Off the rails

One of the saddest things to me is to see a brilliant mind veer off course, and to be powerless to stop it.  I'm not talking about actual mental illness here, although that is a tragedy of considerable magnitude as well; I'm talking about someone with intact cognitive faculties who becomes, for whatever reason, attracted by an ideology, and abandons any sort of critical thinking in favor of its appeal.  I've only seen this happen a couple of times myself, but in my experience, any kind of rational argument is generally fruitless once it has occurred.

My most striking example of this was a young man who studied both introductory and AP-level biology with me.  I remember him as a humorous, friendly, open boy, who had an inquisitive mind and a fine understanding of science.  I was shocked to be contacted by him a couple of years ago and to find out that he had become an ultra-fundamentalist Christian, a young-earth creationist whose sole reason for writing to me was to express concern about the fact that I was headed to hell.  I was, he said, using my influence to draw teenagers away from god, not only by my teaching of the "flawed science" of evolution, but by my being an out-of-the-closet atheist.  He admitted that I didn't push my atheism on my students, but said that my standing as a respected teacher was "making atheism appealing."  His email was a long, rambling diatribe about the evil that "secularizers" like myself were perpetrating upon society, and completely devoid of the sense of humor (and perspective) that I recall as one of his best qualities.  After some consideration I wrote back, and this led to two or three back-and-forths -- but neither of us, of course, budged, and (I suspect) both of us were left saddened by the encounter.

A dear friend and former colleague of mine, one of the most talented teachers I've had the privilege of working with, told me yesterday about a recent similar occurrence.  She told me about a former student, with "a seemingly brilliant mind," who had contacted her by telephone.  The reason for the call was to ask her for money, because he was trying to get to Europe to meet with a healer, Dr. Philippe Sauvage.  My friend said she was not in the position to donate money to his cause, and the young man asked her to refer him to "any rich friends she might have."  Receiving a negative answer to this, the young man ended the conversation, presumably to canvass others to try to raise the money he needed.

I hadn't heard about Philippe Sauvage, so I decided to look into him, and what I found was fairly scary.  Sauvage's site (here) strikes me as the ravings of a megalomaniac.  Here's a sampling:

Philippe Sauvage has accomplished more in one of his 50 Earth years than any human dreams of in a lifetime. The contents of this page offer the barest sketch of his unbelievably dramatic career as Bio-Cosmic Justice Enforcer. Humanity has been not only blessed by his very presence this past half century, but just as we have begun to reap full force the effects of our own carcinogenetic destruction of our planetary organism (the Geo-Self), Philippe Sauvage has arrived to usher the Worthy through the cataclysmic geopolitical, geological, atmospheric and immunological disasters now emergent...  Know, beyond the shadow of ANY doubt, that you are now introduced to the greatest figure the inhabitants of this planet have ever seen. Know that this is THE pivotal time of Your Life. Nothing else matters now but what You DO in response to this knowledge (or, most unfortunately, what you do NOT DO). Awaken or not, it is of no consequence to Philippe Sauvage as he completely fulfills his role regardless, but be certain it is of VERY Real Consequence to You.

 He claims to be the World's Last and Most Powerful Druid, a shape-shifter, and the inheritor of "ancient Hyperborean spirituality" through his Breton ancestry.  He has made "revolutionary contributions" to evolutionary biology, criminology (through "subliminalistics" -- advanced technologies of distant subliminal mind control), psychology, anthropology, and medicine (this last was as a "charismatic miracle worker and healer").  He was also an undercover special agent, a paramilitary undercover anti-terrorist leader called "009."  (No, I'm not making any of this up.)

And more interesting, none of it is true.

An October 2009 BBC exposé (here) calls Sauvage a "conman," a "sham," and a "fraud," who has bilked people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and whose claims (including healing third-degree burns "overnight") are pure bullshit.  Sauvage has been the subject of a number of legal investigations, and in fact fled France because he was about to be jailed for fraud.  He has lived for a time in the United States, where he founded a "healing organization" called Catharsis, but after a judge in the US failed to grant him asylum with regards to the jail sentence pending in France, Sauvage went to England, setting up shop in Devon (and convincing dozens of people there of his powers, ripping more money off from the ill and vulnerable).  His latest home has been Italy, but no one really seems to be all that sure where he is.

Interpol, of course, would love to find that out.

I am mystified as to the appeal that people like Sauvage have.  I suppose, having never had a life-threatening illness, I may not fully understand the desperation that can sometimes engender.  But I'd like to think that even if I were dying of some terminal disease, that my mental faculties would not go off the rails to the extent that I would fall for the claims of someone like Sauvage.

And as far as my friend's former student: all I can say is that it is doubly sad to see a promising mind pulled into the orbit of a counterfactual, irrational, toxic worldview.  And unfortunately, from the (thankfully) few experiences I've had with this sort of thing, I don't hold out a great deal of hope for a positive outcome.  I can only wish, in the case of this student, that enough of his friends and family refuse to fund his trip to Europe that he is forced to stay here in the US... and can be helped to escape from the influence of these charlatans.

Being nice to time-traveling lawyers

Much is made of how thoughtless our society has become, how we fail to help each other, ignore those in need, accept unkind behavior as simply how the world works.  I've no doubt that this can be true.  However, in some ways (and perhaps in reaction to the perception that we need to be nicer), we have become too accepting -- not of people, but of ideas.  Through our conviction that all people deserve respect (which is true) we have decided that all ideas deserve respect (which is nonsense).

In the media, this often plays out as pussyfooting around the purveyors of crazy ideas, calling their silly claims "alternative" or "unorthodox" or "non-mainstream" instead of simply "wrong."  It's why very seldom will you ever see creationism, astrology, or homeopathy flat-out labeled as false.  In our desperation to treat every idea "fairly," we have gotten so far away from scientific induction as the gold standard for thinking that we've lost the ability to tell a reasonable idea from an unreasonable claim.

I think this is insidious, because it leads one to the erroneous conclusion that stating that an idea is wrong is discourteous, or downright mean.  It robs us of clarity in that very realm where it is the most critical.

Let me illustrate what I mean by introducing you to the time-traveling lawyer of Seattle.

Last Friday, Huffington Post had an article about Andrew Basiago, a lawyer in Seattle who sounds to me like he could use some serious psychological help, or possibly horse tranquilizers.  He claims that there is a government program, "Operation Pegasus," that allows select individuals to time travel, and that using a machine invented by Nikola Tesla, he's had more trips through space-time than Marty McFly.

"The machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall, separated by about ten feet, between which a shimmering curtain of what Tesla called 'radiant energy' was broadcast," Basiago told HuffPost reporters.  "Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space."  Travelers would then jump into the tunnel thus created, and "find themselves at their destination."

What evidence does Basiago have?  Well, he says he was photographed in a crowd... while listening to Lincoln at Gettysburg:

Basiago is the one on the left.  Yeah, the guy who conveniently has no recognizable facial features.

Basiago also claims to have been in Ford Theater when Lincoln was assassinated.

Time traveling, he says, does have its downsides.  For one thing, you take the chance of running into yourself, something that has happened to him twice, and is "disorienting."  Also, it can be difficult to stay put, rather like the problem that Christopher Reeve ran into in Somewhere in Time: "If we were in the hologram for 15 minutes or fewer," he explained, "the hologram would collapse, and after about 60 seconds of standing in a field of super-charged particles ... we would find ourselves back on the stage ... in the present."

Right.  Fields of super-charged particles.  I bet they look just like the transporter sparkle in Star Trek.

Then, we get the appeal to authority kicking in.  Basiago's claims are supported, the article says, by Alfred Lambremont Webre, a "lawyer who specializes in exopolitics."  Webre is, throughout the article, treated as a credible witness -- and nowhere does it mention the truth, which is that he is a raving wingnut who has merited mention in Skeptophilia twice -- once for claiming that the Earth was going to be bombarded by "fourth dimensional energy" on November 11, 2011, causing the Earth's rotational axis to shift by 90 degrees (see the post here), and then to claim that he'd met President Obama while visiting Mars (here).  So receiving support from this guy is not exactly going to earn you any validity points.

What gets me about this article is that except for the fact that it's filed under HuffPost's "Weird News" department, Basiago and his claims are treated with a fair degree of seriousness.  Never once is an actual scientist allowed to weigh in on the subject -- although many respected physicists, notably Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Neil de Grasse Tyson, have expounded upon the topic, and the general consensus is that if time travel is possible at all, it requires energy that is far beyond anything we currently have the capacity to create.  Never once did anyone say, "What you're claiming seems to be impossible.  Demonstrate, in some scientifically valid fashion, that you are telling the truth."  No, all that happens is an interview, with a couple of people at the end saying, "Well, it's an odd claim, but there are weird things in this world!" as if that somehow means that his claim merits consideration.

I find this all dreadfully frustrating.  For one thing, having this sort of thing show up in a respected news source lends it credibility it doesn't deserve.  For another, it leaves you with the impression that just because Basiago has a wild idea, we have to for some reason treat it with kid gloves -- to sit there and nod, listening to him ramble on about his to-ing and fro-ing through time as if what he was saying actually made sense.

Well, I'm sorry.  All claims are not created equal.  And Mr. Basiago, if you want anyone with a skeptical bent to take you seriously, you'd better have something more than a fuzzy photograph of a kid with big shoes to support your claim.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said.  And as that esteemed critical thinker also said:  "It is true that geniuses were often laughed at, but this does not mean that if they laugh at you, you must be a genius.  They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers... but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

The Cosmic Glass Pyramids of Doom

In yet another example of a fact-free, zero-evidence claim spinning its way around the internet, we now have a story about giant glass pyramids being discovered on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.  (Source)

These "strange underwater structures... 200 meters high, made of a crystal-like substance" were allegedly discovered from sonar surveying done by a "Dr. Verlag Meyer."  This sent up a red flag immediately, because "Verlag" isn't a first name, it's a German word meaning "publishing house."  But sometimes people have weird names, so I decided to do a quick look, and I could find no scientist named "Verlag Meyer," much less one with any credible links to oceanographic research.  "Dr. Verlag Meyer" seems to be as unreal as the glass pyramids he allegedly discovered.

That hasn't stopped the claim from circulating, of course.  What I find most annoying, however, is the way the sources on this topic pretend that there is all sorts of buzz going on in scientific circles about this non-story:

There are several Western scholars who argue that the pyramid on the seabed may have been initially made on the mainland, after which a devastating earthquake struck and changed the landscape completely. Other scientists argue that a few hundred years ago the waters of the Bermuda Triangle area may have as one of the cornerstone activities of the people of Atlantis, and Pyramids on the sea floor may be a supply warehouse for them. Perhaps it is related to the underwater race of humanoids discovered in Washington State in 2004 - the so called "aquatic ape" beings?

Oh, yeah, all the scientists I know spend their time researching Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, and "aquatic ape beings."

And a complete lack of evidence never seems to bother these people.  They're content to blather on as if what they were talking about actually made sense:

There is also a suspicion that the Bermuda triangle and the area where this pyramid was supposedly located may be some sort of "holy grounds" that is being protected by the fabled Atlanteans - that whatever crosses over the location is considered an offering... Others hypothesize that the pyramid can attract and collect cosmic rays, from the so called "energy field" or "quantum vacuum"  and that this may have been used as an Atlantean power plant (or whoever was around at the time). With the mystery still surrounding the Egyptian pyramids and the fact that the pyramidal structures seems to be found in almost all ancient cultures - its going to be hard to tell for certain the origin of this structure or if it truly exists (we haven't been down there yet so...).

Reading this made me shout at my computer, "Do you even understand what a cosmic ray is, you nimrod?"  My computer didn't answer, which I'm taking as a "no."  They have no more understanding of cosmic rays than did the writers of the amazingly abysmal 1960s science fiction show Lost In Space, who appended the word "cosmic" to things to make them seem, well, cosmic.  Like when the wind would blow, knocking over styrofoam rocks and spray-painted cardboard models of scientific apparatus, and Will and Dr. Smith and The Robot would run around waving their arms wildly and yelling, "It's a cosmic storm!  We have to take cover!"  But it never worked, because in the midst of the cosmic storm there would be a cosmic noise ("bwooooyoyoyoyoyoy") and an alien would always appear out of nowhere.  These aliens included a pirate with an electronic parrot, a motorcycle gang, some space hillbillies, a group of alien teenage hippies, and in one extremely memorable episode, Brunhilde (complete with a horned helmet and a cosmic horse).

But I digress.

The pièce de resistance of the glass pyramids article, of course, has to be the illustrations, such as the following:

  Nowhere does it say that these illustrations are "artist's renditions," so a less-than-careful reader might be led to the conclusion that this was an actual underwater photograph of a crystal pyramid.  Of course, a later illustration might give a critical clue to unwary readers that they weren't looking at photographs:

I rather like this one, although the inevitable question of "where is the water going?" does come to mind.  But given that another woo-woo claim is that the Earth is hollow, I'd guess they'd have a ready answer for that one, too.

So, that's our dip in the deep end of the pool for today.  And just to reiterate: there is no credible evidence whatsoever that there are pyramids of any kind, much less glass ones, on the floor of the Atlantic.  Pyramids don't concentrate Cosmic Quantum Vacuum Vibration Frequencies, either, despite what you might have read from such luminaries of the scientific world as Richard C. Hoagland, who also (as you may remember) thinks there are crop circles on Saturn.  I'd like to think that this will put an end to the discussion, and also to people forwarding this around the Internet, although that might be a forlorn hope given that the source article I looked at had been linked, forwarded, and Facebook-liked a total of close to 10,000 times as of the point I found it.  So my feeble efforts are probably going to be as ineffectual as if the cruise ship captain in the above Scientific Photograph shouted "Reverse Engines!"

Greetings from the Galactic Federation

While rooting around for a topic for today's post, I checked out one of my favorite woo-woo sites, AboveTopSecret.  One of the headline posts said, "Is the Galactic Federation Real?"  I clicked the link, and it turned out not to be an article, as I'd hoped, but to be a post from a member of the site, and simply reiterated the question in the title of the post.

So I went to the "responses" section.  The first two responses were, and I quote:

"Short answer: No."

"Long answer:  NOOOOOOOOOOO."

So I thought: "Wow, this topic is too wacky even for the readers of AboveTopSecret.  This has got to be good."  So first, I continued to scroll down the responses, and I found that most of them were scornful, and a few said that because this topic had been discussed ad nauseam before, the thread would likely be removed by moderators.  Then someone said, "Of course it will  be removed.  They don't want you to know the truth."  *cue sinister laughter*

At that point, I decided I had to check this out.  So I found the site Galactic Federation of Light.  (Please be forewarned that this site is very slow to load, and in fact resulted in my having to restart my browser twice -- perhaps because the Galactic Federation Overlords were aware that I was accessing their site in order to poke fun at them.)  Be that as it may, this site explains everything you might want to know about the Galactic Federation.

Okay, that's only a true statement if by "explain" you mean "make stuff up."  The site is largely composed of a series of dated posts, each stating who said it and some including which Galactic Federation Master (s)he was channeling at the time.  Here is a sampling:

Your planet is literally surrounded with craft from all corners of the universe as all beings vie for ringside seats to the greatest show in the galaxy. Your world has long been highly regarded as one of the finest spiritual schools in the universe and entry into this University has been highly sought after. Now, you are on the precipice of a school-wide graduation, and you are center stage for the family that has come from all parts of the universe to attend the graduation ceremonies.  (Galactic Federation through Wanderer From The Skies, July 14, 2011)

All I can say is, I hope the speeches are better than the ones at most of the graduation ceremonies I've been to.  And if someone decides to read the names of all seven billion graduates, I'm leaving.

The next three or four months are destined to be eye opening, and you will know for sure that the big changes are on the way. After all the year speeds by and before you know it, it will be the magical year of 2012. So get ready to button up your safety belts and enjoy the ride. It can be seen as good or bad as you want it to be, so see the goal that is being aimed for and not the manner in which it is to be reached. All you need know is that it results in all you have been promised. It will be an unbelievable time with one surprise after another, and celebrations will be taking place.

I am SaLuSa from Sirius, and tell you that our ships are gathering for the grand announcement that will allow us to land on your Earth by invitation.  (SaLuSa / through Mike Quinsey, 20th July 2011)

Well, given that this was posted last summer, and I don't remember Autumn 2011 as being all that eye-opening, I guess SaLuSa from Sirius might have gotten his wires crossed somehow.

Since the posts were in chronological order, I decided that like the Brothers of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, I needed to skip a bit, so I scrolled down to more current posts.  From April of 2012 I found the following:

Dratzo! We return! The great shift that your world is undergoing was first predicted by the Ancients over 13,000 years ago. It is part of what they called 'the great galactic year.' Heaven is to honor this time by establishing a great Light, which will wash away the dark and all its minions. We were asked, over 20 of your years ago, to come here and be ready at an appointed time to carry out a mass landing of our personnel on your precious shores. And so we came, and then saw that Heaven's dates for this undertaking were somewhat unclear. So we adapted, and proceeded to use these moments to get to know you better. Since our arrival here, we have become part of a sacred movement to prepare Gaia's surface humans for the requirements of the divine decrees for this planet. One of them specifies the need to resolve the issue of the dark minions' labyrinth of control on your planet through sacred cleansing. In the main this will start with a formal, immense change in the way your societies operate and in the way you perceive the nature of your reality.  (Washta, Sirius Star-Nation, Galactic Federation of Light & Ascended Masters, 17th April 2012)

"Dratzo?"  Is this some kind of greeting from Sirius, or something?  I think we should all begin to greet each other in this fashion from now on, so that "Washta" and his buddies feel at home when they arrive.

"Washta" had a further missive that he delivered last Tuesday:

Dratzo! We return! We have been informed that several major banks worldwide are nearly ready to transfer ownership and management. This is part of the massive shift of financial power out of the hands of the dark into those of the Light, and is the result of recent maneuvers by the Ascended Masters.

Furthermore, the time has come to consolidate the funds that were first posited by Saint Germaine in the early 18th century, and by Quan Yin in the 7th century. These large reserves of gold and silver are the basis for shifting wealth on your world away from a select few over to those who are fully committed to the creation of universal prosperity for the planet. Accompanying this transfer is the new banking system which will be completely transparent in its varied transactions. The new banking is rooted in the unprecedented injunction that banks be the divine instruments of the Light. They are to be used to manage various corporations (special partnerships) charged with specific and temporary mandates: to distribute technologies and related services to benefit the health and well being of your global populations.  (Washta, Sirius Star-Nation, Galactic Federation of Light & Ascended Masters, 24th April 2012)

Well, that sounds hopeful enough.  I wouldn't mind it if the banks started being more concerned with the health and well-being of global populations, not to mention getting my share of the universal property.  But at this point, I stopped reading, because I was afraid my browser would crash again, and also because my prefrontal cortex was beginning to make alarming little whimpering noises.

What strikes me about this is that the people who believe this stuff (and there seem to be quite a few, judging from the posts and the comments that followed) go way beyond wishful thinking into that more rarefied air of delusion.  I mean, it'd be nice if there were some Galactic Good Guys who were ready to Storm The Beaches and reorganize world governments so that they Played Nice, but there's just this teensy little problem, which is that there's no evidence whatsoever that any of it is true.  And this brings up a troubling question, to wit:  what is it that makes someone swallow something like this?  I mean, beyond the rather sad answer that the person in question is mentally ill.  And I just can't believe that mental illness accounts for all of the believers in conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, cults, superstitions... and Galactic Federations.

I actually know people who are seemingly quite rational, who hold down jobs and raise families and interact socially, and yet who have some pretty bizarre beliefs on a single topic -- astrology, homeopathy, HAARP, the Illuminati, psychic contact with animals.  What in the human brain can become so unhinged, in an otherwise intact mind, that a person loses the ability in that instance (and that instance only) to decide if something is real, has supporting evidence, makes sense?

I don't know the answer, but I do think the whole thing is a little scary.  So I'll end on that note.  Well, I do have one more thing to say:  Dratzo!

Walking on sunshine

At what point, when someone believes something that is counterfactual, unscientific, and (to put not too fine a point on it) ridiculous, does it become the person's fault for not knowing better?

We live in a culture which, to a large extent, has an expectation that people should be protected from the effects of their own stupidity.  This extends to the availability of insurance, and claims for government aid, when people build their houses in areas that are known to be targets for natural disasters.  When a five million dollar house is built onto a canyon wall in earthquake-prone, mudslide-prone, wildfire-prone California, and it (to borrow a phrase) burns down, falls over, and sinks into the swamp, and the owner acts all mystified that it happened, how sympathetic should we be?

This question isn't just relevant to matters of property loss; it also is appropriate to ask in a great many issues of personal safety.  Take motorcycle helmet laws.  Take smoking cigarettes.  Who, at this point, doesn't know the dangers of these behaviors?  At some point, it is not the government's responsibility to prevent us from doing stupid stuff; it is ours.

The matter becomes a little fuzzier with medical issues, because (1) people are trained from birth to listen to white-coat-wearing individuals with stethoscopes, (2) there's a huge profit motive to the whole quack-cures industry, inducing charlatans to spend a lot more time and effort pushing their claims, and (3) human physiology is a great deal more complicated than "if you ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and get in an accident, you will be turned into a giant splat mark on the asphalt."  Still, I can't help but think that there is a point at which it is the consumer's personal responsibility to be well enough informed that (s)he won't do anything egregiously idiotic, such as trying to treat an illness by taking pills that have had every last potentially useful molecule removed by serial dilution.

But homeopathy isn't my topic today; the genesis of this post is something even stupider.  Something that makes homeopaths seem worthy of the Nobel Prize in Medicine.  Something so monumentally idiotic that I felt obliged to dig around and see if it could possibly be a hoax.

Tragically, it is not.  It really seems to be true that a Swiss woman died last year -- after a guru convinced her that she could live on sunlight alone.  (Source)

Apparently the woman, whose name was not released by the press but who was a resident of the town of Wolfhalden, had had some health problems, and after being unsatisfied with the medical care she was receiving from actual doctors, she decided to ask a guru's advice.  The guru said he was 70 years old and was still in prime health, and had done it by giving up food and water entirely decades ago.  He said all you had to do was to sit in the sun with large sectors of your skin exposed, absorbing the sun's "life-giving rays," and that if you had reached a high enough plane of spiritual consciousness, that'd be all you'd need not only to survive, but to thrive.

The article didn't say, but I'd bet hard cold cash that the guru also used the words "resonance," "frequency," and "vibration."

Anyhow, the woman didn't do what I'd like to think most of us would do in that situation, which is to burst into guffaws and say, "What the hell?  Do I look like a house plant to you?"  And walk away.  No, she apparently said, "Wow!  I never thought of that!" and proceeded to stop eating and drinking.  She spent a great deal of time sitting, scantily-clad, in the sun.  And amazingly enough, she succeeded not in curing her illnesses -- but in starving to death.

An unanswered question I had is how on earth her friends and relatives let this happen.  If I saw some nimrod I knew stop eating anything and spending large quantities of time sitting outside naked, I think I would probably question whether he'd lost his marbles, and try to intervene.  But either she didn't have enough close friends, or hid it from them well enough, that by the time she was admitted to medical care, it was too late to save her.

This, of course, has elicited calls to prosecute the guru.  My general thought is that this is probably justified, because victimizing stupid people is a pretty terrible thing to do, but there's a part of me that can't get all that worked up about this.  Shouldn't we have an expectation, as a presumably educated society, that people will at least understand biology to the extent that they know that humans cannot conduct photosynthesis?  If there really is someone who is that dumb, or that gullible, should the authorities step in to protect them from the consequences of their foolishness?

I think that at some point, personal responsibility has to kick in.  If we fail to educate ourselves on issues of vital importance to our health and happiness, and then become victims of natural disasters, preventable accidents, hucksters, and frauds, it is no one's fault but our own.  And as far as the Swiss woman who thought she was a plant; this, to me, is just a case of natural selection in action, improving the gene pool for the rest of us.

Prophecy pages and prayer rugs

Apparently a new strategy amongst the severely religious is to send out broadside literature through the mail.  I know this because a friend of mine got one.  However, given that (1) my friend didn't request the letter, and (2) it was warmly and personally addressed to "Occupant," you have to wonder how successful this strategy is going to be.

It's not like junk mail is as lucrative a business as it used to be, given that you can send out ten thousand emails for less than the cost of a single snail-mail letter.  But evidently this hasn't dissuaded some of these folks from trying the old fashioned way.

Anyway, how this all came up is that a couple of days ago, my friend came up to me, grinning, with some papers in his hand, and said, "When I got this, I immediately thought that you should have it."  I've found that since I'm mostly known for my interest in woo-woo crackpots, this is seldom a good sign.  And sure enough, this letter was way off to the "Wingnut" end of the spectrum.

The first thing I opened was a large, garishly-colored piece of textured paper that has a pattern around it in magenta and gold that looks a little like a Persian rug.  After unfolding it, I said, and I quote, "Aaaaugh!"  Because facing me was a nearly life-sized image of Jesus' face, eyes closed, wearing a crown of thorns.  One disconcerting thing is that the face looks to my eyes more like Willie Nelson than it does like my concept of The Lord And Savior, but that may just be me.  Be that as it may, the instructions on the bottom read:

Look into Jesus' eyes you will see they are closed.  But as you continue to look you will see His eyes opening and looking back into your eyes.  Then go and be alone and kneel on this Rug of Faith or touch it to both knees.  Then please check your needs on our letter to you.  Please return this Prayer Rug.  Do not keep it.

My first thought was that if I was staring at this picture and its eyes opened, I would probably want to be alone for an entirely different reason, namely that I would think that I'd lost my marbles.  But then I thought: maybe there's some reason why people see this happen.  I know that staring fixedly at something does mess around with your visual integrative system, creating afterimages and all sorts of odd effects.  So I looked closely at the drawing, and I noticed that in the center of each eye was a faint dot, with a lighter spot up and to the left -- like a ghostly image of a pupil and a point of light reflected from the surface of a human eye.  Stare at the picture long enough, I'd guess, and those features might make the eyes begin to look as if they were open.

So, I folded up and put away the "Prayer Rug," because that picture is freakin' creepy, and picked up the next one, which said, "Please don't open this prophecy until after you have placed your prayer page (page two of our letter to you) and the Prayer Rug back in the mail before sunset tomorrow or the next day.  God will help you to do this.  You will see."

Now, you have to wonder why anyone would need god's help to put something in the mail, but I may be reading this wrong.  In any case, I threw caution to the wind and opened the secret prophecy.  The prophecy turned out to be a page of fine print, and I frankly do not feel like copying the entire thing, but the gist of it is that god knows I'm not happy with my life, and that in fact he has the impression that I'm kind of a sorry so-and-so.  (I paraphrase slightly.)  But in order to have ENDLESS JOY all I have to do is allow god's spirit to work through me by praying a lot and sending a donation to the church that sent this letter.

The remaining pieces of paper were the checklist of what I'd like them to pray for on my behalf (after I saw Jesus' eyes open on the "Prayer Rug"), and some testimonials from folks about what they'd gotten.  Some of these included:

• strength
• spiritual blessing
• a money blessing
• happy family life
• miracle healing
• a good loving companion
• a secure future
• protection from evil
• salvation
• true love

All of which sound pretty awesome, but honestly, I think I'll spare them the trouble.  Given my rampant atheism, I think god (if he actually exists) would not have a particularly strong motivation to shower me with gifts even if these people prayed for me because I'd sent them a checklist and returned their "Prayer Rug."

Honestly, how do the groups who send this stuff out think this could possibly work?  I guess that since they seem pretty sincere about wanting to do good stuff for total strangers, I can't argue with their motives.  There was none of the "Oh, and if you don't believe what we're saying, you will BURN IN AGONY FOR ALL ETERNITY HA HA HA HA" business you usually see with missives of this sort.  So, as these things go, it was pretty friendly, as long as you discount the scary drawing of Jesus.

But I still must ask the question -- if they think that god knows everything and has a plan for everyone, and will always make sure everything works out for the best (for all of which there was ample evidence on the "prophecy page"), isn't it contradictory to believe that they could change someone's destiny by praying, using the person's wish list of stuff (s)he'd like to have?  Do they think that god is sort of like Santa Claus, reading a kid's Christmas list and going, "I didn't know little Billy wanted a Lego set!  Well, we'll just have to have the elves make him one!  Ho ho ho!"  If there is a god, I somehow can't imagine that he works that way.

So, the open question is what to do with the letter, "Prayer Rug," and the lot.  I think I'm going to give it back to my friend.  After all, it was addressed to him ("Occupant"), so if anyone should get all of the bad luck from not returning the "Prayer Rug" to the church, I think it's only fair that it should be him.  Okay, I opened the Prophecy before I was supposed to, but if I seal it back up with a little piece of scotch tape, maybe god won't notice.

Burning down the house

I try to be kind, I really do.  I listened patiently to the student in my Critical Thinking class who told me with great enthusiasm how well astrology worked, and how it has "recently become much more scientific" in the way astrologers construct their charts and predictions.  I refrained from guffawing in the face of the woman who, while visiting my home, informed me that my dad's rock collection had "very powerful crystal energies."  I didn't even give so much as a snort when an acquaintance told me she had been in psychic communication with her pets.

I know that if I'm working toward my stated goal -- to foster skepticism and rationalism -- then from a methodological standpoint, it works better to argue from a logical, scientific perspective than it does simply to bellow laughter at one's opponent.

Still, it's hard sometimes.  Take the case of the naked Wiccan arsonists.  (Source)

Aftab Mughal, of Nottingham, England, had been feeling as if his life was becoming increasingly negative -- he was under stress, and things just "weren't going right" for him.  So he went to visit his friend, Terence Williams, to ask for advice.  Williams, a Wiccan, said that Mughal needed to participate in a ceremony to cleanse him of "negative vibrations," so they set up the ritual in Williams' apartment.

First, they walked around burning white sage sticks.  But this didn't seem to do enough to remove the negativity, in Williams' opinion.  So the two took the obvious next step, which was to set fire first to some pieces of paper, and then to a wooden broom.  Amazingly enough, this also had no effect on Mughal's mood, so Williams came up with an innovative solution: both men needed to strip naked and burn their clothes.

Have I mentioned that all of this was taking place inside Williams' apartment?

Firefighters were summoned by neighbors when they saw smoke billowing out of Williams' window, and one fireman banged on the window to get the two men's attention, because they seemed not to care that the apartment was basically on fire and the room they were in was filling up with smoke.  Firefighters broke in the door and tried to get Williams and Mughal to leave, but the two nude Wiccans ran upstairs to get away.  The firemen followed them, and finally forcibly removed both men from the burning apartment.

Once outside, the firefighters tried to get Mughal and Williams to cover up with blankets, but they threw the blankets on the ground and basically capered about in the all-together, apparently not caring about the negative vibrations they were inducing in passersby.

The end result was that the pair was charged with arson, and the case went to court last week.

The prosecuting attorney, Siward James-Moore, said, "Aftab Mughal, as far as he was concerned, he didn't think the ritual was one that made him fear for his safety and he was bemused when the fire brigade arrived." James-Moore himself seemed more than a little bemused by the whole thing, and added that when a fireman tried to get the two Wiccans to leave the apartment, "The flames were licking around Mr. Williams' ankles at that stage.  He was staring right through him."

Ultimately, Mughal and Williams pleaded guilty to arson, but because the judge considered that the fire was caused by "stupidity, not by malice," they received no jail time, and were sentenced to 120 hours of unpaid community service.

Okay, now while I was reading this, I tried to maintain my sense of decorum, I really did.  I attempted to hold firm to the attitude that these men were only acting out of their seriously-held religious beliefs, and as such, I should be tolerant and understanding.  But when I got to the part about the firemen attempting to get them to cover themselves up, and their tossing the blankets to the ground and running around outside naked while the firemen chased them, I have to admit that my reaction was, and I quote:  BA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *falls off chair*

I mean, really.  You can argue the benefits of religious beliefs from a number of angles -- that religion has incited people to perform acts of great altruism, that it has inspired beautiful art and transcendent music, that it has given people hope in the face of desperate times.  Unfortunately, though, religion has also fostered some pretty bizarre behavior.  And I maintain: whatever your criticisms of the scientific view of the world, rationalism has never incited anyone to dance around naked in his apartment while it was on fire.