The shadow of misrule

One of the most interesting figures from English history is King Henry II, who ruled from 1154 until his death in 1189.

Henry was the first of the Plantagenet dynasty, which was to last another three hundred years.  The Plantagenets are said to have gotten their name because Henry's father, Geoffrey of Anjou, was fond of the brilliant gold flowers of the broom plant (in medieval French, plante genesta).  His claim to the English throne came through Geoffrey's wife (and Henry II's mother) Matilda, who was the granddaughter of William the Conqueror, and who had come damn close to ruling England in her own right during the First English Civil War.

Henry was a larger-than-life figure who spent most of his reign trying unsuccessfully to keep peace in his wide landholdings (he ruled not only England, but Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Aquitaine), reining in his redoubtable wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and later, dealing with repeated rebellions from his three eldest sons Henry and Geoffrey (both of whom predeceased their father) and Richard, who eventually succeeded to the throne as Richard I "the Lionhearted."

The single incident most often remembered about Henry's reign, though, was his clash with the indomitable Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.  (His picking up of an extra syllable -- "Thomas à Becket" -- is a sixteenth-century invention.)  Becket was initially a close friend and confidante of Henry's, and Henry had been instrumental in his succeeding to the Archbishopric in the first place; but once there, Thomas proved to be stubborn and unyielding, and engaged in what amounted to an eight-year-long pissing match with the king regarding the secular authority's jurisdiction over the Church.  Henry, whose temper tantrums were legendary, ranted at a meeting of his counselors in 1170, "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!"  (The better-known line, "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" is not attested by contemporary historians, although it's certainly a pithy and memorable turn of phrase.)

Either way, four of Henry's knights decided that this was tantamount to a direct order.  Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton quietly left the king's presence, and on December 29, 1170 made their way to Canterbury.  At first, it seemed as if they intended to bring Becket back to apologize to the king; eyewitnesses say they left their weapons outside before they went into the cathedral to confront the archbishop.  But Becket, of course, categorically refused, saying to the assassins, "I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may find liberty and peace."  The four knights rushed back out, grabbed their swords, and cut Becket down on the steps leading up into the choir.

The murder of Thomas Becket (ca. 1200) [Image is in the Public Domain]

What happened afterward is why this story comes up in Skeptophilia.  The four knights, understandably horrified at the repercussions of what they'd just done, took off in different directions, as fast as their horses could gallop.  They reconvened in de Morville's home in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, but the following year all four were excommunicated by Pope Alexander III.  Back then excommunication was a huge deal; it meant you couldn't receive the sacraments of the church, including absolution for sins, so it was considered a sure road to spending eternity in hell.  The four tried to make up for it by going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land -- it's thought that none of them returned, and according to one legend they came to bad ends in short order and were buried outside the walls of Jerusalem with the epitaph, "Here lie those wretches who martyred the Blessed St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury."

Thomas was canonized in 1173, and his death turned into a good example of "Be careful what you wish for."  In life, he'd antagonized a lot of people with his inflexibility and sharp temper; after he was murdered, all his failings were quickly forgotten and he became a holy martyr.  (In fact, so many miracles were attributed to him that 350 years later the staunchly anti-Catholic King Henry VIII had Becket's bones unearthed, burned, and scattered to the winds so they could no longer be venerated as holy relics.)  As for King Henry II, he never really recovered from his guilt, both in his own eyes and that of his people.  He undertook a remarkable penance -- he knelt at the site where Becket had died, stripped to the waist, and was flogged by the monks of Canterbury -- but it was the beginning of the end of his reign.  His wife Eleanor left him, his two oldest sons, Henry and Geoffrey, died in 1183 and 1186, and he developed health issues (probably stomach cancer) that ended his life at the young age of 56.

Becket's death made such an impression on the English people that it has given rise to a number of ghostly tales.  First, that on the evening of December 29, on the main roads out of Canterbury, you'll hear the onrushing clatter of a horse's hooves, followed by a swirl of icy wind -- the spectral presence of one of the four assassins, fleeing for their lives after murdering the archbishop.  As for Becket himself, he sometimes appears to visitors as an apparition called "Becket's Shadow" -- a vague dark figure with a "pearlescent sheen" and glowing eyes, seen near the pillar where Becket knelt while FitzUrse and the others hacked him to pieces.

It hardly bears mention that I don't give much credence to the ghost stories associated with Henry and Becket, but it does give an extra little frisson to a tale that's really rather sad.  By most estimations, Henry II wasn't a bad king; certainly there were way worse (including his indolent and cruel son King John, who succeeded to the throne after Richard the Lionhearted's early death in 1199 at the age of 41, from sepsis after a wound from a crossbow bolt).  But Becket wasn't an evil man, either.  Hard-headed and self-righteous, sure.  But the collision course the two men ended up on, and the tragedy that eventually unfolded, was as much due to circumstance as intent.  Even the rebellion of Henry's sons (with the connivance of Henry's wife Eleanor of Aquitaine) was a situation where it's hard to pin blame -- it was more what happens when you get a bunch of stubborn and strong-willed people together all of whom think they know the best way to do things.

But even unintentional misrule can cast a long shadow.  Richard I was a blustering bully who had no real interest in governance, and spent a huge chunk of his ten-year reign away on Crusade; John, his younger brother, was roundly hated for his ugly spitefulness, and no one mourned much when he died of dysentery in 1216 at the age of 49.  John's son, Henry III, had one of the longest reigns of any English monarch -- 56 years -- but he was a pious, easily swayed, and not very intelligent man whose obsession with reconquering lost territory in France turned into an utter debacle.  It wasn't until Henry III's capable son, Edward I, was crowned in 1272 -- almost exactly a hundred years after Becket's murder -- that things really began to settle.

It's worth keeping in mind -- especially considering what's happening right now in the United States -- how easy it is to tear things down, and how hard it is (and how long it can take) to rebuild a functioning government.  Any arrogant, entitled prick can run around with a chainsaw; it takes little effort and no brains whatsoever.  Crafting something that actually helps the citizens of the country live better lives requires skill and intelligence and hard work.  Look at what happened in England at the end of the twelfth century, where all it took were hard-headed ideologues refusing to give an inch to precipitate a century's worth of chaos.

How much worse could it be when the ones engineering the destruction are doing it with intent -- vicious and amoral sociopaths who are single-mindedly focused on amassing wealth and power?

Today's elected leaders, though -- and the powerful men who are moving them around like chess pieces, confident that they will never face any consequences -- might want to keep in mind the sobering epitaph carved into King Henry II's tomb at Fontevraud Abbey:

I am Henry the King. To me
Diverse realms were subject.
I was duke and count of many provinces.
Eight feet of ground is now enough for me,
Whom many kingdoms failed to satisfy.
Who reads these lines, let him reflect
Upon the narrowness of death,
And in my case behold
The image of our mortal lot.
This scanty tomb doth now suffice
For whom the whole Earth was not enough.

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Reaping the whirlwind

Back in 1980, I came up with an idea for a novel.

Ronald Reagan had just been elected president, and many of us were alarmed at what seemed like a lurch toward far-right populism -- anti-regulation, pro-corporate policy that was marketed as somehow being beneficial to the working class.  The buzzwords were "trickle-down economics," the idea that if you gave big tax breaks to the rich, the benefits would "trickle down" to you and me and the rest of the working stiffs.  It was bolstered by a belief that the rich were actually concerned about lifting the working class out of poverty; that it was possible, in the society as it was, for a poor person to become wealthy.

That, to quote Steinbeck, the poor were just "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

It didn't work.  The rich got richer (as intended) and the working class reaped exactly zero benefits from it.  And it generated deep resentment, as corporate profits soared, CEOs raked in unimaginable amounts of cash -- and workers' salaries stagnated.

And I thought: this can't go on forever.  At some point, people are going to get fed up, decide they have nothing to lose, and pull the whole superstructure down.

This was the genesis of my novel In the Midst of Lions.

The title comes from a line from Psalm 56: "Have pity on me, O God, have pity on me... for I lie prostrate in the midst of lions that devour men."  The story is set in Seattle, and centers around five completely ordinary people who are caught up in the collapse.  The attacks are precipitated by a shadowy worldwide organization of violent anarchists called the Lackland Liberation Authority; the "Lacklanders" are people who lost their property from corporate buy-ups of land for industrial agriculture and mining, and because price increases made home ownership out of reach.  Threatening LLA graffiti, in their trademark red spray paint, begins showing up on walls.  

Then the attacks start.  At first, they're scattered and sporadic, targeting a few of the most egregious offenders; but when that doesn't work, they strike hard, and simultaneously, at governmental and business leaders across the world.

The result is spiraling chaos.

Back in 1980 I wrote a few chapters of it, but somehow sensed that I didn't have the background, knowledge, or writing skill to pull off something this big, so I tabled the project.  It was in the back of my mind -- for forty years.  In 2020 I finally decided to tackle it, and wrote it and two sequels (The Scattering Winds and The Chains of Orion), which I published in 2023.  

The reason this comes up is that there's a passage from In the Midst of Lions that's been on my mind for the last couple of days:

“But there’s one thing I don’t understand,” Soren said.  “If they had this coordinated, worldwide plot, planned well in advance, there has to have been communication between different places.  By destroying the telecommunication hubs, they’ve cut themselves off along with the rest of us.  It’s sawing off the tree branch you’re sitting on.”

“I doubt they care.” Cassandra’s lips tightened, the only display of emotion she revealed.  “I’ve read some of the Lacklanders’ manifestos.  They’re no different than the suicide bombers in the Middle East back during the Gulf Wars.  The point is to destroy the power structure they despise.  If they can take down the corporate-capitalist overlords, they still count it as a success even if they go down along with them.”

“That makes no sense at all,” Mary said.

“I didn’t say it was rational.”

The deadly attack on UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson comes from this same desperation.  UnitedHealth is in first place amongst American health insurance companies for percentage of claims turned down -- estimates are around a 32% denial rate.  "Deny, Defend, Depose" was written on the bullet casings -- and the disingenuous media is still saying, "Gee, I wonder what the murderer's motive was?"  Instead of outrage at the violent act, the result has been an outpouring of anger against health insurance companies -- and by extension, ultra-wealthy corporate CEOs everywhere -- coupled with a complete lack of sympathy for Thompson and a celebration of his killer (who, at the time of this writing, remains unidentified and at large).  A Facebook post by UnitedHealth asking for "understanding in this difficult time" got almost a hundred thousand responses -- 77,000 of which were laugh emojis.  

But what gave me the biggest shiver up the spine was the following image of graffiti I saw on Facebook.

In red spray paint.  In Seattle.

I said to a friend -- and I was only half joking -- "I didn't think I'd have to move In the Midst of Lions to the non-fiction shelf quite this soon."

Thompson's murder, and the glee that followed, isn't laudable, but it is understandable.  And it definitely isn't one pundit's characterization of "a sign of the deep moral and ethical corrosion of America."  It's a result of something that we've seen over and over again in history, from the American and French Revolutions to what's happening right now in Syria; if you push people long enough and hard enough, profit off their struggle, empower corrupt oligarchs and expect the working class simply to play along, eventually the whole tower of cards collapses.  People will then take action by whatever means they can to put an end to it -- legally or illegally, ethically or unethically, peacefully or violently.

Something Donald Trump and his ultra-wealthy corporate capitalist cronies might want to keep in mind.

Stephen King wrote, in his book The Stand, "The effective half-life of evil is always relatively short."  It's a line that's stuck with me since I first read it, perhaps thirty years ago.  The power-hungry and super-wealthy -- who are, of course, usually one and the same -- think their riches will protect them.  That's what King Louis XVI thought; so did Napoleon, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Ferdinand Marcos, and Muammar Gaddafi.  

All of them were wrong, and several of them paid for that error with their lives.

The problem with all this is that the result of the downfall of dictators is often chaos, destroying economy, infrastructure... and the ordinary people who only wanted to be able to feed their families and have a roof over their heads.  In In the Midst of Lions, it's not just the corporate oligarchs who end up suffering, it's everyone.

I'd like to hope that the people in charge will recognize where we're headed before it's too late, but unfortunately, we have a very poor track record of learning from history.  (Or from cautionary fiction, for that matter.)  The overweening arrogance that comes with wealth and power tends to make them say, "Oh, sure, it may have happened to all those people in history... but it won't happen to me."

It all reminds me of another biblical quote, this one from the Book of Hosea: "Who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind."

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Tut tut

Most of you are probably familiar with the famous "King Tut's Curse."

The story goes that when British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the hitherto undisturbed tomb of King Tutankhamen, the "Boy King" of Egypt during the 18th dynasty, it unleashed a curse on the men who had desecrated it -- resulting in the deaths of (by some claims) twenty of the expedition members.

Tutankhamen was the son of the famous "Heretic King" Akhenaten, and died at the age of eighteen in 1341 BCE.  Some archaeologists speculate that he was murdered, but current forensic anthropology seems to indicate that he died of a combination of malaria and complications from a badly broken leg.

King Tutankhamen's death mask [image courtesy of photographer Carsten Frenzl and the Wikimedia Commons]

Be that as it may, shortly after Tut's tomb was opened, people associated with the expedition began to die.  The first was Lord Carnarvon, who had funded Carter's expedition, who cut himself badly while shaving and died shortly thereafter of sepsis from an infection.  While it's easy enough to explain a death from infection in Egypt prior to the advent of modern antibiotics, the deaths continued after the members of the expedition returned to London:

• Richard Bethell, Carter's personal secretary, was found smothered in a Mayfair club.
• Bethell's father, Lord Westbury, fell to his death from his seventh-floor flat -- where he had kept artifacts from the tomb his son had given him.
• Aubrey Herbert, half-brother of the first victim Lord Carnarvon, died in a London hospital "of mysterious symptoms."
• Ernest Wallis Budge, of the British Museum, was found dead in his home shortly after arranging for the first public show of King Tut's sarcophagus. 

And so on.  All in all, twenty people associated with the expedition died within the first few years after returning to England.  (It must be said that Howard Carter, who led the expedition, lived for another sixteen years; and you'd think that if King Tut would have wanted to smite anyone, it would have been Carter.  And actually, a statistical study done of Egyptologists who had entered pharaohs' tombs found that their average age at death was no lower than that of the background population.)

Still, that leaves some decidedly odd deaths to explain.  And historian Mark Benyon thinks he's figured out how to explain them.

In his book London's Curse: Murder Black Magic, and Tutankhamun in the 1920s West End, Benyon lays the deaths of Carter's associates in London -- especially Bethell, Westbury, Herbert, and Budge, all of which were deaths by foul play -- at the feet of none other than Aleister Crowley.

Crowley, the self-proclaimed "Wickedest Man on Earth," was a sex-obsessed heroin addict who had founded a society called "Thelema."  Thelema's motto was "Do what thou wilt," which narrowly edged out Crowley's second favorite, which was "Fuck anything or anyone that will hold still long enough."  His rituals were notorious all over London for drunken debauchery, and few doubted then (and fewer doubt now) that there was any activity so depraved that Crowley wouldn't happily indulge in it.

Aleister Crowley, ca. 1912 [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

One of Crowley's obsessions was Jack the Ripper.  He believed that the Ripper murders had been accomplished through occult means, and frequently was heard to speak of Jack the Ripper with reverence.  Benyon believes that when Crowley heard about Howard Carter's discoveries, he was outraged -- many of Thelema's rituals and beliefs were derived from Egyptian mythology -- and he came up with the idea of a series of copycat murders to get even with the men who had (in his mind) desecrated Tutankhamen's tomb.

It's an interesting hypothesis.  Surely all of the expedition members knew of Crowley; after all, almost everyone in London at the time did.  At least one (Budge) was an occultist who ran in the same circles as Crowley.  That Crowley was capable of such a thing is hardly to be questioned.  Whether Benyon has proved the case or not is debatable, but even at first glance it certainly makes better sense than the Pharaoh's Curse malarkey.  Whether Benyon's explanation is right in all the details or not  is probably impossible at this point to prove, rather like the dozens of explanations put forward to explain the Ripper murders themselves.  But this certainly makes me inclined to file the "Mummy's Curse" under "Another woo-woo claim plausibly explained by logic and rationality."

Death in Warsaw

What frustrates me most about woo-woos isn't that I disagree with them on their conclusions.  Heaven knows there are lots of people who disagree with me on a lot of things, and if I disliked them all, I wouldn't have any friends.

What bothers me is their tendency -- and I know I'm overgeneralizing a bit -- to accept a claim despite (or even because of) a complete lack of evidence.  That "because of" bit becomes especially powerful with conspiracy theorists; they seem to consider "zero evidence" a badge of honor.  "Of course there's no evidence," they seem to say.  "Do you think the Illuminati would leave around stuff like evidence?"

As a good example of this, take the case of the death of Max Spiers, prominent British ufologist, supernaturalist, and conspiracy theorist, this past July.  I found out about it over at Sharon Hill's wonderful site Doubtful News, and it certainly is a little on the peculiar side.  You can learn more of the details (such as they are) in Hill's article, but the bare-bones of the case seem to be as follows:

Spiers died in Warsaw in mid-July; the date isn't certain but was probably the 15th or 16th.  He had made a video three days earlier in which he seemed to be either ill or on drugs.  His speech was slurred and at some points unintelligible, and what he was saying devolved into an incoherent ramble.  Spiers is known to have had problems with misuse of opiate drugs in the past, and those symptoms are certainly consistent with being on a narcotic.

Max Spiers [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Spiers's body was flown back to the UK and presumably autopsied, but the results of the toxicology and post mortem have not been made public.  "An inquest is expected," but the authorities have not been forthcoming with further details.

Then we have a claim by his mother, Vanessa Bates -- unsubstantiated as yet -- that Spiers had texted her shortly before his death with a cryptic and sinister warning: "Your boy’s in trouble.  If anything happens to me, investigate."

And that's it, as far as the facts go.

I'll admit that the circumstances are strange, especially if the text to Vanessa Bates turns out to be authentic.  Certainly worth an investigation.  But the woo-woos have taken this extremely slim bunch of information, and come to...

... well, conclusions.  Lots of conclusions.  Here are just a few that have been circulating on conspiracy and UFO websites:

• Spiers was the victim of a group of neo-Nazis running a government mind-control program.
• Spiers was a "supersoldier" who was being controlled by an implant.  When his superiors saw that he was getting out of control and preparing to blow the whistle on him, the killed him by turning off the implant.
• Spiers was fighting against "Energy Vampires," beings who "feed on negative energy" (whatever the fuck that is).  The Energy Vampires caught up with him and killed him by draining him dry.
• Spiers was about to go public with a claim that the world is being run by a circle of politicians and celebrities who do what they do by "black magic."  So they killed him.
• UFO researchers around the world, including Spiers, are being targeted for assassination because the Illuminati don't want information on aliens getting out to the rest of us slobs.
• Spiers was killed because he didn't like Hillary Clinton, because, you know, she does that to people she doesn't like.

And so on, and so forth.

Now let's go back to the facts here.  A guy died under fairly mysterious circumstances.  We don't have any information on why or how.  The guy himself had some pretty odd ideas.  There may or may not have been a sinister text from him to his mother shortly before he died.

And that's all.  I'm sorry, you can't take that and add it together and get computer-controlled supersoldiers and evil Energy Vampires.  It's all very well to be suspicious of official reports, but the lack of an official report doesn't prove a damn thing.

Anyhow.  I hope that there's more information coming down the pipeline on this story, although you know that if it comes out that Spiers died of an opiate overdose none of the aforementioned woo-woos will believe it.  As we've seen all too many times before, once conspiracy theorists decide on something, not only is a lack of evidence considered evidence for, but evidence against is considered evidence for as well.

You can't win.

Interesting times

A few days ago, I started reading Michio Kaku's wonderful book Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century.  The book is fascinating, buoyed up by Kaku's ebullient writing style and endless optimism about our future, touching on the possibilities of artificial intelligence, planet-wide information systems with unfettered access for all, medical advances that could extend (healthy) life span to perhaps twice what it is now, and the ability to harness clean energy sources that are for all intents and purposes inexhaustible.  He suggests that our species, in a time that on the grand scale is a snap of the fingers, will be heading for the stars.

At the same time, here on Earth things are looking pretty awful, as if we'd finally succumbed to the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times."  Only a few hours ago, we here in the United States had yet another senseless mass shooting, this time an attack on a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, California.  The attack left fourteen confirmed dead and an equal number injured; the suspects are, at the time of this writing, still at large, and their motives for attacking the center are unknown.  Just a few days ago, an ultrareligious right-winger killed three people and wounded nine at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.  Many have linked the attack to vitriolic rhetoric from so-called Pro-Lifers like Joshua Feuerstein, who has suggested that doctors who perform abortions deserve to be murdered.  We have one presidential candidate who has openly praised noted conspiracy theorist loon Alex Jones; another claimed yesterday that "the majority of violent criminals are Democrats."  Further afield, the UK Parliament has given the go-ahead for bombing Syria, ISIS has murdered a Russian captive in retaliation for air strikes against ISIS-held areas, our "allies" in Saudi Arabia are very likely in the next few days to behead Ali Al-Nimr, a protestor who was arrested when he was only 17, and in general the world just seems to be a fucked-up morass of misery, hatred, horror, and death.

I'm an optimistic guy, for the most part.  I have always been firmly convinced that most people, most of the time, are doing their level best to act morally and responsibly.  I've also been a strong believer in the idea that you don't have to agree with someone in order to get along with them.  I've had more than one cheerful pint of beer with a friend whose political views are (to say the least) opposite to mine.  I'm a staunch atheist, but have dear friends who are Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Wiccans. (I'm not leaving out Muslims deliberately; I just don't happen to be close pals with any.)

But in the current atmosphere, when the tenor of the news seems to be paralleling the diminishment of the light as we approach the winter solstice, it's hard to keep those ideals in mind.  It becomes increasingly easy to give in to despair, to decide that humanity isn't really worth saving, that any good we do is outweighed by the tremendous evils that we visit on each other for reasons of religion, race, belief, and sometimes for no reason at all.

Still, we do some beautiful things sometimes.  Billionaire Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged 99% of his share revenues to charities connected with personalized learning, curing diseases, connecting people and community building.  The Planned Parenthood clinic that was attacked has been the focus of two separate fundraising drives, one through GoFundMe and the other through YouCaring.

But I keep coming back to the heartache of why we, here in the 21st century, are still having to face people being murdered for wanting control of their own bodies, for wanting to be able to speak freely and criticize their governments, for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It's so far from Kaku's idyllic space-age wonderland that I find myself wondering if the human race will survive long enough to meet even one of his high-flown predictions.

I think the solution lies with the like-minded sticking together, and telling each other that there are still good people in the world, that we will make it through these dark times.  That the days will lengthen, winter will warm into spring, and (perhaps even!) the news will one day be dominated by positive stories.  We have to remain optimistic; if we don't, if the good people of the world give up and succumb to despair, then the evil really will have won.

[image courtesy of NASA]

I will leave you with a poem that I first discovered when I was 13 years old.  I still can't read it without choking up; not too long ago I tried to read it out loud to my son when he was going through a rough patch, and we both ended up bawling.  I think it's more relevant now than when it was written by Max Ehrmann, almost a hundred years ago.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings;
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Atheism, anti-theism, and murder

There's this thing called the No True Scotsman fallacy.  In its more innocent forms, it manifests as a redefinition of terms if you're challenged, to obviate the possibility of your being called out as wrong.  "That's not what I meant, here's what I meant," is the message.

A more sinister form occurs when the term you're redefining has to do with ethnic, political, or religious identification.  It's this use that gives the fallacy its name; "No true Scotsman would do such a thing!" And we're seeing it right now over and over among atheists, who are struggling to understand why One Of Our Own killed three young Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, the three Chapel Hill victims [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Craig Stephen Hicks, now under arrest for the murders, calls himself an "anti-theist," a term that many atheists relish.  They not only disbelieve in god themselves, they are actively against religion, and would prefer it if religious beliefs vanished entirely.  Hicks's Facebook posts ask questions such as "why radical Christians and radical Muslims are so opposed to each others’ influence when they agree about so many ideological issues?"  He has posted and tweeted texts and pictures mocking religion, and is a fan of The Atheist Experience and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion.

It's easy enough to say that psychopathy does not respect lines of belief, nationality, or ethnicity, and that's true enough.  But if that's all we say -- if we call Hicks a psychopath and then turn our attention elsewhere -- we've accepted a facile explanation, and (more importantly) lost an opportunity for self-reflection.

The truth of the matter is, atheists and anti-theists are sometimes vicious and hateful in their diatribes against religion, blurring the lines between railing against the beliefs and demonizing the believers.  Consider the following quotes:

Sam Harris: "Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death." 

Richard Dawkins: "[I] often say Islam is the greatest force for evil today." 

Lawrence Krauss: "Maybe these odious religious thugs [Islamic religious leaders in London] will get their comeuppance?" 

Christopher Hitchens: "The death toll [in the Middle East] is not nearly high enough... too many [jihadists] have escaped."

Now, I've deliberately taken these quotes out of context, but that's to illustrate part of the problem; when we speak or write publicly, that's going to happen.  It is absolutely critical for public figures to be as careful as humanly possible, because there are people reading our words, and reading into our words -- and then acting on them.

I still admire people like Harris, Dawkins, Krauss, and Hitchens for their unflinching demand that the tenets of religion be questioned and its hegemony no longer accepted as a given.  But words have consequences, and when someone like Craig Hicks reads quotes like the above, and decides that the upshot is that Muslims everywhere deserve death, it is incumbent upon us not to shrug it away, but to do some serious self-analysis.

People are complex animals, and there are some who use their religious beliefs to perpetrate actions that are truly evil.  ("Jihadi John" comes to mind, the British-accented ISIS member who has been filmed beheading innocent captives.)  Most of us, though, are not that one-sided.  We have our religious beliefs (or lack of them), and they incite us to some good actions, some bad actions, and a lot that are neutral.  Most of the time we act how we act for reasons that have nothing to do with our opinion about the existence of a deity.  Most importantly, we all come to our understanding of how the universe works in our own way; problems crop up only when people start demanding that everyone take the same path at the same time.

And truthfully, even as a diehard atheist myself, I have a hard time convincing myself that the world would be a better place if religion had never existed.  Yes, I know about all of the evils perpetrated in its name.  But would we really be better off without Bach's Mass in B Minor and Tallis's Spem in Alium?  Would the world be as beautiful without Yorkminster, Rouen Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral?  Would it have been better if the temples at Angkor Wat and Karnak and Tikal and Xochicalco had never been built?  Is the comfort and solace that many derive from their religious beliefs to be dismissed as inconsequential?

More to the point, if I object to the religious trying to force their beliefs on me, why should I have the right to eradicate the beliefs of others?

These are not easy questions to answer.  And whether Hicks was acting out of pure psychopathy, or because he took various anti-theists' words about the eradication of religion as a literal command, or for some other reason entirely, is perhaps impossible to determine.  One thing is clear, however; if Hicks's irreligion was the motive for his murder of three innocent young people, that action is just as morally reprehensible as Jihadi John's use of his religion to justify the murders he's committed.

What is equally clear, however, is that we atheists have just as much of a responsibility to be careful about how we speak and write as the religious do.  And taking the disingenuous route of saying that Craig Stephen Hicks is "No True Atheist" is a complete cop-out.

Note:  Deah Barakat, one of Hicks' victims, had begun a charity to pay for dental care for Middle Eastern refugees.  If you want to donate to his charity as a way of honoring his memory and that of his wife and her sister who were slain with him, here's the link.

Suing psychics for slander

Regular readers of Skeptophilia may recall that in June of last year, I wrote about an alleged psychic (at that time identified only by her nickname of "Angel") who had called the police in Liberty County, Texas, claiming that some folks living nearby had a mass grave on their property.  The police, instead of doing what I would have done (which is to hang up on her), went in to check the story out.

"Checking it out" turned out to be digging up the entire yard of the two who were accused, Joe Bankson and Gena Charlton.  After excavating their property with a backhoe, the police basically said, "Oh, all right, I guess there isn't a mass grave here after all," and left -- not, of course, repairing the damage.  By this time, the story had gotten out to the media, and Bankson and Charlton were subjected to taunts, scorn, and threats over their alleged role in the imaginary murders.

Well, Bankson and Charlton sued the county, several media outlets, and "Angel," and (although their suits against the county and the media were dismissed) just last week won an award from "Angel" -- whose real name is Presley Rhonda Gridley -- of nearly seven million dollars.

I don't know why the suits against the county and media were dismissed.  I can speculate that the reason may be that both the police, and the television stations and newspapers that covered the story, were "acting in good faith," pursuing a lead that seemed to have merit at the time.  I find this unfortunate, for two reasons.  First, there is a history of police turning to psychics to solve crimes -- most famously, in the case of Holly Bobo, a Tennessee woman who was abducted in 2011 and who is still missing.  I can say with some authority that there has never been a case where evidence gained through "psychic abilities" has turned out to be accurate or helpful.  It is reprehensible that the state of Texas is not holding the police department responsible for damaging two law-abiding citizens' reputations by acting on a "lead" that was obviously bogus.

Second, I doubt that Bankson and Charlton will ever see much of their seven million dollar award.  Presley Gridley is no Sylvia Browne, with deep pockets and a large bank account.  While it must be validating finally to have their defamation claims supported in a court of law, it would be nice if they were able to come out with something to show for the ordeal they've been through.  The situation might be different if the suits against the county and the media had been upheld -- Bankson and Charlton would have undoubtedly been more successful at collecting at least part of the award from them.

Still, it's to be hoped that this sends a message, both to "psychics" and to anyone in the media or in law enforcement who is inclined to take their ridiculous pronouncements as fact.  If you want to rip off the public by claiming you can read palms or divine with Tarot cards, or simply (as Gridley did) say you're receiving information from god and the angels, go ahead.  But be careful what you say to your clients, especially when it includes accusations that could be construed as slander.

And for cryin' in the sink, police agencies, let's be clear on what the word "evidence" means.  From Webster's: "evidence (n.) -- The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid."  Note the word "facts" in there -- i.e., not the delusional ravings of someone who thinks (s)he's getting information from the spirit world.  Hope that clarifies things for you.

Remotely possible

Everyone has biases.  I beat that point unto death in my Critical Thinking classes; there is no such thing as a completely objective viewpoint.  We all have our implicit assumptions, preconceived notions, and unquestioned attitudes about how the world works -- or how it should work.  The best thing, and perhaps the only thing if you want to think as clearly as possible, is to be aware of those biases and to try not to let them lead you by the nose.

Still, it's hard, sometimes.  Witness my reaction to the article I just read, entitled "Remote Viewers Help Police Solve Murder."

I had hardly clicked on the link before I was already thinking, "Pfft.  Bunch o' malarkey."  That reaction only intensified as I read -- beginning with their definition of "remote viewing:"  "Remote viewing calls for people to look at random numbers and letters and then let their mind wander, during which they will be able to conjure mental images of people, events and places."  My thought was, "Oh, hey, I can do that!  I just call it 'daydreaming.'"

But, of course, that's not what the article meant.  The author goes on to tell the story of Robert Knight, a Las Vegas photographer, who alerted police to the disappearance of his friend, Stephen B. Williams, in 2006.  Knight was unhappy with the progress made by the police in the case, so he enlisted a teacher of remote viewing, Angela Thompson Smith, for help:

He knew Smith as a teacher of remote viewing, and she apparently knew her stuff. From the late 1980s through 1992, she worked with Princeton University’s Engineering Anomalies Research team. She then moved to Boulder City and became research coordinator for the Bigelow Foundation, which engaged in paranormal research for its founder, Robert T. Bigelow, owner of the Budget Suites of America chain and founder of Bigelow Aerospace...  When Knight came to her in 2006, Smith and six remote viewers she had trained went to work. They included a retired airline captain from Henderson; a retired U.S. Air Force nurse from Dayton, Ohio; a civilian Air Force contractor from Texas; a civil engineer from Virginia; a photographer from Baltimore, Md.; and a university librarian from Provo, Utah. Each was given a coordinate — a random series of letters and numbers — on which to focus.

The viewers each did from one to three remote viewing sessions of about an hour each. They were seeking information unknown at the time, working blind with only the random numbers and letters provided by Smith to focus on. Smith began the work with an initial viewing of the missing man, a follow-up viewing of the suspect’s location, then a profile of the suspect. The other viewers helped seek possible accomplices and the location of the suspect after he fled.

The images they gleaned painted a picture of a body in water, perhaps in criss-crossed netting, near Catalina Island off the Southern California coast.

The punchline: that night in his hotel room, Knight saw a news broadcast in which the newscaster mentioned that an unidentified body had been pulled from the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island.  Knight "knew who it was," and called the morgue the next morning, saying he could identify the body.  Sure enough, it was Williams.  Then Knight said he had more:

Knight’s information went beyond the body identification. He told police about a man named Harvey Morrow, a supposed investment adviser, who had befriended Williams and was investing Williams’ money — a few million dollars — on his behalf.

Investigators looked into it and found that Morrow was stealing Williams’ money. By now, after Williams’ death, Morrow wasn’t to be found.

Knight told detectives that remote viewers believed Morrow had fled to the British Virgin Islands. One of the viewers even sketched a boat with Morrow on board.

Both observations turned out to be accurate.

Clark said Morrow appeared to have no clue he was a suspect. He left the Caribbean for a job as a used car salesman in Montana — for a boss who was a former cop. He Googled Morrow and discovered he was sought for questioning in the Williams homicide.

Morrow was arrested and convicted in November and is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.

The article ends with a quote from a scientist:

Physicist Hal Puthoff, one of the founders of the government’s Stargate remote viewing program, isn’t taken aback by skeptics.

“People seem to fall into two categories: those who have been intimately involved with the phenomenon and know it works, and those who haven’t and know it can’t,” he said.

Well.  He sure told us, didn't he?

Okay, here's my problem, and I will readily admit that my reaction to all this is based upon my biases that the world works a particular way.  First, I am strongly disinclined to believe in remote viewing, and also telepathy, telekinesis, psychometry, and a variety of other kinds of ESP and action-at-a-distance, because I see no possible mechanism by which they could work.  Despite the undoubtedly excellent credentials of Physicist Hal Puthoff, the mechanisms of energy storage and transfer, the behavior of fields, and so on, are exceedingly well understood by physicists, and if remote viewing et al. are real, they must involve some method of energy transfer that is not only outside of the realm of what we currently understand, but is undetectable by any of the instruments physicists use.  And it's not for want of trying; people have been for years trying to develop some kind of "psi-meter," if for no other reason to win James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge, but without success.

Second, I just can think of too many other plausible explanations for what happened in the Williams case, without any appeal to woo-woo.  I won't go into details, because several of them cast Knight in a pretty unpleasant light, and I've no wish to do that as I have no proof of those, either; my point is not that any particular explanation is correct, but simply that there are a great many other possibilities in this situation that could adequately explain what we know without espousing the view that the remote viewers saved the day.

All of which, I realize, is because of my biases.  I know little about the case except what was presented in the article.  Because of my pre-existing condition -- that I tend to assume that the world operates by the known laws of science unless I'm shown convincing hard evidence otherwise -- I read the entirety of this article with, shall we say, a fairly jaundiced eye, and ended by saying, "Yeah, right.  Still not doing it for me."  It does raise the question of what it would take to convince me... and on that count, perhaps Hal Puthoff is right.  It would take my being "intimately involved in the phenomenon."  In other words, direct evidence.  And for that, I'm still waiting.