Charlie Fuqua and the implications of biblical literalism

I wonder how many folks outside of the state of Arkansas have heard of Charlie Fuqua.  Fuqua is a former state representative, and is seeking reelection to that position this year.  He is also, much to the chagrin of some of his supporters, the author of a book released this year called God's Law.

The reason that Fuqua's book has provoked such a fury of facepalming amongst his fellow Republicans is not, technically, that they don't agree with his views, which basically follow the conservative Christian, fundamentalist, biblical literalist pattern that so many of them espouse.  It's more that Fuqua did what you should never, ever, ever do  as a politician:

He told the truth regarding what those views imply.

Fuqua first landed himself in Huffington Post last week, when writer John Celock gave national exposure to a story from the Arkansas Times that had quoted Fuqua's book.  Fuqua wrote a nice long passage in his book that suggests creating laws in the US based on Deuteronomy 21:18-21:  "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."

Yes, people, you are understanding correctly: Fuqua wrote in his book that the USA should have laws that provide for the execution of rebellious children.

Now, wait, Fuqua says: it's not that I think it should happen all the time, fer Pete's sake:

This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children. I cannot think of one instance in the Scripture where parents had their child put to death. Why is this so? Other than the love Christ has for us, there is no greater love then [sic] that of a parent for their child. The last people who would want to see a child put to death would be the parents of the child. Even so, the Scrpture [sic] provides a safe guard to protect children from parents who would wrongly exercise the death penalty against them. Parents are required to bring their children to the gate of the city. The gate of the city was the place where the elders of the city met and made judicial pronouncements. In other words, the parents were required to take their children to a court of law and lay out their case before the proper judicial authority, and let the judicial authority determine if the child should be put to death. I know of many cases of rebellious children, however, I cannot think of one case where I believe that a parent had given up on their child to the point that they would have taken their child to a court of law and asked the court to rule that the child be put to death. Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents. 

Yup, Rep. Fuqua, that it would.  Respect through fear.  That's just the kind of relationship a parent should shoot for.  No wonder he won a "Friend of the Family" award from the Arkansas Christian Coalition, is it?

Of course, that's not the only repellent thing Fuqua said in his book.  Here are a few other gems:

• American citizens who are Muslims should all be deported.  To where isn't specified.
• Liberals are trying to overthrow the US government via "bloody revolution."
• Anyone who cannot support their children should be surgically sterilized.
• Anyone in the US who is not a Christian is, by definition, against the government, and they should be considered "conspirators" and "traitors" and dealt with accordingly.

What I find most interesting about this is not that Fuqua believes this (and has stated, for the record, "I think my views are fairly well-accepted by most people.").  It's that more people don't see that his views are simply the logical end result of biblical literalism.  Biblical literalists are usually quite good at cherry-picking a few of their favorite passages to support whatever cause they happen to be in the mood to rant about -- prohibitions on homosexuality, and the young-earth, anti-evolution stuff being two favorites.  They conveniently gloss over more dicey passages, such as the ones prohibiting anyone from eating shrimp or pork, the ones forbidding you to wear clothes made of cloth woven from two different kinds of thread, the ones expressly permitting slavery (as long as the slaves come from another country, which makes me wonder if I can own a Canadian), the one requiring that rape victims marry the rapist -- and the one mandating the stoning of rebellious children.  Fuqua isn't being crazy, as some people have said about him; he's merely being consistent.

It is mighty convenient, the way the vast majority of people who claim that the bible is the 100% true, literal word and law of god just ignore the passages that are unpleasant or troubling.  If anyone needed further proof that literalist Christianity demands an ethical code that is repulsive, bizarre, and inherently immoral, Fuqua and his ilk are it.  And as for the supposed fundamentalists who are squirming in their seats as they read the bits of Fuqua's book that aren't nice... well, I think you're the ones who have a bit of explaining to do.

Public schools, boring classes, and science as a verb

A couple of days ago, the Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by David Bernstein entitled, "Why Are You Forcing My Son to Take Chemistry?"  In it, he points an accusing finger at the Maryland public school system for mandating that students take technical classes that they will, in all likelihood, never use again.  "It doesn’t take a chemist to know that my son is not going to be a chemist," Bernstein writes, in response to the objection that all students should be exposed to a variety of subjects, so they can make informed decisions on which career to pursue.  "He’s 15, not 7.  It’s really that obvious.  You took chemistry... What do you remember from that year?  Nada, I bet.  Next time a school official preens about the importance of chemistry, I’m going to ask him or her how many elements there are in the periodic table."

He goes on to rail against the system for making his son sit through a class where "It's all about memorization anyway."  "He will forget everything he 'learned' a week after the class is over," Bernstein writes.  "I can’t remember a thing, and I was a pretty good chemistry student."

He ends by pointing out (correctly) that choices like this one have opportunity costs -- by taking chemistry, the cost is that his son was deprived of the opportunity to take other classes that he would have enjoyed, and profited from, more.  More flexibility in what students study, Bernstein contends, would benefit everyone.

On one level, Bernstein is correct.  I have long been a supporter of more choice in paths for students, especially once they reach high school.  Forcing every student to sit through every general-ed class the school offers, just because "it's a graduation requirement," is wrong-headed.  Our own school system took a step away from that mentality a few years ago, and instituted a highly successful electives program -- there now are, in each subject, multiple tracks students can take to arrive at graduation, and the choices are largely driven by what topics students find intriguing.  (We do still have a great many basic survey courses that are graduation requirements, however.)

I think, though, that Bernstein misses one major point -- a question that is uncomfortable, perhaps, but it should be at the heart of any discussion of why public schools don't, by and large, turn children into competent life-long learners.  That larger question is (apropos of Bernstein's own experience) not why his son is being required to take a tedious class like chemistry, but why his son's chemistry teacher is teaching so as to make chemistry appear tedious.

After all, that's why some people go into chemistry, isn't it?  They find it fascinating.  And think about it... good heavens, chemistry is about stuff reacting.  If anything should be inherently interesting, it should be chemistry.  Why does dynamite explode?  How do chemical hand-warmers work?  Why does Drano clear clogged plumbing?  Why don't the oil and water in Italian salad dressing stay mixed?  Why does salt dissolve in water, but plastic doesn't?  All of these are questions you can only answer if you know some chemistry.

Yes, I know, you have to do some applied math to understand fully what's happening in chemical systems, and the math is what gets a lot of kids stuck.  But the math should be secondary to an understanding of the processes.  Because that's what science is -- a process, a way of knowing.  To quote the eminent astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson:  "Science is a verb."  The fact that Bernstein misses this point illustrates that it isn't just his son's generation that got shortchanged this way.  Note that to illustrate how irrelevant chemistry is to most people's lives, the question he wants to ask a school official is, "How many elements are in the periodic table?"  As if a factlet like that somehow is what scientists are concerned with, as if a collection of such trivia is what science is.

And of course, the problem isn't confined to chemistry.  My own field, biology, is often taught as if it were nothing but a long list of vocabulary words, as if somehow being able to name the parts of the cell or correctly spell "photophosphorylation" means that you understand how cells work, or how plants capture and store light energy.  Once again, there is no way around the fact that you have to know some terminology; we have to be speaking the same language so that we have some common ground upon which to discuss how living systems work.  But too many science teachers teach science as if it were some kind of static body of knowledge, as if the best scientists are the ones who remember the most abstruse words.

No field is immune to this characterization of learning as dry-as-dust memorization.  I had history teachers who taught us that history was just a list of dates, names, and treaties, not what it really is -- a complex interplay of personalities and motives, driven by circumstance, context, culture, and ambition.  It took me five years after graduation from college before I realized that history was interesting.  One of my English teachers in high school once told me, in a superior fashion, "It's low-minded to think that all literature is meant to be enjoyed."  Oh, really?  I wonder if the author would have agreed.  I doubt seriously that (s)he wrote a novel, all the while thinking, "Wow, I bet it will be really difficult for those idiot 11th graders to find the symbolism in this chapter!"

Now, I've been a high school teacher for 26 years, and I know that just as students often have little choice over what classes they have to take, teachers often have little choice over what, and in some cases how, they teach in those classes.  But we can as educators make our classes interesting, relevant, and exciting.  That much freedom we all have.  I have no qualms when I hear a student say about my class, "That was difficult," or "That lesson was a challenge to understand."  I do have serious qualms when I hear a student say, "Biology is boring."  If students, on a regular basis, find your class boring, make no mistake about it: you are failing as an educator, whatever their scores are on the standardized tests that educational policy writers are so enamored of.  Because the bottom line is, there is no subject that is inherently boring.  Taught properly, the universe, and its components and systems and interactions and history, are pretty damn fascinating, and our primary job as educators is to shine some light on a bit of it, and say, "Hey, look!  Look at this!  Isn't this cool?" 

Sketchy science and magic rocks

A recurring problem with trying to sift through and evaluate claims, and sort the science from the pseudoscience, is the tendency of people to use scientific terms loosely (or incorrectly).  Throwing around fancy-sounding terminology gives an argument an unwarranted veneer of credibility, especially given that many of the people targeted in these claims lack the scientific background to discern when technical vocabulary is being used in a specious fashion.

The problem becomes even worse when the profit motive is involved, because the stakes become higher.  There often seems to be a deliberate intent on the part of the seller not to clarify matters, but to obfuscate further.  A confused buyer, apparently, is a confident buyer.

I was sent an especially good example of this yesterday, when a friend emailed me a link with the message, "Could there be any truth to any of this?"  On clicking the link, I was brought to the site "Shungite in a Nutshell," which explains the amazing properties of a rock found in Russia.

Shungite, we are told, is a carbonaceous deposit found near the village of Shung'a in the province of Karelia.  It contains large quantities of fullerenes, molecules made up of latticelike arrays of carbon atoms (buckyballs and carbon nanotubes are two types of fullerenes you might be familiar with).  Because of its high concentration of fullerenes, shungite has (according to the authors of the website) a variety of amazing properties:

• it can purify water and air
• it is a natural antioxidant
• it is an antibacterial
• it speeds up healing
• it stimulates the immune system
• it suppresses allergies
• it can act as a carrier for biologically-active molecules
• it can neutralize the negative effects of electromagnetic fields, including "anthropogenic high-frequency, solar, geopathogenic, (and) biofields"

Sounds like pretty amazing stuff, no?  Well, alarm bells went off immediately for me; any time someone says that one substance can cure all ills, it sets off my skepti-senses.  But here's where it gets interesting, because to support his/her claims, the writer starts throwing around some scientific terminology -- and gets a bunch of it wrong:

• "Shungite contains almost the entire periodic table" -- actually, if their first claim (that it's composed of fullerenes) is correct, this is about as wrong as you can get, because fullerenes are pure carbon, and therefore are made of only one element on the periodic table.  So the only way you could have less of the periodic table is if shungite was imaginary.  On the other hand, it's not necessarily a good thing to have lots of elements -- I'm rather happy, for example, that the vitamin tablets I take in the morning contain no arsenic or plutonium.
• Shungite is "a catalyst, which ensures decomposition of organic substances sorbed and restoration of the sorption properties" -- honestly, I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean.  Catalysts are chemicals that alter the rates of chemical reactions, usually by changing the activation energy; and if shungite really does trigger the decomposition of organic substances, it would be a little on the dangerous side to consume, because our bodies are basically big blobs of organic substances.
• Shungite is an "electroconductive rock."  Well, lots of stuff is electroconductive, including the wiring in my house.  I'm not sure why this is relevant, but the writer sure seems to be impressed by it.
• The "presence of shungite materials close to the source of cellular frequency radiation significantly weakens their effect on the human body."  Once again, what the hell is this supposed to mean?  What is "cellular frequency radiation?"  I dunno, but it sure sounds bad, doesn't it?

And so on.  I tried to substantiate a few of these claims -- a couple of articles I found about shungite that seem reliable (if you're curious, here and here) support its use in water purification, but neither of them say the least thing about taking the stuff internally.  This article describes research into a novel cancer therapy using fullerenes and light to trigger cancer cell apoptosis (self-destruction), but as far as I can find the effect has only been observed in cell cultures, not in living organisms.  Otherwise, the best I could find regarding the biological effects of fullerenes is that the Wikipedia article says that they are "found in soot" and are "essentially non-toxic" -- not exactly a ringing endorsement of their health benefits.

So it sounds like what we have here is another example of someone trying to sell something useless to the credulous, and throwing around science-y terms to convince the layperson that what they have will cure damn near everything.  Once again, the best way to insulate yourself, and your pocketbook, against spurious claims is to learn a little science and apply the tools of critical thinking.  So, sad to say, but magic rocks that heal every illness known to man remain exactly what they sound like -- fiction.

Alpacas, flying humanoids, and bi-locating nuns

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're keeping our eyes on two breaking cryptozoological stories.

First, we have a report in from West Berkshire in the UK, where a resident has called in a sighting of a mysterious creature that's been nicknamed "the Creature from Curridge."  [Source]

Spotted on October 3 by a businessman named Don Prater, Curry (you just know eventually that's what they'll call it, might as well start now) was described as being a gray, oddly-proportioned quadruped that was unlike anything Prater had ever seen.

Prater was out for an early-evening walk with his border collie, Bozzy, when he saw the bizarre creature.

"After the footpath bends left, about 25 yards ahead of us were two animals," Prater told reporters for Newbury Today.  "One of the animals looked like a domestic cat but the other one stunned me.  It was a dark or grey color.  The height of its head was about two foot but it had the head of a deer.  The neck was about eight to ten inches long and thin like a swan’s neck.  The body was a cross between a cat and a dog.  It had a bushy tail.  Everything about it was wrong."

"I hadn't been drinking," Prater helpfully added.

Prater went around the neighborhood, asking if anyone else had seen anything like it, but all he got were negatives.  He did provide reporters with a sketch of what he'd spotted:

 For comparison purposes, here's a photograph of an alpaca:

So I think we can all agree that we've got a pretty good match, here.


A little harder to fathom is a story that came to my attention through reports from several of my students.  "Have you heard about the Colorado... um, Mosquito Men?" one asked, and when I said, in some incredulity, "Mosquito Men?", he replied, "Well, not Mosquito Men.  But I'm pretty sure they fly."  So I did some searching for "Colorado Flying Men," and lo and behold, there have been a number of reports lately from the San Luis Valley of flying creatures that look like "a cross between Mothman and Dracula."  [Source]

Notwithstanding the fact that Mothman and Dracula share the characteristic of both being fictional, I began to do a bit of digging, and I found that the San Luis Valley is a hotspot of all sorts of weird stuff -- it has some of the USA's highest numbers of UFO sightings, reports of cattle mutilations, reports of cryptids, and reports of various other odd goings-on.  Besides the flying humanoids, there have been sightings of thunderbirds, and no, I'm not talking about the car:

In fact, so much bizarre stuff happens in the San Luis Valley that it's beginning to get a reputation as a magnet for wackos.  "When the going gets weird, the weird end up in Colorado's San Luis Valley," writes Christopher Weir in Metroactive.  "Hometowns are like families.  You always think yours is more bizarre or dysfunctional than the next.  Not so, of course...  As for hometowns, yours has nothing on Crestone and the surrounding San Luis Valley.  Wondrously depicted by self-appointed paranormal investigator and Crestone resident Christopher O'Brien, the San Luis Valley -- a breathtaking expanse that straddles southern Colorado and northern New Mexico -- is plagued by flying saucers, cow vandals, space guns, serial killers, spook lights, ghost trains, coma healers, prairie dragons and even something called a 'bi-locating nun.'"

So this led me to wonder what a "prairie dragon" was (I found out that they are semi-transparent reptiles that appear in groups and try to get into your home), and of course, any mention of a "bi-locating nun" was bound to stir my curiosity (turns out that this refers to a 17th century Spanish woman, Sister Marie de Jesus Agreda, who visited the San Luis Valley in spirit form, successfully converted some natives, and because of the claim narrowly escaped being executed by the Inquisition).

So, anyway, about the Flying Men.  Apparently, they've been seen by several people over the past two years, flapping along with huge membranous wings, and making "high-pitched hissing or screeching sounds."  Of course, no one has any hard evidence of this, or even any photographs, not that this would exactly count for evidence in these days of PhotoShop.  But the reports continue, and cryptozoologists worldwide are now excitedly turning their eyes toward the Rocky Mountains.

As usual, I wish them all luck.  Being a biologist, no one would be more thrilled than me if some of these reports of bizarre creatures, unknown to science, turned out to be true.  And if I were a betting man, I'd say that they'll have a greater chance of success searching around in the high deserts of Colorado than they would looking for Curry, the Wild Alpaca of West Berkshire.

Smell-o-therapy

I'd always wondered how "aromatherapy" was supposed to work.  I mean, I like nice-smelling things as much as the next guy, but treating diseases by having you smell something just always seemed a little weird to me.  But I'd never really looked into it.

And then a friend sent me this page, wherein we find that it all has to do with "frequencies."

I shoulda known.

Frequency is one of the most misused words in all of woo-woo.  So let's get the definition straight right from the get-go, okay?  Frequency is a measurement of the rate of vibration of anything that is exhibiting rotation, oscillation, vibration, or simple harmonic motion, and is measured by counting the number of cycles completed per second.  A hertz is the standard unit of frequency, and is equal to one cycle per second -- so in a pendulum clock that is keeping good time, the pendulum is swinging at exactly one hertz.  The frequency of sound waves audible to the human ear runs from about 20 hertz to about 18,000 hertz (18 kilohertz).  The electromagnetic spectrum has a much wider range, with the "low" end (radio waves) running all the way down to one hertz or lower, and the "high" end (gamma rays) up into the range of 10²⁴ hertz.  The bit of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes are sensitive to -- the familiar rainbow of visible light -- runs in the vicinity of 10¹⁴ hertz, with red having the lowest frequency (around 4 x 10¹⁴ hertz) and violet the highest (around 8 x 10¹⁴ hertz).

All right, thus endeth the science lesson for today.  Let's look at aromatherapy oils, okay?  Hold onto your hats, because we won't be re-entering the realm of science for a while.

The site I linked above begins thusly:

The effectiveness of aromatherapy essential oils cannot be fully understood without some discussion of their frequency or vibration. Frequency is a measurable rate of electrical energy that is constant between any two points. Every living thing has an electrical frequency. Robert O. Becker, M.D., documents the electrical frequency of the human body in his book, The Body Electric. A "frequency generator" was developed in the early 1020's [sic] by Royal Raymond Rife, M.D. He found that by using certain frequencies, he could destroy a cancer cell or virus. He found that these frequencies could prevent the development of disease, and others would destroy disease. Substances with higher frequency will destroy diseases of a lower frequency.

So, we already have:  (1) a typo that makes it sound like someone was developing electronic devices before the Norman Conquest of England; (2) a guy named "Royal Raymond Rife;" and (3) enough bullshit to fertilize a 50-acre cornfield.  Pretty good start for only one paragraph, don't you think?  But it gets better:

In one test, the frequency of two individuals – the first a 26 year old male and the second a 24 year old male – was measured at 66 MHz each. The first individual held a cup of coffee (without drinking any), and his frequency dropped to 58 MHz in 3 seconds. He put the coffee down and inhaled an aroma of essential oils. Within 21 seconds, his frequency had returned to 66 MHz. The second individual took a sip of coffee and his frequency dropped to 52 MHz in the same 3 seconds. However, no essential oils were used during the recovery time, and it took 3 days for his frequency to return to its initial 66 MHz. One surprising aspect of this study measured the influence that thoughts have on the body's electrical frequency.

Me, I usually vibrate faster after drinking coffee, especially given that I'm from Louisiana, where they don't consider it real coffee unless it's so strong you can stand a spoon upright in it.  I periodically have to replace my coffee mug because the coffee I make has eaten through the ceramic.

But I digress.

So what, then, is the "bioelectric frequency" of various familiar items?  I'm sure you wanted to know, and lo, they provide you with a handy chart:

Fundamental Frequencies of People and Things
(frequencies given in Megahertz)

• Healthy Human Brain...........................................................71-90
• Healthy Human Body (overall).............................................62-68
  • When you have cold symptoms........................................58
  • When you have flu symptoms...........................................57
  • When you have candida infection.....................................55
  • When you have Epstein Barr Syndrome...........................52
  • When you have cancer......................................................42
  • When one begins to die.....................................................25
• Processed or Canned Foods...........................................................0
• Fresh Produce (depending on how fresh)................................10-15
• Dry Herbs................................................................................12-22
• Fresh Herbs.............................................................................20-27
• Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils......................................52-320

So let's see -- canned tuna isn't vibrating at all, and infections of various sorts make you vibrate slower until finally you die when you reach 25 megahertz.  Presumably after you die you continue to decrease in vibration until you reach the canned-tuna stage.

And last, we find out two important things: (1) if you pray over your aromatherapy oils, they vibrate faster; and (2) exposing the body to the highest frequencies causes "spiritual changes."  Thus, I suppose irradiating yourself with gamma rays would just make you experience all sorts of spiritual growth, or possibly just turn you into The Incredible Hulk.  Which, now that I come to think of it, is a spiritual change of a rather impressive magnitude.

So once again, we have some people making unsubstantiated health claims that could potentially convince someone with a life-threatening disease to abandon conventional therapy for sitting around inhaling rose oil.  And despite the disclaimer at the bottom of the page -- "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease," it sounds like that is exactly what they are suggesting.  And when you read the bit that comes immediately before the disclaimer, it becomes even clearer:

The penetrating characteristic of essential oils greatly enhances their ability to be effective. Essential oils will penetrate into the body when applied to the skin. Placed on the foot they will be distributed to every cell in the body in 21 minutes. They will even penetrate a finger or toe nail to treat fungus underneath.

Essential oils stay in the body about 20 minutes to 2 hours and leave no residuals. The effects and frequency are accumulative when the mental attitude changes. We must have a desire to change and work on it or the old programming will keep coming back. Oils are a precursor to set up stage for action and a catalyst to do the work (the blood stream). Oils go where the need is present and are activated in that area. Testing on the thyroid, heart and pancreas showed that the oils reached these organs in 3 seconds! When layered, one oil applied over another, it is faster. The body absorbs the oils fastest by inhalation and second fastest by applying to the feet or ears. The oils also cross the blood brain barrier; they piggy-back the energy waves to get into the cells.

All the essential oils deliver cell wall penetrating oxygen, and it is the unhealthy cells that need the oxygen for the road back to health. When the cell wall thickens, oxygen can’t get in – life expectancy of a cell is 120 days to 4 months). Cells divide making 2 duplicate cells, and if it is diseased, it will make 2 new diseased cells. When we stop the mutation of the cells and create healthy cells, we stop the disease. Therapeutic grade essential oils can restore cells to normal in 7 seconds.

Do not wait until you have the “right” essential oil before administering to a symptom. You cannot be doing it wrong if you use any of the oils for any symptom! When an oil causes discomfort, it is because it is pulling toxins, chemical, heavy metals, poisons, parasites and mucus from the system. Either stop taking the oils for a short time to make sure your body isn’t eliminating too fast or dilute the oils with V-6 Mixing Oil until the body catches up with the releasing. These toxins go back into the system if they cannot be released. If a person does not like the smell of an oil, it is usually because of an acidic condition.

How is this not a claim to "diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease?"

Once again, I think the thing we need to cure first here is ignorance of biological science.  Given a basic background in biology -- I mean, come on, the sophomores in my Introductory Biology class could debunk this stuff -- anyone would be able to recognize the falsity of these claims.  And we wouldn't have to get the FDA involved, because no one would buy the "essential oils" unless they wanted to use them for the one purpose they have -- to make your house smell better.

Anecdotal evidence and restless coffins

As a kid, I loved scary stories.  Still do, really.  And one of the tales I remember reading in one of those books with names like True Tales of Terror was the famous story of the moving coffins of Barbados.

You might well have heard this one yourself, as it's made the rounds, and is often used to support the contention that Spirits and Mysterious Forces of the Supernatural actually exist.  Here's an abbreviated version; if you'd like to find out more, a little digging will turn up a more detailed, and undoubtedly scarier, description of the alleged facts of the case.

The Chase family of Barbados were wealthy plantation owners, and had a family vault carved out of stone in the churchyard of Christ Church Parish, in the town of Oistins.  The first person whose body was placed in the vault was a Mrs. Thomasina Goddard, in 1807.  Two-year-old Mary Ann Chase was laid to rest there in 1812, and her older sister Dorcas Chase in 1814.  A few weeks later, Dorcas and Mary Ann's father, Thomas Chase, died, and when the vault was opened to receive his coffin, the three coffins that had already been interred there were found moved -- none were in their original places.  The three coffins were put back where they should have been, and the Chase family patriarch's coffin added.  The family suspected that the disarray had been caused by an attempted grave robbery, and to foil further attacks they had a large stone cemented across the opening.

The Chase Vault, Christ Church Parish, Oistins, Barbados

When it was reopened four years later for the burial of eleven-year-old Charles Brewster Ames, the coffins were again found moved, even though the stone and its cement binding were undisturbed.  Even Thomas Chase's heavy, lead-lined coffin was out of place.  Fifty-two days later, it was again reopened for the burial of Samuel Brewster, and once again the coffins were in disarray, including one of them standing against the wall head-downward.

By this time, the story was becoming a well-known mystery across the island, and when it was opened again in 1819, and again found in a state of chaos, the governor of the island, Lord Combermere, ordered an investigation.  A layer of fine sand was spread on the floor of the vault, and the opening was sealed again, an insignia of the governor's pressed into the wet cement to prevent any trickery.  The governor ordered the vault reopened in 1820 -- and again, the same result.  The coffins were moved -- but the sand, and the seal, were undisturbed.

The governor ordered the coffins reburied elsewhere, which was promptly done.  The vault was abandoned, but is still in existence, and many people visit it yearly to see the site of such a chilling legend.

Now, of course, the first question for a skeptic is: what is the quality of the evidence?

The fact is: not very high.  The originator of the tale seems to be Reverend Thomas Orderson, Rector of Christ Church, who claimed to have been there at the various openings of the vault.  The problem is, the sources of the time, based on Orderson's recollections, all vary in their details -- the one I presented above is the one that has appeared in most recent publications.  But the earliest versions, such as the one that appeared in James Edward Alexander's Transatlantic Sketches in 1833, and other recountings of the story that were published in 1844 and 1860, disagree with each other considerably.

Add that to the fact that folklorist Andrew Lang went to Barbados, and combed through the registers of Christ Church Parish for anything that could substantiate the information contained in the story -- and found nothing.  Not even the newspapers of the time, which certainly would have published such a sensational story, had a hint of the wild goings on in the Chase vault.

Much has been said about the possible causes of the "restless coffins" incident -- seepage of water into the vault, earthquakes, and the more outlandish answers of vengeful ghosts, voodoo, or evil curses.  But in order even to have a need for an explanation, we have to establish first that there is something to explain -- and in the case of the Barbados coffins, it seems likely that the whole thing was spun from whole cloth, probably by Reverend Orderson himself.

Psychics and ghost-hunters often get impatient with skeptics for their tendency to turn a wry eye on anecdotal evidence, but the fact is, eyewitness accounts and recollections of events are notoriously unreliable.  Odd, isn't it, that eyewitness testimony is considered the highest level of reliability in a court of law, when in science, it's usually considered one of the lowest?  It is simply too easy to fool the human perceptual apparatus, to twist memory or engender memories that are entirely false, and (not to put too fine a point on it) to lie outright.  It may be that juries take eyewitnesses seriously, but in science, we need more than just someone saying, "I saw it happen myself, I remember it clearly."

A slice of pi

Sometimes you have to admire the woo-woos' dogged determination to fashion the universe into their own bizarre version of reality.

Most of us, I'd like to think, just see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe, and don't make such a big deal out of it.  If we want to believe in a Higher Power That Guides Everything, we do, and don't spend endless hours crafting abstruse proofs of the conjecture.  We're content to have a beer, watch a hockey game, and let god have some much-needed quiet time.

There are a few people, however, who just aren't content if they're not actively beating the matter into submission.  Such a person is Marty Leeds, Wisconsin-born writer, mystic, philosopher, and the origin of dozens of highly entertaining YouTube videos.

Just yesterday, I was sent a link to one of Leeds' creations, entitled, "The Holy Spirit, Pi, and the English Alphabet."  The link was accompanied by a message stating, and I quote: "Words cannot describe the level of derp in this video."  So of course I had to watch it.  And I wasn't disappointed.

If you're unwilling to sacrifice ten minutes of your precious time, and countless innocent cells in your prefrontal cortex that will die in agony, allow me to present to you the main points of Leeds' argument.

1)  There's this thing called gematria that was made up a while back by some Hebrew mystics who had overactive imaginations and too much free time.  The idea behind gematria is that each letter in the alphabet (whether Hebrew, English, or other) is assigned a number, and when you add up the numbers for a word or name, you get a number that "means something."

2)  You get to decide what the numbers mean.

3)  If two words add up to the same thing, they are mystically linked.  Leeds uses a form of gematria which takes the English alphabet, splits it into two lists of thirteen letters each (A-M, and N-Z), and numbers each list from 1 through 7 and then back down to 1.  So my first name, Gordon, would be 7+2+5+4+2+1 = 21.  "Sharp" is 6+6+1+5+3, which also adds up to 21.  So you can see that thus far, we have a pretty persuasive theory here.

4)  Leeds then does a gematria addition for four words or phrases.  We have "man" = 3, "woman" = 9, "Christian" = 39, and "The Holy Spirit" = 61.  Note that he had to add a "the" to the last one to make it work out the way he wanted.

5)  So, let's look at the first thirteen digits of pi.  He picked thirteen because we had split the alphabet into two groups of thirteen letters each, which seems like impeccable logic to me, given the obvious connection between pi and the English alphabet.  So, we have 3.141592653589.  It starts with 3 and ends with 9 -- giving you "39."  So right away, we can see that there's something wonderfully Christian about pi, not to mention having a man on one end and a woman on the other.  Also, 3+9 = 12, and 3x9 = 27, and 12+27 = 39.  So you get your 3 and 9 back, so "man + woman" + "man x woman" = "Christian."  Or something like that.

6)  Take the middle number in the sequence (2) and the two on either side (9 and 6).  Why?  Because tridents, that's why.  Stop asking questions.

7)  If you multiply 9x2x6, you get 108, which is a very holy and important number.  Myself, I just thought it was the most convenient way of getting from 107 to 109, but what do I know?  But the Hindus liked the number 108, and plus, it's the number of stitches on a baseball, so there you are.

8)  Now, take the remaining digits of pi, and basically draw a menorah under them.  You then put them together in pairs, flip 'em around, and add 'em together.  I really don't want to go into all of how he does that, because my cortical neurons are already whimpering for mercy, so you'll just have to either watch the video or else just accept on faith that somehow all of the numbers and flipped numbers and all add up to 352.  Then, you add that to the 2 and 6 from the trident bit, and you get 360, which is the number of degrees in a circle.  Get it?  Circle?  Pi?  Are you blown away?  (Okay, he left out the 9.  But still.)

9)  If you multiply the first through eighth digits of pi, you get 6,480.  If you multiply the eighth through the thirteenth digits, you get 32,400.  Subtract them, and you get 25,920, which he says is the number of years for the precession of the Earth's axis to complete one rotation.  Except that according to the Cornell University Astronomy Department's webpage on the precession of the Earth's axis, the length of the precession of the Earth is said to be "about 26,000 years" -- the imprecision being because a motion that slow is almost impossible to measure accurately.  But I think we call all agree that since we're using gematria as our jumping-off point, being off by eighty years or so is plenty accurate enough.

10)  Of course, like any good performer, he saves his most amazing bit for the end, wherein we find out that the first thirteen digits of pi add up to 61, which you will recall is the number of "The Holy Spirit."  So pi "encodes" (his word) The Holy Spirit and the precession of the equinoxes.

11)  Therefore god.  Q.E.D.


Well, I  hope you've enjoyed our little ramble through woo-woo arithmetic.  Me, I'm planning on watching some of Leeds' other videos when I have the time (two especially fascinating-sounding ones are "The Isis and Osiris Myth" and "The Holy 108").  However, I think next time I won't launch into this without something to insulate my poor brain against further damage.  I'm thinking that a double scotch might do the trick.