Witch hunting

The Salem Witch Trials, held in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, were triggered by the hysterical reaction of a group of girls who claimed to be possessed.  They "cried out against" various members of the village, accused prominent townspeople of cursing them and "sending their spirits out" to torment them, and appearing in the form of a cat and a giant yellow bird.  Court proceedings were held, and such accusations were held as evidence.

In the end, nineteen people were executed by hanging for the crime of witchcraft.

Oh, but that was a long time ago, right?   We live in more enlightened days, right?

Wrong.

Yesterday an article appeared in The Swazi Observer, the primary English language newspaper in Swaziland.  It describes various goings-on in Mdzimba High School which sound amazingly like what happened in Salem Village in 1692.  The article, in all apparent seriousness, describes a plague of "demons" which have overrun the high school. 

"The children run away from invisible apparitions, which at times direct them to a nearby pool, where they claim to see a register with the name of pupils targeted by the demons," writes Fayana Mabuza, journalist for the Observer.  "At times, they claim to be instructed to drink water from the school tap, saying the instructions were coming from the school’s principal, Sgwili Dlamini.  They writhe around as if in agony while screaming loudly and if not restrained, they dash full speed to the pond where they return to inform others whose names they claim they saw at the pond."

Dlamini, perhaps out of fear because his name had been mentioned as being complicit with the demons, called in a pastor, Reverend Mdudzi Manana, who is a well-known exorcist.  He prayed for them, targeting individual children, "doing battle with the demons" -- and the situation calmed.

“Initially only nine were affected," Principal Dlamini said.  "I even sent them home advising their parents to take them to people who could treat such affliction.  They returned again with the situation having normalized. But towards last term’s closure it struck again.  When we opened this term the problem was still there and this time around it engulfed the whole school.  But we believe the prayers from this pastor will contain the situation as he has a track record of dealing with such things. Otherwise, since Monday he and his team have been fervently praying at the school, and we can only wish them all the success.”

Okay, you might be saying; that happened in Africa, in a place known for its superstitions.  These people share with the Puritans of 17th century Massachusetts a belief in demons, and under circumstances of stress or fear those beliefs can manifest as mass hysteria.  Then, the preacher gets called in to quiet things down, and once again -- because they believe -- it works.  And in this case no one got hurt, so the belief isn't really doing any permanent harm, right?

There are still executions in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East for witchcraft.  Just last year, five people were burned alive in Kenya for "harming their neighbors by magic."  And given their belief system, it makes perfect sense.  As C. S. Lewis wrote, in Mere Christianity:

But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things.  If we did - if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did.

In 2002, a Barna Group poll showed that 34% of Americans think that Satan is a real, living being who can be invoked to cause direct harm.  39% believe in demons or other malevolent spirits, who can target particular people, places, or events.  Two years ago, Sarah Palin notoriously participated in a ceremony at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, run by an pastor who claims to have "driven out a spirit of witchcraft" from a Kenyan town.  American pastor Bob Larson, whose radio ministry is listened to by tens of thousands of people each week, claims that in the last twenty years, he has performed over 6,000 exorcisms in 90 countries.  

Belief is a powerful thing, and its influence doesn't seem to be affected by whether the thing believed in has any objective reality.  Furthermore, superstition and credulity are not the sole property of any country or ethnic group.   In recent polls, atheism and rationalism were on the rise in the US -- but so were the ranks of the extremely religious, devotees of fundamentalist, evangelical sects whose members are the most likely to believe in devils, possession, and supernatural evil.  (In the above-mentioned poll, 75% of Americans who described themselves as "born again" believed in Satan, demons, and the rest.)

There is increasing emphasis in political spheres on a candidate's beliefs.  Mitt Romney's Mormonism is "an issue," particularly amongst the two groups mentioned above -- atheists and evangelical Christians.  The Christian Right has become more and more vocal about demanding candidates who pass a religious acid-test, whose beliefs are in line with theirs.  This scares me, and not just because I'm an atheist, but because I know what belief can engender.  Recall that James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan, famously stated that the environment wasn't worth protecting because when the Second Coming of Christ occurred, "the Earth was going to be destroyed anyway."

It is an open question as to whether it is even possible for a political figure not to allow his or her religious beliefs to drive decision making.  Because of this, it is critical that we consider carefully before voting for religious ideologues.  If as generally rational and moderate a Christian as C. S. Lewis admits that the only reason we don't execute witches is because don't believe they exist, what will happen when we elect leaders who do believe in witchcraft?

I'll move to Costa Rica, that's what.

It boils down to one thing.  Anyone who believes they'd like to live in a theocracy hasn't actually lived in one.

Beyond reproach

The question of the day is:  is it possible to criticize strongly the beliefs of an oppressed ethnic, religious or social group, without that criticism being motivated by bigotry or prejudice?

I think the answer is a resounding "yes."

I ask this in light of the story yesterday of an ultra-Orthodox group of rabbis in Jerusalem, who condemned a dog to death by stoning because the dog's behavior reminded one of the rabbis of an incident from twenty years earlier.  Apparently, a secular lawyer had criticized the rabbis of this sect, and they had "cursed him and ordered his spirit to enter a dog when he died."  The lawyer apparently died shortly thereafter, and this particular dog somehow reminded the rabbis of the lawyer, so they held a religious court session and determined that the dog should be stoned.  (Fortunately, the dog made itself scarce before the sentence could be carried out.)

Yes, I know that the Jews have been the victims of persecution and genocide.  There are still people (Mahmoud Ahmedinijad comes to mind) who want to see the Jews exterminated.  All of that is hateful and evil, and should not for one second be tolerated.

But I'm sorry, those rabbis who wanted to stone the dog are straight out of the Dark Ages.  Their beliefs -- at least the ones apropos of curses and ordering spirits into "impure animals" -- are ridiculous and backwards superstitions.  Interestingly, there were comments to this effect posted on the news article I read -- and resulting accusations of anti-Semitism.

The evils of oppression do not give the victimized group some kind of insurance against being accused of idiotic beliefs, nor does it make the people who criticize those beliefs bigots.  To pick a few examples that come to mind: the "afrocentrist" twist on history calls dark-skinned people "Sun People" and light-skinned people "Ice People," and credits every advance in knowledge to people of African descent.  I know more than one lesbian who hate all men and consider having a Y chromosome and the requisite anatomy sufficient reason to assume that the person in question is a macho, sex-obsessed victimizer.  Traditional Basques and Rom (Gypsies) often ostracize, sometimes to the point of physical violence, members of the group who marry someone from another ethnicity.

My statement that I think all of the above beliefs are patent nonsense should not have to be followed up by my saying, "... but I'm not a bigot."  In no case did I say that the groups in question were evil, simply that they were wrong.  There's a difference.  Any of us can be wrong.  Most of us, in fact, are frequently wrong.  Being wrong is no respecter of ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. 

But in today's super-sensitive climate, people are on edge.  The "race card" (or "religion card") is played so often that the phrase has become a cliché.  (I even had a student accuse me of being "prejudiced against African-Americans" because she'd received a bad grade -- on a math test.)  For some of these people, the feeling of finally being in a position of power -- of being able to say anything, without fear of contradiction -- is a heady one.

There is no difference, however, between an anti-feminist's statement that "all women are inferior" and an ultra-feminist's statement that "all men are jerks."  Both are prejudiced nonsense.  If belonging to a dominant, majority ethnic group should not make you immune to criticism, belonging to an oppressed, minority ethnic group should not, either.  There is, of course, no justification for oppression.  That said, regardless of what group you belong to, if you make an idiotic statement, you should be called on it.

Move to France, escape the apocalypse

The United States has more than its fair share of wackos.  Maybe it's a side effect of our freedom; if you're free, you're given license to believe whatever ridiculous version of reality you choose to.  It's no particular surprise to me that Scientology, Heaven's Gate, the Oneida Community, the Branch Davidians, the Aryan Nations, and the Westboro Baptist Church are all American creations.  (Of course, given the beliefs of the Islamic fundamentalists, it's not like we have exactly cornered the market, either.)

What's unfortunate is that the US is becoming a major exporter of loony apocalyptic wingnuts.  If you don't believe this, allow me to direct your attention to the picturesque little town of Bugarach, France, population 200.

Bugarach, near Carcassonne in southwestern France, has become the unwilling epicenter of a doomsday cult that buys the whole December 21, 2012 nonsense, but is also connected to the Ramtha cult of J. Z. Knight.  Never heard of Knight, or Ramtha?  Let me tell you a little about  her, and it.

Knight, appropriately enough, was born in Roswell, New Mexico.  She currently lives in Yelm, near Mt. Rainier, Washington, where she runs "Ramtha's School of Enlightenment."  Who is Ramtha, you might ask?  Ramtha is, according to Knight, a "35,000 year old Lemurian enlightened mystic" who Knight is able to "channel."  Lemuria is, of course, the continent that used to be in the Indian Ocean, connecting Madagascar to India, which was destroyed in the same cataclysm that swamped Atlantis.  When Ramtha was alive, the Atlanteans and the Lemurians were at war, and Ramtha escaped to the Indus Valley, thus avoiding death when both lands were destroyed.  There he became a great teacher, mastering out-of-body experiences, and after death his disembodied soul wandered the Earth until it found a person wise enough to channel him, and selected Knight.

Interestingly, when Knight is "channeling Ramtha," she is never able to answer concrete questions such as "what languages were spoken, back in Paleolithic times?  What was the social structure like?  How do you know you lived 35,000 years ago?"  When asked those sorts of questions, she deflects them as "focusing on inessentials," and reverts to her central message, which has five parts:

• You are god.
• Consciousness and energy create reality.
• Make the unknown known.
• Conquering yourself is the only justifiable battle.
• Send J. Z. Knight large quantities of money.

You'd think that anyone making these sorts of claims would be referred for psychiatric evaluation, but this being Americans we're talking about, Knight immediately became famous and attracted hordes of followers.  She was instrumental in the creation of the 2004 movie What the Bleep Do We Know? which set a record for being the longest continuous stream of woo-woo bullshit ever filmed.

What, you might ask, does all this have to do with Bugarach, France?   Well, the deal is that the Ramtha people have jumped on the bandwagon of the Mayan end-of-the-world people, and have decided that Bugarach is going to be the only place on Earth that survives the apocalypse.  The explanations for this vary, but include that Bugarach has a "magnetic field," that it is a holy site for the aliens, or that it contains a portal to another world.  So wingnuts of a variety of stripes have been descending upon Bugarach like locusts to a wheat field.  Just the Ramtha people alone have set up six settlements nearby.

Jean-Pierre Delord, the mayor of Bugarach, is dismayed.  "At first, we treated it as a joke," he said in an interview with Figaro.  "But now, we're taking it very seriously.  What if on the big day, ten thousand people try to assault the village?  Already we have found a strange statue, surrounded by crystals, cemented to a rock near here.  They are trying to turn our village into some sort of Solar Temple.  Enough is enough."  He has ordered a local battalion of French legionnaires to practice maneuvers in the area, presumably to ready themselves to deal with the wackos should they get restive.

Of course, given the way nutjobs think, this has only further convinced them that Bugarach is The Holy Place.  Why, else, would Delord have called in the legionnaires?  It's clearly because he's part of the conspiracy to keep them away from The Holy Place.

I find the whole thing disturbing.  I'm a firm believer of freedom of speech, and also freedom to believe any damnfool thing that you want to, as long as you don't try to force it on me (and don't mind my laughing at you).  And so far, the Ramtha loonies and the other mixed nuts that have arrived in Bugarach don't appear to be trying to convert the populace.  But what if they are ruining the quality of life of the residents by their mere presence?  I recall when another group of wackos, the Rajneeshies (devotees of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, he of the fleet of 74 Rolls-Royces), literally bought the town of Antelope, Oregon, descended upon it in such numbers that they had a majority, and changed its name to Rajneeshpuram.  Fortunately for the residents of Antelope, Rajneesh was shortly thereafter charged with fraud and tax evasion and was run out of the country.

A pity we can't do that with J. Z. Knight, but she's a US citizen and so we're stuck with her.  She's still blathering on about Ramtha, and people are still, astonishingly enough, believing her.  And now, her followers are making life miserable for people in a little village in France.  There ought to be some kind of law that countries have to deal with their own crazies, and they could all be sent back here, hopefully under heavy sedation.  But given that there's no such helpful piece of legislation, the people of Bugarach are simply watching, and waiting, until December 2012 approaches.  At that point, I hope the legionnaires are ready, because I think it's going to get ugly.

Memorial Day Bigfoot report

New from the "34,208th Time's The Charm" department; a group of hikers claim that they've found conclusive evidence of Bigfoot in the Sierra National Forest.

Now, you should know from the outset that this group (1) were up there looking for evidence of Bigfoot, and (2) was being led by the founder of the Sanger Paranormal Society.  But still, before we start to scoff, let's hear the story.

Jeffrey Gonzalez and several friends were camping in the Sierras over Memorial Day weekend, and had been poking about looking for evidence of the hairy hominid.  To their dismay, it began to snow, and remembering what happened to the Donner Party, they decided to bag the trip.  So they returned to their vehicles, packed up, and drove off -- mysteriously leaving two of the vehicles behind.  (Both of the sources I read state that the group was "forced" to leave behind the vehicles, but neither explains why.)

Be that as it may, they came back two days later to retrieve the vehicles, and found that beside one of them was a "twelve-inch footprint," and there was a "face print" on the driver's side window.  (You should look at a photograph of the face print here.)  A similar, but smaller, face imprint was on the passenger side, indicating "two unexplained visitors to the campsite."

"Apparently," Gonzalez said, "the creature was looking in the window and left behind dirt and oil on it, leaving such an awesome picture, you can see the nose, the eye, the hair all over the face and the shoulders -- it's creepy, and it's not a bear.  An impression was left of a nose, eyes and lips, but they were extremely large.  The lips measured about six inches long. You can see that the whole face was full of hair, so when it leaned up against the window, you can see the depth of the eye socket in the glass. "I've shown people -- non-believers -- this photograph and this totally freaked them out."

Hair left at the site is being subjected to DNA analysis, but we are advised not to get too excited about it all, says Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum of Portland, Maine, the man who but for financial concerns could have been my boss.

"One of the cautions I have about finding a nose print or anything on the side of a car is that it could be a homeless person, resulting in people letting their imaginations go wild" Coleman said.  "Of course, if you take a DNA sample and it comes back near-human or primate, then it would match both Bigfoot and a homeless person.  A twelve-inch footprint is not too exciting, because it could be a human or bears imprinting on top of each other.  In this case, it might not have been a homeless person, but in wilderness areas, there are other hikers and somebody would've naturally put their nose up to the window to look inside the car."

So, if you're up in the Sierras, you should be on the lookout for hairy hikers and homeless people with six-inch lips.

My own guess is that Gonzalez faked the lot.  It'd have to be a mighty greasy-faced Bigfoot to leave a complete facial imprint against a car window.  (Try smooshing your own face against a window and see how good an impression you leave.)  Besides, the whole "we had to leave behind two of the cars" thing sounds mighty convenient to me.  I wonder if we'll ever hear anything from the "forensics expert" who is testing the hair -- despite Coleman's caveat that a DNA test wouldn't be conclusive, I would think that the DNA of a hominid whose lineage has been separate from humans for perhaps five million years would be sufficiently different to be discernible with a sensitive enough analysis.  And given that the Bigfoots in question apparently shed fur all over the site, it's not like they're lacking for material.

So, I'm skeptical.  Predictably.  But we can always hope.  I still would love to see proof of Sasquatches in my lifetime (not to mention proof of life on other planets).  So perhaps one of these reports, one day, will turn out to have some weight of evidence behind it.  As for this one -- we'll wait to hear what the forensics experts say.  And if it turns out to be true, I'd be happy to chip in for a bottle of greasy-hair-formula shampoo for those Sierra Bigfoots.  Sounds like they could use it.

Sunspots, climate, and frozen turkeys

In my Environmental Science class, I present them with what appears to be a simple little problem.  I draw a graph on the board, passing through (0,0), (1,30), and (2,60) as follows:

I then ask them to do a little mental math, and predict what the y-value will be when the x-value is 6.  I deliberately have not labeled the axes, and rarely does anyone ever ask me what the numbers mean, or even what their units are.

AP-level high school seniors are great at extrapolation, and without too much trouble they figure out that when x = 6, y = 180.  At that point I label the axes.

The x axis is "Time, in days."  The y axis is "Temperature of a frozen turkey left on the kitchen counter to thaw, in degrees Fahrenheit."  After the laughter dies down, I say, "So, this Thanksgiving, don't bother putting your turkey in the oven.  Just put it on the counter and wait six days, and it will cook itself."

This type of error is called a misextrapolation, or an "assumption of linearity."  We tend to assume that once we've seen a trend, the same trend will continue forever.  It's what has resulted in the "some is good, so a lot must be better" attitude some people have toward taking vitamin supplements, for example.

It's only one of several logical errors I saw in an article yesterday in The Register, called, "Earth May Be Headed Into a Mini Ice Age."  This article notes a recent decrease in sunspot activity (data presented from 2000 to 2010).  Whoever constructed the graph gamely drew a regression line through the data, all the way up to the year 2026.  The regression line crosses a dotted line between a region of the graph labeled "spots" and one labeled "no spots" around 2022.

Well, yeah, if the trend continues, that's true; but nowhere in the article do they mention that the regression line itself is a prediction.  A quick glance at the data would convince you that, yes, it certainly looks linear.  You will read the article in vain looking for a discussion as to why anyone is expecting that it will remain linear.

Then the whole thing gets even worse.  They tie a decrease in sunspot activity to a cold period between 1645 and 1715, a time in which "many European rivers which are ice-free today – including the Thames – routinely froze over, allowing ice skating and even for armies to march across them in some cases."  The author calls this the "Maunder minimum," or the "Little Ice Age," which is half right; actually, the Little Ice Age was the drop in temperatures that began in the 14th century, which froze out the Viking settlements in Greenland and was probably contributory to the spread of the Black Death.

Besides the misextrapolation, we have two more logical problems going on here.  The first is that tried-and-true error in thinking, "correlation does not imply causation."  That the Maunder minimum coincided with a decrease in sunspot activity is true; that the decrease in sunspot activity caused the Maunder minimum is hardly proven.  Also, there's a problem with sample size here; even if you accept that there is some sort of connection between sunspot activity and global temperatures, the link between the Maunder minimum and the 17th century sunspot minimum is a sample size of one.  Sunspots normally fluctuate in numbers on an 11-year cycle, and there is to my knowledge no corresponding cyclic fluctuation in global temperatures.  (There is apparently a weak correlation between average sunspot activity on the hundred-year-scale and solar irradiance, which could have an effect on climate; to read about this from a more authoritative source, go here.)

Then, after reading the article, I made it worse by doing what I should never do, namely, reading the comments.  This article brought the climate-change-deniers out of the woodwork, howling brilliant lines such as, "The sun has an effect on Earth's temperature?  Really?  Wow, these scientists are so smart!"  The whole thing comes from the usual problem; reputable scientists publish a paper (describing decreasing sunspot activity, suggesting that the sun is going into a magnetically quiescent state, and noting that a similar quiescent period coincided with the Maunder minimum).  This gets picked up by the popular media, who then commit various acts of illogic upon it, give it a catchy, sensationalized title, and put it online.

It's no wonder that the general public mistrust scientists, given the generally poor understanding that they have of basic critical thinking combined with the crappy reporting that is typical of the popular media.  The danger is that this has turned scientists into Cassandras; they, better than anyone else, understand the problems we face, but when they talk, no one believes them.

Bubba the psychic meets the crystal skull

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the alleged mystical properties of crystal skulls.  The story is that there are thirteen crystal skulls in the world, and when they're all brought together, the world will vanish in a flash of woo-wooness.  Or the Age of Aquarius will begin.  Or there will be a Cosmic Convergence, whatever that means.

Or maybe nothing will happen.  Which is my guess.

When I wrote that, little did I know that one of the crystal skulls had just visited a town near where I live.  This particular skull, which is named "Max," belongs to a Houston woman named JoAnn Parks.  Parks was taking Max around to see the US, and did a stop in Erie, Pennsylvania to teach a workshop in "hands-on interfacing with the crystal skull."

"There are many people who think he’s from another planet and is encoded – an encoded messenger," Parks told reporters for AOL News. "Some believe he was part of Atlantis as well. I think he's been in cultures that have come and gone that we didn't even know existed."

Those are our choices?  An "encoded messenger" from another planet, or it comes from Atlantis?  Another explanation, such as that it was made by people, does not occur to you?

You might wonder how Parks got Max.  She was given the skull by a Tibetan healer named Norbu Chin in 1977, just before he died, with the instructions, "Take this and some day you will know what it is for."  Chin told Parks that he had been given it by a Mexican shaman in 1970, and that the shaman said it had come from a Mayan tomb where it had been found in 1924 by Indiana Jones.

When Parks came into possession of the skull, she put it in a box in her closet.  But she started dreaming about it, that it was talking to her.  So she put pillows on top of it, and told it, "I don't want anything to do with you."  Because that's obviously what you do when you dream about something.  But finally she saw a  TV special about crystal skulls, and she brought it to the Houston Museum, and they sort of went, "Huh."  So she brought it back home, where she continued to dream about it.

Then, one day, she patted the skull on its, well, skull, and said, "Skull, I don't want nothing to do with you," and she heard in her mind, "My name is not 'Skull,' my name is 'Max.'"  Max went on to tell her that he was a "tool and a teacher" and could "serve mankind in a special way."  Including, apparently, making Parks a lot of money, because she decided to take him on the Woo-Woo World Tour, and she's still doing it today.  She has met a number of celebrities along the way, including Willie Nelson and (surprise!) Shirley MacLaine.

Which is how she ended up in my neck of the woods, in Erie, Pennsylvania.  One of the people who got to "interface" with Max was an Erie spiritualist and psychic named (I am so not making this up) "Bubba Suprynowicz."  Bubba had an encounter with Max that is breathtaking in its detail.

"The first time I sat down with him ... I went into a trance state. I don't know what happened after that," he told reporters.

Well!  That convinces me!

Now, don't get me wrong.  All sarcasm aside, I think that Max the Skull is quite a beautiful artifact.  Whether it's 5,000 years old (which is what Parks says) or is a recent creation made with power tools (my personal belief), it's quite an impressive bit of rock.  But if you want me to believe that it is more than just a piece of polished quartz, you're going to have to do better than anecdotal reports of dreams and trance states in which nothing apparently happened.  As usual, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which so far has not been forthcoming.  Until such time as Max causes the needle to move on a Psychic-o-Meter, or he talks to me personally, I'm still voting for the "polished piece of quartz" explanation.

Noah's Ark found. Again.

In breaking news about Things That Probably Didn't Happen, Noah's Ark has been found on Mount Ararat by (surprise!) a team of evangelical Christians.

The team, sponsored by "Noah's Ark Ministries," found "seven large wooden compartments buried at 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) above sea level, near the peak of Mount Ararat."  According to Man-fai Yuen, leader of the expedition, "The structure is partitioned into different spaces.  We believe that the wooden structure we entered is the same structure recorded in historical accounts."

Noah's Ark, of course, is the boat that rescued Chinese pandas, Australian kangaroos, and American pumas during a deluge that covered the entire world.  When the water all magically went away forty days later, the Ark evidently did a second world tour and deposited all of these animals back where they came from, but somehow still beached on the peak of Mount Ararat.

The expedition team admits that it is not 100% certain that what they've found is the Ark.  They are, they said, "99.9% sure."  Which, given that they are evangelical Christians, is an amazing admission of doubt.

Not surprisingly, scientists are skeptical.  Paul Zimansky, an archaeologist with SUNY-Stony Brook who specializes in the Middle East, said, "I don't know of any expedition that ever went looking for the Ark and didn't find it."

Even more interestingly, some young-earth creationists aren't convinced.

Todd Wood, director of the Center for Origins Research at Bryan College in Tennessee, objects to the find on, amazingly, the basis of radiocarbon dating.

Ready for some byzantine logic?  I hope you've had your coffee.

Wood claims that because the Earth is 6000 years old (no proof necessary), then radiocarbon and other forms of radioisotope dating are flawed and have to be "recalibrated."  They have a sliding scale of calibrations to adjust dates that come out of radioisotope dating, to align them with the by-fiat revelation of the young age of the Earth.  It's sort of like if you went to the doctor for a checkup, and the doctor told you your cholesterol was high, and you should lay off the scrambled eggs and bacon, and you replied, "By my calibration, my cholesterol is just fine.  I use a scale in which 'really high' means 'just fine' and 'just fine' means 'quite low.'"

So anyway, Wood took the radiocarbon dates of the wood samples found on Mount Ararat by the expedition, and "calibrated" them.  Since the Flood allegedly happened 4,800 years ago, if this is the Ark the wood should have an "uncalibrated" date of about 30,000 years.  Which it doesn't.  The wood dates to about 2,500 years ago, which means that by the "calibrated" date, it's only about 1,000 years old.

Plus, Wood says, he doubts that there would be anything left of the Ark by now, anyhow.  "It would have been prime timber after the flood," he said.  "If you just got off the Ark, and there's no trees, what are you going to build your house out of?  You've got a huge boat made of wood, so let's use that.  So I think it got torn apart and scavenged for building material, basically."

So, what we have here is someone who buys the whole nonsense of the Flood story, despite (1) exactly zero geological evidence that it ever happened, (2) the ridiculous notion of building a boat that could house representatives of all of the estimated 1.4 million animal species on earth, (3) the amazing fact that in order to drown a 13,000 foot high mountain in forty days, the rain would have to fall at a rate of 325 feet per day over the entire land surface area of the Earth, (4) there being no explanation for what happened to all of the water afterwards, and (5) how did all the trees and other vegetation come back after being covered with 13,000 feet of salt water?  And this same person wants to "recalibrate" radioisotope dating to align with the dates of this imaginary event, because that would make it "science."

And to top it all off, Noah's Ark Ministries is petitioning the Turkish government to put the site of the alleged Ark on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list.  Because, apparently, they don't already look foolish enough in the eyes of the world.

I've done so many facepalms while writing this that my forehead hurts, and I think that I need to wrap it up or I'm going to go to school with bruises all over my face.  And, of course, I have to prepare myself for the fact that I'm probably going to get beat up over this in a different way, when the hate mail starts to pour in from people who believe the whole thing and who are cheered by the thought that people like me are going to be condemned by the God of Love to burn in hell for all eternity.  So I think I better fortify myself with a second cup of coffee, and grit my teeth and wait for the onslaught to begin.