Religion

by

“You really aren’t a heal” (Bogus healing)

alice

Pretend healers generally fall into one of three categories: the religious, those appealing to tradition, and those allegedly accessing cutting edge technology.

Oral Roberts employed faith healing while simultaneously raising funds for what would seem to be a superfluous hospital. It was a staple of revival tents, where the healers  could hightail it out of town before the long-term results were assessed. They are still regular features of Pentecostal congregations, where the lack of success is more obvious, but downplayed as being part of God’s will, which would seemingly make those appeals to deity unnecessary. Any seeming successes are highlighted in a ceaseless cycle of classical conditioning, magical thinking, communal reinforcement, and selective memory.

Faith healers made a smooth transition to the television era, as their shtick was a natural for this budding entertainment medium. But the Internet has been far less kind. Most YouTube videos on the subject are of healers being busted or having their tricks revealed. These exposés were more laborious in the old days since not anyone could just put a video product together. Still, there were successes. James Randi’s most public victory was his Tonight Show appearance when he exposed how Peter Popoff was using an earpiece and his accomplice wife to divinely determine the affliction of audience members. Popoff would declare them cured, telling them to throw away their hearing aid or assuring them that their bouts of internal bleeding were over.

While Popoff was a huckster, some faith healers genuinely believe in it, with terrifying results. Idaho is home to the Followers of Christ sect, whose members cruelly deny pain relief medication to their children and allow them to die in agony, all protected by the law.

The second category of pretend healers, the traditionalists, also have practices that can be deadly. This month, actress Xu Ting died from a cancer after using moxibustion and other Traditional Chinese Medicine in lieu of chemotherapy. The Beijing Evening News quoted a TCM proponent, who asked, “There are many cancer patients who still pass away after receiving chemotherapy. Does this mean it is also a sham?”

This is false equivalence, where a shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show they are equal. Here, the equivalence is false because chemotherapy has cured millions of cancer patients, moxibustion zero. Yes, it turns out that the burning of dried mugwort on a body does nothing to arrest rouge cell growth.

With moxibustion, mugwort is applied to corresponding meridians. As these are made up, they vary by practitioner. It would be like having a stethoscope placed on your chest, leg, or ear, depending on which physician you favor.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine and its offshoots, the overriding idea is that chi runs along meridians, which get clogged, resulting is illness and disease. The usual claim is that the procedures and techniques date to thousands of years ago, though most can only be traced to Mao, who didn’t believe in it, but who promoted it to foster Chinese nationalism.

With moxibustion, the purpose is to warm the meridian points. Moxibustion has various methods and accompanying levels of unnecessary pain. Some practitioners merely leave the warmed mugwort near the skin, some apply it for a short while, and others keep it on until blisters form. Practitioners calls these blisters “purulent moxa,” while mainstream medicine calls them second-degree burns. Like most alternative medicine, moxibustion is said to be effective for almost any illness or ailment, as opposed to a specific condition that genuine medicine treats. Skeptic leader Dr. Mark Crislip, while advising against moxibustion in general, has an especially strong admonition that it not be used as burn therapy.

Probably the best known pretend healer of olden times was Franz Mesmer, whose eponym is with us still today. He “mesmerized” women by convincing him he could use magnets to cure their blues, illnesses, and maladies. He later concluded he could get the same results just waving his hands, so the magnets were jettisoned for gesticulating phalanges.

Pretend healers today use both approaches. Sound therapy employs tuning forks, shamans ring copper bowls, and crystal healers have at their meridian-enhancing disposal a large collection of shiny doodads. These accoutrements can create a seemingly more authentic character, such as a bead-wearing Shaman or a Native American healer with feathers and drums.

By contrast, aura readers, chakra repairmen, and Reiki nurses have no products, which must really save on storage space. They feel they can cure without hands or instruments, and more importantly, have customers who believe it, too. And if only needing to get within 3 inches of someone, why not within 3,000 miles? Some of the more enterprising offer their healing online.

Meanwhile, the Internet is an obvious avenue for those using the third category of pretend healing, the cutting-edge variety. These folks also make use of the appeal to tradition’s lesser-known opposite fallacy, the appeal to novelty. This is when a product or idea is considered sound only because it is new. It’s easy to see how this notion could take hold. Imagine someone using a GPS when they hear on their Smartphone via satellite radio about the latest gizmo panacea. However, when the cure is announced in an advertisement or a YouTube video instead of in a peer-reviewed journal, it is almost certainly more science fiction than fact.

Examples include supposed medical products that claim to use vibrating sub-atomic particles, biofields, faster-than-warp tachyons, or a reengineering of neural pathways. This verbiage is meant to impress the listener, or at least befuddle them into not asking probing questions. Many times the seemingly cutting-edge words are just made up, while at other times they are misused.

From takoinic.com, here is a description of tachyon energy that veteran skeptics will see as little more than chi and meridians dressed up for the Cyber Age: “Tachyon energy is a life-force that exists infinitely throughout the universe. It is an organizing force field that diminishes chaos by increasing order and coherence in any system. These products restore and increase your energy and vitality. This encourages your body’s life support system and enhances the natural defense mechanisms to promote wellness.” As expected, anonymous anecdotes are used in lieu of double blind studies.

One cannot wonder too long in this field without encountering the word Quantum. From the One Mind, One Energy website: “Science, through Quantum Physics, is showing us that everything in our universe is energy. When we go down on a sub-atomic level we do not find matter, but pure energy. Some called this the unified field or the matrix.”

This website tries to piggyback on legitimate science by pointing out that Earth was once thought to be the center of the universe, but today we know it sits in an arm of the Milky Way, which itself is one of untold billions of galaxies. “Our frame of knowledge is constantly changing since science is showing us new truths. Our frame of knowledge has been changing as long as we have lived on this planet.”

This is all true, which cannot be said of the conclusion they reached, which is that the key to good health is to buying their music and its incorporated subliminal messages.

The website also puts emphasis on a literal mind over matter: “We need to believe that anything is possible. Cutting-edge research and experiments from leading scientists have shown that human intention can influence physical matter. Also, quantum (there’s that word again) experiments have revealed that our consciousness is part of creating the world we see around us. We all have this power.”

To combat the skeptical and credulous, the website employs the Galileo Gambit, a frequent ploy of the pseudoscientist: “Inventors throughout history have had a hard time being accepted and believed by their fellow man when they invented something new.” This is also another manifestation of the false equivalency fallacy. Like Tesla and Galileo, this website had its ideas ridiculed. Unlike Tesla and Galileo, One Mind One Energy has yet to be vindicated through its enhancement of Mankind.

And while the futuristic healers’ body count is much lower than their faith and chi-based counterparts, there have been fatalities. Mary Lynch and Debra Harrison were convinced that disease is caused by extraneous energy being trapped between cells. Lynch was a retired physician who and claimed to be taking medicine to the next level in something she called Consegrity. The idea was to heal by releasing this trapped energy.  Lynch and Harrison were their own guinea pigs and they succumbed to untreated diabetes and a toe infection, respectively.

If desiring a closer walk with Jesus, an adjusted aura, or communion with a higher plain, by all means, seek out Old Time Religion, the New Age, or Novelty Newbies. But if needing to mend a fractured leg, halt a bacterial infection, or close a spurting artery, please go to the hospital. Preferably not the Oral Roberts one.

 

by

“Sappy Sappy Joy Joy” (Aluna Joy Yaxkin)

journey

Aluna Joy Yaxkin is a self-described “Earth Oracle and Star Messenger” who offers a variety of services and products to those seeking to also become conduit priestesses and cosmic deliverymen.

Some of them I could go for. There are trips to ruins of Mayan, Incan, Celtic, Druid, and Egyptian peoples. I love travel and like history, so I would enjoy these excursions even if I’m not looking to “awaken the cosmic universal heart” or “anchor and embody the new codes of creation” that these sojourns promise.   

I was most intrigued by the advertised journeys to Atlantis, but learned that they were currently unavailable, as they occur only “as the Spirt directs.”

That leaves us with trips to sacred spots in Greece, Egypt, Wales, Peru, and even Honduras, which is usually not accorded the exotic status bestowed on the other locales. On these spiritual quests, one doesn’t just get to stand in the shadow of the Sphinx, Stonehenge, or Machu Picchu. Travelers will also “resonate with the messages Aluna Joy recovered.” If that fails to excite you, all these sites sell T-shirts.

Here’s what else Aluna Joy says you can expect: “Transcendent experiences are difficult and almost impossible to describe because they are experienced from the Great Mystery of the Universal Heart.” In other words: To those who know, no explanation is necessary; to those who don’t know, no explanation is possible. This allows her to get away with never describing what is happening, what is causing it, why it is beneficial, or why one should pay to attain it. It is also a form of ad hominem since skepticism is dismissed solely because it came from a skeptic.

Aluna Joy goes onto explain, “There is no way to predict when magic will land where we are. We just have to put ourselves out there and keep our eyes open and feel blessed when we see receive gifts from spirit.” But where they land are places considered sacred by New Agers, as there are no pilgrimages to Toledo or Tulsa. Rather, they are to mountaintops, beaches, and ancient shrines, where conditioning, expectation, and communal reinforcement are more likely to lead to a feeling that something spiritual has happened.

Aluna Joy also offers Sacred Site Essences, which she says “act like a homeopathic inoculation of ancient places of peace and power.” If my bullshit translator is functioning properly, she is telling enlightenment seekers that if they can’t afford a trip to Cairo, they can at least buy some piss water from there.  

 She never explains exactly what this liquid is or how it’s accessed, but based on the accompanying photos, it appears that water is collected from sacred sites “during awesome solar and celestial events.” Other than saying the liquid if purified, it offers no other information but does promise it will “help deepen meditation, stir deep healing, and activate ancient wisdom within.”

Most of this site mixes undefined New Age gobbledygook with a misuse of scientific terms. Consider this claim: “Essences made in sacred sites resonate with that particular Sacred Site and Cosmic Event of the day. Each one is unique to the site it was made in. They can never be re-made since energy shifts daily.” She is acting as if each vial she sells is distinguished from the rest. But I could take one vial apiece from Greece, Peru, England, and my bathtub, and Aluna Joy would be unable to tell them apart in a blind test. Water is water, and the only way the time of year will impact it is if it the temperature causes it to freeze.

With dozens of Sacred Site Essences to choose from, how do cosmic consumers know which to select? Aluna Joy advises, “Listen to where your heart is calling you. Read about the individual Essences and listen to which ones are calling you.”

People come to sites like hers because they are searching for answers and they’re not getting that if she tells them to decide. But Aluna Joy does not leave them completely to their desperate devices, for she offers an essence chart. If wanting to anchor deep peace, the U.S. Southwest is the essence for you. Tap into the Grand Canyon libation and await tranquility. If wanting to go multi-dimensional, Egyptian essence is the ticket. This one includes no testimonies, suggesting customers have been trapped in one of those alternate universes. Another offers self-healing, which is defeating the point if you order it from someone else. For healing the planet, go with Hawaiian Essence. Better yet, clean a river or plant a tree.  Another Essence offers assistance with ascension, and for a price much cheaper than a hot air balloon ride.

There are many others, none of which explain why water from any of these places would be different than the others. Nor does the site offer any mechanism for how these powers would work, nor does it ever define “profound expansion,” “heart activation” or “reconnection with star families.”

The descriptions include made up words and phrase that keep it vague enough that Aluna Joy avoids any real claims while giving her plenty of wiggle room to explain what she really means. This is what she says about the Great Mother of Sekhment Truth Serum:

“Use this essence to make great and positive changes in the world. We were allowed to enter the private temple of the great Mother Sekhmet. Her message was that we are to bring forth the inner Mother force within so that we can destroy anything that blocks our path to manifesting energies for the higher good.”

It’s not a very effective truth serum if she’s using it, then claiming an ancient Egyptian goddess told her to channel an inner force in order to attain a greater power.

Also available is the Rainbow Light Empowerment Divine Resonance Essence. This adjective-laden item will “seal in oneself a high frequency, iridescent, protective, rainbow light cloak, and begin empowering oneself through divine resonance. Users will also be blessed with a powerful activation. We absorbed the new light from the birthing sun in meditation and were assisted by Isis, Thoth and Sekhmet.”

Those are rather lame deities if they can’t manifest the product to those who need it instead of using a proxy to sell it in liquid form.

Someone convinced that ancient Egyptian goddesses and the sun are providing empowerment and a protective rainbow cloak in a bottle are desperate for answers and feeling empty in some aspect of life. As such, this magic potion will, at best, provide a respite from the anguish. They will have to keep coming back for different hopes and promises, which is why dozens of types are offered. If the abilities ascribed to these products were true, a person would need to buy only one bottle to attain lifelong bliss.

Besides the trips and magic potions, a third product is offered, in the form of one-on-one sessions. Although to Aluna Joy, there are actually one-on-one-on-hundreds of spirits sessions. For she is accompanied by her imaginary friends, whom she calls Star Elders. She advises these sessions for anyone experiencing the impossibly vague “general resistance to the flow of life.”

More serious is her promise to help those dealing with the trauma of sexual abuse or the horrors of drug addiction. Persons in these situations need medical and psychological help, not someone offering to “clear Karmic patterns,” “diagnose negative programming,” and “unlock DNA-encoded wisdom.”

I suppose I should give the Aluna Joy some credit for her religious tolerance. She offers products infused by deities associated with five different continents. Here website is the most polytheistic source I’ve come across and reads like the logical conclusion of Pascal’s Wager. All gods, goddesses, and incarnated deities are worshipped just to be safe.

by

“Bang the Dumb Slowly” (Big Bang denial)

godplanets

I would be substantially out of my element when discussing the Big Bang beyond the basics. By contrast, I am competent to address Big Bang denial.

First, however, the basics I mentioned. The Big Bang is the prevailing theory for how the universe reached its present state over the last 13.7 billion years. A Cliff’s Notes of the Cliff’s Notes version would look something like this: After an initial expansion, the universe cooled enough to allow the formation of subatomic particles, then atoms.  Next, giant clouds of primordial elements coalesced to form stars and galaxies,  eventually giving us what astronomers see today.

Evidence for the Big Bang includes the observed formation of new stars and planets, the amount of light elements in the universe, and the cosmic microwave background. Let’s take a look at how deniers handle this, or more accurately, can’t handle it.

As to the formation of new stars, Answers in Genesis concluded that God may have made gas clouds already in the process of collapse and the results are the stars astronomers see forming today. This assertion has zero scriptural support and, coming from an organization dedicated to Biblical literalism, reveals just how problematic this issue is to its members

Now onto the amount of helium, hydrogen, and lithium in the universe and why this matter matters. The average amount of these three lightest elements in certain stars today reflects the primordial abundance of those elements produced by the Big Bang. The match between these observed abundances and predictions in Big Bang models is consistent.

What say you, creation.com? “Scripture teaches that God recently created a finished cosmos, and the finished state of creation included the present suite of stable isotopes.” If the Bronze Age Middle East nomads who wrote the Bible really had identified isotopes, described quantum mechanics, made specific, accurate prophecies with names and dates, and commanded against rape instead of idol-building, I’d be hosting a blog promoting Biblical literalism instead of one on skepticism.   

But this blog it is, so onto cosmic microwave background, which is the earliest radiation that can be detected. Looking out into deep space is like looking back into time and astronomers can see that cosmic background radiation permeated the universe about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The radiation formed after the universe had cooled enough for electrons and protons to recombine into hydrogen atoms. Photons were released and today this radiation is the cosmic microwave background.

While conceding it has no counterclaim to this, christiananswers.net nevertheless cautions, “The authority of the Bible should never be compromised for mankind’s scientific proposals.”

Meanwhile, Bar-Ilan University professor Nathan Aviezer takes a more conciliatory view. He doesn’t dismiss science, but also doesn’t present any. He considers cosmic microwave background to be the result of God separating light and dark in Genesis 1:4.

The most recent piece of evidence came for the Big Bang came this year with the confirmation of gravitational waves, which proved cosmic expansion. Rather than fumbling and bumbling my way through an explanation of the significance, I’ll defer to Michio Kaku:

“Einstein’s great insight was to realize that space-time is not empty, but more like a fabric that can bend and stretch and cause the path of objects to bend, giving us the illusion of gravitational force. And if the fabric of space-time can stretch, why can’t it also create ripples? Think of throwing a rock in a pond. Ripples will gradually radiate away from the splash and fill the surface of the pond. This is similar to what the scientists detected for the first time: Gravity waves rippling outward from the collision of two black holes a billion light years away.”

Thank you, Dr. Kaku for the scientist’s explanation. Now for the pseudoscience counterpoint, we bring in Dr. Danny Faulkner of Answers in Genesis. His retort is that scientists have been wrong before, so they might be wrong again. Of course, this has nothing to do with whether Abraham’s god created the universe. But Faulkner has an answer for that, too: “Creationists know from Scripture that the universe did not begin in a big bang billions of years ago. The world is far younger than this. Furthermore, we know from Genesis 1 that God made the earth before he made the stars.” Faulkner closes by suggesting that even if there are gravitational waves, God is causing them.

This is typical of Young Earth Creationists, who reject all science that conflicts with their interpretation of a specific Bible version. Their points are limited to quoting scripture and negative evidence from supposed deficiencies in scientific theory. They have yet to employ the Scientific Method in order to explain how creationism works.

Consistent with this, there are no creation articles in scientific publications. Jason Lisle, perhaps the only Young Earth Creationist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, refuses to submit any of his work to peer-reviewed journals. His stated reason is because the likes of Neil Tyson and Stephen Hawking never submit their work to his employer, the Institute for Creation Research. This is an especially hilarious excuse, but whatever the reason, bypassing peer review means failing to do complete science.

Here are a few points Lisle or other members of the anti-Big Bang Gang trot out. Keep in mind, even if these points were accurate, it is an invalid to conclude that it proves creationism.

  1. “Something cannot come from nothing because that would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics.” This assertion represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic. The Big Bang is not about the origin of the universe, but is rather about its development. No one knows what was there before or why anything went bang. Additionally, for a creationist to employ this argument requires Special Pleading since an exception must be made to allow God to spring into existence from nothing.
  2. “The Big Bang violates the law of entropy, which suggests systems of change become less organized over time.” In truth, the law of entropy is being obeyed. The early universe was homogeneous and isotropic, whereas the current universe includes the continued formation of stars and galaxies.
  3. “Atheist astronomers are out to disprove God.” First, this claim presupposes that the proof of God has been met. Second, this point doesn’t even mess with a scientific pretense and dovetails into what is at once an ad hominem and a straw man. Astronomers were trying to find out how the universe got to its present state and Genesis was merely collateral damage.

There are about a half dozen other points Young Earth Creationists bring up, but all fall into the negative evidence category and none are included in peer review submissions. As to their evidence for creationism, Answers in Genesis offers us this: “The Creator did not need matter, large amounts of time, energy, or anything else.”

Or this example: “A flashlight operates by converting electrical energy into light. Would it be rational to assume that the flashlight was created by the conversion of electrical energy into light? No, it was created by an entirely different process.” The author then concludes that this proves the universe was also created by other than naturalistic means.

Another point addresses the lack of verifiable antimatter. This is the focus on an ongoing astrophysics discussions, although to AIG it is “a powerful confirmation of biblical creation.” That’s not just jumping to conclusions, that’s a quantum leap. Or would be if AIG believed in such leaps.

 

 

by

“No need to get snippy” (Circumcision)

NOSCISSORS

Because a Middle East nomad wrote a myth during the Bronze Age, U.S. males routinely have their healthy flesh mutilated at birth in a procedure as painful and unnecessary as slicing off an earlobe.

In the tale, Yahweh told 99-year-old Abraham that his nonagenarian wife would give birth to Isaac, and that the subsequent generations would make Abe the patriarch of a favored nation. Yahweh asked in return that Abraham and his male descendants be circumcised. So, to continue being blessed, Jewish parents then and now practice the procedure. 

It consists of strapping down and restraining a baby, then cutting off the foreskin,  dividing tissues that don’t come apart easily. This is so painful that some African and South Pacific religions use it as an initiation ritual for teenagers. Being able to weather highly-innervated tissue being cut off shows that the youngster is worthy of manhood.

For those born into other religions, specifically Judaism and Islam, the procedure is  performed at birth. Even though Christians reject most Old Testament rules, slicing off parts of infant penises is one that has been kept.

There is one other religious reason that infant circumcision has remained the norm in the United States. In 19th Century America, circumcision was part of the anti-masturbation movement. For reasons unclear, crusaders believed removing the foreskin would take away the pleasure and thereby discourage boys from accessing the self-service pump. I know I’m not much on anecdotal evidence, but I can attest this is an ineffective strategy. While this theory, and anti-Onanism in general, has fallen out of favor, the accompanying circumcision has endured.

Some of the reasons cited by circumcision advocates are so that the baby will look like his father, or would be made fun of in adolescence, or be unattractive to potential mates. These are horrible justifications for subjecting a baby to an unnecessary painful procedure that slices away a healthy, functioning part of the body. Another pro-snip plank is that an intact penis can produce a buildup of sebum and skin cells, but this innocuous substance easily washes away.

There are rare times that circumcision makes sense, such as in instances of penile cancer. But wholesale whacking is as nonsensical as removing breasts from every developing female in order to preempt breast cancer. If we performed routine infant appendectomies, appendicitis would be eliminated. But we don’t do that because of the risk/reward analysis. Abdominal surgery is too dangerous to justify without there being an immediate need.

While uncommon, there are instances of babies suffering long-term effects from circumcision. These effects include deformity, infection, amputation, and death. This century in New York City, at least 11 babies have been infected with herpes when Ultraorthodox rabbis passed the disease onto them during a hybrid of religious ritual and sexual assault. In this rite, rabbis slice the newborn’s penis, then suck the blood out. There have been at least two infant deaths that have resulted from this contracting of herpes. That’s a mighty steep price to prevent potential mocking in a middle school locker room.

by

“Dust in the lens” (Soul photo)

ghostcycle

The photo above is from a fatal motorcycle crash last week and features a white, vaguely humanoid figure rising above the site. Some are claiming this image is of the man’s soul or of an angel. I even encountered one person speculating it was the demon who caused the wreck.

The idea of it being a soul escaping his dying body is contradicted by the fact that the victim died in the hospital, not on the highway. Some of the more creatively credulous have speculated that perhaps God lets spirits in such cases go to Heaven a little early so the person no longer suffers, and it only appears they are writhing, moaning, or crying. This, of course, is based on no evidence whatsoever, and is using an unprovable notion to justify another unprovable one.

Even if we go the angel or demon route, we have the sizable obstacle of none of the emergency workers or other witnesses on the scene reporting having seen this supernatural entity. It is only visible in the viral photo. The idea that spirts can be captured in an in-between world of video and photography dates to almost the advent of film. But if this really happened, we would be seeing regular instances of it. Yet no souls are seen leaving the body in videos of the Sept. 11 attacks. The extensive coverage of World War II battles features no departing spirits. The macabre compilations of suicides and other deaths on YouTube and other sites are likewise spirit-free.

Souls were once presented in Christian folklore as naked children, symbolizing an innocence that came with leaving a sinful body and world. Ghosts later became clothed adults, with chains for added effect. Today, they are most often detected in orb form since photo defects make the white circles more ubiquitous in photographs. This is especially true when the photo is taken at night or features a high contrast. The motorcycle victim, however, is a retro ghost since it somewhat resembles a body, though lacking extremities and facial features.

Proving either way whether the milky image is a soul is nearly impossible, so we will consider potential earthbound explanations. One suggestion is that the image is indeed the remnant of the deceased, as it is an out-of-focus bug that splattered on the windshield of the photo taker. However, that man, Saul Vazquez, said he took the photo out a side window, which he rolled down before snapping it. Indeed, for Vazquez to have taken the photo through his windshield, he would had to have been parked sideways on the shoulder. Besides, there’s no reason to disbelieve him when he says he rolled down the window.

So with a fauna explication not forthcoming, let’s consider a flora one. The image shows foliage emerging from the shade of trees in the area, so we may be seeing a tree trunk or light-colored branch. It could also be sunlight coming between the space between two trees.

But the most likely explanation is camera-related. Specifically, the image may be a dust spot that has affixed itself to the camera’s lens or internal sensor. This could cause a white or gray fuzzy appearance, such as what we see in the photo.

Also, the photographer had a large depth of field and the lens is stopped down to a smaller aperture. Investigating the picture, Snopes noted, “When the lens is stopped down and the aperture is significantly smaller, light rays coming from the lens diaphragm are perpendicular to the sensor filter. Because the angle is more or less straight, dust specks also cast direct and defined shadows on the sensor. That’s why dust shows up in images much smaller, darker, and with more defined edges at small apertures.”

Mix that with the photo being taken at a fatal crash site, then add a pinch of pareidolia, and the speck of dust takes on human spirit form. I’m anticipating a counterargument that this confirms Genesis 2:7: “Then God formed a man from the dust of the ground.”

by

“Unfounded conCERN” (Particle accelerator clouds)

CONCERN

This month’s ushering in of the apocalypse took place on the Franco-Swiss border at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN. The focal points were clouds and lightning above the Large Haldon Collider particle beam smasher.

As portents of doom go, this one had a fair amount of specificity. We knew the date, June 24, the location, and who shot the photos: Joelle Rodrigue, Dean Gill, and Christophe Suarez. They are stunning photos, both for their subject matter and the quality of framing, light work, and depth. They were taken by either professionals or enthusiastic hobbyists.

While the colored clouds, twisting lightning, and refracted sunlight do look somewhat foreboding, other photographs have captured much more ominous skylines without an accompanying Armageddon announcement. In this case, it was a combination of clouds, lightning, and a vivid imagination which sparked the conspiracy theory that CERN is paving the way for demons or aliens to overtake Earth.

It’s not the first time CERN has been so accused. Theorists have noted that its logo proudly proclaims 666, though it more resembles 09D. There is also a statue of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction in front of the CERN building. Connect those dots and add a few more of your own, and that cloud can become what rightsidenews.com called the “opening up of mysterious inter-dimensional portals that disrupt the fabric of space and time and expose Earth to the risk of alien or demon invasion from a parallel universe.”

Besides the location, the date was also a factor in this hyperbolic thinking. June 24 was when CERN began its Advanced Wakefield Experiment. Per the CERN website, this experiment is meant to be demonstrate “how protons can be used to generate wakefields and will also develop the necessary technologies for long-term, proton-driven plasma acceleration projects.”

As to how that plasma acceleration paves the way for invading demonic hordes and their Andromedan allies, we defer to prophecywatchnews.com. The website made the connection between a new CERN experiment and an old religious text, specifically Revelation chapter nine: “To him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and they had a kind over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name is Apollyon.”

These clouds and lightning don’t really form a pit, as they are in the sky and not the ground, and the “had a kind over him” is nonsensical in this or any other context. But, hey, doomsdays are too infrequent to quibble over details.

Beyond Apollyon, a few other supernatural beings are in play. The website excitedly notes that a horned god named Cernunnos has a name that starts with C-e-r-n. So it deduces, “Is this just a coincidence? Is it also a coincidence that CERN has to go deep underground to do their god harnessing experiments? Cernunnos was the god of the underworld.” Since you asked, yes, it is just a coincidence. What is not a coincidence is that someone with a paranoid mindset would take the acronym for “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire” and note that it has 44 percent of the letters in an otherwise forgotten Celtic deity, and tie that to storm clouds over a particle accelerator intended to destroy the world.

Theorists also claim the site was once an Apollo temple, which worshippers felt was a gateway to the underworld. The portal is above, the underworld is below, once they find a lateral evil, they’ll have it all covered.

As mentioned earlier, Shiva loiters outside, which theorists like because he is the destroyer. However, that is but one of his almighty attributes. For Shiva is also a benefactor, giving him a complexity and ambiguity that makes for a more developed character in Hindu tales. If the statue is your evidence, one could argue that the benevolent side is what CERN is appealing to. Then there is my interpretation, which is that the good and bad balance each other, so the sculpture will have no impact on atom smashing or apocalypses.

Rightsidenews.com takes a somewhat evenhanded approach to the issue, though it seems a little more sympathetic to the credulous. It wrote, “Some people just see normal thunderstorms when they look at these clouds, but others are convinced that they are looking at inter-dimensional portals.” The key factor here is that we know what thunderstorms look like, interdimensional portals not so much. To be clear, I would probably be OK with elite physicists accessing interdimensional portals, but I need more than storm clouds above a particle accelerator to convince me it’s happening.

Unencumbered by this stuffy skepticism is the maintainer of freedomfighters.com. She writes, “CERN is notorious for opening portals and then denying it. The cloud looks to be rotating in a circular motion and some have claimed to see a face in the lightning-filled cloud. Last year we reported that there were clear images of demons in the pictures of CERNs beams. Could this be an outer manifestation of one?”

To keep church and doomsdays separate, we should consider that making out shapes in rotating clouds can easily have overtones free of demonic embodiment.

by

“Of corpse” (Incorruptibility)

SMILECORPSE

Incorruptibility is the notion that someone who is holy enough will not have their body rot away after death. An incorruptible corpse ranks somewhere above a mummy and below a vampire. It can’t get up, walk around, or suck blood and Yoo-hoo. But nor is it stiff, nor does it require care to maintain an appearance of being asleep. Incorruptibility is primarily associated with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, though it has made cameos in Hinduism and Buddhism.

For a body to resist decomposition, it needs plenty of help. This assistance can take the form of nature and serendipity, which happened to Ötzi, whose corpse spent 5,000 years frozen in an Alps glacier. Or the deceased can be tended to by believers who feel that their all-knowing, all-powerful deity needs some help. In these cases, believers may cover the body in wax and seal it in metal or glass, or use other preservation methods. All bodies eventually disintegrate unless pumped with embalming fluids or waxes, or helped by conditions such as alkaline soil, or a lack of oxygen, bacteria, worms, heat, and light.

Some of the allegedly incorruptible corpses release a sweet odor when exhumed, which is either a divine sign or the result of embalming fluids and ointments, depending on whether one prefers their explanations supernatural or natural.

Like the corpses, claims of incorruptibility wither upon examination. The Catholic Church declared Francesca Romana incorruptible when she died in1440, yet only bones remained when her tomb was opened two centuries later. In another case, Atlas Obscura reporter Elizabeth Harper wrote that Anna Maria Taigi looks incorrupt from a distance when viewed in her coffin at San Crisogono church in Rome. But get closer and one notices that her allegedly wrinkled skin is really made of wax. When Harper asked the man who oversaw San Crisogono’s relics about this, he explained this method was intended to “preserve an honest impression of her the moment she was discovered in her grave.” That’s fine if you work for Madame Tussauds; it’s quite another if you are trying to pass off the corpse as immune to decomposition.

Similar was the case of St. Paula Frassinetti, who died in the 19th Century. She appeared incorrupt when she was moved to a new tomb a quarter century after her death. But this was the result of saintly storage methods. With those methods gone, her body began the normal decomposition, at which point acid was applied as a preservative, which again is fine if one is not claiming a miracle.

In addition to Ötzi, there are other natural examples of somewhat-incorruptibility. Nearly a thousand bodies have been exhumed from the peat bogs of northern Europe, where a combination of cold and chemical processes preserve soft tissue. Peat acid dissolves the bones but leaves the soft tissue rubber-like and with a tanned appearance.

In 1952, a Hindu man was touted as an example of incorruptibility, but he in fact showed nothing unusual for an embalmed corpse kept in optimal conditions. Fifty years later, the body of Buddhist monk Hambo Lama Itigelov was exhumed. His condition was described by eyewitness monks as being akin to someone who had died only two days before. However, a video of the exhumation shows his body more resembled a mummy and a pathologist’s report found the body had been preserved with bromide salts. The lama remains in the lotus at a temple in Russia, either a well-preserved corpse or an immortal in a deep trance experiencing Nirvana.

by

“Summers school” (Worldwide Community of People of the New Message from God)

angelaliens

While there are reasons to question the accuracy of Marshall Summers’ writings, there’s no doubting his drive and determination in cranking them out. For nearly three dozen years, Summers has been busy relaying messages from angelic beings, and filled almost 10,000 pages with visions of doom and a possible escape hatch. Not since Joseph Smith’s heyday has someone been so voluminous in transcribing voices in their heads.

Summers writes of an impending vast darkness, which is contradicted by his having warned about this since 1982. His vague visions of unprecedented calamity are similar to missives from Nostradamus and in Revelation. It also resembles the conspiracy theories which tell of an ultimate disaster which takes place in an Eternal Tomorrow that is always on the cusp of happening yet never quite arrives. The central theme of Summers’ writings is that extreme negative change is imminent, owing to an outside threat, and humans need to prepare for it. After all, it won’t do much good for Summers to print books, press CDs, and make website advertising space available if no one is left to buy them.

For tax purposes, Summers operates under the banner of the Worldwide Community of People of the New Message from God. Summers seems to be alluding to the Biblical deity, using language like angels and creator, but he keeps it generic enough that adherents of other religions or an unspecified spirituality can buy into it as well. Extraterrestrial beings figure prominently in the writings and these beings work with governments, so he’s got the alien and conspiracy crowds covered as well.

In a typical message, Summers relates that we are “at a time of great change, conflict and upheaval,” which describes every period in history. Despite mirroring terrifying prophecies from other religions, Summers claims his is a new and improved doomsday since it includes aliens. He clarifies that only he receives these messages, so ignore any voices in your head you might be hearing.

An interviewer asked Summers how he knew the messages were genuine. He said his certainty of their legitimacy was the proof, a ridiculous non-answer. He offers an equally weak explanation for how others will know he’s revealing the truth, saying they need only to open themselves to the message and it will be revealed. When asked what it’s like receiving these messages, he could only feebly offer, “It can’t be described.” Likewise, when pressed for evidence of his claims, he said, “The evidence is all around us.”

He insinuates that no explanation will suffice for those who are doubtful, which is rubbish. If a satisfactory explication were made using sound science and it met the demands we ask of any other unsubstantiated claim; if he got his angelic presence on speed dial to help him with the James Randi Challenge; if he made a public series of specific predictions that consistently came true, he would win millions of new converts, including members of the skeptic community.

Instead, Summers expects his readers to unquestionably accept notions such as a species of advanced, enlightened aliens who wish to do us harm. Not ray-gun zapping or kidnapping for slave labor, but by being superficially cordial in hopes of gaining our allegiance for unspecified future plans that will increase their power.

Summers commits perhaps the most comically literal circular reasoning I’ve ever seen. Consider this example from an interview :

“What is Wisdom?”

“Being able to live with knowledge.”

“What is knowledge?”

“Living with Wisdom.”

He has a more direct answer about what people can do to prepare for the alien invasion: Buy his stuff.

 

by

“The tooth comes out” (Tooth Fairy Science)

tooth

When my children put teeth under their pillow, they wake up with substantially more money than I did at their age.

If attempting to ascertain why, I could examine various factors, such as whether the amount the Tooth Fairy leaves has kept up with inflation, if the Fairy values incisors more than molars, and if the time in between lost choppers impacts the amount left. I could query 1,000 children, analyze results for socio-economic trends and determine if there is a correlation between the frequency of Tooth Fairy visits and the sell of home security systems. I may even endeavor to conclude once and for all if the Fairy is male, female, or androgynous. The findings could be put in a snazzy hardcover book with impressive graphics and detailed footnotes. Yet none of this would establish that a stealthy, mobile spirit is replacing extracted calcified objects with cash.

Tooth Fairy Science refers to doing research on an unverified phenomenon to determine what its effects are, rather than to ascertain if it exists. It is post hoc reasoning in research form. The phrase was coined by Dr. Harriet Hall.

This shoddy science is a regular feature of studies into ghosts, cryptozoology, reincarnation, alien visitors, alternative medicine, parapsychology, and creationism.

I have three co-workers who believe our office is haunted. Curiously, this spirit only manifests itself when the workers are by themselves at night. Perhaps he is nocturnal and dislikes crowds. We have ample video and audio equipment in the office, and we could set these up and record what times bumps most occur, detect any unexplained shadows, and note any high-pitched whistles. This data could by analyzed and a conclusion reached about the ghost’s characteristics. But this would not take into account wind, pipes, electromagnetic interference, or a worker on floor above coming in at 11 p.m. We would have to assume the ghost’s existence and attribute these factors to it.

Similarly, cryptozoologists will shoot sonar into Loch Ness or look for disturbed vegetation in Bigfoot’s supposed stomping grounds, then attribute any findings they consider consistent with their monster to be proof the animal was there. As such, they do not consider other explanations, such as the sonar detecting a bloom of algae and zooplankton, or a warthog beating Sasquatch to the trap.

That’s because when Fairy Tale scientists uncover data that is consistent with their hypothesis, they assume the data confirms it. For example, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson spent years collecting stories from people who claimed to be reincarnated. He used these anecdotes to support his belief in reincarnation, and he used reincarnation to explain the stories, a textbook case of circular reasoning.

Moving onto alien abduction, John Mack talked with persons who claimed to have been taken by extraterrestrial beings. He assumed the stories to be real instead of considering that he might have implanted the ideas by asking leading questions, such as, “Was the alien about four feet tall,” as opposed to “How tall was the alien?” The mental state and susceptibility of the subject was not considered, nor were explanations like fraud, attention-seeking, or sleep paralysis. 

Alien abductees aren’t the only subjects that spend time on a Tooth Fairy scientist’s couch. So do alternative medicine patients. Chi, meridians, and blockages are assumed to exist in “energy” medicines such as craniosacral therapy, iridology, therapueitic touch, reflexology, chiropractic, Reiki, Ayuvedic, and more. I have addressed the rest of these in previous posts, so we’ll address Therapeutic Touch here.

First, Therapeutic Touch is neither. The practitioner’s hands are close to the patient, but are never on them. As to the therapy part, practitioners claim to be able to sense a patient’s “human energy field” with their hands, then manipulate the field by moving their hands near a patient’s skin to improve their health. Scientists have detected and measured minute energies down to the subatomic level, but have never found a human energy field. Nine-year-old Emily Rosa designed a controlled test of the practice which Therapeutic Touchers failed spectacularly. Any seeming success is because of the fluctuating nature of many illnesses, the placebo effect, confirmation bias, and nonspecific effects. The latter is a common error and refers to confusing the effects of practitioner-patient interaction with the supposed effect of the treatment.

In a test that proponents claimed proved Therapeutic Touch’s validity, researchers gauged the effects of the technique on reducing nausea and vomiting in breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. All patients were on the same chemotherapy regimen and they were randomly divided into three groups of 36 patients. The first group received usual Therapeutic Test treatment, the second group got a similar treatment except the practitioners’ hands were farther from the patients, and the third group received no treatment. A single practitioner performed all the treatments, which was fatal to conducting a proper study because he should not have known which patients were receiving which treatment.

Since there is no evidence the energy field exists, there can be no evidence that how far the practitioner’s hands are from the patient would make a difference. The alleged energy can’t be measured, so there’s no reason to believe any energy was transferred to, or benefited, any patient. While the authors claimed the study showed Therapeutic Touch worked, they had failed to establish that the central feature of the practice even existed.

Likewise, parapsychologists are quick to point to rare instances of a subject performing better than chance as proof that various forms of ESP are legitimate. Unsatisfactory results are considered as the power being unable to be accessed due to cosmic interference, negative energy from a skeptical observer, or some other ad hoc reason. They look to justify the failure as owing to a particular cause rather than the cause being that the power doesn’t exist.

Then we have the creationists. The Institute for Creation Research website informs us, “The very dependability of each day’s processes are a wonderful testimony to the design, purposes, and faithfulness of the Creator. The universe is very stable. The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west. Earth turns on its axis and always cycles through its day at the same speed every time.”

All of these phenomenon are explicable through known laws of physics and astronomy, and the ICR has affirmed the consequent by saying if there is order in the universe, there has to be a god controlling it, and since we see that order, a god exists. They attribute any majesty to this deity without bothering to prove his existence first. It’s one thing to do this as faith in one’s religion. It’s quite another to claim this as science while bypassing the entire Scientific Method.

I’m going to have to wrap this up. My daughter lost another tooth so I’ve got more research to conduct. 

by

“Got any change?” (Anti-science groups)

SCIENCEBOOM

Third basemen who make two errors in the second inning are sent back to that position in the third. Defense attorneys who lose a trial are still trusted with a client’s case the next week. And chefs who send out the wrong dish are allowed to serve future customers.

Some persons, however, seem unwilling to extend this redemptive mindset to science. The thinking is that past mistakes from the field mean that any other conclusions it reaches are at least suspect, if not dead wrong.

First off, it’s good to admit when one is wrong and adjust one’s thinking when presented with new proof. But admirable traits aside, the larger issue here is to understand how science works. It is more than beakers, telescopes, and magnetic resonance imaging. It is an unending cyclical process aimed at learning the truth. It is self-correcting, self-criticizing, and invites critical examination. If we knew that all science was correct and complete, lab coats would be traded for swimming suits, and we would retire the field. Instead, there is no settled science, nor is there any all-knowing, all-powerful entity that declares, “This and this alone is science, and that shall never change.”

Indeed, change when justified is what science is all about. A physician may treat a pneumonia patient with antibiotics, which are the consequence of discovering, understanding, and embracing Germ Theory. By contrast, chiropractors still insist that an unknowable entity called Qi is blocked, allowing pneumonia and all manner of other ills to assault our bodies, necessitating spinal manipulation.

Another example of changing positions when justified centers on climate science. A frequent tactic of climate change deniers is to highlight Time and Newsweek articles in 1975 that portended global cooling. There were some scientists who thought global cooling was coming, but there were more who thought this to not be the case. But both camps employed the Scientific Method to arrive today’s consensus that anthropogenic global warming is real. Again, this is not sacred writ and anyone with contrarian evidence is encouraged to submit it to a reputable journal for peer review. Instead, producers of “Climate Hustle” send their findings not to a journal, but to a theatre.

In 1922, Harold Cook found a tooth remnant that he considered part of the the first developed primate discovered in North America. It was dubbed Nebraska Man. Further research and digs revealed that the tooth actually belonged to an extinct pig, and the claim that it was a primate was retracted in the journal Science. Searching for and finding new evidence, then adjusting when warranted, is one of the hallmarks of science. Ken Ham is correct when he says, “Science was wrong about Nebraska Man,” but he fails to follow up with, “Science uncovered the erroneous thinking about Nebraska Man.”

Like all persons, scientists make errors. The difference is that anthropologists are no longer zealously defending Nebraska Man. Meanwhile, Ham says humans were created in their present form 5,000 years ago in a six-day old universe. This position requires ignoring the totality of anthropological, geological, and astronomical evidence.

Another anti-science trope, this one from the anti-GMO and anti-vax throngs, trumpets that science gave us DDT. Besides poisoning the well, this statement is another illustration of failing to understand how science works.

Paul Hermann Muller received the Nobel Prize for discovering how efficient DDT was as an arthropod exterminator. This led to typhus, dengue fever, and malaria being nearly wiped out in Europe. Later science learned the negative impact DDT had on some sea life and birds, among other creatures, and its use was curtailed. DDT is still used to control insect vectors, and it was through the Scientific Method that researchers determined DDT’s value as a pesticide, and then learned of the environmental dangers and what steps were needed to use it safely. 

For all their wailing about science, these groups are giving us nothing themselves. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has been around since 1992 without announcing a cure or treatment achieved through alternative medicine. In 40+ years, the Institute for Creation Research has yet to contribute to our understanding of biology, anthropology, or astronomy. Anti-vaxxers have yet to concoct a cure for Alzheimer’s using red sage root and dandelion stems. Climate change deniers level charges of hoaxes, false data, and criminality, but have contributed just two of the more than 13,000 peer-reviewed papers on the subject in the last five years.

Meanwhile, genuine science is providing you air-conditioned comfort and freedom from polio as you read this on your iPod.