Miscellanea Agnostica

Late last week, a cache of documents released from UK archives revealed that then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of the arrival of extraterrestrials, because it would incite a panic in the population.

Or did he?

Certainly that’s what the Ufologists have decided; they’ve blasted the news of this shocking revelation to the Internet (such as this from the International UFO Congress, with a WebCite cached version). Unfortunately, the real story here is far less certain and less shocking than these folks would have you believe, as has been reported in the (UK) Telegraph, for example (cached version):

The former Prime Minister allegedly banned reporting of the “bizarre” incident, off the east coast of England, for half a century amid fears disclosures about unidentified flying objects would create public hysteria.

He is said to have made the orders during a secret war meeting with US General Dwight Eisenhower, the then commander of the Allied Forces, at an undisclosed location in America during the latter part of the conflict.

Even then-General and later President Eisenhower was in on it! Wow! This is incredible! Proof positive of a multinational conspiracy to prevent the people from knowing about extraterrestrial visitors!

But as they say so often in infomercials … “But wait, there’s more!”:

The allegations involving Churchill were made by the grandson of one his personal bodyguards, an RAF officer who overheard the discussion, who wrote to the Ministry of Defence in 1999 inquiring about the incident after his grandfather disclosed details to his family.

According to the series of letters, written by the guard’s grandson who is now a physicist from Leicester, a reconnaissance plane and its crew were returning from a mission over occupied Europe when they were involved in the war incident. …

Apart from telling his daughter — the scientist’s mother — about the incident when she was nine, the bodyguard, who was “greatly affected by his experience”, only disclosed the details to his wife on his deathbed in 1973.

The scientist, also an expert in astronomy who said he developed software for use in “spacecraft thermal engineering”, was told years later by his mother.

So, let’s see if we can follow this. The documents in question were not written by Churchill or Eisenhower. They were not even written contemporaneously. Instead, this allegation took a circuitous path over the course of several decades. The bodyguard overheard the remarks, but did not take part in the conversation in question; he told his daughter about it, an unknown number of years later; she told her scientist child an untold number of years after that; the scientist then inquired with the government about the supposed incident.

Somewhere in all of this, the reliability of this story appears to have gone off the tracks somewhere. That’s not to say that everyone in this “train of recall” is lying about it, nor even that any single person in this chain lied. At any step along the line, the story — which was apparently discussed only in hushed tones — might have been misheard or misunderstood. The “telephone game” provides an example of how honest people hearing a story, then relaying it, can produce an altered account after even just a few “hops” — and without any intention to deceive, at any point. This story, then, is not really “evidence” of much of anything (except maybe that Ufologists are easily excited about stuff that doesn’t really help them.)

That said, even if Churchill had — as the tale implies — ordered a “cover-up,” this hardly constitutes proof the Earth had been visited by extraterrestrials, or that Churchill or Eisenhower were aware that it had happened. They might well have been “in the dark” about the affair, and only ordered the cover-up, if they did, out of uncertainty and caution, rather than out of certain knowledge and malicious intent.

This wouldn’t be the first time the UFO community has made way too much of supposed “government cover-ups,” and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Photo credit: otisarchives1.

Tags: churchill, cover-up, coverup, critical thinking, dwight eisenhower, eisenhower, extraterrestrial, extraterrestrials, ministry of defence, prime minister, prime minister winston churchill, ufo, ufologist, ufologists, ufology, ufos, uk, uk ministry of defence, uncritical thinking, winston churchill

Sharron Angle, who’s running for the US Senate in Nevada against current majority leader Harry Reid, recently was interviewed by a Christian radio host. In the course of the interview she revealed herself as a militant Christian religiofascist. The Las Vegas Sun reports on this interview, which — until the Sun took note of it — had gone under the radar of the media (WebCite cached article):

And [Angle said] these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our God. And that’s really what’s happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We’re supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government.

Here, Angle reiterates the laughable whine of Georgia Congressional candidate Ed Martin that government — or more specifically, President Obama — is getting between Christians and their deity.

I never fail to be amazed at the amount of sheer power these people attribute to things other than God … when at the same time they claim their God is all-powerful and can never be overcome or thwarted by anything.

That assumes, of course, that their objections to government are rational. The truth is that they’re not. Neither Sharron Angle, nor Ed Martin, nor anyone else in the Religious Right objected to entitlement spending while George W. Bush was in office and the Religious Right controlled Congress. Their objections to government only made themselves apparent as they began to lose power — first in the 2006 mid-term elections when they lost control of Congress, and more seriously in 2008 when they lost the White House.

In other words, it’s nothing but sour grapes … and it’s childish. Well, boo freakin’ hoo, Ms Angle.

Hat tip: Religion Dispatches.

Photo credit: TPM.

Tags: barack obama, candidate, christan right, christian, christian reconstructionism, Christianity, christians, commandments, dominionism, ed martin, first commandment, government, nevada, politics, president obama, religiofascism, religiofascist, Religion, religionism, religious right, senate, sharron angle, ten commandments

Some Australian Pentescostalists have absconded with education in Queensland, and have begun a laughable effort to swindle school children there into believing absurdities, such as that humans and dinosaurs had once coexisted. News.Com.Au reports on their campaign of ignorance (WebCite cached article):

Primary school students are being taught that man and dinosaurs walked the Earth together and that there is fossil evidence to prove it.

Fundamentalist Christians are hijacking Religious Instruction (RI) classes in Queensland despite education experts saying Creationism and attempts to convert children to Christianity have no place in state schools.

Students have been told Noah collected dinosaur eggs to bring on the Ark, and Adam and Eve were not eaten by dinosaurs because they were under a protective spell.

The Pentecostalists stooped to incredible absurdities in order to withstand any objections that might be thrown at them, such as in the following story:

A parent of a Year 5 student on the Sunshine Coast said his daughter was ostracised to the library after arguing with her scripture teacher about DNA.

“The scripture teacher told the class that all people were descended from Adam and Eve,” he said.

“My daughter rightly pointed out, as I had been teaching her about DNA and science, that ‘wouldn’t they all be inbred’?

“But the teacher replied that DNA wasn’t invented then.”

Really, these people have no shame … and no minds of their own, either.

Hat tip: Unreasonable Faith blog.

Photo credit: dewalt.

Tags: adam, adam and eve, australia, biology, caveman, cavemen, christian, Christianity, christians, creationism, creationists, dinosaur, dinosaurs, dna, education, eve, evolution, noah, noah's ark, pentecostalism, pentecostalist, pentecostalists, primary education, queensland, teacher, teachers, teaching

A pastor in Warner Robins, Georgia is sanctimoniously outraged because his son — who will soon attend Warner Robins High School — will be known as a “Demon.” USA Today tells all about his angry campaign to change that (WebCite cached article):

Pastor Donald Crosby moved to Warner Robins about a year ago was furious when he found out his ninth-grade son would soon become a “demon.”

Crosby, who is pastor of Kingdom Builders Church of Jesus Christ, is on a mission to get rid of the Warner Robins High School Demons’ mascot.

One expects an evangelical pastor to throw around scripture citations in order to justify his complaint, but Crosby doesn’t do so (at least, not in this article). Instead he appeals to the dictionary … or more precisely, to what is not in dictionaries:

“A demon never has a good connotation. Never,” says Crosby. “If you look it up in Webster’s Dictionary, there’s nothing good about a demon.”

Even so, Crosby does fall into a common evangelical Christians’ misconception, which is to make everything into a religion:

Crosby says a pitchfork-wielding mascot sends the wrong message to teens.

“Hundreds of children gather into one place at one time chanting ‘Go Demons.’ It’s the equivalent of us gathering into a church on Sunday morning and shouting ‘Go Jesus’ or ‘Hallelujah Jesus,’” says Crosby.

Uh, pastor … there’s a big difference between chanting “Go demons!” and chanting “Go Jesus!”; I can guarantee that none (or almost none) of those people are actually worshipping demons, but people do commonly worship Jesus (in the US at least, and I assume it to be the case in Warner Robins).

As it happens, there’s an explanation for why the Warner Robins High School has “demons” as its teams’ nickname:

Principal Steve Monday says the origin of the demon as a mascot is not religious in nature. In fact, it started in World War II.

He says the school got its mascot from the 7th fighter squadron at Robins Air Force Base, which earned its nickname in the South Pacific.

“They adopted that name in honor of that fighter squadron — the ‘Screamin’ Demons,’” Monday said.

The simpleton Crosby isn’t buying this, however:

“There’s no airplane there,” says Crosby, holding up a picture of the mascot at a football game. “This doesn’t look like something that has to do with the Air Force.”

While this objection does seem to have a little logic, allow me to point out that the 7th Fighter Squadron has an insignia of its own (visible above), which just happens not to have an airplane in it, and also does not explicitly say anything about the Air Force. It only contains the unit name, not its identity as part of the Air Force.

Just saying.

The whole matter of team names is a sticky one, and — generally — people tend to make far too much of them. Demands to change them might have some value, however, sometimes these demands are based on erroneous beliefs. For instance, the teams of St John’s University in New York City used to be known as “the Redmen.” In the 1980s and 90s, many teams were pressured to move away from nicknames that had anything to do with native Americans, as it was considered derogatory toward them; so in 1994, St John’s teams became the Red Storm. But that school’s teams had never been called “the Redmen” because of any attempt by the school to denigrate native Americans. Rather, it was because they wore red uniforms … they were, literally, “men in red” or “red men.”

If it’s decided that Warner Robins High School’s teams can no longer be “the Demons,” then I guess some other schools have to change their names: DePaul University can no longer be the Blue Demons, and I suppose Wake Forest would no longer be the Demon Deacons. Extending this principle to the word “devil,” which is similar in meaning and I’m sure would also offend the pastor Crosby, Duke University would have to stop calling its teams the Blue Devils, and so too would Central Connecticut State University.

Enough is enough. It’s time we finally accepted that a name is a name. A marker. A label. A placeholder for something else. The name of a team is not an object in its own right that can be “worshipped” as pastor Crosby seems to believe. Let’s start being a little more mature about them, OK?

Hat tip: Mark at Skeptics & Heretics Forum on Delphi Forums.

Photo credit: Holloman AFB media gallery.

Tags: 7th fighter squadron, air force, athletics, blue demons, blue devils, christ, christian, Christianity, christians, demon deacons, demons, donald crosby, fundamentalist Christianity, mascot, mascots, nickname, nicknames, red storm, redmen, screamin demons, screaming demons, teams, warner robins, warner robins GA, warner robins high school, warner robins high school demons