats up leftovers like a champ," and they ignore its periodic demonic outbursts the same way you'd "ignore a child's temper tantrum."  So it all ended happily enough, which I suppose is good.

So Young and Richards have wrapped up their work in Louisville, and presumably are looking for other possessed devices to investigate.  I'd like to invite them to come look at my lawn mower.  My lawn is needing to be mowed, in what is likely to be the last mowing of the season, and this would be an inopportune time for it to malfunction.  Meaning that the demon that lives in the engine is going to be primed and ready.  I'd like to have a strategy in place by then.  Be prepared, that's my motto.

The creation of Zozo

We like to think of urban legends as a modern phenomenon.  As author Jan Harold Brunvand discusses in his wonderful book The Choking Doberman, word-of-mouth transmission of stories heard "from a friend of a friend" is a powerful way to spread memes; and of course, the internet has made it even easier.  Some of these stories are of modern provenance, given their mention of cars and other contemporary props.  But only for a few -- "Slender Man" being an example -- do we know exactly when and where the story started.

I ran into an urban legend of sorts that I'd never heard of just yesterday, and this is apparently one of those rare ones for which the origin is actually known.  The story is about the evil demon named...

... "Zozo."

Notwithstanding that "Zozo" sounds like something a rich old lady would name her toy poodle, Zozo is apparently a demon of incredible evil, according to the story on the subject over at Stranger Dimensions.  Apparently the first mention of the evil Zozo was in Jacques Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, wherein we find that an unnamed girl from Picardy, France was possessed by Zozo back in 1816.

Inferno by Gustave Doré (1863) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But it wasn't until the invention of the Ouija board that stories of Zozo really took off.  Yes, I know it was invented by some entrepreneurial game-designers in 1890, and any positive results -- if you can call them that -- almost certainly arise from the ideomotor effect.  This hasn't stopped the Ouija board from becoming one of the most feared occult devices (hated especially by devout Christians).  Hollywood, never shy of capitalizing on hype, even has a movie called Ouija due out this Halloween, about some teenagers "awakening evil forces" using an "ancient spirit board."

But back to Zozo.  Once this method of "communicating with spirits" was invented, it wasn't long before the Zozo phenomenon really took off.  He (or it) was an evil spirit, claims said, that was always hanging around looking for a means of ingress.  The Ouija board acted to allow access, and once that avenue was open, Zozo wouldn't let go, but would torment the individual forever.

The whole thing has gained so much traction that there's a paranormal researcher, Darren Evans, who has a blog called The Zozo Phenomenon in which he documents hundreds of encounters with the evil spirit.  He calls himself a "Zozologist."  Here's one example of a story from his site:

Hello, I purchased a ouija board at a garage sale from an elderly couple.  I have always had an interested in the spirit world and had a great interest in trying to make contact.  I did not dare to play the ouija by myself so I just left it packed away until I had a friend convinced me to use it last night.  For an hour we spoke to this woman spirit and as we went on with the session the word "zozo" kept being spelled out.  As a newbie at this I had no clue what it meant until I looked it up and found it on your website.  The energy on the oracle was wild and i am certain if we had removed our hands it would have flew off the board. several times it tried to spell out the alphabet.  It was scary as heck and was terrified to see that it was evil… do I still need to cleanse the house even if we went to “goodbye”?  I have children and am scared for them.

Predictably, I still think the whole thing is nothing more than superstition and the aforementioned ideomotor effect, but of course, once this sort of thing catches on, it snowballs, just as Slender Man and Spring-Heeled Jack and El Chupacabra have.  Even Rob Schwartz, in the article at Stranger Dimensions I linked earlier, said:

But what is Zozo, and why has it terrorized thousands of people around the world? This, I’m afraid, is not an easy question to answer.  It’s difficult to tell which stories about Zozo are authentic and which are nothing more than urban legends.  Some tell of murders and suicides, while others involve possession, physical ailments, abuse, curses, and other phenomena commonly associated with demonic forces...  Could Zozo be a tulpa, a shared experience?  Like the Philip Experiment on a much grander scale, or the countless stories (and real life delusions) shared about the Slender Man, Zozo could be our own creation.

Well, yeah, I think that last bit is probably true, but not in the sense that he means.  A "tulpa" is a created experience come to life -- i.e. real -- and I doubt seriously whether that is possible.  As far as the "Philip experiment," I dealt with that in a post earlier this year, and I was (and am) of the opinion that even the people who participated knew it was a bunch of nonsense right from the beginning.

As far as Zozo, it seems to one of a growing number of paranormal phenomena that aren't misinterpreted natural phenomena, nor deliberate hoaxes, but purely human inventions that rely on credulity and a blurred understanding of the line between fact and fiction.  But it does make me want to go out and get a Ouija board and try to summon him up.  If Zozo is that easy to get a rise out of, it should be easy to settle the question of the existence of the paranormal once and for all, not to mention putting me in contention for winning the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge.

Demonic texting

It's an increasingly technological world out there, and it's to be expected that computers and all of their associated trappings are even infiltrating the world of wacko superstition.

About a year ago, we had a new iPhone app for hunting ghosts, called the "Spirit Story Box."  Early this year, there was even a report of a fundamentalist preacher who was doing exorcisms... via Skype.  So I suppose it's not surprising that if humans now can use technology to contact supernatural entities of various sorts, the supernatural entities can turn the tables and use our technology against us.

At least, that's the claim of a Roman Catholic priest from Jaroslaw, Poland, named Father Marian Rajchel.  According to a story in Metro, Rajchel is a trained exorcist, whatever that means.  Which brings up a question: how do you train an exorcist?  It's not like there's any way to practice your skills, sort of like working on the dummy dude when you're learning to perform CPR.  Do they show instructional videos, using simulations with actors?  Do they start the exorcist with something easier, like expelling the forces of evil from, say, a stuffed toy, and then they gradually work their way up to pets and finally to humans?  (If exorcists work on pets, I have a cat that one of those guys should really take a look at.  Being around this cat, whose name is Geronimo, is almost enough to make me believe in Satan Incarnate.  Sometimes Geronimo will sit there for no obvious reason, staring at me with his big yellow eyes, all the while wearing an expression that says, "I will disembowel you while you sleep, puny mortal.")

But I digress.

Father Rajchel was called a while back to perform an exorcism on a young girl, and the exorcism was successful (at least according to him).  The girl, understandably, is much better for having her soul freed from a Minion of the Lord of Evil.  But the Minion itself apparently was pissed at Rajchel for prying it away from its host, and has turned its attention not on its former victim, but on the unfortunate priest himself.

Apparently such a thing is not unprecedented.  According to an article about exorcism over at Ghost Village, being an exorcist is not without its risks:

[John] Zaffis [founder of the Paranormal and Demonology Research Society of New England] said, "You don't know what the outcome of the exorcism is going to be - it's very strong, it's very powerful. You don't know if that person's going to gain an enormous amount of strength, what is going to come through that individual, and being involved, you will also end up paying a price." 

Many times the demon will try to attack and attach itself to the priest or minister administering the exorcism. According to Father Martin's book, the exorcist may get physically hurt by an out-of-control victim, could literally lose his sanity, and even death is possible.

So there you are, then.  Rajchel, hopefully, knew what he was getting into.  But I haven't yet told you how the demon is getting even with Father Rajchel:

It's sending him evil text messages on his cellphone.

According to Rajchel, ever since the exorcism, the demon has been texting him regularly sending him messages like, "Shut up, preacher.  You cannot save yourself.  Idiot.  You pathetic old preacher."  On another occasion, he got the message, "She will not come out of this hell.  She’s mine.  Anyone who prays for her will die."

Which of course brings up the question of how a demon got a cellphone.  Did it just walk into the Verizon store and purchase one?  You'd think the clerk would have noticed, what with the horns and tail and all.  Probably, all things considered, more likely that the demon stole someone's cellphone, although it still does raise the question of how it's paying to keep the cell service going.

It also raises the much more pragmatic question of why Rajchel doesn't just see what number the texts are coming from, and report it to the police.  Odds are it's the girl that he exorcised, and she's not possessed with anything but being a kid and enjoying pranking a gullible old man.

Of course, that's not how the true believers see it, and once you believe in demons and the rest it's a short step to deciding that they can just magically manipulate your machinery.  So I doubt that all of my practical objections would call any of those beliefs into question.

But it does bring up a different issue, which is, if demons can infest cellphones, can they infest other sorts of equipment, too?  Because if so, I strongly suspect that my lawnmower is possessed.  It seems to realize just when my lawn needs to be mowed, and chooses that time to suffer some kind of mysterious breakdown that necessitates my calling Brian the Lawn Mower Repair Guy.  Given how often this happens, maybe Brian is in cahoots with the demon.  Something in the way of a business partnership.  Although you do have to wonder what the demon gets out of it, other than the pure joy of listening to me swear.

Ouija wackiness south of the border

Ouija boards have been around for a long time -- since 1890, in fact -- but they've only really hit an upswing in popularity (and a commensurate downward spiral amongst the highly religious) in the last couple of decades.  In fact, I've dealt with them before, and wouldn't be back on this topic again if it weren't for our dear friends at The Daily Fail.

Mail.  The Daily Mail, is of course what I meant.  They've once again reinforced their reputation for high-quality, groundbreaking journalism with their story entitled, "Three Americans Hospitalized After Becoming 'Possessed' Following Ouija Board Game in Mexican Village."

In this story, we hear about twenty-something siblings Alexandra and Sergio Huerta, and their cousin Fernando Cuevas, who were visiting relatives in the village of San Juan Tlacotenco, Mexico, when they decided to whip out the ol' Ouija board and see what the spirits had to say.  And of course, as with most cases of the ideomotor effect, the spirits very likely didn't have much of interest to say other than what the participants already knew -- until Alexandra Huerta went into a "trance-like state" and started growling.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Then the two boys began to "show signs of possession, including feelings of blindness, deafness, and hallucinations."  So all three were taken to a nearby hospital, where all three were given "painkillers, anti-stress medications, and eye drops."

Because you know how susceptible demons are to eye drops.  Whip out the Visine, and Satan is screwed.

Interestingly, Alexandra's parents called a local Catholic priest for an exorcism, who refused because the three were "not regular churchgoers."  I guess as a priest, your job fighting the Evil One is contingent on the possessed individual belonging to the church Social Committee, or something.

But so far, all we have is the usual ridiculous fare that The Daily Mail has become notorious for -- a non-story about three young adults who either were faking the whole thing for attention or else had suffered panic attacks and some sort of contagious hysteria.  Worthy of little attention and even less serious consideration, right?

Wrong.  You should read the comments, although you may need some fortification before doing so, because I thought that the comments on CNN Online and the Yahoo! News were bad until I started reading this bunch.  These people bring superstitious credulity to new levels.  Here's a sampling, representing the number I was able to read until my pre-frontal cortex was begging for mercy:

I've had plenty of experience.  Like us, there is both positive and negative charges amongst, let's call it, the spiritual realm.  The most common cause of error is to act like it is an actual game with no consequences.  I assure you they are quite real.  I assure you that regardless of positive or negative matter (let's call "spirits" ), they can do some mind boggling things i.e. dimming candles, creating areas or pools of water in places that couldn't possibly form etc.  AND yes, if you blatantly agree to invite them in with you it could potentially shock you into a "possessed" state.  LIKELY, it was the shock of being witness to paranormal activity as nothing can really prepare you for it.  Rule #1: Be of the most steadfast, clear and pure mind and you will have an opportunity to experience something you would never be able to otherwise.  Rule #2 ALWAYS be respectful (which also may explain this possession scenario) to them!  Most are quite nice and knowledgeable! 

Only a true exorcist Catholist [sic] priest can really rid someone of a possession.  Not all Catholic priests have this special "training" if that is even the right word to use (probably not).  It's serious stuff and the Catholic Church takes it seriously.  Perhaps we're not getting the full story on that priest's decision.  If the 3 young people were indeed "possessed," they likely still are...as sedatives won't fix that.  They need to try the C.C. again.  There is a procedure to be followed. 

We just bought a house and there was a board in the closet.  I threw it out instantly and prayed for the Lord to protect the house, I asked Jesus to bless all who enter.  My mother played with one as a teen and it answered many questions correctly, she and her friend asking the other one's question to prevent guiding of the piece.  My God-fearing farm-raised Epispocal [sic] grandma walked by and the piece stopped abruptly-all I need to know. 

Oh, so NOW you WANT a priest.  This is so sad you blame a priest, for not responding to what could be a physically (or life-) threatening situation, at night, brought on by the free will of consenting adults.  Out of many possible suggestions for this sad state of affairs, as a remedy, I can suggest daily praying the Rosary of our Blessed Mother.  Because, "when you fill your mind with Holy thoughts, the demons will flee upon approaching you as they see that you are not fertile ground for them." 

This is NOT fake!  I know this for a fact.  After dealing w/ one, there were spirits and slamming doors in my house.

Good grief, people, will you just calm down?

It's a toy.  The thing was invented back in the 19th century as a kids' game.  There are no demons to call up, and even if there were, I doubt that a little piece of plywood with some poorly-stenciled letters would be sufficient to get them to pay a visit.  There have been tests run on people trying to mess with a Ouija board while blindfolded -- you'd think that demons wouldn't care, right? -- and it turns out that the only satanic messages these subjects spell out are things like, "kdolwicmsalpomng," which may mean something in the Language of Hell, but doesn't really mean much to the rest of us.

So the whole thing is kind of idiotic, which is what the original click-bait story on The Daily Mail intended.  They don't really care if what they say is well-written, or informative, or even true, as long as people give them hits.  (And for those of you who would like to read the original without contributing to TDM's share on search engines, the link I provided goes through the wonderful service DoNotLink.com, which allows you to see content without adding to their hit profile.)

Anyhow, that's our dip in the deep end for today.  My advice: don't go out of your way to throw out your Ouija board if you have one, but also don't expect it to tell you anything but random nonsense.  In that way, it's a little like The Daily Mail itself, isn't it?  Mildly entertaining, but mostly garbage, and gets boring pretty quickly.

Demon redux

A few days ago, I posted about a fellow named Bob Larson who claims to be able to exorcise demons from the possessed via Skype.  My general feeling was that actual demons, if they're as powerful and evil as the religious claim, would have no particular reason to listen to a guy who was babbling prayers at them via a wonky internet connection from 2,000 miles away.

Not that this addresses the deeper problem that there's no evidence that demons exist in the first place.  But still.

Evidently, there are a lot of people who saw the Larson story and agree with me, on the first point at least.  One of them is a gentleman named Isaac Kramer.  Kramer, in an interview that you can watch over at Vocativ, said, "They just can't be done that way.  If a person is fully possessed, the demon inside of them will not let them sit in front of the computer screen to be exorcised.  Chances are, they’re going to throw the computer screen across the room and destroy everything."

Which sounds pretty reasonable, until you find out that Kramer is a Catholic priest who is the director of the International Catholic Association of Exorcists,  and he's apparently only saying this because he thinks he can do it better than Larson can and resents the competition.

I would like to think that belief in demons is on the decline, but if you've been following the news, there have been several recent stories where claims of possession were taken seriously by the powers-that-be.  The best publicized, just last week in Gary, Indiana, involved a house that was a "portal of hell," a nine-year-old boy who walked up a wall backwards, and various priests and chaplains and so on -- a story that got so much press that the priest who was in charge of it all, Reverend Michael Maginot, ended up being interviewed on Fox News' show The O'Reilly Factor.

Bill O'Reilly, to his credit, started out with the right approach; he asked for Maginot to keep his story fact based, and asked the priest what he knew about the little boy.  Maginot responded, not surprisingly, "Actually, I have never met any of the children.  The first time I heard about the incident was after the boy walked up the wall backwards...  I was in my parish, conducting a bible study, when I got the call, and they called me in to do an exorcism."

O'Reilly said, "Now, exorcism in the Catholic church is a serious thing... you have to jump through hoops to get it approved...  It disturbs me a little that the boy involved -- and this is according to the newspaper, and other eyewitnesses -- was doing incredible things, like walking up walls, but you yourself never talked to the boy.  Why not?"

Why not, indeed.  Maginot seemed vaguely embarrassed by the question -- as well he should have been.  "Well," he responded, " when I went to do the interview, at the home, with the mother and the grandmother, it was a four-hour interview, and the first two hours were basically getting information on all the occurrences leading up to the incident."

"The problem I'm having with this," O'Reilly countered, "is number one, you didn't see the boy.  The credibility of the Catholic church is in a tough way now, in this country.  Exorcism is a serious thing, a very serious thing.  I understand you got permission from the bishop in your diocese to do this.  But it seems to me that the story is not solid enough to go public with it.  There are a lot of people watching right now who are saying, 'this is more mumbo-jumbo from the Roman Catholic church, there's no credibility here at all.'  How would you answer that?"

More nervous, sidewise glances from Rev. Maginot.  "Well, the two boys and the girl, the one boy was put into a lockdown psychological children's ward, and the other two were taken to the Carmelite sisters who take care of foster children.  And so they were taken away from the parents, the mother and the grandmother, and so I didn't have access to them.  And the mother, I found out at the very end, was also possessed.  I put the crucifix on her forehead, and she began to convulse."

Righty-o, then, Father Maginot.  That's your evidence?  And you think that the mother, who was the one who had called in the priests, has any credibility at all?  Not mentioning, I notice, that this woman has already been exorcised four times and has a history of mental problems?  That the children need to be in foster care not because there are demons roaming around, but because their mother is a raving lunatic?

I can't say I often agree with Bill O'Reilly, but this time he nailed it, and asked all the right questions.  And it bears mention that O'Reilly himself is a practicing Catholic, who has no vested interest in making Maginot and his In The Name Of Jesus Begone act look silly. 

But that's not stopping the story from making the rounds, not as evidence that the whole practice is ridiculous, but that it somehow proves that demons exist.  As further evidence, they say, there's the photograph of the house, which shows a demon looking out a window:

To me, this more looks like E.T. the Extraterrestrial than it does like your conventional image of a demon.  And all of which goes to show that, as we've seen before, "proof" means something entirely different in the realm of religion than it does in the realm of science.

Interesting, too, that it only seems like people who were already religious get possessed, isn't it?  You'd think that a strident nonbeliever like myself would be perfect Satan bait.  But atheists never seem to need exorcisms.  Funny thing, that.

Probably the true believers would explain this by saying that we're being controlled by the Evil One, we just don't realize it.  You can't win.

Anyhow, that's our story for today.  I just want to end by stating a hope that the poor kids involved in this mess get some help and counseling, and their mother gets the help she needs, too... probably in the form of some heavy-duty medication.

Diagnosing demonic possession using crayons

There are times when I wonder if some people aren't really crazy, but are engaging in a sort of elaborate game of self-parody.

I do, after all, spend a lot of time saying, "I'm not making this up.  I promise," and still some of the topics I find for this blog seem to have the effect of making my readers say, "No, really?  That's just straining credulity to the snapping point."

Yeah.  I know.  Take, for example, the televangelist and the "ex-gay" therapist who got into a discussion this week about how you can diagnose both homosexuality and demonic possession using a drawing of a brain and a box of colored pencils.

Toufik Benedictus "Benny" Hinn, an Israeli-born evangelical who runs the Benny Hinn Ministries and the "Miracle Crusades" revival meeting/faith healing circuit, was interviewing Jerry Mungadze, a psychologist who claims that his therapy turns gay people straight and even "changes their brains to be more like straight people's."  So we're definitely talking about a serious meeting of minds, here.  The following is a transcript of the conversation that ensued:

Mungadze:  Everything that I talk about is based on numbers, is based on studies.  Which is what you do when you're a scientist.  Now, one thing that surprised me, is that for many, many years when I lived in Africa, I saw people that were demonized, but I didn't know that you can actually see demonization in people's brains, which I can now.

Hinn:  Wait, wait, wait, stop.  You can see demonization in people's brains?

Mungadze:  Yeah.

Hinn:  How?

Mungadze:  There is a certain color that I won't mention that tells me if a person has been demonized.

Hinn:  Now, let me explain what he just said to you.  What he has you do, and we're going to show you materials that you can have on your own [holds up drawing of a brain], he divides the brain into different parts, and each part speaks of one area of your life.  This [points to various areas on the drawing] is how you relate to people, this is your compassion, this is your identity, and this deals with your focus, and so on.  And by the colors you choose, you take colored pencils and color every area, he can tell you everything about yourself.  Now, you hear this, and you go, "no, no, that's impossible."  Now, trust me.  This man really can.

Mungadze:  I can be in a room with some people, for example some of the people of the occult, people who were steeped in demonology.  I may not know just by sitting next to them, but I let them do that [color the brain drawing] and I can tell them what spirit they have and what it is doing in their life. 

Hinn:  By the color.

Mungadze:  Yeah.  The trouble, it is a spiritual trouble.  Demonization, for instance.  Or if the trouble is abuse, if they grew up in a family where there is abuse, or people who come from the occult, or come from witchcraft.

Hinn:  What colors do they choose, usually?

Mungadze:  Usually blacks and browns, and grays.

There was also this earlier interview with Mungadze on the Daystar Network, wherein he revealed that he can diagnose men as being gay using the same technique.  Gay guys, apparently, like to use pink crayons more than straight guys do.

Every time I think these people can't possibly find a way to make themselves appear more ridiculous, they do, somehow.

I have sometimes been accused of only going after the low-hanging fruit -- of choosing the most absurd fringe beliefs out there, and highlighting those, rather than engaging in the more difficult job of countering subtle, intelligent arguments (and those do exist).  To some extent, guilty as charged.  On the other hand, I wouldn't feel the need to point out the idiotic claims of people like Hinn and Mungadze if everyone had the reaction of laughing them into oblivion.  But according to the Wikipedia article I posted above, Benny Hinn is incredibly successful at convincing people -- his television show This is Your Day is one of the world's most-watched Christian broadcasts, and his revival meetings are incredibly well-attended.  In three meetings on a "crusade" in India, his message was heard by 7.3 million people.

He is also incredibly wealthy.  Using donations from the faithful, he was able to purchase a personal Gulfstream G4SP jet (dubbed the "Dove One") valued at $36 million, and which costs an estimated $600,000 a year to maintain and operate.

We're not talking about some kind of fly-by-night revivalist preacher at the county fair, here.  People listen to this guy, and mostly, they believe him.

So it's easy for the rationalists to sit back and laugh.  "Colored pencils?  Demonization?  Diagnosing psychiatric conditions using crayons?"  But unfortunately, such is the widespread credulity in the world, the no-evidence-needed, faith-based approach to knowledge, that even such an apparent act of self-parody as Hinn and Mungadze just engaged in doesn't seem to elicit much besides a resounding "Hallelujah."

Some thoughts about demons

C. S. Lewis' famous book The Screwtape Letters chronicles the tempting of a young British man (known only as "The Patient") by a junior demon, Wormwood, who is under the guidance of a senior devil named Screwtape.  The Patient experiences pulls and pushes from various sides, some (in Lewis' worldview) positive, i.e. toward god; others negative, toward hell and damnation.  A particularly interesting passage comes in Letter #10, where Lewis throws a barb at us skeptics and atheists (if you haven't read this book, recall that it's from the devil's point of view, and therefore "The Enemy" is the Christian God):

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know - rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly sceptical about everything in the world. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism. This is excellent. And you seem to have made good use of all his social, sexual, and intellectual vanity. Tell me more. Did he commit himself deeply? I don't mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a Mortal can imply that he is of the same party is those to whom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realise it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult.

No doubt he must very soon realise that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don't think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgment of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary. The real question is how to prepare for the Enemy's counter attack.

It is clear that Lewis, although he meant The Screwtape Letters as a fictional allegory, believed in the reality of demons and their capacity for tempting humans into sin.  In the preface to Screwtape he writes,

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

What I find interesting about all of this is two things; first is why, if demons actually exist, they don't tend to bother atheists like myself -- wouldn't we be easy targets for possession?  (Lewis, I suspect, would respond to this objection that I am so far gone in my disbelief that the demons have already added me to their Ledger Book -- there's no further need to tempt me, as I'm already damned.)  Be that as it may, it's interesting that the only people who seem to be troubled by demons are Christians who already thought they were real beforehand.

The second interesting thing is how generally embarrassed Christians seem to be by the idea of demons, although it is clearly scriptural in origin (recall the passage in Matthew 8 where Jesus casts some demons out of a couple of guys, and the demons possess a bunch of pigs, who proceed to drown themselves in a lake).  Despite this, and with the exception of the fundamentalist sects of Christianity, a lot of Christians kind of turn red and change the subject when you bring up demons and possession.

As evidence of the latter, look at the dithering that came from the Vatican last week after Pope Francis did an impromptu exorcism on a guy in St. Peter's Square.  A television station showed a video clip that had captured the incident, and the announcer stated that it was "certainly an exorcism" given that the man had opened his mouth wide, convulsed, and then slumped to one side when the pope put his hands on his head.  Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi responded with some apparent unease that of course the pope hadn't performed an exorcism; "rather," Lombardi said, "as he frequently does with the sick or suffering who come his way, he simply intended to pray for a suffering person."

Not everyone shared Lombardi's trepidation on the topic.  After the incident in St. Peter's Square, and the media flurry that followed, Father Gabriele Amorth of Rome stated that despite Lombari's claim, the pope had clearly performed an exorcism.  How does Amorth know?  Because he is the head of the International Association of Exorcists, and over his career has expelled 160,000 demons.

That, my friend, is a crapload of demons.

Amorth himself is completely convinced that it works, and went on record in 2010 as saying that "bishops who don't appoint exorcists are committing a mortal sin."

So it's clear that there's some disagreement here, which only got weirder yesterday when the man Pope Francis either did or did not exorcise told the press that it hadn't worked, he was still possessed.  "I still have the demons inside me, they have not gone away," the man, who was identified as a father of two from Michoacán, Mexico named Angel V.  Angel V. has been possessed, he says, since 1999, and has had thirty unsuccessful exorcisms, including one...

... by the head of the International Association of Exorcists, Father Gabriele Amorth.

I couldn't make all this up if I wanted to.  The Mexican priest who accompanied Angel V. to Rome said, in all apparent seriousness, "the demons that live in him do not want to leave."

Or, maybe, it could be that Angel V. has a mental illness that could be treated by modern medicine.  There's always that.

In any case, that's our odd story of the day.  I still have to say that I wonder why the demons aren't after me.  I've been a non-believer for close on twenty years, and I've had nary a single demon come up and shake my hand in congratulations.  (It must be said that I never saw one before that, either, not even during my church-going days.)  So my general conclusion, given the complete lack of evidence, is that demons don't exist.

But I'm sure that Father Amorth would disagree.  "The principle responsibility of the exorcist is to free man from the fear of the devil," he told reporters.  Well, I guess that's a second reason I don't need him.  I'm not afraid of the devil at all.  There's no reason to be afraid of something that doesn't actually exist.