Woof

I was discussing the alleged phenomenon of hauntings with one of my students, and he said, "There's one thing I don't understand.  Some people believe that the souls of humans can survive after death, and become ghosts.  If humans can become ghosts, why can't other animals?"

Well, after pointing out the obvious problem that I'm not really the right person to state with authority what a soul, human or otherwise, could or could not do, I mentioned that there are many cases of supposed hauntings by animals.  The most famous of these is the haunting of Ballechin House in Scotland.

Ballechin House prior to its demolition [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Ballechin House was a beautiful manor house, built in 1806 near Grandtully, Perthshire, Scotland, on a site that had been owned by the Stuart (or Stewart or Steuart or Steward, they seemed to spell it a new way every time the mood took them) family since the 15th century.  The story goes that a scion of this family (sources seem to point to his being the son of the man who had the house built), one Major Robert Steuart, was a bit of a wacko who had more affection for his dogs than he did for his family.  That said, he provided quarters for his sister Isabella, who was a nun -- I'm not sure why she wasn't living with her fellow sisters in a convent, but some claim that it was because she'd had an illegitimate child and gotten herself, um... de-habited?  Anyhow, she lived with them for a time, finally dying and being buried on the property.  As for Major Steuart, he apparently took enough time away from his dogs to marry and have at least one child, John.

As the Major got older, he got more and more peculiar, and finally started claiming that after he died he was going to be reincarnated as a dog.  One runs into these ideas pretty frequently today, but back then, it must have been a sore shock to his nearest and dearest.  So this partly explains why when the Major did go to that Big Dog Kennel In The Sky, his son John rounded up all of the Major's dogs and shot them.

I say "partly" because I fail to understand how, even if you believed that the Major was going to be reincarnated as a dog, killing dogs that were currently alive and therefore presumably none of whom were actually the Major would help.  But that's what he did.

And boy was he sorry.

Almost immediately thereafter, John Steuart and his family and servants began to experience spooky stuff.  They heard doggy noises -- panting, wagging of tails, sniffing, and the really nasty slurping sounds dogs make when they are conducting intimate personal hygiene.  (Okay, I'm assuming that they heard that last sound.  I certainly hear it enough from my own dogs.)  Steuart's wife several times felt herself being pushed by a wet doggy nose, and reported being in a room and suddenly being overpowered by a strong doggy smell.

Other apparitions began -- the sighting of a ghostly nun, all dressed in gray, in the garden; doors that would open and close by themselves; and the sound of limping footsteps (the Major apparently walked with a limp).  John Steuart himself was not long to worry about them, because he was killed in an accident, supposedly the day after hearing a knocking sound on the wall.  (Maybe it was a coded message from the Major that meant, "The dogs and I can't wait to see you!")

In the 1890s the hauntings were investigated on the urging of a certain Lord Bute -- I can't figure out whether by that time Bute was the owner of the house, or just a busybody.  Thirty-five psychics descended upon the house, which created such a cosmic convergence of woo-wooness that you just know something was gonna happen.  And it did.  A Ouija board spelled out "Ishbel" (recall that Major Steuart's sister who was a sister was named Isabella, and recall also that this entire family seemed to have difficulty with spelling their own names).  The psychics experienced various doggy phenomena; one of the psychics, who had brought her own dog along, reported that one evening her dog began to whimper, and she looked over, and there were two disembodied dog paws resting on the bedside table.  (I'd whimper, too.)

In the interest of honesty, it must be recorded that the house was let several times during this period, once to a Colonel Taylor who belonged to the Society for Psychical Research. Taylor's diary records, with some disappointment, that he slept in the Major's bedroom on more than one occasion, and experienced nothing out of the ordinary.  The Society itself is dedicated to researching psychic phenomena through a skeptical and scientific lens, so maybe that was enough to frighten all the spirits off.

Be that as it may, Ballechin House acquired the reputation of being "the most haunted house in Scotland," and by the 1920s became impossible to rent.  It fell into increasing disrepair, and finally was torn down in 1963.  I think this is a little sad -- I'd have loved to visit it.  I might even have brought my dogs. Of course, I'm not sure how useful they'd be in the case of a haunting, even if the ghosts were other dogs.  Grendel is, to put not too fine a point on it, a great big wuss, and if disembodied doggy paws ended up on the bedside table in the middle of the night, he'd be under the covers with me in a flash.  My coonhound Lena, on the other hand -- and I mean this with the utmost affection -- has the IQ of a loaf of bread.  By the time her sensory organs sent the message "Ghost!" to her tiny, candy-corn-sized brain via Pony Express, the spirit would probably have given up and found something smarter to haunt, such as a house plant.

In any case, if you are to take the Ballechin House situation as a representative sample, most believers in Survival seem to think that dogs have an eternal soul.  However, this opens up a troubling question.  Why stop there?  If dogs have an eternal soul, do cats?  (Most of the cats I've met seem to be cases more of demonic possession, frankly.)  How about bunnies?  Or weasels?  Or worms?  Or Japanese beetles?  (I'd be willing to believe that if there are gardens in hell, there'll be Japanese beetles there to eat the roses.)  I find this a worrisome slippery slope.  It may be a cheering thought that something of Woofy's nature will survive his demise, even if he terrorizes the guests with "sudden overpowering doggy smell," but I'm not sure I want to be stung by ghostly yellowjackets, or have to spray my plants for ghostly aphids.  The real kind are enough of a problem.

Post-Rapture checklist

For those of you who are, like me, evil, sinful unbelievers who are doomed to the fiery furnace for all eternity, I have some good news:

A Michigan pastor has created a checklist of all the things we should do when we miss the Rapture.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Personally, I think this is pretty considerate of him.  After all, he's going to be long gone, floating up to heaven to sit forever in the Fields of Lilies, which sounds to me like a good way to have a serious attack of pollen allergy.  Be that as it may, Pastor Dave Williams, of Mount Hope Church in Lansing, Michigan, has provided us non-lily-sitters with some guidelines of what we should do when all of the holy people evaporate.

So, with no further ado:

1. Do not believe the explanations given by the secular media.

Well, most of the people of Pastor Williams's stripe already don't, so this one is a bit of a no-brainer.  The idea, apparently, is not to buy it when the mainstream media says the vanished folks have been "beamed to some interplanetary spaceship to be reprogrammed."  Which doesn't sound like something the mainstream media would claim, although in an extreme case like the Rapture, it's hard to know what they'd say.

2. Get rid of your cell phone.

I guess the government left behind is going to be made up of Not Nice People, and they might use your cell phone to track you.  Why they'd be after you, since you're one of the evil people who didn't get Raptured, I don't know.

3. Do not kill yourself. 

Which is good advice under most circumstances.

4. Repent immediately and make your peace with God.

I guess the message here is that it's not too late to reserve yourself a place amongst the lilies, even if you didn't get Raptured.  I have a hard time imagining myself changing my mind to the extent that I'll make up for all of my years of godlessness, but you never know what someone might do in extremis.  Guess I'll have to wait and see on that one.

5. Make sure you have a printed Bible.

Got that one covered.  Actually I have several -- different translations, mostly.  One of them is a bible given to me by my grandmother at my confirmation into the Catholic church, which I remember mostly because of the horrifying illustrations of the Maccabees getting various body parts lopped off.  The pictures were supposed to be edifying -- I think the message is, "Look how holy these people were, hanging on to their religion even when they were being gruesomely tortured" -- but the message I got from it was, "If anyone ever threatened to cut my hands off and rip my tongue out, I'd drop my religion like a hot potato."  Hell, I figure if under #4 above I can still make up for it, I'll be okay regardless.

6. Leave your home and get away from the cities, especially big cities.

A non-issue for me, since I live so far out in the sticks my nearest neighbors are cows.  I guess this makes sense, though, as based on Stephen King's The Stand, wherein a few survivors of the Superflu got stuck in Manhattan, and ended up having to walk in the dark through the Lincoln Tunnel which at the time was clogged with wrecked cars and decomposing bodies, a scene that still haunts my nightmares.

7. Pray to God to help you and give you strength.

Cf. #4 above.

8. Don't go to church.

The idea apparently is that any church you go to post-Rapture has some problems, given that they didn't get Raptured themselves.  Again, this one isn't a problem in my case.  If a bunch of the people on Earth suddenly vanished, I highly doubt the first thing I'd do is turn to my wife and say, "Hey, I know.  Let's take in a mass."

9. Get a small, self-powered radio.

That way you can keep abreast of further fun developments, such as the appearance of the Beast and the Rivers Running Red With The Blood Of Unbelievers.  Although you'd think you wouldn't need a radio to tell you all that.  It doesn't sound like something that would escape notice, frankly.

10. Keep praying for your loved ones who are unbelievers.

"Your prayers may be the key to seen your loved ones after this period of supreme agony is over," Pastor Williams tells us.  Which sounds good, at least the "seeing your loved ones" part, even though I'm not looking forward to the "supreme agony" part so much.

And last:

11. Leave copies of this list for as many people as you can.

At least by this post I am doing my part in that regard.

So there you have it.  A handy checklist for all of us damned folks to follow.  Me, I'm not losing any sleep over it, because people like Pastor Williams have been predicting the Rapture for decades, and here we all still are.  Also, I figure that since the evangelicals have gone all gaga over Donald Trump, maybe the Antichrist will be more my type in any case.

Egg wars and chosen candidates

Some days I really feel sorry for my Christian friends, who are (one and all), logical, thoughtful, and intelligent.

The reason I say this is that so many of the most visible spokespeople for Christianity appear to be, to put not too fine a point on it, complete loons, and that gives the impression that all Christians think that way.  It's as if you were trying to get a good handle on the stability, temperament, and brainpower of actors, and you were only allowed to look at Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, and Kim Kardashian.

This comes up because of a trio of stories, of increasing wackiness, that I ran into just in the last two days.

Let's start with the outcry by the Church of England and British Prime Minister Theresa May over the fact that a nationwide chocolate egg hunt, sponsored by Cadbury's, has been named the "Great British Egg Hunt" instead of last year's title, the "Easter Egg Trail."

"This marketing campaign … highlights the folly in airbrushing faith from Easter," said an official statement from the Church of England.  May concurred.  "I think what the National Trust is doing is frankly just ridiculous," May said in an interview with ITV News.  "Easter’s very important.  It’s important to me, it’s a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world."

Because Theresa May has nothing more pressing to worry about at the moment, apparently.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Okay, can we get one thing straight right from the get-go, here?  Neither the Easter egg nor the Easter Bunny is mentioned anywhere in the bible.  While the use of the egg as a symbol of rebirth (and thus resurrection) has been part of Christian practice for centuries, it almost certainly is originally of pagan origin.  German folklorist Jacob Grimm writes:

But if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara has the strongest claim to consideration...  The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in matter of bonfires.  Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate: I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people's amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences.

So what we have here is some hypersensitive types overreacting to an attempt to make a national event more inclusive, sort of like the coffee drinkers who got their knickers in a twist last December when Starbucks elected not to write "Jesus Jesus Jesus" all over their holiday-season paper cups.

And they call the liberals sensitive snowflakes.

Then we had conservative activists Don and Mary Colbert on the Jim Bakker Show, and they were asked about their support of Donald Trump.  Mary Colbert responded with a dire warning for all of us who dislike the Donald:

It’s not that Donald Trump is all that perfect of a guy.  We all know he’s not.  And we know that he’s not necessarily perfect in every way that we would like.  That’s not how God works.  He works through the ones he chooses.  We don’t choose them. 

All we have to do is recognize them and when you recognize a chosen one and you have the discernment to know that they’ve been chosen and know that that’s the will of God, then your life will be blessed.  And if you come against the chosen one of God, you are bringing upon you and your children and your children’s children curses like you have never seen.  It puts a holy fear in me.

Okay, just hang on a moment.

"We don't choose them?"  Um, yeah, actually we do.  It's called "having an election."

"Donald Trump is not all that perfect?"  We have a narcissistic, egomaniacal sociopath in the Oval Office, who appears to be very nearly amoral, who lies every damn time he opens his mouth, and who is a serial adulterer and likely sexual predator to boot, and you call that "not all that perfect?"  That's like saying that Joseph Stalin was "a bit of a control freak on occasion."

And last, if we don't support Trump, we are bringing curses on our "children and children's children?"  Look, lady, the closest I have to grandchildren at the moment is that one of my sons owns a pair of ferrets.  You're telling me that my prospective grandchildren, and probably my grandferrets as well, are cursed because I dislike Donald Trump?

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, Bakker himself said that by "blaspheming against Donald Trump," we're hastening the End Times.  Which, honestly, I can't say is a particular deterrent for me at the moment.  Considering the news lately, the Dragon With Seven Heads and Ten Crowns, the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, and the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons sound like a distinct improvement.

Last, no post about religious nutjobs would be complete without a contribution from Pat Robertson, who went on record this week as saying that he's tired of being "dominated by homosexuals."  After laughing for about ten minutes at the mental image this evoked, I went on to read Robertson's explanation of what he meant:

We have given the ground to a small minority.  You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population.  That’s all.  That’s statistically all.  But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities.  It’s just unbelievable what’s being done.  A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference.  The majority — it’s time it wakes up.

Oh, you poor, poor majority.  What is it that you're being deprived of?  The right to run Christian candidates for damn near every public office in the land?  The right to have your houses of worship in every village, town, and city?  The right to found your own universities?  The right to have "In God We Trust" on our currency and "One Nation, Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance?

In other words, the right to dominate every fucking sphere of influence in the entire country?

No, what Robertson and his ilk object to is that LGBT individuals are now demanding to be recognized as having rights, including the right to be free from discrimination.  That, apparently, is "domination" in Robertson's mind.

So anyway.  After that last one, I need to go have a cup of coffee and calm down for a while.

I must say, however, that I'm heartened by the fact that there are Christians who speak up about all of this nonsense.  I just wish they were louder, sometimes.  Or at least louder than people like Mary Colbert, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson.  But unfortunately, at the moment the loons are the ones who are getting all the press -- and they're the ones who will continue to be in the limelight until their followers say, "Okay, enough.  You're talking bullshit, and you need to shut up."

The power of ritual

Since leaving religion when I was in my early 30s, I've found that one thing I've kind of missed is taking part in a ritual.

It's not that I don't enjoy sleeping in on Sunday mornings, or that I miss the specific rituals I participated in while in church.  It's more that there's something comforting about being part of a group that is all doing the same thing, and for which membership in the group involves understanding the context of how the ritual works.

It's amazing how powerful this can be.  Other than my parents' funerals and the wedding of a friend, I haven't sat through a Catholic mass since I was about twenty.  Even so, I bet if I did decide to head on over to St. James Catholic Church next Sunday, I'd know exactly what to do when, and I probably could remember the order of mass, the words to the prayers, and even the lyrics for some of the hymns.

Old habits die hard.

All of this comes up because of a paper (currently in press) by Nicholas M. Hobson, Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton, and Michael Inzlicht called "When Novel Rituals Impact Intergroup Bias: Evidence from Economic Games and Neurophysiology" (the link is to a pre-release copy) that gives us an idea why rituals are so important -- and so ubiquitous in human cultures.

The researchers were trying to find out if getting people to do stereotypical and repetitive actions could alter their perception of belonging in a newly-formed group, and also whether those actions might cause them to change their behavior toward people who had not participated.  Here's an example of one of the rituals Hobson et al. came up with for their participants to perform:

1. Choose two different coins, either a dime, nickel, or quarter (but NOT a one or two dollar coin). It’s best if the two coins you select are different (for example, one a nickel and the other a dime). You will use these two coins throughout the duration of the experiment, over the course of the next week. It is important that you not lose them. Keep them in a safe spot and available. 
2. Get a cup or mug of some sort available. Fill it halfway with lukewarm water – being careful that the water isn’t is too hot or too cold. Gently submerge the two coins in the water. Place the cup down on a surface or on the floor in front of you. 
3. As the coins sit in water, close your eyes and take 5, slow, deep breaths. Afterward, bow your head and make a sweeping motion away holding the cup in your hands.
4. Next, gently remove the two coins from the water. Place the smaller coin in your NON dominant hand (left hand if you’re right handed) and the larger coin in your DOMINANT hand (right hand if you’re right-handed).
5. Hold your hands out in front of you, palms facing upwards so that the coins don’t fall. Lower your hands slowly down so that they become in line with your hips. Do this movement five times. Close your eyes and bow your head.
6. Next, keeping the coins in your hand, close your fingers around the coin, making a tight fist. Hold your fists in front of your chest and bring them together so that your knuckles and thumbs match up. Keeping them in this position, bring your arms straight up over your head. Do this movement five times. Close your eyes and bow your head. 
7. Keeping your fists as is, next bring your fists to either side of your head, so that the knuckles of each hand line up with your temples. Bring your fists together in front of your eyes. Do this movement five times. Close your eyes and bow your head.
8. Bring your fists back down in front of your body and open your hands so that your palms are facing upward with the coins resting. Bring both coins together into your DOMINANT hand. 
9. Finish off by closing your eyes and taking five, slow, deep breaths. As you do this bring your full attention, awareness, and focus on your conscious and unconscious mind. 
10. Lastly, return both coins back into the half-filled cup of water for a moment, and remove them. 

So kind of silly, but honestly, is it any odder than a lot of the rituals we participate in without any question?

So they got the "ritual group" to perform the steps at least three times a week.  Afterwards, they were mixed in with the "no-ritual group" -- people who had been given a task to estimate the number of dots in an image, rather than participating in the ritual.  They were then paired up and participated in a famous psychological experiment called the "Trust Game:"

If player 1 (sender role) sends player 2 (receiver role) all of their $10 endowment, this $10 amount becomes tripled upon being received by player 2 ($30).  In the second exchange (which did not actually occur, but participants were lead to believe that there was a second play), player 2 is then given the option to reciprocate the offer and send any amount of the $30 back to Player 1.  A perfectly cooperative exchange would be player 1 fully trusting player 2 (sending entire $10) to fairly reciprocate the offer (signaling their trustworthiness) by splitting the $30, $15 to each player.  Participants understood that in order to gain more than their original endowment, they would need to trust player 2 with a certain amount; the more money sent to player 2, the higher this individual payout, but the greater the risk of the endowment being lost.

And what happened is that people who had participated in the ritual trusted other members of the ritual group more than they did members of the non-ritual group!

What I find most interesting about this is the fact that the ritual the people were performing was pointless and absurd, and the participants knew it was meaningless -- and yet it still impacted their behavior.  How much more of an effect does this have when the rituals are perceived as meaningful?  Or not just meaningful, but essential for the salvation of a person's soul?

And how might this not only affect our interactions with other members of the ingroup, but how we treat people in the outgroup?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What all of this indicates is that however modern we perceive ourselves to be, our brains still function in the context of tribalism.  And while this has the beneficial effects of increasing group trust and coherence, it makes us prey to the worst of what humanity can do -- mistreatment and mistrust of those who we see as different.  As Hobson et al. put it:

Cultural stabilization of ritual began in human evolution when fast-growing groups began to experience elevated intergroup competition, necessitating ingroup cooperation...   In line with these theoretical claims, the current results partially support the claim that rituals offer a strategy for the regulation of ingroup behavior – but at a detriment to the outgroup.

Which makes me wonder if my missing the rituals I participated in might have a more deep-seated source than I realized.  Almost makes me want to go genuflect in front of a statue of a saint, or something.

The post-truth world

The Oxford Dictionary word of the year for 2016 was "post-truth."

The OED defines "post-truth" as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief."  So here we are using the prefix "post" not to mean "following in time sequence" but "after the point where it becomes irrelevant."

The fact that this term was even coined is unsettling.  Have we really come to a place where demonstrable truth is less important than belief?  Where Daniel Patrick Moynihan's trenchant quip, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts" is not argued against so much as it is ignored into nonexistence?

Unfortunately, the answer to both of these questions appears to be "yes."  This is the alarming conclusion of research done by University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, of the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering, who decided to study how people use social networks to respond to disasters and ended up uncovering something deeply disturbing about our society.

Starbird's research started after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013.  She was sifting through tweets that followed the attack, and noticed that there were the expected calls for help and outcries by worried family members about the safety of their loved ones, but there was something else, something considerably darker.

"There was a significant volume of social-media traffic that blamed the Navy SEALs for the bombing," Starbird said, in an interview with Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times.  "It was real tinfoil-hat stuff.  So we ignored it."

She began to realize her error when she did the same sort of analysis of subsequent disasters.  "After every mass shooting, dozens of them, there would be these strange clusters of activity," Starbird said.  "It was so fringe we kind of laughed at it...  That was a terrible mistake.  We should have been studying it."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So she threw herself into a study of the networks on the internet that involve conspiracy theorists and conspiracy websites -- InfoWars, Before It's News, NewsBusters, NoDisinfo, the misleadingly-named Veterans Today, and hundreds of others.  And what she found was horrifying; these interconnected webs of misinformation and bizarre speculation form a powerful force for spreading their message -- one that rivals the power of legitimate media.

"More people are dipping into this stuff than I had ever imagined," Starbird said, noting that InfoWars alone gets the same web traffic as the Chicago Tribune.

Interestingly, the websites she's studying don't follow any kind of definitive political alignment.  InfoWars, for example, is right-wing; The Free Thought Project is left-wing.  Instead, the unifying theme is anti-globalism and xenophobia, which can manifest irrespective of political leaning.

"To be antiglobalist often included being anti-mainstream media, anti-immigration, anti-science, anti-U.S. government, and anti-European Union," Starbird said.  And that can appeal to both sides of the political spectrum.

The most frightening thing of all is how insulated this network is from the truth.  Since there are now hundreds of these sites, the usual mantra -- cross-check your sources -- doesn't help you much.  "Your brain tells you ‘Hey, I got this from three different sources,’ " she said.  "But you don’t realize it all traces back to the same place, and might have even reached you via bots posing as real people.  If we think of this as a virus, I wouldn’t know how to vaccinate for it."

Which supports a contention I've had for years; once you've trained people to doubt facts, deluded them into thinking that the raw data has spin, you can convince them of anything.  After that, everything they look at is seen through the lens of suspicion, as if the information itself had an agenda, was trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

And I'm as at a loss as Starbird is about how to combat it.  Yes, teach critical thinking and media analysis in schools; yes, harp on comparing your sources to known reliable media before you tweet or post on Facebook.  But this spider's web of interconnected sites is remarkably well-insulated from attack.  Anyone who contradicts the party line is either a dupe or a shill; either they've "drunk the KoolAid" (to use the conspiracy theorists' favorite line) or they've actively sold out to the other side.

Once you've accepted that, there's no way out.

"I used to be a techno-utopian," Starbird told Westneat.  "Now I can’t believe that I’m sitting here talking to you about all this...  My fear is that we may be headed toward the menace of unreality — which is that nobody believes anything anymore... Alex Jones is a kind of prophet.  There really is an information war for your mind.

"And we’re losing it."

I've got your number

An inevitable side-effect of writing six times a week here at Skeptophilia is that I get some weird gifts sometimes.

This explains why I am the proud owner of:

• a cardboard-cutout Bigfoot that you can dress up with various stickers (he's currently wearing a kilt and a jaunty-looking tam-o'shanter)
• a very creepy-looking ritual mask from the Ivory Coast
• a book entitled UFOs: How to See Them
• a deck of steampunk Tarot cards
• a drawing of a scowling alien with a speech bubble saying "Nonbelievers Will Be Vaporized"
• a car air freshener shaped like a Sasquatch (fortunately, it doesn't smell like one)
• the poster made famous from Fox Mulder's office, with a UFO and the caption "I Want To Believe"

The latest addition to my collection comes to me from someone who is not only a loyal reader of Skeptophilia but is one of my best buds -- writer and blogger Andrew Butters (who writes over at Potato Chip Math, an awesome blog you should all check out on a regular basis).  Recently I got a package from Andrew, and when I opened it up, it turned out to be a book called...

... Mysteries and Secrets of Numerology.

This book, by Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, is a complete analysis of the practice of numerology across the world, as viewed through the critical lens of believing every bit of it without question.  I checked out how it has fared on Amazon, and found that it has thus far received two reviews:

1: This book is full of wonderful information regarding numerology.  I got a copy from the library, but I will be buying my own to keep as a reference for numerology and sacred geometry.  Well Done!

... and:

2: Fine. This purchase was for some research I was doing and I came away amazed that anyone can take this entire subject matter area seriously.  The book drones on forever and that makes it great bedtime reading. 

Yes, I did work the examples on my own set of numbers as well as those other family members and it didn't help me understand them any better than I did before.  They're still boring.  I put this book in the same category as those purporting to provide proof of alien abductions happening every day, all over planet earth.  If you really must find something in which to believe to give your life purpose, or help you amaze your friends, this book is for you.

So it's gotten a fairly mixed reception so far.  

Undeterred by the second review, I read through it.  I will admit that I skimmed past the parts of it where the authors calculate numerological values for everyone from Hippocrates to Alexander Graham Bell.  (I did note that the authors concluded that the "dark side of his numerological 1" for the famous British murderer Hawley Crippen "may have been what drove him to the rash and impetuous murder" of his second wife, Cora.  Which seems like a stretch, as from pure statistics one out of every nine people on Earth are "numerological 1s," and as far as I can tell, very few of them murder their second wives.)

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The last section was the most interesting, however.  We're told therein that because all sorts of factors can contribute to a person acting a particular way, or an action having a particular outcome, there's no reason not to believe that "numbers can exert invisible and unsuspected influences just as powerful."  We're then instructed that we should all pay more attention to the numbers in our lives, and especially look for the good influences of the numbers 1 (which, I note, didn't help Crippen much), 3, 6, 7, and 9.  Only in the second-to-last paragraph do the Fanthorpes bring up the central problem with the whole thing: "These attempts to use numbers as influences to attract good things and to protect against negative things are very interesting, but are open to the question of whether -- when they seem to work -- they are actually self-fulfilling prophecies."

Well, yeah.  The whole book is basically Confirmation Bias "R" Us.

So I'm sure you're all dying to know what my number is.  The book gives detailed instructions on how to calculate your number, although it does say there are different ways of doing so.  "Therefore," the authors write, "two equally well-qualified and experienced numerologists working with slightly different systems could reach very different conclusions."  (Which to me, is just a fancy way of saying, "this is bullshit.")

I used what they say the "simplest way" is -- writing out the English alphabet underneath the numbers 1-9, starting with A=1, B=2, and so on; after you reach I=9, you start over with J=1.  Following this protocol, my whole name adds up to 76.  You're then supposed to add the digits (giving 13) and then add those (giving a final answer of 4).

So my number apparently is 4, which unfortunately is not one of the "auspicious numbers" mentioned above.  Four, apparently, means "a foundation, the implementation of order, a struggle against limits, and steady growth."

I suppose it could be worse.

In any case, I'm not going to lose any sleep over the fact that I didn't get "9" (the number of "immense creativity").  Nor am I going to do what the authors say some folks have done, which is change their name to one that has a better number.

It might be worth getting a second opinion, however.  Maybe I should see what the "steampunk Tarot cards" have to say on the matter.  That should be illuminating.

The bear facts

New from the Wishful Thinking Department, we have a woman in Newfoundland who snapped a photograph of what she says is a polar bear praying.

"When I saw it and started taking pictures, I was blown away," says Jessica Andrews, who owns Ocean View Photography.  "I didn't realize I'd taken the picture until I started going through them...  When I edited them, I saw after that he was by the cross.  This is the one that people were commenting on and saying that, 'He's praying,'"

The story and the photo have been shared tens of thousands of times on social media, mostly by people who think that the bear has found Jesus or something.

Without further ado, let's take a look at the photograph in question:

Here's a smattering of responses I've seen since the story first hit:

• The animals are smarter than us, sometimes.  They have more faith in God than we do.
• This gives you a look at what it'd be like if Man had never fallen.  Can you imagine the paradise on earth we'd have?
• Looking toward his Creator.  Like we all should do.
• Stop right now and kneel down and give thanks.  If the wild beasts can do it, so can you.
• This little bear knows how to praise Jesus!

Okay, all piety and good intentions aside, can we just establish a couple of things, here?

This is a polar bear.  It is not praying, it is not the tame denizen of "paradise on earth," and it is not giving thanks.  Just because someone captured it in what looks like a kneeling position does not mean that it has "faith in god."

And, for fuck's sake, it is not a "little bear praising Jesus."  This is a huge and dangerous animal that is a member of one of the few species on Earth that will actively stalk, attack, and kill humans for food.  In the next shot Andrews took -- which you can see posted on the link provided above -- the bear has turned and is looking right at her with an expression that seems to say, "Hmm.  She looks kind of tasty."

So maybe before, the bear was saying Grace Before Meals.  I dunno.

I am certainly understanding of our desire to extract inspiration from the natural world.  Hell, I'm a biology teacher; I'm immersed on a daily basis in the amazing, wonderful world of living things that we share the planet with.  But my awe is tempered by a very certain knowledge that the other species around us are, by and large, completely indifferent to us, our social and cultural conventions, and so on.  Any time we impress upon non-human species some sort of human intention -- courage and majesty in a howling wolf, freedom in an eagle, sneakiness and cunning in a weasel, and so on -- we're on seriously shaky ground.  Whatever sort of emotional state other species exist in, it is almost certain to be pretty different than anything we experience.

Myself, I'd rather learn as much as I can about the living things around me, and experience the wonder and complexity of the Earth through actual knowledge and understanding than to settle for imposing my flawed human interpretations on what the animals around me are doing.  It's more honest, and in the long run, it is way cooler.

On the other hand, I'm absolutely convinced that my dog understood every word I was saying this morning when I explained to him why I wasn't going to give him a second bowl full of dog chow.  So I guess it's all a matter of what you choose to accept.