Never trust a guy named ‘Hayseed’

Israel has no oil, but some people wish it did, for the worst of reasons. This is an amazing story of a con artist and his willing victims…and nothing is better at leading the sheep to slaughter than religion.

When James Cojanis heard the first rumblings of Armageddon, he was sitting in his San Jose home with the radio tuned to a popular Christian show called The Prophecy Club. Featured that day was a charismatic Texas oilman named Harold “Hayseed” Stephens. Speaking in the rousing cadence of a Southern preacher, he told listeners that “the greatest oil field on Earth is under the southwest corner of the Dead Sea”–and that his company, Ness Energy International, was about to tap into it. In doing so, he said, it would drain the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, prompt Arab countries to attack Israel, and at last touch off the great battle that would usher in the end of days.

As soon as the show was over, Cojanis got on the phone to find out how to invest in the venture. Days later the 70-year-old retiree received a form letter addressed, “Dear End Time Servant.” It claimed that the oil reserves at Ness’ planned drilling site ranged “from one billion to 40 billion barrels…putting this prospect in a class of the super giant oil fields of the world.” Without a second thought, Cojanis bought $120,000 worth of stock in Ness. “Faith is a gift God puts in your heart,” he explained when I visited him in October at his cluttered town house, piled with crumpled boxes of prophecy-themed newsletters and cassette tapes of old Christian radio shows. “And I didn’t have any doubt that Ness was a plan of God. He raised up Hayseed Stephens to find Israel’s oil.”

Eight years later, Ness has yet to sink so much as an initial borehole for a Dead Sea well. In fact, for most of its existence it has never even held exploration rights in Israel. Its U.S. headquarters, a barnlike storefront topped with an open Bible sprouting an oil well, was shuttered in 2006. Since then, its stock price has fallen from a high of nearly $5 to a mere 3 cents; Cojanis’ $120,000 investment is now worth $3,000. Not that he’s worried. “I’m glad the stock price is in the tank,” he says. “When they hit oil and the stock goes sky-high, that means Armageddon is around the corner.” At that point, he plans to use his gains to spread the word that the end times are here, preparing as many souls for heaven as possible.

It’s always a shock to see these cheerful people who love, love, love the idea of Armageddon, and want nothing more than for it to come as soon as possible. This isn’t a hard concept to grasp: if your ideal expectation for the near-future is a world-wide catastrophe that has hundreds of millions of people dying in nuclear fireballs, there’s something wrong with you.

Biological pareidolia

Jesus in a pita, Madonna in bird poop, gods speaking through the arrangement of viscera…we’re used to ridiculous religious pattern seeking. A reader, Mike Barnes, wrote in to tell me about a scientist who has been playing the same game: Francis Collins sees DNA in stained glass windows.

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Collins showed two images–a stained-glass rose window often seen in Christian churches, and an eerily similar graphic that he described as “looking down the barrel” of DNA’s double helix.

“I’m not trying to say that there’s something inherently religious” in the DNA image, Collins emphasized. “But, I think it is emblematic of the potential here of the topic to both interest people and to make them unsettled. Can you, in fact, admire both of these [images]? Can you do it at the same time? Is there an inherent problem in having both a scientific world view and a spiritual world view?”

You know you’ve taken a long stroll on a short limb when you start using phrases like “emblematic of the potential” and start seeing significance in the fact that people can see what they want to see in a random image. Collins is also making a peculiar leap to associate the Rose Window with ‘spirituality’. As Barnes explains:

In his 2008 lecture Francis Collins used a slide of York Minster’s beautiful Rose Window as his first religious analogy. Not only is this spurious in principle, but also in fact:

I went to York University; a good friend (and atheist) was doing his PhD on the stained glass of York Minster. First, and more trivially, the Rose Window only looks the way it does on Collins’ slide because the medium of film completely distorts the exposure to create a spurious silhouette effect. It was never intended to be seen, or its meaning ‘read’, this way.

Also, Collins uses the Rose Window/genome slide and asks “do you have to make a choice between these two?”. (science versus religion, he supposes) In fact the Rose Window was designed in the 16th century as propaganda for the bloodthirsty Tudor dynasty, celebrating the union of Henry 7th and Elizabeth of York. The rose was the dynastic symbol: red for Lancashire, white for York. So the roses round the edge are as much symbols of victorious, naked state power as swastikas were in Nazi Germany – albeit more picturesque.

So, nothing to do with god or Jebus – or is the mere fact it’s situated in a Cathedral enough for Collins?

I’ve seen this comparison of Rose Window/DNA genome on Christian propaganda before and as someone who saw the original it annoys me a lot. Collins assumes a photographically-distorted soft-focus image can ‘say’ something about the genome. Unless he simply means, ‘here’s something old and pretty to see, and hey, the genome kinda looks like it’ the facts about the Rose Window blow his analogy to pieces. Or maybe he really loves old, bloodthirsty tyrants?

I can look at the Rose Window and see a piece of history; some interesting architecture; a pretty pattern; the product of skilled human labor; a monument to oppression; a relic of institutionalized superstition. There are also a few things I do not see. I do not see DNA, except that both DNA and the window share the extremely general property of exhibiting radial symmetry. I also do not see the hand of any god, because it is entirely the product of human hands and minds. There is an inherent problem in “having a spiritual worldview”, in that it compels Collins to see things that are not there.

Whatever you do, don’t let anyone show Collins the structure of laminin or potassium channels! I know it’s too late to shield him from the sight of waterfalls.

Jesus.

Joe Biden recently made some remarks in the Wall Street Journal in which he discussed some of Russia’s concerns, and he made this casual remark.

“I can see Putin sitting in Moscow saying, ‘Jesus Christ, Iran gets the nuclear weapon, who goes first?’ Moscow, not Washington.”

It’s not such an earthshaking idea; I’m sure a European nation has more cause to be concerned about fundamentalist Islam on their doorstep than we do way over here on the other side of the world.

Oh, wait.

What’s that? He said what?

He took the Lord’s name in vain?

Pffft. So what? People say things like that (and worse!) all the time. But then, you must read Mark Tapscott’s prolonged hissy-fit over that comment. Fifteen paragraphs and 700 words, all about the evil of saying “Jesus Christ” in a non-reverential manner.

It’s hate speech. It’s offensive. He’d never abuse Mohammed’s name in such a way. “Biden’s uncorrected cursing is indicative of the slow strangling by the unrelenting forces of political correctness of the religious tolerance that is Christianity’s greatest gift to America.”

Apparently, Christianity’s version of religious tolerance involves pitching a fit over public figures saying a few words with insufficient respect for their dogma.

Jesus Christ. Give me a break, you nutjob.

Kooks don’t need evidence

The other day, I mentioned the silly anti-global-warming argument of Alan Quist: he claims a 16th century map shows Antarctica in accurate detail, revealing that 500 years, the continent was completely ice-free. Therefore, he kookles, the world is currently in a deep freeze and a little warming would be good for us, and entirely tolerable.

John McKay takes a closer look at the old map. Would you believe it’s not so accurate after all? That in fact, it’s not even close?

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Oh, no! I’ll never be able to mock Texas again!

I confess. One of the staple sources of creationist lunacy I document here has always been Texas (with Florida as a close runner-up), which seems to be thickly infested with ignoramuses who get elected to high office. It’s the kind of place that inspires the Molly Ivins of the world. Lately, we’ve been appalled at the idiots the Texas government wants to put in charge of science education, but there’s another victim in the gunsights, too: history and social studies. The same abysmal talents that can muck up biology also want to turn social studies into patriotic mulch.

Alas, they can’t get crazy enough in Texas, apparently, so the local ideologues had to go looking for greater loons, a national search for loons when the homegrown flavor just isn’t piquant enough. And where does he go shopping?

Minnesota. Oh, the shame.

Don McLeroy wanted to bring in Alan Quist to join their social studies team. Quist is a former wanna-be governor of Minnesota (who got clobbered in a landslide defeat) with minimal education qualifications. He has a bachelor’s in psychology and a masters in speech; he teaches (minimally) at a local bible college, and most damningly, his wife runs EdWatch, one of those awful anti-education advocacy sites that promotes the destruction of public schools so everyone can go off and be homeschooled. His pet obsessions are the usual, gays and abortions. He’s ag’in ’em both. He will rant for food.

For an idea of the quality of his mind, you should read his disproof of global warming. He builds on an old map, the Oronteus Finaeus map of 1532, which shows the outlines of a southern continent, Antarctica (with many of the details wrong). From this, he draws the conclusion that Antarctica had been thoroughly explored in the 16th century, that it had been free of ice with flowing rivers, and therefore, the world had been much, much warmer than it is now 500 years ago, and therefore, global warming is a myth. The ice sheet in Antarctica is only half a millennium old, which discovery would rather radically mess up our understanding of climatology, geology, and physics…pretty impressive for a know-nothing wingnut.

So, what is lunacy compatible with? Everything?

An Oxford research fellow, Andrew Parker, has written a bizarre little book claiming that the book of Genesis is entirely compatible with science and evolution…by simply redefining most of the terms in the Bible after the fact to fit. You know the sort of thing I’m talking about: “Let there be light” is a perfect description of the big bang, by “grass” god really meant “cyanobacteria”, the appearance of lights in the sky refers to the evolution of animal vision, etc., etc., etc., yadda yadda yadda. It’s ridiculous, of course, mere post hoc retrofitting of valid interpretations to a pile of bronze age bogosity. This is what happens when scientists try to combine old superstitions with real science.

I know of Parker from another connection, too: he’s the author of the Light-Switch Hypothesis, described in his book, In the Blink of an Eye. That was the idea that the trigger for the Cambrian explosion was the evolution of vision, which I’d thought might have been an interesting component, but was burdened with far too heavy a load of speculation and a suspicious reliance on single causes. This does explain some of the pseudo-biblical rhapsodies in that book, though.

Burned out on the bickering among the pro-science forces?

Then you need to turn to the non-scientists for some refreshing expressions of unity. Or not.

A New Age magazine in Minnesota is under new management, and the editor wants to exercise some “quality control”: astrology, fairies, life-force energy, and spiritual quests are OK. Channeling and paganism are out. This has annoyed the so-open-minded-their-brains-have-fallen-out crowd.

Other New Age leaders are appalled.

“He is excluding channeling? Yikes. Or pagans? He should not be doing that,” said Kathy McGee, editor of the Washington-state-based magazine New Age Retailer.

“New Age is an umbrella term encompassing anything on a spiritual path — Bigfoot, Jesus, Buddha. Even worshipping a frog is sort of OK,” McGee said.

She said New Age thinking is all-or-nothing — you either have an open mind to all beliefs, or you don’t. It is wrong for anyone to pick which beliefs are acceptable.

“You don’t want to say, ‘This is OK, and this is not,’ ” McGee said. “There is nothing we would exclude. We are about goodwill to men.”

Her definition, then, puts Bigfoot believers shoulder-to-shoulder beside organic farmers. Along with channeling, she includes the Fair Trade movement, which promotes products that benefit Third World farmers.

Wait a minute…worshipping a frog is sort of OK? Only “sort of”? I am offended. Why is she belittling the faith of frog-worshippers all around the world?

The rest of the story has some interesting information about the cracks in the New Age universe. Organic farmers would rather not be associated with fairies. Chiropractors really hate it — one says, “That New Age connection should not be made. I cannot see how anyone can put chiropractic care and Bigfoot together.” To which I can only reply, well, what if Bigfoot has an aching back, huh? He’s bipedal, he’s probably got the same difficulties we do.

By the way, one psychic also joyfully reports that the poor economy is helping her business.

A lesson in atheist philosophy

Hang on; Klinghoffer is bad, but you haven’t read the clever reasonings of Nancy Greenwood of Red Deer, Alberta yet. She doesn’t like those atheists one bit — she’s got a list of 5 horrible facts about atheists (although it could be longer, if she hadn’t kindly left off the bits about baby-eating).

Being the hot topic of the day, any discussion of atheism, should include these ‘difficult to admit’ points:

Firstly, atheists claim that they themselves are god. They claim they have superior knowledge then the rest of us by trying to say that they have better knowledge because of their own thinking. They will not acknowledge anyone else to be above them.

Personally, I only rank myself as a lesser demon.

Secondly, atheists have been hurt somewhere in their lives, can’t understand suffering, and are mad at God — so it is easier to deny there is one.

I am so confused. They’ve been hurt, so the can’t understand suffering…wouldn’t it make more sense to say they have not been hurt, so they can’t understand suffering, or they have been hurt, so they can understand suffering?

Personally, I’ve suffered the usual losses throughout my life, but haven’t been inordinately afflicted — I’ve actually been fairly fortunate. Her premise fails.

Thirdly, atheists are looking for God for the same reason a thief would be looking for a police officer. They don’t want to be accountable to a higher being because of the wrong things they do.

Wait, what wrong things do we do? Isn’t it a bit much to assume all atheists are criminals?

Strangely, note that her first three items — atheists think they are god, they are mad at god, and they’re afraid of god — all assume the existence of a god. This is the one basic idea these cranks have to get in their heads: atheists don’t believe in gods, period. Plug that in and everything she has said so far is patent foolishness.

Fourthly, atheists forget that when a person goes to a museum and admires a painting, that there was a painter/designer of that art piece. The art piece is absolute evidence of a painter and not caused by random nothingness.

All of the world, stars, animals, plants, oceans, and mountains are absolute proof of a divine intelligent being (beyond our human ability and thinking) who made these things.

Can the atheist make a tree? It is scientifically impossible for bees to fly (laws of physics) and yet they do. It is impossible for our eyes to see and yet they do. What more proof does an atheist need than their own heart pumping in their chest without them commanding their heart to pump each beat in perfect timing each and every second necessary?

Ah, good old argument from invalid analogy. I have a black cat. I have a second black cat. Therefore, all cats are black. Nancy shows me a gray cat. I could say my hypothesis is false, or I could close my eyes and say it’s actually a black cat and stick by my hypothesis. Which makes more sense?

She’s doing the same thing. Here’s a painting, it has a designer. Here’s a sculpture, it has a designer. Therefore everything is designed. I show her a blade of grass…it evolved, and the individual blade grew from a seed, and no designer acted. But Nancy will simply close her eyes and declare that it was designed, anyway. Why is grass designed? Because paintings are!

And, uh, Nancy? Bees don’t fly by miracle. They obey the laws of physics, none are violated. Same for vision: we know quite a bit about the physics and chemistry and biology of eyes, and there’s no step where you can it’s physically impossible.

Fifthly, denial is a strong coping mechanism in crisis, but does not serve anyone in the long run. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand, an atheist denies God not because God does not exist–but because the atheist doesn’t want God to exist and does not want to see the truth and evidence in front of their eyes.

I would rather believe in God and make sure my life is doing what is acceptable to this Superior Being than to not believe in God and find out I will be accountable to this God for everything I’ve done after I die. With 84% of the world’s population believing in the existence of God, I think the majority rules in this case.

A little Pascal’s wager to round out the list, followed by an argument from popularity. She’s one big fallacy!

Some cheerful atheist in Alberta has got to introduce themselves to Nancy, because clearly she’s never met one before. You might give her a primer in logic, too, because she hasn’t met that before, either.

David Klinghoffer will be eaten last

There are intelligent true believers, deluded as they are, but there also a few of them out there who will simply take your breath away with statements of such pretentious stupidity that you wonder how they manage to tie their shoes in the morning. Case in point: David Klinghoffer. If you’re already familiar with him, you won’t be surprised at this. He’s written an essay in which he takes to task the concept of convergent evolution, as espoused by Ken Miller and Simon Conway Morris. I don’t care much for the way Miller and Conway Morris use the idea myself, but Klinghoffer’s argument…man. You’d think it was a parody if you didn’t know Klinghoffer.

His argument against convergence is that if it were true, then evolution could have led to something truly repulsive, like Cthulhu.

Literally Cthulhu. He quotes a lot of H.P. Lovecraft, “Darwinism’s visionary storyteller,” and cites me linking to the “Unholy Bible”, and claims that “Darwinists love him”. Apparently, we aren’t just unbelievers, or even merely Satan-worshippers anymore — we’ve moved on to worshipping inimical alien beings beyond space and time that intend to remorselessly destroy us. Ken Miller (!) is naively promoting the adoration of monsters when he suggests that maybe his god wasn’t so specific in his mechanisms as to demand mammalian bipeds as the recipients of ensoulment.

Ken Miller hasn’t publicly expressed any known fondness for Lovecraft, and I don’t think his idea of evolution as a natural process undetectably adjusted by a benign deity would accommodate itself well to a Cthulhu-dominated universe. As for the rest of us, and me personally, H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are clearly fiction: we don’t see them as a portrayal of our universe at all. I find them entertaining because the descriptions are so flamboyantly over the top, and because, well, tentacles. There’s also the factor that, as an atheist, I find the similarities between a hostile anti-human monster and the Christian religion’s petty, cosmic tyrant amusing. Really, my shrine to the Elder Gods is very tiny, only taking up one of the smaller wings of my mansion. (Uh-oh, it’s Klinghoffer—he might think I mean that for real.)

Besides, if we rewound the tape of life and ran it forward again, and evolution led to intelligent cephalopods, an anthropocentric bigot like Klinghoffer might well regard them as “grotesque, obnoxious, loathsome, abhorrent, ghastly”, but I’d think them pretty cool…and most importantly, these beings would consider their own forms beautiful, and us strangely twisted chordates as hideous.

Oh, by the way: nobody should tell him how Pharyngula appears in some dusty corners of Cthulhu lore.


I’m just going to have to get this shirt, to make Klinghoffer tremble.