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#896: Gail Lowe

January 30, 2014, 6:57 am
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Since “Ira S. Loucks” is, most likely, a pseudonym, and I have been unable to verify the current whereabouts of mad truther Scott Loughrey (of “New York was nuked on 9/11”-fame), we’ll go for a safe one. Gail Lowe is a Texan creationist who assumed the reins of the Texas Board of Education in 2009, following the legendary reign of Don McLeroy (she later yielded them to fellow creationist Barbara Cargill in 2011). Just as her predecessor and successor, Lowe is a young earth creationist and advocate of abstinence-only sex education in a state with one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country despite 96% of the school districts in the state teaching abstinence-only. But “testing theories against reality” is not what this is all about of course, and dishonesty is OK if it is done in the name of Jesus, as emphasized by the fact that Lowe appointed none other than professional fraud David Barton to the advisory committee on the social studies curriculum in 2010.

The main bulk of her time as schoolboard leader was spent fighting culture wars, with Lowe in particular trying to combat the perceived anti-Christian stance of current textbooks, and on crusades against science, in particular evolution – Lowe is a rather active and belligerent creationist. Even other conservatives were apparently somewhat unnerved by her consistent choices of anti-scientists and creationists for the various review panels for science textbooks (including Richard White, (Christian school) teacher Pierre G. Velasquez and “consultant” Cherry A, Moore, whose only qualifications seem to have been to be caught urging that that science students be taught creationist-fabricated “weaknesses” of evolution when testifying before the state board in 2009; Daniel Romo, a Texas A&M University chemistry professor and signatory to the Discovery Institute petition “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism”, and who demonstrably have no clue about what the theory of evolution is; celebrity creationist Walter L. Bradley, and Baylor chemistry professor and creationist Charles Garner.

Fortunately for sanity, reason and civilization, Lowe was defeated in her 2011 bid for reelection, and is presumably reasonably neutralized by now – though the Board of Education isn’t; their antics are well covered here.

Diagnosis: Another religious fanatic and hardened science denialist at an American school board. Perhaps someone should start realizing that the only way to counter deliberate religious fundamentalist attempts at undermining public education is to reform the school board system. Yeah, right.
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#897: Bill Lucas & the "Common Sense" Scientists

January 31, 2014, 8:45 am
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Bill Lucas is a fundie who runs the website “Common Sense Science”, which is not about science, but about Lucas rejecting science that conflicts with “common sense”, where “common sense” is, of course, equivalent to what Lucas – being a religious fundamentalist – thinks support his positions. Relativity, for instance, has to go. As they say “[a]t the end of the 20th century, (Thomas) Barnes, (David L.) Bergman, [Glen C. Collins, and] Lucas […] began to build on the older classical work [...] Working outside the mainstream physics establishment, their common goal was to correct what they perceived as deficiencies in modern physics by reapplying what they deemed to be sound scientific methods […] By striving to maintain the principles of reality, causality and unity throughout their work, they hoped to bring ‘common sense’ back to the field of physics.” In other words, replace the scientific method with their own intuitions – which is sort of missing a rather important point.

So what are they up to? “Common Sense Science is a body of theory regarding matter and forces that describes the physical world using geometric models, absolute time and Galilean space […] The foundational principles of CSS theory are based upon the law of cause and effect and the assertion that the universe and all natural phenomena are fundamentally electrical in character. These principles have led to the derivation of a universal force law that applies on all scales ranging from the sub-atomic to the cosmic domain and to the development of physical models for elementary particles, nuclei, atoms and molecules. Although the new models are novel and in many ways strikingly different from the standard model of elementary particles, they have an inherent simplicity and physical form that appeals to common sense.” It doesn’t fit with reality, of course, but the premise of their work is precisely that when common sense and reality come into conflict, reality must go.

After all, Lucas et al. claim to have Jesus on their side – rummaging through the website you won’t find any evidence for anything, but instead repeated assertions that their model is compatible with Judeo-Christian beliefs. Nor does it add up mathematically, but of course: the number one problem with new scientific theories is that “[p]hysical models of matter were replaced with mathematical equations”. In other words, math is bad since it is not commonsensical, and it fails to be commonsensical because it doesn’t give Lucas et al. the results they need to maintain their Biblically based theories. Crackpottery rarely comes more thoroughly cracked than that.

In their page on “Atomism and Quantum Mechanics”, they launch a diatribe against Lucretius, claiming that all of modern physics is derived from the idea of atomism as proposed by Lucretius, and that Lucretius proposed atomism not as an explanation for how things work, but as a way of freeing mankind from the bonds of religion. “Lucretius, not Darwin, has been the principal spokesman for evolution during the last two millennia,” and the relevance just strikes you purely intuitively and commonsensically.

Instead, they propose their own model of the atom, on which Lucas has given a number of presentation (including at universities, as sponsored by Campus Bible Fellowships): “The presentation in is the form of a PowerPoint using many pictures to explain the new theory of gravity that supports a Biblical view of creation.” Who needs evidence when you’ve got a PowerPoint with many pictures? Lucas also has a presentation on “Expanding Earth: Evidence For Biblical Creation”.

Their links page is given over exclusively to such important, cutting-edge scientific organizations as Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, the Creation Research Society, and so on.

Diagnosis: As shining and brilliant example of delusional crackpottery as you are likely to find, and as so often the insanity is attributed to Jesus. The Common Sense Scientists are, however, at present rather old and feeble, and probably rather harmless.
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#898: Ron Luce

February 1, 2014, 8:22 am
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Ron Luce is the founder of Teen Mania Ministries, one of the scariest organizations in the US, its BattleCry Campaign and the Acquire the Fire (ATF) youth conference. TMM is an evangelical youth organization that promotes fundamentalist Christianity and theocracy by focusing on the more feral, aggressive elements of Christianity: “You guys are freaks of a whole different breed ... You guys are a bunch of wild animals. Man!” as Luce is fond of telling his disciples (the idea is apparently that adrenaline rushes are appropriate substitutes for being possessed by the Holy Ghost). Nonetheless, Luce views his organiztion as a counterforce to modern popular culture (pornography, violent video games, sexual content on television and in the media, gay marriage, and the secularization of America and so on), and as a combat force against the “purveyors of popular culture,” who he deems to be “the enemy ... terrorists, virtue terrorists, that are destroying our kids,” who are “raping virgin teenage America on the sidewalk, [while] everybody's walking by and acting like everything's okay.”

TMM’s mission is “To provoke a young generation to passionately pursue Jesus Christ and to take his life-giving message to the ends of the Earth.” The group has been actively involved in various political issues, especially in opposition to various atni-discrimination and civil rights measures. TMM is also heavily involved in blatantly racism-fueled missionary campaigns targeted e.g. at the violent barbarians that count as indigenous people in South America, and in blatantly dishonest and sexist abstinence-only purity programs.

The ATF and BattleCry producers have accordingly adopted a militaristic tone, accompanied by the display of military imagery and, at one such event, the use of simulated weapons (it is really, really hard to avoid doing a Godwin here). The BattleCry Coalition includes, or has included, prominent Christian Right leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, Chuck Colson, Joyce Meyer, Jack Hayford, Kay Arthur, Jack Graham, Greg Laurie, Josh McDowell, Tommy Barnett, Bob Reccord, Kirk Franklin and John Maxwell. Its official allies and supporters count Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum (the connection is described in some detail here), Sean Hannity, Benny Hinn, Gary Bauer, Hank Hanegraaff, Dennis Rainey, the American Family Association, Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition.

The TMM Honor Academy is an internship program for high school graduates and college students run by Dave Hasz to recruit youths for theocracy.

There is a fine TMM resource here.

Diagnosis: Absolutely rabidly deranged madman with a lot more power and influence than is good for him or civilization. One of the most dangerous and unabashedly evil persons alive today.
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#899: William Lyne

February 2, 2014, 6:59 am
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William Lyne is a conspiracy theorist with a specialty in UFOs. That is, Lyne thinks the UFO phenomenon is a conspiracy: “Don't Be Deceived by the Propaganda Surrounding ‘UFOs’,” says Lyne. “Flying Saucers are MAN-MADE Electrical Machines! ‘Space Aliens’ are Pentagon-Created Delusions.” Apparently the Pentagon has fooled us all into thinking the aliens and UFOs are real, which tells you a bit about what circles Lyne walks in as well.

You can visit his page here; you’ll even be congratulated for visiting it: “CONGRATULATIONSS! You reached this site despite a conspiracy between covert government agencies and internet bosses (YAHOO AND THE CIA ARE LOVERS!), a conspiracy to violate the American Bill of Rights, by violating free speech and free press rights, by excluding from search engine listings, those exposing the government's dissemination of false alien and paranormal propaganda, through UFOlogists, to conceal exclusively man-made flying saucer electric propulsion technology.” Apparently the fact that his page doesn’t show up firstwhen you’re searching for “UFO” is evidence of a conspiracy. Note also the part about government propaganda through UFOlogist – apparently the ufologists control the media and public opinion, and Lyne’s claims conjure up fleeting images of the leading scientists and politicians of the US bowing down to Nancy Lieder and Michael Salla. There’s a nice, terse summary here. I haven’t seen his youtube videos “Nazi-Tesla UFO’s” (a series, in fact) or “Tesla Free Energy Nazi UFO Elite Bloodline Secret Government Occult”, but I suppose they’ll provide a summary of his findings (here  and here).

Apparently Lyne has researched UFOs for “over 48 years”, and his methodology is summed up by the slogan "IF IT WASN'T TRUE, IT WOULDN'T BE SUPPRESSED!" I don’t think that is a particularly useful methodological principle for uncovering the facts of the matter.

Diagnosis: An ardent fighter for, well, at least he is fighting his quixotic battles with impressive persistence and conviction. It doesn’t really matter that much what it’s for, since he is unlikely to win many converts in any case.

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#900: Barry Lynes

February 2, 2014, 7:23 am
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Barry Lynes is perhaps the most prominent heir to the inventor and crackpot Royal Raymond Rife. In the 1930s Rife claimed that by using a specially designed optical microscope, he could observe a number of microbes which were too small to visualize with previously existing technology and reported that a 'beam ray' device of his invention could weaken or destroy the pathogens by energetically exciting destructive resonances in their constituent chemicals. As his Wikipedia article laconically puts it, Rife's claims could not be independently replicated. Rife, of course, blamed the rejection of his ramblings on a conspiracy involving the American Medical Association (AMA), the Department of Public Health, and other elements of “organized medicine”, which had “brainwashed” potential supporters of his devices.

Rife’s claims should, as such, have been allowed to die. But of course, no claim about the healing powers of anything is ever allowed to die if it is ever noticed by the altmed crackpots, which it generally is. In 1987 Lynes revived Rife’s claims in the book The Cancer Cure That Worked – Fifty Years of Suppression, which claimed – predictably – that Rife had succeeded in curing cancer, but that his work was suppressed by a powerful conspiracy headed by the AMA. After the book’s publication, a variety of devices bearing Rife’s name suddenly popped up to be marketed as cures for diverse diseases such as cancer and AIDS. (Electronics Australia found that a typical “Rife device” consisted of a nine-volt battery, wiring, a switch, a timer and two short lengths of copper tubing, which delivered an “almost undetectable” current unlikely to penetrate the skin.) Several marketers of other “Rife devices” have subsequently been convicted for health fraud (e.g. James Folsom and John Bryon Krueger), and in some cases cancer patients who used these devices as a replacement for medical therapy have died. Rife devices are currently classified as a subset of radionics devices; that is, as the worst of the worst of pseudobullshit.

Rife’s work lives on not only in the efforts of Barry Lynes, but also in the works of the late Hulda Clark and the woo of Diane Spindler, and is staple fare for all debunkers of cancer quackery.

Diagnosis: Arguably classifiable as “evil”, Lynes’s promotion of woo is the kind of crankery that actually harms people. He may not be among the more famous loons in the US, but he is certainly among the more obviously dangerous ones. 

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#901: John MacArthur

February 3, 2014, 9:03 am
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John MacArthur is an insane fundamentalist Baptist, hyper-Calvinist and dispensationalist endtimes preacher, known for leading the Grace Community Church, for his radio program Grace to You, as author of several fundamentalist tracts, and for being on the Council of Reference for the British creationist organization Truth in Science (though he is American), which – as the name implies – is vigorously opposed to both truth and science. Of evolution, e.g. in his book The Battle For the Beginning, MacArthur has said that that Christians “ought to expose such lies for what they are and oppose them vigorously.”

He is also an advocate of Nouthetic Counseling, which stresses the Bible as a sufficient tool for counseling people with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Indeed, MacArthur rejects psychological theories and techniques, considering psychology and psychiatry to b contrary to the Bible. Our Sufficiency in Christ: Three deadly influences that undermine your spiritual life, for instance, rejects psychology, claiming that “[s[uch a thing as a ‘psychological problem’ unrelated to spiritual or physical causes is nonexistent,” and of people who seek out secular mental health professionals that “Scripture hasn't failed them – they've failed Scripture.” To emphasize, he points out that “True psychology [i.e. “the study of the soul”] can be done only by Christians, since only Christians have the resources for understanding and transforming said soul. The secular discipline of psychology is based on godless assumptions and evolutionary foundations and is capable of dealing with people only superficially and only on the temporal level ... Psychology is no more a science than the atheistic evolutionary theory upon which it is based.” His stance has, needless to say, caused some controversy, the most notable of which was the first time an employee of an evangelical church had ever been sued for malpractice. MacArthur has, needless to say, no background in or knowledge of psychology (nor evolution).

Equally needless to say, perhaps, is that MacArthur is not particularly open to theological disagreement. Catholicism, for instance, is “a Satanic religious system that wants to engulf the earth,” and Roman Catholic “priests are broken, shattered, tragic, sad, disconnected people; no past, no present, no future.” He is furthermore offended by the fact that atheists celebrate thanksgiving since he finds it incomprehensible how atheists can be thankful for anything – the fact that they seem to be grateful must thus mean that they really know that God exists, and that makes them not atheists but worshippers of (or at least deluded by) Satan. (He is still offended.)

His stances on politics are pretty much what you’d expect. The fact that people’s sexuality is not controlled by the church down to the most intimate detail is evidence that God has abandoned America (“You know a society has been abandoned by God when it celebrates lesbian sex”). Apparently Obama is also evidence of God’s judgment, and so is the Democratic party (the “party of sin”), because that’s what counts as a political argument to wingnuts such as MacArthur (as so many other wingnut pundits, he is pathologically unable to see that arbitrary and negative attempts to classify political opponents as evil are not quite equivalent to offering a reason for disagreement based on fact, analysis, or argument).

Diagnosis: Belligerent, hateful madman whose lack of aptitude for truth is only matched by his narrow-mindedness. A breathtakingly dense fellow – and a dangerous one, for MacArthur seems to have quite a few followers.
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#902: Shirley MacLaine

February 4, 2014, 8:18 am
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Celebrity crazies are a dime a dozen, but Shirley MacLaine is crazier than most. An actor of some fame in the 1960s and 1970s, she became a New Age woo-meistress in the 1980s, writing several books (Out On a Limb, Dancing in the Light) that were unfettered by such conservative standards as reason, rationality, truth, and accountability, and which (nevertheless) helped popularize a plethora of insane New Age beliefs. And MacLaine made sure she ran the full gamut from reincarnation to channelling.

Now, although her earlier woo was particularly concerned with reincarnation, transcendental meditation, channeling and past-life regression, she has lately been mostly focused on UFOs, and in her 2007 book Sage-ing While Age-ing she discusses her alien encounters and witnessing of Washington DC UFO incidents in the 1950s (curious that they weren’t reported before). As for channeling MacLaine and the ABC television network must be held partially responsibility for the fame of JZ Knight. In 1987 ABC did a mini-series based on MacLaine’s book Out on a Limb, in which MacLaine converses with spirits through channeler Kevin Ryerson. One of the spirits who speaks through Ryerson is a contemporary of Jesus called “John”, who speaks, rather than Aramaic, a kind of fake Elizabethan English. “John” tells MacLaine that she is co-creator of the world with a god, which MacLaine accepts because, remarkably, this is a belief she has expressed earlier (i.e. that she is a god). It is pretty remarkable, isn’t it, that “John” told MacLaine exactly what she wanted to hear. Proves that the channeling works, right?

MacLaine briefly lived with Dennis Kucinich, who is known to be more than a little susceptible to woo himself.

Diagnosis: Moron, and so egotistically oriented that the fact that she believes that p is sufficient evidence-for-her that p (indeed, she explicitly claims that she can create her own reality – which is, in fact, a rather common claim among reason-challenged people despite its obviously contradictory force). I suppose the grandness of ego is an important factor in explaining the attraction between celebrities and mystical powers.

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#903: Madonna

February 4, 2014, 8:28 am
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A.k.a. Madonna Louise Ciccone
A.k.a. Esther

We introduced the topic of celebrity loons in our last post, and once that topic is broached it is hard to avoid giving an entry to Madonna (and yes, we do feel compelled to cover some of these celebrity loons, since they actually have quite a bit of influence). Madonna is of course famous for being a proponent of Kabbalah; that is, for her own version of Kabbalah, which reduces a complex form of Judaism and mysticism to mainly be about wearing a red string around one’s wrist and believing whatever shit Madonna wants to belive at any given moment. According to traditional Orthodox Judaism women are prohibited from studying Kabbalah, but given her interpretation of Kabbalah, it is doubtful that Madonna has actually violated that rule.

An obviously loon-wooey aspect of Madonna’s fashionable quasi-religious nonsense is her promotion of Kabbalah water, which has nothing to do with Kabbalah but is promoted by a cult called The Kabbalah Centre as a “dynamic, living fractal and crystalline” form of mineral water. Apparently a process called Quantum Resonance Technology “restructures the intermolecular binding of spring water,” and after the salespeople has meditated over it they sell it, expensively, to rich people, including Maddonna, who paid quite a bit to fill Kabbalah water into the central heating system of her mansion (also here and here) and who thinks the mystical water can solve the radiation problem at Chernobyl. It would at least be as effective, one thinks, as Koranic water.

In 2004 Madonna wanted to change her name to Esther, after her mother, to “attach myself to the energy of a different name.” It did apparently not really catch on.

Diagnosis: I suppose it might be said that Madonna is a victim of a scam – but she also perpetuates it, and is obviously guilty of that kind of grandness of ego that makes her perceive her actions as profound in virtue of the very fact that she elects to perform them (i.e. of course her “version” of Kabbalah” is deep – after all, the fact that a person as respectable as her is into it, is enough to confer profundity onto that version).
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#904: Patrick J. Mahoney

February 5, 2014, 8:28 am
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Patrick J. Mahoney is the director of the D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition, an organization that is – as the name implies – devoted to the really important issues, addressing them with reason, deep thought, and sensitivity to other perspectives. “Sadly,” says Mahoney, “we are seeing an erosion of expressions of faith from the public square” – which is, of course CDC’s primary concern – and he takes the fact that other people aren’t expressing their religious faith with deep emphasis at every opportunity to mean that his First Amendment rights are being violated. That is, disagreeing with Mahoney is a violation of Mahoney’s freedom of speech – after all, he is deeply religious, and the First Amendment means that you are legally obliged to agree with him and, especially, not ignore him. Mahoney and the CDC have hence for a long time been involved in various campaigns to force religion into the public sphere. In 2005, for instance, Mahoney and Reverend Rob Schenck visited the ACLU headquarters to hand-deliver more than 20,000 petitions demanding that the left-leaning liberal attack group back off of terrorizing communities and individuals who seek to affirm America’s Judeo-Christian values. “The ACLU is this generation’s Ku Klux Klan,” said Schenck. There are people in the US who actually nod in agreement to that assertion.

Another pet topic of CDC is politics. Mahoney and his gang were, for instance, rather miffed about Obamacare, and during the Supreme Court treatment of the issue in 2012 Mahoney were calling for “people from all America to come to Supreme Court and ‘encircle it with prayer’ […] as we cry out to God for justice, human rights and religious freedom.” (Keeping in mind how he understands “freedom” one may also approximately derive how Mahoney understands “human rights” and “justice” as well.”) In other words, Mahoney was praying for Obamacare to be unconstitutional, suggesting once again that he has a rather dim understanding of how the Constitution is supposed to work, even over and above the fact that he takes the Constitution and his personal religious beliefs to be equivalent and interchangeable.

It is worth pointing out that Mahoney’s disappointment with Obamacare means that his original ploy didn’t work: when Obama (whom Mahoney claims is lying about his Christian faith) was elected, Mahoney and Schenk anointed the door through which Obama would pass when he took the stage for his inauguration in order to magically prevent him from doing anything Mahoney/God didn’t like (also here).

Nor does Mahoney like the gays. Or staying classy.

This is pretty illuminating with regard to how Mahoney deals with situations where the evidence doesn’t line up with his beliefs.

Diagnosis: Fully unable to discern the possibility of a distinction between “I believe that p”, “p is a fact”, and “Christianity entails that p”. The results are predictably silly, though Mahoney possesses sufficient influence to be able to use those results to consequences of real nastiness.
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#905: Guy Malone

February 6, 2014, 5:36 am
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A.k.a. The Man From Roswell

Henry Makow is probably the craziest guy in the world, but he is also Canadian and hence disqualified. Though Guy Malone cannot quite compete with the exalted levels of loon that is Henry Makow, he is still doing his best. Malone runs the website alienstranger.com and, apparently, various other UFO-related outlets (such as “Live from Roswell”, the website “alienresistance.org”, which “[o]ffers Biblically-based articles and videos on the UFO/Alien topic, and testimonies of abductions stopping in Jesus’ name”, and the book Come Sail Away: UFO Phenomenon & the Bible– website for the book here. According to his bio Malone is a “childhood experiencer of visitations and possible ‘abduction,’” who in the 1990s “began studying the phenomena from a Bible perspective.” In 1999, he apparently moved to Roswell, New Mexico, to get closer to the source of the alleged phenomena, and it has been a downward spiral into the darkest abysses of lunacy from there. His website (one of them) is here, and the layout should give you an idea about where this guy is coming from. “Roswell, UFO’s and End Times” is one of the central features of the site, and it really merits a visit (it also features contents by guests, such as the video “Evidence for a Spiritual Interpretation of Alien Contact” by one Joseph Jordan). Malone actually seems to run a range of websites devoted to the same topics, and with more or less indistinguishable layouts and color schemes.

Due to Malone’s precarious relation to coherence, it is sometimes a little unclear what Malone thinks the alleged UFO phenomenon signifies, but at least he seems to suggest that many aliens are demons, or at least man-made (“I am of course ‘the black sheep’ of Roswell, for detailing the now un-classified military history of Nazi Germany's efforts to invent the ‘flying saucer’ based on Tesla technology – and how their scientists were moved to the U.S. after WWII to continue their work IN NEW MEXICO in 1945–47. This site definitely not endorsed by the Roswell Chamber of Commerce, Roswell UFO Museum, Hollywood, or the New World Order”). At least this presentation by Malone, Joseph Jordan and Michael Tatar jr. suggests something along those lines (together with Jordan’s talk “Sleep Paralysis: A Modern Connection to an Ancient Evil” – damned be what medical science says about a well-understood phenomenon).

Diagnosis: Complete nutters – few people alive today entertain more false beliefs at any particular time than Malone, and he doesn’t feel reluctant to try to spread them. His influence is probably rather limited, however.
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#906: Frank Mangano

February 7, 2014, 9:35 am
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Frank Mangano is an author, researcher, health advocate and entrepreneur in the field of alternative health, whose books include The 60 Day Prescription Free Cholesterol Cure, The Mind Killer Defense (with Cynthia Foster and Kim Wierman), You Can Attract It (with clinical hypnotherapist Steve G. Jones and a foreword by John Assaraf) and The Blood Pressure Miracle (also with Jones). On his website NaturalHealthontheWeb he points out that he “is very animate about the fact that he doesn't believe that the ‘title’ which follows a person's name is indicative of their education level, always ensures they are delivering the right message,” which should give you all the clues you need to assess the trustworthiness of his advice (Mangano is not an MD but apparently a graduate of the University of Google). “He is an independent researcher and has no financial relationship to any pharmaceutical or supplements company. Therefore, his opinions are unbiased,” says his bio, and some of us may be inclined to point out that the conclusion doesn’t follow by any rule of good reasoning.

Mangano seems otherwise to be into pretty much every and any branch of woo on the web – in particular supplements – and is explicit about being a follower of none other than Joe Mercola and Mike Adams, as well as Phyllis Balch and Ray Sahelian (also here; Sahelian is a prominent critic of Quackwatch, of course). And yes, his book You Can Attract It advocates The Law of Attraction, trying to capitalize on the success of the one book of lunatic woo to rule them all, “The Secret”.

Diagnosis: A small fish compared to Mercola and Adams, perhaps, but Mangano is doing his best to wrench health recommendation away from that pesky, rationality-based idea of making medical advice rely on facts and evidence, parameters for which he has little time or aptitude.
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#907: Andrew Maniotis

February 8, 2014, 7:20 am
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Andrew Maniotis is generally known as one of the louder and more fumingly insane of the already rabidly crazy group that is the HIV-denialists, and a guy that more rational people (critics) do well to stay away from if they don’t want too much noise and spectacle. Maniotis has a background in cancer research, though his career has not moved straight upwards, and he no longer holds a tenure track faculty position at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Nor does he have any direct experience working with HIV experimentally, but lack of experience and professional stature has never stopped crackpots from making ridiculous claims on the Internet or presenting themselves as bona fide experts in multiple areas of science and medicine.

In recent years he has mostly been involved in various lonely campaigns to enlighten the world about perceived AIDS conspiracies, targeting various organizations and people with varying level of coherence. Of particularly tragic and repugnant character was his involvement in the Lambros Papantoniou affair. After befriending Maniotis, Papantoniou – who was HIV positive – stopped his medication and quickly died of AIDS; instead of HIV medication, Maniotis pushes his own range of vitamin supplements. You probably have an idea about how scientifically founded his dietary advice is.

Diagnosis: His tiredless is only matched by his misguidedness, and the mistakes he attempts to push are actually prone to cause real and extensive harm. Must be considered dangerous.
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#908: Richard Mann

February 8, 2014, 7:25 am
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Richard Mann, ND (officially “doctor of naturopathy”; more accurately “not a doctor) is a naturopath and (at least used to be) chair of the department of “clinical homeopathy” at Bastyr University, one of the most significant “teaching” instutitions devoted to pseudo-, anti- and cargo cult science in the US (also here, the linked page also includes a feeble defense of naturopathy by one Christopher Johnson), and at least affiliated with the Bastyr Center for Natural Health. Bastyr, which is of course prominently featured on quackwatch, offers several courses in complementary and alternative medicine, most of which require several credits of homeopathy, so Mann’s gang is deeply involved in Bastyr’s students’ pseudoeducation.

Apparently our Mann is not the same as Richard Mann of Berean Watch Ministries and signatory to A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, though he would arguably have deserved an entry as well.

Diagnosis: Bastyr sports quite a number of faculty, and Mann is admittedly only one of a large number of people doing their best to spread pseudoscience and quackery through that institution. It may thus be unfair to single out him in particular. But Mann is clearly a loon and clearly qualified for an entry in our Encyclopedia; recognizing that covering all of these loons is beyond even us, though we can at least attempt to call out a few of them.
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#909: Basil Marceaux

February 9, 2014, 9:01 am
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Basil Marceuax is an American perennial candidate for state and federal public office positions in Tennessee. His most recent stunt was filing as a candidate for the 2010 Republican nominations for governor in the Tennessee gubernatorial election and U.S. House of Representatives, and his campaign ended up being something of a media thing due to Marceaux’s rather – shall we say – “unconventional” viewpoints (Marceaux denied rumors that he was intoxicated when his campaign video was filmed. Here is Colbert on Marceaux’s candidacy). Sometime in 2010 Marceaux apparently became self-aware, but has yet failed to take over the world.

During the 2010 race Marceaux has campaigned for a recall of gun permits – “Everyone carry guns,” argued Marceaux, suggesting fining people if they don’t (“I want everyone to have a gun. If I think that someone doesn’t have one, maybe I’ll fine them $10”). Another central issue was the banning of law enforcement officers from charging suspects for anything except vehicle moving violations – the Tennessee Bar Association references an early 2000s case in which Marceaux claims the governor, sheriffs, the General Assembly and others were guilty of “kidnapping, extortion and racketeering” through the application of laws calling for mandatory car insurance and routine traffic stops; the complaint was dismissed, but set Marceaux on a trail of various pseudolaw arguments, claiming that the Government tends to overlook older, obscure statutes that – remarkably – support everything Marceaux (not always coherently) believes the laws should support. The day before the August 2010 primary, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported on Marceaux's record in criminal court, which consisted primarily of misdemeanor traffic violations, including seven cases in which Marceaux was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2005.

Furthermore “I’m going to remove all gold-fringe flags and fly the real flag with the three stripes. I also want to stop traffic stops,” Marceaux said, which led to some confusion among bloggers who thought he said “gold finch flags” – because he is missing several teeth, Marceaux noted, it is sometimes difficult for people to understand him.

In December 2010 he created a Christmas song titled “Come Christmas”, coupled with a music video, both of which soon went viral.

Diagnosis: Mostly a colorful and charming piece of entertainment, without which the world would have been much less fun. Harmless, to the extent that we feel a bit bad about giving him an entry. The reason we still do, is mostly because we suddently realized that we’re not sure we would want to meet the people who actually supported his candidacy.
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#910: Lloyd Marcus

February 9, 2014, 9:04 am
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Lloyd Marcus is a Tea Party spokesman and singer/songwriter. He is engaged in the Tea Party to fight the big one – according to Marcus the Tea Party is really combatting the Anti-Christ himself: “I believe the battle being fought in America today goes beyond politics; right vs left. It is a spiritual battle; good vs evil. ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’ (Ephesians 6:12). The mindset of the American left is a spirit of Antichrist which is man making himself God. Before writing me off as a Bible nut …”, which is going to be rather hard. And Marcus sort of fuels that fire: “Understanding this reality will explain much of the left’s behavior. Because they believe man is God, in their insane arrogance [ah, the self-awareness], the left think they can fix everything; legislate equal outcomes and even save or destroy the planet. Make no mistake about it folks, we are in a spiritual battle.” That sounds vague; perhaps Marcus has a specific example? “Specifically, what about Sarah Palin inspires such visceral hatred from the left? The word is ‘wholesome’ [no, it isn’t]. For the most part, Palin promotes love for God, family and country. She is passionately determined to thwart Obama’s plan to ‘fundamentally transform America’. While realizing Palin is human and does not walk on water, Palin epitomizes heartland principles and values embraced by most Americans. Thus, we are Palin and Palin is us.” Indeed. At least he brought an otherwise daft and contentless rant to a rather fascinating conclusion.

Diagnosis: Bible nut.
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#911: A. Jan Marcussen

February 10, 2014, 9:02 am
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A. Jan Marcussen is a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) and minister, best known for his book National Sunday Law. “National Sunday law” denotes the conspiracy theory that the United States government is on the verge of enacting a national blue law declaring Sunday a day of rest and worship. According to the idea, the Pope is also the Antichrist and – the clincher – the mark of the beast is worship on Sunday. Thus, to sum up Marcussen’s views, dark forces controlled by the Vatican are conspiring to enact a national Sunday law in the United States, and when this happens it will be the trigger that unleashes the coming fulfillment of the Bible prophecies in Daniel and Revelations (keep in mind that Seventh-Day Adventists consider the Sabbath to be Saturday).

The idea is actually not new but part of the foundation of SDA – it’s founder, Ellen G. White, wrote extensively on the conspiracy, and SDA minister Alonzo Jones published a book on it in 1889. At present, many SDAs believe that a national Sunday law is a clear and present danger to their religious freedom, and coincides with the fear that the Antichrist will unleash great persecution of Sabbath-keepers just before the Second Coming of Christ, which is of course just around the corner. In Marcussen’s book this idea shows up e.g. as a conspiracy to bring back the death penalty so Sabbath-keepers can be executed once the national Sunday law is enacted. (There is of course a bit of nationalism involved: it is the introduction of such laws in the USthat will bring about the end times – laws declaring Sundays a day of resting have existed for hundreds of years in large parts of the rest of the world outside of the US, but that doesn’t really matter.)

Marcussen’s book has been showing up since 1983 in various places (from laundromats to phone booths), and, in particular, unsolicited in the mail. Despite its easy availability it has failed to convince many people outside of the SDA movement. Lately the conspiracy has evolved to encompass Obama and global warming as well (here, but don’t visit if you are sensitive to bad color schemes). The idea presented in the latter is that global warming is a conspiracy to make people stop working on Sundays – allegedly to “reduce emissions” – thus ushering in the end times. So it goes.

Marcussen publishes a free newsletter twice a month that highlights advancements in Sunday exaltation, and leads campaigns to prevent enforcing Sunday as a national day of rest and worship. He has also been tied to billboards warning that the Antichrist is the papacy. In his book Marcussen establishes that connection by numerology (i.e. a numerological connection between the Pope’s title Vicarius Filii Dei and the number 666).

Diagnosis: Blabbering dimwit; tireless, but so out of touch with reality that he is unlikely to cause much harm.
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#912: Joseph "Doc" Marquis

February 11, 2014, 9:04 am
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Admittedly this picture is some
20 years old, but he is hiding
from the Illuminati, so it would be
mean to help them by using a more
recent picture. 

The Illuminati is an elusive beast. Fortunately, there are defectors, and Joseph “Doc” Marquis is one such. According (entirely) to himself, Marquis is a former member of the Illuminati who jumped the ship and currently enjoys a career as a fanatic fundie author of barely coherent screeds and books mixing Taliban theology with accounts of how his former all-control shadow organization is trying, but evidently failing, to kill him since he remains one of their most dangerous threats. Apart from his own accounts (unfortunately there is a dearth of other witnesses who can back it up) the main piece of evidence for the existence of the Illuminati is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Yeah, that’s Doc Marquis for you.

He was apparently initiated at the age of four, quickly rising in the ranks (high priest at thirteen, master witch at seventeen) before leaving. Fellow members included Charles Manson and Coast-to-Coast AM “celebrity” alien abductee Whitley Strieber.

Like a medieval, neo-platonic fog-monger (though without the poetry or subtlety), Marquis has invented more or less a complete hierarchy of angels and demons. Satan has apparently assigned the control of hell and human affairs to seven demons; Marquis knows most of them by name. There is:

- Rege, who “deals with such drugs as marihuana, hashish, cocaine, speed, LSD, peyote and mescaline ... [and] is also responsible for seeing that music is hexed.”
- Larz, the “Demon of Sexual lust, homosexuality, bi-sexuality, adultery, and other such sexual pleasure.”
- Bacchus, the “Demon of addictions,” including “drugs, smoking, and alcohol.”
- Pan, who is the wielder of “mental illnesses, depression, suicide, nerves, and rejection.” (Apparently mental illnesses are more Satanic than homosexuality.)
- Medit, the “Demon of hate, murder, killing, war, jealousy, envy, and gossip.”
- Set, the “Demon of Death”.
-  No. 7, whose name is unknown and so powerful that even the most powerful Illuminati witches avoid contact; his job, though, is to get “Christians to talk about each other through gossiping and causing strife within the church.” War and genocide pale by comparison.

Much of the (seemingly drug-induced) delusional rants are detailed in his book Secrets of the Illuminati, which at least also exposes the many organizations and ideologies cooperating with the Illuminati: Catholicism, Satanism, Rosicrucians, Dungeons and Dragons, the eight “Satanic Sabbaths” and the Cabala, represented the text “Witchcraft Today For As Much Within Ancient Babylon”. Indeed, Cabala is “the most influential of all secret societies in the drive to the New World Order.” There are also the Masons, the United States seals (“The Two Seals of Our Doom”), the House of Rothschild, the rock and roll industry and the Black Pope. Yes, that one – the feted “shadow pope” who is the one to “wield the real absolute power within the Vatican.” We’ve met him before.

Marquis’s theology is promoted by the Cutting Edge Ministries, though the theology of that Ministry seems to be based primarily on the readings on whale.to.

There are decent resources on Marquis’s antics here,here (though can’t vouch for the general reliability of that site as a source of information), and here. As for ourselves, we admit to owing a great deal to Marquis’s rationalwiki entry.

Diagnosis: Though they hold the world in an iron grip through demonic magic, rock’n roll and Dungeons and Dragons, apparently Doc Marquis is too much of a challenge. For the rest of us, however, Marquis is probably perfectly harmless.
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#913: Jim Marrs

February 12, 2014, 8:51 am
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Jim Marrs is a former newspaper journalist and author of books and articles on a wide range of alleged cover-ups and conspiracies. “If it is not an act of God, it is a Conspiracy,” says Marrs – who is not to be confused with the even more incoherent conspiracy theorist Texe Marrs (to be covered next).

Marrs is thus a prominent figure in the JFK conspiracy press, and his book Crossfire was a source for the Oliver Stone film. Marrs has furthermore written books arguing for the existence of government conspiracies regarding aliens, 9/11, telepathy, and various secret societies (you know which). He also taught a class on the Kennedy Assassination at University of Texas at Arlington (clearly not an institution you would go to for a serious education) for 30 years, and is a member of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth. In fact, he appears to be teaching a course on UFOs as well at the aforementioned institution.

Beginning in the 1990s Marrs has been “researching” the “top-secret” government program the Stargate Project, which investigated remote viewing. The military’s adventures into psychic phenomena were of course a miserable trail of failures caused by addle-brained loons such as Albert Stubblebine. According to Marrs, however, the fact that the program appeared to be a ridiculous failure is evidence that the government is covering up its success. In 1997 his investigations of UFOs, Alien Agenda, was published and was apparently a big success. In 2000 Marrs then published Rule by Secrecy, a novel (though Marrs doesn’t recognize it as such) claiming to trace a hidden history connecting modern secret societies to ancient and medieval times – it is apparently an inspiration for various programs on TV channels without integrity, such as the History Channel. Finally, his 2003 book The War on Freedom(later The Terror Conspiracy) proposed various conspiracies surrounding the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, and was apparently something of a success as well. More recent books include The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America and Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. He currently runs his own radio program, “A View from Marrs”, on the Jeff Rense Radio network (which is generally considered evidence that his bullshit turned out to be too idiotic even for Alex Jones).

Diagnosis: Yet another moron who is proudly unencumbered by those oppressive means of government propaganda: facts, truth, evidence, reason, coherence or plausibility. Since those things are apparently too difficult for quite a number of people, Marrs is enjoying quite a bit of success.
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#914: Texe Marrs

February 13, 2014, 8:29 am
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Texe Marrs is perhaps the most aggressively insane ultrafundamentalist conspiracy theorist in the US, and the kind of person who appears to consistently face the universe by adopting the most flamingly insane false belief about how it works – as a result Marrs may not possess a single true belief, and is even willing to endorse contradictions as long as he can make sure that his beliefs stay all false. Nevertheless, his books Dark Secrets of the New Age and Mystery Mark of the New Age were both #1 bestsellers on the Christian book market in the late 1980s, when Marrs was a major promoter of Satanic Panic as applied to the New Age movement. He has continued to explore the deep recesses of his imagination in a similar manner through a long series of newsletters and ministries (e.g. “Living Truth Ministries”, “Flashpoint”, “Bible Home Church” and the shortwave radio program “Power of Prophecy”).

Marrs’s original idea, in short, is that the New Age movement was (and is) an elaborate conspiracy to set up the Antichrist's world religion based on combining all world religions (except evangelical Christianity) into one. The sacraments of the New Age movement have already been widely adopted. Abortion, for instance, is a form of human sacrifice to Satan; mainline-to-liberal Christian denominations are part of the New Age movement; universal product codes are the mark of the beast, and so on. It does indeed appear that everyone but Marrs and some select evangelicals are actually actively in on the conspiracy as well.

It may be noted that Marrs' writings on the New Age borrowed heavily from Constance Cumbey; both, for instance, argued that the imagined leadership of the New Age movement was based around the teachings of “prophet” Benjamin Creme and esotericist writer Alice Bailey. Cumbey therefore accused Marrs of plagiarism, which suggests that she is dimly aware that you just don’t come up with that idea on your own, and certainly not by independently investigating reality.

Those were Marrs’s formative ideas, however, dating from before he really got his crazy warmed up. In the 1990s he became sufficiently insane that even evangelical publishers saw the need to drop him – all his later stuff is self-published, such as his magnum opus, Codex Magica: Secret Signs, Mysterious Symbols, and Hidden Codes of the Illuminati, which covers pretty much any piece of insanity you can think of, as well as an enormous amount of material including “The Elite Serial Killers of Lincoln, JFK, RFK, and MLK”, “Saucers of the Illuminati” “Unmasking the Sexual Perversions of the Illuminati” and “Implantable Biochips and the End of Human Freedom and Dignity”. Indeed, even the RaptureReady crowd dismisses Marrs as crazy, and their standards for sanity are pretty low.

Part of the reason he was dropped from the mainstream evangelical press may have been because Marrs started to integrate Bush senior and the Republican party into his New Age conspiracy theories. In 1999, for instance, Marrs argued that former President Bush (sr.) would be involved in a black mass in a chamber within the Great Pyramid of Giza during the 2000 millennium celebrations. And in his 2007 article “Unmasking President George W. Bush and His Merry Band of Homoerotic Thugs,” Marrs argued that George Bush jr. was the first homosexual president of the US. Evidence? “Since assuming the presidency, George W. has surrounded himself with gay men. The White House is jokingly referred to as the ‘Pink House’ by the Gay Community. First, there’s Karl Rove, […] Rove himself is a queer. ‘President Bush calls me “Turdblossom,”’ Rove said. […] Bush appointed Ken Mehlman, a Jewish homosexual, as the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. [… ] Secretary of State Condi Rice [… is] a reputed lesbian dominatrix. […] President Bush has more homosexuals in his Administration than Bill Clinton, and he’s more than accommodated their ‘special needs.’ […] Bush’s biggest coup was his choice to be the new Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. John Roberts, a gay judge [… who is] fanatical in his support of sodomy and gay rights.” Scooter Libby, on the other hand, is apparently an Israeli spy who writes books about beastiality.

Being his own man has apparently given him the freedom to pursue such interesting fields of study as the Illuminati,UFOs and the “Illuminati Conquest of Outer Space”, shape-shifting lizard-people, King James Onlyism, the Federal Reserve, television (“’Angels in America [is] possibly the most evil TV series of all time”), pop culture (the artist Prince’s full artist name is “Prince of Darkness”) and the Rothschild Family, as in his DVD Rothschild’s Choice: Barack Obama and the Hidden Cabal Behind the Plot to Murder America, which “documents the astonishing rise of a young, half blood ‘Prince’ of Jerusalem, a Communist adept named Barack Obama who won Rothschilds’ favor – and was rewarded for his slavish devotion to their sinister Agenda”. Among his many claims are:

- The Oklahoma City bombing was planned and carried out by the American government and Timothy McVeigh was framed.
- The D.C. street design conspiracy.
- Hillary Clinton is a “doctrinaire Marxist” who has recruited “other America-hating subversives for key administration posts.”
- Newt Gingrich is a closet Marxist as well, and member of the occult, secret society the Bohemian Grove.
- Bill Clinton is a member of the traitorous Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, and the Council of Foreign Relations. He and Hillary are deep into Egyptian occultism and Masonic magic.
- Robert Dole is a 33rd degree Mason and “a fake conservative. He's anti-Jesus Christ.”
- Bill Martin’s plans for a Christian naturist resort is evidence that Satan is subverting Christianity.

He has lately fully endorsed anti-Semitism, for instance with his book The Synagogue of Satan: The Secret History of Jewish World Domination. The Jewish world-domination is in part enforced by Catholics, who are apparently really Jews. The Pope – who is the Antichrist – isn’t really Catholic, but a mixture of Jew, Muslim, Hinduist and hippie [must have been his haircut that gave him away], whose goal is to implement the new one-world religion (you can’t avoid reading that one in Eric Cartman’s voice, can you?). On his website you can order your very own copy of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (“This Cunning Blueprint Lays Out a Secret Plan that Resulted in Over 300,000,000 Deaths and Unspeakable Horror Over the Past Century. And now, Satan’s Chosen People Intend to Use it to Once again Set the World on Fire”) as well as the standard Holocaust denial material – including his own recordings with such titles as “The Holocaust Controversy and the Falsification of History and Holocaust Dogma Unmasked – A Grim Global Conspiracy Mocking Reality and Capitalizing on Death”.

Steve Lashuk is a fan of Marrs. Do check out Steve Lashuk.

Finally, a piece of trivia: before he started criticizing the New Age, Marrs was himself writing a long series of “career preparation” book, as well as The Perfect Name For Your Pet.

Diagnosis: The whole of whale.to and RaptureReady in one single person. His influence is limited, presumably, but the fact that some people do listen is scary enough.
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#915: Al Martin

February 14, 2014, 8:49 am
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A.k.a. The Man Who Knows Too Much

Continuing our stint of conspiracy theories, Al Martin is admittedly a smaller fish than the Marrses but still deserving of an entry. According to his bio Martin is a former a Lt. Commander from the US Naval Reserves and government operative, and currently an author, probably most famous for his book The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider, which is “a true crime story that’s been too hot for mainstream media.” The claim of the book is that “[b]efore they stole the White House, the Bush Cabal was the First Family of Fraud,” and Martin lays out their involvement in the Iran Contra scandal and the hidden history of US Government drug trafficking, illegal weapons deals, as well as wholesale fraud by government perps – securities fraud, real estate fraud, and insurance fraud, all led by George Bush, Bill Casey and Oliver North, who constitute a shadow government within the government. Apparently “[w]hen Iran Contra finally fell apart, they had ended up using 5,000 operatives and making $350 billion.” It was hence up to Martin to expose the dealings of the shadow government that had really been ruling the US all along based on personal anecdotes and drawing out the patterns (he has no documentation, of course, but that is just evidence that there is a thorough-going conspiracy going on), and he points out that he is exposing the conspiracy now because he has nothing to lose. The book has received critical acclaim precisely in those corners of the Internet you’d expect (including JimMarrs).

Martin also runs a blog, Almartinraw.com. The fact that it is less obviously incoherent than many conspiracy theory blogs doesn’t make it much more trustworthy.

Diagnosis: Yet another victim of a conspiracy who has emerged to tell his tale – that is, the tale of how he is really a hero despite currently being down on his luck; it’s a conspiracy, and everyone is against him, but he grits his teeth in defiance nonetheless. There is a huge audience for that kind of stuff, especially when the enemy is that evil government thing.
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