We already knew Bryan Johnson was going to die someday

Remember Bryan Johnson? Here’s a reminder of his silly obsession.

Johnson famously claims to spend millions on his health each year, which goes towards keeping a personal army of doctors on hand who constantly monitor his biomarkers, and help carry out more unorthodox health interventions like swapping his blood out with his younger son’s and monitoring his nighttime boners (though he’s seemed to pare things back as of late).

Unfortunately, poor little Bryan is sick.

Bryan Johnson, in his quest for eternal youth, has been dealt a mortal blow.

Last week, the longevity-obsessed tech investor revealed that he had been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease in which his “stomach is eating itself.”

He’s got autoimmune gastritis. It’s not a mortal illness, but it is a serious and uncomfortable chronic disease, nothing to be made light of. Pity him, but don’t plan the funeral just yet.

Besides, he’s going to turn this into a profit-making drama.

But, true to his mission, Johnson believes he can biohack his way out of this gut-punch, too.

“I’m going to try and solve it,” he wrote on X. “Will share all.”

The man is rich, he already spends millions of dollars on his health every year, and gastritis is a manageable illness. I’m pretty sure he’s going to live through this, it’s just become a significantly more uncomfortable process.

But someday, he will die.

The clowns rise to the top

Imagine that Donald Trump offered me a prestigious and profitable position in his administration (that’s not going to happen). I’m on the edge of retirement, and would love to have a nice comfortable position for my twilight years, so maybe you think I’d be tempted. I would not. I am not going to trash my own integrity to get some advantage. That would be the last thing I’d ever consider, and would feel a deep shame if I were to accept it, because everything Trump touches turns to crap.

In other words, I’m not Avi Loeb.

A polarizing Harvard astronomer known for splashy theories about alien visits has been tapped by the Trump administration to lead a team of outside scientists to study the national security risks posed by UFOs.

Avi Loeb, a cosmologist who studied black holes and served as head of Harvard’s astronomy department until 2020, was recently appointed to helm a new scientific advisory council tasked with investigating the origins of mysterious orbs and other objects reported by military personnel in recent years.

Loeb has made a career of pushing patently nonsensical bullshit. That’s not just my opinion, the scientific community in general thinks he’s a con artist.

His theories have won praise in UFO circles but often put him in conflict with academic peers. Other astronomers accuse him of making exotic claims with little evidence. Some chafe at his habit of skipping the peer review process and bringing claims directly to the public.

Steve Desch, an Arizona State University astrophysicist who has challenged some of Loeb’s theories, said Loeb uses flawed methods to reach wild conclusions about alien life — all while shunning a more established branch of science searching for life beyond Earth.

Loeb’s role on the administration’s new panel casts doubt on the entire endeavor, Desch said.

“I don’t know what’s going to come of this, but we’re not going to get any closer to answering these questions with him in charge,” Desch said.

Loeb has been artificially propped up by the grifter administration. Let’s hope he comes crashing down hard in a few years, and learns regret.

Confirming the terrible quality of this panel, Michael Shermer has also been appointed to it.

Not my VBS

I never formally attended Vacation Bible School, but my house was across the street from the Lutheran church, so sometimes I was tempted. There were kids playing outside! They were playing a beanbag game! So I wandered over a few times, and I was encouraged by the sunday school to do so. Forgive me, for I sinned.

It was mostly harmless, I think — the theme was just to have fun while under the umbrella of the church. That’s all. I guess the church has gotten more aggressive nowadays.

In a bizarre, disturbing scene that’s gone viral on TikTok, a church appeared to stage a fake execution of a man—involving realistic-looking guns and military uniforms—during Vacation Bible School. As the man is being murdered, the children are cheering in unison, “Take him out! Blow him up!” The military men then take the body outside (and out of view), where it’s suggested by the pastor they’re going to “blow him up.”

It’s disturbing that children were not only watching this scene, they were encouraged to cheer on the players machine-gunning the victim. Is this where a faith centered on the public execution of a disruptor of the status quo leads us?

The preacher at that church rationalizes the scene by saying that murdered man represented sin or satan, so it was OK to kill them. I’m sure Jesus would agree that children should be taught to kill sinners. They deserve death, after all.

I wonder if this church teaches that LGBTQ+ people are sinners?

I don’t understand American Christians

Barna has put out the results from a survey of American beliefs, and it bewilders me.

• A majority of U.S. adults adopted a biblical answer on only 1 of 7 questions about humanity and only
1 of 7 questions about the supernatural.
• Only 57% of adults believe humans are God’s creation, made in His image, fallen, and in need of
redemption—despite 70% identifying as Christian.
• Just 30% of adults hold the biblical view that people are born into sin and can only be saved by Jesus
Christ. Among Catholics, that figure drops to 24%.
• Only 1 in 4 adults (27%) believes human life is sacred. An equal share says human life has no intrinsic
value.
• A majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable—and only 1 in 3 adults (33%)
describes themselves as passionately pro-life.
• Only half of U.S. adults (50%) believe God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe
who rules it today—down from a clear majority at the start of the millennium.
• One in four adults strongly agrees that Jesus Christ sinned while on Earth. Among Notional Christians,
roughly half of all churchgoers, more strongly agreed He sinned than strongly disagreed.
• By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to firmly believe the Holy Spirit is merely a
symbol than to strongly affirm the Holy Spirit as a living entity.
• Twice as many adults strongly agree that animals, plants, wind, and water have unique spirits (35%) as
strongly disagree (16%).
• Nine out of 10 American adults hold Syncretism (not Biblical Theism) as their dominant worldview

• A majority of U.S. adults adopted a biblical answer on only 1 of 7 questions about humanity and only
1 of 7 questions about the supernatural.

What is a “biblical answer”? I don’t think there is such a thing — the Bible is a tremendous hodge-podge of archaic, conflicting, and fuzzy ideas. This is an assumption that there is a clear “biblical” position on everything, so I’m unsurprised that there is an absence of a coherent response. The survey returned results that don’t match Barna’s presupposition of what Americans should believe.

• Only 57% of adults believe humans are God’s creation, made in His image, fallen, and in need of
redemption—despite 70% identifying as Christian.

57% is still too damn high. I’m curious as to what the 43% believe.

• Just 30% of adults hold the biblical view that people are born into sin and can only be saved by Jesus
Christ. Among Catholics, that figure drops to 24%.

That’s just a fundamentally horrible belief. What is sin? What is it that a newborn is a sinner? I’m happy to see that belief is in decline.

• Only 1 in 4 adults (27%) believes human life is sacred. An equal share says human life has no intrinsic
value.

I believe that human life is valuable and should be protected, but I don’t believe in the “sacred,” so I guess I’m in the majority. A lot of people are becoming cynical if they think life has no intrinsic value.

• A majority of Americans (52%) consider abortion morally acceptable—and only 1 in 3 adults (33%)
describes themselves as passionately pro-life.

The pro-life movement has always been nothing but an ideological game that was ginned up in the 1970s. The Bible doesn’t say much of anything about abortion, and basically takes it for granted that it happens. Is this one of the things they score as a “non-biblical answer”?

• Only half of U.S. adults (50%) believe God is the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe
who rules it today—down from a clear majority at the start of the millennium.

Good. Let’s see that number continue it’s decline. The concept of an ominipotent supernatural agent is nonsensical.

• One in four adults strongly agrees that Jesus Christ sinned while on Earth. Among Notional Christians,
roughly half of all churchgoers, more strongly agreed He sinned than strongly disagreed.

I’ve never even thought about this idea! Why would anyone care about the sin-status of a rabble-rousing Jewish preacher who lived 2000 years ago? Apparently it’s a serious theological question, which is an indictment of theology.

• By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Americans are more likely to firmly believe the Holy Spirit is merely a
symbol than to strongly affirm the Holy Spirit as a living entity.

Don’t you suspect that most people are confused about this whole business of a “holy ghost”? I know I was only exposed to the concept of the trinity as a grade school child, and found it absurd, so I’m sure theology has a more “sophisticated” muddle of excuses, but I suspect most Americans have the equivalent of my childish explanation.

To be a good Christian, must one believe in a nebulous space ghost?

• Twice as many adults strongly agree that animals, plants, wind, and water have unique spirits (35%) as
strongly disagree (16%).

“Spirits.” Stop there. When your survey is treating spirits as discrete entities that need to be evaluated, you’re lost.

• Nine out of 10 American adults hold Syncretism (not Biblical Theism) as their dominant worldview

OK, good. Ken Ham is thus rebuked.

I read the whole paper, and I’m mainly confused about why we should consider it significant that American religious belief is complicated and messy and does not conform to one particular view. There are tens of thousands of protestant denominations! I guess it’s nice that Barna is highlighting how incoherent religious belief is.

They’re against science and free speech

No one will be surprised to learn that RFK jr is trying to bias the scientific literature. He’s upset that the journal Toxicology Reports had killed an article that supported his weird belief that childhood vaccines are causing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, so he pressured them to restore it.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, is demanding answers from a medical journal that recently removed a paper suggesting a link between vaccines and infant death, saying their decision was “of great interest to me”.

Public health advocates immediately criticized the move, and said Kennedy appeared to be trying to intimidate and influence the journal’s editorial process. The journal Toxicology Reports had removed the paper this spring after editors determined it was so seriously flawed it could harm patients and pose a risk to public health.

This is patent meddling in the publication of scientific ideas. David Gorski commented on it.

Dr David Gorski, a surgical oncologist who has written extensively about the antivaccine movement, pointed out in a post that Kennedy has portrayed himself as pro-free speech, but that he was “apparently using the power of his position” to put pressure on an editorial decision by a private publisher.

“To antivaxxers, it’s free speech for me, but not for thee,” Gorski wrote on X.

I’m interested in that bit about how the paper was “seriously flawed”. The first clue is that the paper is yet another example of VAERS cherry-picking, a common tactic by vaccine deniers to scavenge through reports of vaccine effects to find isolated examples that they they then assemble into fanciful fairy tales of statistical significance, and that’s what this paper is.

The paper raised concern among scientists soon after it was published in 2021 by Neil Z Miller. It used reports made in the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to find what Miller said were “unusual patterns and safety signals highly suggestive of a causal relationship” between vaccination and Sids. VAERS is a vaccine safety monitoring program where anyone can submit a report about any suspected adverse health event that happens after a vaccination.

The second clue is that the author is Neil Z Miller. They can stop right there — Miller has an entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons. He’s not a scientist, not a doctor, and has no qualifications whatsoever, and all he does is comb through diverse data to assemble “evidence” supporting his a priori conclusion that vaccines are bad, mmmK?

Neil Z. Miller is a “medical research journalist”, “health pioneer”, “independent researcher” (yes, that means exactly what you think it means) and Director of the Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute, an anti-vaccine organization listed here (and Miller has a long history in various altmed and antivaxx organizations). Gary S. Goldman is an “independent computer scientist” affiliated with WAVE – World Association for Vaccine Education, another anti-vaxx organization, and President and Founder of Medical Veritas, a rabidly anti-vaccine “journal” (listed here) that is into HIV/AIDS denialism as well, having published dubious “reanalyses” of autopsy results of victims of AIDS. Neither Miller nor Goldman have any qualifications that would lead one to think that they have any special expertise in epidemiology, vaccines, or science. But they have google and are not afraid to use it.

Together they have actually managed to publish a paper or two in obscure journals, where they completely misunderstand data in favor of their cherished hypotheses. In “Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?” they “found” that nations requiring the most vaccines tend to have the worst infant mortality rates, and their cherry-picking of data and speculation needed to reach that conclusion are rather painful – quite simply yet another poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly analyzed study that is poorly done exactly because it needs to be in order to show what the authors want it to show, namely that vaccines cause autism, a hypothesis so thoroughly falsified as any in the history of science. The study was of course praised in the venues you’d suspect, and where the assessment of the methodology used in the study is determined by whether it supports the conclusions the praiser wants it to show. Indeed, it was even praised at NaturalNews in a long post written by … Miller himself.

That paper should not have been accepted in the first place, and now we have RFK jr stepping in to push for its publication. And what qualifications does RFK jr have to assess scientific papers? Also none whatsoever.

Southern Baptists: always on the wrong side

You know, the Southern Baptist denomination was specifically formed in 1845 to uphold slavery — their whole raison d’etre was to separate themselves from those namby-pamby abolitionists who would later kick their asses in the Civil War. That’s not their only issue, though. They also don’t like those uppity women.

Thousands of Southern Baptists overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to advance a formal ban on women pastors in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, sending a clear message that men alone should preach to these conservative evangelical congregations.

The amendment would tighten existing restrictions in the Southern Baptist Convention, which already has a faith statement opposing women pastors.

Can you guess what their position on abortion might be? Or on same sex marriage.

Basically, a good rule of thumb for living a moral life is to ask a Southern Baptist their opinion, and then do the exact opposite.

Do you remember…?

Who remembers the Secular Policy Institute? It still exists, it has a mission statement.

The Secular Policy Institute (SPI) is a think tank organization of thought leaders, writers, scholars and speakers with a shared mission to influence public opinion and promote a secular society. We believe governmental decisions and public policies should be based on available science and reason, and free of religion or religious preferences.

The latest news from SPI is dated 2016; they published a newsletter in 2020. It seems to be moribund.

Who remembers the atheist movement in the mid-2010s? It was crumbling fast, all these different groups were scrambling to stake out a position, and one of them was the Secular Coalition of America, which also still exists, and is actively lobbying the government for secular rights. But for a while it was led by someone named Edwina Rogers.

Who remembers Edwina Rogers? She was a Republican strategist who briefly led the SCA before getting fired in 2014, and then scurried off to found this pointless SPI think-tank.

We’re talking ancient history here, petty derailments of the atheist cause that plagued various groups over a decade ago. You probably don’t care about any of it. I don’t care about any of it. I hadn’t given any thought to SPI or Edwina Rogers for ten years.

But the other day, I got a legal notice from a real lawyer on behalf of Edwina Rogers that I had 14 days to delete two posts, one from 2015 and the other from 2017, claiming that they were in violation of copyright and were defamatory. The merely defamatory page is basically a quote from an SPI representative.

“I’m starting to believe that the reason the secular movement doesn’t have more women is the women. Prove me wrong.”

The quote is accurate, and I agree that it puts SPI in an ugly light, but I didn’t make it up. Don’t complain to me about the fact that SPI had several misogynists on staff.

The other post they want deleted is full of my opinions, and includes a promotional photo publicly posted by SPI, that features Dawkins and Harris and Shermer mugging for the camera. Back then this was something they wanted to advertise, but times have changed and now they’re apparently embarrassed by the situation. Mainly, though, it’s about the unsavory reputation of one Jonny Monserrat, and linked to his history of lawsuits.

I guess you better go check those old posts now, just in case I have to take them down. I don’t know that I will, because there’s nothing factually inaccurate in either of them, but jesus fuck I am tired of these corrupt cowards who now feel enabled to silence anyone who ever criticized them. Of course, most of you weren’t paying any attention to those topics in 2015, or have completely forgotten that period of atheist drama, or think Edwina Rogers and Jonny Monserrat are being really stupid. How many of you have bothered browsing the archives here from over a decade ago? But now I have to deal with lawyers again.

Someone needs to mention Barbra Streisand to those people.

There are no atheists in foxholes, by definition

Pete Hegseth has decreed that there are only 31 religions that will be officially recognized by the US military, in an effort to pare down and streamline the efficiency of their administration. Of the 31, 22 are hair-splitting variants of the Christian cult, which to my mind suggests that there are greater efficiencies to be achieved, if only this policy were administered by someone who doesn’t have Crusader tattoos all over his body, and isn’t a member of Doug Wilson’s white nationalist church.

But surprise, surprise, surprise, guess who is left off the list?

This restructuring of faith codes, which help identify service members as well as the military in planning for appropriated religious coverage to include them, has now excluded minority faith/worldview groups including Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans.

I guess some of the founding fathers of this country, the ones who were Unitarians and deists, wouldn’t get any respect from our modern military. The ones who owned slaves would probably fit right in.

Hey, did I lose my audience with an ancient Gomer Pyle reference? I am old.

Forgive and forget

One of Christianity’s most pernicious and harmful ideas is that a deathbed conversion is sufficient to erase all of your sins (“sin” being one of the worst ideas of all) and get you into heaven, a paradise of joy where you are rejoined with your grandparents and your childhood puppy and you get to eat soft-serve ice cream all day and instantly learn how to play a harp. Well, the details of an eternal life in paradise are left vague, but for sure you will be tormented and in despair for eternity for the sin of being an atheist or failing to obey your parents if you don’t express your love for Jesus. Great crimes can be forgiven if all you do is accept Jesus before you kick the bucket. Adolf Hitler might be burning in hellfire right now, but he could have been saved if, after ordering the murder of six million Jews, he had just let Jesus into his heart before allowing a Russian soldier to blow his brains out.

It’s so easy. They call us atheists hedonists who want to indulge in anti-social behaviors without consequences, but Christians have this bizarre imaginary get-out-of-jail-free card that allows them to commit any horror they want, as long as they have good timing and deploy their repentance excuse before they croak.

Let’s make it even easier. There are sects where not only must good Christians practice forgiveness of sins, but they are required to forget that a sin was committed at all, and most importantly they must not penalize anyone for a sin that they have repented. They create a culture of incessant cycles of forgiveness and forgetting, where you can commit horrible acts and not only get into heaven, but remain members in good standing of your church and community.

The abusers and victims all belonged to the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, or the OALC, a Scandinavian-rooted revivalist church that teaches its followers that heaven is reserved just for them. To get there, according to current and former members, they must follow a strict doctrine, which emphasizes asking for forgiveness for their sins and says that being forgiven by a fellow church member washes away those sins.

What’s more, the church teaches that once a perpetrator is forgiven, anyone who speaks about the wrongdoing — including the victim — can be accused of harboring an unforgiving heart. Those who have left the church, as well as some who are still with it, say this means the burden of sin shifts from the person who committed the act to the person who refuses to let the matter rest.

The OALC has congregations in the US and Canada, particularly in Minnesota, Wyoming, and Washington state — the headquarters of the church are in Sweden, explaining the geographic distribution of the cult. And the OALC has a problem.

The OALC is full of pedophiles and rapists that can’t be purged from the church, because all a bad actor has to do is ask for forgiveness and not only will he be granted a Christ-like absolution, but everyone in the church is obligated to adopt a kind of communal amnesia and pretend the act never happened. It’s a kind of social experiment: what if people really took the doctrine of forgiveness of sins seriously? Now we know. It creates a haven for vile, rapacious behavior, and the bad actors will thrive. It’s an interesting conundrum that this doctrine, called Laestadianism, leads to an extremely moralistic, close-minded religion that at the same time creates conditions that allow extreme immorality to flourish.

The church’s emphasis on large families has created booms in places like Minnesota, Wyoming and southern Washington. Families rely heavily on one another socially, financially and spiritually while keeping their distance from what members often call “the world” — outsiders and secular influences viewed as dangerous or corrupting. Even ordinary activities like watching TV and dancing are treated as transgressions that must be confessed. One abuse victim said she felt anxious every time she turned on her car radio, fearing that if she listened to a pop song and died in a crash before asking forgiveness, she could go to hell.

While most of its practitioners live in fear of turning on a radio, some see the church as a playground for pedophilia.

Over 10 years, authorities alleged, Charles Massie had sexually abused at least seven girls. Some of the abuse occurred at his house and some at his businesses, where young girls worked part time. But the vast majority of the abuse occurred at church, according to court documents. Investigators tallied 832 incidents where Massie sat near the girls’ parents, allegedly fondling the girls’ genitals and breasts. One victim, who told the police she was 5 or 6 years old when she was abused by Massie, said that he “raped me with his fingers.”

Wyoming has charged Charles Massie with nine counts of sexual abuse and sexual battery. He is being held in jail in Nebraska, where prosecutors also have charged him in connection with sexual assaults. He has pleaded not guilty in both states. He could not be reached for comment.

When investigators in Moorcroft contacted families of the victims, they learned that the families already knew about the abuse. One had learned of it three years earlier, according to charges. But according to court records, none of them had told the police. Instead, the charges say, the father of some of the victims had told their preacher, David Lindberg, about the abuse in 2024. Charles Massie would later turn himself in, but not for another year.

The fox is in the henhouse, and the culture of the church is to adopt a willful blindness…very convenient for predators.

The Wyoming church isn’t the only one to face accusations that it failed to report abusers. In southwestern Washington in 2017, a jury convicted church member Carsie Tikka of raping a 9-year-old boy. But one woman, who was a member of the church at the time, said that years before he was charged, Tikka had assaulted her stepchildren and the leaders had done nothing to stop him. Instead, Tikka asked her family for forgiveness.

When secular society catches up to these criminals, it does what the church is incapable of doing. Tikka was convicted and sent to prison, but I don’t think he will learn.

Then Tikka illustrated the central problem facing prosecutors and victims alike — a powerful religious culture that prioritizes spiritual absolution over secular justice — with his final, defiant words:

“My sins have been forgiven,” Tikka told the judge. “Have yours?”

The all-powerful lord of the universe, source of all morality, has told him that raping boys was OK. Who are you to disagree with him?