No sooner did I publish my last blog post on irrational and erroneous beliefs, especially about Obama’s citizenship and the putative “moon-landing hoax,” than I noticed that the “moon-landing hoax” theory has a public proponent, and that is Whoopi Goldberg. This report comes via Real Clear Politics (video available there):
Whoopi Goldberg questioned the original moon landing on today’s edition of “The View.” Goldberg, a co-host, wondered who shot the footage and why the flag was “rippling” if there was no wind.
The flag rippling has been explained — by Mythbusters and others — and the lander had external cameras requiring no one to hold them.
Not that these facts are likely to sway Whoopi or any other moon-hoaxer. It would be nice if people like Ms Goldberg weren’t so gullible or ignorant … but they are.
Americans are not only among the most religious people in the occidental world, they’re also among the most paranoid and conspiracy-minded. Perhaps the two tendencies are psychologically linked … I tend to think so, especially since perhaps the most common paranoid-conspiracy theory currently in circulation — i.e. the claim that President Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen — is mostly being propagated by Christian fundamentalists. That Obama is, indeed, a citizen — as explained by numerous sources, ranging from fact-verifying groups like FactCheck, to major media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, to Web sites such as Snopes — has had absolutely no measurable effect on this belief among fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. Facts do not matter to them, not when there’s a paranoid conspiracy they can cling to instead.
The 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing has also pushed into the open yet another conspiracy theory, which likewise appears never to die. CNN reports on this persistent controversy:
It captivated millions of people around the world for eight days in the summer of 1969. It brought glory to the embattled U.S. space program and inspired beliefs that anything was possible.
It’s arguably the greatest technological feat of the 20th century.
And to some, it was all a lie.
Forty years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, a small cult of conspiracy theorists maintains the historic event — and the five subsequent Apollo moon landings — were staged. These people believe NASA fabricated the landings to trump their Soviet rivals and fulfill President Kennedy’s goal of ferrying humans safely to and from the moon by the end of the 1960s. …
Conspiracy theories about the Apollo missions began not long after the last astronaut returned from the moon in 1972. Bill Kaysing, a technical writer for Rocketdyne, which built rocket engines for NASA’s Apollo program, published a 1974 book, “We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle.” …
Decades later, Kaysing’s beliefs formed the foundation for “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” a sensational 2001 Fox TV documentary that spotted eerie “inconsistencies” in NASA’s Apollo images and TV footage.
Is there a connection between the same Fox News channel, which is currently fueling the “Obama-is-not-a-citizen” mantra, and the Fox Entertainment division that aired this documentary? I doubt it. They’re part of the same media empire, yes, but are separately run. Fox Entertainment has given us many things that the religionazis at Fox News would never have approved of, e.g. Married With Children.
But I digress.
That the moon landings were hoaxed is, of course, nonsense. At least one of the reasons is one that CNN cites:
Critics of moon-landing hoax theorists, and there are many, say it would be impossible for tens of thousands of NASA employees and Apollo contractors to keep such a whopping secret for almost four decades.
Not to mention an even more obvious objection: Had NASA “hoaxed” the Apollo 11 moon landing, why would they have gone to the expense of faking several more? If the point was to make people think astronauts had landed on the moon, that would have been accomplished by just the first “hoax.” What need would there be to orchestrate any more?
But as it turns out, none of this really helps alleviate the controversy. The people who subscribe to it are impervious to insignificant little things like “facts” and “verification.” Those don’t matter … the only thing that does matter, is one’s emotional attachment to the conspiracy theory. Of course, that’s what conspiracy theories and religious fundamentalism have in common — that underlying appeal to emotion and sentimentality. Ultimately that’s all they have going for them … but given how susceptible human beings are to emotion and sentiment, that’s more than enough. People usually choose wishful thinking over verifiable fact.
What do you do when you’re a career politician who screwed up big-time, and has been watching other politicians, pundits, and the media write your political obituary over the last couple weeks? That’s the quandary facing South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, about whom I’ve blogged a couple times already. Like a dope addict who can’t get enough of a favorite drug, Sanford somehow cannot resist seizing back the spotlight of attention he once enjoyed. Toward that end, he’s indulging his “attention” compulsion once more … by sending a missive to South Carolina newspapers (here it is, via the Columbia State, the paper which originally broke the story of his infidelity and hypocrisy):
It is true that I did wrong and failed at the largest of levels, but equally true is the fact that God can make good of our respective wrongs in life. In this vein, while none of us has the chance to attend our own funeral, in many ways I feel like I was at my own in the past weeks, and surprisingly I am thankful for the perspective it has afforded.
Like any dutifully religious GOP southerner, Sanford drops the “G”-word almost at the beginning, and keeps inserting it repeatedly, along with lots of other traditional Religious Right canards and code-words:
One, forgiveness and grace really do matter. I used to believe that at an intellectual level; now it is at the level of heart. …
Two, life is indeed about way more than public standing or political views; it’s about recognizing that none of us is the arbiter of truth, that there are moral absolutes and that there is a God to whom we will all report for our actions. …
It’s in the spirit of making good from bad that I am committing to you and the larger family of South Carolinians to use this experience both to trust God in his larger work of changing me and, from my end, to work to becoming a better and more effective leader. …
It means less time fighting the tide, and a greater awareness of the fact that God controls it.
Note his mention of moral absolutes, his desire for forgiveness, his mentions of “the heart,” grace, and trusting God. These phrases and more are all terms his slavering religious worshippers will eagerly devour … or at least, he hopes they will. He also claims some humility:
I’ve been humbled and broken as never before in my life, and as a consequence have given up areas of control in a way that I never have before.
This is, of course, disingenuine. There is absolutely no “humility” to be found in dispatching a letter — ostensibly to all the people of South Carolina — to be published in major newspapers! True “humility” would have been the exact opposite … i.e. for Sanford to get back to work, quietly, and without trumpeting himself all over his state’s media outlets once again. Once again we have an example of Sanford being a brazen hypocrite, doing the exact opposite of what Jesus had ordered his own followers to do, as seen in the following:
Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. (Mt 6:1-6)
Governor Sanford … if I may be so bold as to ask … how is it that I — godless heathen that I am — know your own Bible, and the teachings of your own Jesus Christ, so much better than you do? I wonder if you have the courage to answer that question.
Evangelist Tony Alamo — currently being tried for various child-related offenses (e.g. child abuse, child pornography, etc.) — has had a long and storied career of using his cult either to skirt the law or flout it outright. All by himself he exemplifies many of the problems associated with religions. His recent trial has brought out a number of revelations which are surprising even to his watchers. This can be seen in this AP report (via Yahoo News):
In the years after evangelist Tony Alamo took the 14-year-old girl as a bride, she said, she caught glimpses of her father on the surveillance cameras that fed into the minister’s office.
As her father walked by outside, monitors provided views from every angle. But even though only a few walls and doors separated them, leaving Alamo’s home without permission was unthinkable.
Alamo was a prophet, she’d been taught. He was “God’s chosen one.”
I’m trying to figure out how a man who possesses extraordinary divine insight, enough to be called a “prophet,” somehow has to rely on security cameras to know what’s going on in his own compound.
But it’s not coming to me.
And I suspect it never will.
Tony Alamo is no stranger to the US legal system; the AP article mentions that he’d done time in the ’90s for tax evasion. The degree of control he exerted over the lives of his moronic sheep was extensive:
At the compound more recently, followers filled out request forms for everything, whether clothing or toiletries. Alamo himself approved all expenditures, witnesses said.
Alamo’s house, meanwhile, had television, a swimming pool and ponies in the backyard — unbelievable luxuries for a life one described as floating just above the poverty line.
The point of Alamo’s hypocrisy becomes crystal clear in the very next sentence:
Those amenities led at least one mother to push her underage daughter to become an Alamo wife, testimony showed.
The prophet used these luxuries in order to “get some.”
I’m also trying to figure how a “prophet” needs to use enticements like this in order to acquire wives, but … again … it’s just not coming to me.
Oh well.
The sheer ridiculousness of Alamo’s operation is apparent:
Families were prohibited from keeping food at their homes, the 20-year-old woman said. Alamo also banned his followers from eating meat or dairy products. At one point, on a layover at a Las Vegas airport, the woman said she and another Alamo “wife” committed a sin — they ate a cheese pizza.
Sometimes, Alamo put requests from his followers on hold in order to have money to print the church’s apocalyptic tracts.
Those fliers, outlining everything from Alamo’s feared “one-world government,” his belief in flying saucers and his hatred of the Vatican, served as a backbone of the ministry after he stopped preaching in the wake of his 1994 tax conviction. Each person had a distribution quota, the 30-year-old woman said.
Records in Alamo’s office included the “account,” she said — a list that showed how much literature each follower passed out on the constant cross-country tracking trips. …
Interesting. Once again, a “prophet” somehow requires record-keeping in order to know what his sheep are doing? He can’t somehow manage the feat of just “knowing” what they’re doing, on his own?
My home state of Connecticut is an odd place. It’s a “blue state” which — despite having a Republican governor — is run by Democrats in the legislature and its state employee unions. As a whole it votes liberal and Democratic reliably and consistently. It’s only the third state to permit gay marriage — by virtue of the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling in Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health. Compared with the rest of the country, Nutmeggers are extremely liberal.
But in a few ways it’s still a very parochial state. It still has blue laws, for example. Connecticut also has three very powerful and influential Roman Catholic dioceses (those of Bridgeport and Norwich, and the archdiocese of Hartford) which have, over the last year and a half, become extremely “activist” along Religious-Right lines, as I’ve blogged already. (Even though nationally the Religious Right tends to be Protestant, not Catholic.)
The reason for their political activism is not immediately clear … however, I suspect it’s a push-back effort … the dioceses in Connecticut have suffered from bad press for several years as a result of pedophile priests (such as Fr Stephen Foley, who — when he was sued by one of his victims — the archdiocese of Hartford tried to keep from being deposed in civil court (WebCite cached article). By ramming Religious Right-type causes down Nutmeggers’ throats and trying to make themselves into “kingmakers,” the bishops are playing on Connecticut’s underlying stream of parochiality, hoping to have at least one success that gets people to forget their complicity in previous scandals.
The Kerrigan case … and the presence of gays and gay causes in general … has provided no small amount of fodder for Catholic activism in Connecticut. The most recent example of this campaign is an odd but remarkably ardent campaign to prevent DCF — Connecticut’s child-care agency — to help gays (as reported by WTIC-AM radio in Hartford):
The state Department of Children and Families takes down part of its web site describing a program to train care givers on the needs of homosexual young people.
A conservative political group, and a Christian legal group had threatened to sue over the web pages for the Safe Harbor Project.
American Center for Law and Justice lawyer Vincent McCarthy said his organization sent a letter to the department, “demanding that the state of Connecticut DCF discontinue its endorsement of an alternative religious point of view that endorses the homosexual lifestyle.”
The web pages that were taken down included links to gay-accepting churches in Connecticut, including some in the United Church of Christ, and the Unitarian-Universalist Church
How dare the state of Connecticut offer gays a resource for acceptance!? Why, it cannot be tolerated!
Now … this story does not mention the Catholic Church or the state’s Catholic bishops as being part of this. And they may not be. However, there is a connection, which is referred to later in the article:
Family Institute of Connecticut director Peter Wolfgang said “This was the state stepping in to reeducate our children.
“This is the next big fight, and we will step in to fight it wherever we can, but this was such an obvious open and shut case because it had to do with the state taking a position on religion in clear violation of the first amendment,” Wolfgang said.
Peter Wolfgang is a prominent Connecticut Catholic, and his Family Institute dutifully aligns itself with the state’s Catholic bishops on all of their various crusades.* So it’s not unlikely that they played some part in this effort, even though it’s not overtly stated here.
At any rate, there appears to be no good reason for these religionazis to prevent the state from offering gays a positive resource they can rely on … except as part of their generalized homophobia and desire to repress gays in all ways and make them into second-class citizens. Way to go, guys. Keep up the gay-bashing. You continue to look like the intellectual Neanderthals you’ve shown yourselves to be for nearly 2,000 years.
* My choice of the word “crusade” here is deliberate and not metaphorical. The Catholic bishops in Connecticut are assuredly at war with gays. If they possessed the ability to raise armies against them — as some Popes such as Urban II and several Church councils sent armies to go to war with “the infidel” during the Middle Ages — I have no doubt they would be doing so, right now. That their “crusade” is one of propaganda, lawsuits and politicking, rather than a martial expedition, is just a reflection of modern reality … and a reminder as to why “separation of church and state” is so very important.
The Pfister [Hotel] is Milwaukee’s most regal address, having hosted every U.S. president since William McKinley and scores of celebrities who can take a self-guided tour of the hotel’s Victorian art collection. Today, it’s the place to stay for upscale business travelers and out-of-town visitors, including many Major League Baseball teams. Commissioner Bud Selig, a Milwaukee native, is a frequent visitor.
But some players don’t care for the 116-year-old hotel’s posh accommodations and reputation for privacy. They swear it’s haunted.
Yes, folks, this is exactly the sort of urgent, breaking news we need the AP and Fox News to provide us! That ballplayers are afraid of a hotel because — they say — it’s haunted. They can provide all sorts of stories to back up this claim, and the article itself lists a number of them. There are even some Milwaukee locals milking the presumed haunting of the Pfister for their own gain:
Allison Jornlin, who leads haunted history tours for the folklore research organization Milwaukee Ghosts, said guests have reported seeing a “portly, smiling gentleman” roaming the halls, riding the elevator and even walking his dog. The apparition is said to resemble Charles Pfister, who founded the hotel with his father, Guido.
“His ghost is thought, usually, to behave very well,” Jornlin said. “But MLB players seem to bring out his mischievous side.”
Why’s that?
“Obviously, he’s a Brewers fan,” Jornlin said.
But even some of the Brewers won’t stay there in the offseason.
There’s a problem with this assumption; Charles Pfister cannot have been a Milwaukee Brewers fan … he died in 1924, but the team didn’t arrive in Milwaukee until 1970. (There was a Milwaukee Brewers team in Pfister’s time, but they moved long ago, and have been the Baltimore Orioles since 1954.) This means Jornlin’s claim is chronologically impossible!
With mass media outlets suffering due to the recession, and newspapers failing around the country, one would think journalists could find something more substantive to report on, than “hauntings.” But I guess not. Sigh.
Famous preacher Wiley Drake is proud of the fact that he prays for God to kill President Barack Obama. What’s more, he doesn’t see why anyone has a problem with this. The Associated Baptist Press reports on this bizarre character (WebCite cached version):
A former Southern Baptist Convention officer who on June 2 called the death of abortion provider George Tiller an answer to prayer said later in the day he is also praying “imprecatory prayer” against President Obama.
Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and former running mate of American Independent Party presidential candidate Alan Keyes, said June 2 on Fox News Radio he didn’t understand why people were upset with his comments quoted by Associated Baptist Press from a webcast of his daily radio talk show.
He knows this is just fine, because he has been instructed to do so by the Almighty, and anyone who disagrees needs to take it up with him:
“Imprecatory prayer is agreeing with God, and if people don’t like that, they need to talk to God,” Drake told syndicated talk-show host Alan Colmes. “God said it, I didn’t. I was just agreeing with God.”
But far from merely insisting he’s doing God’s work, Drake proudly elaborates on the kinds of things he prays for and is all too happy to confirm it:
Asked if there are others for whom Drake is praying “imprecatory prayer,” Drake hesitated before answering that there are several. “The usurper that is in the White House is one, B. Hussein Obama,” he said.
Later in the interview, Colmes returned to Drake’s answer to make sure he heard him right.
“Are you praying for his death?” Colmes asked.
“Yes,” Drake replied.
“So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?”
“Yes.”
So we have an unabashed, repeated confirmation of it. But then Colmes asks something that almost makes Drake back up:
Colmes asked Drake if he was concerned that by saying that he might be placed on a Secret Service or FBI watch list, and if he believed it appropriate to talk or pray that way.
“I think it’s appropriate to pray the Word of God,” Drake said. “I’m not saying anything. What I am doing is repeating what God is saying, and if that puts me on somebody’s list, then I’ll just have to be on their list.”
After telling us repeatedly that he was all too happy to obey God by praying for Obama’s death, Drake tries to swerve out of the way of Secret Service review by insisting that he’s merely “repeating what God is saying” and that, ultimately, he’s “not saying anything.”
What a fucking weasel.
Keep in mind that Wiley Drake is not just a “lunatic fringe” nutcase or a “nobody.” He is, rather, a widely-respected minister and a well-known voice in the Religious Right. He served as an officer for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest and most influential Protestant denomination in the United States. Naturally this means the SBC went out of its way to distance itself from these remarks:
Sing Oldham, vice president for convention relations with the SBC Executive Committee, was unavailable for comment until late on May 4.
He said that while Drake served one year as second vice president of the SBC, he is not now nor has ever been a spokesman for the convention.
“Mr. Drake does not represent Southern Baptist actions, resolutions, or positions in his interpretation and application of ‘imprecatory prayers,’” Oldham said. “Any comments made by Wiley Drake on this subject represent his personal views, not those of the Convention.”
So there you have it … someone who once was part of the SBC’s leadership, cannot speak for the SBC. If you can figure out how that works, let me know, ’cause I can’t. Just another example of religious folk enabling each other’s outrages in order to evade having to take responsibility for them. Nice.
If there’s anything more unnecessary than religious rivalries and strife, I have no idea what they are. But religious conflict persists even though, in the United States in the 21st century, we know all too well how maladaptive, counterproductive, and even outright dangerous it can be. There are always religiously-inspired demagogues, it seems, willing to go after “enemies of the faith,” for no other reason than to go after them.
The dozens of protesters who came and went from the sidewalk in front of the Dove World Outreach Center on Thursday had one thing in common. They each expressed — in varying degrees — their disapproval of a sign outside the church on Northwest 37th Street that proclaims “Islam is of the devil.”
The church’s reason for putting up the sign? Incredibly, it’s “love.” Yes, “love.”
The pastor of Dove World Outreach Center, Terry Jones, and his followers have said the sign is their way of expressing love for followers of Islam by letting them know that Christianity is the way to heaven.
Put simply, there is no “love” to be found in telling someone that they’re “of the Devil.” None. Not a speck. Fortunately these protesters know better, and they aren’t relenting:
None of the protesters who spoke to The Sun thought their efforts alone would convince the church to remove the sign. However, several expressed an opinion similar to John Fullerton’s.
“The idea of having this sign here without anyone saying anything makes us all complicit,” said Fullerton, a member of Veterans for Peace.
CNN did a report on this, as well, which you can see here:
The idea of “complicity by silence” is an interesting one, and something I rarely see acknowledged. All too many Americans — even some who do not agree with them — have, by their silence, allowed the Religious Right to drive the country closer to the theocracy they demand it to be. Their refusal to speak out against it, represents tacit permission to proceed.
In Gainesville, it seems, some have figured out that they cannot remain silent.
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