Naveena Shine and the revision of worldviews

Being a woo-woo apparently means never having to admit that you're wrong.

Regular readers of Skeptophilia will undoubtedly remember my post last month about "Naveena Shine," a Seattle guru who wanted to demonstrate to the world that it was possible to live on nothing but sunlight and water.  Shine, who is evidently under the impression that she is a house plant, finally discontinued her month-long fast last week after losing 33 pounds.

But did Shine do what any sensible person would do in this situation, namely, to say, "Wow, I guess I was wrong!  Humans do need food after all!  What a goober I was!"?

Of course she didn't.  Oh, she starts out sounding uncertain enough.  Shine wrote on her Facebook page:

After 47 days [actually, the post was written after 44 days] I still feel really good, weight loss is slowing and all seems well.  However, I still have no evidence that I am actually living on light and it could well be slow starvation.  Now that I am ending the experiment I will never know.

But soon afterwards, she turns positively militant:

A doctor can't see living on light because he looks through different lenses...  From the feedback I am getting, it is becoming patently clear that most of the world is by no means ready to receive the information I am attempting to produce.  Even if it were true that a person can 'live on light' and I were successful in demonstrating that, I see that it would be synonymous with putting a non-driver behind the wheel of a huge truck.  It would be an accident in the making.

About her decision to end her fast, she says:

There are many, many complex reasons for ending this experiment...  I received a simple message from the universe that it is time to stop.  Because I'm closing it doesn't mean to say there's any failure here.  I'm looking healthy, I feel healthy, bouncing with energy, none of those dire predictions that people were saying were going to happen happened.

No, obviously everything is completely A-OK with you!  Losing 33 pounds in four weeks is perfectly normal!

So, this ended the way all of us thought it would; she finally realized that she couldn't go through with it.

What always interests me in these sorts of situations whether the person in question actually knows that what (s)he is saying is false -- i.e., whether (s)he is lying or simply delusional.  I wonder the same thing about "Psychic Sally Morgan" who, appallingly, just won a £125,000 libel case in England against The Sun, who had called her out for receiving information at a "psychic reading" through a headset.  "I got lots of loving care from my family and fans and that’s the only thing that got me through," Morgan said in an interview with the very paper she sued, excerpted in an article that was just published two days ago.  "Now, when I look back at how I felt, I think it wasn’t such a bad thing. I have even more empathy for the people I give readings to now. I really feel like I’m one of them."

 There is, apparently, a fairly thin line between belief, self-delusion, and outright charlatanism, and it can be awfully difficult to tell the difference between them.

What bothers me about all of these sorts of beliefs is how difficult they are to challenge.  In science, it's a case of The Best Model Wins; if your theory fits the available evidence better than mine does, mine simply has to be scrapped.  I may not be happy about it, but that's the way it goes. 

Here, though, there's always an argument, always a rationalization, always a way around admitting that you're simply deluding yourself and your followers.  Naveena Shine gets ample evidence that she can't live on light and water?  It's not that she's wrong; the doctors who advised her to give up and have a cheeseburger are "looking through lenses."  It's the fault of the unenlightened masses who aren't "ready to receive the information she is attempting to produce."  Tell Sally Morgan that she is a skilled cold reader who is defrauding her fans?  She sues you for libel.  Anything but revise their worldviews; anything but publicly admit that what they are claiming is simply false.

In the case of Shine, the damage is minimal.  Almost no one took her seriously, even at the beginning.  In the case of other woo-woo claims -- psychics, mediums, homeopaths, astrologers -- the cost, both literally and figuratively, is far higher.  These people take your money and give you nothing in return (especially the homeopaths!).

And if you challenge them, you can be sure of one thing; they will never, ever admit that they were wrong.

Footprints, skulls, real estate, and musical theater

My prognostication earlier this year that Melba Ketchum's failure to demonstrate that she had a sample of Bigfoot DNA would be an end to squatchery was apparently wildly wrong.

Ketchum's embarrassment of a scholarly paper, and her subsequent meltdown, evidently discouraged no one in the cryptozoological world, although it did generate a number of highly witty comments (my two favorites were "I guess she didn't Ketchum" and "Melba is toast").  But judging by four stories this week, the folks who believe that our hairy cousins populate the remote areas of the world are still undaunted.

First, we have a report from Malaysia that a set of 200 footprints belonging to a Southeast Asian Sasquatch were reported from the village of Kampung Kepis Baru.

Now, my first thought was: I was just in Malaysia last August, and the Bigfoot waits until now to show up?  There I was, chasing birds, and I could have been chasing proto-hominins.  Best of all, it would have been chasing proto-hominins in the tropics, which is definitely preferable to freezing my ass off in the Himalayas.  But sometimes you don't get this kind of break, however richly you deserve it.

Be that as it may, the guy who discovered the footprints, a rubber plantation owner named Adnis Pungut, took the following photograph:

So, my next thought was: really?  That's your evidence?  Couple that with the following quote from the article:

The footprints were all the same size and according to reports from Pungut based on the prints it could be assumed the creature who made them had two legs and weighed more then [sic] 100kg or about 220lbs.

220 pounds?  Wow, that is one impressive creature.  I can't think of anything that could be an upright, bipedal creature that weighs 220 pounds except for a Malaysian Bigfoot.  Unless, possibly, it could be an overweight American tourist wearing flip-flops.


Next, we have a real estate company called Estately, Inc., which has compiled a list of the best and worst states for Sasquatch to live.  Unsurprising that Washington comes first, especially given that Olympia Beer Company is offering a million-dollar reward for anyone who captures a Bigfoot alive.  This is followed by Oregon and California, but the fourth state is kind of mystifying.

Ohio?

Apparently, according to the article, Bigfoot has been sighted in Ohio 234 times, making it rank fourth.  Who knew?

If you're interested, Florida came in dead last, probably because of the general "if it moves, shoot it" attitude of a significant percentage of Floridians.

But I do have a question about all of this.  What earthly purpose can a real estate company have for compiling such a list?  Is it trying to attract cryptozoologists?  It seems like kind of a small target audience.  Selling real estate to Sasquatch himself also seems to me to be a losing proposition.  So however you cut it, it's kind of bizarre.


But not nearly as bizarre as our third story, which comes out of Ogden, Utah, where a retired private detective named Todd May claims to have found a fossilized Bigfoot skull.  May apparently has had Bigfoot sightings while hiking many times, according to the article:

May says he found the item about six weeks ago near the mouth of Ogden Canyon while he was on a dig looking for fossils. He said he was sort of drawn to something he could see sticking out of the ground and it seemed like just a rock but he went ahead and began to dig it out. He said at first he couldn’t tell exactly what it was because it was face down but once he got it completely dug out he could see the face perfectly. May believes this 70 lb object that he has recovered is a fossilized Bigfoot skull and says he has also had Bigfoot sightings in the same area on multiple occasions.

So, without further ado, here's a picture of May with his prize:

Um, Mr. May?  I hate to break it to you, but that is not a Bigfoot skull.  That is a rock.  I have to admit that it looks like a very sad rock, but it is a rock nonetheless.  You can now join Melba Ketchum in the "Sorry, I Don't Think So" department.


Our last story, though, is an encouraging one.  Just because the evidence for Bigfoot is pretty much nonexistent doesn't mean that he can't have his very own musical.

Yes, folks, Sasquatched: The Musical opens on July 9 at the New York Musical Theater Festival.  Billed as a heartwarming story about "about a Sasquatch named Arthur who gets lost in Columbia National Park and befriends a young boy named Sam," the play tells the tale of how they "encounter oddball locals, dodge a TV crew on the hunt for Bigfoot, and bust out into songs to help move the story along."

The songs include "Shake the Camera and Run" and "Eight Feet Tall and He Smelled Like a Skunk." And, for the record, I didn't make either of these titles up.   Arthur the Sasquatch does have some solos, but according to playwright Phil Darg, they are "dignified" and "not really show tunes."

I know I'm relieved about that.  This sounds like it's all about dignity.

So, anyway, that's the news from the world of cryptozoology.  And I thought squatching was a dying pastime.  Little I knew.  Apparently there are plenty of Sasquatch enthusiasts out there, still misinterpreting evidence, hyping Bigfoot for publicity, and writing musicals.  And I guess if it keeps you entertained, there's nothing wrong with it, as long as you don't have a Melba-style freakout if people laugh at you.

Water-tight compartments in the brain

Today's topic is compartmentalization, a psychological phenomenon that is defined thus:

Compartmentalization is an unconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person's having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. within themselves.

Compartmentalization allows these conflicting ideas to co-exist by inhibiting direct or explicit acknowledgement and interaction between separate compartmentalized self states.  [Source]

While I'm sure that we all engage in this defense mechanism to one extent or another, in more extreme cases it does result in stances that (from the outside) look completely ludicrous.  It explains, for example, two of my former students, both brilliantly successful in my AP Biology class, both of whom were Young-Earth Creationists.  One of them, when I asked how she could accept the rest of science and reject evolutionary biology, answered -- without any apparent rancor -- that the rest of science was just fine, and she believed it to be true, but when science and Christianity conflict then the science has to be wrong, because she knew that the bible is true.  The other student seemed more conflicted about the whole thing, but ended up with basically the same solution.

One of these students, by the way, is now a medical doctor, and the other an environmental lawyer.

The whole subject of compartmentalization is on my mind today because of something that President Obama said this week with regard to climate change.  In a speech given at Georgetown University (excerpted and reviewed here), Obama stated that the United States needs to develop and implement a comprehensive plan to manage anthropogenic climate change, and outlined steps that he believes would accomplish what needs to be done.  About climate change deniers, he had the following to say: "I am willing to work with anybody…to combat this threat on behalf of our kids.  But I don't have much patience for anybody who argues the problem is not real.  We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat-Earth Society.  Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm."

Which is a pretty good line... but, unfortunately, generated a response from the Daniel Shenton, president of the Flat-Earth Society, who said that actually, he believes in anthropogenic climate change.

"I accept that climate change is a process which has been ongoing since beginning of detectable history, but there seems to be a definite correlation between the recent increase in world-wide temperatures and man’s entry into the industrial age," Shenton said, in an email to Salon.  "If it’s a coincidence, it’s quite a remarkable one. We may have experienced a temperature increase even without our use of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, but I doubt it would be as dramatic as what we’re seeing now."

To which I can only respond: but you think the Earth is flat?  What the hell?

I mean, I've seen compartmentalized brains before, but Shenton may win the prize.

Not only does Shenton believe that the Earth is flat, but he believes that:

1)  Photographs from satellites are "digitally manipulated."  Why scientists are so desperate to convince people that the Earth is a sphere isn't certain, but they sure seem determined.  They're an evil bunch, those scientists.

2) The view of the Earth from space by the astronauts is explained by the fact that the space program is a lie, neatly tying up this nonsense with the Moon-landing-is-faked conspiracy theory nonsense.

3)  The seasons are caused because the Sun moves in circles over the North Pole (the center of the disk) and "shines down like a spotlight."  (Hey, don't yell at me.  I don't believe this stuff, I'm just telling you about it.)

4)  The Earth's gravity is created because the flat disk of the Earth is accelerating upwards at 9.8 m/s^2.  This acceleration, while it would create an apparent gravitational pull (consistent with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity), has as its cause a mysterious "aetheric wind."  Put a different way, they are making shit up.

 

Oh, but the rest of science is just fine, and we have no problem with accepting anthropogenic climate change.

I wish I was joking, here.  But these people, hard though this may be to believe, are completely serious.

The problem is, once you have your brain this compartmentalized, you become impossible to argue with.  Just like my long-ago student, anything that brings up an internal contradiction or logical flaw is immediately dismissed as simply wrong.  It's like the old joke, strikingly relevant here, about the man who thought that the Earth was a flat disk resting on the back of a giant turtle.

"What is the turtle standing on?" asked a friend.

"Another turtle," the man said.

"But what is that turtle standing on?" the friend persisted.

The man smiled.  "You can't catch me that way," he said.  "It's turtles all the way down."

I live in hope that one day, the water-tight compartments will begin to leak -- and that the resulting cognitive dissonance will require these folks to reevaluate their position.  But unfortunately, rationalism doesn't always win -- not with evolution, not with climate change, and not even with the Earth being an oblate spheroid.

Spinning statues and rational explanations

Sometimes I run into the objection that my acceptance of rationalism is as much of a faith-based statement as anyone's declaration of belief in a religion.

In one sense, this is true.  I have concluded that the world is explainable through rational means not by any rational argument.  The only way that would work is if you've already accepted that rational arguments lead to the truth, tying you up in a neat little bit of circular reasoning.  On the other hand, we rationalists do have one thing going for us; scientific rationalism has a pretty good track record of making accurate predictions about how the world works.  Say whatever else you like about it, science certainly does provide consistent explanations that line up well with whatever evidence we have.  As Tim Minchin put it, "Out of all of the great mysteries ever solved, none of them have ever turned out to be magic."

It's telling, I think, that even the most diehard religious folks accept most of science's conclusions and technology's innovations -- except the specific few that happen to contradict their religious convictions.  Interesting, isn't it, that the scientific method can lead to right answers in the case of airplanes, computers, and modern medicine, and wildly wrong ones when it comes to, for example, evolution?

In any case, my main argument for rationalism is: it seems to work.  This is why, when I am presented with a mystery, I immediately jump to one conclusion -- there has to be a rational explanation.  I may not know what it is; I might never figure it out.  But I am certain that there is a reasonable, scientific explanation for what we're seeing.

Take, for instance, the case of the spinning Egyptian relic.  

Here's how the story was reported in the Manchester Evening News:

An ancient Egyptian statue has spooked museum bosses – after it mysteriously started to spin round in a display case.

The 10-inch tall relic, which dates back to 1800 BC, was found in a mummy’s tomb and has been at the Manchester Museum for 80 years.

But in recent weeks, curators have been left scratching their heads after they kept finding it facing the wrong way.  Experts decided to monitor the room on time-lapse video and were astonished to see it clearly show the statuette spinning 180 degrees – with nobody going near it.

The statue of a man named Neb-Senu is seen to remain still at night but slowly rotate round during the day.

Now scientists are trying to explain the phenomenon, with TV boffin Brian Cox among the experts being consulted.

Scientists who explored the Egyptian tombs in the 1920s were popularly believed to be struck by a ‘curse of the Pharaohs’ – and Campbell Price, a curator at the museum on Oxford Road, said he believes there may be a spiritual explanation to the spinning statue.

Egyptologist Mr Price, 29, said: “I noticed one day that it had turned around. I thought it was strange because it is in a case and I am the only one who has a key.

“I put it back but then the next day it had moved again. We set up a time-lapse video and, although the naked eye can’t see it, you can clearly see it rotate on the film. The statuette is something that used to go in the tomb along with the mummy.

“Mourners would lay offerings at its feet. The hieroglyphics on the back ask for ‘bread, beer and beef’.

“In Ancient Egypt they believed that if the mummy is destroyed then the statuette can act as an alternative vessel for the spirit. Maybe that is what is causing the movement.”

Oh, come on.

First of all, if this is a curse, it's a pretty pathetic one.  Can't you see Neb-Senu, back almost 4,000 years ago, saying as he's on his deathbed, "If my statue ends up on a museum shelf in England, and no one brings me bread, beer, and beef, I hereby pronounce the following curse: my spirit will go there, and make the statue slowly turn round and round!  Ha!  That will sure show them!"

I mean, come on.  If this is some sort of "Mummy's Curse" kind of thing, you'd think he could do better than that.

Second, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for the statue's movement, which was outlined in some detail on the site Metabunk.  Here's a brief quote that sums up what's going on:

The statue is hard uneven stone, and the glass shelf is very hard and perfectly flat. When two hard substances are in contact with each other, then there's not much friction because there are limited points of contact. I suspect that the base of the statue is uneven, which allows it to tilt and pivot very slightly from the vertical vibration from people walking by. The shelf is very slightly tilted towards the front, so the statue rotates until the center of gravity is at the lowest point, and then it stops.

This, by the way, also explains why the statue only rotates during the day, and not at night -- when the museum is empty.

Now, am I certain that this is what is going on?  No, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than Campbell Price's conjecture that Neb-Senu's wandering ghost is slowly turning his statue around.  And the nifty thing about a scientific explanation is that it's testable.  The whole thing could be settled once and for all by putting a rubber mat between the statue and the shelf.  If the vibration theory is correct, the statue should stop moving -- whereas there's no reason to suspect that a rubber mat would foil a sufficiently determined ancient Egyptian ghost.  ("Dammit!  They brought out the rubber mat!  My curse is useless!  Useless, I tell you!  Now what will I do?")

So, my general feeling is: rationalism wins again.  But, of course, you knew I'd say that.

Saunas, health, and half-truths

One of the difficulties in identifying woo-woo claims is that they are seldom pure, unadulterated pseudoscience.

The reason for this is that most people have at least a rudimentary background in science.  A purely woo-woo claim -- for example, that a mystic can look in her crystal ball and see the future -- inevitably generates the question, "how on earth can you do that?"  Falling back on the old answer of "because I am a psychic who is in touch with the unseen world" will only convince people who already think psychic claims are valid.  You will convince more people, and therefore sell more of what you're peddling, if you can mix in some science-y words and half-truths, leaving people to have to tease apart the claim and figure out what is real and what is bogus.

All too often, it takes more scientific training than the average person has in order to do that.  Which, of course, is what the purveyor of said woo-woo claim is hoping.

I ran into an especially good example of that just yesterday, with this website advertising the "Photon Genius Energy Infrared Sauna."  Here's the pitch:

The Photon-Genius is a dynamic energy sauna that provides more direct and targeted harmonic energy infrared (including full spectrum) than any infrared sauna in the world.

This combination importantly helps the body produce more nitric oxide (NO), the "miracle molecule" which helps preserve the elasticity of all the vessels in the body, because it is a "signaling molecule" that tells the blood vessels to increase in width or dilate. This has significant implications, because optimal blood circulation is a key factor in virtually all health issues, including Heart Disease, Alzheimers, Diabetes, Cancer, Obesity, Arthritis, Anti-Aging, ect. [sic]

For many, the biggest news about the Photon-Genius is its application in the evolving science of detoxification. At home and in clinics, the Photon-Genius infrared sauna is said to yield many benefits--including relief from different kinds of pain; stimulation of immune response; improvement in skin tone and conditions such as burns, eczema and acne; and the accelerated burning calories. But the detox application is health news that can benefit everyone. 

The Photon-Genius promotes energetic balance and coherence. Fully functional coherence of the biofield is the new and most comprehensive definition of anti-aging therapy, born out of quantum physics. When quantum coherence is restored to the biofield, the healing power of the body is now known to be literally limitless, dwarfing the benefits of any mere biochemical manipulation.

Which seems like a good place to start.

First of all, all saunas are "infrared saunas."  Infrared radiation is given off by any hot object, and when absorbed, is converted into heat.  So adding the word "infrared" is kind of like calling a light bulb an "electromagnetic-radiation-producing incandescent light bulb."  It's true, but redundant.

In the trade, though, there is a distinction.  What differs between an "infrared sauna" and an ordinary one is that infrared saunas use some sort of infrared emitter, and an ordinary one uses heated stones to warm the air -- but the result is the same.  You get hot, and sweat a lot.

So, what about the claims that saunas are beneficial to health?

According to an article by Dr. Brent Bauer of the Mayo Clinic, the answer is yes, maybe:

Several studies have looked at using infrared saunas in the treatment of chronic health problems, such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure and rheumatoid arthritis, and found some evidence of benefit. However, larger and more-rigorous studies are needed to confirm these results.

On the other hand, no adverse effects have been reported with infrared saunas.

So that sounds good.

How about the whole nitric oxide thing?  The answer here appears to be that it's a half-truth:

In mammals including humans, NO is an important cellular signaling molecule involved in many physiological and pathological processes. It is a powerful vasodilator with a short half-life of a few seconds in the blood. Long-known pharmaceuticals such as nitroglycerine and amyl nitrite were discovered, more than a century after their first use in medicine, to be active through the mechanism of being precursors to nitric oxide.

Low levels of nitric oxide production are important in protecting organs such as the liver from ischemic damage.

So nitric oxide is a critical intercellular signal, and is an intermediary in a great many biological reaction mechanisms.  One interesting one is that being a vasodilator, if you get a boost of nitric oxide in the right place at the right time, it can trigger an erection -- this, in fact, is how Viagra works.

Whether that qualifies it as a "miracle molecule" is, I suppose, a matter of perspective.

As far as the connection between saunas, nitric oxide, and health, the answer (once again) is... maybe.  A study at Kagoshima University in Japan looked at the vasodilation effects of saunas in hamsters with cardiomyopathy, and found some positive effects.  Here's their conclusion:

Repeated sauna therapy increases eNOS [endothelial nitric oxide synthase] expression and NO production in cardiomyopathic hamsters with heart failure.

So if you have heart failure, a sauna might be helpful, especially if you're a hamster.  Virtually all of the other sources I found linking saunas, health, and nitric oxide were websites that were trying to sell saunas.

What about the claims that saunas aid in "detoxification?"  You hear that word a lot, especially on alt-med websites.  Particular herbs, foods, exercises, colon cleansing, or other practices help to "rid your body of toxins," as if your liver and kidneys aren't perfectly capable of dealing with whatever toxic metabolic byproducts your body creates.  Here's what the Skeptic's Dictionary has to say about detoxification:

Outside of being treated for poisoning or certain kinds of addiction, the word 'detox' has no meaning, according to a pamphlet published by a group of thirty-six people calling itself Sense About Science (SAS). (A summary of the group's findings may be found on their website.) There are thousands of products that use the claim of detoxification as their main selling point. SAS investigated 15 representative products and found that none of the products identified a single toxic substance as one their product removed, none of the manufacturers of the products could provide compelling scientific evidence that the product removes toxic substances, none of the sellers had a clue what the products actually do, and nobody involved in making or selling these detox products could provide a comprehensive definition of 'detox.'

So that one, predictably, is a bust.

Then, at the end, the claim rushes headlong into pure woo-woo nonsense.  "Restoring quantum coherence to the biofield," my ass.  I would like to sit down with whoever wrote this and ask if (s)he can define the term "quantum coherence" in a rigorous way, and to have him/her provide me with some evidence of the existence of a "biofield."

I'm guessing it would be a really short conversation.

Anyway, you get the idea.  In order to pull apart the strands of the sales pitch here would take hours of research -- it took me over an hour just to do the digging for the admittedly shallow analysis I've done here.   Some truth; some half-truth; some misleading facts; some complete, unadulterated bullshit.  Most people, frankly, don't have the time, energy, or training to evaluate critically a claim such as this one -- and when you couple that with a promise that the product is going to alleviate all manner of chronic health problems (this site claims that the "Photon Genius Energy Infrared Sauna" can help with everything from Alzheimer's to HIV), you have a recipe for people spending a lot of money for something with benefits that are, at best, unproven.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I like saunas, and find them relaxing.  A nice sit in a sauna after a hard workout is one of the most pleasant things I can think of, especially if it's the middle of winter.  And the positive health effects of relaxation are pretty clear.  (Although I draw the line at the behavior of a friend of mine, who likes to alternate baking in the sauna with rolling around naked in the snow.  "Let's make anatomically correct snow angels!", I remember him suggesting one time.  To which I responded: there are parts of my body I would rather not freeze off, thank you very much.)

But using bogus claims and half-truths to sell a product is unethical at best -- especially when it's framed in such a way as to make the layperson unable to tell if what they're reading is scientifically sound or not.

All hail Zeus

Richard Dawkins writes, "I have found an amusing strategy when asked whether I am an atheist is to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon-Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  I just go one god further."

I suspect he chose that particular list because it is composed of gods that no one currently believes in.  Even the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a modern creation, isn't (I hope) worshiped anywhere as an actual god.  Most people consider him more of a statement of rebellion, I would say.

I bring all this up because it appears that Dawkins may have to revise his strategy some.  Because a piece on NPR recently describes a movement gaining strength in Greece...

... to reinstitute worship of the Greek pantheon.

Yup, that's who I'm talking about -- Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite, and the rest.  And by "the rest," I'm talking about a crapload of gods.  The ancient Greeks had gods for just about everything.  There was Adephagia, the god of gluttony.  There was Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft.  There was Ceto, the goddess of sea monsters.  There was Mnemosyne, who was the goddess of memory who evidently doubled as the deity of unpronounceable letter combinations.  There was Lorna, the goddess in charge of making scrambled eggs for breakfast on Mount Olympus.

Okay, I made the last one up.

But don't think that I would have fooled Tryphon Olympios for a second.  Olympios, whose actual last name is Kostopoulos, is pretty serious about the whole Greek-god thing.  He is the founder of a movement called Ellinon Epistrofi (Return of the Hellenes), which has as its goal the abandonment of what he calls "Helleno-Christianity."  The Greek Orthodox Church, Olympios claims, has gained a stranglehold on Greek culture, and to be truly Greek you need to return to your roots.

Which, apparently, includes being rebaptized on Mount Olympus with an ancient-Greek-sounding name, and giving up Christianity for worshiping Zeus et al.

Now, to be fair, not all of the people who belong to Return of the Hellenes take it that literally.  Marina Tontis, a computer programmer who founded a philosophical group to discuss the new old religion, said in the NPR piece, "The difference between philosophy and religion is that philosophy is open to all ideas, and religion is based on dogma.  We support the investigation of our cultural background to find messages, good messages, to bring to today's world."

Which is pretty open-minded, I guess.

Still, there are people who are taking this pretty seriously.  The site Dodecatheon, which promotes a return to "the religion of the Twelve Gods," seems to consider the Greek pantheon to be real entities, a possibility that I'm not sure humans should be all that happy about.  For one thing, I've read a good bit of Greek mythology, and mostly what the gods seemed to do was either to have sex with mortals or else to smite them, or occasionally to have sex with them and then smite them.  So however much fun this must have been for the gods, their interaction with humanity didn't seem to work out in favor of humanity all that often.

So I'm not really in favor of the whole let's-worship-Zeus movement.  Despite my approval of these folks being proud of their heritage, the whole thing strikes me as a little... silly.  It's all well and good to revere an ideal, in the way that Americans tend to revere the concept of liberty; but when you start sacrificing sheep to Matton, the god of bread dough, you've gone too far.

And, for the record, I did not make that one up.

So, anyway, I'm not going to go to Mount Olympus and change my name to Hermes Apollyon any time soon.  Actually, if I was going to choose a pagan mythology, I'd go with the Norse gods over the Greek ones any day.  I was always particularly fond of Loki, who was a trickster god who was (to be honest) kind of a sonofabitch, but usually good for a laugh.  And you can't possibly find a cooler god than Odin, who had only one eye because he traded his other eye for wisdom, and who rode on an eight-legged horse with a raven on his shoulder.

Now that is badass.

Anyhow, that's the latest from the wacky side of religion.  I have to say that, as religions go, this one is pretty benign.  For one thing, Tryphon Olympios and his neo-Hellenist pals haven't said anything about going abroad to bring their Good News About Zeus to the unbelievers, which I think is a good move, and one that the Jehovah's Witnesses should take to heart.

The Buddhist jihad

I probably come across as hostile to religion, sometimes, and at the risk of being accused of he-doth-protest-too-much, it really isn't true.  In matters of belief, I am a strong advocate for following wherever your heart and mind leads, and far be it from me to try to push anyone in a direction they don't want to go -- provided they accord me the same right.

Still, I'm an atheist for a reason, and I must state for the record that mostly what I feel toward a lot of religious ideologies is incomprehension.  When I read about various gods and angels and demons and spirits and so on, mostly what my reaction is can be summed up as, "Why on earth do you think that's true?"  But again, if it floats your boat, and you don't feel the need to have congress pass laws mandating that everyone treat it as scientific fact, you certainly are free to believe what you like.  (I might, however, write a sardonic post about it, every so often.  Tolerance and ecumenism only gets you so far.)

In fact, I find it unendingly interesting what sorts of beliefs people gravitate towards.  With the exception of people whose beliefs are what they are simply because they were raised that way and have never considered anything else, I have noticed a general pattern; nice people tend to envision nice deities, and mean, narrow-minded people envision harsh, judgmental ones.  We tend to populate the spiritual world with beings that match our temperaments, all the way from Borne Up On the Wings of Angels to Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

All of which is a rather verbose way to introduce today's news story, which comes all the way from Myanmar.

Meet the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu.  You probably already have a picture in your mind, just from my identification of him as a "Buddhist monk" -- and likely that picture involves someone whose foremost characteristics are a love of peace, love, understanding, and detachment from the world.  Given that most of us have people like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh as our models, it's no wonder that we have this as our mental image of what the term means.

This image, however, is very far from the truth.  Wirathu is currently traveling around Myanmar, trying to stir up violent ethnic cleansing against the country's Muslim minority.  [Source]

"Muslims are like the African carp," Wirathu said, in an interview with reporters from Global Post.  "They breed quickly and they are very violent and they eat their own kind.  Even though they are minorities here, we are suffering under the burden they bring us...  Because the Burmese people and the Buddhists are devoured every day, the national religion needs to be protected."

His rhetoric may sound familiar, especially if you have read any of the speeches of Adolf Hitler.

He refers to Muslims as "mad dogs" and "cannibals," and advocates driving out of the country those Muslims who will not convert to Buddhism.  He has been a strong advocate of a "National Identity Law," which would mandate Buddhism as the official state religion for all citizens of Myanmar.  He has started a campaign called "969" (after the number of virtues of the Buddha) that encourages Buddhists only to do business with other Buddhists.

Now, let me say first that I am no apologist for Islam.  Muslims in the Middle East, Africa, and (increasingly) in Europe and North America have a lot to answer for, given the silence of their leaders in the face of terrorism, intolerance, and subjugation of women, minorities, and those who dissent.  But in Myanmar, Muslims only make up 4% of the population [Source] -- so this has much more of a flavor of oppressing a vilified minority than it does striking out against a group that has created legitimate problems.

Be that as it may, Wirathu's fire-and-brimstone speeches have stirred up the populace in a way that is all too familiar to students of history.  Recent riots have, according to estimates in Global Post, caused the deaths of 200 Muslim citizens of Myanmar, and displaced from their homes 150,000 others.

The irony of what amounts to a jihad against Muslims leaves me shaking my head in dismay.

It is appalling that Wirathu has corrupted the message of Buddhism in this way -- Buddhism has, for the most part, been the most tolerant and peace-loving of the world's major religions.  But it is, perhaps, unsurprising.  The fact that kind people spin religion in a kind fashion, and violent ones in a violent fashion, is universal -- and further evidence (in my opinion) that all of religion is a human invention.  We live in the world we create, and Wirathu and his followers are determined to create a world out of hatred, intolerance, violence, and demonization of people who are different.

As author Ken Keyes put it: "A loving person lives in a loving world.  A hostile person lives in a hostile world.  Everyone you meet is your mirror."