School spirit

So, today's the first day of school here in upstate New York, and I'm sure there are thousands of nervous boys and girls who are on the verge of being awakened by parents, siblings, or alarm clocks, and getting themselves ready for the start of another school year.  And lots of little ghostly children are stretching and yawning (well, I assume that ghosts stretch and yawn, but I have no empirical data on that) and preparing for another nine months of haunting, before the school is again empty and the ghosts have to find other occupations than scaring the living.

Every school I've worked in has, according to the students, been haunted.  My current school supposedly had a haunted gym, and for years I was periodically regaled by students with accounts of being alone in the locker room and "hearing noises" and "seeing shadowy shapes."  This usually resulted in my initiating a discussion of the phrase "tangible evidence," making suggestions for other possible explanations for noises and shadows, and describing the principle of Ockham's Razor.  The stories have kind of tapered off, however, since a renovation project a few years ago turned what was the gym into the cafeteria, and a new, larger gym was built on what was bare ground.  Since that time I haven't heard any more about ghosts.  Maybe even ghostly kids are repelled by cafeteria food, I dunno.

We're apparently not the only ones who have enrollment from the ranks of the spirit world, however.  A Frankfort, Kentucky school for the disabled is supposedly haunted by the spirit of a kid who was killed in a bus accident.  A worker in the school, identified only as "Belinda," relates that custodians heard the sound of footsteps in empty halls at night, and students heard noises from inside lockers, and heard their names called when no one was there.  "Belinda" herself was discussing the haunting in the cafeteria with another staff member, and a pot on an overhead rack "came up off the spoke and flew clear across the room!"  However, as we have only "Belinda's" word for this, I'm thinking this one carries about as much weight as my former students' "shadows and noises."

Apparently, you can have all kinds of ghosts at schools.  "Deb" from a town in the hill country of Australia describes barbequing hamburgers for some eight-year-old students of hers who were staying at the school for a sleepover, when "a little dog - a Jack Russell terrier - popped out of the wall!"  The ghostly dog "ran around barking" and ran "through a wall into the Tech Studies room."  Deb, whose nerves we should all admire, went into the Tech Studies room, and lo, there was the dog, standing on his hind legs, barking at a "glowing green orb."  Finally, both dog and orb "floated away into the sky."

I bet by then the hamburgers were reduced to disc-shaped charcoal briquets, but who can blame her?

Lastly, we have a photograph taken by one Margaret Cowart, when she visited the oldest wooden schoolhouse in the United States, situated in St. Augustine, Florida, that seems to show the face of a rather severe looking schoolteacher (see inset on upper right):

I'm hoping that no one expects me to continue going to school after I'm dead.  My feeling is, I spend enough time in my classroom as it is - once I'm dead, I'd like to visit a few more interesting places.  I could totally get into haunting, say, a beach in Costa Rica.  Why a schoolteacher would stick around in a musty old building not only after retirement but after death, especially one that isn't even a working school any more, just to glare menacingly out of windows at passersby, is beyond me.

In any case, if any of my readers are students, allow me to wish you a pleasant and productive school year, free of ghostly footsteps, flying cookware, floating dogs, glowing orbs, and glowering teachers (dead or alive).

An equal wish of goodwill goes out to all you teachers and school staff members out there.  May all of your problems this year be no worse than mildly unruly, but still living, students, and no Jack Russell terriers of either sort, dead or alive.  We have to maintain some classroom decorum, here.

Paying psychics what they're worth

It's not often that I'll run across a story from the World of Woo-Woo that actually makes me mad.  My general opinion is that if it makes you happy to believe in ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, or whatever, and you don't mind my laughing in your general direction, then I'm cool with that.

This morning, however, I bumped into an article on the site A State of Mind called "What Can You Learn about Attracting Abundance by Paying for Psychic Services?"  (The article can be read in its entirety here.)  This opinion piece, written by someone who simply calls himself "Nathaniel," has as its central argument that you should pay psychic practitioners because that's a way to share the abundance of the universe and attract more good stuff into your own life.

Okay, I have some serious problems with this.

Let's take the simple stuff first.  Suppose you decide to go into a bakery this morning and get a cup of coffee and a croissant.  The guy at the counter asks you for five bucks.  Why do you give it to him?

Well, because it costs money to grow, process, and ship the coffee beans, wheat, and other stuff that it takes to make your breakfast, and people put time and effort into brewing the coffee, making the croissant, and so on.  So you're paying for a set of things, and you're paying for a set of services.

What about entertainment?  Why do we pay for movies?  Well, here we're paying people for their skills; a talented movie-maker worked long and hard to learn how to craft a good movie, as did the actors, costumers, and all of the hundreds of other people it takes to put together this summer's blockbuster.

You pay the people who tune your car up because they have abilities you don't.  You pay doctors because they have knowledge that can help you directly.  You pay the government, in the form of taxes, to maintain resources for the common good -- police, teachers, firefighters, roads, public lands.

Why, then, should we pay psychics?

Beats the hell out of me.  Let's see how "Nathaniel" weighs in on the topic:

You’re not paying just for service – let’s take my e-books for example. You’re not paying just for the e-book as a piece of electronic document. You’re paying for knowledge inside, for the knowledge I had to collect and understood in the past years. You’re paying for all my experience, mistakes and successes I had, so you won’t make the same mistakes I did. You’re also paying for the coffee I used to drink when I was writing e-books, you’re paying for electricity, for my food, for my bills, for hours of practice. Or let’s take Chakra reading, for example, what are you paying for in this case? First, you pay for my time, and, of course, you pay for my knowledge and experience. You’re also paying for my life energy I’m spending to use that “active sonar” on you :). Then you’re paying for the food, jogging and Tai Chi Chuan that I will use to recharge my psychic batteries. And all of this is just the tip of an iceberg.

So, "Nathaniel," you really are putting "chakra reading" in the same category as, for example, a doctor's use of his/her knowledge and training to help cure you of a disease?  I'm sorry, but I have to call "bullshit" at this point.  There is no evidence - not one scrap - that "chakras," and all of the associated nonsense about energy meridians, auras, and blockages, actually exist.  To steal a line from Richard Dawkins, the training people receive in this area is a little like a person studying for a degree in fairyology. 

What psychic practitioners are doing is hoodwinking the public.  They are leading the gullible into thinking that they have abilities that they in fact do not have, and that they can provide a service that they in fact cannot provide.  As such, it is not only questionable as to whether they should be paid, it is questionable as to whether they should be allowed to practice their "arts" at all.

Now, I understand that many people approach this stuff as a form of entertainment, and I have no issue whatsoever with that.  I actually had a Tarot reading done myself once, just for fun, although I must add in my own defense that I had had more than one pint of beer in the hours preceding the event.  As a form of entertainment, there is nothing wrong with people shelling out cash to get a crystal ball reading if that's what floats their boat.

I do, however, have serious issues with the amount of money people spend on psychic services not as entertainment, but because they think that they are really receiving something valuable for their money.  Despite the fact that the claims of such charlatans as James Hydrick, Uri Geller, Peter Popoff, James van Praagh, and Sylvia Browne have been debunked again and again, people continue to make them and others like them filthy rich.  Desperate individuals have blown their entire life's savings paying for the services of "psychics."  And that is immoral, unethical, and should be illegal.

Nevertheless, "Nathaniel" concludes his article with:

Everything you do is a way of giving or receiving energy. When you receive a psychic or spiritual service, and you give money in exchange, then such exchange is complete. But you don’t need to give money to complete the exchange. It can be food, a place to say, or a bit of advertising for someone who was kind enough to help you for free. Some people prefer money, as this is a form of universal energy exchange in the modern world. Others accept other things, as well. But some form of exchange is needed.

It’s that simple.

If you do not give, how do you want to receive? If you do not provide a service, how do you want to receive gratitude? If you do not produce a product, how do you want to receive money? If you do not give, how do you want to receive? This rule applies to our entire life.

Myself, I believe the "give to receive" rule only makes sense if what you're receiving actually has any value.  If "Nathaniel" and others like him want to get rich off our desire to understand the present, know the future, and do even more outlandish things - contact the dead, cast spells to attain our wishes, heal our illnesses without the use of traditional medicine - then it is incumbent upon them to show that they can actually do what they claim.  As the evidence for such abilities currently stands at "zero," my opinion is that they shouldn't receive a single cent of compensation for their "services."

Breaking news: The alchemists were right

Frequently, when I'm asked why I'm opposed to science teachers being required to teach "alternate explanations" along with teaching evolution, I respond, "It's interesting that no one is asking teachers to present 'alternate explanations' in other areas of science.  No one, for example, expects chemistry teachers to advocate alchemy as an 'alternate explanation.'"

By now, you'd think I'd know better than to use the phrase "no one" in a statement about belief in some crackpot idea.

Meet Jay Weidner, film director responsible for such masterpieces as Timewave 2013, Infinity: The Ultimate Trip, and (most significantly, for our purposes) The Secrets of Alchemy: The Great Cross and the End of Time.  Weidner, in his website (here's the link) outlines his three laws of the universe, which are poised to oust Newton's Laws as fundamental rules governing nature:

Weidner's First Law:  "Whatever ideas are the most suppressed are the most likely to be the closest to the truth."

Weidner's Second Law:  "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a symbol is worth a thousand pictures."

Weidner's Third Law:  "The only people who call conspiracies 'theories' are the conspirators."

The First Law would seem to suggest that we should go back the Four Humors Theory of Medicine (all illnesses are caused by an imbalance between the Four Bodily Humors -- blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile), as that was suppressed back when they noticed that patients treated according to the recommendations of this theory usually died.  The Second Law means -- never mind, I don't know what the hell the Second Law means.  But the Third Law would seem to indicate that I'm a conspirator.  I guess that given that I not only call most conspiracies "theories," but I ridicule them frequently in my blog, I'm not only a conspirator, but I'm really high up in the hierarchy of the conspiracy because I'm so determined to convince everyone that it isn't real.

How about that?  I'm in such a high echelon in a top-secret conspiracy that the fact was secret even from me.  Now that's what I call a secret conspiracy.

In any case, Weidner is a big believer in alchemy, especially as it pertains to the production of the Philosopher's Stone, a substance that can give eternal life.  I thought that Dumbledore had destroyed the Philosopher's Stone way back in Book One, but Weidner disagrees; he said he has discovered a book that shows you how to produce it, using "materials costing less than a thousand dollars," and he illustrates this on his website using a picture of Aquarius, symbolized by a guy with a Fabio hairstyle, huge pecs and biceps, a six-pack, and almost no clothes, pouring water out of a jar, wearing an expression that seems to say, "Hey, baby, you wanna partake of my Elixir of Life?" 

Now there's a symbol that's worth a thousand pictures.

Anyway, the book that describes the process for making the Philosopher's Stone is available for free here.  Weidner cautions us all to download the book before the Evil Conspirators find out that it's available and "hit the internet kill switch."  Because we all know how much the people who run the internet care about the presence of wacky, absurd ideas out there online.  We can't have that.

Curious, I took a look at the book (the Book of Aquarius), since it's free.  When you go to the "Read Online" page, you get a set of chapter headings, and not wanting to slog through the pages of quasi-metaphysical bullshit, I decided to cut to the chase, and skipped to Chapter 14:  What Is It Made Of?  And I found out that, to my great shock, the Philosopher's Stone is only made from one ingredient.  And that ingredient is...

... wait for it...

Urine.

Yes, you read that right.  I know, because I had to read it several times before I was convinced that I was reading it correctly myself.  And I thought, "Well, at least Weidner was right when he said that you can get the ingredients for less than a thousand dollars."  Here's the relevant passage from the book:

I must explain that the Stone could in theory be made from anything, since everything contains the life-energy to some degree, which is the active ingredient of the Stone.  Urine contains this life-energy in high concentration, due to the fact that it has just come out of you, and you, as a living animal, are full of life-energy...  From the urine we will need to extract a distillate (water) and a salt.  The life-energy is in the water, and since the life-energy is so volatile it will remain with the water even when the water is distilled (evaporated and condensed).  Our bodies do not want to reject the life-energy in the urine, but have no choice since the life-energy is attached to the water.  Secondly, urine is the perfect ingredient because it is as of yet undetermined.  That is, it has been well filtered, broken down and purified.  It contains all kinds of different minerals, but in minute particles not yet assigned to any purpose.

At this point, I had to stop reading, mostly because it's hard to read the computer screen when your forehead is on your desk.

Anyhow, I encourage you to peruse Weidner's site (I especially recommend the stuff about Stanley Kubrick faking the moon landing) and the Book of Aquarius.  But if you succeed in making the Philosopher's Stone, please don't tell me about it.  I don't want to know.  For one thing, it will mean that you'll have been playing around with your own urine, or, god forbid, someone else's, and that's just nasty.  For another, at that point you'll have discovered the Secret of Eternal Life, and being that I'm one of the Conspirators, I'd be duty-bound to kill you.  That'd just be unfortunate for a variety of reasons, the most important one of which is that I need all the readers I can get, and if I went around killing them it might discourage people from following my blog.

Ghostsquatch

You probably know all about such familiar cryptids as Bigfoot, Nessie, El Chupacabra, and Champ, and if you're a regular reader of this blog you probably also have a good working knowledge of some less familiar ones -- the Bunyip, Mokele-Mbembe, LizardMan, Sheepsquatch, the Beast of Gevaudan, Black Shuck, and Cadborosaurus.  You are probably also well aware that there has never been a bit of hard evidence for the existence of any of them.  All we have is sketchy eyewitness accounts, grainy photographs, and videocamera footage so shaky it looks like it was taken by a person who had just consumed about a quart of espresso.

What explains this dearth of tangible proof for any of these mysterious creatures?  There are two possible explanations that come readily to mind:

1)  None of them actually exist.
2)  The eyewitness accounts, photographs, and video clips aren't of actual, live cryptids; what people are seeing are the ghosts of prehistoric animals.

Well.  I think we can all agree that option #2 is a pretty persuasive scientific explanation, can't we?

It will come as no surprise to you that the Ghost Cryptid Theory is the brainchild of Nick Redfern, author of Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction, Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story, Man-Monkey - In Search of the British Bigfoot, Three Men Seeking Monsters, and about a dozen other titles on similar topics.

Redfern writes of a discussion he had with his friend, Joshua Warren, on the subject:

Could it be that certain animals of a strange and fantastic nature seen today are actually the spirits or ghosts of creatures that became extinct thousands of years ago? As fantastic as such a scenario might sound, maybe we shouldn’t outright dismiss it.

Indeed, paranormal expert and good friend Joshua P. Warren, the author of the highly-relevant book, Pet Ghosts, told me that he had extensively investigated a series of encounters with apparitional, ancient animals on farmland at Lancaster, South Carolina – one of which seemed to resemble nothing less than a spectral pterodactyl. Josh seriously mused upon the possibility that the ghostly presence of certain extinct animals might very well help explain sightings of monstrous beasts in our presence to this very day.

“Maybe Bigfoot is a phantimal,” said Josh to me, utilizing a term he uses to describe ghostly beasts, “perhaps even the ghost of a prehistoric creature, similar to the enormous extinct possible ape, Gigantopithecus, or maybe even the spirits of primitive humans.”

Okay.  Right.  A "phantimal."  So, what we've succeeded in accomplishing here is to take something that is potentially open to investigation (I hesitate to call what the Finding Bigfoot people did "investigation"), and place it entirely outside of the realm of what is even theoretically verifiable. 

Redfern and Warren seem to think that this is a good thing.  If all of those people who claim to have seen Bigfoot are actually seeing a "spectral" proto-hominid, then the lack of evidence somehow becomes a point in favor of the theory, right?

Ghostly Sasquatches, after all, leave behind no hair samples.

This seems mighty convenient to me.  It takes all of the objections that skeptics have to the cryptozoology thing, and dismisses them at one fell swoop:  "Of course there's no tangible proof."  It also explains all of the cryptid sightings with equal facility.  Nessie and Cadborosaurus are spirit pleisiosaurs.  Mokele-Mbembe is the ghost of a brachiosaurus.  Black Shuck and El Chupacabra are the ghosts of deceased canines.  Sheepsquatch is the ghost of...  well, I still don't know what the hell Sheepsquatch is.  But the ghost of some prehistoric mammal or another.

All of this, of course, just goes to show something that I've commented upon before; there's no crazy idea out there that's so outlandish that someone can't elaborate upon it so as to make it even more ridiculous.  We take something for which there is no evidence, but which at least isn't biologically impossible (the existence of cryptids), and put it in a blender with another thing for which there is no evidence (the existence of ghosts), and pour out a wonderful new Woo-Woo Smoothie -- Cryptids are the Ghosts of Prehistoric Animals.

Maybe we can elaborate it further, you think?  Maybe the spirit animals are actually in contact with... aliens!  That's it, the spirit animals are spies and are relaying information on us to their alien overlords!  I'm sure that somehow it's all tied up with the Roswell Incident, HAARP, and the Illuminati.

And I'm also sure that before the year is out, Nick Redfern will have written a book about it.

Satan's tour guide

"Visit lovely Hell.  Warm year-round, exclusive meetings with famous historical persons.  Breathtaking views of Burning Lakes of Fire.  Special excursions to the fabulous Ninth Circle available for a nominal charge."

Meet Master Kek Eng Seng, of Georgetown, Malaysia's Tze Bei Guan Yin Dharma Centre.  Master Kek recently offered fifty paying participants the opportunity to visit hell, heaven, and other special travel destinations.  Amazingly enough, the fifty lucky celestial tourists paid mucho buckos (not sure what that comes to in Malaysian currency, given current exchange rates) to be part of this trip.  Even more amazingly, the fifty were selected from over two hundred who applied.

"Some were taken off the list through a screening process, based on the birth dates that were unfavorable with the timing of the tour," said Beh Yuen Hui, a Malaysian reporter who was chosen to be part of the tour.  "Pregnant women and those having their period were also turned down."

Me, I didn't think Satan was that picky.  I thought he was sort of a come-one, come-all kinda guy.  Shows you what I know.

In any case, Master Kek assembled the fifty lucky travelers at the Dharma Centre last Saturday.  He pointed out that it had rained Thursday and Friday, but the weather Saturday was sunny, because he had "prayed to the deity Guan Yin" to stop the rain.  Guan Yin kindly complied, which was nice, because you know how irritating it is to go on a tour in the rain.  Besides, the rain might have put a damper on the fire and brimstone, and all.

The participants participated in prayers and rituals, and at a little after ten PM, the tour was ready to begin.  Master Kek blindfolded the fifty travelers, and then began a chant.

Reporter Beh Yuen Hui commented afterwards, "As I listened to the chants by Master Kek, my head became very hot, as though there was a stream of warm air trying to get out of my body through the top.  Master Kek later explained this by saying that my soul was trying to get out of my body."  His soul never did escape, however, because he was "distracted by the sounds of a nearby Chinese opera."

Myself, I wonder if he wasn't actually hearing hell.  If Chinese opera sounds anything like western opera, it could well be hell's soundtrack.

Beh, however, got a little frustrated, even though later in the experience he did do some traveling.

"About 45 minutes after the 'tour' began, I saw lights and followed their direction but I soon fell into darkness again with some circles flying towards me," he said.  "It was like watching a science fiction movie with a spacecraft traveling through a stream of meteoroids."

Unfortunately, the opera once again distracted him, and he found himself back at the Dharma Centre.  Master Kek later told him that the circles he'd seen were "whirlpools" that you pass through on your way to hell.

After an hour and a half, Master Kek called the participants back, and questioned them about what they'd seen.  It turned out that only one, a Chinese reporter named Chiang Kee Chuan, actually visited anywhere interesting -- and it turned out to be heaven,  not hell.

"I saw a rainbow hanging on a beautiful sky," Chiang said, afterwards, "and a monk advised me to become a vegetarian."

Another woman, who declined to be named, saw herself in a night market.  Master Kek asked her if it was a market in Ba Jiao Jie (Octagon Street), and the woman said yes.

"How did I know?" he asked the amazed crowd.  "Because I have been there before."

Wow.  Okay.  I'm convinced.

The tour participants, however, were pretty disappointed by the fact that they'd wasted a bunch of money and time, and most of them had spent an hour and a half watching the inside of a blindfold.   Master Kek was quick to allay his clients' grumbling.

"Come back again," Master Kek told them, after leading them in prayers to get rid of the bad luck that had caused the tour to fail.  "And I will take you on another trip."

Oh, sure, Master Kek, sign me right up.  Here's lots more money.  Can we visit Purgatory, this time?  Or Xanadu?  Or the Lost City of Cibola?  Or Oz?  Or Wonderland?  I think a dinner with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare could be entertaining.

So many fictional places to visit, so many gullible people in the world to fleece...

I am Arthur, King of the Britons.

Once upon a time, in the land of Britain, there was a man who had long white hair, a beard, and wore a golden circlet on his head.  His robes were snowy white, and there were lines of wisdom on his face.  His name was King Arthur Pendragon.  He faithfully appeared at Stonehenge, holding his staff of authority, to lead his followers in the yearly rituals.

One day, King Arthur Pendragon found out that some graves at the sacred site had been desecrated, so he traveled many a mile to right the wrong that had been done to the bones of his Druid forefathers.

The year was 2011.  And yes, his real name is King Arthur Pendragon; he had it changed by deed poll years ago, probably from something like "Norbert Fernwhistle."  He signs his legal papers "Arthur Rex."

If the whole thing doesn't make your brain swim with Monty Python references, you're made of sterner stuff than I am.

The grave sites were discovered as part of an archaeological dig, and the human remains they contained have yet to be conclusively dated.  Despite that, Pendragon, 57, has been fighting for some time to have the bones reburied.  He claims that the bones, which were unearthed in 2008, are those of druids, who were members of the "priest caste," and may have been amongst the "founding fathers of our nation."  "Let those who are at rest, stay at rest," he declaimed.

Last week, Pendragon appeared in court in London last week to hear the verdict.

He lost.  The judge ruled that the bones would be available for scientific study until 2015, and after that would be sent to the Salisbury Museum.

Pendragon, as befits his rank, is not about to take such a rebuff sitting down.  He has vowed to lead a "day of action" at Stonehenge this week.  I'm guessing that there will be more white robes and staffs and chanting.  That will sure show that judge, won't it?  I bet he'll never mess with them again.

Besides the surreal nature of anyone changing his name to "King Arthur Pendragon," there's the whole problem of the fact that (1) we have no idea who these bones actually belonged to, and they could have been just about anyone; (2) we know next to nothing about the druids; (3) the druids, whoever they were, did not build Stonehenge; and (4) there's not really all that much evidence that King Arthur ever existed.

The original King Arthur, I mean.  This dude clearly exists, even though my personal opinion is that he could use some psychological evaluation.

Interestingly, the whole Druidic Cult thing is largely a result of the 19th century British Romanticist movement, which gave us the florid (and sanitized) accounts of the Knights of the Round Table we find in Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and associated works of poetry, prose, and art.  The word "druid" simply meant "priest" -- until the revival of the word in British Neopagan fraternities encouraged the accretion of all sorts of other trappings.

The reality is, most of what we think of as the Arthurian legends is myth -- and no less beautiful for that.  But honestly, someone who claims to be the heir, and namesake, of King Arthur deserves about as much serious consideration as a guy who changes his name to Thor, starts dressing in chain mail, wearing oven mitts, and throwing hammers at his neighbors when they have noisy parties.

In any case, Pendragon has vowed to continue his fight, although where he'll go after the London High Court is up for speculation.  He could appeal to the Queen, but that seems a little beneath him, you know?  Acknowledging her rule could cause an uprising by his followers, and there've already been enough riots in England lately.  On the other hand, if there was a battle, I'm putting my money on the Queen.  She's been on the throne longer than King Arthur Pendragon has been alive.  Besides, what does King Arthur Pendragon have as actual proof that he's king?  Just because some watery tart bungs a sword at you, it's no basis for a system of government.

Or so I've heard.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, apostles, and diarrhea

I think the hardest things for me to comprehend, as an atheist, are the tendencies of religious people to (1) be certain that they know why god does stuff, (2) figure god shares their political views, and (3) think that they can sway god to do whatever they'd like to see done.

Note that I do not include "believe in god" in the above list.  That one I can understand, even if I'm not a believer myself.  The idea that there's some kind of Celestial Order, that there's someone watching over you, has a real appeal.  I just don't happen to think there's any evidence that it's true.

But let's assume you do believe in a deity, for whatever reason you may have.  Why on earth would you think that said deity agrees with your views on anything?

I'm referring, of course, to the recent baffling statements coming from Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and Rick Perry.  From Bachmann we have the following, which she'd prefaced with some comments regarding reining in governmental spending:

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians.  We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane.  He said: ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?  Listen to the American people, because the American people are roaring right now.’”

Really, Michele?  God wants us to reduce the deficit, so he hits us with an earthquake and a hurricane?  Amazing how someone who thinks that humans can't affect the climate is apparently convinced that liberal economic policies cause hurricanes.  Me, I think if there was a supreme being, and he was really that interested in our nation's finances, he'd be smart enough to find a more direct way to tell us.  Does she really think that people will look out at the flooding and wind damage, and think, "Wow, if I'd voted Republican, this never would have happened?"

Glenn Beck, of course, also had to weigh in, and he did it in his usual bizarre fashion:

"How many warnings do you think you're going to get, and how many warnings do you deserve? ... If you've waited [to prepare and stockpile food], this hurricane is a blessing. It is a blessing.  It is God reminding you — as was the earthquake last week — it's God reminding you you're not in control.  Things can happen."

Thanks for that, Glenn.  "Things can happen."  That's awfully profound.  You'd think a revelation from god would be more... substantive.  Given that god supposedly has knowledge of all things, past, present, and future, it's a little mystifying that his message would be so inane.  (Not to mention that he'd use a bloviating blowhard like Glenn Beck to deliver it.)

Then, we have Rick Perry:

"God has chosen an elite, his new apostles here in America, to rule over the land through great monied business associations whose sole purpose is to further their divinely ordained agenda: economic, social and political."

This one is so arrogant that it leaves me virtually speechless.  This guy's identification of his own agenda with god's is scarily close to someone identifying himself with god, isn't it?

Allow me to say, for the record, that none of this has to do with whether any specific policy is right or wrong, or would have beneficial or detrimental effects on our country; it has to do with the fact that we have public figures proclaiming that their own agenda is god-given.  Me, I find that concept terrifying.  I'd much rather have a leader -- conservative or liberal -- who knows that (s)he is a fallible human being, and is capable of admitting mistakes and then trying to fix them, rather than a starry-eyed true believer who thinks that every word out of his/her mouth comes straight from the mind of god.  The certainty that these people have about everything they say is not only baffling, it's deeply troubling.  I fail to see any real difference between their attitude and the attitude of the fundamentalist Muslim, who truly, honestly thinks he's doing god's will by blowing people up.

So, anyway, all of this is pretty depressing stuff.  Let's end on a lighter note, with an example of some people who think that if god hasn't come up with a good solution on his own, maybe they can suggest one to him.  From the UK Guardian (read the whole article here) we have the story of some monks at the Franciscan monastery of San Salvatore al Monte in Tuscany.  Angered by the theft of some bibles from their church, they posted a sign in the church that read:

"We pray to God to show the thief the error of his ways, that he might return our stolen Bibles to us.  If this doesn't work, we pray to God that the thief is struck by a strong bout of the shits."

Yes, you read that right.  The monks are trying to talk god into visiting diarrhea on the person who took the bibles.  Hey, if a hurricane and an earthquake don't work, maybe that's the next best thing, right?