Religion

Jeff Hawkins was a Scientologist and member of the Sea Org from 1967 to 2005. He was responsible for 1980s marketing campaigns that brought L. Ron Hubbard’s book Dianetics back to the New York Times bestseller lists. Beginning in 2008, he wrote a book-length series of blog posts about his experiences which has led to many further defections from the Church of Scientology. The blog posts have been edited into a hardback book, one of several by long-time high-ranking recent defectors (others include Nancy Many’s My Billion-Year Contract, Marc Headley’s Blown For Good, and Amy Scobee’s Abuse at the Top). I’ve read the first few chapters at his blog–it’s quite well-written and the comments from others who have shared some of his experiences are fascinating.

A group of Tucson atheists and skeptics have started the Desert Air podcast, available via iTunes. Three episodes available so far. Anonymous (2011-07-12): I know it's unrelated, but I just wanted to compliment you as a great source of atheist resources. It's not easy finding any- the internet is dominated by apologists and theologians. It's easy to accidently run into sites. like, say, this one: http://akma.disseminary.org/?s=theology ...

Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans’ “love-hounds” mailing list, I don’t recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian “rock music seminar” about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music. I was familiar with the claims of supposed “backwards masking” where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse. The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples. Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985. We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard. The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear. It’s interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” made a comeback two decades later–being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate. Simon Singh, 2006: ...

The assets of Premise Media, including rights to “Expelled,” are going up for auction. The Talk Origins Foundation plans to bid for the film, which includes production materials. Their stated plan seems to be just to determine what interesting information might be in the production materials or raw footage and make that known, not, as I’ve suggested, make an “MST3K”-style version, or a version that points out and corrects the errors. UPDATE (June 28, 2011): The winning bid for “Expelled” was $201,000. My guess is that the film would only be worth that much to somebody who plans to promote it as-is without any significant re-editing, and thinks they can extract at least that much value out of it–perhaps via charitable deduction by giving it to a creationist organization. There was a bidding war at the end between two bidders that drove the price up this morning from $43,000 (last night’s high bid) to $201,000, which caused the bid to be extended 10 minutes beyond it’s scheduled end time in one or two minute extension increments. It was at $122,000 at the original auction end time, so that last $79,000 increase occurred in the last 10 minutes. ...

Premise Media Holdings LP is in bankruptcy, and its assets are going up for auction online between June 23 and 28. Those assets include the film “Expelled." Perhaps a few of us should get together and buy it, and reissue it in a “Mystery Science Theatre 3000” format? UPDATE: As Damian Howard and Bob Vogel pointed out on Facebook, this adds financial bankruptcy to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the film.

On May 22, 2011, we will either see that many Christians have disappeared and we've been left behind, or that the claims of billboards like this are completely false.  If any individual or group of Camping followers have a strong belief that the former is the case, I challenge you to sign an agreement to transfer to me $100,000, effective May 22, 2011, in return for one of two things.  In the case that you have, in fact, been raptured, I promise to use those funds to evangelize in support of your beliefs to try to save as many of those left behind as possible.  In the far more likely case that you remain behind, I promise not to engage in public ridicule and humiliation of your nonsense for a year.  So it's a win-win.  Any takers? UPDATE (May 20, 2011):  Via Tom McIver:  "Camping has a very idiosyncratic scheme: basically amillennial, and a hybrid of his own Bible numerology and a variant of the World Week (world lasts 6,000 yrs after Creation) framework. Camping puts Creation at 11,013 BC, Flood at 6,000 + 23 yrs later at 4,990 BC, Christ's birth 7 BC, and end of Church Age / beginning of Tribulation 13,000 yrs after Creation. 7,000 yrs after Flood (13,000 + 23 yrs after Creation) is 2011. 1988--13,000 yrs after Creation--was beginning of Tribulation (and also the year Camping left the established church, deciding it was heretical and that all churches had been taken over by Antichrist). 2011 is 23 yrs after 1988 (previously, Camping had predicted a shorter Tribulation ending in 1994). May 21 is Rapture and Judgment Day, world is destroyed Oct 21." And: "Camping also made much of 1948 (founding of Israel), with next Jubilee supposedly 1994. He has much more numerology as well. Interestingly, he doesn't focus on political leaders or natural disasters (although I think the news reports of catastrophes and wars has increased his following)." Eamon Knight (2011-05-15): Predictions (which I guarantee you have more chance of coming true than Camping's): No one will take you up on your offer. Come next Sunday, there will be dead silence from the Camping, um, camp. Few or none will say "Oops, we were wrong; sorry" – same as they did in 1994. ...

After witnessing the despicable pseudo-historian David Barton on “The Daily Show,” inadequately rebutted by Jon Stewart, author Chris Rodda decided to take action. She’s giving away her book, Liars for Jesus, which carefully documents the historical revisionism of Barton and others, online as a PDF. You can download Rodda’s book here. You can also purchase a paper or Kindle copy of the book from Amazon.com. Rodda depends on income from her book, but felt it was important enough to give it away. I suspect she’ll see an increase in sales along with the free distribution. UPDATE: Rodda’s book seems to be selling well: Paperback: ...

John Lynch and I have co-authored a review of the Creation Ministries International film on Darwin which will be appearing in vol. 30 of Reports of the National Center for Science Education and which may be found on their website. My previous blogged review of the film is here. I gave a little more background on the film here. John Lynch has said more about it here, here, here, and here, mostly about the deception used to get interviews by prominent historians. ...

Former Arizona state legislator Pamela Gorman, or someone claiming to be her, took issue with the following passage in her Wikipedia entry: Also in 2005, Gorman was one of several Arizona legislators who supported parental rights legislation which was also supported by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. She attended the grand opening of the Church of Scientology's "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" exhibition in Los Angeles in December 2005 at the request of Robin Read, President of the National Federation for Women Legislators.The edit, which was described as "clarification of falsehoods entered about me and other organizations" and came from Cox Communications Phoenix IP 68.231.27.68, added the following right after that text: It was a quick visit which did not include any meals or other "fluff." The goal of the trip was to determine what the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights was about, as they were becoming heavily involved in NFWL. The cost of the roundtrip flight for the small group to tour the museum was reported by CCHR, according to Arizona disclosure laws. Gorman's political enemies have tried for years to make a leap from her touring a museum as a favor to the president of her professional organization to her actually being a Scientologist. Further attempts to alter this page with falsehoods of this nature may be met with legal action.I'm not aware of any online claims that Gorman, who is an evangelical Christian, is a Scientologist, only that she was one of several Arizona legislators who sponsored legislation on behalf of a Scientology front group and accepted gifts from the Church of Scientology. It's good that Gorman was willing to give a bit more context, but it should be noted that this was not simple "parental rights legislation which was also supported by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights," it was a bill that was at least partly written by CCHR. As the Arizona Republic reported at the time, the original text required not only parental consent before mental health evaluations by schools, it required that parents read CCHR anti-psychiatry propaganda before signing a consent form: Another bill introduced this year would have required written consent from parents for any mental-health screenings in schools. The bill was similar to other measures passed in previous years and vetoed by the governor. Sponsored by Sen. Karen Johnson, a member of the commission's international advisory group, the bill had a bipartisan group of 36 co-sponsors. Still, it failed by a tie vote in the Education Committee, in part because of testimony of mental-health advocates. The original text of the bill would have required parents to sign a lengthy consent form that contained paragraph after paragraph of negative information about psychiatric practices.Information about CCHR is easy to come by on the Internet (e.g., at Wikipedia or xenu.net), so it's unclear why Gorman needed to accept a round trip flight to Los Angeles on the CCHR's dime to find out "what the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights was about," or why she sponsored their bill.

In James Dobson’s 1978 book, The Strong-Willed Child, he writes about using a belt to beat his dachshund into submission: Please don't misunderstand me. Siggie is a member of our family and we love him dearly. And despite his anarchistic nature, I have finally taught him to obey a few simple commands. However, we had some classic battles before he reluctantly yielded to my authority. The greatest confrontation occurred a few years ago when I had been in Miami for a three-day conference. I returned to observe that Siggie had become boss of the house while I was gone. But I didn't realize until later that evening just how strongly he felt about his new position as Captain. At eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed. On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater... When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!" I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me "reason" with Mr. Freud. What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12! Dobson's book is a promotion of corporal punishment in child rearing. This story is complementary to Jerry Falwell's cat-killing story, written at a time when Christian fundamentalists didn't seem overly concerned about abuse of animals--the 1970s.  It's also complementary to the story of Mike Huckabee's son killing a dog, and Mormon Mitt Romney's dog abuse story. Thankfully, most of us today recognize that abusing animals is a sign of psychopathy. UPDATED: To lengthen quote and correct source book title, as per Snopes.  The original 1978 hardcover version of the book is available for $0.01 on Amazon.com Marketplace. Historical Comments Bartimaeus (2010-09-28): They probably thought Sigmund's behavior was "cute" up to the point that he started biting them. Sad that he did not realize he was creating a monster and then resorted to physical violence as his first and only option. Even more disturbing that he uses it as an example for raising children. Here is an interesting post by someone who actually understands dogs better than most, just for a little contrast; http://cynography.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-09-16T18%3A49%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=7 ...