Encyclopedia of American Loons

Trotter

[Note: I wrote up this post for Round 1 but inexplicably forgot to publish it – it is published now, relatively unaltered, but still highly relevant to the current situation]

One of the most notorious institutions for promoting denialism and illiteracy in the US has long been the Texas Board of Education (TBoE) – despite the admittedly tireless work of some pro-reality members and good organizations such as the Texas Freedom Network. Although prominent former members, such as Don McLeroy and Cynthia Dunbar – who have done measurable harm to reason – are out at present, they are still saddled with ardent fundamentalist haters or knowledge such as Ken Mercer and Barbara Cargill.

In 2011, when the Texas Education Agency released the full list of members serving on the science review panels that will evaluate instructional materials submitted for approval by the State Board of Education, the review panel for biology predictably included individuals with histories of promoting creationism or at least the “teach the weaknesses of evolution inscience classes” gambit (i.e. advocating creationism). The identifiable creationists (courtesy of the Texas Freedom Network) were:

- Ide Trotter (appointed by Terri Leo) a “Baptist layman”, longtime herald of Texas creationism (funder and spokesperson for the creationist Taliban offshoot “Texans for Better Science Education”) and signatory to the Discovery Institute petiion A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, despite not being a scientist. Trotter testified before the board of Education in 2003 and 2009, both times advocating the inclusion of “weaknesses of evolution” that have been scientifically thoroughly discredited. He has claimed – and seems indeed to believe – that major scientific discoveries during the 20^thcentury have made evolutionary science harder to defend: “The ball is rolling and it’s going downhill. There are not enough forces on the side of Darwinism to keep pushing it back uphill forever.” The Trotter Prize, annually awarded by the creationist hub Texas A&M College for various work including important contributions to anti-science, is apparently named for his father.

Shorman

- David Shorman (appointed by Barbara Cargill), well-known and completely delusional and stupid young earth creationist (with a doctorate in limnology): “Treating Earth history as just that, history, I can find physical and written testimony that the Earth is only 6,000 years old. And just as most of us have no problem believing Jesus Christ was a real person who lived 2,000 years ago, we should have no problem believing there were about 4,000 years from the Beginning to Christ’s birth.” Seriously.

- Richard White (appointed by current chair Gail Lowe), who advocates including (dishonestly) the “weaknesses of evolution” in the science standards, that there “are all well-known scientific problems with modern evolutionary theory” and that teaching evolution without these thoroughly debunked “weaknesses” amounts to indoctrinating children with a religious dogma.

Things can’t be going too badly, however. Even the Discovery Institute has expressed their displeasure with the TBoE.

Diagnosis: And the whack-a-mole goes on. The claims are refuted, and refuted again, and new loons flood in to repeat them. These people are complete idiots, and wear their ignorance and moronicity with pride, dismissing reality as an elitist conspiracy.

Ok, so we are not completely sure whether already-legendary kook Giorgio A. Tsoukalos is actually formally qualified – he seems to be Greek – but his (significant) contributions to lunacy has been made primarily in the US, so we’ll count him in, mostly because we want to cover him. Tsoukalos is the publisher of Legendary Times Magazine, a magazine occupied with searching for evidence to support ancient aliens, and has long been the Director of Erich von Däniken’s Center for Ancient Astronaut Research (Tsoukalos is also “Erich von Däniken’s official representative in the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world). Most famously, he is the star and consulting producer of History Channel’s cargo-cult-scientific drivel Ancient Aliens – The Series, and according to himself Tsoukalos “is the real-life Indiana Jones.” He has, of course, no qualification in history, archaeology or any field that would make him even minimally qualified to assess, well, any kind of evidence whatsoever (or distinguish it from non-evidence), a lack of qualification he amply and proudly displays in his writings and shows.

Tsoukalos believes that practically everything in the ancient world has something to do with aliens, to the extent that it has made him into some sort of official meme (you can try the Tsoukalos meme generator here). Did, for instance, the Babylonians have nuclear weapons? Oh yes, they did.

To give you a sample of crazy in Tsoukalos’s own presentations:

- Here is his breathtaking inference from ancient mythological creatures to aliens.

- Here is Tsoukalos presenting his view on Atlantis – “I don’t think that Atlantis sank. I think it was lifted off.”

- Here he claims that the rocks of Stonehenge “were transported by way of levitation by none other than Merlin the wizard.” (After all the rocks are there; clearly they must have been transported there by magic. It could be suggested by the Disney cartoon The Sword in the Stone that Merlin would be capable of such feats. Therefore Merlin did it.)

- Here he weighs in on the idea of an “alien goldrush” (the “ancient astronaut’s home planet needed gold for their atmosphere”).

- Here he concludes that “we’re half-human, and half-extraterrestrial. We’re hybrids;” an incoherent (think about it) conclusion drawn from the fact that common depictions of the DNA double helix looks strange (to him). A quick discussion of Tsoukalos’s take on genetics can be found here.

He has also claimed that the streets of D.C. (a well-known source of conspiracies) were laid out in the shape of a five-pointed star to communicate to the aliens that we “respect” them. (He seems to be unaware that real stars don’t have points and that the convention to depict them as such would make no sense to a foreign culture).

According to himself his study of the Ancient Astronaut Theory is “scientific”, though he doesn’t seem to have much by way of the faintest grasp of what that might mean. Apparently the fact that his “study” includes analyses of ancient scriptures, drawings, monuments and artifacts using pareidolia and motivated reasoning as their sole methods of assessment, somehow makes it scientific (plenty of the items featured are demonstrably hoaxes). A Tsoukalos argument that is rather telling (from a March 2012 episode) was, roughly:

1. People worship “Gods”

2. But people only believe in things they have evidence for.

3. They had written/drawn evidence for these “Gods”.

4. Written/drawn evidence is always realistic and never abstract, imaginative, or metaphorical.

5. But “Gods” don’t actually exist.

6. Therefore these ancient gods were actually aliens.

Notice the second premise. It really sums up Tsoukalos’s approach to everything – by virtue of beliving in ancient aliens, it followsthat he has evidence for it. Here, by the way, is an account of an interaction with Jason Colavito, who are – shall we say – reasonably skeptical of Tsoukalos’s ideas. Tsoukalos was unhappy with the results, arguing that “[j]ust the fact that you so desperately attempt to dismantle our theory proves that we areon the right track. Otherwise you would not feel so threatened by our theories!” Which is also rather telling (there is a discussion of Tsoukalos’s approach to evidence here). As is his response to the question of whether ancient astronaut claims have been presented in peer-reviewed journals (imagine it read by Michael Scott/Steve Carell): “And because YOU haven’t seen any articles THAT means the articles don't exist, right? Wow. Oh wow. UN-real. What a glaring display of RAMPANT egotistical ignorance.” I think that means “no”.

Diagnosis: Tsoukalos has no idea what evidence is, or why it is needed, and is somewhat confused by the fact that people ask for it – which makes him precisely the kind of guy e.g. History Channel want. Though he has quite a media presence, it is hard to imagine that Tsoukalos’s helps rather than harms the conspiracy movement – even dimwits seem to find his claims and assessments of evidence rather … weird. But who knows; we may be overestimating people.

Frank Turek is a famous fundie author and motivational speaker. He is the author of Correct, Not Politically Correct (you get the gist) and co-author with Norman Geisler of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist and Legislating Morality. His level of fundie insanity can probably be gauged from his participation in Bob Cornuke’s expedition to find Noah’s Ark in Turkey, an expedition the participants judged to be successful (though their findings don’t seem to have convinced the skeptics – or fellow creationists, for that matter.)

Turek is also a hardline theocrat. Of course, he claims not to be a theocrat (since “theocrat” is a poor sales pitch even in wingnut circles). Indeed he insists that Christians (that would be Christians^TM– those who agree with Turek) don’t want theocracy, they just want the government to enforce Biblical moral laws on people who don’t believe in them.

Turek is of course also negatively inclined toward gay people, and laid out his views in the Correctbook. After the publication of that one, Turek did, however, notice that it became harder to sell his dayjob services as a team-building consultant – he was booted by Cisco Systems and Bank of America, for instance – since the rather rank bigotry of his book sort of tended to undermine his team-building message. Guess who screamed “persecution” because people didn’t want to buy his product and convinced himself he was a martyr, persecuted for just saying that he believed marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman? Of course, what Turek did claim was (for instance) that gays and radical muslims have united to destroy Western civilization – gays (and muslims) want to bring about totalitarianism, and they have united because “they both hate Western Civilization” and “hate Judeo-Christian natural law values” – gay marriage will, in Turek’s mind, cause Americans to “lose the freedom of speech,” and his arguments are quite clearly taken rather directlyfrom the arguments against interracial marriage used in the 50s. His denunciation of diversity training programs (as well as gay pride events – “[p]ride is, as we all know, really the root of all sin,” though one suspect his main problem isn’t with the “pride” part) for religious reasons might also have been considered not entirely irrelevant to companies’ assessment of the suitability of his team-building consultancy practice.

A particularly notable feature is Turek’s borderline amazing inability to understand what marriage equality is all about and what the position of those in favor of marriage equality actually is – thus providing a rather stunning example of how bigotry-induced bias can blind one to the issues at stake. He has, at least, admitted that he sees no-fault marriage as an even greater threat than gay marriage.

Here is Turek being a wingnut moron on the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the individual mandate to purchase health insurance.

Diagnosis: Rank theocrat and Taliban fundie. Relatively standard fare for this Encyclopedia, in other words, but Turek seems to have risen to a position of some prominence in the wingnut community.

Hal Turner is Hal Turner, and Hal Turner is, as many will be aware, a rather infamous sympathizer of white supremacism. He rose to attention (in part) as a regular caller on Sean Hannity’s WABC radio program in the 1990s, where he would make arguments such as “if it weren’t for the white man, blacks would still be swinging from the trees in Africa” (getting no rebuke from Hannity). It culminated in 2000, when Turner stepped forward to run for the Republican nomination for Congress in New Jersey (though he wasn’t recognized by the party), receiving Hannity’s endorsement (Turner’s experience included being North Jersey coordinator for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign and manager of the 1997 gubernatorial campaign of Libertarian Murray Sabrin). Turner himself has claimed that he and Hannity were “good friends” at the time, though Hannity himself has since remained silent on the issue.

Not long after (and having decided that the system was rigged against white males), he started the infamous “Hal Turner show”, a favorite of neo-nazi and white supremacist groups everywhere, and notable for spewing hate as if it were nobody’s business (ranting about “savage Negro beasts,” “bull-dyke lesbians” and “lazy-ass Latinos ... slithering across the border.”), supporting the murders of judges he didn’t like, calling for civil war (in 2000) if Al Gore were to win the then-contested outcome of the Florida vote, and telling his audience to “clean your guns, have plenty of ammunition … [and] then do what has to be done” to undocumented workers.

At least he is straightforward. He said on his radio show that someone has to kill Barack Obama to keep him from becoming president, adding that it would be “a public service” to kill African Americans (“sub-human simians”) and white people (“mentally-ill Whites”) who celebrated his election. In 2008 he also published the home address of the superintendent of Lexington schools in Massachusetts (where the wingnuts were upset about books that dare to mention that some families include gay people) and urged his followers to take him out – this being relatively standard fare for a guy who once started a website called www.killtheenemy.com for the purpose of posting photos and names of those who marched in favor of immigrant rights.

It is worth mentioning that Turner for many years (possibly, perhaps probably) worked as an informant for the FBI, supplying them with information about right-wing groups, and, after the revelation, announced that he would step down from “whites’ rights” political activism.

Diagnosis: There’s quite a bit to write about this guy, but I prefer to refer the reader to the SPLC’s extensive files rather than making my hands too dirty on this kind of shit.

Rocky Twyman is a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the D.C. suburbs who managed to draw some attention to himself for his profoundly moronic solution to surging gas prices in 2008: prayer. Now, I am sure he is not the only one who has tried that one, but Twyman even went on a tour, staging prayers asking God for cheaper gas in DC (with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in), at a San Francisco Chevron station, in Oakland (church members) and probably elsewhere. He has also suggested that the economy would recover and everything be perfect in America if President Obama would just emulate Tim Tebow and get on his knees to pray more often; “the answer is simple,” according to Twyman: “Tebow gives God glory for his success and God in turn blesses him.” Twyman has yet had scantt success with getting his insightful economic models into peer-reviewed economy journals (or in lowering gas prices, for that matter). Perhaps it is because he doesn’t discuss the question of whether people may alreadybe praying for wealth and a flourishing economy, with negligible success.

Diagnosis: He doesn’t really understand how it works, and is sufficiently brazen about it that he’s earned himself some media time for his ignorance and idiocy. Probably harmless.

David Tyree is a former football wide receiver who played in the NFL for seven seasons and got famous for his “helmet catch” in the Giants’ final drive in the 2008 Super Bowl. He’s out of NFL now, and currently uses his career to say stupid shit as part of his campaigns against marriage equality. On the day the New York State Assembly approved a same-sex marriage bill, Tyree warned that the bill’s passage would “be the beginning of our country sliding toward … anarchy” (also here), explaining that “[m]arriage is the only relationship that actually mirrors the relationship with God” (which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever) and that it is not justifiable to alter a long-standing institution “because a minority – an influential minority – has … an agenda,” which I don’t think he really means if he thinks about it twice (or once). Furthermore, “[w]e’re doing God an injustice by not making his heart known to our country,” which is, of course, what matters (gay people go home). And methinks quite a few people before Tyree have made what God’s heart (according to them) tells us known.

Diagnosis: No, you don’t necessarily expect insight and acumen from former NFL players discussing issues they know nothing about, but Tyree did open his mouth, and shit did fall out.

The question mark doesn’t really mean that we wonder whether Fred Upton is a loon. He is almost certainly not. But his official views are sufficiently insane that we’ll count him as one. Upton is the U.S. Representative for Michigan’s 6th congressional district, serving since 1987 (he replaced the absolutely incoherently insane Mark Deli Sijander), and Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Due to his environmental policies (and his position of power), the LA Times wrote in 2011 that Upton “represents one of the biggest threats to planet Earth on planet Earth,” which seems accurate. As a politician Upton is staunchly committed to climate change denialism, and is determined to prevent any legislation that pays even lip service to environmental problems. He also assigned John Shimkus to chair the Environment and Economy Subcommittee, which is sufficient to qualify Upton as a loon in his own right.

Now, one suspects that Upton position is motivated more by strategy than actual convictions. As late as 2009, he maintained that “climate change is a serious problem that necessitates serious solutions. Everything must be on the table.” In 2010, however, he co-authored a Wall Street Journal editorial saying he was “not convinced” that “carbon is a problem in need of regulation,” urging Congress to overturn Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, which would be a completely irrational thing to do if you were only “not convinced” (and cared about anything beyond your own short-term goals, of course). He falsely claimed that there is no scientific consensus regarding climate change and was so (deliberately) misinformed regarding “Climategate” that he advocated for congressional hearings.

Not only has he refused to approve any emission limits on greenhouse gases (e.g. here), however; he has also urged lawmakers to reverse the United States Environmental Protection Agency emissions rules. Carbon regulation, according to Upton, “threatens to drive energy prices higher, destroy jobs and hamstring our economic recovery.” (The American automobile industry supports the regulations.)

In 2007 Upton was a co-sponsor of the Energy Independence and Security Act, which among other things mandated phased-in energy efficiency standards for most light bulbs. But in 2010, after Glenn Beck called Upton “all socialist” for supporting the bill, Upton turned around to lead a failed effort to stop Obama from enforcing the new energy standard. Apparently being called “socialist” by Beck is something people of Upton’s kind take very seriously.

On other issues (healthcare, marriage equality, etc.) Upton generally votes strictly in line with recommendations from the religious right.

Diagnosis: One of the most dangerous people alive. Mad dictators of small countries pale in comparison when it comes to having power to truly harm the world and everyone in it. If Upton knows what he is doing (and one suspects he does), he doesn’t care, and I urge anyone to record his name so that you can tell your grandchildren who was responsible for it all.

Many of you probably remember Christine O’Donnell from the 2010 elections, but O’Donnell wasn’t the only wingnut running for office as a Republican in Delaware. Indeed, she may not even have been the most crazy wingnut running for office in Delaware. Meet Glen Urquhart, the Republican Party candidate for the United States House of Representatives election in 2010 in Delaware’s At-large congressional district (and yes, he did lose pretty badly). To give you an idea of who Urquhart is:

“Do you know, where does this phrase ‘separation of church and state’ come from? It was not in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. … The exact phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State ask them why they’re Nazis.”

Oh, wheee! Of course, the phrase is pretty explicitly in that latter (Urquhart has of course never bothered to read it). And Hitler pretty explicitly did not believe in such a separation, instead declaring an official established church, the Protestant Reich Church, in Germany.

He later admitted that the phrasing was unfortunate and that he is a strong supporter of the First Amendment, but adding that he also believes the government has gone too far in limiting people’s rights to express their religion by restricting athletes from holding prayers at high school football games, for example, or preventing public schools from teaching alternative theories to evolution such as creationism.

He did secure the endorsement of Mike Huckabee. He gets ours as well: Urquhart is clearly qualified for inclusion in our Encyclopedia.

Diagnosis: Complete moron, and the election results suggest that so is a not insubstantial minority of Delaware’s voters.

The argument about church and state seems to be rather popular among wing nuts; here is Rick Santorum trying it out a couple of days ago.

For some truly amazing physics crackpottery I recommend checking out Pentcho Valev (useful introduction here), but Valev is hardly American. Jacques Fabrice Vallée qualifies, though – although French-born, Vallée is at least currently residing in California. Indeed, Vallée is a former astronomer and computer scientist, noted for co-developing the first computerized mapping of Mars for NASA and for his work at SRI International on the network information center for the ARPANET, who at some point turned into a venture capitalist and ufologist. He is, however, notable for rejecting the “extraterrestrial hypothesis” – that is, the idea that UFOs are alien spacecrafts – advocating instead a “multidimensional visitation hypothesis”. Rejecting a stupid claim for an incoherent one, in other words (fans of Vallée include John Weldon and John Ankerberg).

He claims to have experienced rather conclusive evidence for his UFOs, but – of course – the powers that be, to keep their conspiracy going, have tended to destroy it for him. In the late 1960s, however, he decided that there was a link between UFOs, cults, religious movements, demons, angels, ghosts, cryptic sightings, and psychic phenomena (based on “many commonalities” – human psychology being not one of the ones he considered). Speculations about these potential links were detailed in Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. He also argued that the UFO reports are simply not consistent with visitations from space, which is true, though Vallée somehow misses the obvious conclusion to draw from that, suggesting instead his interdimensional rubbish. He even claimed that the so-called “Fátima Miracle”, Marian apparitions and possibly the visions of Joseph Smith were … instances of UFOs (so, once again, the obvious explanations elude him). Indeed, his idea that UFOs are associated with some form of non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time and has been active throughout human history, masquerading in various forms to different cultures, does suggest a rather evident religious subtext to his writings – not that far removed from Joseph Smith himself, come to think of it.

Many of his ideas were developed together with his mentor, the infamous late ufologist J. Allen Hynek.

What sometimes seems to lend him a whiff of credibility is his tendency to engage with the craziest and most delusional ideas among ufologists and conspiracy theorists to show how these are wrong, and thereby occasionally managing to come off as a voice of reason in debates – despite the fact that his own views are rarely less crazy than those of his opponents.

Diagnosis: Standard, wild-eyed pseudoscientist and loon.

Reiki is woo. Indeed, reiki is faith healing based on a metaphysics strikingly close to Western medieval delusions about how the body works. Reiki is also a rather common form of woo. Thus, it is hardly surprising that you’ll find people out there, like Taylore Vance and Roi Halse, who have put their own individual stamps and spins on reiki. Vance and Halse offer … laser reiki. “In 1994 we discovered additional levels of Reiki healing beyond Masters,” says Vance: “I call Level 4 – Laser Reiki (LR) and Level 5 – Cosmic Energetic Healing (CEH). They are light years ahead of basic Reiki.” LR & CEH heals at “the atomic, sub-atomic, quantum and original creation level. Its impact can in many cases cause the body to instantly heal itself, and the mind and spirit as well.” Indeed, they actually seem to genuinely believe that their claims are even remotely close to making sense.

“In the traditional 3 levels of Reiki you are flowing the god force energy as it flows from the 4th dimension to heal the physical. In other words, you are flowing energy to mass. It works, but it may take several weeks or more to permanently bring wellness to an individual.” It would take someone more patient than us to try to disentangle the misunderstanding embodied in that one, but Vance and Halse continue: “With the use of LR and CEH the energy flows directly from the 6th or higher dimensions directly into the patient’s energy body where it first aligns the energy body with a hologram of perfection. Next, the healing flows naturally into the physical body. In other words, the transfer of healing flows from energy to energy. This is hundreds of times more efficient.” Note that the last claim may be technically true, though not for the reasons they imagine, but despite the fact Vance and Halse don’t have the faintest idea what the terminology they are using really means.

It is all about science: “Science seems to have proven that we are even born with tendencies for disease and problems. These show up imprinted within the cells in three ways: 1) energy blockages from unresolved problems from the past, 2) genetic tendencies from our biological lineage, and 3) those astrological tendencies caused by the birth/conception date.” I guess the cue word here is “seems”, for people like Vance and Halse are apparently able to get anything to seem like anything. Not that they have the faintest clue of how to distinguish science from a monkey with a funny hat. What they do have, however, is one Dr. P. Gutierrez of Ultra-Tek Concepts Research Group (this is the only google hits for that one) with them, and he claims that it really is … science, and that that “the brain is a mere transducer/ computer of Consciousness, Thought & Subtle Energies that are extrinsic to the Mind-Body Complex, the result of which is EMOTIONS, FEELINGS & ATTITUDES,” citing “authorities in the Quantum Healing Paradigm, such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Caroline Myss, Dr. Norman Shealy, Dr. Richard Gerbee [sic], Dr. Bernie Segal [sic!].”

But where are the lasers? Nope. There are no lasers in Laser Reiki. But Vance and Halse apparently do offer ghostbusting.

Diagnosis: Absolutely … amazing.

Larry Vardiman is a hardcore and almost legendary creationist “scientist” and signatory to The CMI list of scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation. He does have a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University, which is, I suppose, supposed to lend a sheen of legitimacy on his ventures in cargo cult science, but his career has mostly been entangled with the Institutefor Creation Research. Vardiman taught at the Christian Heritage College (run by the ICR) as a Professor of Natural Sciences from 1982 to 1989, served as Academic Dean from 1987 to 1989, and as chairman of the astro/geophysics department from 1989 to 2009. Apparently he retired in 2012, but there’s no evidence of any later affiliation with reality-based belief alignment.

He is the author of several books and a frequent contributor to Answers in Genesis’s house journal Answers. For vol. 3, for instance, he (and Wesley Brewer) gave us “Numerical Simulation of Precipitation in Yosemite National Park with a Warm Ocean: A Pineapple Express Case Study”, which took as point of departure a storm in 1996 and pretended it extrapolated to a massive Global flood, ignoring anything having to do with evidence or feasibility considerations in the process. The paper is most notable for Vardiman & Brewer’s discovery of the technique (used by mainstream hydrologists) of publishing multiple papers with the same basic idea and calling each one a case study, even though it is no different than the last paper. Their contributions to volume 4 and volume 5 were very much along the same lines, and here is a summary of Vardiman’s article “Did It Rain Before the Flood?” The methodology is what you’d expect: “The first step is always to examine Scripture carefully.” And his answer is “probably not”. This is supposed to be science, remember. As is, apparently, this one.

Vardiman is perhaps most notable, however, as director of ICR’sRadioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (R.A.T.E.) research project. R.A.T.E. is a joint project organized by the ICR and the Creation Research Society to produce experimental geochronological results that support a Young Earth creationist view of the age of the Earth. It is exactly as feeble as it sounds (you can find a report from one of their conferences here). Creationists affiliated with R.A.T.E. do indeed claim to have experiments that 1.5 billion years of nuclear decay took place over a short period of time to fit the Biblical account of creation (neglecting the obvious problem that the rate of nuclear decay they assume would have blasted all life from Earth in seconds). Of course, the morons carrying out said experiments had no training in geochronology (nor anything resembling any degree of competence whatsoever), and their experiments are methodologically crap (some criticisms here; some more here – most scientists don’t really bother with the crankery, but Old Earth Creationists are usually ardent critics so they get a link for once). As they themselves seem to admit their hypothesis requires positing miracles violating the laws of physics at several points, but insofar as the point is to prove the veracity of the Bible (and God) this … well, it does become a little circular.

The members of RATE include old friends of ours like Steve Austin, John Baumgardner, Don DeYoung, Russell Humphreys, as well as Vardiman, Australian superloon Andrew Snelling, and one Eugene Chaffin.

Diagnosis: They write papers, use technical jargon, go to conferences, perform experiments (sort of) and call each other experts … but it’s like kids playing with mudcakes in kindergarten: they’re not cakes, the rock is not a stove, and you’re not a cook. When the participants are grown up men (mostly), as is the case with RATE, the whole game becomes rather uncanny.

Doreen Virtue is a Hay House guru and practitioner of Angel Therapy, and is as such one of only a few people that can “see” and “communicate” with angels, including the guardian angels that watch out over all of us – yes, it’s similar to the same kind of bullcrap pushed, famously, by princess Märtha of Norway, who appears to be a fan – but whereas Märtha tries to teach you how to get in contact with angels yourself Virtue talks to them on your behalf. For a reasonable fee, of course. And they really can help you. Once angels saved Virtue’s life when armed robbers tried to steal her car by telling her to scream, and she screamed. They also help find her a parking place when she is in a hurry.

According to her bio Virtue was a natural clairvoyant even as a child, “seeing and conversing with what many people call ‘invisible friends’ (which are really angels and deceased loved ones).” I am not completely sure that this needs further commentary, but the seemingly desperate attempt at rationalization evinced by the parenthesis is rather telling. Currently she usually refers to herself as “Doctor Virtue”, but her “PhD” is from California Coast University, an absolutely legendarily shoddy diploma mill, whose diplomas are worth precisely as much as your other regular spam.

Numerology

Virtue is also longtime student of numerology – very longtime, as she did, during a past life, study under Pythagoras himself. Numbers have special significance or vibrations or something, and numbers you see on clocks, license plates and the like are really messages from angels (“’Why do I always see the numbers 444 (or 111, 333, etc.) everywhere I go?’ is one of the most frequently asked questions that Doreen Virtue receives at her worldwide workshops”). Angels arrange for specific number sequences to appear around us or subtly “whisper in” our “ear” so we notice particular numbers, and if we keep noticing the same number sequences, it is because the angels are giving us a message through those numbers (not confirmation bias). But here is the clincher: We cannot interpret these messages unless Virtue shows us how, and she does this in the books you can buy (she’s written a stunning shitload of them) – she covered some numbers in Healing with Angels, but Angel Numbers provides an interpretation of more complex number sequences;” that “new book focuses on numbers such as 123, 337, 885, and so on.” She also has a special “Angel Number Calculator” for identifying your personal angel number. Dimly aware of potential conflicts between various forms of bullshit, she does have an FAQ showing how her nonsense is Christianity compatible.

According to Virtue, we’re all also alchemists, though it is not entirely clear what that is supposed to mean.

Healing

Apparently there is occasionally friction between the path that our guardian angel wants us to walk and the path we want to walk, and that manifests itself in a range of psychological and physical illnesses. And of course, Virtue can help “heal” the rift between you and your guardian angel, though the price is pretty steep. Fortunately, there are other “certified spiritual councilors” (CSC) and “angel therapy practitioners” (ATP) who have been certified by the American Board of Hypnotherapy – which is headed by Virtue. And yes, you can take courses and become a certified therapist, too. If you are really fortunate, perhaps you can get a session with Susan Stevenson, a hypnotherapist who practices past life regression therapy and sees angels absolutely everywhere.

Indigo children and their ken

We have mentioned indigo children and crystal children before, and Virtue is excited about them. So excited, in fact, that she has come up with her own designation, “rainbow children.” Since humans evolved from what Virtue calls “ape-like postures,” crystal children prove humanity can evolve further. “Evolution” here means not evolution, though, since it is God who is sending these various children as a gift to us. Like the indigos and crystals, the rainbows are highly sensitive and psychic, and often diagnosed as autistic, but they are really just communicating telepathically instead of using ordinary means. The spirit world told Virtue remarkable things about all these wonderful children while she was asleep, and she consequently published a lucrative, spiritually-informed book about them.

Her current husband, Steven Farmer, fancies himself a shaman of some sort and calls himself an expert in “power animals.” He also tends to refer to himself as “Doctor Farmer”, and his PhD is from Madison University, an unaccredited diploma mill located in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Diagnosis: I tend to be wary of using it, but it is hard to avoid the word “fraud” given, in particular, how she pushes her fake credentials. Virtue is still a loon, and a particularly insidious one, a parasite feeding on people in trouble or those who have experienced various kinds of psychological or existential crises. A disgusting excuse for a human being.

Michael Voris is a hysterically fanatic, militant religious (Catholic) fundamentalist. He is the president and founder of St. Michael’s Media, which creates short videos and full length programs for the website ChurchMilitant.tv and for youtube, which is apparently “increasingly popular around the world,” though partially, one hopes, for its ridiculous, infantile display of childish, raging lunacy and hatred.

ChurchMilitant.tv (formerly RealCatholicTV.com) generally takes an extreme rightwing and conservative view of Catholicism, and their expressed goal is to wipe out heterodoxy (and leaders in the Catholic hierarchy are, apparently, not unequivocally happy about Voris’s efforts in that direction). Voris himself claims to be an “Emmy-Award winning journalist” (haven’t found any verification) who initiated his efforts after being incensed by what he considered to be the lies told about Catholicism in the book and movie The DaVinci Code. In other words: loon. And he seems blithely unaware that his attempts to correct these misconceptions do not tend to lead to greater sympathy for his theological views. It has been argued that Voris is really the puppet of co-owner and spokesperson Marc Brammer. Be that as it may. They are both serious loons.

To get an idea of where they are coming from, in this episode of “The Vortex” Voris advocates the overthrow of democracy (the problem with democracy being that everyone, even those who disagree with Voris, gets a vote) and the institution of Catholic Dictatorship (not the Pope, but by some unnamed “benevolent Catholic Monarch”). The episode was apparently removed from RCTV’s Youtube channel.

One program they have is the Faith Based Investigation (FBI, formerly the CIA – the Catholic Investigative Agency), which is “devoted to in-depth examination of scandals, betrayals and evil in the Church.” They are not talking about the scandals you think they would be talking about, though, but instead focus on “the dark deeds of evil Catholics-in-name-only, who are hijacking the Church for their own ends, not the ends of Christ!” That is, “Catholics” who support gay marriage, abortion, freedom of religion, gender equality and suchlike.”

Apart from their video on the ideal structuring of government mentioned above, some interesting youtube videos include:

- “Some Clarity”, which clarifies their political stance (democracies always become evil when heathens and heretics are allowed to sway government policies by voting). Voris also provides examples of virtuous Catholic dictators. He does not provide examples of bad ones, which one would think would be sort of relevant when discussing the merits of forms of government.

- “Freedom of Speech”, which Voris denounces since it can lead to heresy.

- “Hate is Good”. Hate is a family value (which may be true).Without hatred of heresy, there could be no faith.

The main programs require registration for access, but fortunately some of their content has been made available elsewhere, including “The Influence of Saul Alinksy on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development”, “Obama’s Counterfeit Catholics”, “Weapons of MASS Destruction” (good grief!), “Global Warming Unmasked, the Hidden Agenda” (ah, yes) and “The Contraception Deception”. According to Voris there is a conspiracy to push contraception for population control (which is also deliberately neglecting to inform people about the dangers of contraception and population control that exist only in Voris’s mind), based on junk science and anti-Catholicism (not that Voris has a particularly sophisticated understanding of science). And global warming is a myth, pushed by certain members of the environmentalist movement for evil and heretical purposes (“global warming is the evolution, the natural evolution, of that early eugenics program,” says Voris: “The elite need global warming in order to pursue their reduction in population goals”). They also have a show on freemasons, if you needed further indication of where these people are located in logical space. Here is Voris claiming that masturbation will destroy Catholicism.

The Archdiocese of Detroit expressed concern that Voris has made comments that “can be interpreted as being insensitive to people of other faiths” after Voris had made some … colorful comments about Judaism. Voris’s views on atheism are predictable, but his complaints that atheists are “angry” indicate some lack of self-awareness.

Diagnosis: An abomination.

I think this is him.

There isn’t much to argue about when it comes to the lunacy of domestic terrorist Clayton Waagner, but he’s not quite the kind of lunatic that deserves a separate entry in an Encyclopedia like this. Gary Wade, on the other hand, is almost too typical. Wade is, allegedly, a physicist, though insofar as he has an education in physics he sure didn’t learn much. Wade is most familiar, perhaps, for his advocacy for the Rife Machine, a quack device that purports to destroy diseases by homing in on “their resonant frequency” and disrupting them with radiofrequency (RF) waves (like a soundwaves shattering glass). It is profoundly silly, and the machines themselves turn, on investigation, out to be little more than batteries with flashing LED-lights with no capability of generating specific radio frequencies. Of course, most of those who sell these kinds of things are presumably frauds, but Wade appears, in fact, to be a true believer. Or who knows. He’s at least popular over at Educate yourself.org.

Apparently Wade is the proud former editor and publisher of The UFO Report, Scientific Advisor to the National Health Federation, and the Science Editor of the Health Freedom News, which tells you all you need to know about the trustworthiness of those sources for health information. He is currently President of the American Institute of Rehabilitation, which develops alternative health energy medicine technology (and seems to be too obscure even for quackwatch). This appears, possibly, to be his own website. At least it has the predicted design solutions and color schemes, as well as a prominently displayed link to “Truth about American Medical System (Still True)”.

His articles display an amazing depth of quackery and crackpottery, mostly in the form of Wade trying to apply crackpot physics to medical issues he really knows very little about, including applications of Rife machines (no science, no testing, no evidence, of course – the link to “results” offers no results) and “vibratory energy medicine” (which is, I assume, what others call “vibrational medicine”, but Wade seems to think of it as particularly important, so we’ll respect that and give it a link – the color scheme of the article is the most immediately striking feature), and conspiracy theories trying to explain, without mentioning the obvious explanation, why Rife’s old ideas have thus far failed to revolutionize medicine.

Diagnosis: Standard crackpot gibberish, but Wade is at least rather entertaining in his complete lack of touch with reality or reason.

One of the most elusive and frightening people afoot in the US at the moment, C. Peter Wagner is a domionionist writer often recognized as the de facto leader and founder of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Though his writings reveal impressive levels of insanity, Wagner is hardly the most vocal of the lot (compared to, say, Cindy Jacobs or Lou Engle) but his influence, including his power over politicians such as Rick Perry, Louie Gohmert and Randy Forbes – or former Hawaii Lt. Governor James Aiona – runs deep, even though these politicians sometimes, and in glaring contradiction with the facts, try to downplay the dominionist ideology of Wagner’s movement. Officially, his current position is chancellor emeritus of Wagner Leadership Institute, which serves as a training camp for leaders to enable them to join in the NAR (here is what it takes to be an apostle, by the way). He was previously president of Global Harvest Ministries, and is the author of more than 70 books. Some background for the movement is given here.

In particular, Wagner more or less founded the modern conceptions of spiritual warfare (i.e. jihad, though Wagner would never, ever use that word), especially in Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the Power of Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare and Engaging the Enemy, where he breaks the warfare down into three levels:

- Ground Level: Person-to-person, praying for each other’s personal needs.

- Occult Level: dealing with demonic forces released through activities related to Satanism, witchcraft, astrology and similar stuff, for instance through Harry Potter, Buddha jimcrack or the preservation rather than wanton destruction of heathen native American heritage (NAR leaders have bragged online about the destruction of Native American religious artifacts, perceiving the destruction as a liberating act, promoting “reconciliation” between estranged groups of people; here are some examples from Hawaii).

- Strategic-Level or Cosmic-Level: To bind and bring down spiritual principalities and powers that rule over governments.

“Strategic-level intercession” uses “spiritual mapping” and “tearing down strongholds” to engage in spiritual warfare against “territorial spirits”. Ok, so how literal and insanely does he mean “warfare”? As literally and insanely as you could imagine (there is a useful guide here). The NAR cultists actually runs around and cleanses houses and burns heathen artifacts in bonfires, and their goal is, explicitly, to take control over all aspects of business, family, government, media, religion, and education (the “Seven Mountains”), which they believe have, quite literally, fallen under the control of demons; all sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth stem from the Earth being controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. The premise of Engaging the Enemyis precisely that Satan’s territorial spirit-demons may be identified by name, and that Christians are to engage in war with them; NAR leader Alice Patterson, for instance, has claimed that the Democratic Party is a “demon structure”, his wife Doris is the author of How to Cast Out Demons, and Wagner himself seems to think that anyone who disagrees with him is demon possessed. In short, they call for revolution in favor of a religious dictatorship, which is a necessary prelude for the return of Christ to Earth (we are “mandated to do whatever is necessary” to take domionion, says Wagner), which would bring about the annihilation of mankind and eternal torment of everyone but a select few. The parallels to insane Azathoth worshippers in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft are uncanny.

In Hard-Core Idolatry: Facing the Facts, Wagner doesn’t face the fact but asserts instead that Catholic saints bring honor to the spirits of darkness, and promotes burning their statues and relics (though he talks mostly about doing that in Argentina, since doing so in the US may be less than politically savvy). Indeed, Wagner, directed his associate Cindy Jacobs – a prophet in his Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders – to go to the Argentinian city Resistencia, where “they must burn the idols, like the magicians did in Ephesus,” which they did: they literally ran around in the streets playing war with an imaginary enemy and burnt down stuff. Yes, the NAR is well-and-truly the American Taliban.

For an arbitrarily selected illustration of how Wagner thinks the world works, you may turn to his claim that the early 1990s economic downturn of the Japanese economy was due to what Wagner depicted as a Shinto ritual in which Japanese emperors have sexual intercourse with a demonic succubus. The 2011 earthquake in Japan was also a result of that country being “pagan” and the emperor having sex with demons (“There is a spirit called a Harlot, a principality, who dominates nations, who dominates territories, who dominates people groups very, very clearly to such an extent that she has fornication with kin”). When he finally got some media attention in connection with Rick Perry’s 2011 prayer rally, which the NAR helped organize, he tried rather desperately to downplay these elements of his teachings.

In 2012 Wagner was honored by the state of Delaware (requested by representative Daniel B. Short), given a commodation and the key to the city of Seaford by its mayor and even received a tribute from the city council, the state Senate, and the state House that was personally read by the local state representative for his attempts to overthrow democratic rule and institute a domionionist tyranny, though that was not an explicit part of the official reason for the tribute.

Diagnosis: Insane but shrewd, C. Peter Wagner may well be among the most dangerous people in the US – his views are more or less identical to the Taliban, and he enjoys a scary and ridiculous amount of influence. The chances that he’ll succeed in implementing any kind of dominionism is admittedly slim, but his influence runs deep enough for there to be a genuine cause for worry.

Joel D. Wallach, M.S., D.V.M. and N.D. (Naturopathic doctor – or “not doctor”) is a veterinarian and naturopath with a long history of involvement in dubious health schemes. He is particularly infamous for claiming (in the bizarre audio tape “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”) that all diseases are due to mineral deficiencies, that everyone who dies of natural causes dies because of mineral deficiencies, and that just about anyone can live more than one hundred years if they take daily supplements of colloidal minerals harvested from pits in Utah. It is probably needless to say that the information is not entirely accurate (there’s a discussion here). The (a?) website for the tape is here, and it is worth linking to for its glorious design and color scheme, which makes it even more incredible that Wallach has actually had some influence: He’s probably the main US promoter of colloidal mineral supplements, which, by the way, are completely and utterly bunk.

Wallach claims that minerals in foods and most supplements are “metallic” and not as effective as “plant-based” colloidal minerals, which is as nonsense as a claim can get (colloidal minerals are also “metallic”). This is something Wallach ostensibly learned from living on a farm, doing necropsies on animals, and reading National Geographic and the 1934 novel The Lost Horizon. He certainly didn’t learn it from science. And it hardly matters that science has falsified his claims about the benefits of mineral supplements (e.g. here) it’s also worth adding a link to a discussion of the recent results on multivitamin supplements in general here, though Wallach is way beyond standard supplements). Mineral deficiencies are certainly not a major cause of disease and death, either. But to back up his claims to the contrary Wallach uses anecdotes and fiction, for instance claiming that there are five cultures in the world that have average lifespans of between 120 and 140 years: the Tibetans in Western China; the Hunzas in Eastern Pakistan; the Russian Georgians and the Armenians, the Abkhasians, and the Azerbaijanis, which is … well, fiction through and through and so obviously and easily verifiably false that one wonders how he thought he’d get away with it (but apparently he does; gullible people are not only buying his supplements, but repeating his claims). Equally false is, of course, his claims about South American people who sustain longevity by mineral rich “glacier milk”. On the other hand, Wallach says, “the average lifespan of an American doctor is only 58 years!” (hence the title of his tape). That number has absolutely no connection with anything real either, of course. There is a resource on Wallach’s claims here.

On the aforementioned tape, "Dead Doctors Don't Lie", Wallach can tell us that “... what I did was go back to school and become a physician […] and they allowed me to use everything I had learned in veterinary school about nutrition on my human patients. And to no surprise to me, it worked.” He doesn’t emphasize that by “physician” he means N.D., which is as much a doctor as a monkey in a lab coat. Wallach is not medical doctor. Still he claims to have made 3,000 autopsies on humans in that period, and discovered that “every human being who dies of natural causes dies of a nutritional deficiency.” How an N.D. gets to do human autopsies in the first place is probably something relevant authorities might want to look into …

According to Wallach, not only can we not get all nutrients we need from our food (no data). Nor can we buy them – the supplements available in stores are not “colloidal” and can, apparently, not be absorbed by the body. We need colloidal minerals from that pit in Utah. His explanation is well covered here (I am indebted to that article for this entry; also check the reader comments).

To make the relevant products available to as many suckers as possible, Wallach founded American Longevity, a multilevel marketing company (for which “Dr.” Paula Bickle, who has a degree from the diploma mill Columbia Pacific University, Jerry Bergman’s alma mater, is a leading distributor.) At least the market structure keeps non-suckers away from the get-go, thus providing some insulation for his rank ridiculousness.

Wallach has also been noticed for testifying in favor of the late James G. Keller’s fraudulent Tumorex device, a “radionics” device that allegedly could transmit “subtle energies” from a person with a hair strand, a drop of blood, or even a photograph, and send and receive “healing energies to that particular object.”

Diagnosis: Make one up yourself. Wallach apparently doesn’t care to know anything about how reality works, and – deliberately, it seems – therefore targets his bullshit at people who don’t know the basics either. A winning scheme for him; a losing scheme for humanity.

Mike Warnke is the author of the 1972 book The Satan Seller, a notoriously fraudulent “memoir” of his life as a “Satanist”. He is also a preacher, and has predictably fooled plenty of people into supporting his ministry despite having been exposed as a liar.

According to himself, Warnke led a large Satanist “coven” in California in the late 1960s (he was sucked into Satanism partially by watching the TV series Bewitched) but left Satanism after he got too high in the “organization” and learned too much, including stuff about the shadowy group called the “Illuminati” at the top levels of Satanism (duh) and plenty of human sacrifices, and he promptly converted to Christianity, subsequently enjoying a long career as a purported expert on Satanism and as a Christian “comedian”. Of course, Warnke was never involved in Satanism (rather, he was involved in the Campus Crusade for Christ at the time), but although he was exposed early on (this article in particular) and his career took some damage, he has continued to stand by his stories, claiming that those who expose him are smearing him. His response to the 1992 revelations was nevertheless rather feeble, consisting primarily of invectives against his ex-wife Carolyn. Nor could he name a single member of his allegedly 1500-member strong coven. In the ensuing months, that number shrinked to 13, of whom the whereabouts of five were unknown to him, while the other eight had since died.

The substantial amounts of money he raised during the 1980s for an underground network to rescue kids caught up in Satanism was instead used to fund a lavish lifestyle – there is no evidence he ever actually had such an underground network, but since no Satanist conspiracy existed either, it is apparently hard to convince him he did anything morally questionable.

Indeed, there is good evidence that Warnke’s lying borders on the pathological (his claims about his education, and how many times he was wounded in Vietnam, tended to grow during the early 80s as well), but at least he didn’t really put too much effort into making his claims fit together.

The Satan Seller, and Warnke’s subsequent status as a media go-to “expert” on Satanism, were driving forces behind the Satanic panic of the 80s – though the main blame should perhaps go to the guy who groomed Warnke, Morris Cerullo) – and even today people, especially in certain corners of the Internet, actually believe in a widespread Satanic underground.

Interestingly, Warnke enjoyed a strained relationship with John Todd, another self-proclaimed “ex-Satanist” who was exposed in 1979 – Todd accused Warnke for instance of stealing “his” testimony about the Illuminati. When Todd was exposed, Warnke didn’t hesitate to denounce him and warn his followers of such frauds and hucksters. True to his martyr complex, however, his own 2002 account Friendly Fire: A Recovery Guide for Believers Battered by Religion lamented how unfairly he had been treated by his fellow Christians after his own lies and financial trickeries had been exposed. As per 2014, Warnke is still making the rounds, currently as a protégé of Rick Joyner.

Diagnosis: Fraud. One sometimes wonders whether he has managed to delude himself into believing his own claims, but he’s no less a fraud for that. He does retain a modicum of negative influence, however.

Anna and Don Warrick are the leaders of the fundamentalist ministry Cadets for Christ, which operates (or at least used to operate) at the Air Force Academy. Some suggest “cult” is a more appropriate term – their tactics are at least cult-like, and includes brainwashing techniques and separating victims from their families or any other factors that could potentially interfere with their mission. The ministry is part of the “shepherding” movement, where females are “sheep” and males “shepherds,” and a woman’s sole purpose in life is to be a good wife and mother, subordinating herself to her male shepherd. No, seriously – take a look at this. One of the Warricks’ main goals is accordingly to prevent women from pursuing careers in the Air Force. Other than that, it is surprisingly hard to find any reliable information about the group.

Diagnosis: Evil. At least that much is clear. Should be watched.

If you think Jack Chick is on the crazy side, you may not be familiar with the glorious antics of Dial-the-truth ministries, run by Terry Watkins. No, seriously; this is pretty much as insane as the Internet gets. The organization started up in 1990 as a telephone ministry with “inspirational” recorded messages (mostly incoherent hatred) for the caller. The organization, based in Pinson, Alabama, is notable for their King James Onlyism, and possibly most famous for their hardline stance on rock music – it’s evil, pure and simple (“tools of Satan”), and due to the Biblical instruction “Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers" (II Corinthians 6:14), that verdict applies to Christian rock as much as mainstream rock (look at that webdesign! You can’t but take them seriously). Less surprisingly, the site criticizes Britney Spears as a “whorish woman” who provokes “youthful lusts” and parents who allow their children to listen to the Spice Girls as “co-conspirators in this cultural rape of their daughters.” No, they don’t really keep up with the “developments” in pop music, but I suppose that’s heartily unnecessary for their message. Lyndon Larouche associate Donald Phau’s classic The Satanic Roots of Rock makes an appearance on their site as well.

Interestingly, they also believe that Hell is a physical place. No, it’s not just a place, but geographically located down there, in the core of the Earth. One of Satan’s forms on Earth is Santa (I suppose even a kid should be able to figure out that anagram). He uses that form because he preys on the weak, such as children … and others – Watkins draws our attention to “The great German Reformer, Martin Luther writ[ing] in his Table Talks: ‘The devil plagues and torments us in the place where we are most tender and weak. In Paradise, he fell not upon Adam, but upon Eve’.” Watkins actually claims to prove that Santa is Satan. And yes, the proof is in that anagram (anagrams are heathen word magic). But Watkins somehow manages to make the argument even sillier than it initially sounds: “An internet Google search on ‘Satan Claus’ [not Santa Claus – but SATAN Claus] found over 1,700 hits!” Can’t argue with that. In fairness, he provides references. To Constance Cumbey and Texe Marrs, Madame Blavatsky and Gail Riplinger. And to clinch it, “[i]s ‘Claus’ another anagram for ‘Lucas’? It’s no secret ‘Lucas’ and ‘Lucis’ is a new-age ‘code word’ for ‘Lucifer’” (actually, it’s the real name of the Evangelist Luke, but that fact doesn’t fit so we disregard it.) And, not content with these observations, he also pulls the Jack Skellington inference “‘Claus’ sounds a lot like ‘claws’.” You can’t top this. Actually, Watkins does arguably top this. I strongly recommend you to check out the article yourself. And don’t get him started on Halloween.

(One interesting detail is that Watkins swallows whole everything ever written by Silver Ravenwolf or any other New Age witch – not a critical question asked – and then takes it as proof of the workings of Satan.)

He didn’t like the Da Vinci code, either (“the most blatant mainstream attack on the Lord Jesus Christ in modern times! Nothing comes close”), nor Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Both verdicts are by all means understandable, but you sort of get the feeling that to Watkins hatred is a default reaction. I am unfamiliar with the movie “Saved!” but according to Watkins it is “[o]ne of the most hateful and blatant attacks on Bible Believing Christians […] This is beyond belief!”

Dial-the-Truth Ministries has also written engagingly on the purported link between the number “11”, 9/11, and – you guessed it – the Endtimes (at least the end of “America the great” – just look at the Muslim atheist in the White House). You really have to check it out, and no – it’s not a Poe. The article on Hurricane Katrina is not without its moments either. And here he tackles environmentalism, pointing out the “scientific ignorance” of environmentalism and urging us to pollute as much as possible, since there is plenty of evidence that this is what Jesus would have done. At least he admits that the goal is, indeed, to destroy the world, and that this is the main reason why environmentalism is unchristian.

He also has a nice, elegant little proof of the historical accuracy of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The only premise you have to commit to is the literal accuracy of the Bible.

Diagnosis: Absolutely hysterical, in every sense. Though an abysmally unappealing character, the world would have been much the poorer without Terry Watkins.

Jean Watson is a Distinguished Professor of Nursing at Colorado and head the National League for Nursing, the board that accredits nursing schools. Hers is, in other words, a position of genuine power and influence. Watson is also a supporter of a range forms of woo, quackery, and pseudoscience, which makes her very, very scary. For instance, Watson has been a defender of Therapeutic Touch (TT), a completely unfounded type of faith healing based on murky and fluffy musings rooted in medieval vitalism (though, of course, preferably mareted under an Eastern name such as “prana” or “chi”).

Now, at least at one point TT achieved notorious popularity among nurses, partially, one might suspect, because it contributed to a sense of empowerment among nurses through a way to feel they were participating more directly in the “healing” of the patient, rather than just passively carrying out doctor’s orders. Indeed, in Colorado defenders of TT, while heavily promoting the bullshit, were also desperately trying to keep science out of it, even trying to portray it as part of a feminist cause – during the Colorado panel investigation of the practice the panel was warned by the practitioners that a negative finding on TT would be viewed as male-dominated medical imperialism against female-dominated nursing. And Watson has been encouraging the bullshit. But how crazy is she? Well, in her speech heralding Colorado’s Center for Human Caring (a hotbed for TT training), she stated that this was “part of the universe turning, ushering in one of the seasonal ancient calendar revolutions … appeasing the gods and goddesses of the universe … this leave-taking from the Age of Pisces, after 2,000 years of the Mayan calendar, takes us away from the destruction, the violence, the technological, industrialized war and power into spirit-filled cosmology … commercial and machine entropy are being scattered to the universe and being replaced by guardians, angels in fact, of esthetic mystic and spiritual unification, of human and planetary evolution.”

Yes, you’re welcome. She was promptly elected president of the National League for nursing.

Diagnosis: A quack and a crackpot, yet Watson wields quite a scary amount of influence and power. A real threat to civilization.

#1220: Ide Trotter and the creationists on the Texas Education Agency Science Review Board

#1221: Giorgio A. Tsoukalos

#1222: Frank Turek

#1223: Hal Turner

#1224: Rocky Twyman

#1225: David Tyree

#1226: Fred Upton(?)

#1227: Glen Urquhart

#1228: Jacques Vallée

#1229: Taylore Vance & Roi Halse

#1230: Larry Vardiman

#1231: Doreen Virtue

#1232: Michael Voris and Churchmilitant.tv

#1233: Gary Wade

#1234: C. Peter Wagner

#1235: Joel D. Wallach

#1236: Mike Warnke

#1237: Anna & Don Warrick

#1238: Terry Watkins

#1239: Jean Watson