Home bizarre

My house is, to put not too fine a point on it, kind of a disaster area.

A friend described it as "looking like a museum run by lunatics."  Part of this is that my wife and I have dozens of interests, so we have a huge amount of random stuff.  Carol is a professional artist (you can and should check out her amazing work here), so between the pens and inks and watercolors and framing supplies -- as well as all the finished pieces -- it takes up a lot of room.  We're both amateur potters, which is a whole other set of supplies and products.  I'm a fanatical book and CD collector, and also a musician with (at last count) five flutes, three recorders, three pennywhistles, a set of bagpipes, a guitar, a djembe, a concertina, and a piano.  I collect masks, and have them hanging on walls all over the house.  Then there's the odd random stuff; just from where I'm sitting, I can see a Bigfoot statue, an antique typewriter, a gargoyle, a bronze sundial, several ceramic statues of characters from Doctor Who and Lost in Space, and a scale model of the Miller-Urey apparatus.

Our house isn't neat, but I can at least confidently assert that it's interesting.

There's also the problem that Carol and I are both housework-impaired.  This is not helped by the fact that we have three large dogs.  When we have guests coming over it's preceded by three days of panic-cleaning so we don't die of humiliation as soon as our guests walk through the front door.  On the other hand, it's a good thing we sometimes do have guests, because otherwise one day we'd go missing, and when the police came to investigate they'd find us both trapped in enormous clumps of dog hair.

We'll never make Home Beautiful, but we did make the May edition of Home Chaotic.

My work station

The reason all this comes up is a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, who sent me a link suggesting that the problem isn't that I have a million interests, the attention span of a fruit fly, and zero aptitude for housework.

The problem is my home needs an exorcism.

At least that's what Australian psychic Catarina Ligato would probably say.  Her vocation is "cleansing" houses of their past inhabitants, who do stuff like creating "negative energy," making rooms feel unnaturally cold, and moving your belongings around.  They can also produce odd smells, although I wonder if we'd even notice that given our aforementioned three dogs.

If Ligato checks a place out and finds it's haunted, she respectfully asks the disembodied ghosts of former residents to leave the place in peace.  She also uses a "crystal wand" and "sacred spray" to encourage their exit.

Kind of the spirit world equivalent of a mop and a can of Lysol, is how I think of it.

"Doing this work is a calling, it’s not for everyone," Ligato said.  "I know other psychics who ended up in psych wards for losing their balance.  [Working in homes] can feel a bit more positive, because you’re helping both the inhabitants and the spirits to find peace."

If you don't want to shell out the cash to hire Ligato (her minimum fee is three hundred dollars) -- or if, like me, you live halfway around the world from her -- you can always DIY it.  Burn some essential oils, she says, play some calm music, keep the windows open, and "declutter regularly."

It's this last one that would be the sticking point for us, because as I mentioned earlier, clutter is kind of our raison d'être.  I mean, I guess it'd be nice to live in a neat, clean house (not that I know first-hand what that's like), but... I like my stuff.  This is my Emotional Security Stuff.  If I were to start doing a Marie-Kondo-style culling, I'd be a little lost.  Okay, maybe I don't need an Indonesian statue of a cat playing a flute, but yeah, Marie, it kind of does spark joy.

So I think the fact that we're constantly misplacing stuff probably isn't caused by the ghosts of former inhabitants moving our belongings around, but more that (1) we have a huge amount of random things strewn everywhere, and (2) we're both kind of scatterbrained.  As far as it feeling cold sometimes -- well, it's an old house, and we do live in upstate New York, which is a four-season climate (the four seasons are Almost Winter, Winter, Still Fucking Winter, and Road Construction).  I don't think I'm ready to pay Catarina Ligato to fly out from Australia to do an exorcism, entertaining as that would be.

I might give the essential oils a try, though.  I doubt it'll help with the overall cleanliness, but maybe it'll help with the doggy smell, which can get pretty intense sometimes.   Every move in the right direction is a good thing.

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

Pew-pew-pew

Because it's always a losing bet to say the state of things in the United States couldn't get any weirder, today we have: a priest holding a mass of exorcism to protect Brett Kavanaugh from a spell cast by witches.

I wish I were making this up.  You might have heard about the witches, who were so pissed off about Brett Kavanaugh's nomination and ultimate accession to the Supreme Court that they hexed him.  Twice.  Once before the confirmation vote, and once, for good measure, afterwards.

The event, sponsored by spiritualist/occult book store Catland Books, explained it thus:

We will be embracing witchcraft's true roots as the magik of the poor, the downtrodden and disenfranchised and [its] history as often the only weapon, the only means of exacting justice available to those of us who have been wronged by men just like him. 

[Kavanaugh] will be the focal point, but by no means the only target, so bring your rage and all of the axes you've got to grind.  There will also be a second ritual afterward — "The Rites of the Scorned One" which seeks [sic] to validate, affirm, uphold and support those of us who have been wronged and who refuse to be silent any longer.

Well, far be it from the Righteous to take this lying down.  So Father Gary Thomas, who serves as an exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, California, decided to take some serious action.  "Conjuring up personified evil does not fall under free speech," Thomas said, making me wonder what laws it would fall under.

Spinello Aretino, The Exorcism of St. Benedict (1387) [Image is in the Public Domain]

Although given the current administration's reputation for doing whatever the evangelicals want, I wouldn't be surprised if the next bill to go through Congress is a Satanic Attack Protection Act.  Or perhaps a law preventing demons from immigrating into the United States.  Or maybe just a suggestion to build a wall along the border between the U.S. and hell.

Thomas went on to explain further:

They are going to direct the evil to have a permanently adverse effect on the Supreme Court justice.

When curses are directed at people in a state of grace, they have little or no effect. Otherwise, [I have] witnessed harm come upon people such as physical illness, psychosis, depression and having demons attach to them. Curses sometimes involve a blood sacrifice either through an animal or a human being, such as an aborted baby...

The decision to do this against a Supreme Court justice is a heinous act and says a lot about the character of these people that should not be underestimated or dismissed. These are real evil people.

I suppose this is to be expected from someone in my position, but to me this really sounds like two kids fighting with finger guns, one saying, "Pew-pew-pew!  I got you!  You're dead!" and the other saying, "No, I'm not, I got my magic invisible shield up in time!"

Only these are adults, and I have the sneaking suspicion that a significant proportion of Americans think this is perfectly normal behavior.  And these people vote.

So that's today's contribution from the Department of Surreal News.  I keep thinking that we have to have plumbed the depths of government-endorsed insanity, but I keep being wrong.  A friend of mine thinks that all this is happening because we're living in a computer simulation, and the programmers have gotten bored and now are simply fucking with us to see what we'll do.

And I have to admit, it makes as much sense as any explanation I could have come up with.

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

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is something everyone should read.  Jonathan Haidt is an ethicist who has been studying the connections between morality and politics for twenty-five years, and whose contribution to our understanding of our own motives is second to none.  In The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics, he looks at what motivates liberals and conservatives -- and how good, moral people can look at the same issues and come to opposite conclusions.

His extraordinarily deft touch for asking us to reconsider our own ethical foundations, without either being overtly partisan or accepting truly immoral stances and behaviors, is a needed breath of fresh air in these fractious times.  He is somehow able to walk that line of evaluating our own behavior clearly and dispassionately, and holding a mirror up to some of our most deep-seated drives.

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

Bulk discount on demons

As you undoubtedly know, there are people who take the whole exorcism thing with the utmost seriousness.

And given the current chaos in the world, both man-made and natural, it's no wonder that some religious types think that demons are causing it all.  If you're already a believer in supernatural forces (good and bad) controlling things, I suppose it's natural enough that when things get crazy, you're more likely to think that none of it can be due to natural causes.  So according to these folks, demons are directly causing the natural disasters -- and as far as the human-induced ones, it's demons acting through people, directing their actions, that's causing them to do awful things.

Although as far as the natural disasters go, I've heard them attributed to other sources as well.  Noted theologian Kirk Cameron, for example, thinks that Hurricane Irma was sent by god himself in order to teach us "humility, awe, and repentance." He said:

The storm is causing us to remember that it’s God who supplies our life, breath and everything else so that you and I reach out to him...  Remind [us] that God is the blessed controller of all things.  He is the one who gives us peace, security and strength in the midst of the storm and that he uses this to point us to him and to his care for us.

Myself, I doubt that people in the middle of Hurricane Irma are thinking any such thing.  I'm guessing that most of them are trying to figure out how not to have their asses blown into the next time zone, and/or dodging wind-driven projectiles like pieces of houses and, in some cases, entire cars.

Then there's Reverend Lance Wallnau, who has become something of a frequent flier here on Skeptophilia for saying things like god told him the Chicago Cubs were going to lose the World Series because President Obama was from there (the Cubs won),  that Donald Trump's administration has turned into a slow-motion train wreck because he was being cursed by witches, and now that Hurricane Irma will spare Florida if you just pray at it hard enough.  He suggests the following approach:

We command that storm… in the name of Jesus, you will go off to the ocean, you will bounce off in a direction away from the coast… we don’t have to accept this destruction.  And we’ll see it wobble and off to the ocean it goes, out into the open ocean it goes…

Well, I'm not seeing much in the way of a wobble at the moment, and in fact, every forecast I see is more and more certain that southern Florida is directly in the bullseye.  Maybe we haven't hit the minimum number of prayers that is acceptable for god to turn the hurricane aside, I dunno.

Anyhow, my point is that we have a great many people who still engage in magical thinking, and attribute everything from one's own personal behavior to large-scale events like earthquakes and hurricanes to the direct intervention by spirits, both good and bad.  So with all this demonic stuff going on, it was only a matter of time before we had an exorcist...

... offering a quantity discount on demon-eviction.

The exorcist in question is Father Cataldo Migliazzo of Palermo, Sicily, who does his group exorcisms on Tuesdays.  People gather, and he exorcises them all at once.  In fact, Migliazzo says the whole thing works better when there are at least eight possessed people there.  No explanation of why, although it does seem to be a somewhat more efficient way to approach it.  Paul Seaburn, who wrote the article I linked for Mysterious Universe, describes what happens at one of these evil entity meet-ups:

[A] woman begins to groan, a couple of people growl and spit and one man vomits.  All are then attended to by other priests who allegedly are also trained exorcists. They hold some of the people down, put crucifixes in their faces and, in one case, throw flour in the face of a woman.

Which seems like an odd thing to do.  Do demons have gluten sensitivity, or something?  In any case, the whole thing seems like a combination of auto-suggestion, superstition, and histrionics to me, but I guess that's unsurprising.

St. Francis Borgia Performing an Exorcism (Francisco Goya, 1788) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Federica di Giacomo, who a documentary on modern exorcists, seemed oddly accepting of the whole thing.  "As the priests said to me," di Giacomo said, "people go to the psychiatrist, they go to the magician, they go to other kinds of healers, and they spend a lot a lot of money.  When they finish the money, they go to the priests."

Kind of a troubling progression, that.  Implies that if the psychiatrists can't fix you right away, the only possibility is that you're possessed.  The truth is, many psychological disorders are remarkably intractable, even considering modern medicine and therapy techniques.  The idea of someone who might be schizophrenic going from a psychiatrist to a magician to a priest is actually kind of horrifying.

But Migliazzo thinks he's got the right approach, and apparently his Tuesday demonic socials are quite the rage.  The article didn't mention his success rate, at least in terms of how many people felt better afterwards.  My guess, given what these people are most likely suffering from, any successes would be short-term at best, and end with them becoming repossessed, or whatever the appropriate terminology is.

Myself, I think if you're inclined to growl, spit, or vomit in a public place, you need professional help, and not from a guy in a white robe chanting incantations or throwing flour around.  But I'm not expecting this to change anyone's mind.  If we still have people who think you can pray away a hurricane, all of this exorcism stuff doesn't seem that much crazier.

Possession profession

Looking for a job with excitement and travel opportunities?  Do I have news for you!

Of course, there are a couple of downsides.  These include (1) you most likely have to become a Catholic priest to be eligible, and (2) it requires you to commit yourself to fighting bad guys who almost certainly don't exist.

What I'm referring to is an urgent call that was issued last week by a spokesman for the Vatican regarding a drastic shortage of exorcists.  The announcement was made by Valter Cascioli, who is the "scientific consultant" for the Vatican-endorsed International Association of Exorcists, which in my mind is a little like being the "reality consultant" for Looney Tunes.  Cascioli, we find out, also teaches a course in exorcism at the Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum in Rome.  This makes me wonder if there's a required lab class that goes along with the course.  Do you get graded on how thoroughly squelched the demon is after you exorcise it?  Do you get points off if your subject is eventually, as it were, repossessed?

Be that as it may, Cascioli takes the whole thing pretty seriously.  "The lack of exorcists is a real emergency," he said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa.  "There is a pastoral emergency as a result of a significant increase in the number of diabolical possessions that exorcist priests are confronting.  The number of people who take part in occult and satanic practices, which lead to serious physical, psychological and spiritual damages, is constantly rising."

Saint Francis Borgia Performing an Exorcism by Francisco de Goya (1788) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Amongst the difficulties I see with the whole concept of possession is that you'd think an atheist like me would be a sitting duck with respect to demonic attack.  I mean, I don't do all of the Vatican-approved things to protect myself, e.g. wearing a crucifix, making the sign of the cross, praying, and sprinkling myself with holy water.  And yet, here I sit, neither turning my head a full 360 nor puking up pea soup all over my computer.  In fact, atheists never seem to be the victims of demonic possession -- it's always people who believed in the devil and all of his assorted pals in the first place.

I wonder why that is.

This doesn't seem to occur to Cascioli, however.  In fact, he says, "There is a broad spread of superstitious practices, and with that a growing number of requests for help from people who are directly or indirectly struck by evil.  It is dangerous to underestimate a phenomenon that is caused by the direct actions of the devil, but also by a decline in faith and values."

Note that Cascioli attributes the rise in the demand for exorcisms with the "spread of superstitious practices," which is true, but not for the reason he thinks.

In fact, Cascioli thinks that exorcist training programs need to be expanded dramatically.  "There doesn’t exist a training institution at university level," he says.  "We need an interdisciplinary approach in which science collaborates with religion, and psychiatrists work with demonologists and exorcists."

And of course, there's just one problem with that, which is that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that demons exist, so a scientist collaborating with a demonologist would be sort of akin to a scientist collaborating with a unicornologist.  Not much chance there of getting funding, much less making it past the peer review process.

Nevertheless, Cascioli is getting a lot of support from his fellow demon-eviction squad.  Father Vincent Lampert of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, who is called "America's top exorcist" and whose activities have been featured on the television show Paranormal Witness, concurs with Cascioli's call for more exorcists.  "We’re gaining all sorts of knowledge, but there’s still that emptiness within us that is being filled with addictive behavior such as drugs and pornography," Father Lampert said.  "The decline in faith goes hand in hand with the rise in evil."

Well, all I can say is that if pornography led to demonic possession, the vast majority of single males (and a good many of the married ones) would be possessed.  In fact, it's hard to imagine the demons keeping up with the demand.

In all seriousness, the whole thing strikes me as kind of dangerous.  Not the demons, but the exorcists themselves.  How many people who are mentally ill -- especially schizophrenics and people with panic and anxiety disorders -- have been frightened by the combination of their experiences and the superstitious nonsense being thrust upon them into undergoing an exorcism rather than seeking legitimate medical attention?  Despite Cascioli's confidence that he can tell the difference between a mental illness and demonic possession, I'm unconvinced.

Of course I would be, given that I don't think demons exist in the first place.  But still.  The idea that some poor tortured soul would seek out an exorcist rather than getting help from a doctor is appalling.

So there you have it.  Today's dip in the deep end of the pool.  Myself, I can only hope that the shortage of exorcists isn't because the demons have been busier, but because belief in this dangerous superstition is on the decline.  The fact that there are still people like Cascioli and Lampert around is indicative of the fact that we're not fully in the 21st century yet -- but perhaps we're moving in the right direction.

Get thee behind me, Rover

If you live in Japan, own a dog, and have more money than sense, I've got good news for you: you can pay ¥ 31,000 (about US $297) to have a Shinto priest perform an exorcism on your canine companion.

I'm not making this up.  According to an article by E. S. Huffman over at UpRoxx, the D+ Spa in Kagoshima Prefecture is offering a special deal wherein you can come over with Fido, and a certified Shinto priest from the nearby Shingariyu Shrine will get rid of whatever evil spirits your dog has in attendance.

"Seven-year-old, 10-year-old, and 13-year-old dogs need to be careful of their health, as it’s easier in those years for them to get diseases of aging," the D+ website explains.  After all, it couldn't be because by the time dogs get to be ten years old, they're moving into the age bracket euphemistically known as "getting up there in years."

On the other hand, if creaky joints, bad eyesight, and wrinkles are caused by evil spirits, that'd be good news for people Of A Certain Age.  Like myself.  Unfortunately, however, D+ doesn't offer exorcisms for humans yet, only dogs.  And if the whole thing brings up mental images of Linda Blair puking up pea soup all over the place, not to worry; the exorcism ritual only lasts thirty minutes, is apparently calm and peaceful, and afterwards the newly-cleansed dogs get to go for a swim in a dogs-only pool.  Then, according to the website, they "are reunited with their owners for a relaxing meal and champagne."

Me, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to give a dog champagne.  But maybe the bubbles keep the evil spirits from returning, I dunno.

Actual photo from the D+ website of a poodle, settling in for a nice post-exorcism nosh

What I wonder, besides "Are you people nuts?  Or what?", is that in my experience all dogs have weird, quirky habits, so if you're attributing canine oddities to evil spirits, then every domesticated dog I've ever met must be possessed.  In my long years of dog ownership, I've known dogs who:

• never figured out that you can't walk through a sliding glass door
• tried to herd our cats
• thought a stuffed toy was a live squirrel and stared at it for hours on end waiting for it to move
• begged for cucumbers but completely ignored us when we were cooking steak
• had a mortal hatred of ping-pong balls
• barked furiously at strangers -- until they walked in the front door, at which point everyone apparently becomes a friend
• would suddenly turn vicious and block the door, growling and snarling, when visitors tried to leave

I sort of doubt that any of this could be fixed by exorcism.  Myself, I've always thought that domestication just makes animals act weird.  In order for a formerly-wild animal to cohabit successfully with humans, it must kind of screw up the mental circuitry on some level.

On the other hand, if you want my vote for a species that really could use some intervention, evil-spirit-wise, I'd suggest looking at cats.  On a recent visit to a friend's house, I met a cat whose preferred mode of affection is to jump on the top of the chair you're sitting in and bite a chunk out of your scalp.  Another friend has a cat who likes to climb into your lap, reach up with both paws, and attempt to give you a nipple piercing right through your shirt.

You have to wonder what a Shinto priest could do about that.

Anyhow, if you're ever in Japan with your dog, consider whether a family outing for a canine exorcism might be right for you.  As for me, I need to sign off here so I can go let my dog out, so she can spend the next three hours sitting completely motionless staring at a tree in the back yard, waiting for squirrels to spontaneously drop from its branches or something.

Possessed poodles

The one thing you should never say is "Now I've heard it all."

Especially if, like me, you are an aficionado of woo-woo. If you are a regular reader of Skeptophilia, you have followed me through investigations of Florida Skunk Apes, the discovery of the Millennium Falcon on the floor of the Baltic Sea, plastic cards that will impart "Scalar Energy Fields" to the water you drink, medicines that you download directly into your body, and countless examples of Jesus, the Apostles, the Virgin Mary, and (in one case) Bob Marley showing up on a variety of food items.  And each time, it's been tempting to say, 'Now I've heard it all."

If you did, in fact, say that, you're gonna regret it.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Because following hard on the heels of yesterday's discovery that your computer can be healed by witchcraft, we now we have a  book, written by New York City artist Olga Horvat, called Paranormal Pooch.  Paranormal Pooch is about her dog, Princess, who was...

... possessed by demons.

I kid you not.  Horvat apparently had a run of devastatingly bad luck a while back, including the following incidents:

• Her apartment was infested by bedbugs, and it cost $7,000 to get rid of them.
• Her husband was in an automobile accident, and afterwards came down with a rare autoimmune disease.
• Her daughter was suspended from second grade for putting on a rubber glove and grabbing a classmate, and then blamed the odd behavior on "hearing voices in her head."

And instead of doing what most of us would do, in such unfortunate situations -- including saying to our kid, "Why the hell did you bring a rubber glove to school?" -- Horvat evaluated the evidence, and came to the inescapable conclusion that the whole thing was due to her poodle being possessed.

Don't be fooled by the goofy haircut and innocent-looking eyes.  This is a demonic entity for sure.  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Amongst the claims she makes in Paranormal Pooch -- and believe me, there's enough fodder for skepticism in there that I could go on all day -- my favorite is that dogs with pointy ears are more susceptible to possession than dogs with floppy ears, because "The spirit can get in there easier."

Myself, I would think that if a spirit is capable of causing your spouse to get in an automobile accident, it would be capable of lifting a dog's floppy ear to get inside.  But what do I know?

In any case, Horvat solved the whole thing by inventing, and selling (c'mon, you knew she was selling something) "electromagnetic shield pendants" to protect humans and pets from demonic possession.  They only cost $197, which is a comparative steal considering the cost for exterminating bedbugs.  It's received rave reviews, mostly from other wingnuts, including Joshua Warren, renowned psychic investigator: "A CHILL ran down my spine while reading Olga Horvat’s Paranormal Pooch.   Why?  Because her story is so real and her emotions so palpable."

Well, all I can say is that my definition of "real" and Mr. Warren's seem to differ somewhat.

The sad postscript to the whole thing is that four months after she was successfully cleansed of evil spirits, Princess herself fell down the stairs and died.  Maybe she was grief-stricken after losing her satanic companion, I dunno.

I do know one thing, though; I hope like hell that Horvat is never allowed to own another dog.  Because it sounds, all joking aside, like she is not someone who should be trusted to give appropriate care to a pet.  But I have strong feelings about how animals are treated, and maybe I'm being unfair, here.

Oh, and one other thing: now I've heard it all.

Mass eviction notice

Buoyed by the success last month of Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop Emeritus of Guadalajara, who conducted an exorcism of the entire country of Mexico, a Catholic priest in Scranton, Pennsylvania is now suggesting that we do the same thing for the United States.

Monsignor John Esseff, who has been a priest for 62 years and an exorcist for 35, says that "Such exorcisms … have helped bring awareness that there is such a thing as sin influenced by Satan...  The devil has much to do with [influencing people in] breaking the law of God."

William Blake, Satan Smiting Job (1826) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Right.  Because things in Mexico are ever so much better since Íñiguez and his intrepid team of Satan-fighters expelled all the demons from the country.  Notorious drug cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera escaped from jail last week, almost certainly with help, and is now in hiding.  A "killing surge" in the city of Monterrey three weeks ago left 25 people dead. Ruben "El Menchito" Oseguera Gonzalez, son of the Jalisco Cartel's leader, was arrested for the third time last week after already being arrested and released twice for complicity in "two cases of forced disappearance."  Officials have said, basically, that everyone knows he's guilty, but he almost certainly won't be tried and found guilty because of the culture of corruption, coercion, and fear that exists in the Mexican judicial system.  A study just found that Mexico has a gun-seizure rate twice that of Iraq -- and yet the violent crime is on the increase, with 2015 looking to set a record, just as 2014 did.

So the exorcism really worked well.  It's no wonder that Monsignor Esseff wants the United States to follow suit.

And if we can't get our act together to have a country-wide expulsion of demons, local bishops could still do a piece-by-piece exorcism.  "Every bishop is the chief exorcist of his own diocese," Esseff said.  "Any time anyone with the authority uses his power against Satan, that is powerful.  Every priest and bishop has that power...  During the exorcism of a diocese, the bishop calls on the power of Jesus over every court, every single institution, every individual and every family.  The whole country would have such power if bishops would exorcise their dioceses."

What strikes me as most bizarre about all of this is the seemingly complete lack of awareness by people like Esseff and Íñiguez that their Get Thee Behind Me Satan routine has no effect whatsoever. I mean, this is a lack of connection to reality on a truly colossal scale.  You'd think that the first time you had a flat tire, and you prayed to god to expel the demons from your steel-belted radials, and nothing happened, you'd go, "Huh.  What a goober I am.  I guess this doesn't work."

But no.  They keep doing their rituals and prayers and so forth, and nothing continues to happen, and they are for some reason completely undaunted by this.

When it comes to true disconnect with reality, though, they've got a good precedent in the bible itself.  "Truly I tell you," Jesus says in Matthew 17:20, "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Either that's simply not true, or else mustard seeds are setting the bar for faith higher than they appear to be.  Because the faithful pray for stuff all the time -- ordinary stuff, not mountains moving around -- and a great deal of it doesn't happen.

But "god works in mysterious ways."  Which, I suppose, covers damn near every failure I can think of.

So we'll see, over the next few weeks, if American bishops take Monsignor Esseff's advice and exorcise the United States.  I suppose the whole thing falls into the "No Harm If It Amuses You" department.  Myself, I'm not expecting anything to change much.  Life will go on, crimes will still happen, Donald Trump will still be running for president.  Just showing that some demonic entities are harder to get rid of than others.

Group discount on exorcisms

There's no doubt that Mexico has become a pretty rough place to live, in the past couple of decades.

The crime rate is astronomical.  According to the demographics site Nation Master, Mexico ranks in the top five nations in the world for homicides and violence committed by youths.  They are #3 for number of prisoners per capita, and have a wealth gap that staggers the imagination -- 16% of the citizens of Mexico earn less than a dollar a day.  Corruption is rampant, the drug cartels are in charge of many cities, and the air and water pollution, especially in Mexico City, result in thousands of preventable deaths per year.

So all of those problems, what do you do?

You have a mass exorcism, that's what.

Because clearly what's doing all of this awful stuff is... demons.  At least that's what Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop Emeritus of Guadalajara, and his sidekick, Spanish priest and exorcist Father José Antonio Fortea, think.

With the permission of the Archbishop of San Luis Potosí, Jesús Carlos Cabrero, the "Grand Exorcism" was held in the Cathedral of San Luis a couple of weeks ago. "This celebration is a sacramental [sic] of the Church,," Cabrero said.  "During the ritual, some priests were present, and Cardinal [Sandoval] did me the favor of accompanying us, in response to an invitation I sent him."  The ceremony was conducted in private, Cabrero added, because otherwise, "morbid interests appear, and misinterpretations."

Hey, you're the one who thinks that demons are running rampant in your country, harming and killing innocent people.  How much more morbid can you get?

Cardinal Sandoval, however, was in full support of the event.  "The Great Exorcism is a prayer asking God to drive away the Enemy, to drive him away from these places.  From San Luis, first of all, and then from all of Mexico.  People should become aware of the very grave situation we are living through in Mexico, whose root is very deep, beyond human malevolence; it is the devil, who is very connected to death.  He is a murderer from the beginning...  Acts of revenge, now occurring between assassins and the government; deaths here, deaths there, and deaths everywhere.  This violence is nothing else but the Devil who is tearing us apart."

As far as how they know all of this, apparently they found out from one of the demons itself.  Roberto O'Farrill, a Catholic journalist and "demon specialist," said that during an exorcism of a devil from a guy named Ángel (I'm not making this up), the demon kind of spilled his guts regarding what is going on.

O'Farrill explained that "the demons possessing Ángel said, 'you are stupid, because She [the Virgin Mary] cast us out of Mexico, and now you with your stupid laws have allowed sacrifices to return to Mexico, human sacrifices. We don't want to say this but She is stepping on our head and forces us to.'"

"During that exorcism," O'Farrill added, "the Virgin Mary forces the demons to say that they have returned to Mexico, that there is once again an infestation, principally in Mexico City and in other parts of the country."

Well, that's proof enough for me.  Time to reboot the Inquisition, sounds like.

So anyhow, Cabrero and Sandoval had their Grand Exorcism on May 20, and in the four weeks since the ceremony, we've seen a miraculous decrease in... um... a heaven-sent... um...

Okay, nothing much has changed.  In fact, just last week, a bunch of "radical teachers" in the town of Tuxtla Gutierrez went on a rampage, and attacked and burned the headquarters of five different political parties, demanding, amongst other things, "100% pay raises."  A few days before that, 42 suspected drug dealers who had taken over a ranch in the state of Michoacán were killed in "sprays of machine gun fire" by police.  Violence has recently spiked in Tijuana during the lead-up to elections on June 7, with gang and drug related killings reaching record numbers, and including such grotesque horrors as "severed heads in an icebox."

So yeah, Cardinal Sandoval really seems to have those demons on the run.

But we can't have reality intruding on the worldview, after all.  Bad for business, in one of the most staunchly Catholic countries in the world.  Gotta keep having meaningless rituals so they can pretend they're actually accomplishing something, rather than throwing their accumulated wealth and resources behind things like remediating the crashing poverty and hiring more law enforcement.

And, of course, dealing with all of the "radical teachers."  Those sonsabitches are mean.

Exorcism While-U-Wait

In the latest from the Bizarre Religious News department, we have word that Catholic exorcists in Italy are being told to take it easy by the powers that be.

The Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Giuseppe Bertori, has become concerned that priests are conducting too many exorcisms.  There's a danger, Bertori said, that some of the purported possessed actually are suffering from conventional mental illnesses, and would be better off consulting a psychiatrist than a priest.

Saint Francis Borgia Conducting an Exorcism by Francisco Goya [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Well, yeah, I'd agree, especially if you substituted the word "all" for "some."  But Bertori obviously still thinks that the whole demonic possession thing is real, because instead of telling the Get-Thee-Behind-Me-Satan crowd simply to knock it off, he's telling them that they have to apply for and receive permission from the higher-ups before going through with it.

This strikes me as simultaneously appalling and hilarious.  Because if bureaucracy is good at anything, it's dragging its feet.  Can you see the problem here?

Italian church member:  Father, you need to come conduct an exorcism on my wife.  She froths at the mouth whenever anyone near her says a prayer, can't stand the sight of crucifixes, chews on the upholstery, and recently turned her head a full 360.  It's scaring the pets. 

Priest:  I'll have to apply for permission.  I'll get right back to you. 

*a year and a half later* 

Priest:  Good news, we've got permission!  I have you on the calendar for March of 2018.  I hope that works for you.

So that could be problematic.  But Bertori et al. seem to be more worried that unauthorized exorcisms are making the church look kind of... silly.  So he's sent all the priests a manual called (I'm not making this up) "Regarding Magic and Demonology," telling them to pay special attention to the section called "Exorcisms and healing prayers… pastoral rules and recommendations."

"Some priests, with the best intentions," a Catholic spokesperson said in an interview in La Nazione, "are making themselves available to listen to these people and sometimes perform exorcisms on them in a way that is not permitted, not regular and not coordinated."

Well, the last thing we want is uncoordinated exorcisms.  And lest you think I'm simply being snide, allow me to point out that there are regular reports of people dying during exorcisms -- just this week a man in Zambia died during a ritual to expel evil spirits, in which the victim was given a poisonous liquid to drink because supposedly the demons would be poisoned, not the man.  It didn't turn out that way.  The pastor, once he realized that his ritual had killed the man he was supposed to be helping, dumped the body and is currently on the run from the law.

This sort of thing hasn't stopped the practice, nor diminished the support of many religious leaders.  And no one is more convinced than Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican's "chief exorcist," who claims to have expelled 70,000 demons in his 25 years of service in the position.  Keep in mind, though, that this is the same dude who thinks that yoga is "satanic," and that it "leads to evil, just like reading Harry Potter."

So we're not talking about someone with a particularly sound grasp on reality, here.

In any case, I am heartily in favor of anything the church patriarchy can do to cut back on the exorcisms being conducted by the rank-and-file.  It'd be nice if they'd abandon "magic and demonology" stuff entirely, but that's probably too much to hope for.  In the meanwhile, if you need an exorcism, you might be looking at a long wait.  I might suggest trying a good psychologist in the meantime.

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.

Skype exorcisms

Some of my regular readers may remember that a few months ago, I posted about a trio of young and extremely Christian ladies who were invading Britain to rid the country of demons that had been brought there because so many British children read Harry Potter.

One of them is named Brynne Larson.  It will come as no surprise that Ms. Larson is from an fundamentalist household; hard to imagine your believing anything that ridiculous if you didn't learn it as a very young child.  Be that as it may, Ms. Larson's father is Bob Larson, an evangelical preacher, talk radio host, and general wingnut.  Larson has been doing his dog-and-pony show for a while; I remember listening to him back in the 80s when I lived in Seattle.  I'd turn the show on when I got stuck in traffic, which was often, because I figured that the best thing to keep you from experiencing road rage is to listen to a radio show that distracts you by making you even madder at something else.

Well, Larson is still around, and just this week announced that he's out there fighting the Evil One just as hard today as he was thirty years ago.  He has, he claims, performed over 20,000 exorcisms in his life.  Doesn't that seem like a lot, to you?  It would imply that a good many of the people we meet on a daily basis are possessed, which I kind of doubt.  I don't think I've seen anyone lately who was guided by a demon, with the exception of the woman who ran a stop sign and cut me off in a Syracuse mall parking lot last weekend during a snowstorm, and I don't think she was possessed by anything but the evil spirit Dumbassimus.

But Larson begs to differ.  The demons are out there, he says; "there'll never be a shortage."  There are so many, in fact, that Larson can't keep up with the requests.  He receives so many that now he has to do his exorcisms...

... via Skype.

I don't know about you, but my first thought upon reading that was, "How could that work?"  Here you have a wicked, dangerous minion of Satan, who has latched on to some poor unfortunate soul in Hogfoot Junction, West Virginia.  And a guy shows up on Skype and says, "Get thee gone, evil spirit!" from 2,000 miles away via an internet connection, and the demon has no choice but to retreat in disarray?  If I was a demon, and Larson showed up babbling at me to Return to Hell From Whence I Came, the least I would do is to flip him off and then cause his computer to experience the Blue Screen of Death.

I mean, it can't be that hard.  My computer does that often enough without any demons being involved.

And it has to make you wonder what's next.  Will he start distributing general exorcisms through Twitter?

Get thee behind me Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord Amen #ChalkAnotherOneUpForMe #IGuessThatShowedYou

What if he doesn't finish his magical incantation before he runs into the 140-character limit?

My overall impression is that he's fighting a losing battle, trying to use the internet to fight Satan.  Just considering the volume of pornography alone, out there on the 'net, I think that so far it's Larson 0, Satan 1,489,352.

Larson, of course, doesn't see it that way.  When asked in an interview with ABC15 if his Skype-your-way-out-of-hell method was nothing more than a fire-and-brimstone circus act, he said, "It’s real.  There would be no reason to theatrically stage this for any reason.  Why would anybody do that?  I have no idea."

I'll pass over the fact that he used the word "reason" twice, and that his worldview isn't exactly one in which reason, in its literal sense, is the driver.  But really, Reverend Larson?  You can't think of any other incentives for doing what you're doing, other than the need to fight the Evil One?  How about money?  Notoriety?  Being interviewed by a major news outlet?

But other than those, nothing, right?

Of course, right.

So that's the latest from the world of religious wingnuttery.  I live in hope that most Christians recognize whackjobs like Bob Larson for what they are, but the sad fact is that there are enough people still listening to Larson that his show, Talk Back, is still being aired, and his ministry still gets followers.

And he still gets people, over Skype, who are eager for him to free them of demons -- for just a small donation to support the ministry, of course.

Attack of the teenage exorcists

In previous posts I've described a lot of examples of Poe's Law -- a rule that states that it is impossible to tell the difference between a sufficiently well done satire and the real thing.  Today, I want to look at a different phenomenon -- the difficulty of determining when someone is making a claim because (s)he actually believes it to be true, or simply because it has the potential to generate a lot of money and notoriety.

It's the problem with psychics, isn't it?  Given the human capacity to lie convincingly, you can see that it would be difficult to determine if people like Psychic Sally Morgan sincerely believe that they can "see what's hidden," or if they are simply hoaxers and charlatans, in it to make money from the gullible.  (Note that even if the first is the case -- Morgan et al. actually do believe that they are psychic -- it has no relevance to the additional question of whether they are right.  There are lots of people who sincerely believe lots of things, and who are simply wrong or delusional.)

Which brings us to the trio of teenage exorcists who are currently embarked upon a quest to eliminate demons from England.

An upcoming documentary, filmed by Dan Murdoch and airing tomorrow on BBC3, chronicles the efforts of sisters Tess and Savannah Scherkenback and their friend Brynne Larson to exorcise the evil spirits that are currently troubling Great Britain.  These bad guys, the three say, were always kind of oozing around the place, but really gained a foothold recently...

... because of Harry Potter.

"It has been centuries in the making, but I believe it came to a pinnacle with the Harry Potter books," Savannah told reporters for The Daily Mail.  Her sister Tess agreed, adding, "The spells you are reading about are not made up.  They are real and come from witchcraft."

Funny, then, how when I shouted "Petrificus totalus!" at a student in my class who wouldn't stop talking, nothing happened.  Maybe the demon who is helping me was taking a nap, or something.

Be that as it may, these girls have gone all over the world with their dog-and-pony show, Casting Out Unclean Spirits and making Satan Get Thee Behind, um, Them, and raking in lots of money at each appearance.  It's clear that a lot of the audience members believe they're for real; there's the usual screaming and rolling-back-of-eyes and so on that accompanies exorcisms, followed by hallelujahs and praising of Jesus when the all-powerful Evil One is once again, surprisingly enough, vanquished.  But the question remains:  do the Weird Sisters themselves think that they're banishing demons -- or are they just charlatans who are in it for the money and publicity?

One thing that would argue for the former is that Brynne Larson is the daughter of Reverend Bob Larson, who is an evangelical wingnut of some proportion.  He's been around for a while; I remember listening to his radio program, Talk Back, in the 1980s when I lived in Seattle.  His major theme -- harped on in just about every single show -- was how the music industry was infested by demons, and how listening to rock-and-roll was going to endanger your soul.  He's written several books on the topic, including Rock & Roll: The Devil's Diversion, Hippies, Hindus, and Rock & Roll, Rock & the Church, and Rock, Practical Help for Those Who Listen to the Words and Don't like What They Hear, as well as the more general titles Larson's New Book of Cults and In The Name of Satan: How the Forces of Evil Work and What You Can Do to Defeat Them.  So it's pretty clear that Larson himself believes what he's saying, even though most of the rest of us think he should see a doctor about getting some antipsychotic meds.

Actually, my most vivid memory of Larson's radio show is that he was notoriously slow on the five-second delay button when people would call up to harass him, which happened with clock-like regularity.  On one extremely memorable occasion, a woman called up, asked a couple of misleading questions about how to invite Jesus as her personal savior to get Larson off his guard, and then said, "I'm just curious to ask, Reverend, can god get it up?"

Larson, clearly not understanding, said, "I beg your pardon?"

She said, "Can god get it up?  You know?  Because after all, man was created in god's image, and my boyfriend has a hard-on pretty much constantly.  And god made the Virgin Mary pregnant, and all, so I was just wondering..."

*click*

Then followed a fifteen-minute rant about how the forces of Satan were constantly attacking him, and how evil and twisted and depraved they were, and how that woman must have been possessed by a devil to call him and say such a thing.  No mention was made about how his (human) tech crew should be doing a better job of screening his calls, which is the reaction I would have had.

But I digress.

My guess, about the teenage exorcists, is that they probably are at least nominal Christians, but that they know full well that what they're doing isn't real.  "Reality" is the last thing that "Reality TV" turns out to be, and I suspect that that this is no exception.  I also suspect that the British, who are in general considerably less religious than Americans, will simply roll their eyes at the documentary and then proceed to forget all about it.  And the trio will have to take their Malleus Maleficarum roadshow elsewhere.

I'm sure, however, that this isn't the last "documentary" of this sort that we'll see.  Because, after all, the exorcists aren't the only ones who are motivated by profit.  If Teenage Exorcists is successful in garnering anything approaching high ratings, it will probably be only the first of many such shows.

All of which makes me glad that we don't watch television.

Saturday shorts

Well, it's Saturday, the beginning of the weekend, and here at Skeptophilia we're hard at work following three stories for your facepalming enjoyment.

First, we have an update from the bible-is-literally-true crowd.  Long-time readers of this blog may remember that back in 2011 we had an announcement from Donna D'Errico, former star of Baywatch, that she was going to be spearheading an expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey to try to find Noah's Ark.  D'Errico's qualifications for leading the mission seem to be twofold: (1) she has dreamed of finding Noah's Ark since she was ten; and (2) she likes people to take videos of her.  The climb went off without a hitch, unless you count the fact that they didn't find Noah's Ark because it basically doesn't exist.

Of course, you shouldn't let a little thing like reality stand in the way of pursuing your dream, so D'Errico and her team are trying to launch another expedition, this time using a Kickstarter project to fund it.

Even if she gets the money -- and when I looked, she'd raised $2,900 of the $10,000 she's asking for -- she'll still have a rough time ahead, she says.

In a quote I swear I am not making up, D'Errico wrote on her Kickstarter page, "To get to the area where we believe the ark is located, we will have to climb using ropes, traverse cliffs, circumvent rock slides, avoid mountain rebels, survive blinding blizzards, and fend off vicious sheepdogs."

As far as objections to the entire Great Flood story, and how anyone could believe it was true unless they had the IQ of a grapefruit, D'Errico says that it's completely logical.

"If you do the math, the total cubic volume inside the ark would have been roughly 1.5 million cubic feet," she told The Huffington Post by email. "That’s the equivalent of 569 modern railroad stock cars. The average stock car can accommodate 240 sheep, which would have been the average size animal on the ark.  Keep in mind that the Bible did not say two of every species, but rather two of every kind. That means that one feline kind, rather than every species of feline, would have been taken aboard the ark.  Smaller animals would have been kept in cages that could stack on top of each other. As few as 2,000 animal kinds could have been taken aboard the ark, which would have resulted in all of the species we have today."

Right.  2,000 "animal kinds" resulting in 15 million species in 5,000 years (give or take).  Not to mention the fact that the entire Earth being covered in salt water would have killed all of the plants.  Not to mention the wee problem of bringing, for example, the wombats back to Australia after the waters receded.  Nor the problem of where exactly the waters receded to.

But other than that, it's completely logical.


Speaking of not being in touch with reality, we have a story in from Poland that there is going to be a meeting of exorcists soon.  On the agenda: discussing the threat of Madonna.

You would think that, given that these people apparently believe that the world is being besieged by evil supernatural emissaries of Satan who are trying to destroy our souls, they would have more pressing issues to discuss than a 54-year-old has-been pop star.

You would be wrong.

"Part of the conference is dedicated to the hidden subliminal message in communication, and the choice of this subject was inspired by the woman who dares to call herself Madonna," said Father Andrzej Grefkowic, a trained exorcist who is one of the organisers of the conference.  "We've been worried about her concerts."

Well, one of the reasons that Madonna dares to call herself that is that it's her actual name.  And I don't know how "subliminal" you can call her message, given that she once staged a mock crucifixion at one of her shows.  But okay, I can grant them that she pisses off Catholics with great regularity.

Other things that Grefkowic et al. will be discussing are how the increasing popularity of tattoos and body piercings represent a means of ingress for the devil into people's lives.  But as I've discussed before, this is rather thin ice for me personally, so perhaps I'd better just move on.


If you're not in the mood for discussing the evils of pop stars, but you'd still like to find out about the bizarre side of religion, perhaps you should sign up for the "Defending the Faith" cruise sponsored by Catholic Answers.  This holy voyage will be from November 2 - November 9 of this year, and besides some of the usual shipboard activities (a pool, a rock-climbing wall, an ice skating rink, a spa, a nightclub, and several bars) there will be talks, lectures, and panel discussions on Catholic apologetics, not to mention daily Mass.

In particular -- and they must feel it's important because it was quoted on the front page -- Catholic Answers Director of Development Christopher Check will be giving an interesting talk.  "On the cruise, I’ll be defending the Church against the charges that the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition are events for which we Catholics need to apologize," Check writes.

Now, I'm a staunch believer in the idea that no one is responsible for bad things his or her ancestors did (or should bask in the glory of good things they did, either, for that matter).  But the Catholic Church, which just recently issued a 400-year-too-late apology for placing Galileo under house arrest for the remainder of his life for publicly stating that the Earth went around the Sun, really does have a lot to answer for as an institution.  And it's reprehensible that Check and his comrades seem to be claiming that the Catholic Church at the time was acting within its rights to launch people off to "reclaim the Holy Land" from innocent people who had lived there for generations, and to torture and execute thousands for heresy and witchcraft.

But if that sort of thing is your cup of tea, have at it.  Failing that, you can go to Poland and discuss the most recent depredations of Madonna.  Or go to Turkey and join Donna D'Errico in an expedition to once again not find Noah's Ark.  If you believe this stuff, there are thousands of pointless activities you can participate in!  Me, I think I'll stay home and weed the garden.  And frankly, it seems like in doing so I'll accomplish a great deal more toward improving the world.

The backfiring demons of Romania

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch we're keeping a close eye on a story out of Romania.  It's got all of the necessary elements -- some religious guys who are a little loony, a true believer who is even loonier, and a supernatural entity with an unfortunate problem.  [Source]

The whole thing began when Madalin Ciculescu, a 34-year-old lawyer from the town of Pitesti in Romania, enlisted the help of four priests in ridding his business of demons.  According to Ciculescu, the problem wasn't just the presence of the evil spirits, but that they had a rather... um... malodorous gastrointestinal condition, the results of which were making it impossible to do business.

"When I am at home," Ciculescu told reporters, "they switch the TV on and off all the time, they make foul smells that give me headaches and basically roam unhindered around my house and my business."

So, anyway, the priests dutifully showed up to show the farting demons the door, and performed the ritual exorcism to remove them.  Unfortunately for Ciculescu, though, the whole "vade retro satana" routine didn't make any difference, and the disturbances continued.

And Ciculescu sued the church for "religious malpractice."

"If they (the priests) represent the way of God, then God's ways are crooked.  They did not remove the demons that made these bad smells as they promised to do, and I still see all sorts of demons in the form of animals, usually crows but also other such things, that are making my life miserable."

He included the bishop of the diocese, Constantin Argatu, in the suit, alleging that since the bishop was supposed to be overseeing what the priests were doing, he was guilty of malfeasance as well for not instructing them properly.

Now, you can see how to an atheist, this is all kinds of funny.  A guy plagued by nonexistent evil spirits call priests who are supposed to get a nonexistent god to expel them, and then is surprised when nothing happens.  The flatulence adds a whole extra middle-school-level humor to the whole thing, but I'm not so sophisticated that I can't laugh at a good fart joke.

Ciculescu wasn't laughing, though, and at his court date brought his mother as a witness.  I'm not sure that she helped his credibility, though.  On the witness stand she agreed that her son was plagued by flatulent demons (so far, so good).  But then she added that she sees a "black shadow" following her around, said that the evil spirits liked to hang out in the fridge, and mentioned that her hair dryer was "possessed."

Okay, mom, thanks for helping... you can get off the witness stand, now.

The outcome of the case is interesting.  The courts found in favor of the church, which is unsurprising from the standpoint of "who is richer and more powerful?", but which casts a rather harsh light on the church's claims.  Do evil spirits exist?  The church is the one who is claiming that they do.  Can priests perform an exorcism, or is the whole thing a pointless ritual?  I thought the whole Christian idea was that god is more powerful than the devil, and that you can accomplish anything in god's name.  So, do you people really believe in what you're preaching, or not?

The double standard is curious, and it doesn't just apply here.  Consider all of the biblical stories of god telling so-and-so to smite various people.  The Old Testament in particular is full of references to "holy men of the lord" killing the unworthy, in several places even the children (I'm remembering especially the lovely line from Psalm 137, "Happy the man who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rock").  And they got nothing but approval for these actions.  Today, if a person kills somebody, and then tells the authorities they did it because "god told them to," they're referred for psychiatric evaluation.  No Christian I've ever heard has spoken up and said, "Wait, god told him to do that!  That makes it okay!"  What, doesn't god like his followers to kill the unworthy any more?  Why was that kind of thing edifying (and justifiable) 3,000 years ago, and now it means you're crazy?

Or does it just mean that deep down, you know that god isn't really talking to anyone?

Anyway, Ciculescu lost his suit, and he and his mom have to return to dealing with farting demons in the house.  You have to feel at least a little sorry for them; they obviously believe that their house is possessed (not to mention the fridge and hair dryer).  Also, being around someone with GI problems is no picnic.  I have a dog, Grendel, who gets periodic gas attacks that can clear a packed room in five seconds flat, and that's bad enough.  I can only imagine how much worse a demon would be.

You know, sulfur and brimstone and all.