UFOs coming right up

lego-guardian

I spent my morning at the Mall of America.

Don’t judge me. We’ve made this a kind of Big City Weekend Holiday, and my wife and I are hanging out here with a couple of responsibilities: I have to monitor the weirdness at the Paradigm Symposium, and Mary is shopping for the stuff she needs to be presentable at the wedding of her son in South Korea next week. Who knew there was preparation involved? I just put on clean pants and I’m good to go.

Anyway, I’m done soaking in unrepentant loud capitalism now, and have to head out to listen to an afternoon of UFOlogy. First up is Peter Robbins, a pal of the notorious Bud Hopkins. I expect to hear the latest poop on anal probings.

After that, it’s Travis Walton…the Travis Walton, who was the subject of a hollywood movie, who wrote a book called The Walton Experience, and who has a new movie out called Travis: The True Story of Travis Walton. I guess he’s fearfully terrified that you might forget his name. I expect to hear all about his dubious claims of being kidnapped by the saucer people. It should be entertaining, but not entertaining enough to make me want to hang around for the Travis Walton movie screening afterwards.

I’ve got to be back to the hotel early to write up my experiences with the UFO people.

#ParadigmSymposium: the saltatory illogic of Rita Louise

notsayingaliens

Shortly after I arrived at the Paradigm Symposium this afternoon, the organizers announced that all the toilets at the venue were backed up. I think there’s a metaphor somewhere in there.

I got to hear Rita Louise talk about “Genetic Engineering in Antiquity” anyway. It was an amazing parade of non sequiturs and irrational leaps, all built on the bizarre premise that aliens had to have guided all of evolution. I say “premise” specifically, because it was not a conclusion from the evidence, but rather a presupposition that she pretended the evidence supported. It was also strange because the entirety of the evidence she presented was conventional scientific observations that support evolution.

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Yep, somebody is definitely trying to kill me with outrage

I’ve been sent a link to a video about the BX Protocol. It’s appalling. The BX Protocol isn’t actually a protocol — there’s nothing that seems to be at all specific about it. It’s a collection of quack cures for everything, daubed with sciencey language to make it sound authentic. If you want to see what I mean, watch this con artist try to bamboozle his audience with his version of molecular genetics.

Ow. That hurts.

First, I’m always suspicious when someone invokes the name of St Tesla. He may have been a clever guy, but he was an inventor, not a scientist, and no, he did not invent a cure for cancer. He’s rightly famous for an engineering solution to the problem of transmitting electricity long distances. But the fannishness surrounding him sounds palpably religious.

But this guy’s explanation of transcription factors is flippin’ nonsense. He claims they “oscillate” and that cancer interferes with the “vibration” of p53, and that the mode of action of transcription factors is dependent on their “frequency”. His treatment for cancer is to basically aim a radar gun at the patient, tuned to wavelengths that will make transcription factors wiggle in such a way that they’ll stop cancer growth.

Nope. Nope nope noppity nope. All lies.

This is going to be a difficult weekend. Maybe you should all pray for me, or vibrate in my general direction, or something.

Can you die of a bogosity overdose?

notsayingaliens

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.

Stanislaw Burzynski must be stopped

Burzynski is a ghoul who preys on the terminally ill. It’s a great scam: offer dying people hope, charge them lots of money for it, and then scamper away when they die and are unable to complain about your criminal behavior. He’s been doing this for decades, and getting rich off the dead. He has been hauled in front of the Texas Medical Board to review his unethical practices, and is currently being tried before a court that will clear the way to stripping him of his medical license. Only now he’s got fervent acolytes who are going to be dunning the Texas governor begging that Saint Burzynski be allowed to continue his failed cancer ‘cures’.

RJ Blaskiewicz is asking that you write to the governor’s office and suggest that they let the board do their work. He recommends leaving a message with one of these themes:

Please support the Texas Medical Board’s efforts to hold Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski responsible for his business practices.

The current proceedings against Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski were initiated by patients who felt they were wronged by Burzynski’s unethical medical and billing practices. All but one of the patients named in the action are now dead. Please allow the hearing to continue.

Burzynski’s supporters believe that he has a cure for cancer, but the proceedings are for deceptive and dishonorable practices at the expense of cancer patients. Please allow the TMB to make its case in front of the judges.

Note that what we’re asking is not that he be immediately stripped of his license, but only that he face a court that will determine the fate of his practice without interference from the state government.

Go do it.

I was a lucky kid

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Canadian couple, the Stephans, who were convicted of letting their two year old son die of meningitis because they were so committed to their willful ignorance.

Because sitting back and doing nothing while your child dies of meningitis is considered unacceptable in most civilized societies, a jury in Canada just convicted a mother and father of failing to provide for their 2-and-a-half-year-old son when he became deathly ill four years ago. Maybe you remember this story: David and Collet Stephan are religious fundamentalists who own a company called Truehope Nutritional Support, which sells natural, homeopathic remedies and nutritional supplements. Not surprisingly, the Stephans favor homeopathic remedies over ones that, you know, actually work, and when their son Ezekiel came down with meningitis they tried to cure him by feeding him “water with maple syrup, juice with frozen berries and finally a mixture of apple cider vinegar, horseradish root, hot peppers, mashed onion, garlic and ginger root.” This nonsense cocktail was supposed to boost his immunity. Needless to say, it didn’t work.

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“Village Atheists”

Atheism-for-Dummies

Sincere Kirabo discusses a wonderfully useful term, the “village atheist”. He brings up that faction of atheism that reacts with hostility to any mention of social justice.

The aforementioned critique, while a forgettable blip on the radar, is symptomatic of an overarching problem that’s festered within secular (both atheist and humanist) spaces since the New Atheism came into vogue. I call it “village atheism.”

I coined the term to classify a self-contained community of socially unaware atheists who reside within and reinforce a feedback loop of ignorance. This subset of nonbelievers is overly wowed by the low bar it requires to recognize the inadequacy of the God hypothesis. Meanwhile, in many ways, they preserve or encourage a bounty of beliefs that are just as oppressive and pernicious.

Yep, I recognize those atheists. You should read the rest for his dissection of the characteristics of these people — you’ll find them painfully familiar.

(I also wonder if they are able to see the irony of the image I used here.)

The message of God’s Not Dead 2 is…

godsnotdead2

…Christians are stupid. Sadly, the audience at the Morris Theater today gulped it right down and confirmed it.

This movie and its predecessor has only a few simple premises: a) all atheists are bad people; b) all Christians are good people; and c) if they close their eyes real tight and pray real hard and pretend, those arguments their pastor made to them will hold up in a court of law. So right off the bat, we meet a heroine of the movie who is grieving over the offscreen death of her brother, while her parents don’t seem to give a damn at all that they’ve lost a child. Her parents are “freethinkers” obviously, while she’s going to convert to Christianity. The father of the Chinese fellow who found Jesus in the last movie shows up to slap him around and disown him for his faith. A team of ACLU lawyers show up to persecute another heroine who dared to quote the Bible in a high school classroom; the lead lawyer is a sneering reptilian buffoon. An ACLU lawyer who is completely dumbfounded by the arguments of Lee Fucking Strobel.

The story is all about a court case. Above heroine who mentioned Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr in a class about non-violent protests gets dragged before an inquisition of fellow teachers, school board members, and lawyers who, obviously, are all atheists who detest Bible-believing Christians (where is this school? I’d like to move there) and when she refuses to apologize for proselytizing — because she didn’t — they all smack their lips in anticipation, because they’ve called in the Evil ACLU, who will destroy her in a court case.

Let me just say, speaking as a certified Evil Atheist myself, who also tends to be more strident than most, I did not believe this persecution scenario at all. The movie was very careful to set the scene so that there was no doubt at all that she wasn’t promoting religion at all, but was responding to a student question asking for a comparison between a set of historical (well, semi-) figures, and the teacher’s response was more cautious than even I would have been in quoting the Bible. It was set up from the beginning as a trumped up case.

What follows is incoherent. The legal case her lawyer tries to make at first is that she was simply speaking her conscience, rather than that she was responding directly to a student question. Then he switches gears and decides that the best strategy is to claim that she was making a secular argument, merely quoting historical figures. Then later he decides to rant and rave and claim that if they silence a Christian for speaking her mind, next thing you know they’ll be coming to arrest everyone for mentioning the Bible. It makes no sense, but of course the jury sees it as valid and votes to declare her innocent.

That wasn’t a spoiler. You know no Christian will suffer any consequences in this kind of movie.

Another irritating thing is that, although apparently this whole sham of a court case was all about proving that Jesus was real, the slimy ACLU lawyer allowed the defense to trot up a whole string of Christian apologists making ludicrous arguments, and not once did they disagree or bring up counterarguments. According to this movie, there are hundreds of contemporary first person accounts of the crucifixion, and no one disagrees with that.

One good thing, though: at least this one didn’t kill any atheists to get a deathbed conversion. It did have the woman from the first movie who had been diagnosed with cancer and converted to Christianity, though; instead of killing an atheist, they had prayer cure a Christian of cancer, praise Jesus. It also had a string of cameos from Christian culture warriors, like Pat Boone, Mike Huckabee, that same abominable Christian musical group, the Newsboys, from the first movie.

One more damning thing: it’s boring. It just goes on and on. It’s so bad that my wife had to nudge me awake in the middle.

Skip it. Total waste of time.

I’m content to let it stand as a testimonial to the paranoia and inanity of modern American Christians. I would think that the people who ought to be most indignant about it are Christians themselves.

Not a good day

godsnotdead2

I had braced myself for a long miserable day: I’m committing myself to grading, grading, grading all day long. It’s term paper time, and I’ve got a stack of exams, so I left early to come into my office…and as I’m getting ready to go, my wife reminds me that I’d promised to go see God’s Not Dead 2 at the noon matinee. So I’m committed to taking a break from drudgery to watch an abysmally bad movie which will reaffirm my contempt for Christianity.

Such fun.

Anyway, if you’re in the area, and if you want to be miserable together, I’ll be at the Morris Theater at noon, not knowing whether to be happy that so many Christians show up for an evil movie that I can’t get in, or to be disappointed that there are so few Christians attending that there are plenty of seats for me. It will be a very confusing time.

At least I’ll go out to Old #1 afterwards for a beer, I’ll need it. I’ll try to put something cephalopod-related on the table, so if you’re looking for like-minded godless folk you’ll know how to recognize us.

Suppressive Persons

ruthless

The Church of Scientology is to be blessed with interesting times. The father of David Miscavage, head of the church, is publishing a tell-all book next week, titled Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me. Well, they plan to, anyway — David Miscavage is threatening to sue for defamation if they go through with it. That’s the best advertisement ever. It must be really juicy, although I can’t say I look forward to reading about the childhood of a psychopath.

That the religion would tear apart families is no surprise. Like many cults, they have a policy of disconnection: new converts are told to sever all ties with family members who might weaken the influence of the church on them. The church becomes a collection of deeply unhappy people who have no choice but to rely on each other.

Scientology is to be featured on 20/20 this Friday. Man, it’s hard to be a secretive evil organization when people keep shining a spotlight on you.

And they’re shedding celebrities! Lisa Marie Presley has become disaffected and is dishing dirt behind the scenes. Could it be that we’ll see a religion die in our lifetimes? That would be nice.