I’m getting worried. This is going to be a weekend heavy on bullshit: I’m bouncing straight from a week of smart students mastering basic science to the Paradigm Symposium, and the shock might kill me. I’m heading off to Minneapolis shortly, and my plan is to ease myself in with one talk today: Rita Louise (should I mention the typo in the itinerary that names her “Rita Lousie”, that sorta messed up my google searches for background?), and she’s going to be talking about “Genetic Engineering in Antiquity”. How could I miss that?
Bestselling author Dr. Rita Louise is the founder of the Institute of Applied Energetics and the host of Just Energy Radio.
She is a Naturopathic Physician and a 20-year veteran in the Human Potential Field. Her unique gift as a medical intuitive and clairvoyant illuminates and enlivens her work.
Rita is the author of the books Man-Made: The Chronicles Of Our Extraterrestrial Gods , Avoiding The Cosmic 2X4 , Dark Angels: An Insider’s Guide To Ghosts, Spirits & Attached Entities and The Power Within.
She actually is a doctor. She graduated from the Berkeley Psychic Institute and has degrees in Naturopathy and Natural Health Counseling, and is also the chair of the International Association of Medical Intuitives. Whew. I am totally outranked.
You might be wondering who was doing this genetic engineering in antiquity. Would you be shocked to learn that it was…ALIENS? She says she has evidence of alien intervention. Her “evidence” seems to be allopolyploidy. Should I tell her that that happens naturally and doesn’t require aliens?
Watch this video and notice a common technique: questions. Did aliens intervene in human evolution?
, not “Aliens intervened in human evolution.” I guess it’s supposed to sound more reasonable if you’re Just Asking Questions, rather than making outright claims.
If I survive or avoid lapsing into a coma, I’ll try to report back what I learn about aliens jiggering our crops in prehistory later this evening.
Well, if by ‘aliens’ you mean viruses or bacteria, maybe. But if you mean some kind of advanced entity designing our genome intelligently… Oh, wait, did I just imply that ancient aliens and intelligent design are fundamentally similar bullshit?
Ah, you mean the reliable and trustworthy PsychoTute? This lady sounds legit, PZ. You might be in over your head.
I’ve had the good fortune of meeting an acolyte–err, “graduate”–of the PsychoTute. I genuinely couldn’t tell if she was a victim of woo charlatans or if she was a woo charlatan. It was like she paid money to learn a script on how to scam people, and then proceeded to scam people without the slightest hint of awareness on where she picked up her technique.
I never understand why alien lizard people supposedly wanted to optimize the genomes of plants and mammals with Earth biochemistry. Or is it that there IS no more Earth biochemistry, because really ancient aliens wiped out all life on earth and replaced it with what we find now? Oh, no! We’re all aliens, all the way down to the gut bacteria of termites. Well, the Lord/aliens moves in mysterious ways, I suppose.
That video is false advertising. The thumbnail promised a cute CG girl with scales, but I listened to (OK, skipped through) the video and all I got was a woman droning on about the usual Von Daniken crap, only with hominids instead of pyramids. Where are my hot Annunaki?
I made it 8 minutes before losing breakfast. Thanks loads Dr. Poopyhead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
I’m hoping that at the talk, Dr Louise will make a triumphant reveal by peeling off her epidermis to expose her true scaly green complexion. That’ll convince me.
Haha–I meant this in reference to “Did aliens intervene in human evolution?”…not PZ’s post. But, I suppose it holds true in both cases, although we might wish otherwise.
Your comment reminded me of [a book I enjoyed as a child](http://i.imgur.com/pUJEifF.jpg).
looking at the speaker list for paradigm, it seems that they all frequent the same hat store?
yup! http://www.penmanhats.com/
Pen IS hats.
Come on! She’s just asking questions… http://explosm.net/comics/3668/
I assume Penman Hats offers a tinfoil lining option.
B-but the Monsanto fanboys told me breeding is “genetic engineering in antiquity!”
‘Cuz they are not alien to Earth. They are Silurians and predate long pigs on the planet.
Close. Ark B crashed into the planet, and the cargo wiped out the native long pigs.
Oh no, aliens did it AGAIN? Somebody should hold them responsible someday.
For someone who thinks aliens, and not a god, created humanity and our associated culture and technology, she certainly uses “miracle” a lot.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology…”, albeit in this kook’s case, it should probably be “Reality is indistinguishable from magic.”
I have arrived at the Templar Lodge. It’s already weird — a Masonic temple? OK.
I’ve walked into the middle of some guy (Lon Milo Duquette?) lecturing us all on the glorious history of the Mason’s and the Knights Templar and King Solomon and the Bible. We apparently rely on the Bible as our primary source of historical information.
The guy is sounding a bit like an atheist, criticizing the Bible because we’re supposed to believe in it because the Bible says we should. I think he’s planning to tell us all about the nonbiblical sources for historical information, but he’s taking forever to get around to saying anything substantial.
“There’s no archaeological evidence to show that King Solomon or King David or the whole kingdom of ancient Israel even existed.” Have I accidentally stepped into a skeptical talk? Confusing. Still waiting for his point.
Now he’s arguing that the Knights Templar also discovered that the Bible was false. If Solomon & David are removed, then the whole Bible falls apart. Heresy! The Most Dangerous Secret in the World! Then something about “Jesus’ small little cult that was taken over by James”. I think we’re building to a conspiracy theory here.
I think he’s meandering to a close. What I saw sounded like something that wouldn’t be out of place among the bible scholars faction at an atheist conference.
Oh, God. Don’t ask Duquette any questions. He goes on and on and on with Bible stories from the Bible that he’s just told us is fiction.
I’m afraid this is going to be a weekend full of people who deeply love their own voice.
Sounds like you need to arrange a gathering of the local ilk. A beer or two may relax you.
applehead@14 beat me to it. PZ, where were you when, in the last discussion of GMOs on this blog, more than one person was claiming that “All our main crops are GMOs, fnah, fnah, fnah!”?
Isn’t that why the Templars were arrested, 13 October 1307 (a Friday) leading to the legend of “Friday the 13th is unlucky”?
–
I enjoyed the earlier conspiracy theory [pedantic note: hypothesis], the Templars were keepers of the secret that Jesus had a wife, and descendants: the Merovingians. That San Greal (Holy Grail) was really a typo for Sang Real (real/royal blood).
Actually quite interesting how they pulled together disparate pieces of history to assemble this “hypothesis”, that Dan Brown later apparently ripped off for Da Vinci Code. The authors sued, but Brown got it thrown out; as history speculation cannot enjoy the same kind of IP protection as outright fiction.
If I tried to engage in every conversation here, I would go insane.
“She actually is a doctor.”
Actually, she is a naturopath, which is an “alternative medicine”. Also generally known as an alternative spelling of “medical quack”. And that was even before the “aliens did it” BS adder.
It’s been hours.
I hope PZ is still sane.
To be fair, selective breeding was done in antiquity, and it is a form of genetic engineering.
Still?
</snark>blf #29
re: sane™
tsallrelativneh?
My wife and I are combining my going to a few silly talks at this symposium with a weekend holiday in the big city. So yeah, I failed to get up a summary of Rita Louise’s nonsense last night, because we did a bunch of things to keep me sane, like going out to dinner and dropping in on a skeptic’s meetup.
I’ll get to work on it this morning.
@24
The Templars were arrested and liquidated because King Phillip had a cash flow problem and the Templars were very rich. We can’t blame religion for that atrocity.
The “aliens did it” crowd, who insert that to “explain” where human beings or human ingenuity came from, without evolution, never ask the follow up question … where did the aliens come from? You’ve just put off the evolution question one more space down the road.