#1671: Russ Greenfield

June 6, 2016, 12:22 am

Andrew Weil has the dubious honor of being the person in the US who has (probably) done the most to legitimize pseudoscience, woo and quackery. Weil is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and largely responsibly for popularizing the term “integrative medicine”. Weil is also an MD, and his students, who continue his missionary work on behalf of pseudo-religious altmed treatments, are MDs, too, which, of course, tends to give a sheen of legitimacy to the garbage they peddle.

(I don't know who to credit for this one, but I'll credit people
like Greenfield for making it an apt illustration.)

Russell Greenfield is one of those students, and he is for instance, together with Stuart Ditchek and Lynn Murray Willeford, the author of Healthy Child, Whole Child (with a foreword by Weil), a critique of conventional medicine (which they term “allopathic” (http://skepdic.com/allopathy.html) – a sure sign that some serious quackery will follow) as being of limited scope when it comes to common health issues, and promote a range of quackery and New Age religious rites to complement it. According to the authors “[i]n most cases, the therapies we recommend have at least some supportive research evidence and always have anecdotal evidence of efficacy.” “Anecdotal evidence”, of course, stands to evidence as “toy horse” stands to horse. And by “some supportive research” they have some pretty, uh, minimal standards in mind, citing for the most part poorly designed and mostly irrelevant studies, as well as the occasional anomalous outlier – the gold standard for all pseudoscience and denialism – while usually ignoring all the evidence against the conclusions they wish to draw. As a consequence, the authors end up recommending things like cranial osteopathy for ear infections, headaches, sinus or respiratory problems, learning disabilities, and attention deficit disorder; homeopathic products for e.g. sore throats and colds; and acupuncture for acute sinusitis. And the very title of their chapter on traditional Chinese medicine is “A Billion People Can’t Be Wrong”. No, really.

At least with regards to energy medicine they admit that some techniques are “simply too wacky for us to consider.” Well, among the ones that are apparently not too wacky you’ll find therapeutic touch and “external qi gong”. It’s hard to express politely how wacky these techniques are, and the authors of course fail to mention the existing evidence against them. They do admit that they are “on somewhat shaky ground scientifically when we talk about energy medicine because we are talking about subtle energies that cannot be measured by currently available scientific instruments.” But of course, scientists usually detect the energy of a system by its effects– for instance the effect on someone’s health – and saying that something is too subtle to be detectable just means that it is too subtle to have any detectable effect on anything, including health. What “subtle” in “subtle energies” really means is, of course, “imaginary”. And imaginary energies are, of course, undetectable.

Greenfield has actually managed to establish a bit of a reputation for himself. Dr. Oz referred to him as a “world expert” in integrative medicine when he brought him on his show to promote homeopathic remedies, no less. Greenfield did describe homeopathy as “among the most controversial” types of alternative medicine, but nevertheless went on to tout “scientific studies” that purportedly show that homeopathy works (he’s already established that he’s about as reliable at assessing whether studies “show” anything as David Icke’s forum) and concluded by saying that what’s important about homeopathy is that it makes us “question science”. Of course, what Greenfield actually does is not only to question science but promote crackpottery that is not only spectacularly false and demonstrably so, but which assumes the falsity of most of physics and chemistry. He also warned his audience that they shouldn’t touch the homeopathic remedy because touching it can “inactivate it.” Because it’s magic.

Greenfield has, like Weil, been heavily involved in efforts to gain official recognition of various types of woo. Together with Kenneth Pelletier and David Eisenberg, Greenfield was a consultant to the Federation of State Medical Boards’ “Special Committee for the Study of Unconventional Health Care Practices (Complementary and Alternative Medicine)”. Their work gave us the Model Guidelines for the Use of Complementary and Alternative Therapies in Medical Practice in 2002, which has subsequently been accepted by several state medical boards.

Diagnosis: Among the more influential pseudoscientists around, and one of the most successful at giving a sheen of legitimacy to even the craziest forms of pseudoscientific bullshit – not by doing science, of course, but, like creationists, doing outreach and advocacy work.

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#1672: Gary Greenwald

June 7, 2016, 1:02 am

≫ Next: #1673: Steven Greer

≪ Previous: #1671: Russ Greenfield

Gary Greenwald in his glory days.

Now, this is a legend. It’s been a while since he’s been in the spotlight, but Gary Greenwald was big in the 80s and early 90s, the heydays of the Satanic Panic movement, to which he contributed a series of currently much sought-after videos in which he would find occult or satanic symbolism almost everywhere, especially in toys, music or television shows for kids. His primary target was, in fact, rock music, which he claimed contained much demonic backward masking, but many raging fundies were doing that in the 80s and Greenwald’s name is forever tied to the videos he created with “Turmoil in the toybox”-author Phil Phillips, in which they analyzed Saturday morning cartoons and various toys for their putative Satanic influence. Apparently winding each other up, Phillips and Greenwald would make more and more bizarre claims; here you can for instance watch Greenwald top Phillips’s claim that Smurfs are undead corpses with an anecdote about Dungeons and Dragons game pieces screaming in pain when thrown into the fireplace. Apparently Greenwald still runs something called “Eagle’s Nest Ministries” in California and practices faith healing.

Greenwald’s topics were not limited to music and toys, but also concerned Asian martial arts, yoga and cursed statues and jewelry that might have a demonic influence on their owners. Highlights of his output include:

- The Punk Called Rock (1981) a cassette series where Greenwald would expose satanic subliminal messages in the popular music of the era. These are currently coveted collectors’ items.

- Marijuana, the Heavenly Deception (1983), a book.

- Rock’s Primal Scream (1983), a VHS where Greenwald presents examples of how Satan uses rock music to control listeners and in the end completely possess them.

- Deception of a Generation (1984 or 1985), the classic series where he and Phillips take on e.g.

o Scooby-Doo, which promotes occult things like amulets, spell-casting and “dark and evil realms.”

o E.T., which sent a clear Satanic message (it’s actually a bit unclear what it was, but E.T.’s healing powers were apparently meant to mislead children into thinking that Jesus was an alien).

o He-Man: the toys were magical objects, and the show instructed kids in how to use these items to cast spells (with incantations like “By the power of Grayskull”) and worship pagan idols; the message of the show being that “He-Man is more powerful than Jesus.”

o The Thundercats series; promoting all sorts of paganism (after all, the main characters were human/animal hybrids much like the deities of many ancient religions); also, they would use martial arts, which is clearly a Satanic practice since it is rooted in false Eastern religions.

o Superman, which promotes necromancy.

o The Smurfs: primarily designed to get children to think that an entirely homosexual community is just fine – in addition to the fact that their blue color being a symbol of the fact that they are spirits of the dead. Yup, gay zombies, no less.

o She-Ra; explicit promotion of witchcraft.

o My Little Pony; unicorns are pagan and hate Jesus.

o Star Wars, which promotes paganism, Zen Buddhism and outright Satanism (the Force is obviously Satan); moreover, Darth Vader was “intentionally designed to look like Odin,” something that was definitely lost on anyone but Greenwald and Phillips (he was also, you know, the bad guy, but perhaps Greenwald and Phillips didn’t quite see it that way).

- Prophets and Prophetic Movements (1990), a book with an impressive range of random but consistently completely insane pieces of advice on how to run a church.

- Seductions Exposed: The Spiritual Dynamics of Relationships (2003), a more recent book in which he explains various factors that can lead to abusive relationships and romantic problems, such as “cursing yourself through forbidden statues, jewelry, and practices.”

It is worth noting that Rock’s Primal Scream followed a series of lectures and at least one mass record smashing event.

Diagnosis: A legend. True, his efforts may have caused some frustration among kids in the eighties, but he arguably makes up for that with the entertainment value he provides these days. Complete idiot.

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#1673: Steven Greer

June 8, 2016, 12:26 am

≫ Next: #1674: Bryan Griem

≪ Previous: #1672: Gary Greenwald

Steven Macon Greer is a retired MD and ufologist, and the founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and The Disclosure Project. The Disclosure Project seeks the disclosure of allegedly suppressed UFO information – the fact that the government doesn’t release documents that demonstrate the existence of UFOs and visitations is of course evidence that the government is engaged in conspiratorial cover-ups, and the more they fail to demonstrate the existence of UFOs, the clearer it becomes that the conspiracy is vast and far-reaching and that the government possesses information that would change and shake up everything (the existence of advanced energy and propulsion systems is apparently a central issue). That’s what happens when you go off the rails and down the rabbit hole to epistemic hell like Steven Greer.

CSETI was established in 1990 to create a diplomatic and research-based initiative to contact extraterrestrial civilizations (Edgar Mitchell is a member). According to CSETI “the extraterrestrial hypothesis is not just a theory, but is a fact of life,” which suggests some confusion over the meaning of the words “hypothesis”, “fact” and “theory”. The Disclosure Project was established in 1993 not only to disclose the government’s alleged knowledge of extraterrestrial intelligence, but also to grant amnesty to government whistle-blowers willing to violate their security oaths by sharing insider knowledge about UFOs. Greer claims to have given a briefing to CIA director James Woolsey at a dinner party, but this is denied by Woolsey and attendees. He did, however, appear in a Larry King TV special The UFO Coverup? in 1994, and made a presentation at a background briefing for members of Congress in 1997. He also appeared in the 2011 conspiracy film Thrive together with luminaries like David Icke, Nassim Haramein and anti-GMO celebrity Vandana Shiva, and has been featured (but of course) on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series. Here is a video of Greer discussing different types of aliens; according to Greer dozens of benevolent extraterrestrial races are already here and eager to make contact,– apparently none of them are technologically savvy enough to circumvent the cover-up efforts of municipal bureaucrats, however.

In fact, Greer is known as a serial extraordinary claimant, and hardly a month seems to go by without him receiving and reporting on new, conclusive proof of what he is already convinced is true (example; example), such as new “government documents” delivered to him by anonymous officials (often related to well-known hoaxes or myths such as the infamous MJ-12 documents), and one of his most notable traits is his complete disinterest in even cursorily trying to verify any of the claims or even check whether his sources are trustworthy or even minimally coherent.

His more recent efforts include being co-producer of the quite laughable documentary Sirius (directed by NLP practitioner Amardeep Kaleka), which covers his work and theories over extraterrestrial life, government cover-ups and close encounters of the fifth kind, and is partially based on his 2006 book Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge (reviewed here). The “documentary” consists of various pieces of “evidence” and interviews with people who claim that secret, alien technologies are being suppressed by the government (or other groups); it also features some free energy conspiracies and claims that man-made anti-gravity vehicles have been used for nearly 50 years to perpetuate ET-abduction hoaxes in order to maintain control over the population (Greer doesn’t believe in abductions since all the aliens are benevolent). One notable feature of the film is its coverage of the so-called Atacama skeleton, a six-inch skeleton found in Chile in 2003 of what is demonstrably a human suffering from a variety of severe genetic disorders (that’s not how Greer interprets it). There is some 9/11 conspiracy stuff there as well; apparently the 9/11 terrorists were part of a conspiracy to prevent us all from realizing that UFOs are real (“It is hard to concretely prove that 9/11 was a false-flag attack because the people behind it are so good covering their tracks” – just think about that claim for a moment; the scriptwriter obviously didn’t).

Greer thinks peaceful contact with extraterrestrials is not only possible but that he is currently in telepathic contact with them through meditation techniques he has apparently developed himself (often with technobabble-like titles such as “Coherent Thought Sequencing” or “Koch-Kyborg Pyramidal Visualisations”). Greer seems to have come to transcendental meditaion after a near-death experience during which he came in contact with “cosmic consciousness” and started levitating and performing miracles; currently, he can summon UFOs by projecting his desire to see them through meditation. You can apparently also contact them using laser pointers.

Over at whale.to the dominant view seems to be that Greer is a reptilian, mostly because he claims that all aliens are benevolent, which according to those who subscribe to the reptilian-overlord view is obviously false and thereby demonstrates that Greer must be a reptilian agent. They even have a collection of photos of Greer to prove it (and, for good measure, throw in a link to young-earth creationist Eric Dubay rambling about the government conspiracy to hide the truth that the Earth is really flat).

Diagnosis: We’re sure the world Greer thinks he inhabits is an interesting place, but it has relatively few points of connection with the real one. Relatively influential, but probably quite harmless; he could certainly have spent his energy on more constructive efforts, however.

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#1674: Bryan Griem

June 9, 2016, 11:55 pm

≫ Next: #1675: James "Bo" Gritz

≪ Previous: #1673: Steven Greer

Rev. Bryan Griem, a California-based pastor, may be an unpleasant fellow who doesn’t like the idea that people who disagree with him on metaphysical issues have rights, but being an unpleasant fellow is not enough to give you an entry. Griem, however, is also a creationist. Like most creationists he doesn’t really understand evolution, but he is nevertheless not afraid to conclude that “Big Science” is in some sort of conspiracy against good religious people like himself. Accordingly, he has called out Bill Nye as “the scary guy, the pagan guy; one worshiping godless misdirection,” and concluded that scientists are motivated by money and anti-religious arrogance (yeah, a standard trick for justifying why you won’t bother to actually understand something or look at the evidence): They “garner funding, find arti-‘facts’ and pretend life’s knowledge. They’re ignorant, as Nye illustrates. I don’t like him anymore. Neither do my kids.” Indeed, like Voltaire, Nye is a “dork.” So that settles that. Griem is also behind a very positive review of “Expelled”, but I won’t link to that one (search it up yourself if you, for some reason, should want to read it).

Aside from that, Griem is on record lamenting the status of the US as a Christian nation (which he, like so many fundamentalists, claims is what the Founding Fathers intended all along), for instance pointing out that in a truly Christian nation “pregnant women would not murder the offspring they produced from their wanton lifestyles” and “gay pride would be an oxymoron,” and that Obama was not elected by a Christian nation – he couldn’t have been (ostensibly since people who disagree with Griem on politics couldn’t be real Christians). So, yeah: that kind of guy.

Diagnosis: An unpleasant person. Stay well away (but I doubt minimally reasonable and decent people would have much trouble realizing that on their own once Griem opens his mouth).

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#1675: James "Bo" Gritz

June 11, 2016, 12:31 am

≫ Next: #1676: Gloria Gronowicz

≪ Previous: #1674: Bryan Griem

Another legendary figure who has fortunately faded from public view – though: he’s been colorful, we’ll give him that. James Gordon “Bo” Gritz is a decorated former Special Forces officer and Vietnam veteran who made a name for himself in the 80s for his conspiracy theories surrounding the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue and a couple of bizarre rescue attempts, but is probably most familiar for his two presidential campaigns in association with the white nationalist America First party in 1988 and 1992. In 1988, he ran as vice president with David Duke on a political platform advocating the re-institution of racial segregation (in fairness, Gritz thought he’d be running with James Traficant and dropped out when he met Duke). In 1992, he ran for the Populist Party under the slogan “God, Guns and Gritz” on a platform described in his isolationist manifesto “The Bill of Gritz”, which e.g. called for completely closing the border with Mexico, the dissolution of the Federal Reserve, and proclaiming the US to be a “Christian Nation” in which the legal statutes “should reflect unashamed acceptance of Almighty God and His Laws”.

Gritz was a central proponent of the rather popular conspiracy theory that there have been a concerted effort by Vietnamese and American governments (every one of them since the war) to hide the existence of POWs still alive and retained in Laos and Vietnam. In the 80s he even undertook a series of private trips to locate POWs, though the missions were uniformly failures: partially the failures can of course be attributed to the always heavily emphasized secrecy of the missions being undermined by Gritz’s pathological inability to avoid drawing attention to himself and publicizing his attempts – in addition to the nonexistence of the POWs that were supposed to be rescued (some might suspect that the latter is a reason for the former – despite being funded by people like Clint Eastwood and Ross Perot, Gritz’s missions bore an uncanny resemblance to missions to locate Bigfoot, in more than one way). He did, however, succeed in cranking up the conspiracy theories, concluding for instance that US government was covering up the existence of the POWs as part of a bigger cover-up of their involvement in organized drug traffic with South East Asian mafia. In the late 80s he founded the Christic Institute for the purpose of pursuing a lawsuit against the U.S. government over these issues but little seems to have come from it, apart from his books A Nation Betrayed and Called To Serve, which expanded on the conspiracy theories to encompass e.g. JFK assassination conspiracies (JFK was assassinated because he was about to abolish the Federal Reserve and have the Treasury Department begin printing United States Notes – the drug traffic conspiracy runs deep) and various New World Order ravings.

His next organization, the Center For Action, broadened its view and actually tried to actively build bridges between conspiracy theorists (Gritz himself was strongly influenced at least by Mary Stuart Relfe) and both leftwing and rightwing activists. His 1990 ”Freedom Call ’90” conference, for instance, featured a lineup including both October surprise conspiracy advocates, psychic and later 9/11-truther Barbara Honegger, and Eustace Mullins, no less. Gritz’s own 1992 presidential campaign was also colored by his beliefs in FEMA concentration camps, the idea that Clinton, Bush and Perot were all pawns of the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, as well as his fear that bar codes are the mark of the beast. His anti-war efforts in the early nineties, despite being premised on the idea that the first Gulf War was a conspiracy to implement a one-world government, actually found him some sympathy on the left, at least until they discovered his association with Christian Identity activists like Peter Peters.

During the 90s Gritz was probably most noted for his involvement in the survivalist movement, e.g. through his course SPIKE (Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events), where opponents of the New World Order were taught paramilitary and survivalist skills that would help them survive the impending total sociopolitical and economic collapse of the US – he even established a community in Idaho called Almost Heaven (featured heavily here). To the public, however, he became probably most famous for using his influence in the Christian Patriot community to negotiate with Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge and with the militia in the famous 1996 stand-off with the Montana Freemen. He was also arrested in 2005 for his, uh, intervention (trespassing) in the Terri Schiavo case. At present he is still running some radio shows and suchlike, but seem to have faded from public view.

Diagnosis: Colorful, but not necessarily in a good way. Probably pretty harmless at this point.

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#1676: Gloria Gronowicz

June 13, 2016, 12:32 am

≫ Next: #1677: Glenn Grothman

≪ Previous: #1675: James "Bo" Gritz

Quackery and pseudoscience have been infiltrating academic medicine for a while, and we have covered the phenomenon before. The University of Connecticut Health Center is another example. The Department of Surgery there is the home of Gloria Gronowicz, who for years now have been looking into the effects of energy healing on tumor growth and metastasis. “Let us use everything to help patients,” says Gronowicz to justify spending efforts and resources for years on funneling resources to study the most ridiculous, medieval magic nonsense that will, of course, not help a single patient. Energy medicine, of course, encompasses things like Reiki, qigong and Therapeutic Touch (TT), and Gronowicz is focused primarily on the latter – basically, the idea is that practitioners emit energy or spirit matter, which they call “biofields”, from their hands and can thereby cure patients without even touching them. Yes, it’s magic, nothing less.

But Gronowicz has produced “results”; she’s made posters and published articles in places like the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (JACM) and even low-ranked “real” journals like the Journal of Orthopedic Research (the latter one is reviewed here). And in 2015 she produced “Therapeutic Touch Has Significant Effects on Mouse Breast Cancer Metastasis and Immune Responses but Not Primary Tumor Size,” which managed to achieve statistically significant results on a small sample by removing the outliers). It’s worth noting that the latter study was funded by the Trivedi Foundation: “The Trivedi Effect® is a natural phenomenon that is harnessed from the universe and is capable of transforming living organisms and non-living materials to operate at a higher level and serve a greater purpose for the welfare of humanity.”

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific nonsense. Give it up Gloria, and spend your resources and energy on something to help patients.

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#1677: Glenn Grothman

June 16, 2016, 11:33 pm

≫ Next: #1678: Wayne Grudem

≪ Previous: #1676: Gloria Gronowicz

A.k.a. Rick Santorum’s “soul mate” (according to himself)

Oh, the state legislatures (again). Glenn Grothman is a village idiot state senator from Wisconsin who managed to serve 22 years as a representative/senator before he – instead of being laughed out of the house – got himself elected to Congress in 2014.

As you’d expect, Grothman has weighed in on social issues with little insight but plenty of dumb. Gay rights is an important one, of course. Grothman opposed a provision in a 2010 Wisconsin sex education law that prohibited teachers from promoting bias based on sexual orientation: homosexuality shouldn’t be mentioned at all in schools beause the instructors who lead these talks would invariably have an “agenda” to persuade students to become gay since homosexuals “would like it if more kids became homosexuals,” and that would eventually lead to divine punishment.

He was also concerned about what God might think of the United States in light of more recent government efforts to fight discrimination based on sexual orientation – in particular the government’s ungodly opposition to Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws – and said that Republicans, conservatives, and church leaders were not confronting the issue of homosexuality and were therefore “losing the issue” (huh!). It’s also the end of America: “We had such a great country in the relatively recent past. Now America, supposed to be the light of the world, instead we’re the light going in the opposite direction.” Indeed, same-sex marriage is an insult to those who fought in the Civil War because those soldiers were fighting to make America more Christian. Yes, he said that.

In a 2012 press release Grothman argued that Kwanzaa is not a real holiday but invented by people who intended to destroy America: “almost no black people today care about Kwanzaa – just white left-wingers who try to shove this down black people’s throats in an effort to divide Americans” (cause the only reason for disagreeing with Grothman is that you wish to divide America). Instead, we should “treat Kwanzaa with the contempt it deserves before it becomes a permanent part of our culture.” Meanwhile Martin Luther King Day is “an insult to all the other taxpayers around the state.” (Of course, Grothman has also advocated a seven-day work week.)

He supported Governor Scott Walker’s decision to repeal the Wisconsin Equal Pay Act, claiming that “once you break it down by married and unmarried, the differential disappears.” That’s of course false, but Grothman explicitly addressed the studies showing that the claim is false by rejecting them and pointing out that “you could argue that money is more important for men.” In 2012, he introduced a state Bill 202, which would have repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act and a bill that would require the state’s Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board to officially label single parenthood “a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect,” saying that the “Left and the social welfare establishment want children born out of wedlock because they are far more likely to be dependent on the government.” You see, it is all a conspiracy; the government is secretly trying to “destroy the nuclear family”. Grothman tried to argue that out-of-wedlock birth rate is the “choice of the women,” who should be “educated that this is a mistake.” And when shown statistics about the high number of pregnancies that are unintended, Grothman dismissed them by saying that many women are “trained” to lie and say that their planned pregnancies are actually unintended. It is really part of a “war on men” (“our country is not going to survive if we continue this war on men”), in fact, conducted through welfare and diversity efforts – so, a war on white men, to be more precise: In a 2009 press release on diversity programs at the University of Wisconsin, he precisely raised the question: “Does the university hate white men?”

Meanwhile, he has called Planned Parenthood “the most racist organization” in the country because it is “aggressively promoting” sex-selective abortions to Asian Americans because such abortions are really popular among that group. No, he doesn’t seem to have a very sophisticated understanding of “racism”. He recently argued that Planned Parenthood’s services aren’t necessary because “as a guy” he has plenty of other health care options in his home state.

Given his proclivity for insane conspiracy theories it is little surprise that he claimed, after the 2012 election, that President Obama and Sen. Tammy Baldwin both won their elections due to fraud (he also suggested that he was eventually going to be arrested for opposing Obamacare and that the Council on Foreign Relations – a shadowy, powerful and evil organization – may be out to get him). But at least he has admitted that the point of voter ID laws is not to prevent voter fraud.

Another active conspiracy is environmentalism. Climate change “doesn’t exist,” according to Grothman, and “this environmental stuff, this is the idea that is driven by this global warming thing. Global warming is not man-made and there is barely any global warming at all, there’s been no global warming for the last twelve or thirteen years” (and let us emphasize: anyone who uses that gambit and believe it is so stupid and malinformed that they shouldn’t be trusted with opening doors without assistance). Indicative of his powers of observation, Grothman’s laments the “fact” that few Republicans are “stepping up to the plate and saying, ‘look, this global warming stuff is not going on.” (The shortage of scientists doing so concerns him less, since he is unable to see science as anything but a political game anyways).

During the 2016 primaries Grothman endorsed Ted Cruz, ostensibly because Ted Cruz was the only candidate who can protect us from single moms having anchor babies (presumably since it's the single mothers that are guided by Satan to destroy America; marriage saves them).

Diagnosis: Yes, a crazy, bigoted and obtuse wingnut. But Grothman is first and foremostly a deranged conspiracy theorist, of the kind that should really be relegated to writing rants with curious font choices and color combinations for Red Ice Creations.

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#1678: Wayne Grudem

June 22, 2016, 12:44 am

≫ Next: #1679: Glenn Gruenhagen

≪ Previous: #1677: Glenn Grothman

Wayne Grudem is a fanatic Biblical inerrantist and evangelical theologian – he has suggested that being non-Christian (by his narrow definition of Christianity) is immoral – most famous for his advocacy of letting the Bible control absolutely every single aspect of life, including those not covered in the Bible, and for being the founder of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) (current president is Mississippi pastor J. Ligon Duncan, III). Yeah, you get the idea. They advocate complementarianism. Focus on the Family is heavily inspired by their work. Grudem is also the editor (with John Piper) of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (which was named “Book of the Year” by Christianity Today in 1992) and the author of Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth: an Analysis of over 100 Disputed Questions. You can probably guess your way to his and the CBMW’s position on gay marriage (complete with made-up statistics).

As a Biblical inerrantist it is hardly surprising that Grudem is a creationist – though he suspends judgment on whether he’ll plump for the old-earth or the young-earth variety. To his credit (or whatever you call it) he doesn’t even really bother to try to engage with the science when it comes to scientific questions. Grudem does Bible. Science, truth, evidence or reality aren’t even on his radar.

In 2016 Grudem was one of several fundamentalist recruited to serve on Marco Rubio’s Religious Liberty Advisory Board, which promoted religion very much indeed but had little time for promoting liberty in any recognizable sense of the word.

Diagnosis: This is what the Taliban was made of. Really. Grudem’s views on political and social issues are indistinguishable but for the names. He is also very influential and thus extremely dangerous.

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#1679: Glenn Gruenhagen

June 24, 2016, 1:19 am

≫ Next: #1680: Nina Gryphon & Chris Brennan

≪ Previous: #1678: Wayne Grudem

More delusional derangedness in the state legislatures, this time in Minnesota. Glenn Gruenhagen has been serving as a representative since 2010, and has been a vocal proponent of climate change denialism and associated conspiracy theories. According to Gruenhagen, climate change is a “complete United Nations fraud and lie,” and as a source he cites “the latest facts from CPAC,” no less, which “show that in the last sixteen years there’s been no global warming.” Yeah, that one.

Oh, but he is also into gay rights conspiracies, as you probably expected. According to Gruenhagen, homosexuality is a “sexual addiction” and an “unscientific lie” (keep in mind Gruenhagen’s reference to CPAC for his scientific facts). On what grounds is it unscientific? “The human genome map was completed in 2003. There is no gay gene. Okay?” It’s interesting to ponder what else would be “unscientific lies” by that criterion. Gruenhagen dismissed Alfred Kinsey’s work on the grounds that he was a “filthy, perverted unscientific liar” and called for all of his research to be destroyed. He has also asserted that “the concept of sexual orientation was started by Sigmund Freud … he’s a pervert, he’s a moron in my opinion, and I don’t believe in anything that he came up with.” Granted, “in my opinion” isn’t much worse as a source of scientific evidence than CPAC. He has also urged his constituents to “resist the implementation of the gay agenda in public and parochial schools,” and has claimed that in Massachusetts there have already been cases where “citizens who would not succumb to politically correct speech have been charged with hate crimes.” That information (false, of course) he got from the anti-gay organization MassResistance, Brian Camenker’s group. Which may, in fact, be an even more ridiculous source of “facts” than CPAC.

Diagnosis: Moron who tries to weigh up for his lack of intellectual clout with passionated hatred, paranoia, conspiracy theories and bigotry. Which is pretty common, but never a particularly pretty sight.

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#1680: Nina Gryphon & Chris Brennan

June 26, 2016, 12:13 am

≫ Next: #1681: John Guandolo

≪ Previous: #1679: Glenn Gruenhagen

To hard to believe, there are actually people out there who genuinely believe in astrology. Plenty, in fact, and we cannot hope to cover every practitioner here, even though they all deserve entries. The present entry concerns a group that suffered sufficiently bad karma (since being publicly outed as an astrologer is objectively bad for you even if you don’t realize it yourself) to be featured in the news prior to the 2012 election after having participated on a panel at some astrology convention in New Orleans, where they decided that Obama was going to win the election. Yeah, they got that one right. We are not impressed.

- Nina Gryphon is an astrologist and corporate lawyer who offers “expert astrological consultation” to the Chicago area. Apparently it was her study of the Aries ingress – the time when the Sun enters the sign of Aries – that clinched the prediction for her.

- Denver-based Chris Brennan, however, while asserting – apparently without irony – that the charts told him Obama were entering into “peak periods of eminence” that would remain “consistent throughout the election” (whereas Romney’s seemed “to falter a few weeks before the election”), he admitted that Obama may face trouble after the election, since “the ingress of Saturn into Scorpio may trouble him.” He also hedged the conclusion a bit, since we “should all be aware of the Mercury retrograde that will occur on election day.”

The sad thing is that they apparently think they are helping, and that their predictions can assist people in decision making. It’s actually pretty scary if you think about it.

Diagnosis: These people are allowed to vote (although, since the movements of distant balls of rocks or gas determine the outcomes anyways, one wonders whether and why they would bother). That should probably concern you.

↧

#1681: John Guandolo

June 27, 2016, 12:00 am

≫ Next: #1682: Thomas G. Guilliams

≪ Previous: #1680: Nina Gryphon & Chris Brennan

John Guandolo is a former FBI agent who talks to wingnuts and conspiracy theorists about the threat of Muslim infiltration. Actually, like most of their ex-Muslim and ex-secret-agents Guandolo is … well, his background isn’t quite like the picture he conveys. But he tells wingnuts and conspiracy theorists what they want to hear, so they’re apparently more than willing to overlook that somewhat substantial dent in his credibility.

According to Guandolo himself he was an FBI agent until he was forced out by the “Muslim radicals” who control the agency. That’s right; the FBI has become, covertly, more or less a front for Islamic radicalism, and the people in charge – despite recognizing the stellar work Guandolo did on gathering intelligence – finally got tired of him bringing to light uncomfortable facts about Islamic radicals, so they booted him. In reality, Guandolo apparently resigned from the FBI because he was having sex with a confidential informant in a federal corruption case, and resigned before they could question him about it.

How deep does the radical Muslim infiltration go? Well, according to Guandolo, John Brennan converted to Islam when he served in Saudi Arabia as the “culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him”. And Guandolo is more than willing to elaborate upon how dire a situation this puts the US in, but tends to neglect to provide, you know, anything to back up the assertion. The WND ran it anyways, of course. Rick Wiles also hosted Guandolo on his show to explain how Brennan is seeking to “aid and abet the enemy” through assistance to Muslim Brotherhood agents who are infiltrating the government (the goal is to replace the Constitution with Sharia law, of course). On the show Guandolo also suggested that President Obama is a Muslim, although he admitted that he couldn’t offer a “100 percent guarantee” (most of us would rather be interested in the evidence than a guarantee, but then again we are not raging, paranoid nutjobs and may accordingly use different parameters) – but he could assert that Obama “is significantly sympathetic to the cause of our enemies” and that he and other top officials are accordingly “absolutely not upholding their oath of office and need to be removed” and put in jail (“treason”, he calls the fact that Obama wants to work with U.S. Muslim communities to combat extremism) – apparently he hopes that president Trump will ensure that everyone Guandolo disagrees with on political matters will be arrested and the practice of Islam is properly regulated by law to ensure that the liberty and freedom we know and love are upheld. He also falsely claimed that the Islamic Society of North America is a front group for Hamas. Guandolo was invited back after the Boston bombings to claim that Islamic radicals are operating in “every locale across the United States” and must be named and shamed. If not, Guandolo claimed, such extremists will infiltrate school boards and the sheriff’s departments and cause America to go over the “tipping point” beyond which we become a nation controlled by Al Qaeda (at least that seems to be what he was claiming; it’s not entirely coherent. And once again, Obama is actively seeking to impose Sharia law. Indeed, Tennessee is apparentlyalready under Sharia law.

In 2015 he also blamed the mass shooting at an Oregon community college on Obama’s “pro-jihadi ideology”. The shooter was not a Muslim. But you know: He was an Islamist terrorist nonetheless. “While there are reports Chris Harper-Mercer’s online dating profile identifies him as a ‘Republican’ of mixed race, the evidence available as of today reveals he is sympathetic to terrorists and jihadis,” said Guandolo. He didn’t specify the “evidence” part. And Mercer was clearly fueled by Obama’s “anti-Christian rhetoric, his pro-progressive-left socialist, Marxist, revolutionary ideology,” as well as “his anti-police policies and actions and the Department of Justice and attorney general who support these.” That’s what Islamic extremism is all about. Added Guandolo to radio show host Vince Coakley: “I think this is a much more reasonable answer to why this happened than the fact that we have too many guns, which is what the president immediately came out and said.” It really, really isn’t, you know. But then Guandolo wouldn’t be able to identify “reasonable” if his life depended on it. Apparently Black Lives Matter is a front for Muslim extremism as well.

Now, Guandolo’s crazy is the kind of insanity that might pass muster on the fringes of whale.to, but Guandolo’s audience actually includes several big figures in the rightwing movement. David Barton is a fan, of course, but Barton has never had much of an aptitude for the distinction between truth and falsehood. More disconcertingly, the 2015 crop of GOP presidential candidates didn’t express any qualms about appearing alongside him at Frank Gaffney’s National Security Action Summit”.

Diagnosis: Frothingly insane, paranoid conspiracy theorist – but since he tells people what they want to hear he is apparently also well-respected by frighteningly many gohmerts on the fringe, and even exerts some influence on people with real power.

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#1682: Thomas G. Guilliams

June 28, 2016, 12:32 am

≫ Next: #1683: Elbert Guillory

≪ Previous: #1681: John Guandolo

The Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism was supposed to gather signatures from scientists skeptical of the “Darwinist dogma”. As such, it was an abject failure. True, the relatively modest number of signatories includes some frothing fundamentalists on the faculty at various bible schools, but relatively few of the signatories are real scientists. And some are people like Thomas G. Guilliams. Now, Guilliams does have a Ph.D. Molecular in Biology, and does – as opposed to the vast, vast majority of signatories – have a reasonably relevant educational background. But Guilliams is currently VP/Director of Science and Regulatory Affairs, Ortho Molecular Products, Inc. Yes, readers: that’s orthomolecular medicine, which is as quacky as quackery comes. Guilliams himself is listed as an “integrative practitioner” at integrativepractitioner.com, an online community of woo practitioners. Now, Guilliams does in fact have some publications that seem legitimate – though in fields unrelated to evolution, of course – but is also the author e.g. of “The Original Prescription: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries Can Help You Leverage the Power of Lifestyle Medicine”. So much for science.

Diagnosis: The deeper you look at the signatories to the Discovery Institute’s list, the shoddier it becomes. Guilliams is a pseudoscientist and crackpot galore, but he’s in good company among said signatories.

↧

#1683: Elbert Guillory

June 29, 2016, 12:33 am

≫ Next: #1684: Jane Guiltinan

≪ Previous: #1682: Thomas G. Guilliams

Elbert Guillory was, until 2016, a State Senator for Louisiana, most recently representing the Republican party (that has varied), ostensibly because the Dixiecrats were racist and Democrat-supported policies harm the black community; according to Guillory welfare and even food stamps are used, apparently intentionally, as a way to control it. Besides, Frederick Douglass was a Republican.

Beyond Louisiana Guillory is most famous for his unflinching support of creationism and initiatives to get creationism taught in public schools. In particular, Guillory supported the infamous Louisiana Science Education Act, which opens up precisefly for teaching creationism (and was designed to do so). His reason for supporting the Act – or, in fairness, opposing a 2013 move to repeal it – is somewhat novel however: when a voodoo doctor correctly (allegedly) diagnosed his condition (how would he know if he didn’t also see a real doctor?), Guillory realized that he should keep his mind open about science: “Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man – in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed – if I had closed him off and just said, ‘That’s not science. I’m not going to see this doctor,’ I would have shut off a very good experience for myself.” Yes, that’s right: Guillory is skeptical of science but keeps an open mind (in the sense of “endorses”) voodoo. His speech has gone down as one of the great moments in Louisiana history, and note: the move to repeal the bill in 2013 failed in a 3-2 vote where Guillory voted with the majority. Which means that it was their support for voodoo that won the day for creationism among Louisiana legislators.

To back up his distrust of science, Guillory pointed to an imaginary past when “when scientists thought that the world was flat, [a]nd if you get to the end of it, you’d fall off,” (there really, really wasn’t) and they would burn people who disagreed at the stake. We don’t think it was the scientists who burned people at the stake, but Guillory’s support for the education act was already premised on an amazing inability to distinguish science from fundamentalist religion, and in that respect his reasoning is rather illuminating.

Diagnosis: It’s hard not to judge the people of Louisiana as a group when faced with something like this, but we should try to reserve our judgment for Guillory himself. The “loon” epithet really doesn’t do justice to the abysmal mess of delusional crazy that is the mind of Elbert Guillory.

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#1684: Jane Guiltinan

July 2, 2016, 12:51 am

≫ Next: #1685: Colin Gunn

≪ Previous: #1683: Elbert Guillory

Jane Guiltinan is the former President of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) and Dean of Naturopathic “Medicine” at Bastyr University. She was also nominated by Josephine Briggs to serve on the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NACCAM) – a pretty big name in the quackery and pseudoscience movement, in other words. Guiltinan, according to herself, “emphasizes the concepts of treating the cause of a problem, supporting the body’s own healing process and encouraging patients to create their own wellness even in the face of serious illness.” She “uses nutrition, plant medicine and homeopathy in her practice and believes that air, water, food, touch, love and laughter are some of the most powerful healing agents.” Guiltinan has also served on the advisory board for Almon Glenn Braswell’s Journal of Longevity, a pseudojournal if there ever was one and the kind of thing the expression “cargo cult science” was invented to describe.

Now, the AANP requires that its members graduate from a four-year accredited college, and Guiltinan herself has claimed that “[t]o argue that you don’t have to have any training for diagnosing or treating patients is absurd.” But although naturopathic training has the superficial trappings of a real education (with titles and classes and diplomas), they don’t seem to really grasp, you know, the point of real medical training. It doesn’t matter how long you study astrology or the quality of the paper on which your astrology diploma is printed; you don’t get any better at predicting the future. And homeopathy is sillier than astrology.

Diagnosis: Technobabble isn’t science, magic doesn’t work, and naturopathic medicine isn’t medicine. Jane Guiltinan is little more than a modern-day alchemist and witch doctor who has deluded herself into believing she’s something more. But though she cannot achieve any real results with regard to curing people, she has contributed to real results when it comes to promoting and giving her pseudoscientific garbage a sheen of legitimacy. Dangerous.

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#1685: Colin Gunn

July 4, 2016, 12:20 am

≫ Next: #1686: Richard Gunther

≪ Previous: #1684: Jane Guiltinan

If Christian reconstructionism is a fringe movement, it is pretty mainstream for a fringe movement. There are plenty of people in the US fighting fervently to institute a theocracy, and although they often claim to revere the Constitution, their idea of what the Constitution says has very, very little with what it actually says. In particular, reconstructionists fight tooth and claw against religious freedom. They do so in the name of religious freedom, of course, but what they mean is their freedom to force others to accept their religious beliefs, not religious freedom. Accordingly, many reconstructionists take a dim view of public education, since public schools are not allowed to violate the religious freedoms of students and in particular not allowed to force or even recommend that students adopt the religious belief these reconstructionists think students should adopt. And combine that sense of dismay with the persecution and martyr complex at the core of their own sense of identity, and you will get some truly inane and scary conspiracy theories.

Homeschooling activist and dominionist Colin Gunn is one such, and he is behind one of several “documentaries” about the perils of the public education system, such as “IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America,” which features an impressive lineup of Christian Reconstructionists such as Gary North, Gary DeMar, Doug Phillips, John Eidsmoe and Joe Morecraft, as well as none other than Ken Ham, of Answers In Genesis and the Creation Museum fame. According to Gunn, the education system can only be fixed if “every subject taught in school is designed to give glory to God,” so OK: Gunn may not even be trying to pretend that he is in favor of civil rights or religious freedom. Rather, he strives to protect children from being exposed to subjects like evolution or, really, science in general: the teaching of evolution can, according to Gunn, contaminate “the culture of a school” and trigger school shootings, and the “faith of many children are undermined very quickly in the science class”. Instead, the Bible alone should be basis of “understanding of real science,” says Gunn. “Real science” does apparently not mean science. The solution, of course, is to eradicate the “sinful” and secular public school system that also exposes children to the philosophies of gays, progressives, and abortion rights activists.

In an interview with Vic Eliason on Crosstalk, Gunn claimed that even the school bus is emblematic of the United States’ “totalitarian education system” (no, he doesn’t quite understand what “totalitarian” means; go figure). Moreover, Gunn claims that public schools are persecuting Christians (by not forcing everyone to submit to Gunn’s Taliban-style version of dominionism, of course) and has compared public school education in the US to Nazi indoctrination through the Hitler Youth (Eliason agreed, and said that the public school system was performing “mental molestation”).

Diagnosis: Thoroughly deranged, frothing madman. The rabid Taliban-envy that characterize people like Gunn should really be a laughing matter, but given his influence and the sheer number of delusional maniacs sympathetic to his cause, it really isn’t.

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#1686: Richard Gunther

July 4, 2016, 11:01 pm

≫ Next: #1687: Matthew Hagee

≪ Previous: #1685: Colin Gunn

If density annoys you, you better stay well clear of this one. Richard Gunther, of Living Waters Ministry, is a cartoonist and creationist. In fact, he is Ray Comfort’s official cartoonist, and probably one of the dumbest creationists you’ll come across on the whole, wide Internet. His cartoons are more like … illustrated creationist talking points, and Gunther doesn’t really have the faintest idea what the theory of evolution actually is or how science works. Actually, Gunther’s misconceptions and errors are so staggering that it really has to be seen – here you go, but brace yourself and expect to lose some intelligence points. If you don’t want to try, you can instead ponder this statement: “A while ago I drew a cartoon as a joke, with the picture of hairy primate and the words to the effect: ‘If we come from apes, and if humans are “fitter” than apes, then how come there are still apes?’” Oh, yes, he did. He did also receive some flak for that one, to which he offered the Ray Comfort response to making a fool of himself with the banana argument: “This joke was drawn and written for its humour, not its accuracy, because of course it is downright silly to argue this way.” So it was really a joke on the expense of creationists? (Otherwise, what was the joke? … are we just trying to furiously backpedal here, Richard?) And he carefully explained: “Just because humans are ‘fitter’ than apes does not mean that apes ought to be extinct.” Indeed, “[t]here are also many examples of very ‘unfit’ plants and animals, such as the panda which lives almosty exclusively on bamboo, or the koala which likes mainly eucalyptus. Most ‘unfit’ yet they survive.” No, he doesn’t get it. Not even close. And for the grand non-sequietur, he once again offered an illustration of how silly evolution is. It is best quoted at some length:

“[L]et us see where the Darwinian view leads, if we follow it through: Darwin saw Mankind as the product of millions of years of slow development, an increasing trend, from lower to higher levels of intelligence and complexity – a development which he claimed was a normal part of living things. Apply a logical progression to this: If this premise is true we should see:

- A continuing improvement in average human phisique, health and resistance to biological opposition over time,

- A continuing increase in average human intelligence, and technology,

We do not see any of these things. The trend is the other way. Darwin’s theory of evolution upward doesn’t fit the real, observed world.”

You can’t but marvel, can you? Well, Gunther can back up his hypothesis about the devolution of human civilization, don’t you know: “Health? Humans are increasingly beset by new diseases (small pox, malaria, cholera, ‘black death’. etc)” Ok, one down – evolution is refuted by recent increases in incidents of cholera and the black death (and note that according to biologists the theory of evolution applies only to humans, not other organisms). What about technology and intelligence? “How[sic] Intellect? Increasingly discoveries of ancient civilizations are revealing that those people were actually brighter they we are in many ways (i.e. huge monuments made of incredibly heavy stones, the antikathera, astronomical knowledge, metal-work, more complex languages, etc.” Perhaps the rocks were just heavier back in those days. And yes, Gunther is, in full seriousness, trying to argue that our intellectual level has exhibited a downward trend since the stone age by using examples fromtechnology. And he is doing so in a desperate attempt to falsify a ridiculous strawman of evolution (“[a]ccording to [Darwin], evolution for humans is all up and up”). The failure is, in other words, so complete it transcends stupidity. You can’t make this up.

The conclusion Gunther draws from his inane ravings is, of course, that evolution couldn’t have happened (remember he is still dealing with his weird misconception about what it is) and you should accept the obvious truth of a literal interpretation of the Bible instead (there is probably little to gain in pointing out to him evidence against evolution, if such was offered, is not evidence for Biblical creationism); and ominously enough: “evolutionists don’t want the public to know this. They prefer to believe the lie than face the truth.” Guess who’s ultimately running the scientists and behind their nefarious tactics.

Diagnosis: Absolutely hilarious. It’s hard to believe that anyone could challenge Ray Comfort or Jim Pinkoski for inanity, but you betcha there is. Marvelous.

↧

#1687: Matthew Hagee

July 6, 2016, 12:32 am

≫ Next: #1688: Stephen Che Halbrook

≪ Previous: #1686: Richard Gunther

Matthew Hagee is the spawn and aide of deranged lunatic John Hagee and responsible for much of the televangelism perpetrated by John Hagee Ministries. Matthew is deranged as well.

Like his father, Matthew entertains a love-hate relationship with the end-times, which he, like Harold Camping and others (like his father), believes is imminent: On the one hand they welcome it, while on the other they offer dire warnings and much gnashing of teeth about how certain political decisions they don’t like are bringing it closer (and please: take a moment to think about how abysmally moronic and childish it is to respond with “it’s going to bring about the end times” to political decisions you don’t like). For instance, according to Matthew Hagee:

- The 2013 DOMA ruling is a sign that “the rapture of the church is about to occur” (i.e. “send us money”) since today all of the same things are taking place as occurred during the days of Noah, such as men being wicked and atheistic, and during the days of Lot when “men had given up the natural affections for women and were lying with other men.” (Marriage equality also “kills capitalism” – which I guess is a rather trivial corollary of it bringing about the end times).

- The 2013 Navy Yard shootings were a sign of the end times, and possible military action against Syria could lead to World War III, and thus the fulfillment of Jesus’ assertion that “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars” as the End Times approach, since wars and rumors of wars are a new thing.

- Obamacare (of course) is paving the way for the Mark of the Beast and then to the endtimes

- The 2014 ebola crisis is a sign of the end times (according to John Hagee it is proof that God’s judgment is on America for failing to support Israel … wait, what?)

- Climate change is a myth because it contradicts the Bible, and therefore a sign of the end times (no, we cannot really make sense of it; don’t blame us). Instead of caring about the environment we should tell people about Jesus.

As a response to the woes of society of present – with civil rights and the separation of church and state and all that – Matthew Hagee recommends more dominionism, and to achieve this Christians need to use “spiritual violence” (whatever that is) – in America at present secularists have “become violent with people of faith” (apparently meaning that not everyone subscribes to the same doctrines as Hagee and gay marriage is legal – according to Hagee, Christians are soon going to be declared “enemies of the state” and thrown in jail, or worse), and Christians need to fight back: “There is a value in spiritual violence,” since it will … prevent or postpone the end times? Wait, that can’t be it, can it?

One of the oppressive, ungodly tactics of secularists is science, and in particular science education: science, English, and math are only ungodly if they are not taught from the perspective that “God is the source of all knowledge,” but “whenever you use science to teach the deception of evolution, that’s ungodly”. Evolution, according to Hagee is a “lie from the pit of hell” and has “cost us 55 million Americans” since it is to blame for legal abortion (he doesn’t explain). It is also to blame for the uproar over Cecil the lion’s death, which is ostensibly of the devil as well. As Hagee sees it, schools have been telling kids “that we were the highest form of a scientific process called evolution. ‘There’s just one little chromosome between us and Cecil the lion.’ Thank God for that chromosome, because it gave me a finger and I can use it to pull the trigger.” It seems that Matthew Hagee must have skipped that day when they explained evolution at his school, and that this wasn’t the only class he missed.

Apparently he has also been involved in the construction of another Noah’s Ark replica in San Antonio; though it is somewhat scaled down (a “two-story ship with 16 life-sized passengers,” including a giraffe), it cost 5 million and “aims to spur wonderment but also to underscore the Bible’s authenticity,” said Matthew Hagee. It even got real animatronics! “You’d be hard-pressed to find any church with animatronics,” said Michael Chanley, executive director of the International Network of Children’s Ministry. How could it (as opposed to words) fail?

Hagee is, of course, also an advocate of faith healing. Indeed, he claims that healing in Jesus’s name always works: Sometimes instantaneously, other times over a longer period … and sometimes the person dies, “but that does not mean they’re not healed.” As he reminds us, “The Bible says that when we get into presence of God that every sickness, every infirmity, and every kind of weakness is gone, which is an absolute and total healing.” Just think about it.

Sometimes, though, Hagee suggests less lofty and abstract tools to counter societal ills. For instance, to prevent mass shootings he has suggested that we should just outlaw video games. He agreed with radio show host Trey Ware that we also need “common sense gun control”, which means that we need to “repeal a lot of the restrictions on the Second Amendment” and “outlaw the gun-free zones,” and helpfully offered the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee as an example of the dangers of gun control. As for gay marriage, it doesn’t only usher in the end times (and kill capitalism); it also destroys our ability to survive because it undermines the family and is a tool of Satan. Indeed, gay marriage is apparently so silly that, according to Hagee, “people who are educated cannot look at two men married and say ‘that’s right’”. But then, Hagee presumably has a pretty eccentric idea about what “educated” means.

Diagnosis: It’s another John Hagee, only more deranged and less sympathetic. Yeah, it’s pretty bad.

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#1688: Stephen Che Halbrook

July 7, 2016, 12:17 am

≫ Next: #1689: Ralph Hall

≪ Previous: #1687: Matthew Hagee

Well, Matthew Hagee may be an utterly deranged loon, but for frothing, sadistic bloodthirst and evil he probably doesn’t hold a candle to Stephen Che Halbrook. Halbrook runs something called the Theonomy Resources and is a teacher at The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy, a “college-level” “school” endorsed by people like Gary DeMar, Ray Moore of Frontline Ministries and the Exodus Mandate, and Mark “we must base our laws on faith, not reason” Rushdoony, the vile spawn of R. J. Rushdoony himself. Halbrook is the author of a 2011 book called God is Just: A Defense of the Old Testament Civil Laws (oh, yes, precisely), which is apparently an extension of a Master’s thesis presented at Regent University in 2008. The book, which is hardcore even by dominionist standards, promotes the idea that government should use the Old Testament moral code as its basis for civil law, including the death penalty for blasphemy, idolatry, sabbath-breaking, disobedient children, adulterers and gays. Apparently having capital punishment for violators of biblical law benefits society, as Halbrook sees it, but his understanding of the word “benefits” seems to be unidiomatic.

And yes, he advocates the death penalty for disobedient children: “To all this we must add that capital sanctions for those who repudiate parental authority protect the family from treason. Many today would think capital punishment for treason against the family is extreme, but on the other hand, capital punishment for treason against the state is a necessity.” I don’t think you need us to point out some flaws in that analogy. And for breaking the Sabbath? “Given the evidence that criminality begins with Sabbath breaking, we see the importance of the Sabbath capital sanction. Fear of execution by the state deters many would-be criminals from embracing a life of crime and executing innocent people. Thus the more lax society becomes regarding the Bible’s penalty for Sabbath-breaking, the more society can expect to contend with crime. ‘[T]he wages of sin is death’ (Rom. 6:23), and so we shouldn’t be surprised that the wages of the heinous sin of Sabbath breaking on a societal level results in death on a societal level,” which may just be the most amazingly malicious and delusionally insane passage ever recorded on the Internet. Ok, his justification of the death penalty for blasphemy comes close: “In sum, the purpose of civil government is not primarily to defend the rights of man, but the rights of God. God’s rights over the state entail the state’s requirement to recognize God as Lord over the state (i.e., the highest political authority), and the state’s requirement to execute God’s wrath in His prescribed manner. This in no way diminishes human rights, but increases them. As we can see from the necessity of theocentric laws that we discussed, to disregard God’s rights —which are the rights from which all human rights derive — is to disregard man’s rights. And what right of God is more fundamental than not to be blasphemed?” Just think about it. Halbrook didn’t. Will his master’s thesis supervisor please go have a chat with some real grownups? (Halbrook probably shouldn’t be let near anyone, grown-up or otherwise.)

And the gays? Ah, Halbrook’s chapter on homosexuality is riddled with quotes from Scott Lively’s book The Pink Swastika, and endorses Lively’s claim that Nazism is a “sodomite movement.” Not that Halbrook really needs the connection to justify his conclusion about gays: “justifying sodomy on the grounds of it being a private act doesn’t work, because it contributes greatly to a society’s cup of iniquity that can result in God’s destruction of that society. What good is it for a society to promote the freedom for all to participate in the lifestyle of their choice if a society isn’t around to promote it?” Ah, yes: what good is allowing sodomy if God is going to destroy society over it. Apparently capital punishment for sodomy will also help sodomites themselves by preventing them from committing suicide as a natural consequence of their sinful lifestyle. Which is, in a deranged sense, true.

And yes, if you wondered: Halbrook does think that stoning and burning are proper methods of capital punishment.

The book has been endorsed e.g. by Buddy Hanson, the Alabama representative to the Exodus Mandate, a home school support group, who said that “With God’s grace, God Is Just: A Defense Of The Old Testament Civil Lawswill be used to bring American Christians to repentance and back to honoring God’s Word through their daily decisions.” Halbrook actually refers to Hanson to justify imposing biblical laws on a society: “By not ‘imposing’ Christian beliefs on others, we allow them to ‘impose’ their beliefs on us […] Pluralism is no less impositional than other political system – and actually, it is potentially the most impositional […] pluralism naturally tends towards outright totalitarianism, and even imperialism.” And no, this is not a parody. At least Halbrook also denounces the Christian right for lack of integrity.

Diagnosis: Yes, there are people more extreme, fanatic and ideologically pure than Boko Haram. And please maintain your distance to this one; love and compassion will probably be futile.

↧

#1689: Ralph Hall

July 9, 2016, 11:43 pm

≫ Next: #1690: Robert Hall

≪ Previous: #1688: Stephen Che Halbrook

Ralph Moody Hall was the deranged idiot who served as the United States Representative for Texas’s 4th congressional district from 1981 to 2015 (Democrat until 2004; Republican afterward) and who was apparently trying to demonstrate beyond doubt that Texas’s 4^th congressional district is composed largely of morons (he’s done a pretty good job of that). Hall notably served as chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology from 2011 to 2013 because he is clueless and would be unable to distinguish scientific reasoning and evidence-based conclusions from a broomstick if his life depended on it, and because the party he served evidently hates science.

Hall, who doesn’t like the conclusions scientists draw from their data, says that scientists “concoct evidence to obtain grants” – in particular climate scientists, who systematically tend not to come to the conclusions Hall has deluded himself into believing. In particular, Hall doesn’t believe climate change (if it exists – the earth might be freezing, according to Hall) is in any way manmade, since “I don’t think we can control what God controls.” (Remember, again, that this was the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.) He did emphasize, however, that “I’m not anti-science, I’m pro-science. But we ought to have some believable science,” where “believable” of course means believable to Ralph Hall, who has already demonstrated that he is a moron and a conspiracy theorist. Also climategate, and the fact that this purported conspiracy has been as thoroughly refuted as the earth’s flatness is something he can easily dismiss by claiming that the conspiracy just goes even deeper, encompassing also everyone who investigate the conduct of professional scientists and come to conclusions not in alignment with the conclusions he has persuaded himself into believing through non-rational reasons. He has also threatened to subpoena scientists who come to conclusions he doesn’t like.

Instead of accepting the scientific consensus, Hall presents his own perspectives. Of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 men and was an environmental disaster, Hall said: “As we saw that thing bubbling out, blossoming out – all that energy, every minute of every hour of every day of every week – that was tremendous to me. That we could deliver that kind of energy out there – even on an explosion.”

He wasn’t alone. Hall’s House Committee on Science, Space and Technology also included young Earth creationist and global warming denialist Paul Broun, Todd Akin, who is most famous for his idiosyncratic beliefs about human anatomy, and Dana Rohrabacher, who thinks the solution to global warming is to clear cut forests. The Vice-chair was Jim Sensenbrenner, who believes the Earth is cooling but not that CO₂ is a pollutant: If it were, says Sensenbrenner, we’d all “need to put catalytic converters on all our noses. The fact that people think CO₂ is a pollutant … basically goes into propaganda.” He has also referred to the scientific consensus on global warming as a “massive international scientific fraud.”

Diagnosis: Befuddled but raving old lunatic (and no, it’s unlikely to be pretense) whose lack of critical thinking skills border on the impressive, even for the group of peope he usually associates with. He’s out now, but may have provided us with a lasting and harmful legacy.

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#1690: Robert Hall

July 11, 2016, 12:42 am

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Robert Hall is a pastor at Calvary Chapel Rio Rancho and (surprise) an anti-gay activist. At a 2013 Family Research Council event, “Stand with Scouts Sunday”, to oppose the proposed resolution that would end the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay members under the age of eighteen (featuring politicians such as Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Steve Palazzo), Hall warned that the push to end the ban on gays is a sign of the End Times and will ultimately make America “self-destruct.” Because, you know, Hall doesn’t like gays and anything that Hall doesn’t like will bring about the End Times. Which he ostensibly does like but still warns against.

Hall is also a creationist, and when the Rio Rancho school board’s initially adopted a policy that would allow discussing “alternative ideas to evolution” in science class only to walk back on the idea, he was not pleased. According to Hall, there is a bias within school systems that protects the teaching of evolution (an “unproven hypothesis”) while discrediting creationism by calling it “religion in schools,” which it is, regardless of whether pastor Hall adamantly asserts that “it’s a scientific movement” or not. In particular, according to Hall, there’s a conspiracy afoot, “a chokehold on the educational system and certain scientific outlets by evolutionists,” something that he, as an end times pastor and advocate of a literal reading of the Biblical, is in a particularly privileged position to discern.

Hall accordingly launched his own lecture series, which featured luminaries like John Doughty, a mechanical engineer and adjunct professor in scientific apologetics at Trinity Theological Seminary in Albuquerque. According to Doughty himself, he “was trained in evolution,” but “found out there was another model that made a whole lot more sense – and that was the creation model,” ostensibly because of the laws of thermodynamics, no less (no, he doesn’t even faintly understand the basic principles of evolution); according to Doughty creationism fit within the thermodynamic laws better, which, if you think about it, is a spectacularly silly thing to say. “The Bible is first and science is second,” said Doughty: “The Bible stood on its own merit for centuries before science arrived on the scene.” Indeed.

Diagnosis: Yes, another one. Stupid and evil and fanatic nut.

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