You are a magnet, and I am steel

Yesterday one of my Critical Thinking students brought to my attention one Miroslaw Magola, the Polish man who claims that metal objects spontaneously stick to his body.

Magola attributes this phenomenon to psychokinesis and his ability to "load his body with energy;" others have tried to explain it by saying that he is able to "concentrate and focus a magnetic field."

Upon doing a bit of research, I found that Magola is not alone in making such claims.  There's also Liew Thow Lin of Malaysia, who not only says that metal objects stick to his body (and there are photos on the website showing him, lo, with metal objects stuck to his body) but that it's evidently genetic, because his son has the same ability.

All of this makes me wonder how these men would manage to walk through, for example, the kitchenware section of an Ikea.  You'd think that they would become the center of a whirlwind of flying kitchen implements, rather like when Wile E. Coyote tried to catch the Road Runner with an Acme Giant Magnet, and would end up with paring knives and cheese graters and vegetable peelers protruding from their bodies.

James Randi, the venerable debunker of all things psychic, has investigated Magola, and apparently put paid to his animal magnetism by the simple expedient of sprinkling talcum powder on the metal object he was trying to adhere himself to.   After such a treatment, his power mysteriously vanished. Randi has stated that his conclusion is that Magola either is making use of the natural stickiness of skin oils, or (more likely) has coated his skin with a thin layer of adhesive.

You'd think that'd be case closed, but some people are not to be discouraged by a simple thing like a controlled experiment.  Magola, apparently undaunted by his failure, responded by making a YouTube video "debunking Randi," in which he is shown, sitting in front of a variety of metal objects, and he sprinkles talcum powder on one, and proceeds to make it stick to his hand.

Well, that's all well and good, but I find myself highly suspicious when an alleged psychic can't demonstrate his/her powers under controlled conditions -- it fails in Randi's lab, but when he's by himself, his ability miraculously reappears.  I'm reminded of the dreadfully uncomfortable experience of watching Uri Geller having his clocks cleaned on the Johnny Carson Show -- Geller, the Israeli psychic spoon-bender, couldn't so much as bend a piece of Reynolds Wrap when he wasn't allowed to provide his own props.  He attributed his failure to "the atmosphere of suspicion and pressure" that Carson had created, and followed it up by saying that he "wasn't feeling strong tonight."  That didn't wash with Carson (who had spent time as a professional magician, and knew how easy it was to bamboozle people), and it doesn't wash with me, either -- not in Geller's case, and not in Magola's.  I don't know about you, but I think it's a little puzzling that Magola can only do his funny stuff on his own terms.

All of this brings up one of my biggest criticisms of psychics of all stripes; the fact that they explain away their failures by blaming the skeptics.  "Your disbelief is interfering with the phenomenon," is something you hear all too often from Camp Woo-Woo.  My question is, "why would it?"  If whatever psychic phenomenon you pick -- let's say, telekinesis, since that's what Magola, Lin, and Geller all claimed they could do -- only works when no one suspicious is present, then all I can say is, that's mighty convenient.   It reminds me of the character of Invisible Boy on the movie Mystery Men who is capable of becoming invisible, but only when no one is looking.

And, of course, I always am looking for a mechanism.  If you think you're magnetic, I want you to explain to me how it works without resorting to jargon-laden bullshit like "focusing the frequency of psychic energy fields."  If you say you can move objects with your mind, I want you to do it while undergoing a brain scan, and see what's happening in your brain that the rest of us slobs don't seem to be able to manage to get ours to do.

I find myself in complete agreement with a character from a book by, of all people, C. S. Lewis.  His skeptical scientist MacPhee, in That Hideous Strength, says, "If anything wants Andrew MacPhee to believe in its existence, I'll be obliged if it will present itself in full daylight, with a sufficient number of witnesses present, and not get shy if you hold up a camera or a thermometer."

To which I can only say; amen.

Aliens, belief, and magical thinking

Following hard on the heels of yesterday's post, which was about the weird, counterfactual things people believe, we have a study in the journal Motivation and Emotion looking at the psychology of belief -- in particular, whether there is any correlation between belief in the paranormal and religious belief.

The study, by Clay Routledge, Andrew Abeyta, and Christina Roylance of the University of North Dakota's Department of Psychology, was titled "We Are Not Alone: The Meaning Motive, Religiosity, and Belief in Extraterrestrial Intelligence." The authors write:

We tested the proposals that paranormal beliefs about extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) are motivated, in part, by the need for meaning and that this existential motive helps explain the inverse relationship between religiosity and ETI beliefs...  [We] found support for a model linking low religiosity to low presence of meaning, high search for meaning, and greater ETI beliefs.  In all, our findings offer a motivational account of why people endorse paranormal beliefs about intelligent alien beings observing and influencing the lives of humans.

Routledge was interviewed by Eric W. Dolan of PsyPost and had some interesting insights into his team's results, which showed that the non-religious actually have a higher likelihood of believing in extraterrestrials: 

Research using traditional measures of religiosity such as religious affiliation, church attendance, and even belief in God suggests that the US and the Western world more broadly are becoming less religious, more secular.  However, there are good reasons to doubt that this is entirely true.  Sure, fewer people go to church or think of themselves as religious, but this does not necessarily mean they are any less engaged in religious-like spiritual activities or any less in need of the psychological benefits these activities provide.  For instance, there is reason to believe that certain non-religious magical beliefs such as belief in supernatural energy, agents, and forces are actually increasing as is general interest in the paranormal.  So one possibility is that it is not that people leaving traditional religion are becoming more secular but instead that are switching to other types of religious-like beliefs and interests to pursue spiritual needs.

Which I find particularly interesting, given that my experience with my fellow atheists seems to indicate that most of us ended up where we are because of rejecting non-evidence-based frameworks of belief -- so that would include belief in extraterrestrial visitation, which at present has little in the way of hard data in support.  However, as a student of mine used to say, "the plural of anecdote is not data."  Routledge says:

If atheists reject a belief in God, why would they, or at least some of them, believe that there are intelligent alien beings monitoring the lives of humans (these are the types of paranormal ETI beliefs we measured)?  In this research we looked at the motive to perceive life as meaningful.  We found support for a model in which low religiosity (and atheism) were associated with low perceptions of meaning and a high desire to find meaning (what is called search for meaning), and this desire for meaning in turn predicted ETI belief.  In other words, people who were not getting meaning from religion were vulnerable to deficits in meaning and these deficits inclined them to search for non-traditional sources of meaning.  Why ETI beliefs in particular?  Part of the reason religion gives life meaning is it helps us feel connected to something bigger and more enduring, that we are not here by chance.  ETI beliefs do not typically contain a traditional belief in a creator, but they do suggest that we are not alone in the universe.  And intelligent aliens are often construed as agents watching over us.  A lot of specific ETI beliefs involve being part of a cosmic brotherhood.  And ETI beliefs seem, on the surface, more scientific as they do not typically invoke the supernatural.  This makes them more palatable to atheists.

Which is pretty fascinating, and also explains why I have a poster in my classroom with a picture of a UFO and the caption "I Want To Believe."  While I certainly think that the evidence thus far brought to light about the possibility of aliens visiting the Earth is below the standard I'm willing to accept, I have to admit that the thought that aliens are not only intelligent, they're here -- well, it's tremendously exciting.  I would love nothing more to have unequivocal proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, up to and including having a giant UFO land in my back yard.

Of course, if they act like most of the aliens in movies, the next thing they'd do is start vaporizing my pets, and I wouldn't be so thrilled about that.  But on balance, it would still be up there amongst the peak experiences of my life.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Routledge recognizes the existence of people like myself, and in fact draws an interesting distinction:

Some hardcore skeptics might point out that they do not believe in any of this stuff, that they are completely guided by reason and empirical data.  It is true that being a hardcore skeptic tends to make one an atheist.  However, this does not mean being an atheist makes one a hardcore skeptic... There are atheists who reject belief in God but, as I documented in my work, still hold other paranormal and supernatural beliefs...   In other words, even atheists are a diverse group.

Which stands to reason.  One of the most common errors in thought is the package-deal fallacy --  assuming that groups are homogeneous, and that the beliefs or characteristics of one member is indicative of the beliefs and characteristics of everyone else in the group.  It's to be expected that we atheists have just as many approaches and nuances to our unbelief as religious folks have to their belief.

Myself, I find this reassuring.  I wouldn't want everyone to think alike, even if it meant that they by some fluke all ended up agreeing with me.  As I've pointed out many times before, a willingness to consider the flaws in our own understanding is absolutely essential to a rational and accurate view of the universe.  That goes double for those of us who already are under the impression that we're the pinnacles of logic and reason -- there's nothing like a bit of conceit to blind us to our own misapprehensions.

We have nothing to fear but...

It's become increasingly apparent to me, over the seven years I've written here at Skeptophilia, that most of the time people think with their guts and not with their brains.

Even the most cerebral folks can find themselves swayed by their emotions.  I like to think of myself as logical and rational, but many's the time I've had to stop, and turn slowly and deliberately away from my instinctive, knee-jerk reaction, and say, "Okay, wait.  Think about this for a minute."

Which is why I found the results of a survey done by Chapman University, released last month, so simultaneously fascinating and alarming.  The survey asked the question "what are you most afraid of?", and asked respondents to elaborate on that fear -- the specifics, causes, and any subcategories that might be applicable.  It also asked what things they believed in for which they had no concrete evidence.

Here are a few of the most interesting results:

46.6% believe places can be haunted by spirits
39.6% believe that Atlantis, or something like it, once existed
27% believe that extraterrestrials have visited Earth in our ancient past
24.7% say aliens have come to Earth in modern times
13.5% believe that Bigfoot is real

But it's when you get to the conspiracy theories that things get really strange. Here are the percentages of people who believe the government is covering up information about...

9/11 (54.3%)
the assassination of JFK (49.6%)
aliens (42.6%)
global warming (42.1%)
plans for a one-world government (32.9%)
President Obama's birth certificate (30.2%)
the origin of HIV (30.2%)
Antonin Scalia's death (27.8%)
the moon landing (24.2%)

I suppose I should find it heartening that at least 4 in 10 Americans think the government is covering up the evidence for global warming, because at the moment, they kind of are.  But that optimism is tempered by the fact that 5 in 10 still have their knickers in a twist about JFK, and 3 in 10 think that HIV is some kind of government plot.

For fuck's sake.

Of course, it's clear where at least some of this comes from; the This Is No Longer Even Remotely Connected to History Channel is probably responsible for the majority of the Atlantis and extraterrestrial visitation bullshit, and belief in ghosts and spirit survival have been with us for as long as humanity has considered such things.  President Trump certainly bears most of the responsibility for the Obama birth certificate nonsense, and Breitbart is the origin of the claim that there was anything more to Scalia's death than an overweight 79-year-old dying of a heart attack.

Oh, but I forgot to mention: 19.1% of respondents believe in telekinesis, and 14.1% think that astrology and other types of fortune telling are accurate and scientifically supported.  Although now that I come to think about it, if someone had asked me to estimate the last one, I'd probably have guessed that it was higher, so I suppose that's something to be glad about.

The scary part of all of this goes back to what I started with; that people are much more likely to be swayed, even on important topics, by their emotions and not by their brains.  Some of the beliefs that the survey investigated are harmless enough; I doubt anyone ever came to grief by believing in Bigfoot, for example.  But freaking out over a one-world government -- a major concern of a third of the respondents -- could certainly affect the way people vote.

But on a deeper level, it's troubling that so many people admit to deep-seated beliefs that fly in the face of the evidence.  Believing in Atlantis may not be a big deal, in the grand scheme of things.  But the fact that someone -- in fact, 4 out of every 10 someones -- is willing to accept a counterfactual proposal in the complete absence of evidence indicates their susceptibility to falling for other, more insidious ideas.

So we're back to where we often land; it's imperative that we teach children how to evaluate evidence and think critically.  It's also important to ask, "Why do you believe that?"  It's not easy to pry people away from loony claims to which they have subscribed based on emotion and gut reaction -- but it's pretty important, especially considering how many loony claims are out there and how important it is for people to base their conclusions on the facts.

Woof

I was discussing the alleged phenomenon of hauntings with one of my students, and he said, "There's one thing I don't understand.  Some people believe that the souls of humans can survive after death, and become ghosts.  If humans can become ghosts, why can't other animals?"

Well, after pointing out the obvious problem that I'm not really the right person to state with authority what a soul, human or otherwise, could or could not do, I mentioned that there are many cases of supposed hauntings by animals.  The most famous of these is the haunting of Ballechin House in Scotland.

Ballechin House prior to its demolition [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Ballechin House was a beautiful manor house, built in 1806 near Grandtully, Perthshire, Scotland, on a site that had been owned by the Stuart (or Stewart or Steuart or Steward, they seemed to spell it a new way every time the mood took them) family since the 15th century.  The story goes that a scion of this family (sources seem to point to his being the son of the man who had the house built), one Major Robert Steuart, was a bit of a wacko who had more affection for his dogs than he did for his family.  That said, he provided quarters for his sister Isabella, who was a nun -- I'm not sure why she wasn't living with her fellow sisters in a convent, but some claim that it was because she'd had an illegitimate child and gotten herself, um... de-habited?  Anyhow, she lived with them for a time, finally dying and being buried on the property.  As for Major Steuart, he apparently took enough time away from his dogs to marry and have at least one child, John.

As the Major got older, he got more and more peculiar, and finally started claiming that after he died he was going to be reincarnated as a dog.  One runs into these ideas pretty frequently today, but back then, it must have been a sore shock to his nearest and dearest.  So this partly explains why when the Major did go to that Big Dog Kennel In The Sky, his son John rounded up all of the Major's dogs and shot them.

I say "partly" because I fail to understand how, even if you believed that the Major was going to be reincarnated as a dog, killing dogs that were currently alive and therefore presumably none of whom were actually the Major would help.  But that's what he did.

And boy was he sorry.

Almost immediately thereafter, John Steuart and his family and servants began to experience spooky stuff.  They heard doggy noises -- panting, wagging of tails, sniffing, and the really nasty slurping sounds dogs make when they are conducting intimate personal hygiene.  (Okay, I'm assuming that they heard that last sound.  I certainly hear it enough from my own dogs.)  Steuart's wife several times felt herself being pushed by a wet doggy nose, and reported being in a room and suddenly being overpowered by a strong doggy smell.

Other apparitions began -- the sighting of a ghostly nun, all dressed in gray, in the garden; doors that would open and close by themselves; and the sound of limping footsteps (the Major apparently walked with a limp).  John Steuart himself was not long to worry about them, because he was killed in an accident, supposedly the day after hearing a knocking sound on the wall.  (Maybe it was a coded message from the Major that meant, "The dogs and I can't wait to see you!")

In the 1890s the hauntings were investigated on the urging of a certain Lord Bute -- I can't figure out whether by that time Bute was the owner of the house, or just a busybody.  Thirty-five psychics descended upon the house, which created such a cosmic convergence of woo-wooness that you just know something was gonna happen.  And it did.  A Ouija board spelled out "Ishbel" (recall that Major Steuart's sister who was a sister was named Isabella, and recall also that this entire family seemed to have difficulty with spelling their own names).  The psychics experienced various doggy phenomena; one of the psychics, who had brought her own dog along, reported that one evening her dog began to whimper, and she looked over, and there were two disembodied dog paws resting on the bedside table.  (I'd whimper, too.)

In the interest of honesty, it must be recorded that the house was let several times during this period, once to a Colonel Taylor who belonged to the Society for Psychical Research. Taylor's diary records, with some disappointment, that he slept in the Major's bedroom on more than one occasion, and experienced nothing out of the ordinary.  The Society itself is dedicated to researching psychic phenomena through a skeptical and scientific lens, so maybe that was enough to frighten all the spirits off.

Be that as it may, Ballechin House acquired the reputation of being "the most haunted house in Scotland," and by the 1920s became impossible to rent.  It fell into increasing disrepair, and finally was torn down in 1963.  I think this is a little sad -- I'd have loved to visit it.  I might even have brought my dogs. Of course, I'm not sure how useful they'd be in the case of a haunting, even if the ghosts were other dogs.  Grendel is, to put not too fine a point on it, a great big wuss, and if disembodied doggy paws ended up on the bedside table in the middle of the night, he'd be under the covers with me in a flash.  My coonhound Lena, on the other hand -- and I mean this with the utmost affection -- has the IQ of a loaf of bread.  By the time her sensory organs sent the message "Ghost!" to her tiny, candy-corn-sized brain via Pony Express, the spirit would probably have given up and found something smarter to haunt, such as a house plant.

In any case, if you are to take the Ballechin House situation as a representative sample, most believers in Survival seem to think that dogs have an eternal soul.  However, this opens up a troubling question.  Why stop there?  If dogs have an eternal soul, do cats?  (Most of the cats I've met seem to be cases more of demonic possession, frankly.)  How about bunnies?  Or weasels?  Or worms?  Or Japanese beetles?  (I'd be willing to believe that if there are gardens in hell, there'll be Japanese beetles there to eat the roses.)  I find this a worrisome slippery slope.  It may be a cheering thought that something of Woofy's nature will survive his demise, even if he terrorizes the guests with "sudden overpowering doggy smell," but I'm not sure I want to be stung by ghostly yellowjackets, or have to spray my plants for ghostly aphids.  The real kind are enough of a problem.

Post-Rapture checklist

For those of you who are, like me, evil, sinful unbelievers who are doomed to the fiery furnace for all eternity, I have some good news:

A Michigan pastor has created a checklist of all the things we should do when we miss the Rapture.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Personally, I think this is pretty considerate of him.  After all, he's going to be long gone, floating up to heaven to sit forever in the Fields of Lilies, which sounds to me like a good way to have a serious attack of pollen allergy.  Be that as it may, Pastor Dave Williams, of Mount Hope Church in Lansing, Michigan, has provided us non-lily-sitters with some guidelines of what we should do when all of the holy people evaporate.

So, with no further ado:

1. Do not believe the explanations given by the secular media.

Well, most of the people of Pastor Williams's stripe already don't, so this one is a bit of a no-brainer.  The idea, apparently, is not to buy it when the mainstream media says the vanished folks have been "beamed to some interplanetary spaceship to be reprogrammed."  Which doesn't sound like something the mainstream media would claim, although in an extreme case like the Rapture, it's hard to know what they'd say.

2. Get rid of your cell phone.

I guess the government left behind is going to be made up of Not Nice People, and they might use your cell phone to track you.  Why they'd be after you, since you're one of the evil people who didn't get Raptured, I don't know.

3. Do not kill yourself. 

Which is good advice under most circumstances.

4. Repent immediately and make your peace with God.

I guess the message here is that it's not too late to reserve yourself a place amongst the lilies, even if you didn't get Raptured.  I have a hard time imagining myself changing my mind to the extent that I'll make up for all of my years of godlessness, but you never know what someone might do in extremis.  Guess I'll have to wait and see on that one.

5. Make sure you have a printed Bible.

Got that one covered.  Actually I have several -- different translations, mostly.  One of them is a bible given to me by my grandmother at my confirmation into the Catholic church, which I remember mostly because of the horrifying illustrations of the Maccabees getting various body parts lopped off.  The pictures were supposed to be edifying -- I think the message is, "Look how holy these people were, hanging on to their religion even when they were being gruesomely tortured" -- but the message I got from it was, "If anyone ever threatened to cut my hands off and rip my tongue out, I'd drop my religion like a hot potato."  Hell, I figure if under #4 above I can still make up for it, I'll be okay regardless.

6. Leave your home and get away from the cities, especially big cities.

A non-issue for me, since I live so far out in the sticks my nearest neighbors are cows.  I guess this makes sense, though, as based on Stephen King's The Stand, wherein a few survivors of the Superflu got stuck in Manhattan, and ended up having to walk in the dark through the Lincoln Tunnel which at the time was clogged with wrecked cars and decomposing bodies, a scene that still haunts my nightmares.

7. Pray to God to help you and give you strength.

Cf. #4 above.

8. Don't go to church.

The idea apparently is that any church you go to post-Rapture has some problems, given that they didn't get Raptured themselves.  Again, this one isn't a problem in my case.  If a bunch of the people on Earth suddenly vanished, I highly doubt the first thing I'd do is turn to my wife and say, "Hey, I know.  Let's take in a mass."

9. Get a small, self-powered radio.

That way you can keep abreast of further fun developments, such as the appearance of the Beast and the Rivers Running Red With The Blood Of Unbelievers.  Although you'd think you wouldn't need a radio to tell you all that.  It doesn't sound like something that would escape notice, frankly.

10. Keep praying for your loved ones who are unbelievers.

"Your prayers may be the key to seen your loved ones after this period of supreme agony is over," Pastor Williams tells us.  Which sounds good, at least the "seeing your loved ones" part, even though I'm not looking forward to the "supreme agony" part so much.

And last:

11. Leave copies of this list for as many people as you can.

At least by this post I am doing my part in that regard.

So there you have it.  A handy checklist for all of us damned folks to follow.  Me, I'm not losing any sleep over it, because people like Pastor Williams have been predicting the Rapture for decades, and here we all still are.  Also, I figure that since the evangelicals have gone all gaga over Donald Trump, maybe the Antichrist will be more my type in any case.

Egg wars and chosen candidates

Some days I really feel sorry for my Christian friends, who are (one and all), logical, thoughtful, and intelligent.

The reason I say this is that so many of the most visible spokespeople for Christianity appear to be, to put not too fine a point on it, complete loons, and that gives the impression that all Christians think that way.  It's as if you were trying to get a good handle on the stability, temperament, and brainpower of actors, and you were only allowed to look at Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, and Kim Kardashian.

This comes up because of a trio of stories, of increasing wackiness, that I ran into just in the last two days.

Let's start with the outcry by the Church of England and British Prime Minister Theresa May over the fact that a nationwide chocolate egg hunt, sponsored by Cadbury's, has been named the "Great British Egg Hunt" instead of last year's title, the "Easter Egg Trail."

"This marketing campaign … highlights the folly in airbrushing faith from Easter," said an official statement from the Church of England.  May concurred.  "I think what the National Trust is doing is frankly just ridiculous," May said in an interview with ITV News.  "Easter’s very important.  It’s important to me, it’s a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world."

Because Theresa May has nothing more pressing to worry about at the moment, apparently.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Okay, can we get one thing straight right from the get-go, here?  Neither the Easter egg nor the Easter Bunny is mentioned anywhere in the bible.  While the use of the egg as a symbol of rebirth (and thus resurrection) has been part of Christian practice for centuries, it almost certainly is originally of pagan origin.  German folklorist Jacob Grimm writes:

But if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara has the strongest claim to consideration...  The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in matter of bonfires.  Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate: I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people's amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences.

So what we have here is some hypersensitive types overreacting to an attempt to make a national event more inclusive, sort of like the coffee drinkers who got their knickers in a twist last December when Starbucks elected not to write "Jesus Jesus Jesus" all over their holiday-season paper cups.

And they call the liberals sensitive snowflakes.

Then we had conservative activists Don and Mary Colbert on the Jim Bakker Show, and they were asked about their support of Donald Trump.  Mary Colbert responded with a dire warning for all of us who dislike the Donald:

It’s not that Donald Trump is all that perfect of a guy.  We all know he’s not.  And we know that he’s not necessarily perfect in every way that we would like.  That’s not how God works.  He works through the ones he chooses.  We don’t choose them. 

All we have to do is recognize them and when you recognize a chosen one and you have the discernment to know that they’ve been chosen and know that that’s the will of God, then your life will be blessed.  And if you come against the chosen one of God, you are bringing upon you and your children and your children’s children curses like you have never seen.  It puts a holy fear in me.

Okay, just hang on a moment.

"We don't choose them?"  Um, yeah, actually we do.  It's called "having an election."

"Donald Trump is not all that perfect?"  We have a narcissistic, egomaniacal sociopath in the Oval Office, who appears to be very nearly amoral, who lies every damn time he opens his mouth, and who is a serial adulterer and likely sexual predator to boot, and you call that "not all that perfect?"  That's like saying that Joseph Stalin was "a bit of a control freak on occasion."

And last, if we don't support Trump, we are bringing curses on our "children and children's children?"  Look, lady, the closest I have to grandchildren at the moment is that one of my sons owns a pair of ferrets.  You're telling me that my prospective grandchildren, and probably my grandferrets as well, are cursed because I dislike Donald Trump?

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, Bakker himself said that by "blaspheming against Donald Trump," we're hastening the End Times.  Which, honestly, I can't say is a particular deterrent for me at the moment.  Considering the news lately, the Dragon With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, and the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons sound like a distinct improvement.

Last, no post about religious nutjobs would be complete without a contribution from Pat Robertson, who went on record this week as saying that he's tired of being "dominated by homosexuals."  After laughing for about ten minutes at the mental image this evoked, I went on to read Robertson's explanation of what he meant:

We have given the ground to a small minority.  You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population.  That’s all.  That’s statistically all.  But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities.  It’s just unbelievable what’s being done.  A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference.  The majority — it’s time it wakes up.

Oh, you poor, poor majority.  What is it that you're being deprived of?  The right to run Christian candidates for damn near every public office in the land?  The right to have your houses of worship in every village, town, and city?  The right to found your own universities?  The right to have "In God We Trust" on our currency and "One Nation, Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance?

In other words, the right to dominate every fucking sphere of influence in the entire country?

No, what Robertson and his ilk object to is that LGBT individuals are now demanding to be recognized as having rights, including the right to be free from discrimination.  That, apparently, is "domination" in Robertson's mind.

So anyway.  After that last one, I need to go have a cup of coffee and calm down for a while.

I must say, however, that I'm heartened by the fact that there are Christians who speak up about all of this nonsense.  I just wish they were louder, sometimes.  Or at least louder than people like Mary Colbert, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson.  But unfortunately, at the moment the loons are the ones who are getting all the press -- and they're the ones who will continue to be in the limelight until their followers say, "Okay, enough.  You're talking bullshit, and you need to shut up."

The power of ritual

Since leaving religion when I was in my early 30s, I've found that one thing I've kind of missed is taking part in a ritual.

It's not that I don't enjoy sleeping in on Sunday mornings, or that I miss the specific rituals I participated in while in church.  It's more that there's something comforting about being part of a group that is all doing the same thing, and for which membership in the group involves understanding the context of how the ritual works.

It's amazing how powerful this can be.  Other than my parents' funerals and the wedding of a friend, I haven't sat through a Catholic mass since I was about twenty.  Even so, I bet if I did decide to head on over to St. James Catholic Church next Sunday, I'd know exactly what to do when, and I probably could remember the order of mass, the words to the prayers, and even the lyrics for some of the hymns.

Old habits die hard.

All of this comes up because of a paper (currently in press) by Nicholas M. Hobson, Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton, and Michael Inzlicht called "When Novel Rituals Impact Intergroup Bias: Evidence from Economic Games and Neurophysiology" (the link is to a pre-release copy) that gives us an idea why rituals are so important -- and so ubiquitous in human cultures.

The researchers were trying to find out if getting people to do stereotypical and repetitive actions could alter their perception of belonging in a newly-formed group, and also whether those actions might cause them to change their behavior toward people who had not participated.  Here's an example of one of the rituals Hobson et al. came up with for their participants to perform:

1. Choose two different coins, either a dime, nickel, or quarter (but NOT a one or two dollar coin). It’s best if the two coins you select are different (for example, one a nickel and the other a dime). You will use these two coins throughout the duration of the experiment, over the course of the next week. It is important that you not lose them. Keep them in a safe spot and available. 
2. Get a cup or mug of some sort available. Fill it halfway with lukewarm water – being careful that the water isn’t is too hot or too cold. Gently submerge the two coins in the water. Place the cup down on a surface or on the floor in front of you. 
3. As the coins sit in water, close your eyes and take 5, slow, deep breaths. Afterward, bow your head and make a sweeping motion away holding the cup in your hands.
4. Next, gently remove the two coins from the water. Place the smaller coin in your NON dominant hand (left hand if you’re right handed) and the larger coin in your DOMINANT hand (right hand if you’re right-handed).
5. Hold your hands out in front of you, palms facing upwards so that the coins don’t fall. Lower your hands slowly down so that they become in line with your hips. Do this movement five times. Close your eyes and bow your head.
6. Next, keeping the coins in your hand, close your fingers around the coin, making a tight fist. Hold your fists in front of your chest and bring them together so that your knuckles and thumbs match up. Keeping them in this position, bring your arms straight up over your head. Do this movement five times. Close your eyes and bow your head. 
7. Keeping your fists as is, next bring your fists to either side of your head, so that the knuckles of each hand line up with your temples. Bring your fists together in front of your eyes. Do this movement five times. Close your eyes and bow your head.
8. Bring your fists back down in front of your body and open your hands so that your palms are facing upward with the coins resting. Bring both coins together into your DOMINANT hand. 
9. Finish off by closing your eyes and taking five, slow, deep breaths. As you do this bring your full attention, awareness, and focus on your conscious and unconscious mind. 
10. Lastly, return both coins back into the half-filled cup of water for a moment, and remove them. 

So kind of silly, but honestly, is it any odder than a lot of the rituals we participate in without any question?

So they got the "ritual group" to perform the steps at least three times a week.  Afterwards, they were mixed in with the "no-ritual group" -- people who had been given a task to estimate the number of dots in an image, rather than participating in the ritual.  They were then paired up and participated in a famous psychological experiment called the "Trust Game:"

If player 1 (sender role) sends player 2 (receiver role) all of their $10 endowment, this $10 amount becomes tripled upon being received by player 2 ($30).  In the second exchange (which did not actually occur, but participants were lead to believe that there was a second play), player 2 is then given the option to reciprocate the offer and send any amount of the $30 back to Player 1.  A perfectly cooperative exchange would be player 1 fully trusting player 2 (sending entire $10) to fairly reciprocate the offer (signaling their trustworthiness) by splitting the $30, $15 to each player.  Participants understood that in order to gain more than their original endowment, they would need to trust player 2 with a certain amount; the more money sent to player 2, the higher this individual payout, but the greater the risk of the endowment being lost.

And what happened is that people who had participated in the ritual trusted other members of the ritual group more than they did members of the non-ritual group!

What I find most interesting about this is the fact that the ritual the people were performing was pointless and absurd, and the participants knew it was meaningless -- and yet it still impacted their behavior.  How much more of an effect does this have when the rituals are perceived as meaningful?  Or not just meaningful, but essential for the salvation of a person's soul?

And how might this not only affect our interactions with other members of the ingroup, but how we treat people in the outgroup?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What all of this indicates is that however modern we perceive ourselves to be, our brains still function in the context of tribalism.  And while this has the beneficial effects of increasing group trust and coherence, it makes us prey to the worst of what humanity can do -- mistreatment and mistrust of those who we see as different.  As Hobson et al. put it:

Cultural stabilization of ritual began in human evolution when fast-growing groups began to experience elevated intergroup competition, necessitating ingroup cooperation...   In line with these theoretical claims, the current results partially support the claim that rituals offer a strategy for the regulation of ingroup behavior – but at a detriment to the outgroup.

Which makes me wonder if my missing the rituals I participated in might have a more deep-seated source than I realized.  Almost makes me want to go genuflect in front of a statue of a saint, or something.