Happy St. Patrick's Reincarnated Alien Etheric Ascension Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Time for everyone of Irish descent to celebrate their heritage by drinking Guinness, wearing green, having parades, singing "O Danny Boy," and celebrating the fact that we're all actually reincarnated aliens.

This last part comes from noted wingnut Theresa Thurmond Morris, who calls St. Patrick's Day "Spritual Fey Day."  It's not that she scoffs at the traditional meaning of St. Patrick's Day; in her article (here) you will find that she is highly ecumenical in her woo-wooism.  She seems to have no problem with all of the drinking of green beer and wearing of shamrocks, and also gives a pleasant nod to the Catholic Church's ritual blessing of missionaries on March 17; but she also says that because of St. Patrick's Day's connection with pagan symbolism, it is a day of "Spiritual Understanding of both Good and Bad as Dark and Light Fey on Earth."

Whatever that means.

Ms. Morris talks about her work as a "White Lighter," which is a reincarnated alien sent here to do good.  Lots of us are reincarnated aliens, she said, only most of us have forgotten it, and her job is to reawaken that memory so we can go help reawaken others, kind of like a giant woo-woo game of "Tag."  And St. Patrick's Day is the day to begin it all: 

Those who are on earth will be given a day on earth from 2012 forward to choose as adults. Normally, those who come to earth are trained in the spiritual ways of the creation of both the alpha males and the omega females to exist inside the omniverse. Those in the past on earth who found themselves on the dark areas and chose their parents before coming may have had to stay in their area or community.

Now we have an annual cross over from the dark fey to the light fey. In the past, there was a choice made ace the age of sixteen earth years to choose to be good spirit light or bad spirit light and to work on one side or the other. Now from 2012 forward all those who come to earth that desire to change will be allowed to do so.

This is one of the reasons for the Ascension Age is change! What does all of this have to do with me being visited all my life with those from above to share that they exist and so I would not forget them in my human form?

I had been an experienced avatar ascension master in past lives and decided to come back in an agreement I made with the Advanced Beings and the Alpha God and Omega Goddess realms. This was due to my prior choices in past lives.

Evidently, her home world is the Planet of Convoluted Syntax, because she goes on to say, "However, we prefer those who are now present on earth who have not caught up to the way our Supreme Council desires us to be for the future of all humanoid sentient intelligent beings who will be Taken to Terra-Form and begin new worlds to think."  To which I can only respond, "Has anyone ever really been as far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"  To borrow a phrase.

Whatever her origins, Ms. Morris is pretty optimistic about the future of life on Earth.  She thinks we're headed into something she calls an "etheric ascension," which is due to happen this year.  St. Patrick's Day is only the beginning, she says; we're all going to become highly evolved beings.  I applaud her enthusiasm about this, given my general opinion that there are a good many people who could do with some evolving, and more than a few who richly deserve to be on the receiving end of natural selection.  "I do my part as the Oracle of this generation in the Akashic Field and what we now call cyberspace as the WEB of sharing the All that is known," she says.  "We are now going to enter a time when all are accepted into the sea of both waves and particles."

Well.  I'm assuming by this last bit that she's talking here about the dual nature of light, a purely physical phenomenon that woo-woos love to yammer on about because it sounds like some sort of Mystical Duality Of Being, when in reality it just a description of how photons of light behave (albeit a pretty cool thing in and of itself).  So once again, we have someone who seems not to understand the science throwing around buzzwords to give herself more credence in the eyes of the gullible.

But don't let me rain on your Spiritual Fey Day Parade; if you think you're a reincarnated Good Alien and are highly in touch with your Akashic Field, don't let me stop you.   Me, I'll probably stick to drinking Guinness and wearing green.  Don't expect me to sing "O Danny Boy," however.  I freakin' hate that song.

Clean sweep

It will hardly merit mention to regular readers of this blog that, given an odd circumstance, I will look first for a rational, scientific explanation.  Although my field is biology, I know enough of the basics of the other sciences to have a good shot at coming up with a plausible explanation for most of what I see -- or, failing that, at least to recognize when a proposed explanation doesn't make sense.

Which brings me to the strange case of the standing brooms.

Apparently over the last few months, there have been multiple reports of brooms staying standing up after being set on end, sometimes for hours.  People report that they were resistant to falling over even if bumped or pushed, and several folks stated that it felt like a "strange force" was keeping the brooms upright.

Naturally, once this sort of thing starts to be reported, we have a veritable explosion of silly explanations.  Here is a sampling of ones I saw on various websites:

• planetary alignment creating a change in the gravitational pull
• solar flares
• static electricity
• Mercury going into retrograde motion
• ghosts
• the position of the Moon
• the position of the broom relative to "ley lines"
• tapping into "psychic energy currents"

Reading the impassioned exponents of each of those so-called explanations made me want to weep softly and bang my head on my computer keyboard, but I decided to man up and see if I could find anyone who had a more sensible approach.  I found this wonderful site ("Common Sense Conspiracy: We Filter the Bullshit So You Don't Have To!"), which attributes the phenomenon to simple physics -- almost any object will stand upright if it has a flat surface of some kind, and you can get the object's center of gravity to stay over its base of support.  Voilà -- a standing broom!

Of course, woo-woos never give up that easily.  Or sometimes at all.  The "comments" section was filled with rants about how no, it wasn't simple physics, because the broom would only stand up on second Tuesdays when the Moon was full and the appropriate words were chanted.  It can't just be a simple explanation!  It can't!

It is a mystery to me why so many people don't find the world as it is sufficiently wonderful and weird -- they feel like they have to make stuff up, push natural phenomena into supernatural molds, turn everything into some kind of paranormal mystery.  Isn't what actual, reputable scientists are currently discovering -- especially in fields like quantum mechanics, cosmology, neurology, and nanotechnology -- awe-inspiring enough?  Why do you need to muddy the whole situation by making stuff up, or coming up with loony explanations for what you see?

Now, mind you, I'm not saying that there aren't things that haven't been explained yet.  There are plenty, and good science is always pushing the envelope of what's known.  But I am confident that any real phenomenon is ultimately going to be explainable by science, because that's what science does.  It may seem supernatural now, but that's just because we don't yet comprehend what's going on.  As Robert Heinlein said, "Magic is science we don't understand yet."

But the brooms, alas, aren't even that; it's just simple mechanics at work.  No need to invoke solar flares or planets in retrograde.  I'm glad, actually; the whole thing brought up memories of Fantasia, which I'd really rather not think about.  That movie scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

Here comes the sun

Well.  And I thought that the only thing we had to worry about, sun-wise, was the appearance of a Massive Unknown Object that was tethered to the sun and slowly draining it of energy.  As the responses of six regular readers of Skeptophilia to yesterday's post show: a lot I know.

Besides the game of cosmic tetherball currently involving our home star, we also have another thing to fret about, which is a giant triangular coronal hole.  Well, not the coronal hole itself, which is a purely natural phenomenon, but the reactions of thousands of woo-woos who, upon seeing the photographs, immediately started running around making terrified little bleating noises.  I mean, people seriously need to calm down, or someone's gonna get hurt.

First, let's take a look at a photograph of the phenomenon, once again courtesy of NASA:

 

Okay.  So, even I have to admit, it's kind of creepy-looking.  But, I assure you, it's harmless -- all it is is a place where the sun's magnetic field has shifted, changing the speed and direction of the solar wind.  A solar storm, so to speak.  It could cause brighter-than-average auroral displays, but here on Earth, that's about it as far as impacts.

Tell that to the woo-woos.  Here is a sampling of comments on posts, blogs, and websites regarding the phenomenon, which I replicate here verbatim:

"Could the pyramid be a sign of the new world order that's about to be achieved? You know.. like what's on the dollar.  The triangle.. the novos ordo seclorum.  (New world order).  HMMMMMM?"

"The first thing I noticed is that the configuration is the same as Orion's Belt.  That's significant."

"The SUN WARMS... the SUN WARNS!!!  The heavenly signs are up there for those that have EYES TO SEE!!!"

"The sun is crystallizing, or something.  It's turning into a merkabah."  (I had to look up what a "merkabah" was.  It's god's chariot, such as was seen in the visions of Ezekiel, an event that goes on record as the world's first known bad acid trip.)

"What's the possibility that all celestial bodies have this shape as their inner core, as opposed to the round core commonly considered?  If this was true, couldn't it account for the importance of this shape to every ancienct [sic] civilization so far discovered?  The properties attributed to this shape alone is remarkable, and, possibly applicable, if considered.  Think of it.  This shape creates energy.  It is said to effect force fields.  Think of the spin of round bodies.  The attributes of this triangular core might contribute to a cascade of complimentary forces that would keep a body upright and spinning.  Not knowing science to any degree, I still can't figure the magnetic pole parts, or, what happens in a pole reversal, yet, the properties of triangular bodies containing an infinite number of it's [sic] own kind, including those additional shapes formed by them, seems to make this idea worthy of a few moments of consideration, even if unusual, or, to mainstream thinking, implausible.  Well, that's what I posit, when I look at that anomoly [sic].  What is causing it to show itself is quite another matter. That I have no clue about...except to say that the energy that the Sun has been ejecting lately probably needs to build back up."


Oh, really?  You posit that, do you?  Even though you don't "know science to any degree?"  It never fails to amaze me that people who have no understanding of science whatsoever still think they have valuable contributions to make in the field just based on their "feelings."

But then, there's one last comment I saw that I just have to throw in:

"DEAR GOD IT'S THE EYE OF SAURON!!!!"


So, there you have it, folks.  A coronal hole leading to a massive outpouring of foolishness.  I know that correlation doesn't equal causation, but I think here we might have a pretty good case.

Space tetherball

New from the "Okay, Really, You Actually Believe That?" department: a gigantic UFO is moored next to the sun, and is sucking energy from it in the fashion of a leech.

At least, that's the claim of a guy who seems to have spent too much time in the sun himself, who based his conclusions on the following photograph from NASA:

There are apparently two theories currently going around to explain what the Massive Unknown Object is trying to accomplish by this.  (1)  It is a benevolent Massive Unknown Object, which is siphoning off energy from the sun to prevent a solar flare from deep fat frying the entire Earth.  The siphoning is keeping us at just the right temperature, and is responsible for the abnormally warm weather much of the United States is currently experiencing.  (2)  It is a malevolent Massive Unknown Object, which is draining the sun of energy, the ultimate result of which will be that the sun will fade out and the entire Earth will become a frozen wasteland, sort of like Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, but without any weird goat-things to ride around on and periodically disembowel to stay warm.

All of this has had the effect of making me want to shout at my computer, "Don't you understand the definition of the word 'unknown?'  It means you don't know!"  Of course, woo-woos never let a little thing like a complete lack of facts stop them, and there have been thus far a variety of videos that have showed up on YouTube, seemingly mostly made by people who really ought to be medicated, as well as impassioned posts on woo-woo websites imploring us to For God's Sake Do Something.  One of them urged NASA to try to contact the Massive Unknown Object and demand to determine its intent; another one, evidently posted by someone from the Woo-Woo Auxiliary Unit of the NRA, suggested shooting at it; and a third tied it to the upcoming Mayan apocalypse, which I suppose was inevitable.

But by far my favorite comment was one posted on a website that put up the photograph with an all-call for explanations from anyone who wanted to weigh in.  "Jesus H. Christ on a raft!" the poster wrote.  "A GIANT SPACESHIP is SUCKING ENERGY out of the SUN and people are UNSURE whether this is good or bad?  Wake up and smell the cold, dead planet!  People, people, people!  It's time to sell out and see if we can negotiate to at least keep Australia!  Madagascar!  South Central LA! Something!"

Oh, you silly folks!  It's gotten so I can't tell when you're joking!  So I'm just going to assume you are!  And hope that none of you know where I live!

Anyhow, that's the latest storm of controversy stirred up by the folks at NASA.  I'm sure that in a day or two, some guy at NASA will make a public statement to calm everyone down, assuring us that the Massive Unknown Object is actually a sensor artifact, which will have the result of making all of the woo-woos howl even louder that it's a conspiracy and a coverup and that we're all gonna die.  At least until they all stampede off, mooing wildly, toward the next blurry photograph that seems to show something that's actually not there.  In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the amazingly warm weather the northeast is currently basking in.  Whether or not it's due to the energy-siphoning work of a giant alien spacecraft, it's pretty nice.

Thoughts of a small-town atheist

Recently I was asked by a former student, who is now a graduate of Harvard University in the field of evolutionary biology, if I would write an article for The Harvard Humanist Community Project, a fine new organization supporting rationalists, humanists, skeptics, atheists, and agnostics in the Harvard community.  (You should check out their website, which has a great many interesting links.)  To say I was honored by her request is an understatement; the following was my contribution.

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

I am a high school teacher in a small, rural village in upstate New York. I’ve lived here for twenty years, and know pretty much everyone around here.

I am also an atheist.

It was some years after I moved here, from the safe anonymity of the big city, before I felt comfortable admitting my beliefs (or lack thereof). In fact, I actually attended the local Methodist church for a time, mostly on the prompting of my (now ex) wife, who felt that it was important to raise children in the social, ethical, and cultural setting that a church could offer. Contrast that with now, two decades later, when virtually everyone who knows me knows that I am an atheist.

Despite what a geometry teacher would tell you, getting from point A to point B seldom progresses in a straight line. I did not have a sudden “coming out,” where I went to the center of the village and made some kind of public proclamation of disbelief. It started out because, as a teacher of biology, I yearly face the daunting task of addressing students’ preconceived notions about evolution, and inevitably someone asks, “What religion do you belong to, Mr. Bonnet?” Even the phrasing of the question seems not to admit “None” as an answer; there is a tacit assumption of religiosity in this country, even in the relatively liberal part of it where I live, that makes a denial of faith seem almost like admitting to being some sort of pervert.

At first, I just dodged the question. “Why is that relevant?” was my standard response, mostly because few 10th graders had the wherewithal to come up with an answer to that question on the fly. The fact is, of course, it is relevant, just as the religions of the presidential candidates are relevant, however much we’d like to pretend as a nation that it isn’t true. And honestly, the deflection of the question was disingenuous, and left me with a sense of unease, a feeling that I had lost a teachable moment, not to mention left students with the impression that I was afraid to answer.

About twelve years ago, following a divorce, and perhaps feeling I had less to lose in the public eye after the very visible collapse of my marriage, I started answering the question by saying, “I’m an atheist. However, religion is outside the scope of this course – I’d be happy to discuss it with you another time, if you’d like.” This seemed to satisfy the majority of students, who (to be honest) probably had figured it out anyway. But it opened the door for the minority who were bound to see that as throwing down the gauntlet.

I’ve had letters written to me urging me to “confront my disbelief” and accept Jesus as my personal savior. I’ve been mailed piles of religious promotional materials. I’ve had a former student, once a skeptical rationalist but now a born-again, take it as his personal mission to save my soul. I’ve had parents who have asked the administration to place their children in the other biology teacher’s class, because she is “less hostile toward people with opposing views.” I even had, on one spectacularly frightening occasion, a man show up at my door and tell me that I was headed to hell because I “mislead young minds,” and he would be the one who would send me there, if need be. (I told the man to get the hell off my property, and called the police – and, fortunately, never saw or heard from him again.)

All of this has, on the one hand, made me more militant – my general reaction being, “I’ll be damned if I’ll be bullied.” On the other, it’s made me wonder why atheism is viewed with such hostility. It’s not like the majority of us are saying you can’t believe in god if you want to – by and large, atheists are a pretty live-and-let-live bunch. It more seems to be that people are bothered by someone calmly and rationally looking at all of the religious choices out there, and simply smiling and saying, “No thanks. I don’t want any of them, thank you.” It offends a lot of religious people, I think, because it implies that even given the smorgasbord of dishes, we atheists would prefer to forgo dinner completely.

In a well-publicized survey, it was found that when asked if Americans would vote for a person who was an atheist, a smaller percentage responded “yes” than did for almost any other stigmatized group. Muslims, homosexuals, even convicted felons garnered more “yes” votes than atheists did. When these results appeared in the press, I made a fairly aghast comment about it on Facebook, and a woman who was one of my high school classmates responded, “I agree! I wouldn’t vote for an atheist! How can you have any ethics or morals if you don’t believe in God?”

Well that, to quote Tolkien, needed a week’s answer or else none. Sensing a losing battle, I elected the latter, all of which goes to illustrate that I’m not as self-confident as I could be. It has been, and continues to be, a process of growth – toward, I hope, a position of respecting others while simultaneously never allowing myself to be browbeaten into silence again.

Toward that end, a little over two years ago I started a blog called Skeptophilia, intended to explore the rationalist’s view of life, with a bit of humor frequently thrown in. What at first began as a way for me to express myself in a public forum has grown to have a significant regular following – I am currently zooming toward 50,000 lifetime hits. More important to me personally is that I have a number of current and former students who are regular readers, and have contributed topics on many occasions. This gives me hope – that given exposure to rational, skeptical views, people will respond positively.

And also toward that end, I am here, at the invitation of another former student of mine. I hope to continue to contribute to the cause of humanism in whatever way I can. I may never be a Hitchens or a Dawkins, making headlines and fighting the big battles, but if I can in some small way add my voice to those championing the rationalist viewpoint, I will have succeeded.

DNA energy field laser frequency vibrations!

Every once in a while I'll run across a claim that is so wildly ridiculous that I question, for a time, if it is meant as a joke.  Sadly, the majority of them aren't.  As hard as it is for me to believe, given that we currently live in the most scientifically and technologically advanced society that the Earth has ever seen, there are a lot of people who believe stuff that is unrefined bullshit.

I ran into an example a few days ago, when a friend sent me this article, entitled "Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Reprogrammed By Words And Frequencies."  The word "frequency" always acts like a red flag to me, as it is for some reason a word woo-woos like a lot, and throw about in absurd ways despite its having a rigid, and not especially thrilling, definition in the scientific world (three others are "energy," "vibration," and "field").  So I read the article, and found ample fodder for faceplanting right in the first paragraph, to wit:

THE HUMAN DNA IS A BIOLOGICAL INTERNET and superior in many aspects to the artificial one. Russian scientific research directly or indirectly explains phenomena such as clairvoyance, intuition, spontaneous and remote acts of healing, self healing, affirmation techniques, unusual light/auras around people (namely spiritual masters), mind’s influence on weather patterns and much more. In addition, there is evidence for a whole new type of medicine in which DNA can be influenced and reprogrammed by words and frequencies WITHOUT cutting out and replacing single genes.

So -- DNA causes auras and clairvoyance, not to mention "weather patterns."  And here I thought weather patterns were caused by air masses moving around, and all that sort of thing.   But the author is far from done:

The Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev and his colleagues also explored the vibrational behavior of the DNA. [For the sake of brevity I will give only a summary here. For further exploration please refer to the appendix at the end of this article.] The bottom line was: “Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.” This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

Ooh, there we are -- "vibration!"  That's two down, two to go.  My favorite part of this is that "no DNA decoding is necessary."  You don't have to know anything about how DNA actually works, apparently, to experience "endogenous DNA laser radiation."  Maybe it'll grant you superpowers, you think?  If so, I want to be able to fly.  You know, big feathery wings coming from my shoulders.  It'll make fitting into shirts tricky, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

But let's not get sidetracked, here.  Back to the article:

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used...  Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. Of course the frequency has to be correct. And this is why not everybody is equally successful or can do it with always the same strength. The individual person must work on the inner processes and maturity in order to establish a conscious communication with the DNA. The Russian researchers work on a method that is not dependent on these factors but will ALWAYS work, provided one uses the correct frequency.

"The human language" reprograms DNA?  Hmm.  I wonder if it has to be a specific language?  Russian, given that that's what the "scientist" who did this "research" speaks?  Would English do?  How about Sanskrit?  Or Swahili?  What about Pig Latin?  "This is Ordon-gay attempting to eprogram-ray your NA-Day."

But that's not all your DNA can do, when the proper "frequency" is achieved:

The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).? These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness. This process of hyper communication is most effective in a state of relaxation. Stress, worries or a hyperactive intellect prevent successful hyper communication or the information will be totally distorted and useless.

I've been kind of stressed lately, which is probably why there have been no wormholes forming in my vicinity.

When hyper communication occurs, one can observe in the DNA as well as in the human being special phenomena. The Russian scientists irradiated DNA samples with laser light. On screen a typical wave pattern was formed. When they removed the DNA sample, the wave pattern did not disappear, it remained. Many control experiments showed that the pattern still came from the removed sample, whose energy field apparently remained by itself. This effect is now called phantom DNA effect. It is surmised that energy from outside of space and time still flows through the activated wormholes after the DNA was removed. 

Yay!  "Energy" AND "field!"  We've scored four for four with this one!  At this point, my DNA was tired of hypercommunicating at high frequencies, so I pretty much stopped reading, although I did notice further along that the article mentioned the Schumann resonance, Princess Diana's funeral, remote sensing, UFOs, "troubled children," and anti-gravity.  So they've got their bases pretty well covered, woo-woo-wise.

And yes, this article appears to be entirely serious.  As do the comments, the first one of which was, "This appears to be how Jesus performed miracles.  The power of God is within us!"  Because Jesus had lasers, and all. 

I find all of this simultaneously hilarious and discouraging.  Hilarious because the claims are so bafflingly stupid that I can't help but laugh when I read them; discouraging because there is, apparently, a large group of people who actually find them plausible.  As a science teacher, we try to provide what Carl Sagan calls "a candle in the dark" -- a way of seeing the world that gets past superstition and credulity, and bases our knowledge instead on evidence, logic, and rationality.  And to be sure, we've come a long way since the Dark Ages, when people believed that there were only four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and frogs were spontaneously created from muddy water.  When I read stuff like this, however, it makes me realize how far we still have to go.

Camping finally apologizes. Sort of.

Ironic, given that yesterday's post was about belated apologies, that just this morning I found out (thanks to a regular Skeptophilia reader) that Harold Camping had finally apologized for misleading everyone last year about the Rapture.  (Read the story here.)

Camping, you will undoubtedly recall, is the loony evangelical preacher who convinced his followers that the Righteous were going to be carried bodily into heaven on May 21, 2011, leaving the rest of us here to be killed in messy ways by Satan.  His followers, assuming that by "The Righteous," Camping meant "us" (people always do, don't they?), began to prepare -- some even giving away tens of thousands of dollars of their savings, selling their homes, saying goodbye to friends and coworkers.  And then, on May 21, surprise!  Nothing happened.

Camping, undaunted, expressed puzzlement that his predictions had been wrong, given that he was really looking forward to Rivers Running Red With The Blood Of The Wicked and all.  But he then said that he'd just missed it by that much, that the real date was October 21, 2011, cross his heart and hope to die.

This time, of course, fewer people went along with the whole thing, and when October 22 rolled around and lo, we were all still here, righteous and unrighteous alike, Camping retreated in disarray, and has made no further public statement.

Until yesterday, when Camping had a press release that said, in part, the following:

We humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing.  We tremble before God as we humbly ask Him for forgiveness for making that sinful statement.

Though we were wrong God is still using the May 21 warning in a very mighty way.  In the months following May 21 the Bible has, in some ways, come out from under the shadows and is now being discussed by all kinds of people who never before paid any attention to the Bible.  Even as God used sinful Balaam to accomplish His purposes, so He used our sin to accomplish His purpose of making the whole world acquainted with the Bible.

We also openly acknowledge that we have no new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world. Though many dates are circulating,  Family Radio has no interest in even considering another date. God has humbled us through the events of May 21, to continue to even more fervently search the Scriptures (the Bible), not to find dates, but to be more faithful in our understanding.

To which I can only say: wow.

No mention of the people who bankrupted themselves because of your "sin?"  No mention of the dangers of the abuse of power wielded by the charismatic over the weak-minded?  No mention of the damage done to the reputation of Christianity as a whole, by people who looked upon the spectacle not as a reason to become more "acquainted with the Bible," but to ridicule the entire belief system?

Of course, my own stance is that Camping is wrong about a great many things; but I think what bothers me most about this is not the fact that his failure didn't suddenly turn him into a rationalist (I'm not that much of an optimist, frankly).  What bothers me is that the whole thing, whatever his repeated use of the words "humbly" and "humbled," seems still very much to be about Camping saving face in the eyes of his followers.  I'm sure that listeners to Family Radio are down, and it wouldn't be a stretch to surmise that donations are down as well.  When someone like Camping, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard, "apologizes" to his followers, it so often turns out that all it is is a thinly-disguised attempt to reingratiate himself into the minds and hearts of the people who once trusted him, and start the cash flowing again.

And the sad thing is, it so often works.  Swaggart, who was arrested for hiring a prostitute in 1988, apologized, and got arrested a second time for doing the same thing in 1991, still is a popular televangelist.  Haggard, the virulently anti-gay evangelical who was accused (and later admitted) to having hired a male prostitute and using methamphetamine, is now the pastor of a church in Colorado Springs.

So call me cynical, but I don't believe Camping's mealy-mouthed apology.  It has, all along, been about Camping's power, and keeping the money flowing to him and his radio program.  Whether he himself actually believed that the world was going to end last year remains to be seen -- but I hope that any of his remaining followers aren't duped by his self-aggrandizing attempt to reestablish himself in a leadership role.  It's ironic, given that in yesterday's post, I suggested that it might be worthwhile to apologize for past transgressions, even if it's too late to make amends -- but in this case, simply I don't believe that his apology is sincere.  And as for elevating him back into a position of trust?  He doesn't deserve it.