the Skeptic - Volume 4 Number 2...the Skeptic Vol 24, No 2 Winter 2004 ISSN 0726-9897 Editor Barry Williams Contributing Editors Tim Mendham Steve Roberts Technology Consultant Richard

the SkepticVol 24, No 2Winter 2004ISSN 0726-9897

EditorBarry Williams

Contributing EditorsTim MendhamSteve Roberts

Technology ConsultantRichard Saunders

Chief InvestigatorBob Nixon

All correspondence to:Australian Skeptics Inc

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the Skeptic is a journal of fact and opinion,published four times per year by AustralianSkeptics Inc. Views and opinions expressedin articles and letters in the Skeptic arethose of the authors, and are not necessarilythose of Australian Skeptics Inc. Articles maybe reprinted with permission and with dueacknowledgement to the Skeptic.

Editorial consultants:Dr Stephen Basser (medicine)Dr Richard Gordon (medicine)Dr William Grey (philosophy)Prof Colin Groves (anthropology)Mr Martin Hadley (law)Dr Colin Keay (astronomy)Dr Mark Newbrook (linguistics)Dr Andrew Parle (physics)Prof Ian Plimer (geology)Dr Stephen Moston (psychology)Dr Alex Ritchie (palaeontology)Dr Steve Roberts (chemistry)Mr Roland Seidel (mathematics)Branch correspondents:ACT: Mr Peter BarrettDarwin: Mr Simon PotterGold Coast: Mr John StearHunter: Mr Michael CreechQld: Dr Linda ShieldsSA: Mr Allan LangTas: Mr Fred ThornettVic: Mr Grant StevensonWA: Dr John Happs

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Skeptics around Australia

ContentsRegulars

♦ 3 – Editorial — Light at the End of the Tunnel — Barry Williams♦ 4 – Around the Traps — Bunyip♦ 67 – Letters♦ 69 – Notices

Features♦ 6 - Modern Imaginings of Islam — Philip Almond♦ 10 - The Fundamentalist Curriculum — Brian Baxter♦ 14 - Disinformation — Jef Clark♦ 20 - Myth Making and Preserving— Helen Lawrence♦ 23 - Fighting Financial Fraud — Leo Igwe♦ 26 - Conversation with the Bad Astronomer — Richard Cadena♦ 32 - Nutrition Myths: Eggs are Bad for You — Glenn Cardwell♦ 34 - The Writing’s on the Wall — Karen Stollznow♦ 38 - I Can Smell Onions — Ken McLeod♦ 40 - Prized Above Rubies — Liz Armstrong♦ 42 - The Good Word: Word Play — Mark Newbrook♦ 47 - Finding Ed the Skeptic — Ian Bryce♦ 50 - Horoscopes: Who Wants Them? — Guy Curtis♦ 53 - Divers Deceased Deities — Sir Jim R Wallaby♦ 54 - Time is Out of Joint — Barry Williams♦ 56 - Report: Cool Appraisal of Cold Readers — Richard Saunders♦ 58 - Review: Buy This Book — Barry Williams♦ 59 - Review: Holy Trivia — Martin Hadley♦ 60 - Review: Matters of Life and Death — Martin Hadley♦ 62 - Review: Neverending Quest — Peter Bowditch♦ 64 - Review: Delving into Delusion — Hugh Crone♦ 65 - Review: What a Load of Crop Circles — Richard Saunders♦ 65 - Review: Ghostly or Ghastly — John Sweatman

Cover art by Charles Rose of Cogency

the Skeptic, Winter 2004 - Page 3

Light at the Endof the Tunnel?

Editorial

Barry Williams

Skeptics sometimes feel we are beat-ing our heads against a wall in ourcampaign to have alternative andcomplimentary therapies regulatedto standards no less rigorous thanthose applying to orthodox therapies.All is not bleak however, as a story,“Too many quacks in naturalhealth”, in the SMH (May 31) givesus some cause to hope that our ef-forts might be bearing fruit.

A national survey of the industry,conducted by Associate ProfessorAlan Bensoussan, head of the Centrefor Complementary Medicine Re-search at the University of WesternSydney, found that:

The number of adverse events associ-ated with herbal medicines, nutri-tional substances and homoeopathicmedicines recorded in Australia issubstantial and the types of eventsreported are not trivial.

That is hardly news to Skepticswho have been following the debate,but it is encouraging that the studywas reported in ComplimentaryTherapies in Medicine. We can onlyhope that practitioners in the fieldare taking notice. After all, substan-tial numbers of non-trivial adverseeffects should give anyone pause forreflection.

Also quoted in the story wasSusan Dean, president of the Na-tional Herbalists Association, whosaid there was a need to differentiatebetween poorly qualified practition-ers and those required to have a

certain level of education and whoabided by ethical standards.

Prof Bensoussan was further re-ported as saying that, as there wasno authority with which a practi-tioner needed to register, there wasnothing to prevent anyone doing aweekend course in somethingvaguely relevant and then hangingup a shingle and proclaiming them-selves as naturopaths or some otherkinds of practitioner. Nor was thereanything to prevent any dodgy prac-titioner from forming an importantsounding association with no stand-ards at all, thereby giving their prac-tice a seeming credibility it did notdeserve. He concluded:

There is a need to examine whetherstatutory regulation of practitionersof naturopathy and Western herbalmedicine is required to better protectthe public.

Indeed there is. For example,someone who has completed a two-day course in First Aid would feelthe full majesty of the law if theythen proclaimed themselves as amedical practitioner. And rightly so— but the double standards applyingto the treatment of dodgy medicalpractitioners and dodgy alternativepractitioners has not hitherto notice-ably seemed to have concernedspokespeople for the alternative in-dustry. Maybe there really is a glim-mer of hope.

The study in question is reportedto have surveyed 20 disciplines

which included, inter alia,naturopaths, herbalists,homeopaths, massage therapists,nutritionists, counsellors, acupunc-turists and aromatherapists, whichseems to be a pretty mixed bag ofpotentially useful and seriously du-bious practices. One wonders whatremarkable therapies constitutedthe unnamed dozen specialities. Wecouldn’t help being reminded of theBilly Connolly sketch in which hedescribes an horrific road accident,with hundreds of dead and dyinglying around, emergency vehicleswith flashing lights everywhere anda man pushing through the specta-tors shouting, “Let me through! I’man aromatherapist”.

We could hardly disagree with thecomments made in the story — asfar as they go — but they don’t gonearly far enough. We would suggestthat rather than starting out by en-suring that anyone wishing to prac-tice alternative and complimentarymedicine had undergone a long, ‘rec-ognised’ course, or belonged to a rec-ognised association, it would be bet-ter to first establish which of thetherapies offered had any validity.There could be reason to supposethat some of the many practices clus-tering under the ‘alt and comp’ ru-bric might well have some beneficialeffects, but until their claims havebeen subjected to rigorous testing, itis impossible to determine which.

Page 4 - the Skeptic, Winter 2004

AroundtheTraps

News and Views

The State of Denmark

No doubt all readers of the Skeptic(royalists to an entity, we are certain)were as excited as we at Bunyip Manorby the recent Danish Royal nuptials.It’s not every day that a resident ofTasmania gets elevated to the statusof Consort Apparent (Fred Thornett’sclaims to be the legitimate Pretenderto the Throne of the Romanovs notwithstanding).

However we have been concernedthat the Foreign Affairs Departmentwould have been remiss in its dutiesif it failed to warn the father of thebride of the perils involved in stand-ing behind any arrases while attend-ing the ceremonies. There is, after all,ample historic precedent to attest tothe dangers of this activity. (If anyoneknows what an arras is, please sendyour answer under plain brown cover.)

Bard baitingApropos which, did you all enjoy thedocumentary Who Wrote Shakespeare?shown on ABCTV in April? There wasbe no doubt remaining that the answerto the question posed was“Christopher Marlowe”. Mind you,there did seem to be just a trace ofwhat lawyers call “special pleading” inthe programme, in that the bulk of theshow was taken up with the evidence(or assertions) of convinced“Marlovians”, while the appearancesby those of more orthodox viewsseemed to have been shown in the

worst possible light (one was beinginterviewed while he appeared to bedigging his spuds). Barrackers for theEarl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, BenJonson, and Banjo Paterson (the lat-ter a very small group), were giveneven shorter shrift.

We at the Skeptic are solid support-ers of the view most persuasively putby our esteemed editor, that Shake-speare was not written by Shake-speare, but by another writer of thesame name.

Tragic homeopathic failureWe are grateful to our colleagues atthe Skeptical Inquirer for advising usof a protest by a group of 23 Skepticsin Belgium. Objecting to a decision byhealth insurance companies to coverthe costs of homeopathy in responseto popular demand, these Skepticstook drastic action. They proposed tocommit mass suicide by drinking acocktail of lethal poisons includingarsenic, snake venom and deadlynightshade. To make certain of suc-cess, they increased the homeopathicpotency to 30C, ie the cocktail was di-luted one part per hundred andshaken, and then repeated 30 times.According to the SI report:

The media were invited to watch thedeath agonies of the deranged sui-cides, who included a number ofprominent citizens, professors ofmedicine, “and a few normal peoplearmed only with common sense.”

The media coverage was excellent,but the suicide attempt was afailure.

And againNot to be outdone, certain luminar-ies of Australian Skeptics have beenperforming similar acts of late. Itseems that President Richard Saun-ders finds he cannot meet any speak-ing engagements without publiclyquaffing handsfull of homeopathicsleeping pills, while Vice Pres PeterBowditch, at a recent talk before anaudience of medical practitioners,consumed so many preparations“guaranteed to halt or reverse theageing process” that his listenerswere stunned that he did not con-clude the presentation by suckinghis thumb and saying “Gooo”.

To sleep, perchance to dietRecently the denizens of BunyipManor received a fax offering us (ifwe responded by faxing back and re-ceiving a document at $5.50/min forapproximately 7 minutes) “TheLemonade Diet” which is allegedly“Taking America by Storm”. De-signed by “Homeopath StanleyBurroughs, who spotted the connec-tion between weight loss, health andnatural eating”, it promises to, in-ter alia, “Reduce Weight ... Recoverfrom Sickness ... Clean out your sys-tem” which it achieves because it“Dissolves toxins ... purifies your


glands... cleans your kidneys ... re-lieves pressure on nerves”, etc.

Well good for Stan. We’re amazedthat no one else had spotted that vitalconnection before he did, but we oftentend to overlook the obvious. Whydidn’t our resident dietitian, GlennCardwell, tell us? We must confess tobeing a trifle bemused by ‘natural’ eat-ing — what is unnatural eating, wewonder? Stuffing tucker into your ear,perhaps.

However the clinching argumentcame with this question:

Why are the strongest animals in theworld vegetarians?

We don’t know, but doubt if we wantto try a diet that makes us look likean elephant.

Ah fame, brief fame!Perhaps we have all, at one time oranother, hankered after the chance ofbecoming a cultural icon but foundthat it has eluded us. By a strange se-ries of circumstances, however, theesteemed Editor of this publicationappears to have achieved just that.

It’s a long story that began a dec-ade or so ago when he found himselfin one of Messrs Angus andRobertson’s larger book emporia in thecentre of Sydney. The Ed would nodoubt claim he was carrying out re-search, but the Sage of Occam wouldlikely have attributed his motivesmore accurately to “avoiding work”.During his browsings, he was ap-proached by a young lady with a cam-era who asked him if he would objectto having his photograph taken perus-ing a book. She was, she explained, afreelance photographer working on anassignment to get illustrations for afeature on the book trade for the Fi-nancial Review.

Our Editor has many qualities(some good, some not so) but resistingthe blandishments of attractive youngwomen is not one of them, so he read-ily agreed. Fortuitously, he mentionedthat he had just been asked for a pho-tograph by a magazine for which hehad recently been interviewed, andasked the young woman if he couldhave a copy of one of her shots to send

to the journal. She was more thanobliging and shot off a whole roll of theEd in various dignified poses (one ofthem adorns his article in this issue)before giving him the film to be proc-essed.

Nice work all round you might say,but how did this result in culturaliconhood? Well, it seems that the origi-nal pose of our Editor (poseur?) musthave resonated with whoever runs thephoto library in John Fairfax andSons. He appears to have been filed inthat worthy institution as “a typicalbookworm”, whose image is trotted outany time one of the publications of thatstable runs an article on the booktrade.

That is why, Dear Reader, storiesthat ran in both The Age and The Syd-ney Morning Herald in April carried apicture of the Editor of the Skeptic pe-rusing a book entitled The Encyclopae-dia of Ships (which he did not buy, in-cidentally). Thanks to all those readerswho brought it to our attention.

A motherhood issueWe thank Michael Vnuk, a subscriberfrom Qld, who sent us a clipping fromBrisbane’s Child, the free paper aimedat new parents, which contained an in-terview with well-known humorousauthor Kaz Cooke about her new book,Kid Wrangling.

As a new mother, she spoke of ago-nising over the topic of immunisation.Initially very wary, she researched thesubject and concluded that, despite theseductive power of anecdote put out bythe anti-immunisation lobby, she camedown on the side of medicine. To quotethe article:

Reading the anti-immunisation booksand websites, my sense of what’s mor-ally right was absolutely outraged bythe lies that were told and the way inwhich statistics were manipulated tosupport the argument.

She concluded that, try as she mightto present all sides of the issue, shesimply could not recommend any anti-immunisation book that she thoughtwas fair and informative.

Good on you Kaz, you’ll do us as aSkeptic.

Undue praiseIt was very kind of the Chair of theQueensland Museum Board, AnneJones, in opening the Chinese Dino-saurs Exhibition at the Qld Museum,to attribute sponsorship of the entireexhibition to Australian Skeptics, butsadly it wasn’t true.

We did sponsor an important partof the display, the feathered dinosaurfossils that have caused creationists somuch angst (or at least equivocal clap-trap), but the real credit should havegone to the Australian Museum andits then Director, Mike Archer. Sinceleaving the Australian Museum, theexhibit has visited Wellington NZ andis now in Brisbane, with further dis-plays in prospect

Readers from the Sunshine Stateare strongly advised to get along to seethis remarkable exhibition, but theyshould be careful to avoid tripping overapoplectic (or even apocalyptic) crea-tionists littering the floor.

Something fishySpecial thanks to the magical PeterRodgers for sending us this piece ofwisdom:

You don’t have to go to Brisbane towitness a miracle. I have just no-ticed that my Darwin Fish is bleed-ing fish oil.

Free PlugWe like to find and mention enter-prises that sell items of interest toSkeptics and we have discovered onein Sydney recently.

Professor Plum’s at 1 Ernest Place,Crows Nest (02 9906 7441) has a greatrange of scientific models, toys, kits,and items. We were delighted to findan ‘action figure’ of Albert Einsteinthere, as well as lots of fossils andother items of interest. Just the placeto take your (grand)kids.

If there are any science shops or thelike in your locality, let us know andwe’ll give them a plug.

Bunyip


Muhammad the ProphetThomas Carlyle in the 1840s lookedupon Muhammad, the Prophet, asone of the great heroes who spoke‘from Nature’s own heart.’ For others,the Prophet was to be included in‘the golden book of humanity.’ Hecould be seen as containing all theideals of the West: brave and liberalyet pious, noble but simple, irre-proachable in morality. He hadmany of the virtues central to theideals of a Victorian muscular Chris-tianity. For many late Victorians,he typified Victorian ideals ofgentlemanliness: simplicity in life,gentleness to inferiors, children andanimals, modesty and gentle speech,decisiveness in judgment, courage inthought and action. The EclecticMagazine in 1850, for example, as-cribed to him ‘the largest amount ofcredit for every excellent humanquality that a man may possess out-side of the pale of Christian disciple-ship.’ The Dublin University Maga-zine described him in 1873 as ‘one ofthe greatest ever sent on earth.’

But other images of Islam and itsfounder have been more common inthe West. It has been seen more of-ten as demonic than divine, itsfounder more a profligate than aprophet. From its beginnings in theArabia of the seventh century AD, itpushed against the borders of Chris-tendom. Within 100 years of thedeath of Muhammad in AD 632, anArabian Empire extended from Indiaand the borders of China to theSouth of France. Since that time, forthe Christian West, Islam has re-mained often threatening, some-times enchanting, but ever present.Indeed, the West created its ownidentity over against an Islam whichit saw as totally other, quintessen-tially alien, and likely to engulf it.

For Muslims, the Quran is thefinal word of God, and Muhammadthe seal of the prophets. But readersof the first English translation of theQuran in 1649 were introduced to awork described by its translator Al-exander Ross as a ‘Gallimaufry oferrors’, a forgery concocted by

Philip Almond is a Professor and the Head ofthe School of History, Philosophy, Religion,and Classics, The University of Queensland.

ModernImaginings

of IslamThe text of a talk given tothe Queensland Skeptics

earlier this year.

Feature


Muhammad from Jewish and Chris-tian sources. Even Carlyle, admirerof the Prophet that he was, was hardput to admire it.

Yet with every allowance, one finds itdifficult to see how any mortal evercould consider this Koran as a Bookwritten in Heaven, too good for theEarth; as a well-written book, orindeed as a book at all; and not abewildered rhapsody; written, so faras writing goes, as badly as almostany book ever was.

There was little inclination toview the Quran as a work which,both read and chanted for a thou-sand years, had inspired a civilisa-tion equal to that of the West.

Muhammad fared little better inWestern eyes. Western imaginationrioted in its pictures of the Prophet.Few Christians could ever be ac-cused of erring on the side of charityin their judgements of Muhammad.For most, he was the imposter, formany the anti-Christ. For some, hewas a sincere, if ultimately deludedreligious fanatic, prone to epilepsy.

The issue of his imposture wastraditionally linked with that of hislust and ambition. The French phi-losopher Voltaire depicted him in1742 as motivated only by lust, am-bition, and sexual jealousy. ThatMuhammad was both profligateprophet and politician was an imagecentral to the discussion of Islam foranother one hundred and fifty years.And it was the profligate, polyga-mous Prophet Muhammad who wasseen as having most influence on thesensual Oriental mind.

The correlation of sensuality andan exotic and Romantic Islam hadgained a firm foothold in the West-ern mind from the beginning of theeighteenth century with the publica-tion of the Arabian Nights. It was achildren’s classic by the end of the18th century, and did much to softennegative images of the Muslim Eastand Islam. But it also provided evi-dence of the essential voluptuous-ness of Muhammad and the Arabianimagination. It could produceTennyson’s Recollections of the Ara-bian Nights, imbue Goethe with its

exoticism, and influence Carlyle’sportrait of the Prophet as nobleArab. But it would also beget thatclassic of the 19th century porno-graphic genre, The Lustful Turk.

The Religion of the SwordThe issue of Muhammad’s politicalambition was intimately linked tothat of his and later Islam’s use offorce to spread the religious, social,and political unity that was Islam. Itwas above all pictured as the religionof the sword. Christians conven-iently forgot the violent beams in theeyes of their own tradition. Thus, theWest saw the success of Islam as duesolely to the sword, the success ofChristianity to the hand of God. Theimage of a benign Christianity overagainst a malevolent Islam was amythical one. It ignored the violenceand suppression often involved inthe extension of the Christian faith,and the religious tolerance whichaccompanied the gradual spread ofIslam.

The extraordinary success of Is-lam during the Prophet’s lifetimeand afterwards was, not surpris-ingly, a topic of considerable impor-tance, both theologically and politi-cally, throughout the medieval andearly modern periods and it contin-ued to be so until the middle of the19th century. Indeed, it can be rea-sonably argued that Christian self-identity was forged in part by itssense that it was always on theverge of being overwhelmed by the‘other’ of Islam. The tone in 18th and19th century discussions of Islamand violence was set by HumphreyPrideaux in his influential work TheTrue Nature of Imposture Fully Dis-played in the Life of Mahomet in1697. He warned his readers that itwas the universal doctrine of allMuslims that their religion was to bepropagated by the sword, althoughhe went on to point out that it wasGod, in his all-wise Providence, thatallowed Islam to continue as ascourge to Christians ‘who havingreceiv’d so holy and so excellent aReligion… will not yet conform our-selves to live worthy of it.’

The stress on the use of force inIslam as a means of spreading thefaith was, of course, part of an argu-ment concerning the relative truth ofChristianity and Islam. According tothis, the success of Islam was duesolely to the sword. The success ofChristianity, having abjured thesword, was therefore due only todivine favour. Such an argumentwas implicit in all those which de-clared that Islam’s success wasmainly, if not solely, due to its innatetendency to violence. Isaac Barrowfor example, in one of the 17th centu-ry’s most vituperative attacks onIslam declared, ‘it diffused itself byrage and terrour of arms; convincingmens minds only by the sword, andusing no arguments but blows.’

The specific claim that Islam’ssuccess was due to the sword, Chris-tianity’s to God, had been popular-ized in George Sale’s translation ofthe Quran in 1734. According to him:

... it is certainly one of the most con-vincing proofs that Mahommedismwas no other than a human inven-tion, that it owed its progress andestablishment to the sword; and it isone of the strongest demonstrationsof the divine original of Christianitythat it prevailed against all the forceand powers of the world by the meredint of its own truth, after havingstood the assaults of all manner ofpersecutions as well as other opposi-tions, for three hundred years to-gether…

Sale’s argument continued to beinfluential well into the 19th century.Although the major source of theBritannica’s entry on ‘Mahomet’ in1797 was Humphrey Prideaux, theabove words of Sale were quotedverbatim, without acknowledgement.And they re-appeared in the 1810,1817, 1823, and 1842 editions. Fortyyears later, in a popular essay forThe Leisure Hour, William Muir de-clared that, as an instrument for thepropagation of the faith, ‘the use ofthe sword is abjured by the Gospel,while it is commanded by the Coran,’although he recognised that, in thecase of Christianity, practice mayhave often differed from precept.


The Western image of a benignChristianity over against a malevo-lent Islam was a mythical one. Withfew exceptions, it ignored both theviolence often attendant on the ex-tension of the Christian faith, andthe religious tolerance which oftenaccompanied the spread of Islam.But the myth is a potent one, andremains present within Westernmentalities still. For it did, and doesreflect the deep-seated Western hor-ror, always potent in the collectiveimagination and on occasiongrounded in reality, of being literallyoverrun by the fanatical hordes.

During the 19th century, however,such a fear began to fade. NormanDaniel has pointed that, while theimage of Islam as essentially a reli-gion of force remained throughoutthe early part of the 19th century,Islam came to be seen more in rela-tion to entirely new political reali-ties. In essence, the burgeoning cul-tural and political power of the Westrendered effete this traditional fearof being engulfed by Asia in general,or by Islam in particular. As Danielputs it:

Islam, the religion of force, was be-ginning to be dominated by thegreater force of Europe; the old en-emy was becoming a subject, or, ifnot a subject, he was being com-pelled to accept Western influencesas a result of Western prosperity.

In the Victorian period, the cul-tural hegemony of West over Eastallowed for modifications to the im-age of Islam as a religion of force. Onthe one hand it could be argued that,while an aggressive Islam needed tobe opposed, a peaceful Islam wasimpotent and only fit for culturalimprovement. Fruitful in aggression,it is sterile when quiescent. On theother hand, the role of force in Islamcould be down-played. From themiddle of the 17th century there hadbeen those who decried it as a vulgaropinion that Muhammad spread thefaith by the sword. In 1829, GodfreyHiggins saw the use of force as aconsequence of Islam’s successrather than a cause, an argumentwhich was refined and popularised

by Carlyle. It was the exigencies ofMuhammad’s situation in Meccawhich merited his use of the sword,suggested R. Bosworth Smith.

To be sure, there were those whoremained unconvinced by Smith’sapology. But despite this, Islam wasno longer seen as a threat to theEmpire or its possessions:

the fact that the name of our mostgracious Sovereign is now insertedin the Khutbeh, or “Friday biddingprayer,” in all mosques throughoutIndia, is a sufficient proof that Is-lam is not antagonistic either toreligious or political toleration, andthat the doctrine of Jehad, or holywar, is not so dangerous or barba-rous an one as is generally imag-ined.

Just how little of a political threatIslam had become in the early partof the Twentieth century is clearfrom Edith Holland’s The Story ofMohammed, written for the adoles-cent reader in a series entitled He-roes of all Time. Western enemieshad become much more present.Like Smith, she suggested that itwas the circumstances ofMuhammad’s life that justified hisuse of force. But, writing in the con-text of England’s conflict with Ger-many in 1914, she held upMuhammad and his followers asexamples to be emulated. ‘Although,we believe,’ she wrote, ‘that religionshould teach us peace, and not war,yet we cannot but admire the zeal ofthese early Moslems, who were readyto give their lives, their property andall they had, in the cause of theirfaith.’ Just as, one might add, herreaders might be expected to givetheir all in the cause of God andcountry.

Orientalist MotifsAlthough the traditional image ofIslam as a religion whose successwas attributable to force still heldsway throughout the 19th century, itwas balanced by a number of othermotifs. The view that Islam per-suaded rather than intimidated coa-lesced with Carlyle’s charismaticleader. Muhammad’s justified use of

force was counterpointed by Christi-anity’s unjustified use of it. Lesshysterical views of Islam were facili-tated by a developing imperial confi-dence in which Islamic culture wasseen, not so much as a politicalthreat, but rather as a sphere ofWestern patronage, both secular andreligious.

On balance, Islam was viewed ashaving brought about a significantimprovement in the intellectual,moral, and religious culture of pre-Islamic Arabia, even over the Chris-tianity which it had there sup-planted, a Christianity divided byheresy and factionalism, and perme-ated by impiety, inequity, iniquity,and idolatry. On the decadence ofChristianity in pre-Islamic Arabia,sympathisers and detractors alike,all were agreed. How else to explainIslam’s success?

And there was a sense in which18th and 19th century Protestantismin its simplicity, both ritually anddoctrinally, in its commitment to theBible, in its antipathy to the per-ceived idolatries of both WesternCatholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy,did have a formal similarity to Is-lam. Protestants really could empa-thise with the success of Islam oversuch forms of Christianity. But manyof those who endorsed the Islam ofMuhammad’s time also saw it aseither having degenerated after hisdeath, or incapable of change. Therewas little enthusiasm for later devel-opments of it. A discourse of Islam asstatic, stagnant, and unchanging, orof modern Islam as decadent anddegenerate permeated many texts.As Bryan Turner aptly puts it, ‘Therise of Islam is thus the genesis of itsdecline.’

The inability of Victorians, how-ever much they admired Muhammadand original Islam, to endorse itscontemporary manifestations arosefrom a deep seated incapacity ofnineteenth century Europe generallyto treat Islam, indeed the East ingeneral, on equal terms. Indeed, thegreater value of the West over theEast, over all those it variously char-acterised as backward, degenerate,or uncivilised, was a sine qua non of

Islam


most discussions of non-Westernforms of life.

The image of the progressive Westover against a static or degenerateEast lurked only just beneath thesurface. According to KathrynTidrick, during the 19th century, ‘the“unchanging East” came to be re-garded as a spectacle; one for whichit was increasingly assumed, theEnglish were entitled to both a frontseat and a presence behind thescenes.’ And the image of a vibrant,active, progressive Christianity overagainst a passive inert Islam wascongenial to a policy of British reli-gious and political hegemony.

These were common motifs. And,at that time, the demise of Islamseemed inevitable. To Edward Free-man, for example, the West was pro-gressive, legal, monogamous andChristian, and the East was arbi-trary, stationary, polygamous, andMahometan. Thus, Islam was oftenseen as the source of all the evilswhich, in the Western imaginationat least, had afflicted Islamic socie-ties. It was Islam, extravagant butnot progressive, that had relievedthe Eastern mind from the disciplineof improving itself, and had left it inits preferred state of untamed wild-ness. It was the prime source of thepolitical decrepitude and moral andsocial evils of the Ottoman Turks. Tothe Baptist George Smith it wascertain that ‘Islam and scientific andpolitical progress are incompatible,as Christianity and scientific andpolitical progress are not incompat-ible.’

There was a number of aspects ofIslam which were often cited as thecause of the stagnation and deca-dence of Islamic societies. Some sawit in blind devotion to Muhammad,others in the dead weight of Islamicfatalism. William Palgrave, ratheruniquely, viewed the Muslim ban onalcohol as a major cause in Islam’sinability to progress, and to be toler-ant. Still others saw the dead weightof political despotism as inhibitingchange, and Islam as having fosteredit. Islam and progress were incom-patible:

Chained to a black stone in a barrenwilderness, the heart and reason ofthe Muhammadan world wouldseem to have taken the similitude ofthe objects they reverence; and therefreshing dews and genial sunshinewhich fertilise all else seek in vainfor anything to quicken there.

There were some attempts to de-fend Islam in principle from the al-leged defects of its practitioners.Bosworth Smith, for example, main-tained that it was as unfair to judgeIslam in terms of Turkish despots,maniac dervishes, and Persian liber-tines, as to judge Christianity interms of Anabaptists, Pillar Saints,or Shakers. But there was a strongtendency throughout the Victorianperiod to blame Islam for all theimagined ills of Oriental societies —the moral degradation of women,slavery, the physical and mentaldebilities of men, envy, violence andcruelty, the disquiet and misery ofprivate life, the continual agitations,commotions, and revolutions of pub-lic life.

ConclusionThus, during the 18th and 19th centu-ries, Muhammad remained heretic,Anti-Christ, ambitious imposter,profligate politician. But these weretempered by new images of theProphet as sincere hero, noble Arab,and even true Prophet of God.

The reasons for this change weremany. Increased data aboutMuhammad and the origins of Islammade earlier stereotypes ineffective.The demise of Christianapocalypticism and the rise of secu-lar historical method created theMuhammad of history, relegating tothe shadows the Muhammad ofChristian legend. The Victorian pen-chant for great men coupled with theWestern fascination for an exoticEast engendered a sympathetic envi-ronment for the rehabilitation ofMuhammad and Islam. And the riseof Western power over Islam madefor a context in which original Islamcould be treated benevolently, even ifmodern Islam remained open tocriticism.

That Islam was, of its essence,violent was a myth that faded in thenineteenth century, as Islamic cul-tures began to be dominated by Eu-rope. The old enemy were becomingimperial subjects. And Islam couldbe treated more benevolently.

But in a post-imperialist age,Muslim nationalisms are again onthe rise, not only in the Middle Eastand North Africa, but in Indonesiaand India. The power of the myth ofIslam as essentially violent has re-surfaced. The image of Islam as areligion essentially other resonatesagain within the modern West. Theactions of some Muslims bring to thesurface of our consciousness thedeep-seated Western fear, alwayspotent in our imaginations, of beingoverwhelmed by the East.

There has been a resurgence inthe West of viewing Islamic leadersas demonic. Thus Libya’sMuhammad Gaddafi, Iran’sAyatollah Khomeini, and Iraq’sSaddam Hussein have all on occa-sion incarnated the mythical demon.Osama bin Laden has already en-tered a mythical realm in which hisname and face have become symbolicof evil. And Satan even appears tosome in the smoke of the Twin Tow-ers of the World Trade Centre.

But demonisation is a two-edgedsword. In the name of God, suchIslamic leaders have also demonisedthe West, and especially the UnitedStates. For many in the Islamicworld, the United States representsthe demonic forces of economic ex-ploitation and imperialist repression.To act in the name of Allah is tostrike a blow against evil. One tradi-tion’s martyr is the other’s fanaticalterrorist.

It is foolish to deny that there is aviolent edge to Islam, as there is toChristianity and Judaism. In allthese traditions, there is the tensionbetween the idea of a God whose willis always good and a God whose willis always right. And where God isseen as a being whose will can tran-scend the good, evil acts committedin his name can abound. These are

Continued p 13 ...


It’s hard to know exactly how manyAustralian children are being taughta fundamentalist curriculum. Ac-cording to the website of the Austral-ian Associations of Christian Schools(AACS) — www.aacs.net.au — stu-dent enrolments in its 254 memberschools number over 72,000 (2002).If we add the enrolments of non-member schools and allow for stu-dents being ‘home-schooled’ by fun-damentalist Christian parents, weprobably have a ballpark figure ofaround 100,000.

Am I using the term ‘fundamen-talist’ too loosely? The AACS ‘State-ment of Affirmation’ commences withthis ringing declaration:

The Scriptures of the Old and NewTestaments are God’s infallible andinerrant revelation to man. It is thusthe supreme standard by which allthings are to be judged, and theauthoritative guide for all life andconduct.

Call it ‘conservative evangelicalProtestantism’ if you like, but fromwhere I stand, that’s fundamental-ism, brother! Or sister!

Christian bookstoreI wanted to find out what these chil-dren are being taught, whether at

school or in the homeschooling envi-ronment. My first step was to visit alocal Christian bookstore and ask tosee their range of primary and sec-ondary texts. ‘You should really tryLight Educational Ministries [LEM]or Kingsley Educational’, said thefriendly assistant, ‘but first have alook at these.’

‘These’ turned out to be fourshelves full of Answers in Genesismaterial, interspersed with an occa-sional volume by Hugh Ross, a lead-ing member of the rival ‘Old Earth’creationist faction.

‘This should do you for Science’, Iwas assured, ‘but for other subjects,try LEM. They’re probably the bestdistributors of Christian school textsin Australia.’

Slightly dispirited, I went homeand sat at the computer for a fewhours, clicking through a largenumber of Religious Right and moregeneral fundamentalist websites.My bookstore assistant was right. Ifyou were after Christian schooltexts, all roads led to LEM.

The American experienceBefore pursuing this lead, I dug outa couple of books on American funda-mentalist schools, namely AlanPeshkin’s God’s Choice: The Total

Brian Baxter is a Melbourne based writerwhose photographic image has beenappropriated by Dark Forces.

The Fundamentalist

Curriculum:What are they teaching? What are they thinking?

Investigation


World of a Fundamentalist ChristianSchool (1986) and Albert Menendez’Visions of Reality: What Fundamen-talist Schools Teach (1993).

Peshkin, a professor of educationat the University of Illinois, spentseveral semesters at a fundamental-ist Baptist school, visiting classes,attending services and generallyimmersing himself in the lifestyle.Here is part of the headmaster’sfirst-day address to students:

Our classes here reflect the Word ofGod. We believe that history, for ex-ample, is his story, the unfolding ofthe word of Jesus Christ on the cen-tre stage of the world. A man tryingto write a history textbook thatpresents Jesus Christ as just anotherhistorical figure has no concept ofreal truth. We don’t teach that way inour history classes …

Science is an understanding of God’shandiwork. Men deny the Word ofGod and try to make us believe thatall that we see about us has comeabout just through a series of events.Sometimes, the general term of evolu-tion is used to apply to all this, butthe Word of God is different on that.It clearly teaches that man was cre-ated from nothing …

The evolutionist says that the dino-saur and man were epochs of timeapart, but Dr Henry Morris, a born-again man, a Christian man, has apicture in one of his books you won’tfind in the average, secular highschool biology book. It shows in thesame petrified stream bed a footprintof a man and a footprint of a largedinosaur. So these creatures were onearth the same time as man. (p.50)

The headmaster goes on to ex-plain to his students that this photo-graph - doubtless one of the PaluxyRiver fakes, now discounted even bycreationists — ‘clearly shows theuntruth of the evolutionary position’,and concludes:

You’ll get that kind of information inour school; you’ll see that kind ofthing emphasised.

The school librarian helps to pro-

tect the sensitive young minds of hercharges:

I look for evolution … I found a dou-ble page of monkeys developing intoman and, of course, we don’t approveof that at all, so I just sealed thepages together … If I find a nakedperson, I draw a little bathing suiton them or I put a little dress on …One of the books sort of made lightof discipline and so we, instead ofhaving a little frowning boy in there,you know, that had been punishedand he didn’t accept it, we put asticker on there with a smiling face.(pp.262-3)

Bob Jones University PressPeshkin’s school recommends thatits students aim to attend Bob JonesUniversity, a volubly fundamentalistSouth Carolina college. Menendezanalyses several Bob Jones Univer-sity Press (BJUP) texts in usethroughout American fundamental-ist schools. A senior high school Biol-ogy text attempts to relate all areasof scientific observation and knowl-edge to the inerrant Word of God:

As the author notes at the beginning,‘The people who have prepared thisbook have tried consistently to putthe Word of God first and sciencesecond.’ This negative attitude to-ward science pervades the text. Stu-dents are urged to disregardscientific facts and conclusionswidely held in the scientific commu-nity. ‘If the conclusions contradictthe Word of God, the conclusions arewrong no matter how many scien-tific facts may appear to back them.’(p.118)

And it’s not just Biology. Havingexamined BJUP History texts deal-ing with the Reformation, Menendezconcludes that the treatment isstrikingly deficient:

No attention is given to the sociologi-cal, economic, cultural, geographicor political factors which predis-posed certain nations toward accept-ance of Reformation theology andsocial organisation. Students aretold that God intervened directly in

history to bring about this event,and no further discussion is needed.This is a grossly unacceptable wayto teach students the meaning andmatter of history. (p.40)

Light Educational MinistriesAlthough I discovered a number ofother Christian textbook suppliers inAustralia, I am going to focus hereon LEM for reasons which will be-come apparent.

LEM was founded in 1979 by Pe-ter Frogley, a South Australianteacher. In 1978, Frogley had spenttime in Hawaii as Principal of YouthWith A Mission’s (YWAM) Interna-tional Christian School. YWAM has aclose association with the ReligiousRight in both Australia and the US,where it has developed distinctReconstructionist tendencies (Dia-mond, 1989, 206). Reconstructionismis a contemporary Christian move-ment which aims at the eventualrestructuring of society in accord-ance with the strictures of Old Testa-ment law, including the death pen-alty (by stoning) for ‘crimes’ such asadolescent rebellion (Barron, 1992,p.218)

According to LEM’s website —www.lem.com.au — Frogley nowtravels widely both nationally andinternationally, ‘teaching on Chris-tian education and promoting theorganisation to schools, teachers andparents. Peter is also an ordainedMinister and currently pastorsGinnindera Christian Church inCanberra.’ In 2000, Frogley was amember of both the (Pentecostalist)Bethesda Movement Churches Ex-ecutive and the anti-feminist AboveRubies magazine’s Australian Boardof Reference (Above Rubies, letter tosupporters, Feb. 2000, 2). His churchfigured briefly in the news during2001 when it issued a leaflet claim-ing that Harry Potter novels hadbeen seducing children into witch-craft and Satanism. Frogley rapidlywithdrew the leaflet when he foundthat its information was based on asatirical article appearing in anAmerican online humour magazine(Sibley, 2001)


LEM’s Curriculum and LibraryCatalogue

The March 2004 catalogue listsbooks designed ‘for Christian Schoolsand home educators’ (p.1). If youcome across a book with the accom-panying symbol ‘NSC’, you are ad-vised that this stands for ‘Not Spe-cifically Christian’, which indicatesthat it has been selected as it ‘do[es]not contain offensive material ormention evolution’ (p.2). Thus reas-sured, we progress through over 30closely-typed pages of texts.

Books issued by Bob Jones Uni-versity Press are featured at everygrade level. Whether you’re teach-ing Bible Studies, Science, ‘HeritageStudies’ or the Three Rs, BJUP has atextbook for you, guaranteed evolu-tion-free. Several other Christiancurricula are offered, including thefaintly disturbing ‘Rod and Staff ’collection of texts.

On p.33 we arrive at the Austral-ian History offerings. One of these,Understanding Our Christian Herit-age, is written by GrahamMcLennan, current Chairman of theNational Alliance of Christian Lead-ers and a senior figure in the Aus-tralian Religious Right for manyyears. Another book, Southland ofthe Holy Spirit, is authored by Eliza-beth Rogers Kotlowski. Kotlowskiand McLennan are both big fans ofthe late Francis Schaeffer, whose‘dominion theology’ called for societyto be conformed to ‘Christian’ stand-ards (ie, a ‘soft’ version ofReconstructionism).

Kotlowski compares her own workfavourably to that of Manning Clark(described as ‘a sceptic, and a satiri-cal pessimism pervades his writ-ings’), whose landmark history ismerely ‘one man’s story of the comingof civilisation to Australia. [My book]is God’s story (His story) of the com-ing of Christianity to Australia’(Kotlowski, 1994, p.295). In fact, herbook is a long, rambling politicaltirade, bulging withReconstructionist and dominionistreferences, and containing meaning-less assertions, such as:

Wherever the Gospel has been

preached, it has brought liberty inthe lives of men and nations. In thecontext of Australian history, theselandmarks of liberty can be chartedthus: Creation – Moses – Christ –Paul – Bible – Columbus – Cook –Convicts – Pioneers – Federation.(p.59)

She rails against evolution, socialwelfare and modernity in general,and her book is not really a historytext at all, but rather an over-longreligious tract.

Politics and GovernmentMoving on to Civics, Peter Frogley(an art teacher by training) has pro-duced his own senior school textentitled Government in Australia.The first few pages are pureReconstructionism interspersed withFrogley’s folk-wisdom:

[At the time of European settlement,the Australian Aborigines] were aprimitive people living a subsistenceexistence in fear and superstitionbecause of their animistic religiousbeliefs … It is a biblically based be-lief that the people who left Noah’sArk and subsequently were dispersedfrom Babylon were advanced people.It is further suggested that so-calledprimitive peoples are actually degen-erate people who have rejected Godand the civilising effect of His Wordand Spirit. (p.8)

As a consequence of the penal natureof [most Australian settlements] …our Christian heritage has sufferedand antagonism to the Christianfaith and its principles became in-grained in Australia. This is seen inthe strong influence of anti-God po-litical thought which has commonlyexpressed itself as socialism. (p.9)

[Prime Minister] Alfred Deakin wasa prominent member of the spiritual-ist movement and was thus anti-Christian. (p.20)

And one for all you lawyers outthere:

God has established the standard ofright and wrong … God’s standardsundergird Common Law and underthat law it is the judge’s responsibil-

ity to declare God’s law. This systemcontrasts with statutory law, whichis a body of law made by the parlia-ment; that is, it is made by man.(p.22)

Frogley is seriously suggestingthat Christian schools and parentsteach these things to Year 9-12 stu-dents!

Returning to this LEM catalogue,also on p.33 are listed three books byleading American ReconstructionistGary DeMar. I found it a little curi-ous that other leading lights of theReconstructionist movement such asRousas Rushdoony, Gary North andDavid Chilton were not mentionedhere, but as it turned out I was sim-ply looking at the wrong catalogue. Aquick glance through the companion‘Theological and Reference’ booklistconvinced me that in LEM we areconfronted by one of the majorReconstructionist organisations inAustralia.

LEM’s Theological and ReferenceCatalogue

This catalogue claims to redress a‘void’ existing in Christian book-stores by offering the works ofRushdoony, North and a range ofother ‘dominion theologians’. Therange of topics dealt with is ex-tremely wide, from The DominionCovenant, ‘North’s economic com-mentary on Genesis, pointing outthat sound economic policy must befounded in the doctrine of creation’ toDonald Howard’s Burial or Crema-tion: Does It Matter?: ‘Howard sug-gests burial is the only Bible-ap-proved method of disposing of ourloved ones after death’. (p.8)

The ‘Science/Mathematics’ sectionof this catalogue contains a lot of oldfriends, including Duane Gish,Henry Morris and Ken Ham, allmainstays of Young Earth Creation-ism. There are twenty books underthe Science/Maths heading, not oneof which would advance your under-standing of science or maths in anyway. One of these works, The Cos-mos, Einstein and Truth by Waltervan der Kamp, ‘revives the old geo-centric theory [ie. the sun and the

Curriculum


rest of the universe revolve aroundthe earth] with some fascinatinginsights which challenge Einstein’swork.’ (p.18)

James Nickel’s tome Mathematics– Is God Silent? ‘revolutionises theprevailing understanding and teach-ing of Maths [and] shows that Mathsis distinctively Christian.’ (p.19)

Finally, Rushdoony himself willlay your doubts to rest with his mag-isterial Mythology of Science: ‘Thisbook defines the nature of the oppos-ing religious systems of thought:Christian creationism and Darwin-ism. It is a call to Christians to standfirm for Biblical six-day creationismas a fundamental aspect of theirfaith in the Creator.’ (p.19)

ResultsWhat sort of person emerges fromthis kind of education? Many differ-ent sorts, no doubt, but I’d like toclose with three quotes fromPeshkin’s American fundamentaliststudents:

Judy (Year 11): This is what got mesaved. I’d seen a movie called Burn-ing Hell. [This film has often beenshown to church audiences in Aus-tralia.] … The movie was trying tomake hell as realistic as they can.When I think of hell, I think of totaldarkness … In hell, the wormdoesn’t die, and it’s going to be onyour face. In the movie, it showedthe worms were just all over and thepeople were just all screaming …You can’t really picture the Lordputting someone in that much pain.But he is going to because they ne-glected his Son … God is mightierthan anybody. I mean mightier thanthe Communist … (pp.208-9)

Sally (Year 11): I want to be readyto face Jesus. Oh, that scares me.When you have to look at him and tosee the holes in his hands and hisside and stuff and you know that hemore or less got tortured for us …Getting people to heaven makes methink about hell and about my rela-tives, most of all, my grandpa … Allthe time I’d cry as I witnessed tohim. I prayed, every day I’d pray forhim. When I was fourteen [my

grandpa died] … He lived a terriblelife. I mean, he was what you wouldcall an evil man. He drank, smoked;he’d go to nasty places, see girls …Everybody considered him an evilman, but still I loved him. (pp.214-5)

Mary (Year 12): I’m one of thosestudents who are always preaching.Some of the students [approve] andsome of them just think, ‘Oh, man,here comes Miss Holy again’. It’sreally bad. Some day they are goingto pay for it, because God knowswhat they’re thinking and he is go-ing to punish them. (p.195)

ReferencesAbove Rubies, Feb. 2000 Australian

Associations of Christian Schools –website material – www.aacs.net.auBarron, Bruce (1992)

Heaven on Earth? The Social and Politi-cal Agendas of Dominion Theology(Zondervan, Michigan) Diamond, Sara(1989)

Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of theChristian Right (South End Press, Bos-ton) Frogley, Peter G. (1999)

Government in Australia: The Natureand History of Australia’s Civil Govern-ment in a Christian Perspective (LightEducational Enterprises, ACT) Kotlowski,Elizabeth Rogers (1994)Southland of the Holy Spirit: A Christian

History of Australia (Christian HistoryResearch Institute, Orange, NSW) LightEducational Ministries – website material– www.lem.com.au

LEM Curriculum and Library Catalogue(Mar. 2004)

LEM Theological and Reference Cata-logue (Mar. 2004)

LEM Serving You (n.d.) Menendez,Albert J. (1993)Visions of Reality: What Fundamentalist

Schools Teach (Prometheus Books, NewYork) Peshkin, Alan (1986)

God’s Choice: The Total World of a Fun-damentalist Christian School (Universityof Chicago Press) Sibley, David (2001)

‘Canberra church fooled by Harry Pottersatire’, Canberra Times, 2 Feb 2004. –canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?story_id=19481

... Islam from p 9

genuinely religious acts, ones whichare not alien to religion. But al-though genuinely religious, they arenot moral acts. Ethics may necessar-ily forbid such acts, but religion doesnot necessarily do so. What appearsincomprehensibly barbaric to theoutsider may be the ultimate expres-sion of religious piety for the insider.

The history of the Twentieth Cen-tury West resounds with those whobelieve that the demands of ideolo-gies and belief systems go beyondethical boundaries. Nazism finds itsjustification in the idea of the super-man who can transcend the ethicaldemand placed upon all of us byvirtue of our humanity. Genocideand ethnic cleansing depend on simi-lar notions of denying the ethical fora (seemingly) higher end. Muslimsand Christians, Jews and Hindusare all guilty, on occasions, of barbar-ity.

But violent Christians are nomore typical of Christianity thanviolent Muslims are of Islam. MostMuslims, as fellow human beings,are as much the victims of Islamicterrorism as the rest of us, more thevictims of repressive political re-gimes than most of us. There aremany Islams, as there are manyChristianities. ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’are no longer helpful banners behindwhich any of us should enthusiasti-cally rally. No God, no religion, andno ideology can justify the events ofthe past few years, any more thanthey can justify indiscriminate re-taliation and revenge.

The demonisation of the other isto no one’s advantage. Thus we dowell not to construct present eventsin apocalyptic images of a war be-tween evil Islam and the virtuousWest. And both sides need to avoidrhetoric which invokes Manichaeanimages of battles between ultimategood and ultimate evil. For unfortu-nately, such images may provokejust that.


IntroductionPublic policies and practices whichaffect our daily lives and our ulti-mate welfare and well-being areoften based on false knowledge.False knowledge is pernicious andmisleading when it is believed to betrue. False knowledge is corruptedknowledge — that is, knowledgewhich is founded on fantasies, wish-ful thinking, inadvertent distortions,deliberate distortions and outrightlies.

Information filtering through topolicy-makers, corporate decision-makers and private individuals alikeis rarely uncontaminated. Self-se-lected gatekeepers to informationoften seek to distort and control in-formation. They spin information asthey pass it on to the next organismin the information food-chain. Toextend the metaphor — end-users ofinformation are often unaware ofhow many cycles of predation, inges-tion, mastication, peristalsis,defaecation and flatus have takenplace before they receive the endproduct. As a part-time skeptic andfull-time iconoclast, I am interestedin reflecting on, drawing attention

to, and taking account of such ali-mentary processes, rather than sim-ply accepting the end product atfaecal value. (The reader will bepleased to know that the scatologicalmetaphors will not be extended be-yond this point in the article.)

Promulgators of disinformationand corrupters of knowledge aremany and varied. This article fo-cuses on two types of corrupters inparticular — incompetent or biasedsocial scientists within the academy;and egocentric control-freaks withinthe establishment commentariat.The article does not deal with ab-stract concepts or matters of princi-ple. It is not based on research find-ings. Rather, scenarios are presentedin order to illustrate how the corrup-tion of information can be broughtabout.

One scenario is based on an ac-tual case (Saint Margaret of Samoa).The others are fictional, grossly cari-catured cases which are exaggeratedin order to highlight the specific phe-nomenon under consideration. Whilesome readers may recognize a gen-eral archetype in the scenario, thefictional individuals alluded to in thediscussion are composites and inven-

Jef Clark is a lecturer in Education at GriffithUniversity and is the author of Humbug! - theSkeptics Field Guide to Detecting Flaws inThinking.

Disinformationand the

Corruption of Knowledge

Feature

Finding fertile fields forcritical thinking in the

academy and media


tions. Any resemblance to any livingperson is a product of the reader’simagination rather than the author’sintention.

Disinformation in the AcademyIn the following discussion I will befocusing on a particular domainwithin the academy, one which in-vites skeptical scrutiny because of itspretensions. Some academics work-ing within this domain presume tocall themselves social scientists. Thisis arguably an example of preten-tious boosterism, on a par with vets,dentists and chiropractors callingthemselves doctors. Let’s face it,even doctors don’t have doctorates. Iprefer the descriptor “social re-searchers” rather than social scien-tists. This reflects my own bias, as Ibelieve that the term “social science”is a classic oxymoron. Like the term“fun run”, it is a self-evident contra-diction in terms.

I feel that I need to explain thereasoning behind such an unequivo-cal assertion. I realize that there aresome individuals who allege thatthey derive pleasure fromrunning marathons. To anyreasonable person this isclearly a false claim. Just likethe idiot beating his headagainst the wall, the pleasureis not in the act, but in stop-ping the act. There are alsosome who claim that theirinterviews, observations andsurveys of “human subjects”are “scientific”, because theresearchers “appropriate” (ie,steal) some constructs whichproperly belong to the natu-ral and life sciences.

As unlikely as it mayseem, it is said that there aresome individuals who claimthat they are both “fun-run-ners” and “social scientists”.Such persons are clearly be-yond any hope of redemption.They are either shamelessliars, or they exist in an irre-trievable state of pathologicalself-delusion. I apologize if Ihave upset any readers withthis frank truth-telling, but

someone had to tell you sometime. Itmay as well be me, as I have derivedgreat pleasure from doing so.

Social research, particularly whencarried out into value laden, complexand contentious domains, is oftenperpetrated by partisan researchers.At the very least, such researchershave made their minds up about theimportance of particular variablesbefore conducting their investiga-tions. At their worst, such research-ers can be passionate and menda-cious zealots. A useful short-handdescription for such investigations isadvocacy research. An advocacy re-searcher has definite convictionsabout the importance of particularvariables, and for this reason he orshe may consciously or uncon-sciously tend to seek confirmation ofhis or her views in the data and toignore contradictory evidence. Advo-cate-researchers “observe”, but mayonly pay attention to informationwhich seems to support their exist-ing convictions.

Example: Saint Margaret of Samoa

An engrossing example of a critiqueof advocacy research, followed by adefence, and followed in turn by adevastating counter-attack is docu-mented in the pages of the Skeptic.The article which initiated the se-quence was written by Derek Free-man and published in the Autumn2000 issue of the journal (“MargaretMead’s Coming of Age in Samoa andBoasian culturalism” 20:1 p.11). Inthe article, Freeman updates hislong-standing argument thatMargaret Mead, a one-time icon ofcultural anthropology was a deeplyflawed, tendentious and naive re-searcher whose conclusions owedmore to her passionate a priori con-victions than the “data” she offeredas evidence.

I first encountered the works ofMargaret Mead as a second yearpsychology student at the Universityof New South Wales in 1968. Mead’sbook, Coming of Age in Samoa wasset as a key reading, and I alsoviewed a fawning and didactic docu-mentary film which featured Meadcasting pearls before some of her

enthralled postgraduatestudents. At the time, I wasastonished at the evidentadulation of Mead on thepart of the students fea-tured in the film, and on thepart of my tutor and some ofmy fellow students. To meand to some of my moreiconoclastic friends, Meadcame across as a conde-scending poseur. Her de-meanour suggested that sherelished her status as asecular guru. What particu-larly amazed me was thatshe presumed to give a de-finitive picture of Samoanmores, values and familylife on the basis of a sojournwhich amounted to littlemore than an extended va-cation. The foundation forher “definitive” bookamounted to something likethree months of fragmented,unsystematic and opportun-istic conversations withbemused locals.


My initial encounter with thewritten works and filmed persona ofMargaret Mead has led me to char-acterise her as Saint Margaret ofSamoa. When she spoke on film hervoice was that of The Oracle. Heressentially banal statements weredelivered with affected gravitas. Heracolytes seemed to think that theywere in the presence of a minor de-ity. The prophet-like status of Meadwas visually reinforced, as she wasalways seen (at least on film) withan enormous and apparently redun-dant Mosaic staff. While I carry sucha staff myself, its purpose is to strikepeople who do not agree with me. InMead’s case, the staff seemed to be adeliberate affectation.

Freeman’s critique of Mead in theSkeptic (the substance of which Ifirst encountered in his 1983 bookMargaret Mead and Samoa: TheMaking and Unmaking of an An-thropologicalMyth) seemed tome to be well-considered anddefinitive. How-ever it provokeda vitriolic re-sponse from anacolyte of SaintMargaret in theSummer 2000edition of theSkeptic. PaulShankman, aMead-boostinganthropologistbased at the Uni-versity of Colo-rado, attackedand attempted tobelittle Freeman.In doing so, he descended into adhominem rhetoric and opened thedoor to a devastating counter-attack.Freeman obliged, and his counter-attack was published in the Autumn2001 edition of the Skeptic. In myview Freeman presents a convincingrebuttal to Shankman, and reiter-ates an essentially factual case insupport of his substantive critique ofMead. As he does so, he calls a spadea spade. Actually to be honest, hedoes rather more than call

Shankman a spade. As you can seefrom the extract below, in effect hecalls Shankman an “effing shovel”:

Paul Shankman,... having based hisanthropological career on Boasianculturalism and Margaret Mead,finds his world falling apart, and somuch so that in a state of intellec-tual panic he resorts to outrightobfuscation in a vain attempt toprop up what is beyond question anentirely antiquated belief system...There will, I have no doubt, alwaysbe a lunatic fringe of true believers,who will, while clinging to thewreckage of Boasian culturalism,persist in their efforts to reinstate(Mead’s conclusions)... they aregenuine zealots who can be expectedto take their mistaken beliefs to thegrave. (p 66)

Example: Simone de Gruppenfuehrer

Academics are sought after by themedia and other lobby groups tocomment on all manner of socialissues. But in my experience as an“insider”, academics as a class orvocational group can be extraordi-narily dogmatic, narrow-minded andignorant. As Freeman suggestsabove, when an academic has in-vested years of professional toil inaffirming a particular view of theworld, he or she is not likely to relin-quish that view in the service of

truth. Consider the following hypo-thetical example which originallyappeared in my book Humbug! Notethat some liberties have been takenwith the original, but I have agreedwith myself that my original workcan be freely appropriated and para-phrased without acknowledgementin any subsequent work written byme.

Simone de Gruppenfuehrer isbeing interviewed on the nationalradio program Social Issues. Thesubject of the interview is her PhDresearch on “recovered memories ofchildhood sexual abuse”. In thecourse of the interview, she statesthat her research is:

designed to demonstrate that childsexual abuse is very widespread,and that most victims repress theirmemories of abuse throughout theiradult lives.

Simone’s de-scription of herresearch indicatesthat she is seekingto “prove” a hy-pothesis, ratherthan test or falsifya hypothesis. Herapproach to re-search is clearlypartisan and bi-ased, and her con-clusions could notbe safely reliedupon by policy-makers, lawyers orpractitioners in thefield of child pro-tection. She wouldbe far more cred-ible if she de-scribed her re-

search in the following terms:

I am seeking to establish the natureand extent of child sexual abuse,and whether and to what extent thevictims repress their memories ofabuse throughout their adult lives.

This improved description ofSimone’s research intentions is cer-tainly more even-handed than theoriginal description, but of coursethere is still no guarantee that her

Disinformation


research will prove to be unbiased.Ultimately the credibility of her re-search can only be assessed byclosely examining her methodology,and by verifying that she actuallydid the work she claims to have donein the way she claims to have doneit.

Observational selection is ex-tremely widespread in research pro-grams. PhD candidates in the “socialsciences” usually frame a topic whichaccords with their current interestsand convictions. They seek a super-visor whose mind-set is compatiblewith their own. The thesis is alsoprobably examined by academicswho are sympathetic to the topic,methodology and “findings”.

The specific type of bias exhibitedby both Saint Margaret and Simoneis commonly labelled “confirmationbias”. They are both seeking confir-mation of their pre-existing convic-tions in the data they collect, and inthe way the data is subsequentlytreated. So the collection processitself is likely to be flawed — evi-dence is sought though a consciousor unconscious process of selectiveobservation. Attention is paid toconfirming instances. Contradictoryinformation is ignored. Confirmationof a belief rather than testing a hy-pothesis is the real purpose of theresearch, no matter how much theenterprise is dressed up in the lan-guage of real science.

Another widely recognized andcommon type of bias in social re-search should at least be mentionedhere, although it won’t be discussedin detail. The usual label is publica-tion bias. One cause of publicationbias is the “bottom drawer effect”.This occurs when researchers areunhappy about the results of a study,and as a result they metaphorically“put it in the bottom drawer”, and itnever sees the light of day. Anotherform of publication bias is the “nulloutcome effect” where write-ups ofresearch which supports the “nullhypothesis” (no effect of one variableon another) are inherently uninter-esting, and are unlikely to be putforward for publication. Even if theyare put forward for consideration,

editors are unlikely to be accept thearticle for publication. Over time, afield of enquiry can be severely dis-torted through publication bias, be-cause evidence on one side of a ques-tion is systematically promulgated,and contrary evidence remains un-disclosed to the community of schol-ars in the field, and to the widercommunity.

Disinformation in the CommentariatIn my childhood and early teens, Iprobably assumed that the purposeof newspapers and other news mediais to inform the general public. Inever specifically expressed thatview (the issue never came up) butlooking back, that is probably what Ibelieved.

Then I saw something nasty inthe woodshed.

It was the very last day at the endof my final year of high school. I wasan enthusiastic participant in thetraditional “muck-up day”. As agraduating student, and with mypeers, I had engaged for about twohours in the usual mild, officiallysanctioned and essentially good-natured carnival-like behaviouraround the school grounds. Teacherswere lampooned, amusing posterswere put up on classroom windows,flour-fights took place on the grassedplaying fields. Fun, but pretty lame.Near the end of the festivities, andas we began to clean up prior to leav-ing for the party circuit, a newspaperjournalist and his photographer ar-rived. The journalist said that hewanted some pictures to go with thestory he intended to write about “theriot”. He asked some of us to fill abin with water and flour, and to tossthe contents over the door and floorof a classroom foyer. He also askedus to climb onto the roof of one of thebuildings, and to throw some chairsand tables off the roof. We refused.He did it himself. The photographertook pictures of the damage. Thestory of the “riot” which never hap-pened appeared the next morning inthe paper. A letter to the editorsigned by many students who wit-nessed the fraudulent behaviour ofthe journalist and photographer

wasn’t published. This experiencewas a valuable lesson — journalismas it is commonly practised is notprimarily dedicated to informing thegeneral public. Journalism is aboutmass-producing readable content ona tight deadline in order to “fill up” avoracious and profitable product.

A variant of journalism — socialand political commentary, sharesmany of the priorities and ethicalimperatives of journalism. Manycommentators also seem to have acompulsion to seek a high publicprofile. Some commentators have anoverwhelming desire to proselytise.For convenience, this proselytisingsub-group within the commentariatwill be referred to hereinafter asControl-Freak Commentators(CFCs). CFCs are readily recognized.They are not content to merely arguea point of view — they seem desper-ate to have their social and politicalviews prevail. They are committed todemocracy — but only in theory. Inpractice, they loathe voters whobring about the wrong election re-sult. They explain away the wrongresult by impugning the motives andquestioning the intelligence of “badvoters”. The only reason the wrongparty won the election was that the“Bad Voters” outnumbered the “GoodVoters”. To the CFC, this is clearlynot fair — so the democraticallyelected government is illegitimateand has no mandate.

CFCs who are not happy withreality are adept at spinning a mes-sage in order to distort reality. What-ever a CFC thinks ought to be true,or whatever he or she wishes weretrue is true. A widely accepted labelfor this variant of disinformation iswishful thinking. Argument to wish-ful thinking is a logical fallacy whichmay manifest itself in a variety ofways. In general terms, argument towishful thinking could be describedas setting out to “prove” what“ought” to be true, or “disproving”what “ought not” to be true. Thecommonest strategy for achievingthis end is “stacking the deck”.Stacking the deck occurs when theadvocate of a particular point of viewconceals or avoids counter-argu-


ments to his or her own position inorder to defeat his or her opponent.In such circumstances, the motive ofthe advocate is to win the argumentat all costs. He or she is not inter-ested in arriving at a solution to aproblem or the truth of a matterunder discussion. A newspaper col-umnist commonly “stacks the deck”through selective use of source mate-rial which is favourable to his or herposition. A radio or television com-mentator can do the same. Where abroadcast media program uses “tal-ent” via interviews or panel discus-sion, the producer and presenter can“stack the deck” by paying carefulattention to the selection of inter-viewees and to the composition ofdiscussion panels.

An example: Bob BombastBob Bombast is the host of a radiotalk program. The title of the pro-gram is This I Believe, Stupid. Itgoes to air live between 2am and4am five days a week on the QuangoBroadcasting Commission (QBC).Bob’s producer is Gerry O’Waldheim,a like-minded inhabitant of the sameinner-city boutique suburb. Bob is awine buff, and has recently moved onfrom merely collecting vintage winesto collecting vintage wineries. Ontheir promotional website, Bob andGerry assert that the program teamis committed to a cutting-edge ap-proach which fearlessly engageswith difficult social and politicalissues in order to secure social jus-tice for the underprivileged. In fact,the featured guests are carefullyselected to ensure that their viewsare in accord with those of Bob andGerry. Bob’s interviews usuallyamount to nothing more engagingthan amiable conversations with aseries of sympathetic guests. Dis-senting voices are normally absentaltogether, or carefully screened toensure that they are muted or un-convincing.

Tonight Bob is interviewing OlgaFatlip who has written a book calledThe Perils of Colonialism. Bob hasprepared for the interview by scan-reading a precis of the book preparedby a research assistant. Unfortu-

nately for Bob, the research assist-ant passed the task on to an inexpe-rienced year-ten high school studenton work experience with the station.The precis seems factual andstraightforward, but the student hasfailed to capture the core argumentin the book. Bob launches into theinterview with his usual confidence,however it soon becomes apparentthat Bob has been misled by theprecis, and has misread the author’sposition. The title of the book is infact ironic, and Olga’s wide-rangingtreatment of the topic, while criticalof the colonisers, is far more criticalof the critics of the colonisers. Dur-ing the interview, and to Bob’s dis-may, she makes the case that somemembers of the wealthy middle classare currently colonising the innercity precincts of the capital cities,and others are buying up “mortgageein possession” farms and evictingstruggling primary producers andtheir families. In so doing, they areadvantaging themselves at the ex-pense of the urban and rural poor.She finishes by declaring:

... inner city suburbs and impover-ished rural regions are colonised byindividuals rather than by nation-states, but the process is still aboutdispossession, and the dominance ofthe rich and powerful over the poorand powerless.

Bob is livid with rage, and foronce is almost speechless. Howeverhe manages to back-announce Olgaand her book, waits for her to leavethe studio, draws a breath, recovershis composure and then editorialises:

well, needless to say I think Olgais grossly in error with her analysis,and I’ll have more to say after thisshort break.

During the unscheduled musicalinterlude, Bob fires the researchassistant, and orders Gerry to con-tact one of his more compliant andregular guests. Tribal ties are in-voked off air, and by the time Bobcomes back on, Honoria Sidebottomis on the line. Honoria is a CFCbased in London with identical socialand political views to Bob. Shehasn’t actually read Olga’s book, but

there is nothing she enjoys morethan rambling aimlessly, and pontifi-cating with certitude on any topicunder the sun. Particularly whenshe is not burdened with actual in-formation. So she is more than will-ing to pour scorn on Olga’s book atBob’s urging.

In due course, Olga’s cerebral,thoughtful and challenging critiquewill be swamped by adverse com-ments from Bob’s cheer-squad. Therepeat of the program (which is nor-mally broadcast at drive-time on thefollowing day) will be edited before itgoes to air to weaken Olga’s case.The deck has been restacked to en-sure that the ideas and values en-dorsed by Bob prevail.

An example: Onan NarcissusOnan Narcissus is the presenter of aweekly television program on theQuango Broadcasting Commission.The title of the program is MediaBitchslap. The title reflects the gen-eral demeanour of the program’spresenters. The producer of the pro-gram coaches his new presentersuntil the “house style” of presenta-tion is achieved. He is not satisfieduntil the new presenter can producea vast range of animated facial ex-pressions — from a superior smirk toa condescending sneer.

The program time is taken upwith a variety of segments. Spellingand punctuation mistakes in re-gional newspapers are seized uponwith an air of gleeful sanctimony.The standard treatment is amarked-up paragraph displayed onscreen while a voice-over reads theoffending material in grotesque ac-cents. The accents are the sort onemight expect from a grade 4 pupilunderstudying a supporting role in aschool play. This treatment is in-tended to highlight the illiteracies orreprehensible attitudes of the writer.The actual effect is to highlight theclass prejudices and infantile preoc-cupations of the production team.

A perennial on Media Bitchslap isa series of ongoing feuds betweenOnan and several newspaper andradio commentators. Onan is notafraid of using airtime on “Our QBC”

Disinformation


to pursue personal vendettas againsthated foes in the commentariat. Hisfoes reciprocate by using column-inches or airtime to vilify Onan.

Onan has his fa-vourite “out-group”targets, and he alsoconsistently fails tocriticize “in-group”personalities. Pre-senters, producersand journalists withsimilar social andpolitical views toOnan are a protectedspecies. They arenever attacked, evenwhen the publicrecord demonstratesthat they have com-mitted egregious er-rors. In fact, thescope of MediaBitchslap is an in-stance of “stackingthe deck” writ large.Production decisionsabout who or what tocriticize amount tothe same process ofselective observation, disinformationand knowledge distortion as thatcommonly encountered in someforms of social research. In short,Media Bitchslap, like This I Believe,Stupid could be characterized as“advocacy programming”.

ImplicationsObservational selection is not con-fined to flawed methodologies informal research programs or thebiases of CFCs in the commentariat.Few individuals can even read anewspaper article without selectivelyattending to information which con-firms their pre-existing biases.Casual readers of magazine horo-scopes often see accurate predictionswhere none exist. Two bystanderspresent at a brawl between policeand protesters will sincerely ascribeblame for the incident to differentprotagonists. In any contentioussituation, the seeker after truth willat least recognise the potential forbiased observation, and will be wary

about possible distortions of thetruth, overstatement, exaggerationor outright fabrication.

A partial solution to the problem

of disinformation is the internet.While much of the content on theweb is much more distorted thananything one is likely to encounterin a newspaper, the web is a vastresource which can be used to iden-tify distortions and disinformation.The prudent internet user can by-pass disinformation promulgated byadvocates and control-freaks in theacademy and the commentariat.Rather than reading (for example)what a journalist on The Age has tosay about a report in the WashingtonPost, a diligent skeptic can read theelectronic edition of the WashingtonPost. Rather than reading what acommentator has to say about a re-cent Senate Committee Report, aseeker after truth can read the ac-tual report when it is posted on theweb. If you have ready access to theweb, and you have suspicions aboutthe alleged neutrality of a commen-tator on foreign affairs, you couldcarry out a Google search on thecommentator — you may discover

(for example) that the commentatoris a failed election candidate for apolitical party. Once discovered, suchinformation can be shared with

many thousands ofyour new-foundfriends on your favour-ite blog. If you don’tknow what a blog is,or what a Googlesearch is, my advice isto do a Google searchin order to find out (noneed to thank me, I’malways happy to offerhelpful suggestions).

The internet hasenormous potential. Itcan be a great leveller,as users are no longerdependent on CFCsand advocacy-journal-ists within the estab-lishment media forinformation. Thetruth-seeker with aninterest in a particularsocial or political issuecan seek informationat source. He or she

can also consider the views of moreintelligent and informed commenta-tors from across the political spec-trum, and from across the world.

Finally, I hope that I have madethe case that it may be unwise totrust academics in general. Further,it is sheer folly to believe withoutreservation anything an academic inthe social sciences has to say. Suchan academic often has an axe togrind, while maintaining the facadeof disinterested scholar. Except forme of course. You can trust me im-plicitly.


Myth Making

Preservingand

Helen Lawrence is an author, editor ofMaygog Publishing, retired physiotherapistand polymath who lives on the shores of thelovely Pittwater in Tasmania.

Exploring the interfacebetween myth

and religion.

predictions. Alexander Marshacksuggested that markings carved intorock or on portable items indicatedthat palaeolithic humans could pre-dict the phases of the moon, which tosome extent governed hunting.

Early myths seem to be connectedwith survival, stressing animals aspart of the myth-making process tofacilitate hunting success. This as-pect is particularly well documentedamong the !Kung people of southernAfrica where the eland seems to bethe sacred emblem. Rock carvingsdepict many elands and also shamanfigures in animal guise. Shamansheld power by their magic and mighthave used an animal persona to givethe impression that they could crossthe species gap, or hallucinatorydrugs to induce a trance. In this un-worldly state, predictions from apowerful figure thought to be intouch with the spirits was of greatimportance to the tribe — in relation-ships, in fending off enemies and inhealth matters. The shaman pro-vided social cohesiveness within acommunity.

Myth enshrines cultural markersand the history of the tribe. It sets

What is a myth?Definition: Purely fictitious narrative,usually involving supernatural per-sons and embodying popular ideas onnatural phenomena. OED

Derivation of Myth in generalThe origin of Myth dates back atleast 20,000 years but the content isstill obscure. We know that Homosapiens at that time was capable ofabstract thought, a necessary ingre-dient of myth.

We know this from sign languagecarved into rock and this happenedin all continents — though later insome than others. Pictures of ani-mals and also portable art (tools,weapons, ornaments) suggest a de-gree of culture. Enigmatic humanfigures appear, suggesting a portraitor caricature of a powerful person inthe community — a shaman who canapproach the unknown, the super-natural. Parallel lines can be inter-preted as a counting device. Count-ing involves holding the numbers inthe mind. The facility is necessary indiscerning the length of the seasonsand astronomical observances and

Article


communities apart and gives themtheir own identity. And because thesethings have become sacred, there is agreat reluctance to allow change. Atthe root of myth is the wish for anexplanation of human presence inthe world. It is only a short step frommyth to religion.

The similarity of religious mythsReligion is an evolved part of theculture and social fabric of a commu-nity and this means religions willdiffer widely in detail and perform-ance of rites. But the surprisingthing is that they all appear to beunderpinned by the same basic in-gredients. They usually have a char-ismatic protagonist who has aco-lytes. This protagonist often hassomething odd about his/her birth.

Virgin birth is only one type ofoddness that makes the individualdifferent and noteworthy. In Greekmythology the mother of Zeus had tohide him away to prevent his father,Cronus, from swallowing him. InIndia, Buddha’s mother had a pain-less birth and died soon after leavingthe infant to her sister who was alsomarried to the Buddha’s father. InEgypt, Osiris, tricked by his brotherSeth into getting into a coffin Sethwas donating to the person it fitted(rather like Cinderella’s shoe) gotnailed down and thrown into theNile. The coffin was washed up atthe feet of his wife Isis, but Seth hadhacked the body of Osiris to bits. Isisput all the bits together again butshe had to use a substitute penis.However, the resurrected Osiris wasimmediately ready to copulate withhis wife and the result was anothergod — Horus! (Renaissance artistGerard David portrayed Mary feed-ing Jesus, as did Robert Campin.Both mirror an Egyptian statue ofIsis feeding Horus).

Birth was enormously importantto hunter-gatherers and continued tobe so in early cities needing to keepup their population against neigh-bours with evil intent. Equally im-portant was nurturing and the ne-cessity for a good food source. InInuit culture a Sea Woman is impor-tant. When very young, this girl was

forcibly married to a petrel. It is atotal mismatch and her father takesout his canoe intending to rescue herfrom the petrel, but the bird blowsup a dreadful storm. The girl clingsto her father’s boat, but in order toappease the bird who is a kind of godher father cuts off his daughter’sfingers bit by bit, until she sinks tothe bottom of the sea. From thereshe controls the food supply for thehuman community.

As myths became great religionsthey gathered accretions. With verylittle chance of global contact, theway these developed suggests a com-mon mindset, already tentativelyaccepted as ‘folk memory’. Early arttends to convey the same sorts ofimages world wide though the stylesdiffer. The wish was for some controlover destiny and the return of anever-never golden age. To obtainthose ends, these common elementsare usually to be found in well estab-lished religions:

1. Ritual and ceremony denotingpraise for the deity

2. A guide to morality as laid downby the deity

3. Sacred stories and texts extollingthe deity

4. Sacrificial gifts

5. Oaths to bind believers

6. Miraculous intervention of thenatural order

7. Deeds showing enthusiasm for thecause

8. The rise of prophets

9. The need for proselytisers

10. Appeasement of the deityThe mode of delivery of most of

these items is well understood, but aword about proselytising and ap-peasement is in order. Proselytisinghas the same role as advertisingwith the prophet as the brains be-hind the newest gimmick. Advertis-ers are only successful if they areable to ‘sell’ their products. As wellas selling ability, proselytisers needto be well versed in appeasementtechniques in order to keep the par-

ticular community running smoothly.Witness George Bush on numerousoccasions: “……..and may God con-tinue to bless America!” (my italics).At least some of the public mustagree with the sentiment, otherwisethe petition is pointless. And itseems that the gods are not satisfiedwith a petition just uttered once butmust have banners waving, anthemsof appreciation and cheer-leaders tojog their memories.

Miraculous intervention was es-sential for any prophet worth his/hersalt (usually his). Providing thatcondition could be demonstrated, aprophet could individualise the mes-sage. But what about the rank andfile bound by oath to proselytise?How reliable was the received orrevealed message? Could the mes-sage obligatory for the proselytiser tobroadcast contain logical flaws?

A sceptic looking at the Christianreligion should spot at least two fal-lacies. Take humans being held ac-countable for the evil in the world.Doesn’t this include killing? Anddidn’t the food chain based on killingdevelop eons before humans evolved?It would seem that original sin isbased on a fallacy. Creationists re-quire a short timeline in order thatthere be no evidence that the lion didnot lie down with the lamb.

Our supremacy over other ani-mals is also a problem. We are tryingto save species in the modern worldand this makes us suspicious of a‘me first’ attitude. And finally theEdenic embargo on gaining knowl-edge is totally at odds with the in-nate driving force in humanity.

When compiling the Bible at theCouncil of Nicaea, the church fathershad problems with the ability ofChrist to forgive sins. By tradition,only God could do that. But if theysaid He was human, then it wasblasphemy to forgive sins and if theysaid He was God then He couldn’t bea sacrifice unto Himself. The com-promise was to make Him both hu-man and supernatural.

When does a myth become a religion?It is not really a case of becoming. Italways was, in my view. What we see


is development, evolution. A patterncan be seen across the board. Aprophet arises who has a message,usually of hope for something betterin this life, some better way of living,and a promise of salvation and con-tinuation of the persona in a lifeafter death.

Prophets often seem to insert alimited liability clause by sayingthat there is absolutely no guaranteethat the individual will deserve this‘reward’, and that it will be up to theSupreme Cosmic Commander togrant eternal life. The SCC also haspower to inflict punishment. In cer-tain cases the SCC appears to de-mand that life in this temporal zonebe cut short in order to reap the re-ward of eternity, or, alternatively,that life be miserable so that an af-terlife can be a desirable contrast.One of the problems with myththrough the ages is that there are somany variations and ostensibly nu-merous SCCs. Though sometimes inthe interests of ecumenism, believerswill claim that it doesn’t matterwhich SCC you believe in becausethey are all one and the same! Orthree in one! All very confusing.

Modern MythsNostalgia, the retaining of an oldmyth is very much part of modernculture. Myths are like sentimentalpossessions, kept for fear of losingone’s roots. There is also the dread ofa hydra-headed amoral society devel-oping, with the loss of ‘morality’ en-shrined in mythico-religious beliefs.If religion is the only source of mo-rality, then losing religion might leadto a totally self-seeking society. Thisargument is severely lacking in evi-dence! The glory of Rome passedaway despite the conversion of theEmperor Constantine.

Some mythico-Christian thinkingis that if we returned to 2000-year-old values we would become a moremoral society. It is important to notethat the people who advocate this donot usually want to return to 2000-year-old customs and conditions.

Even without a firm convictionand adherence to a mythico-religious

format, there is a simmering fearthat we will become a pan-societyrun by science. All sorts of scientificmyths abound, usually, but not al-ways, propagated by people whoknow very little about the mysteriesof science, only that it is mysteriousand therefore suspect.

Is science the new religion?I have heard it said that whilereligionists believe in God, biologistsbelieve in evolution. The answer isthat ‘evolution’ in the scientific sense(the word is open to misinterpreta-tion) is not something you eitherbelieve in or don’t believe in. Evolu-tion is a process of change (muta-tion) for which an enormous about ofevidence has accumulated. Moreover,the evidence for evolution is con-stantly corroborated from differentbranches of science. When there issufficient change within a species itis convenient to see the mutants aseither new species or a subspecies.Since Darwin first formulated thetheory after a lifetime of experimen-tal work on numerous types of ani-mal and plant, his theory has beenconfirmed over and over again in allrelevant fields of science.

Are myths therapeutic?I suppose it must be admitted thatsome aspects of myth can be thera-peutic, but as Marx said, they are anopiate and hence deceptive. They arerather like fairytales, comfortingwhen we were very young but quiteirrelevant in maturity except as areminder of a happy (or scary) child-hood. We grow out of fairytales be-cause they are myths. Religioncomes into the same category for thesceptic. Faith seems to be built onthe flimsiest of evidence and becausethe evidence is flimsy, faith has to beheralded as a virtue in a religioussense. It is an utterly necessary partof belief. Without the faithful thereligion will die. Faith in your GP orspecialist is not the same. It is notblind faith — it is based on evidence— reputation — the way she/hetreats your problems etc. If we haveno personal evidence we might go onstatistics. We drive cars because we

have faith that most other driverswill obey the rules of the road.

Myths are divisive.There have always been rival myths-weavers to rock the boat and rivalryto be the one purveying THETRUTH. The Crusaders in the Mid-dle Ages spent enormous effort intrying to eradicate a rival myth andthereby created bad blood that haslasted centuries. But this is only oneexample.

Along with the myth goes power.Someone has to control the myth —explain it to his/her flock. Childrenare particularly vulnerable to thissort of corruption. Children’s brainsare necessarily pliant because theyare learning how to live in this diffi-cult, dangerous world. It is easy for aperson in a position of power, be itwell meaning parent, teacher or min-ister, to teach only one way of think-ing, accompanied by threats of thedire happenings of veering offcourse. A child might miss thechance of deciding what to believeand what not to believe. It is calledfreedom of religion, but it is not uni-versal.

What about mysticism? Spirituality?In mysticism lies the answer to theriddle of the universe according tosome, but spirituality is just a senti-mental way of having your cakewithout having to eat it. Einsteinwas interested in mysticism andthought it led on where physics andmaths came to a no-through-road.Mysticism sounds suspiciously likeshamanism to me. However Ein-stein’s scientist brain came to thefore when he said: “I want to knowhow God created this world.”

Can a myth change - modernise itself?Myths appear to be very resistant toupdating. Is it possible for a myth toaccommodate new facts about theworld and still remain intact? Theproblem calls for devious brains tofind a solution without losing thevital ingredients of the myth.

Continue p 25 ...

Myth Making


Last May, the Nigerian governmenttook an unprecedented step in itsefforts to rid the country of fraudand financial crimes. It inauguratedan anti-fraud outfit—the Economicand Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) with Nuhu Ribadu, an As-sistant Police Inspector as the chair.Within a month of its creation, theEFCC has arrested and detainedover 20 of the nations most notoriousscammers. They include MauriceIbekwe, Fred Ajudua, AdedejiAlumile (alias Ade Bendel),Emmanuel Nwude, AmakaAnajemba and others.

These individuals are implicatedin several cases of fraud and finan-cial scams against mainly foreignerssince the 90s For instance, MauriceIbekwe operating under a falsename, Dr Anthony Isreal, allegedlydefrauded a German, Munch Klaus,of about US$300,000 and DM75,000in 1992. He impersonated the ac-count general of the Ministry ofTransport and Aviation and deceivedKlaus by making him believe thathis company, German Electronics,would be awarded contract to delivercomputers, monitors, radar systems,

accessories and landing lights for theconstruction Nnamdi Azikwe Inter-national, Abuja. The value of thecontract was $US30 million. Toheighten his interest,” Dr Isreal”, ina proposal he tagged “urgent”, said aNigerian company was initiallyaward the contract but failed to ex-ecute it. He named Mr Bello Moussa,a fake Director General at the Cen-tral Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Dr MrsLouissa Gambo, another phoneyofficial of the CBN, and one Idris,described as the Secretary of State(There is nothing like the Secretaryof State in the Nigerian Govern-ment) as partners.

Early in 1993, Klaus arrived inNigeria via Benin Republic. But be-fore his arrival, Klaus gave Dr Isrealthe sum of $US30,000 andDM75,000 because he was told thatthe monies would be seized by bor-der officials. While in Lagos, he wasaccommodated at a sumptuousGuest House, which Dr Isrealclaimed he owned, and was chauf-feur-driven around the city. Later,Klaus was taken to Abuja where hewas lodge at NICON Hilton, a fivestar hotel, and there he was made to

Fighting Fraud

Financial Scamsand

Leo Igwe, head of Nigerian Skeptics, is aregular Skeptic correspondent

Letter from Nigeria

Our correspondent recountsaction taken against

fraud in Nigeria


pay $100,000 said to be “Security for(our) common future business con-nections” After that, Dr Isreal gotKlaus to pay another US$200,000 tothe “government”, so that the con-tract could be quickly awarded tohim. Not long after making thispayment, Klaus realized that he hadbeen duped, Dr Isreal and his col-leagues disappeared.

Klaus reported the matter to thePolice Anti Fraud Unit, and the po-lice investigations revealed that DrAnthony Isreal was Maurice Ibekwe,representing OkigweNorth Federal Con-stituency in the Houseof Representative onthe platform of theruling People’s Demo-cratic Party. As a mem-ber of the House,Ibekwe chaired theHouse Sub-committeeson Police Affairs andInternal Security. Heused these positions tohalt, scuttle and frus-trate police investiga-tions into his criminalpast, till the formationof EFCC last year.Ibekwe was re-electedfor another four-yearterm but could not at-tend the swearing-in ceremony inMay because he had been arrestedand arraigned in Lagos High Courtthe same week on an eight charges,including forgery, impersonation andrelated offences.

Two other 419 kingpins now in thecustody of the EFCC are FredAjudua and Ade Bendel, who areveterans of the Nigerian Scam in-dustry. Ajudua is a Lagos based law-yer. He conned a German National,Frieda Spinger-Beck, to the tune ofUS$360,000. Spinger-Beck had ap-proached Ajudua, as a lawyer, tohelp her recover money she had lostto some Nigerian fraudsters butAjudua saw that as an opportunityto milk and swindle the woman fur-ther.

Springer-Beck was so wrecked bythe fraud that she moved to Nigeriawhere she has settled down to form

an association to help victims offraud. She recently told a newsmagazine that she has to leave Ger-many because she couldn’t cope withthe taxes. And to survive in Nigeria,she has resorted to preparing meatpies, chicken pie and cakes whichshe sells. “I lost everything. I lostmy company, I lost my life insurance,I lost even my private House”,Springer Beck told journalists. Apartfrom that of Springer-Beck, Ajuduahas 11 other cases of scam againsthim.

Ade Bendel is a name that “ringsa bell” in the ears of Nigerians interms of fraud. He is implicated inseveral cases of fraud and financialcrimes against local and foreign na-tionals. On the local front, AdeBendel allegedly defrauded BrigGeneral Abba Kyaria, a former Mili-tary Governor, of around 500 millionnaira. But his most “celebrated”scam is that of US$605,000 belong-ing a retired Egyptian General, AliAbdul Atiah. Ade Bendel and his“419” syndicate conned Abdul Atiahto invest the said amount in a fakeagri-business, only for them to disap-pear with the money.

A big catchAnother big catch by the EFCC isEmmanuel Nwude, who along withIkechukwu Anajemba (now de-ceased) defrauded Nelson

Sakaguchi, a Brazillian bank direc-tor of US$254 million, in what isreputed as the biggest case of ad-vance fraud in the world’s history.In the scam, Nwude posed as PaulOgwuma, the then governor of CBNwhile Ikechukwu “played” RasheedGawamalik, Director of Interna-tional Remittance. But Ikechukwudied in 1998 (he was alleged mur-dered by those he edged out in thecourse of sharing the loot) and hiswealth was inherited by his wife,Amaka, who posed as Mrs Gomwalk

in the scam.Nwude used the

proceeds from thescam to buy shares inone of Nigeria’s topbanks, where he roseto become one of thedirectors. But recently,he was removed fromthe bank’s board fol-lowing the allegationof his involvement andimplication in finan-cial scams.

Prior to their ar-rests, Nwude andAmaka tried to bribeofficials of the EFCC.Nwude allegedly of-fered the EFCC boss70 million naira

through his lawyer, while Amakagave EFFC official 40 million nairaalso through his attorney. The mon-ies were immediately registered asexhibits and passed on to theCBN. In February, both Nwude andAmaka appeared before the FederalCourt in Abuja on eighty-six charges,including charges of conspiracy, theftand obtaining by false pretence thesum of US$254 million. Their law-yers were also charged with aidingand abetting the commission of thecrime, protecting scammers, andattempting to bribe operatives.

Other fraudsters in the “wantedlist” of the EFCC, are Prince Okoyeand Chief Ekweozor (US$374,000)Ibrahin Al, Dr Abdallah Williams, DrDouglass and Dr Waziri(DM660,000) Mike Ogbu, BenChukwujindu, Babatunde Olu,Tijani Usman Andy Tayo Ayeni, Ben

Taking the crime seriously. Billboard warnings appear throughout Nigeria.

Fighting Fraud


Walls, Ema Oki (US$536,000) DrChief Ekpere, Danladi Dasuki, ToniUwah, Mr Mary Rose Obi(US$283,000) Collins Nkwor($68,000) Francis Olisah ($231,120)Dr Chan Chikelu, A. T. Ayeni, AbdulMalik Salawu, Ezenwanta, DrOkafor ($1.2 million). These namesare fake, but EFCC officials saidthey have read the real names.

EnlightenmentApart from the arrest and prosecu-tion of some key suspects, the EFCChas also embarked on enlightenmentcampaigns to sensitize the Nigerianpopulace. The commission hasinstalled billboards in most of thecountry’s major cities warning citi-zens against indulging in “419” (Ni-gerian name for advance fee fraud)and other financial crimes.

EFCC has threatened to deal deci-sively with any bank, public Internetor business centre that is used toperpetrate financial scam. In fact, ithas gone to the extent of blockingmoney transfers through the nation’sApex Bank, and recentlycommercial banks in Nigeria wereordered to report all cases of moneytransfers in excess of US$5,000 forindividuals and US$10,000 forgroups.

In addition most public Internetcentres now have postings in theirwalls warning users against sending“spams and 419 mails”. Somehave even gone to the extent of in-stalling facilities, which they use tosecretly monitor Internet users. As Iwas writing this piece it was re-ported that President Obasanjo hasinaugurated the Nigerian Cyber-crime Working Group that willtackle the malaise of internet andother electronic crimes. Most cases offinancial crimes by Nigerians areperpetrated through the internet.The recent crack down on scammersin the country is indeed a welcomedevelopment because financialscams perpetrated by few Nigerianshave done tremendous damage tothe image and integrity of Nigeriaand its citizens.

Reasons to doubtBut there are two reasons why Idoubt the ability of the Nigeriangovernment to combat and eradicate419 and financial crimes. Firstly theObasanjo government at its incep-tion launched an anti corruptioncampaign, and so far that campaignhas not in any way reduced the rateof corruption in the country. Andwithout tackling corruption, 419 willnever go away. The Nigerian policeand judiciary systems are corruptand rotten. Over the years, membersof the Nigerian police and judiciaryhave connived and colluded with“419ers” by providing them withintelligence reports and frustratingtheir trail and prosecution. Manysecurity agents in Nigeria are in thepay of financial scammers and somejudges have been bribed to stall andscuttle their prosecutions. For in-stance no one has been so farconvicted or jailed for 419 and re-lated offences in Nigeria, while inSouth Africa 38 Nigerians have beenconvicted for financial crimes.

The Financial Task Force — anarm of the G-8 — has been threaten-ing to blacklist Nigeria. So the crea-tion of the EFCC and its currentsactivities could be a way by the Nige-rian government of telling the inter-national community that at least itis doing something tackle the prob-lem.

Secondly politics in Nigeria is anexclusive preserve of the rich andaffluent. Over the years, many Nige-rians fraudsters like Maurice Ibekwehave used their money to get them-selves into positions of power andauthority. In fact, in one of thestates in southern Nigeria, it wasreported that some prominentscammers sponsored the 2003 elec-tion campaign of the incumbent gov-ernor. It is therefore certain that thefraudsters will use their “politicalconnections” to undermine their trialand prosecution, and other activitiesof the EFCC.

Is it healthy to believe in myths?Myths can be very wasteful in termsof lives quite apart from martyrdom.Think of the problem in terms ofmyth-hours!

How much time does an averagedisciple spend in ritual, in rote learn-ing, in proselytising (all good myth-followers are in duty bound to do this— however unpalatable — becausethe myth depends on their collectiveefforts). And what about money?Tithing? Giving away your cloak sothat some poor unmythical sod feelscompassion and gives you another.

Mythology forms an importantlink with the past in all civilisations.Myth and history are intertwinedand anthropologists use myths as asource of extra information that mayhelp to confirm a theory. But is itsane to live one’s whole life in accord-ance with a certain set of myths andto expect others to do likewise?

The Inevitability of MythIt may be that the making of myth ispart of the human condition, some-thing we have to put up with like poli-ticians. Do we need gods and politi-cians or could we manage with justone source of lies? Both provide aseemingly endless source for specula-tion.

Science is actually a tremendousthreat to religion, but the mythmindset is also a threat to science.They are in opposition. Myth/religionis about faith — science is aboutdoubt.

The replacement of god with scienceis in accordance with evolutionarytheory if god-thinking is a mindset.Attributes often become adapted to afunction to which they were not origi-nally ‘designed’.

References:Burkert, Walter, 1998, Creation of the

Sacred, Harvard Univ. PressLewis-Williams LW, Loubser, JHN, 1986,

‘Deceptive appearances: a critique ofSouth African rock art studies’. Advancesin World Archaeology, Vol 5.

Smart, Ninian, 1989, The World’s Reli-gions, Cambridge Univ. Press

... Myths from p 22


This piece is the result of inter-views conducted at Sonoma StateUniversity and at The AmazingMeeting 2 (TAM2) in Las Vegas.

Phil Plait is a charming, engagingand captivating speaker. During theinterviews his interest and excite-ment in the subjects he spoke aboutcame through constantly. He wouldamusingly slip in and out of voices toillustrate and emphasise somepoints. His sense of humour anddemeanor is an aid in getting hispoint across and the skeptical move-ment is fortunate to have him ap-pear on the scene in the past fewyears.

He is an astronomer and hasworked with the Hubble Space Tel-escope. He currently works in thePhysics and Astronomy Departmentat Sonoma State University in Cali-fornia on a NASA-sponsored publicoutreach program for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, dueto launch in 2007.

Richard Cadena: Do you consideryourself a scientist, a skeptic orboth?

Phil Plait: Both. I think every sci-entist should be a skeptic. The wordskeptic is much maligned these daysespecially on the web. When I go into argue some point, they say askeptic is someone who just denieseverything. Well that is not true. Askeptic says, “You are making aclaim, I want to see the evidencebefore I’ll be swayed either way byan argument”. Every scientist is likethat. There is an established theory,someone comes along and says Ihave evidence against this theory.Well, I’m not just going to believetheir word, I want to see what theirevidence is, I want to investigate it,I want to know that it is not a cali-bration error, an interpretationerror, small sample statistics, any-thing like that. All of these are partof the scientific process, to investi-gate a claim. So skepticism, by itsnature, is part and parcel of whatscientists do. You can be a skepticwithout being a scientist but I don’tthink you can be a scientist withoutbeing a skeptic. I am a scientist. Iam a “classically trained scientist”(spoken like a voice-over) so skepti-cism plays into everything I do.

The Cadena Interviews

Conversation With

Bad Astronomerthe

Richard Cadena is a computer something andformer resident of Australia before returningto his native USA.

A continuing but irregularseries of interviews with

prominent Skeptics


RC: When you were growing up,were you skeptical?

PP: No. I was a wide-eyed gulliblebeliever. You told me something andI just believed it. I had books on theBermuda Triangle, UFOs. I wasnever that interested in Bigfootalthough, if pressed as an elevenyear old, I probably would havesaid, sure. When I was in schooldoing debating, a friend of mine andI, both big science fiction fans, hadto take pro and con of some issue.We decided on UFOs. We flipped acoin and I got the pro side. He wasreally upset, he wanted to defendUFOs. He said, “I don’t want tohave to cut apart the UFO theories,I believe in UFOs”. I said, you couldtalk about swamp gas and hot airballoons. He was like “OK, I guess(in a reluctant voice)”. He wound upresearching it and doing a reallygood job of showing why UFOsaren’t anything butmisidentifications. It was not untilyears later that I finally woke upand said, jeez, UFOs, really there isnothing going on. There is no realevidence that these things are flyingsaucers despite what everyone saysand there is good evidence that theyare not. So, when I was a kid, I justbelieved in everything.

RC: Was there a moment thatchanged all this?

PP: I don’t know if there was a mo-ment, it was gradual, readingSagan, watching James Randi. Ididn’t believe in astrology. I neverbelieved in that. I was always inter-ested in astronomy but I guess Isort of left the science out of UFOs. Inever applied the scientific method.It is amazing, you can harbour inyour brain completely contradictorynotions, like locked away in sepa-rate cells. Then at some point, thereis a switch that’s thrown and youremember that you believed in thisthing all this time and a light getsthrown on it and you say, oh golly,that is really dumb. I don’t believein that anymore. It is just funnythat you think, wow, for all theseyears I haven’t really thought about

it but now I understand that it isgarbage. So I don’t really know ifthere was ever really any apothe-osis, catharsis or some other reli-giously used term that I canmisapply here (laughing).

RC: How did your web site(www.badastronomy.com) getstarted?

PP: Really two events. I was watch-ing the Today show on NBC (a na-tionally broadcast morningmagazine program) and they cut tothe news. The news of the day wasabout a space shuttle experiment. A‘wake shield’, a high-tech circularpiece of metal that is dragged be-hind the shuttle.

It acts like a snowplow, it sweeps upparticles behind the shuttle and itleaves behind it a high gradevacuum and then you can do experi-ments behind it because you needthat super vacuum to do them.Thinking of it as a snowplow makesit very obvious what it is doing. It isclearing out the debris in orbit. It isnot exactly (ha ha) rocket science.The newscaster, Matt Lauer, readhis copy and then Bryant Gumbeland Katie Couric after the newsturned to him laughing and basi-cally said, you didn’t understand aword you just said. And he is like haha ha, no I sure didn’t, this stuff istoo complicated for me. Cut to mestaring at the screen wide-eyed andslack jawed. I couldn’t believe whatI was hearing. These are supposedto be three “topnotch journalists”proclaiming that they don’t under-stand really very basic science. Thiswas at the time there were problemsin Bosnia. What if they had beenreporting on mass murders inBosnia and then Katie turns toBryant and says ha ha, I don’t evenknow where Bosnia is, yeah thosewacky Bosnians. They would havetheir heads handed to them by thecorporate headquarters of NBC. Butit is OK to laugh about science. So Iwrote up a brief essay, a very angryone.

The second event was when I waswatching TV and they were stand-

ing eggs on end. Now I don’t know ifthis a big thing in Australia, it is inthe United States but on the firstday of spring, of course this is north-ern spring around March 21st, youcan stand an egg on end. If you askthese people they talk about thegravity of the earth and the sunalign or some other nonsense. Youcan always stand an egg on end, butit is this big bad astronomy legend.So I wrote about it and put it on myweb page, this was back when theweb was young. I realised I was onto something. My web site startedgetting bigger so I bought the do-main name badastronomy. Which Iactually took from Alistair Fraser’s‘bad science’ page, his page is reallybad meteorology but he gave it thebad science moniker.

RC: Do you mind being known asthe bad astronomer? It makes itsound like you are not very good atwhat you do.

PP: (laughing) A lot of people com-ment on that. It’s like, wow, whofirst called you the bad astronomerand why did you stick with it. Well,I came up with it, actually, and Ikind of like it. It’s not like I’m say-ing I’m a bad astronomer, becauseI’m not “A” bad astronomer, I’m(booming voice-over voice) “THE”bad astronomer. It is just a nick-name that I think is quite funnyand it catches people’s attention. Mymom was like (in a high pitched,older female voice), “Why do you callyourself the bad astronomer, I don’twant people calling my son the badastronomer, you studied for so longto be good.” Yes, seven years ingraduate school and I got that di-ploma and now I’m calling myselfbad. It is just a name and once peo-ple see what my web site is about(laughs) if I had called myself theidiot astronomer I think that mighthave been a little bit different.

RC: What is the most popular partof your web site?

PP: At first it was the movie re-views, the first big jump was when Ireviewed the NBC movie Asteroid.(laughing) NBC plays a big role in


my web site. Armageddon came outin 1998 and I’m still getting e-mailsabout my review of that. Those arepopular but far and away more so isthe Fox TV “documentary” thatNASA faked the moon landing. Ihad a million hits in the year thatcame out.

RC: How do you view that you caneducate the public in sci-ence?

PP: The beauty of bad as-tronomy, the way it workedout, was in the movie re-views and this is one of thereasons I do these reviews.People see these movies andthey remember them. Now Idon’t know how many peo-ple saw comet Hale-Bopp orHyakutake the year before,millions of people did andthey will remember vaguelywhat they saw through atelescope. But if you askthem about the final sceneof Deep Impact where theyblew up the comet andthere was this big fireworksshow afterwards, they are,oh yeah that was so cool.People tend to remembermovies better, they remem-ber Star Trek better, whenthey see something theycan watch again and again.These bad science ideas arelike little worms eating into yourbrain and that is bad but in a senseit is also good because they remem-ber them. I can actually say, heyremember that scene in Deep Im-pact where they blow up the cometin the end and all you get is a prettylight show, well it turns out that iscompletely wrong. Then I can showslides of why it is wrong and whatthe correct science is. And so byusing the bad science as a hook itinstantly gets them interested be-cause people, you know they pay tosee movies, they want to see thesemovies, they want to rememberthem.

So it winds up working to my ad-vantage and (fake wicked laugh)

“that is my evil scheme, ha ha ha”,use bad science to teach good sci-ence. It works. Fifteen million peo-ple in this country alone saw thatFox show. Half a million peoplehave seen my web site debunking itpiece by piece. A lot of those peoplewere teachers who then went andtaught their students.

So that is pretty high leverage,every time a teacher reads some-thing and shows it to their students,you’re actually hitting maybe 100kids that way just by having oneperson read your web site. It reallyis a good way to educate people inscience and it’s fun; as long as Iremember not to get too angry andlet that sort of boil over into whatI’m writing like maybe it did withthis moon hoax stuff. I do get theoccasional e-mail saying, wow you’rereally angry about this. Yeah, nokidding. But as long as I can keep itfriendly and jovial and sometimeseven silly, people will rememberwhat they’ve read and hopefullythey will remember the good stuff

better than they’ll remember thebad.

RC: Why do you think the publicmakes so many science or math er-rors in the case of understandingprobability?

PP: I don’t think they are taughtvery well. There is sort of inertia inthat a lot of the teachers who teach

science don’t understand thescience well. That is cer-tainly true in elementary[primary] school, not asmuch in high [secondary]school. Teachers who areteaching kids aged 6-12 maynot be that educated in sci-ence and they may be forcedto teach science becausethere aren’t any other sci-ence teachers. So they don’tknow why meteors are hotas they burn up in the at-mosphere and they wind upteaching the wrong thing.

They hear something andthey remember it and theyteach it. I see this all thetime. My teacher said thesky was blue because itreflects blue ocean light.Well that’s not right. Thesky is blue for a totally dif-ferent reason. The oceansare blue for a totally differ-ent reason than why the sky

is blue. So you get a propagation oferrors. People just remember thiswrong stuff. A lot of the time, if theteacher is not interested in sciencethey can’t make it exciting to thestudent. If you’re not excited bysomething you’re learning about, ifit doesn’t seem real and interesting,you are not going to learn it.

One of the things I’m doing here atSonoma State University, as part ofthe Gamma-ray Large Area SpaceTelescope [GLAST] project, is thatwe are teaching teachers about thescience. GLAST, this gamma-raytelescope that NASA is launching in2007, is observing high energy ob-jects in space, the centres of galax-ies, black holes, colliding neutron

Phil Plait with a poster from a favourite film

Conversation


stars, really big, violent, nasty, hor-rible events. They are interesting,kids want to know about this stuffbut we have to teach them the basicphysics first. So that is what we do,we develop lesson plans and weactually get teachers, physically, tocome here to Sonoma State and weshow them what we are doing. Weteach them about waves, we teachthem about photons and the electro-magnetic spectrum so that they canget the basics to these kids andshow them why this stuff is reallycool. Again, it is very high leverage.You teach a teacher and they teachhundreds or even thousands ofstudents over the years.

RC: Is it easy to get teachers tovisit you?

PP: Oh yeah. One of the thingswe did, based on the JPL [JetPropulsion Labs] Solar Systemambassadors, is having GLASTambassadors. We had a nation-wide search for five teacherswho would be our ambassadorsto the public. We teach them allabout gamma-rays, black holes,and active galactic nuclei. Allthis great stuff and then theywill in turn hold science work-shops in their area where theywill teach 30 teachers at theworkshop. [Further informationabout the ambassador programcan be found at http://epo.sonoma.edu/] I go to meet-ings where teachers show up,the National Science TeachersAssociation, I’m sure there areAustralian counterparts. Sci-ence teachers love to come tothese things and get hands-ondemonstrations they can showtheir kids. They want to teachthis stuff and once it is taughtthe right way, the kids want tolearn, they forget to look at theclock and they sit there and learnand do things. It is great; it is sowonderful to see that stuff. I’m hop-ing that in my informal job as “TheBad Astronomer” I’m educating thatway and in my day job I’m doing itin a more formal way.

RC: Could you talk about yourbook?

PP: It is called Bad Astronomy pub-lished by Wiley and Son; it has a lotof the same topics as the web site,although usually in more detail.And there are a lot of topics notcovered on the web site althougheventually I’ll cover them briefly.Also more standard astronomicalthings like why the moon hasphases, how tides work, meteors,big bang, why the sky is blue andstanding eggs on end is the firstchapter.

RC: What made you decide to do abook?

PP: It seemed a natural thing to do.I kind of stumbled onto writing, juststarted doing it and it was fun.Started writing the web site andthen said to myself, this would prob-ably make a good book and be a fun

book to write. I decided to writemagazine articles first, sort of estab-lish myself and get practice. Didthat for about a year and then saidI’m ready, found an agent and it wasactually a pretty easy sale.

RC: Really, why was it an easy sale?I get the impression that publisherswould make “Hitler found on themoon” an easy sale.

PP: (laughing). Not Wiley. Wileyand Son is a fairly prestigious pub-lishing house. They do a lot of text-books and popular science. Sure, Iworked for a NASA contractor for

five years and my fundingcomes from NASA if Iwanted to claim that yes,NASA faked the moon mis-sion or UFOs are real I couldmake a million bucks byselling my story to sometabloid. I’m not interested indoing that first of all. I don’tthink the publisher was ei-ther; maybe they could makemoney doing that, and ofcourse some publishers do.Richard Hoagland has pub-lished his books about theface on Mars and other peo-ple have published how theEarth would be destroyed inMay of 2000. You may havenoticed that that didn’t hap-pen.

There is a market for thatbut there is a market forpopular books. Astronomy forDummies has done very well.That was written by a friendof mine, an astronomer, Iwas actually technical editoron that book. It is done verywell. People want to readabout science. There was apoll done that showed if

there were a regular science articlein newspapers in the United States,more people would read that thansports, finance or even the horo-scope, luckily. I think there is ahunger for it. Astronomy is probablythe most popular of the sciences, Iwould guess. I’m probably biasedbut beyond things like DNA and


those sort of specific subjects, as-tronomy gets a lot of play on TV inthe news and documentaries.

RC: What has your relationshipbeen like with the media?

PP: Oh, I’m a media whore (laugh-ing). I tell them, you want me to beon camera, I’m your man!

RC: How do they tend to hear aboutyou?

PP: Actually, I get a lot of magazinearticle offers through my web site.They read my web site and say, youwrote about this, could you write abit more about it for our magazine?A good friend of mine, Steve Marin,is the press officer for the AmericanAstronomical Society, which is thepremier professional society of as-tronomers in the United States. Weworked on the same Hubble projecttogether and he went with a group Itook to observe the Leonids and webecame friends. He saw that I likedtalking to the public and I guess hefelt I was good at it so when CNN orFox News Network would call, Stevewould call me and ask if I could bein downtown Washington in an hourto talk to them. Yes, yes I can. Ilearned that was the answer be-cause once I said, well no I’m notsure and they never called back.(laughing) So after that I said yes Ican be there. No, I’m having myappendix out but I can be there.That’s a lot of fun and I do a lot ofradio interviews, which is actuallymy favorite. I love doing radio. Idon’t know why I like it better thantelevision. It seems to be more funand I can be a little more outra-geous usually.

RC: I understand you have anotherbook in the works. Is that right?

PP: I am working on a second bookbut it is not Bad Astronomy 2 al-though there will be a lot of as-tronomy in it and it will bedebunking pseudeoscience. It isn’treally a follow-up to the first book.It is actually a fiction book. It is allvery tentative. I don’t have a buyerfor this. I don’t have a publisher for

this. I want to try to write a noveland see what happens.

RC: Over time astronomical eventsseem to be in the news more andmore with Mars, the lunar eclipses,Saturn, and so on. Do you think thiswill continue to increase the public’sawareness of astronomy?

PP: It is hard for me to know butwhen you look at the Mars opposi-tion in August when Mars was sobright there were millions of peoplethat went out to look at Mars. Theirony of this was that Mars wasn’tany brighter than it was 10 yearsago. (sounding like an announcer)“The closest it has been in 60 thou-sand years!” Yeah we are like a hun-dred miles closer out of 25 million.In fact every year and half or soMars gets really bright and this wasa really good one. Even thoughMars is pretty disappointing whenyou look at it through a telescope,most of the places where peoplewent there were other telescopeslooking at other things. So therewere people seeing lots of astronomythere. I don’t know if that is a last-ing effect. Saturn is far better tolook at through a telescope thanMars ever could be. There has beena lot of astronomy in the news withthe landers on Mars, the stardustand I just read today that they aregoing to decommission Hubble[Hubble Space Telescope].

RC: What is your feeling on that?

PP: Randi just told me before mytalk and I said, “What is it aboutcoming to here to TAM and gettingbad NASA news [During TAM1, theColumbia shuttle exploded on re-entry]. I don’t really need thisanymore.” I’ve known for a longtime that this was a possibility. Ididn’t know when they were goingto do it. I do know that Hubble is introuble right now; it is operating onthe minimum number of gyroscopesthat it can operate on. Hubble iswinding down and they are rampingup the next generation space tel-escope, called the James Webb tel-escope. They were hoping that

Hubble would stay up long enoughthat they would overlap. With theColumbia accident that is lookinglike that isn’t going to happen.

There are a lot of people out therewho want to save Hubble. I under-stand their sentiment. I do, in fact,think that they are wrong. Mindyou, this is coming from someonewho has used Hubble for over tenyears. I was on the project in 1990,worked on it to the year 2000. Ithink Hubble has done an amazingamount for astronomy and I meanthe science of astronomy. It hasdone more than any other telescopein popularising astronomy. I wishwe could keep it up, that would befirst choice. Keep it up there andkeep it going especially with thenew cameras on board, which arejust fantastic. The second option isto bring it back down, to bring it toa museum but that is really danger-ous. I don’t think that was everreally a good option. Hubble is big;it occupies the whole shuttle pay-load bay. It is not a good idea tosend a shuttle up, which costs abillion dollars to launch, just tobring back Hubble so people canlook at it. Hubble’s legacy is not inthe instrument itself, it is in theimages and the science and themajesty of the universe that it re-turned. If they can figure out a wayto deorbit it safely, then deorbitingit is what they should do. It is sadbut it is the way things are going tohave to be.

RC: On the panel discussion aboutmanned vs unmanned space explo-ration, Bob Park [physicist] was verymuch against manned explorationand it looked like you wanted tospeak to that issue but were cut off.What were you going to say?

PP: You’re absolutely right. BobPark was talking and then theywent to the next speaker. Bob wasvery strongly pro unmanned. Ro-botic probes are what he likes. I wasgoing to say that there is a hugedichotomy, a schism almost, inmany people on the manned vsunmanned issue. Most scientists

Conversation


prefer unmanned because it is lessexpensive and it’s faster. It takes farless time to plan a mission. I’m on aproposal right now, that if it getsaccepted, in two years we are goingto have a mission in space. It isamazing. I’m going to be doing theeducation for this not any of the realscience or engineering. A mannedflight would take forever to get thatorganised. In many cases robots cando a better job than people can butyou know, as exciting as it is to seethese rovers on Mars, it is NOTH-ING compared to seeing a humanbeing walking out of a spacecraftand setting foot on Mars.

[Regarding the Apollo program] If,in fact, kids got educated and ex-cited about space travel, I have afeeling that was pretty far down onthe list of the government’s priori-ties. However, in the end, what peo-ple remember now is how amazingit was. This was probably the great-est achievement of the 20th century. Imean of any achievement. Peoplerate this even higher than eradicat-ing smallpox in many cases; it wasactually Neil Armstrong walking onthe Moon. So, actually putting aman on Mars would be fantastic, itwould just be amazing. Evenputting another man on the moonagain would be fantastic.

RC: Do you think Mr Park hasmissed the inspirational side of it?

PP: I don’t know if he has missed it.I don’t know if he doesn’t count it asimportant. He is absolutely right,that these robots can do the sciencebut if space travel was only aboutscience we wouldn’t be putting peo-ple into space we’d be just doingrobots. In the end, as inspiring asHubble images are, and Hubble isbasically a manned program be-cause the shuttle is what launched

and refurbished it, I don’t thinkrobots or images have the visceraloomph of seeing a person out inspace and doing these things.

RC: Then no-one would travel to theGrand Canyon; they would justwatch films on DVD.

PP: That is exactly right.

RC: Isn’t that part of what humansare, they want to do it themselves,they want to explore?

PP: Yes, yes. There is a visceralconnection to seeing another humanbeing doing something versus see-ing a robot doing it. That is reallythe bottom line.

RC: Sorry you didn’t get a chance tosay that to the conference?

PP: I wish I had, as that is almostexactly what I would have said.

RC: What is the status of yourproject at Sonoma State? Is thefunding starting to run out?

PP: No, actually I have the sweetestposition in astronomy, ever. Most ofmy friends have to scramble forgrants every year or more thanevery year or at best every couple ofyears. I’m actually funded through2011. I’m on the hardest soft moneyof all time. The Gamma-ray LargeArea Space Telescope, which isfunding me, is a Department ofEnergy and NASA project. It is duefor launch in 2007 and it has a five-year mission and if it is extended toten years, I’m funded until 2016. Soall NASA has to do is not blow thisthing up, not send it into the Atlan-tic Ocean and I am set until 2011 atleast and if the thing works, I’mgood until 2016. So we can keepwriting educational materials forthe next 10 years. I can do all myday stuff, mild mannered day job

and at night become my secret iden-tity, the Bad Astronomer.

RC: So what is next for the BadAstronomer?

PP: There are always these littlethings that I have to take care of,like Galileo turning Jupiter into astar, or the Harmonic concordance,but I want to tackle creationism andI really want to tackle RichardHoagland once and for all. RichardHoagland, the face on Mars guy,does not have a credible, thoroughdebunking anywhere on the web.There are dribs and drabs, there isan article in CSICOP, a lot of peoplemaking fun of him but there isnever anyone who has just cut himto the quick and said, “What he issaying is garbage and here is why”.And what he is saying is in factgarbage and I can explain why, I’vejust never bothered because it is ahuge amount of work. But I do wantto do this because with the Marsrovers coming in and the Mars pro-gram wrapping up he is going to getmore time. In fact, I have heard himon radio programs more and moreand it is really time to show this guythe door.

RC: Excellent, and you are just theAstronomer to show it to him.

PP: Cool.[The battle has begun. On March 8,2004 Phil posted, for the public, aseries of pages debunking Hoagland.Also included are some typicallyerroneous responses of Mr.Hoagland. Visit http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/hoagland/index.html for all the de-tails.]

Plait for Convention?The Skeptics Committee is negotiating with Phil Plaitwith the view to his being a speaker at our NationalConvention in November.

We hope to successfully conclude negotiations very soonand will keep readers advised on our special conventionpage on our web site, www.skeptics.com.au


The goose, duck and guinea fowlwere already common in the Medi-terranean when the chicken, a do-mesticated form of the Indian junglefowl, was introduced to the areaaround 500 BC. Most of the eggswere allowed to hatch as the chickenwas prized more for its meat thanthe eggs. It was believed that an eggunhatched would interrupt the nor-mal biological order and deprive thecommunity of a chicken, so eggswere eaten only in desperate times.

Later, farming the chicken meantthat surplus eggs became a conven-ient nutritious food and recipe ingre-dient. That view might well be cur-rent had not someone discovered itsabundant cholesterol content. Whenthe big cholesterol scare began in the1970s, egg consumption took a down-hill slide. As health authorities rec-ommended a maximum dietary cho-lesterol intake of 300 mg, there waslittle room for the poor egg at around210 mg per 50g egg (all in the yolk).Although it made common sensethat food cholesterol became bloodcholesterol and therefore athero-genic, it later became clear that thebody didn’t simply respond like that.

Effects of cholesterolCholesterol in food does have theability to raise blood cholesterol, butindividual response is variable. It isestimated that 70% of the population

compensate for extra cholesterol inthe diet by decreasing liver produc-tion of cholesterol, reducing absorp-tion from the gut or increasing bileproduction (cholesterol is a precursorof bile). In the remaining 30%, the‘hyper-responders’ to dietary choles-terol, there is only a minor increasein blood cholesterol.

Are eggs bad for blood cholesterol?So, is being a ‘hyper-responder’ aproblem? Not really, according to DrKristin Herron, from the Universityof Connecticut, as any rise in thenasty LDL-cholesterol is matched bya rise in the good HDL-cholesterol,therefore not increasing heart dis-ease risk. Could this view be biasedas Dr Herron has received grantsfrom the American Egg Board? (Thisauthor has received nary a cent fromany egg industry group, sadly).

Drs Stephen Kritchevsky andDavid Kritchevsky also looked at thedata on egg and heart disease. Theytoo found little connection betweenthe egg and subsequent heart dis-ease. But hang on, this was a reportgiven to a meeting sponsored by theAmerican Egg Board. Can they alsobe trusted? In my opinion, both re-ports can be trusted. It’s too danger-ous to try and concoct scientific datato please a self-interested group orbody. It will jeopardise your career.Having been an advisor to the food

Nutrition Myth 5

Eggs Are BadFor You

Glenn Cardwell is a nutritionist and dietitianwho writes a regular column on such mattersfor the Skeptic.

Don’t kill the chook thatlays the golden ovoid


industry for 20 years, I know theyprefer the data to be straight andfactual, even if they don’t like it. Alsonote that no-one has produced com-pelling evidence to suggest that theegg is a danger to your health.

Positive egg researchEgg lovers will take great delight inhearing of the ultimate in egg re-search. A prospective study pub-lished in 1999 (Hu et al) that fol-lowed 38 000 men and 80 000women, found that an egg a day hadno impact on the risk of heart dis-ease or stroke in healthy men andwomen. I repeat, no impact. Therehave been other studies too thathave failed to see a connection be-tween egg intake and heart disease.This good news has not filtered downto the public. Thirty years of fear-mongering has had its toll.

It also seems that if your overalldiet is low in the artery-cloggingsaturated fats (eg pastries, deepfried foods, biscuits), then the choles-terol in food will have little effect onyour blood cholesterol. However,feast on saturated fats and the cho-lesterol in the diet will compoundthe effect of the fats. So, whatevereffect you get from the egg will de-pend largely on what else you eatthrough the day. It is widely under-stood that saturated fats (except one,stearic acid) are the main dietaryconcern for blood cholesterol levels.

To be on the safe side, assumingeveryone to be a ‘hyper-responder’,the National Heart Foundation ofAustralia suggest a maximum of twoeggs a week if you have high bloodcholesterol. The American HeartAssociation has relaxed its stanceand no longer gives a limit on eggyolks, although they still advise eat-ing a maximum of 300 mg choles-terol a day. For those with a bloodcholesterol <5.5 mmol/L there mayno need to propose an egg limitwithin normal consumption.

Are eggs high in saturated fat?Entangled in the confusion, the eggis accused of being a fatty food, yet itprovides only 5g of fat, and less thantwo of those are saturated fats. If

50g of total fat daily is consideredlow-fat eating in an adult, then anegg is clearly playing only a smallpart in the fat stakes. Compare thatto the 40g of saturated fat (out of100g total fat) eaten daily by menand 27g (out of 68g total fat) of satu-rated fat eaten by women. And weknow these figures have been under-reported as that is human nature.You can see that the egg is a smallplayer in fat consumption (unless itis always accompanied by fatty ba-con).

Silliness & confusionIn a wonderful demonstration of bio-logical ignorance, and creative oppor-tunism, the Araucana egg was pro-moted as a ‘cholesterol-free’ egg some15 years ago. It still comes to me as aquestion; “A friend of mine said heheard you could buy a cholesterol-free egg”. The scam failed to ac-knowledge that all eggs must containcholesterol as it is an essential partof animal cell structure. (Which re-minds me of a Larson cartoon withchickens lying around the yard undera sign ‘Bone-less chicken farm’).

Sometimes the egg industry hasbeen its own worst enemy. A decadeago, a NSW company launched the‘Safe Egg’ from chickens who hadbeen fed fish meal. The natural as-sumption was that all other eggswere ‘unsafe’. In reality, they differedlittle from regular eggs, and so wereremoved from the market.

A newspaper advertisement foreggs in late 2002 stated that theycontained good cholesterol (HDL) andwere a rich source of iron. Whoops!Eggs do not contain HDL cholesterol.High density lipoprotein (HDL) is ahuman blood transport protein re-quired to carry cholesterol back tothe liver as cholesterol always has tobe chaperoned in the blood. There isno HDL cholesterol in food. And eggsare not a rich source of iron. The ironin eggs is mainly non-haem, a type ofiron that is not easy to absorb by theintestines. This is unusual as mostanimal foods have mainly the easy-to-absorb haem iron eg meat, fishand poultry. Now you can see whythe egg industry needs to employ me!

Good nutritionLet’s finish on a positive note. Eggsare a great source of protein, zinc,selenium, vitamin B12, lutein andzeaxanthin, the latter two beingcarotenoids in egg yolks that mayreduce the risk of age-related maculardegeneration, a major cause of pooreyesight in older people. Those eatingthe greatest amounts of food withlutein and zeaxanthin had a lowerrisk of macular degeneration (greenleafy veg, broccoli, carrots and cornare also great sources). So, relax andcrack an egg for a good dose of nutri-ents. (Days after writing this para-graph, GoldPlus eggs were releasedonto the market, containing 11 timesthe lutein levels of regular eggs).

My tipThe egg is an excellent, wholesomeand affordable food. If it is harmfulto your health, it is likely due to yourother poor eating habits. If yourblood cholesterol is high, limit eggyolks to two per week. Otherwise,enjoy your boiled, poached, scram-bled, fried egg, and your omelette,frittata, eggnog, quiche etc. The eggscare is another one the health-doomforecasters got wrong. I think it wasJRR Tolkien who said of the egg: “Abox without hinges, key or lid; yetgolden treasure inside is hid.”

References & BibliographyHerron KL, Fernandez ML. Are the

dietary guidelines regarding egg con-sumption appropriate? J Nutr 2004; 134:187-190

Hu FB, Stampfer MJ, Rimm EB, MansonJE, Ascherio A, Colditz GA, Rosner BA,Spiegelman D, Speizer FE, Sacks FM,Hennekens CH, Willett WC. A prospectivestudy of egg consumption and risk ofcardiovascular disease in men andwomen. JAMA 1999; 281: 1387-1394

Kritchevsky SB, Kritchevsky D. Eggconsumption and coronary heart disease:an epidemiologic overview. J Am CollNutr 2000; 19: 549S-555S

Schaefer EJ. Lipoproteins, nutrition, andheart disease. Am J Clin Nutr 2002; 75:191-212Functional eggs. Food Australia 2004; 56:

83


Recently I was handed a copy ofWake Up With Spirit, the monthlynewsletter of Armidale’s The Way ofLight Healing Centre. This centre isthe latest brainchild of the infamousAma Nazra, who still practisesGhostbusting (the Skeptic, Vol 22, No4), now re-marketed to new ageyuppies as ‘Energy Clearance’. Thenewsletter began with an intriguinganecdote from Ama:

Today I walked down the stairs andthrough the mall, doing my usualjourney to and from the newspaperoffice. On the way back I stopped inamazement. I watched an angeldescend and land in the mall verynear to me, and in that moment Isaw many more angels walkingthrough, with people, and without,going about their daily business ofbringing Light, Love and Healing tothe Earth.”

While the Healing Centre offersits usual array of services, TarotReadings, Spirit Guide Readings,Regression Therapy and SpiritualHealing, etc, something new wasnow on offer. Automatic writing. Thisservice is offered by Lisa, a new min-ion of Ama’s. Lisa operates a new agebookstore through the centre, called

Angelic Mysteries. Automatic writ-ing is an uncommon practice in Aus-tralia, so I leapt at the chance towitness the act. This topic alsoseemed to be in keeping with myrecent theme of spiritualism (theSkeptic, 24:1).

Flicking throughWake Up WithSpirit, I noticed that Lisa was theauthor of an article that began, “Doyou ever look at your children andwonder what planet they are from? Ido that.” The article featured ‘IndigoChildren’, so named for the colour intheir auras. “Indigo children firstmade an appearance on our planetapproximately 25 years ago”. Suchchildren function on a ‘higher psy-chic level’ and with their ‘warriorspirit’ are consequently “labelled asADD/ADHD”. Lisa also writes about‘Crystal Children’, claiming these‘type’ of children “began to appeararound 1995”. Apparently, such chil-dren have striking physical quali-ties, “they share similar characteris-tics with accounts ofextraterrestrials, with their large,penetrating eyes, and smallmouths.” Crystal children “are natu-rally telepathic and this delayslearning normal speech.” Because ofthis factor and their “strong connec-

The Writing’son the Wall

Investigation

Once more our intrepidcorrespondent trawls

the fringes, seekingenlightenment

Karen Stollznow is a postgraduate student inlinguistics and a member of the NSWcommittee.


tion to their own inner world, theyare too frequently misdiagnosed withautism or Asperger’s Syndrome”. Itcame as no surprise to me that thesources for this article were two ti-tles by Doreen Virtue. I restrainedmyself from reading the followingarticle, entitled ‘Mental Pottery ForBeginners”.

Automatic writingAutomatic writing is a ‘paranormalability’ also known as ‘inspired writ-ing’, ‘trance writing’, ‘spirit writing’ or‘autonography’. Automatic writersclaim to receive communication fromthe spirit world by way of involuntaryhandwriting, allegedly guided by spir-its of the deceased. Some technologysavvy spirits prefer automatic typing,sending their messages via a compu-ter. As a psychic ability automaticwriting is practiced by mediums whoseek information or guidance fromspirits with access to ‘higher knowl-edge’. Today, automatic writing is alsoused as a stream-of-consciousnessapproach for creative writing, knownas free writing, and is especially popu-lar in surrealist circles. It has alsobeen employed in some areas to re-cover ‘repressed memories’, bearing asimilarity to ‘free association’, and isused in self-hypnosis or as a cathartic,therapeutic tool.

Popular automatic writingemerged during the spiritualismmovement and was a favourite par-lour trick of spiritualists. Usuallyknown as ‘slate writing’, the practicebecame discredited when it was re-vealed that spiritualists used writingslates with concealed sections con-taining pre-written ‘messages’ fromthe dead. Historically, the practicecan be found in many cultures.While automatic writing is generallyseen as an occult practice,‘journalling’ is viewed by some as a‘Christianised’ version, where a per-son ‘receives’ and transcribes mes-sages from God during prayer. ManyChristians would still perceive thisas an occult practice and an act ofSatan rather than God. Automaticwriting was practised in China as aform of divination and in the Japa-nese religion Shinto, where it is

known as Tenjo, the Heavenly Stick,and Shinto priests would receivedivine messages through a brush orpen.

In an attempt to contact hismother, Harry Houdini once had aprivate sitting with automatic writerLady Doyle, mother of Arthur ConanDoyle. Houdini attended the sessionwith an open mind, hopeful thatcontact would be achieved. LadyDoyle produced fifteen pages of writ-ing, claiming to be guided byHoudini’s mother. Houdini found thewriting to be filled with generalisa-tions and inaccuracies and becameskeptical of the practise. This inci-dent contributed to the demise of thecurious friendship between Houdiniand Doyle. Soon after the legendarysession, Houdini attempted to dupli-cate Lady Doyle’s ability, leavingArthur Conan Doyle convinced thatthe magician had psychic powers!

Musical interludeParanormal automatism is not re-stricted to automatic writing. Somemediums claim to channel spirits toproduce paintings, drawings, sculp-tures or music. English mediumRosemary Brown came to fame whenshe claimed that the late composerFranz Liszt had communicated withher in 1924, some 40 years after hisdeath, to inform her that he wouldsoon begin to compose ‘through’ her.Lazy Liszt waited until the 1960s toresume contact with Brown butbrought along a few famous friends,including Bach, Brahms, Chopin,Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Schubert andothers who queued up to dictatetheir compositions to Brown, guidingher hands over the piano keys.Brown is reputed to have given over400 performances of music composedby deceased classical musicians.

It is claimed the deceased also useother methods to express themselvescreatively through the living. PearlCurran of St Louis gained notorietyin 1913 for allegedly channelling a17th century character named Pa-tience Worth, through an ouijaboard. Curran and the spirit soondeveloped a powerful ‘mental link-age’. The contact became so frequent

that the medium began writing out,then typing the messages, until thevolume necessitated the hire of astenographer. It is reputed that Pa-tience Worth ‘dictated’ nearly 5000works through Curran, includingplays, poems, short stories and sev-eral novels. Today’s skeptical stanceon the cases of Pearl Curran andRosemary Brown is that both womenwere the artists behind the crea-tions. Both certainly exploited theadvertising their reputed psychicabilities brought to their work.

Borley RectorySome automatic writing occurs with-out a mortal intermediary to guidethe pen. Such an incident occurredduring the very famous haunting ofBorley Rectory in Essex, known as‘The Most Haunted House in Eng-land’. There have been over 2000reports of paranormal activity on theproperty, including a phantom nunand a headless coachman. The phe-nomena made the career of paranor-mal investigator Harry Price. Duringthe residency of the Foyster family(c.1930s), the phenomena escalated,most of the activity centring aroundMrs Marianne Foyster. Soon afterthe Foysters moved into thepremises, mysterious handwrittenmessages appeared throughout thehouse, on the walls and on scraps ofpaper. Most of the messages werepetitions from an entity pleading for‘help’ from Marianne. Marianne of-ten responded to the pleas, asking“what do you want?” The reply al-ways begged for “rest”. Contempo-rary investigators theorise that thephenomena were the result of theoveractive imagination of a young,bored housewife.

Other automatic writers claimthat spirits pass on their messagesin foreign languages or even ‘un-known’ languages. But it is unthink-able that the automatic writer sim-ply knows another language or couldinvent one that only she/he couldinterpret! James Randi’s An Encyclo-pedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxesof the Occult and Supernatural citesthe story of 19th Century mediumHélène Smith (Catherine Müller).


Smith purported to receive mes-sages from Martians through auto-matic writing. Of course, she couldtranslate their messages and ac-cordingly, created a Martian alpha-bet. Psychologist ThéodoreFlournoy investigated her claimsand observed that the languagebore an uncanny resemblance toFrench, Smith’s native language.

Some automatic writers allegethat their spirits prefer to commu-nicate with symbols or pictures.That seems as paranormal as ab-sent-mindedly doodling on paperwhile on the phone. Other spiritsare sloppy spellers who defy punc-tuation and grammar. Typicallythese errors reflect the linguisticperformance of the automatic writ-ers themselves. Fortunately, Lisa’sspirits were fluent in modern Aus-tralian English, with a few quirks.For grand effect, the spirits pre-ferred the pretentious ‘one’ subjectpronoun. There were a few errorsbut who can blame an anonymousdead person for those mere over-sights?

Here and nowLisa is a travelling automatic writerwho offers a house-call as part of herservice. Her $30 fee would grant mea half hour line to the spirit worldwith random spirits ‘coming through’with the required information. I wastold, “the spirits will tell you whatyou need to know” but would theytell me what I already knew? I wasasked to construct a set of threeshort questions that the spiritswould answer through Lisa, by wayof handwritten messages. Lisa toldme that she receives these messagesas ‘thoughts’ in her head then thespirits guide her handwriting. Shehas only practised her craft for fouryears but has communicated withspirits and experienced visions sincechildhood. Her abilities are dis-missed by friends and family as her‘imagination’.

Lisa pulled out the unassumingtools of her trade, a ball point penand spiral notepad. She asked that Iwrite out my questions, which were:

What travel plans do you see in myfuture?

Where could I be travelling?

Why would I be travelling there?

Apparently the spirits cannotunderstand the writing of anyonebut their host as Lisa explained, “I’llwrite out the question again in myown handwriting then the spiritswill take over with their own hand-writing”. Interestingly, after printingout the questions again, the ‘spirits’decided to stick with Lisa’s hand-writing as the style remained thesame throughout the session, includ-ing the writing on my receipt, writ-ten well after the session had termi-nated!

Travel advice from beyondThe spirits must have heeded Lisa’scall as she began to squint and pro-ceeded to write for a solid five min-utes before pausing to stretch heraching wrist and read what she hadwritten. Obviously the spirits like toreview their handiwork as they goalong! Lisa had scrawled a page ofwriting, most of it illegible. Therewas nothing unusual about the man-ner in which she wrote. I asked herif the spirits had taken over herhandwriting and who they were.“Yes, they have. I can’t write thatfast myself! I don’t know who is

working for us. They won’t tellme until they have finished send-ing their messages.” Lisa re-ported a tingling sensation andwarmth in her arm as proof thatthe spirits were controlling herhand and writing. The first mes-sage read:

At this time it is a time for solitarytravel within oneself. What is thatyou are truly seeking. Is it an in-sight into oneself?

Hang on, wasn’t I the one ask-ing the questions here? Shouldn’tthe spirits have all the answers?I had a feeling the entire readingwould be replete with esotericmumbo-jumbo. Next, the spiritsimpressed me with their usage ofcontemporary idioms:

On a physical plane, what is on thecards for you at this time is a poten-tial for a trip overseas to NorthAmerican continent. Specific detailswill unfold in most unusual ways.

Bingo! What an impressive, unde-niable hit! Yes, I am travelling to theUS later this year. Revelation orguess? Let’s examine this a littlefurther. My questions centred on atravel theme so Lisa would havebeen insane to ignore this clue. Eachquestion blatantly indicated that Ihave the intention of travelling. De-spite this, the ‘spirits’ initially que-ried whether this was a literal orfigurative journey. And why couldn’tthe ‘spirits’ narrow my destinationdown to the US rather than the en-tire continent consisting of severalcountries? Of these countries, someare very popular tourist destinationsfor Australians, particularly the USand Canada. Furthermore, it wassuch an obvious choice as Lisa is anAmerican! Similarly, an Englishautomatic writer may guess that Iwould travel to the UK. Lisa is anative of California, yet neither herpsychic powers nor the spirits couldpinpoint that state as my precisedestination! Nor did the details ‘un-fold in most unusual ways’. This is awell-organised, long-term trip, notan aimless jaunt as suggested by thenext message that came through:

A sample of the “automatic writing” produced atBorley Rectory

Writing


Perhaps one needs to think of a di-rection in which one needs to begoing and set your feet upon thepath. Thoughts tend to jumble one’sown instinctive response. This travelto North America will be one ofguided joy as we see you opening upto new possibilities. We see a planetrip within the next 3 months. Thisis so.

This is not so. I am scheduled toleave in six months. When asked aquestion about travel, a psychic willinevitably prophesy travel ‘withinthree months’. I have had this saidto me on numerous occasions byvarious mystics. This period of time,or thereabouts, is a prudent esti-mate. Many people will probablymake some sort of trip during thattime frame. The very question pre-supposes travel or at least, the de-sire for travel. The focus of the ques-tions also presumes overseas ormajor travel, more in the vein ofvisiting the Big Apple than the BigBanana.

Travel there will be of a businessnature as an opportunity for a fact-finding mission presents itself toyou. Mind you, in all of this thejourney is one of a personal natureand a spiritual journey of discover-ing oneself is mirrored in physicalexperiences that are presented.

The spirits were vacillating thatday. At first they pin me as a driftingbackpacker, then as a business per-son and finally as a holidaymaker ona spiritual quest! My trip is indeed a‘fact-finding mission’ for universitypurposes but can this message bereasonably counted as an accurate‘hit’ when most of the possible mo-tives for travel have been covered?

What must be kept in focus here isthe journey of discovery of who one isuppermost on the cards. Should oneseek to control outcomes then onewill find oneself at a loss of direc-tion, an inability to follow one’s com-pass.

The spirits finally decide that thejourney is a soul-seeking search sowe can discount the dubious ‘hit’above. Lisa hadn’t channelled the

most wise spirits though, counsellingme to refrain from controlling my‘outcomes’, advising with contradic-tion that such planning would bedisorienting?!

When oneself sets upon oneself expec-tations of any kind often oneself willset oneself up for disappointment.We say three months time pieces willcome together to enable this journeybut your lesson here is one of accept-ance and patience in the ability toallow the universe to afford the op-portunities you seek. Go with theflow instead of fighting so hardagainst it and release yourself intothe stream of life. If you can makethat leap of faith we can foresee atime when all that is wished forbecomes a need and the needs be-come the wishes of reward.

This paragraph exceeded its quotaof bungled fortune-cookie philosophy.Too many words to say too little. WasLisa channelling spirits or intoxi-cated on them? The spirits took an-other lengthy break before producinga final tirade that was no more en-lightening.

We say to you that all you will meetwill be put in your path for yourlessons and theirs. You seek a con-nection with a part of your life thathas remained clouded in mysterysince a child you once were. Theanswers you are seeking, the personyou wish to know will be availablefor you during this time. The an-swers to your past will be revealed.These you will know. The journeybegan several years ago will presentseeds of truth and a new beginning.Be mindful of growing pains andissues that will be raised within youto deal with. You will have a betterunderstanding of who you are todayand why the past happened as itdid. We hope that this had given youa satisfactory beginning to yourjourney. This is so. Malai, Asti andMorphi.

Finally the names of the miracu-lous spirits were revealed! Appar-ently, three spirits, ‘Malai’, ‘Asti’ and‘Morphi’ had answered my questions.Lisa is obviously a science-fiction

fan. This final message reads like aroutine ‘prophecy’ and has no rel-evance to my situation. How manytimes has Lisa reeled off this one?The session was now over and assoon as Lisa had regained control ofher hand it was in my wallet for thefee.

The messages produced duringthe session of automatic writingwere mostly cryptic, generalised orobvious guesswork. My travel-basedquestions dictated the content of thewriting, allowing Lisa to presumethat travel is relevant to my currentsituation in some way. I would at-tribute her broad, imprecise ‘hit’ tospeculation based on the ‘NorthAmerican continent’ being a populartourist destination and the fact thatLisa is a native of that continent.Lisa/the spirits couldn’t provide anyspecific details and she hedged herbets as to the purpose of my trip. Iwas also suspicious of the lengthypauses in the delivery of some of themessages. Was Lisa buying time toformulate her next message, killingtime or simply waiting to ‘hear’ herown thoughts? Could she have beenattempting cold reading? She alsoprovided some rather dubious guid-ance. For travel advice, consult theDepartment of Foreign Affairs andTrade, not an automatic writer.

SummaryIs automatic writing a paranormalphenomenon, self-deception or ahoax? It would seem that automaticwriting is not so automatic. EvenLisa admitted she receives the ‘mes-sages’ as thoughts. Isn’t that howeveryone writes? Perhaps Lisa hasconvinced herself that her innervoice is an outer being. As a creativewriting tool, automatic writing mayhave some brainstorming benefitsbut there is no current evidence thatautomatic writing is a paranormalability or that automatic writersreceive messages from the deceased.One thinks that this is a trick orsimply a vivid imagination mistakenfor a paranormal power. This is so.

Hey! Who typed that?


The article in the Autumn 2004 edi-tion (24:1) “Murders and Clairvoy-ants” got my mind going back to mynigh-on 30 years in Search And Res-cue, SAR. I worked my way up inthat industry from humble quill-sharpener in the early 70s to editorof the Australian SAR Manual andVice-Chairman of a UN committeeon SAR, before retiring a few yearsago. In all that time, we too had ourbrushes with “clairvoyants”, just asour colleagues in the Police still do,as the article showed. Sometimes, inspite of our dedication and the bestthat science could offer at the time,we would have no success in oursearch for a missing aircraft or boat.We never called on clairvoyants; no,they called on us. If ever the mediareported our lack of success in anyprotracted search, as sure as nightfollows day, the phone would bringone of those little rays of sunshineinto our lives.

It’s not as if we were just bum-bling around in the dark, SAR is ahighly technical business. Our plan-ning and allocation of search unitswas based on probability mathemat-ics, research on how the eye andbrain interact to register objects, theeffects of weather and ocean cur-rents, navigation, etc, and lately theuse of satellites to detect distress

radio beacons and determine theirposition anywhere on the planet (Seewww.cospas-sarsat.org ) .

Generally we found what we werelooking for, plus no end of marijuanaplantations and WWII wrecks in theNorthern Territory. The lack of suc-cess was usually due to thick junglesobscuring aircraft wreckage or avessel sinking in the wide expansesof ocean without leaving any floatingevidence.

Occasionally, if a search appearedto be unsuccessful, the families ofthe missing would call in clairvoy-ants for assistance. That was alwaysa recipe for a difficult situation; intheir desperation these poor peoplewould clutch at any straw, and therewas no shortage of the rip-off artists,shonks, and the deluded to taketheir money. Having been presentedwith urgent suggestions, we were ina difficult position, between usingcommon sense and empathy withthese families. Always, the advicefrom clairvoyants followed the sameformat:

• The clairvoyants, usually female,really did appear to be genuinelyconcerned, convinced of their pow-ers, and were very persuasive.

• The advice was so vague as to fitalmost any location.

I Can SmellOnions!

Ken McLeod, our resident Search and Rescueexpert, who spent a lifetime in that fieldbefore retiring to the NSW South Coast topeer under rocks.

Report

It is not just the police whoare pestered by persistent

psychics


• It would be our fault if we ignoredthe advice and the lost people died.

• Usually it made no sense at all.Clairvoyants seem to have no un-derstanding of how aircraft andboats work, no understanding ofgeography. They really are on adifferent plane.

Were we ever assisted in oursearches by a clairvoyant’s advice?No. Invariably, it resulted in wastingour time while we thought of how tomake sense of the clairvoyant’s ad-vice, and deal with the families, andnever led us to the missing people.

In one difficult search, for an air-craft missing between Coolangattaand Bankstown, a clairvoyant con-tacted us as follows.

Me: Hello, Rescue Co-ordinationCentre.

Caller: It’s (name of “respectedclairvoyant” withheld) here, I havesome information about the missingaircraft.’

Me: Go on, please.

Caller: I can smell onions.

Me: Pardon?

Caller: I can smell onions. Tell yoursearchers to try to smell onions,that’s where you’ll find the wreckage.

Me: Thanks very much, if you’llleave your phone number… etc

Picture the Rescue Co-ordinationCentre. There was much furrowingof brows, chin-scratching, rustling ofnew packets of Valium being opened,mumbling into coffee cups, and por-ing over navigation charts. We wentthrough our mathematics to find outwhere we had omitted the OnionFactor. Try as we might, we couldn’tfind “Here be onions” on the charts. Istill lie awake at night asking myself“Should we have told the search air-craft to open a window?” Extensiveinvestigations revealed that the peo-ple on the aircraft had eaten ham-burgers before the flight, so I sup-pose that nowadays that advicewould be classified as “MicrosoftAdvice”; technically correct but nouse at all.

In my time in the UN committeeon SAR, my colleagues and I occa-sionally used our spare time to dis-cuss the assistance we had been of-fered by clairvoyants. After muchselfless research in some of the bestpubs in the world, none of us couldrecall any clairvoyant being anymore than a nuisance.

After my retirement, anothersearch for a missing yacht in theCoral Sea had a clairvoyant tell theRescue Co-ordination Centre thatthe survivors were resting under atree on an island. Not that this wasany help, because between Australia,PNG and New Caledonia there arethousands of islands and billions oftrees.

What was really surprising is thatthe Australian Maritime Safety Au-thority had introduced a procedurewhere staff were instructed to “con-sider the advice of clairvoyants” andso based on that loopy advice, theyspent many thousands of dollars oftaxpayers’ money hiring aircraft tosearch islands. Not that this was acomplete waste, at least they wereawarded the Australian SkepticsBent Spoon Runner-up Award of1997. (See how the bureaucrats de-fended the indefensible at SenateEstimates at www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s1231.pdfgo to page 145.)

So, what does this little articleamount to? I can hardly claim thatthe foregoing is “science”, indeed thesubject of clairvoyants locating miss-ing aircraft and boats had neverbeen researched, to my knowledge. Icould claim that the above is illus-trative of a general principle: clair-voyants only get in the way and inthe process cause already distressedpeople even more grief.

The Great Skeptic CD 2Now Available

$55.00 — full price$25.00 — update

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John Templeton (an American fundmanager) began the Templeton Prizefor Progress in Religion in 1972, ashe felt that the Nobel Prize excludedreligion from its list of disciplines. Hecreated the prize to be awarded an-nually ‘to a living individual who hassought new and different paths inadvancing the world‘s understandingof god and/or spirituality’.

These days the objective of theTempleton Prize is slightly morefleshed out. It is awarded to a livingindividual, from any religious back-ground, for progress toward researchor discoveries about spiritual reali-ties. The Prize has the highest mon-etary value available to an individual— at £700,000, it is deliberately sethigher than the Nobel Prize. Theobjective of the prize is stated thus:

Progress is needed in spiritual discov-ery as in all other dimensions of hu-man experience and endeavour.Progress in religion needs to be accel-erated as rapidly as progress in otherdisciplines. A wider universe demandsdeeper awareness of the aspects of theCreator and of spiritual resourcesavailable for humankind, of the infin-ity of God and the divine knowledgeand understanding still to be claimed.

It is hoped that there will result fromthis enterprise expanded spiritualawareness on the part of humankind,a wider understanding of the purposeof life, heightened quality of devotionand love and a greater emphasis onthe kind of research and discovery that

brings the human perceptions moreinto concert with the divine will.

What does this all really mean?The first Templeton Prize was won in1977 by Mother Teresa of Calcutta,who used the prize money towardsfunding the Missionaries of Charity,which she founded, and to help home-less children in Calcutta. The Rev DrBilly Graham donated his 1982 prizeto funding his seminars and confer-ences for evangelists in underdevel-oped nations.

The first Australian winner wasProf Charles Birch, a biologist fromthe University of Sydney who, ironi-cally, received more press coveragewhen his cat fell from an 11th floorwindow and survived unscathed, thanhe did from winning the Templeton.

Cardinal Suenens of Brussels re-ceived the award in 1976 ‘for provid-ing enlightened discourse on theCharismatic Renewal Movement,eliminating misperceptions amongskeptics and offering sensitive guid-ance to followers’.

Last year’s winner was the Rev DrJohn C Polkinghorne, Professor ofMathematical Physics at the Univer-sity of Cambridge. He was inductedinto the Royal Society at 44 (nulliusin verba) and shortly thereafter hebecame an Anglican minister. Hisefforts in the years since have beendirected towards bridging the worldsof science and religion.

In 2000 the American physicist/

Prized AboveRubies

Liz Armstrong is a training manager and along time Skeptic subscriber.

Article

Does this prize seek to solvethe insoluble?


mathematician, Freeman Dyson, wonthe award for bridging the gap be-tween religion and science (see theSkeptic 20:3) and the year before that,Ian Barbour an American college pro-fessor won in recognition of his effortsto create a dialogue between theworlds of science and religion. ProfPaul Davies won it in 1995 and col-lected the award in Westminster Ab-bey. The award was given to him ‘inrecognition of his wide ranging en-quiries into the workings of the uni-verse that breach the barrier betweenscience and religion’. He used theprize money to pursue his research.

Benedictine monk, ProfessorStanley Jaki (who had taken a vow ofpoverty) won the 1987 Prize for inves-tigations into the relationship of sci-ence, culture and faith. Another win-ner, Carl von Weizsacker, washonoured for his efforts to initiate adialogue between the academic disci-plines of natural science and religion.

It sounds like progress in religionis being interpreted to mean finding acommonality between science andreligion.

Some of the judges, past orpresent, of the Templeton Prize areeminent people, who are either sen-ior and strongly contributing mem-bers of religious institutions orhighly regarded scientists or, insome cases, both. Some aren’t either.On the list of previous judges arenames like President George Bush(pere) the Dalai Lama, Prof PaulDavies, the Rev Canon Prof ArthurPeacocke, Mrs Anwar Sadat, Baron-ess Thatcher and the Prince ofWales. Many of the people listed asjudges would perhaps qualify to benominated for the award themselves.

It is difficult to see exactly how thewinners of the prize are meeting theobjectives. It seems that so many ofthe recipients have been trying tocreate commonality between religionand science, which is a long way fromprogress towards spiritual realities.

Defining religionAny religion needs three basic things:some record or book of laws, a deity ordeities and a human interpreter of therules. Together these things often

serve to establish a human culture aswell as a religion. It isn’t acceptable toquestion the basic tenets of the rulebook. In fact, a defining principle ofreligion is that its followers have faithin its beliefs and don’t question them.Progress in religion is really a contra-diction in terms, since religion isn’tsupposed to evolve and individualsare actively discouraged fromreinventing it. Indeed, being responsi-ble for any progress in religion hasprobably caused an inquisition or twobefore now.

Science, on the other hand, is basedon observation of occurrences. In sci-ence, you question more, rather thanquestion less. It’s difficult to see muchcommonality. Science doesn’t get intothe murky waters of addressing reli-gious questions, nor can a spiritualbelief be tested using any scientificmethods. Even if a scientist were tosay “I accept Newton’s second law as amatter of faith” that wouldn’t turnscience into a religion. Conversely, if aminister were to abide by observa-tions, that wouldn’t make religion ascience. The Skeptical Enquirer hasmany good articles on the topic.

OppositionChristian fundamentalists (Crea-tionists) haven’t been too impressedwith some of the Templeton Prizewinners. They seem to interpret theterm “progress in religion” to meanfurthering the study and worship ofGod and they have regarded theviews of some of the recipients to bedetrimental to their idea of Christi-anity, even though the TempletonPrize isn’t limited to members of theChristian religion.

Too many of the recipients havepublicly stated their belief in evolu-tion. Freeman Dyson is a self con-fessed agnostic. He claimed that Godmust be impotent, because he hadn’tdone anything to stop famine, dis-ease and suffering. The fundamen-talists would rather think of God asall powerful and all loving.

Historical mattersThe aims of the Templeton prizeinclude:

A wider universe demands deeperawareness of the aspects of the Crea-tor and of spiritual resources avail-able for humankind

This resonates like 17th centuryalchemy, where the alchemist was likea spirit medium, channelling thehand of god and allowing the spirit tomutate matter.

Isaac Newton was a 17th centuryalchemist as well as being the inven-tor of the high school physics lesson.One of the reasons I find any study ofNewton so compelling is that of coursehe was also the author of thePrincipia, which is regarded as awork of standard science. Newton wasalways keen to unite disparate fieldsof study. It is believed that Newtonproduced more than twice as manypages with alchemical content in theperiod just before the publication ofthe Principia, than he did at anyother time.

In Newton’s mind there clearlywasn’t a line between what is nowregarded as standard science andwhat is now regarded, perhaps, ashistorical fantasy. Newton was tryingto understand the mind of the creatorand if he had to recreate the creationin a test tube to do it, then so be it.There’s even a story (which can’t beverified) that Newton blew the roof offone of the buildings at Trinity College,Cambridge in the late 1600s, whiledoing alchemical experiments. Thismythical experiment probably re-sulted in the development of the cal-culus as well as being the origin ofmodern Occupational Health andSafety.

Newton should have won theTempleton Prize.

ReferencesWhite T (1998) Isaac Newton the Last

Sorcerer

The Skeptical Enquirer March 2002 TheFoundations of Newton’s Alchemy

Faurel, Flood (1988) Let Newton BeJames Gleick (1994) Genius The Life and

Science of Richard Feynman. (This bookhasn’t got anything to do with the abovearticle. I just thought it was a good book.)


The Nature of languagesAn article in Nature reporting a newand sophisticated cladistic analysisof the diversification of the Indo-European languages (Nov 27, 03)drew unusual amounts of press at-tention. The authors, Russell D Grayand Quentin D Atkinson, are psy-chologists at Auckland Uni but haveclearly informed themselves well onlinguistics and on other relevantsubjects. Summaries in the popularpress suggested a naïve acceptanceof some outdated methodologies, butthe paper itself is in fact impres-sively critical on this front.

The focus is entirely on mattersinternal to IE and very largely onknown cognates; the vexed questionof deeper-time relationships withother language families does notarise. Gray & Atkinson interpret theresults as locating Proto-Indo-Euro-pean (the posited ancestor languageof IE) in Anatolia c 6,500 BCE asopposed to the other main theoryplacing it on the Asian steppesc 4,000 BCE; this arises from theirfinding that among the known an-cient IE languages Hittite is closestto PIE. But here lurks the largestobjection that linguists will raise tothis analysis. Gray & Atkinson, likemost non-linguists, worked verylargely with vocabulary (specifically,with the phonological forms of

words). But historical linguists haveof late realised that grammar is of-ten an even more useful measure ofrelatedness between languages. Anda grammatical analysis of the knowndata would certainly locate Hittitefurther from the source than theypropose. By the date of the maincorpus of texts, the language hadinnovated considerably from what isreconstructed for PIE grammar,eliminating or replacing many keyfeatures.

Linguists have not spurned ordisparaged the paper in Nature (it ismuch too good for that); but neitherhave they rushed to accept all itsconclusions. Gray & Atkinson havereceived some positive feedback andthey have rebutted some criticismsquite persuasively; but the abovepoint remains to be resolved, as dosome other worries.

Yahoo meets Glozel‘Bengt’ on Yahoo (see last time) even-tually became more specific, promot-ing not only oddly conceptualisedanalyses of Sumerian as at least aregional Ursprache (well, what asurprise!) but also a revival of theidea that the tablets found at thehighly controversial French site ofGlozel are genuine after all — andthat the signs on them representgenuine script.

The Good Word

Linguist Mark Newbrook writes a regularcolumn from his hideaway in the Wirral,deep in the English outback.

Word Play

Trawling the fringes forabuse of language


When studied by different meth-ods, the artefacts from Glozel yieldwildly different and often quite im-plausible dates, and the consensus(apart from a few French thinkers,most of them nationalistically moti-vated) has long been that the site isa hoax. In any case, the symbols donot pattern like a script.

But Bengt rejects both of theseviews and treats the Glozel tabletsas genuine, very ancient texts. Herelates them to similar inscribedmaterial on ‘Azillian’ artefacts. Ifthis really were linguistic it wouldperhaps double the known age ofwriting; but like abstract Australianrock art it is generally considered‘symbolic but not linguistic’ (stylisedideograms and such with no repre-sentation of linguistic structures).

On the same group (and others),‘Dave’ continues on his merry way. Igave up on the group in the end, butmy spies reported that his ideaswere becoming stranger andstranger and I had a little more con-tact with him in another forum. Heproposes grotesque reinterpretationsof the representations of Hebrew/Aramaic names in New TestamentGreek, notably by denying the iden-tity of a Greek grammatical endingthat one learns in the first week. Heclaims these and other misconstrued(or at least weak) points as evidencethat ancient Hebrew was pro-nounced and structured quite other-wise than is normally believed. Hecontinues to misinterpret and thusto misjudge the work of mainstreamtheoretical historical linguists (nota-bly that of Nichols, who would assur-edly reject his views). And he forgesahead with his re-decipherment ofEgyptian as very close to Hebrewand to a recent Ursprache, denyingthat Egyptologists have any relevantexpertise. On the other hand, heshows only limited enthusiasm forpreparing papers on his ideas whichI could reasonably ask Nichols orother scholars to read.

Talking to waterIrene Pepperberg thinks parrots canunderstand the structures of humanlanguages; John Lilly thought dol-

phins could. Well, maybe! ButMasaru Emoto thinks water can! Itcan react to unspoken thoughts aswell! (Some think dolphins can too;see Eris Andrys in Fortean Times174, where Lilly ‘meets’ Tompkinsand Schwartz.) This is all to do with‘vibrational medicine’ and (guess!)homoeopathy! See www.aiis.com.au/Message%20from%20the%20Water.htm.But where is the extraordinary evi-dence? A 3-hour promotional event ata uni (!) in Melbourne on 2 August,2003 cost $50 per head. Did anybodygo at that price, and, if so, what canthey report?

Phone or phoneme?It is not uncommon for nutters tothink they know more about linguis-tics than they do, but in an arguablyless alarming way this is also true ofmore mainstream writers. Sciencefiction and fantasy authors whobring language matters into theirthemes often mangle the specifics.(Suzette Elgin, who is herself a lin-guist, is an obvious current excep-tion; an earlier exception was, ofcourse, JRR Tolkien.) There is a bookon linguistics in sf and a few articles(one by me remains unpublished).See also below.

Commentators in the popularbroadsheets — and sometimes eventheir qualified non-linguist sources— make similar mistakes. A fa-voured locus for these is the termphoneme, which adds a technical airto discussions of pronunciation.Some take it to mean just ‘speechsound’ (in fact these are technicallycalled phones), others ‘sequence ofspeech sounds’ or even ‘word’; I haveon file recent cases of all interpreta-tions. Well, no, and often cruciallyno. Do not assume that a non-lin-guist who uses this term has got itright!

Sign to your baby?Other recent newspaper reports,drawing more directly from informedscholarly sources, refer to the prac-tice of teaching signing (British SignLanguage etc) to babies. This alleg-edly improves cognitive developmentin the longer term and routine com-

munication in the shorter. It is cer-tainly known that the cognitive abili-ties of babies are considerablygreater than was once believed, butthese particular claims are contro-versial. However, they are not pat-ently wrong, and this is a seriousdebate which is being conductedlargely by properly qualified scholars(with certain views being more typi-cal of each of the various relevantdisciplines).

Much as one hesitates…I have referred to linguistically-trained opponents of Chomsky,whose reputation in the non-linguis-tic world exceeds his status within it(great as that is). Now and then anon-linguist takes Chomsky on, inmuch the way that previously dis-cussed figures such as AmoreyGethin take on linguistics as awhole. These are often literaturescholars; even those who can acceptthe scientific rigour which linguisticsbrings to its subject matter (as somecannot) are often disturbed by thealgorithmic, quasi-mathematicallook of Chomsky’s formalism. Theymay also be upset by his relativelyunambitious and arguably unimagi-native treatment of semantics (lin-guistic meaning). So too are some ofChomsky’s professional critics suchas Geoffrey Sampson; but they areon their home turf and make outgood cases.

I hold no brief for Chomskyans —but there is no point in overstatingthe case against them, ignoring theirstrengths or attacking straw men.One recent critic from a non-linguis-tic background is David Kozubei; heworks in a roughly Sampsonian di-rection, but almost inevitably he getsthings wrong. Notably, he attributesall linguistic constraints to context.He seems to think that if a sequenceof words can be interpreted as gram-matically and semantically feasiblein any way whatsoever — howevercontrived and however remote inmeaning from the sequences withwhich it is being compared — thisdisallows Chomskyans from identify-ing it as grammatically anomalous


and from arriving at any generalisa-tions on that basis.

For instance, he rejects theChomskyan identification of Applesharvest as grammatically and se-mantically anomalous by comparisonwith non-anomalous sequences (sen-tences etc) such as Harvest apples.His interpretations involve eg, ‘Someapples harvest/get [what they de-serve]’. But even if the sequence isaccepted as feasible with this sense(and not all English-speakers wouldaccept it, especially in respect of thegrammar), this is scarcely relevantto the issue at hand, which is thegrammatical behaviour of the nor-mal verb HARVEST and the seman-tics of associated nouns. Kozubeigoes on to claim/imply (surelywrongly) that foreign learners’ errorsare all semantically/contextuallybased; they do not involve grammar.

In places he allows words to be‘mentioned’ rather than ‘used’ (agood distinction which we owe to thephilosophers!) in order to make asequence work (‘General it consistsstringing’ makes no sense). Once youdo this you can redefine almost anysequence as grammatical and mean-ingful. This is rather like the re-peated mentioning of had, coupledwith Had used as a name (anotherdodge), in the celebrated spoof sen-tence Where John had had ‘had’,Had had had ‘had had’. (Yet an-other dodge is citing a sequencewhich is not a construction, eg, is isas in What this is is unclear.)

Like Gethin, Kozubei is movingtowards a model of language whichwill include only a minimal grammarand in consequence will fail to cap-ture many key facts. This will berejected by non-Chomskyans as wellas Chomskyans. Kozubei has seensome good points and has pushedthem too far, like many on the fringeand near it (remember MerrittRuhlen?). For his material, seedavidkozubei.com/chomsky.html.

Look back in time! (And listen!)(Apologies to Kylie!)

See recent issues of Fortean Timesand Skeptical Inquirer on the case ofthe Chronovisor, a mid-C20 inven-

tion which allegedly allowed obser-vation (not participation) of pastevents (a common theme in sf!). Thekey book (by Peter Krassa, who oncewrote a largely positive biography ofErich von Daniken) appeared awhile ago but the matter blew upagain in 2003. An important piece ofevidence involved a lengthy, previ-ously unrecorded passage in Latin,around 10% of a play of which weknow but which is largely lost. How-ever, the text has been examined bya classical scholar, and there areanachronisms. In addition, the clus-tering in this passage of a high pro-portion of the surviving minor frag-ments is suspicious. Without betterevidence, this must be the verdict onthe entire story as well (although ifit is a hoax someone proficient inLatin went to a lot of trouble!).

Birds and serpentsSome readers may remember RossHamilton and his theories about howthe Great Serpent Mound (Ohio) isconnected with the Greek alphabet. Ireviewed this book on Amazon.com.Later I noticed that a fellow re-viewer was proclaiming that Hamil-ton’s account would have been im-proved by a reference to the‘Language of the Birds’ as promotedby William Henry. Henry has a siteat www.williamhenry.net/ebooks.htm#lob. He says: ‘Are youready to take a leap in spiritual con-sciousness? For centuries an ideahas existed that there once was alanguage, or a particular word [eh?],which perfectly expressed the natureof things. This language, called theLanguage of the Birds, was spokenin the Garden of Eden, but was lost.King Solomon recovered it. He usedit to become immensely wise andwealthy. The alchemists, Mozart andJules Verne all used it and preservedits secrets. Surprisingly, so too didJesus.’ Etc. Hmm! See his othermaterial as well, if you enjoy suchstuff

The Greeks and the QabalahA more reasonable proposal is pro-moted in a 1999 book by the NewZealand classics graduate Kieren

Barry, who believes that the Hebrewsystem of gematria, the Qabalah, infact had its origins in Greek. Whilethis idea would upset someHebraicentrists and is certainly notthe accepted scholarly view, it is notridiculous. There was plenty of cul-tural influence between the two civi-lisations (some of it mediated by thePhoenicians); at certain periods andin some respects the principal direc-tion of influence was from theGreeks to the Hebrews.

Barry makes out a fair case for hisspecific claim. It does have to besaid, however, that some of Barry’sdiscussion is rather approximate andeven inaccurate. For instance: theterm pictographic is used too loosely,and Barry also assumes the superi-ority of alphabets in a naively ama-teur-sounding way (and even fails toidentify as such the syllabaries hediscusses). In addition he agreeswith Joscelyn Godwin in findingsignificance in the ‘seven vowels’ ofGreek, although Greek had sevenvowels only in writing (but, to befair, the ancient thinkers involved inall this may have focused on thespelling so much that they too ig-nored the evidence of the spokenusage or judged it irrelevant, as wascommon before linguistics began).

Talking to aliens againGary Anthony and I continue to ex-amine claims about alien languages(as per Mary Rodwell et al.). We arealso interested in discussions of lin-guistic issues in the world of SETI;Gary hunts these out. Of course,there have been many fictional treat-ments of this theme; one famous oneis in ‘Omnilingual’ by H Beam Piper.See also below. But note my com-ment above on the frequency of er-ror. Most unfortunately, the lack oflinguistic expertise extends to muchof the non-fictional literature in thisarea. One recent body of work is byJohn Elliott at Leeds University inthe UK (see www.nidsci.org/essaycomp/jelliott.html).

Elliott is a rather odd figure. Hehas worked quite extensively in com-putational linguistics, and (althoughcomp linguists are an odd bunch

Word Play


generally and often know too littlegeneral linguistics) this would sug-gest he should have some compe-tence. And he does know of relevantprinciples such as ‘Zipf ’s Law’(though linguists are cautious aboutextrapolating too far from such prin-ciples). But his references to linguis-tics books are at a rather basic levelonly, and his program appears over-optimistic and inadequately in-formed by the vast literature ongrammatical typology. He talks as ifthis hardly exists and seems to be-lieve that phonological informationalone can reveal grammatical pat-terns, which no linguist known to mewould accept or even think plausible.He also makes various naive and/orwrong statements. Eg: he does not (itseems) distinguish adequately be-tween languages and systems ofcommunication more generally; inthis context, in his discussion of birdcommunication he totally misinter-prets the key structural notion ofduality (I am assuming that he is noterring further by including here con-fusion between birds’ ability tomimic and real language-learning, oruncritically following Pepperbergand such); he assumes a strong in-terpretation of dolphin activity inthis area; and he repeatedly confusesscripts and phoneme systems, orrather naively thinks in terms of theformer (especially where he refers toLatin). There are certainly seriousproblems with this work as it stands,for all the apparently impressivematerial from his own area of spe-cialisation (which others would haveto assess).

Elliott is by no means alone.Other material has been produced byAnthony Judge and Allen Tough;their sites are linked and are atlaetusinpraesens.org/docs/alien.phpand www.ieti.org/who.html respec-tively. The material is very interest-ing but as usual there is too littlefocus on the linguistic issues and toolittle linguistic expertise is found inthe relevant teams of scholars. ButJudge does have a link to JustinRye’s survey of sf languages(www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/lingo.html). Rye in turn has links to

non-fictional and allegedly non-fic-tional proposals near the fringe ofthe SETI world. He is linguisticallywell informed, although at times heis covertly contentious. He alsowrites intelligently on artificial lan-guages such as Esperanto and onarguments surrounding spellingreform.

The former USSR took linguisticsvery seriously in this respect. Lin-guistics graduates were trained tolearn and analyse the most unusualhuman languages which could befound, with a view to possible futurecontact with ETI.

Letters from AmericaMy American contact Gary Goldbergsends me links and references formany interesting cases. Recently,these have included the following:

(a) Eli Abir claims to have arrived atan algorithmic means of determin-ing and expressing linguistic con-text in such a way that machinetranslation can be completely reli-able. His method as described isonly a numerical expansion of exist-ing methods, but if it is technicallyfeasible it will indeed increase levelsof reliability (though perhaps not asmuch as is suggested). Where Abirapparently does go over the top is inclaiming that this work will revolu-tionise linguistic theory itself. Healso seems to adhere to extreme andquasi-mystical worldviews.

(b) One Harvey Kipper has ad-vanced yet another diffusionist pro-posal: as usual, unsystematic,superficial linguistic similarities(combined with other evidence,mostly dubious — including MarkMcMenamin’s mini-maps on coins)supposedly demonstrate not onlythe deep-time dispersion whichmust have happened by some meansbut also a global civilisation in morerecent but still very ancient times.Again, no (as we have tried to ex-plain).

(c) A more scholarly proposal comesfrom Dan Willmore, who seems toknow his genetics and hispalaeoanthropology pretty well (as

far as I can judge) but has beeninfluenced by the near-fringe andthe ‘lumpers’ in respect of linguis-tics. He thinks that the overall evi-dence shows that there was just oneProto-World and that it can be re-constructed in part; he is also surethat Neanderthals spoke. Willmorecan cite John McWhorter (discussedin these pages) as an ally in respectof some of this. But most linguistscurrently believe that caution isadvisable on all these fronts.Willmore’s specific examples (themain one involves ‘clicks’) are inter-esting but not as convincing as hesuggests. And he seems to believe(very oddly) that ‘imagination’ issomehow involved even in phono-logical change. However, one canhave a reasonable discussion withhim.

(d) A Japanese manufacturer isproducing devices which will alleg-edly translate ‘dog speak’ (so far, not‘cat speak’) into English (or Japa-nese, if you prefer). The vendors arenot claiming that dogs have phonol-ogy or syntax! The translations areof unanalysed ‘blocks’ (barks?) ofutterance — and only six types arerecognised. But surely attentiveowners soon become able to inter-pret their pets at that level of ‘de-tail’? Some people clearly have toomuch money!

Egyptian re-deciphered, again!As noted above, ‘Dave’, one of thenon-standard historical linguistswho are active on Yahoo groups, be-lieves that the standard C19-20 deci-pherment of Egyptian is mistaken. Isuggested that he was on his own.Looking for support, he found a site(rather reminiscent of Ann Walker’sEgyptian sources but further devel-oped) produced by one Tarek Abdel.Abdel’s English is very strange (heshould employ a translator), but hiscase is intelligible to a degree,though not at all persuasive. For astart, he does not seem to under-stand established methods: he be-lieves that the original deciphererChampollion and his successors weremerely guessing and often guessed


wrong. As my Liverpool Uni col-league pointed out in commenting on‘Dave’, if this is so, it is odd thatnewly-found texts are regularly deci-phered on the basis of the estab-lished decipherment, with fewanomalies persistently resistinganalysis. But Abdel (like so many)has other weird notions as well, in-volving alchemy and the building ofthe Giza Pyramids (no?!). Mercifully,he is unlikely to be taken very seri-ously. See tarek1.4t.com/estart.htm.

Incidentally, another LiverpoolUni scholar has been a leading criticof David Rohl. Indeed, Rohl at-tributes all rejection of his views tobaleful influence from this quarter.Well, not quite! For instance, I criti-cised his treatment of Sumerian inthese pages, and at that time I hadnot read this Liverpool material.

Of another Bengt!An author called Bengt Sage, unfor-tunately an Australian, thinks hecan do linguistics and writes for theInstitute for Creation Research(www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-083.htm). His approach to linguisticsis like that of Kipper and many oth-ers discussed earlier in these pages,ie, invalid. Once again,unsystematic, superficial linguisticsimilarities supposedly prove, in thiscase, the literal truth of Genesis,notably the Noah’s Flood story.Enough said. But if anyone cites thiskind of thing as a reason to acceptcreationism, you all know what tosay now!

Oh, those Turks!Polat Kaya re-surfaced on a Yahoogroup, pushing his theory that al-most everything is deliberately dis-torted Turkish: utterly implausibleand contrary to huge volumes ofevidence, but difficult to disprovedecisively, given the amount of lee-way he gives himself. Kaya becameangry when I challenged him to pro-duce evidence, and his allies nowseem to regard an ethnic Turkishlinguist in Macedonia as a race-trai-tor for supporting me. The ‘evidence’he did produce was merely furtherassertion; he appears not even to

understand what would count asgenuine evidence or argumentation.And he repeatedly uses Greek in hisarguments, all the while revealingthat he does not even understandhow the Greek alphabet works, stillless the language itself.

Turkish linguistics has long suf-fered from crazy nationalistic ideas,and if Kaya’s ideas really are per-ceived there as normal the situationwould seem to be unchanged. Ofcourse, there are several other writ-ers of this kind: Ior Bock, Nyland,Oak, White etc. Indeed, Nylandeventually joined in on this group(‘Kaya is wrong, because I am right’).The two of them then started a ri-diculous argument about which lan-guage, Turkish or Basque, was inorigin a deliberately corrupted formof the other! (Of late I have beenexchanging comments with Nylandin other forums.)

Link your wordsFor some time an interesting theoryhas been going the rounds; a recentversion is presented atwww.unforgettablelanguages.com. Itis claimed that a word in a foreignlanguage can be learned very effec-tively by construing its equivalentwith a near-homophonous word ofyour own language. For instance,one learns Arabic samakh (‘fish’) bythinking ‘smack a fish’. This doesseem to work for some people. I havenot seen any report on a controlledstudy, and I will see if I can interestthe experts. (As often happens, theauthors of this specific site use out-dated straw men to attack otherlearning strategies, but that can beignored.)

A second InterglishA new proposal for an English-basedauxiliary, ‘Unish’, has emerged froma Korean source (like much unusualmaterial at present). It has a vocabdrawn from a range of languages.But it is not always clear why agiven word was taken from the lan-guage in question; and, more impor-tantly, the grammar is closely basedon that of English. There are manysalient Interglish-like

simplifications, but in some respects(eg past tense used in remote condi-tions) even the more obviously arbi-trary features of English are re-tained. This rather runs against amajor justification offered for theproposal: the need to counter theoverwhelming advantage of nativespeakers of English in today’s world.And the problems which wouldhandicap Interglish apply here aswell. In addition, Unish is very shorton subordinate clauses; this leads to‘parataxis’, jerky bursts of short sen-tences, overtly connected in minimalways if at all. See www.unish.org.

English itself re-interpretedA recent piece in FT was a review ofthe 2002 book The History Of BritainRevealed, by MJ Harper, who oftenpromotes non-standard historicaltheories. In this book, he presentsthe astounding view that ModernEnglish, while related to Old Eng-lish, is not descended from it (andthat Middle English thus did notexist except as a highly artificialliterary variety); that Modern Eng-lish has existed since ancient times,when it was current across WesternEurope, and is indeed the ancestor ofmost modern western European lan-guages, including the Romance lan-guages; that Latin was thus NOTthe ancestor of these languages andwas in fact invented; and that thevast majority of etymologies givenfor English words are thereforewrong. Sally Thomason and I areworking on a review; watch thisspace!

Word Play


The lengths we go to, to find thosedear to us. A fish searching theoceans in Finding Nemo; secrethandshakes so that Freemasons canrecognise fellow members in distantlands. How far would you go to find afellow Skeptic?

Let me tell you a tale. You mighthave heard of The Cave Clan — theycan perhaps be described as neo-troglodytes and adventurers, who,with the encroachment of civilisa-tion, have adapted their activities tothe Built Environment. Like pos-sums adapting to back yards. Whereonce our ancestors exploredundergound streams, now we turn todrains. Unable to find labyrinths, weexplore abandoned factories. Withthe decline of trees, we climb towersand chimneys. Instead of slidingdown waterfalls, we jump frombridges.

For example, in Sydney there is aderelict incinerator facility in Water-loo — a big cubic windowless build-ing with tall chimney (clearly visiblefrom Botany Road). Closed in 1996,it was left virtually intact.

Far too good to go to waste, theClan renamed it ‘Rator’ and wereable to put it to use. Imagine explor-

ing a huge industrial plant likewhere the final battles of Terminatormovies take place. Steep metal stairsand grid-floored walkways, sur-rounding furnaces and blowers, amida mesh of chutes, pipes, wiring andconveyors. For several years, it was(I am told) possible to start some ofthe machinery and drive the enor-mous cranes. Now the power hasbeen disconnected, and it is exploredin the dark with head torches. Whatan experience!

Some explorers climbed the chim-ney. This was quite a feat becausethe safety cage around the ladderwas locked off at the bottom, so itwas necessary to climb the back sideof the ladder — outside of the safetycage!

Some people imagine Urban Ex-ploration as their worst nightmare,while others find it compelling. InSydney, a girl, coming home fromshopping at dusk, saw darkly cladfigures disappearing down a man-hole. On being told it was the CaveClan, she said “Fantastic! Can I joinyou?” So she completed her firstExpo in street clothes and without atorch. She was tagged “Spur”, forjoining on the spur of the moment.

Finding Edthe Skeptic

Ian Bryce, engineer, explorer and rocketscientist (yes, really) is a member of the NSWcommittee. No animals were harmed inmaking his hat.

An intrepid investigator goesto great depths to find

another Skeptic

Adventure


You have probably gath-ered that Clannies refer toeach other by nicknames or“tags”, such as Predator,Trioxide, Siologen, Ogre,Hatchet, Gilligan etc.Sometimes they are selfchosen, reflecting perhapswhat the member mightlike to be in a fantasy, orthey may be conferred byteam mates.

Imagine, if you will,climbing down 20 metres ofvertical shaft on rusty lad-ders, to get into the hugedrain system underWaverly called Fortress.You are now walking in aprocession of Clannies intotal darkness, except for atrail of glowing coloured straws (asthey sell at shows) laid down by theleader. Accompanied by the hauntingsounds of a flute, which someone hasbrought along. And all speech isweirdly distorted by the ex-treme acoustics of a drain pipe.

Exploring farther afieldHaving explored one’s hometown, an interstate trip istaken as an opportunity tomeet up with local Clanniesand hopefully join an Expo(expedition). So it was that lastDecember, a small group wentinto “The Maze”, led by “JC” ofthe Melbourne clan. This is astormwater drain, so calleddue to its complex plan, withseveral loops (most drains havea simple tree structure, withpipes joining and getting largeras they flow downstream).

We entered the stormwaterdrain at an open section,quickly went underground, andfirst walked downstream to itsoutlet at the Yarra River. Thenwe turned upstream, taking adifferent branch, negotiatingseveral ladders at waterfalls.

Note that household wasteand sewage go into an entirelyseparate system, not usuallyvisited even by Clannies!Stormwater drains are usually

quite clean and odourless, althoughyou will often get wet feet or legs.

Not being a civil engineer, I hadnot learned about stormwater con-trol. I was surprised to learn that

sometimes they build twoor three parallel tunnels,with a diverter system suchthat all water flows in thefirst until its capacity isreached, then it overflowsto the second and so on.This helps avoids slowflows which deposit sedi-ment.

When the rain is soheavy that all tunnels arefully loaded, the water levelrises over a barrier andflows out a grill into a “re-tarding basin”. This is usu-ally a specially landscapedlocal park or sportsground.When rain abates, the wa-ter can flow back into thedrain system. Thus, flood-

ing of streets is cleverly avoided. Ifyou see some faces looking out fromsuch a grill, you will know why.

It is prudent to notice possibleescape routes, because safe entry

and exit points are few. Imag-ine climbing up a ladder, try-ing to lift a cast iron manholewith your shoulder, and thenseeing a 40 ton truck bearingdown on you…

You get to know the differ-ent types of drain engineering.Shallow sections were oftenmade by open cut, rectangular,with a flat slab roof. Deepsections were made by tunnel-ling. Modern ones mostly havea simple round concrete lining,and the best way to walk andkeep your feet dryish is: 3steps on the left then 3 on theright. Some historic drainshave thousands of red brickslaid by hand — the lower sec-tion can be badly eroded andhazardous to walk on. Themost interesting shape is “hotair balloon”, with a vee at thebottom to keep the waterspeed up — also difficult towalk on.

On our Melbourne expo in“The Maze”, JC had previouslydone a section of this drain ona “torchless expo”, which isnavigated entirely by feel! A

John August, Clannie from Sydney, ascending aladder at a waterfall in “The Maze”

The author asks a local for directions

Finding Ed


helmet is a must. And a goodmemory for layout.

We came across a rat thatran ahead of us for about200m, until stopping from ex-haustion and trying to climbthe wall. He did not seemscared, perhaps he only sawflashing lights and echoingnoises. I was tempted tostroke him…

…until later when I read anarticle in Nature Australia bySteve Van Dyke of the Queens-land Museum. He describes anencounter with a corneredsewer rat:

For whatever reason, the rat letout a screech and leapt at mybrother’s face. But… it wasstopped in mid flight by hisquick left block. All was notlost, however, for the rat founda mark and latched onto theknuckle of his thumb. Andthere, with its infectious-look-ing yellow teeth buried to thebone, it dangled like a mouldychorizo sausage in a deli win-dow…

As we moved upstream, thetunnels got progressivelysmaller and lower. At a junc-tion, evidently as far as manyvisitors get, there was a graf-fiti wall where many had writ-ten their tag. And there Ifound “Ed the Skeptic” — oneof six who had visited thereonly 3 days earlier!

So if you read this Ed, dropme a line! Our Expo was allSkeptics or supporters too.

Ed the Skeptic and his team had visited only 3days before.

Passers-by amazed by apparitions in a drain.

And look out for my tag -“Perigee”, which as everyspace engineer knows, is the“lowest point in my orbit”.

The wall also advised thatto proceed further was“hardcore”, meaning ex-tremely demanding. So wepressed on, the roof closing to960 mm for perhaps 200 m,requiring some difficult meansof locomotion. We finallyreached our goal — a cavitywhere you can stand up andlook out of a street drain ontobusy Camberwell Junction!

What sport to harangue thepassers by. To shine a torch atdrivers stopped at the lights,watch their puzzlement, andthen tell them about the CaveClan. And to ask pedestriansfor a smoke, where they canhear you clearly but can’t seeanyone, and then explain thatyou have been rendered invis-ible by an evil sorcerer.

Then it was back to thenearest exit, a quick snack(definitely takeaway), andabove-ground back to the car.We had travelled about 5 kmbelow ground and 3 km aboveground, in about 4 hours.

It must be stressed that “Ed theSkeptic” is not in any way relatedto “the Ed OF the Skeptic”, whomight be mad, but is not nearlymad enough to go traipsing aroundin storm water drains. Ed

Annual Convention SydneyNovember 12-14

Watch our web site for detailswww.skeptics.com.au


As the title of this piece suggeststhis article is about newspaper horo-scopes, those daily catch-all predic-tions where every single one of thepredictions could be interpreted asapplying equally well to you as theone that’s really supposed to beyours. I’m going to start by making afew observations about astrology andthe reaction to research into astrol-ogy that was presented in a recentissue of the Skeptic. After that I willpresent the results of a little survey,or market research, about the im-pact of newspapers running astrol-ogy columns on the likelihood peoplewould purchase a paper.

Where Astrology Comes From andWhere it Should Go.

The basic conceptual basis of astrol-ogy is that celestial bodies that arevisible to the naked eye, in certainparts of the sky in a certain part ofthe world at the time a person wasborn, and where those and othercelestial bodies are now, can be usedas a basis for assessing personalityand predicting the future.

Intelligent observers of such aclaim, who hadn’t been indoctrinatedinto a culture where such claims hadwidespread acceptance as commonknowledge, would certainly be leftscratching their heads wonderinghow such a connection could possibly

be true. Physically, the connectionmay be something to do with light orgravity. Sure the Moon effects tides,but one would be making a sweepinggeneralization to think that far moredistant celestial objects would affecthuman affairs like love and financein the way the Moon influenceslarger bodies of water. The gravita-tional effects and light that comefrom the Sun and Moon are muchstronger than from any distant star,yet these don’t seem to be as impor-tant to astrologers, particularlythose who write the daily newspapertype predictions, as far off stars andplanets.

Astrologers have their own argu-ments that they commonly use todefend and promote their craft. I’lllist some of these and note how theyare logically questionable.

Argument 1

Astrology has a long history. Astrol-ogy was practised in Ancient Rome,Egypt, China, India, and by ancientSouth American cultures. Having along history must mean there’s some-thing good about it, otherwise itwouldn’t have lasted this long,right?

Here’s our first logical fallacy,argumentum ad antiquitam, thefallacy that something is good simply

Newspaper Horoscopes:

Who Wants Them?

Guy Curtis is an Associate Lecturer inPsychology at UWS. His regular researchexamines mood-related and other biases injudgments, but he conducts occasionalsurveys out of personal curiosity.

Investigation

Do astrology columns boostreadership? The facts say

otherwise.


because it is old. Malaria has beenbesetting human beings for a longtime now; does anyone want to arguethat it’s a good thing?

Argument 2

The list of cultures where astrologyhas found acceptance at variouspoints in history shows that lots ofpeople believe in it, which should betaken as evidence of its validity.

The logical fallacy here isargumentum ad numeram — themore people who believe something,the more likely it is to be true. Priorto the recent war more than half theUS population believed there wereweapons of mass destruction in Iraq,but even majority agreement with abelief does not guarantee its validity.The whole population of Europe oncebelieved the Church’s assertion thatthe Sun revolved around the Earth,now only some hard-core creationistsand naïve children will still say theybelieve that.

Argument 3

Of all the people who have believedin astrology some of them have beenfamous, smart, or both. Thus, ifsome great leaders and scholarshave believed in astrology theremust be some truth to it.

Again, this argument is easilyrelated to a logical fallacy — theappeal to authority or argumentumad verecundiam. There are a lot ofsmart people and some famous onespossibly reading this now who do notbelieve in astrology. These people, I’dimagine, have more access to moderninformation about both astrologyand astronomy that were not avail-able to figures in the past who werebelievers.

Argument 4

Maybe these arguments for astrologydo commit logical errors, but, whoare we to judge? Perhaps, us logicaltypes should stay away from makingjudgments about the efficacy of as-trology and leave it to qualified as-trologers. After all, only astrologers

can tell you about astrology; outsid-ers aren’t qualified to judge it.

While we’re at it, let’s let qualifiededucators chose which schools wesend our kids to, let coffee manufac-tures pick which brand each of us isallocated to drink with our blackforest cake, and let’s repeal lawsagainst murder because only mur-derers are qualified to judge whetherit’s a worthwhile practice. For as-trologers to fall back to a specialpleadings position, that only astrolo-gers can judge astrology, is as silly asonly letting murderers decide on theacceptability of murder. You do nothave to do something to be able tojudge it; if that was the case only theunhealthy doctors and the mad psy-chologists would be any good at theirjobs. As the following list of “Prob-lems in the Stars” from an introduc-tory psychology textbook demon-strates, there are some good reasonsto think that astrology is not a con-ceptually well-grounded system ofknowledge.

Problems in the Stars

1. The zodiac has shifted in thesky one full constellation since astrol-ogy was first set up. However, mostastrologers simply ignore this shift.(In other words if astrology calls youa Scorpio you are really a Libra, andso forth).

2. There is no connection betweenthe “compatibility” of couples’ astro-logical signs and their marriage anddivorce rates.

3. Studies have found no connec-tion between astrological signs andleadership, physical characteristics,career choices, or personality traits.

4. The force of gravity exerted bythe obstetrician’s body at the momentof birth is greater than that exertedby the stars. Also, astrologers havefailed to explain why the moment ofbirth is more important than themoment of conception.

5. A study of more than 3000 fa-mous astrologers’ predictions foundthat only a small percentage werefulfilled. Their successful predictions

tended to be vague (“There will be atragedy somewhere in the east in thespring”) or easily guessed from cur-rent events.

6. If astrologers are asked tomatch people with their horoscopesthey do not perform better thanchance (Kelly, 1999)

7. Few astrologers have tried totest astrology. Their results have beenjust as negative as those obtained bycritics.

(Coon, 2001, p. 24)

The Persistence of Belief in theQuestionable

I have discussed problems with somearguments used to defend and justifyastrology, and I have reproduced alist of facts that seem to be contrain-dicative of the validity of astrology.In the face of these poor argumentsand anti-astrology facts, belief inastrology persists. In fact, when newstrong evidence is produced, believ-ers still manage to believe.

Geoffrey Dean and Ivan Kelly’s(2004) recent contribution to theSkeptic outlining astrologers’ reac-tions to their paper published in theJournal of Consciousness Studies,provides an interesting example ofhow beliefs persist in the face offacts to the contrary. To quickly sum-marize Dean and Kelly’s (2003) find-ings from the JCS, “a large-scale testof 2,101 persons born on average lessthan 5 minutes apart found no hintof the similarities in personality andbehaviour predicted by astrology”(Dean & Kelly, 2004, p. 9). In addi-tion, astrologers who claimed to usepsychic abilities in their readingsperformed similarly to others whodid not (Dean & Kelly, 2003).

Dean and Kelly report that as-trologers’ reactions to their researchresults were, to say the least, closedminded. Astrologers dismissed Deanand Kelly’s finding based on anumber of spurious grounds, in somecases they simply attacked the au-thors’ characters and motives. Re-cent research indicates that peoplethink information that confirmstheir beliefs comes from more cred-


ible sources than information thatdisconfirms their beliefs (Fragale &Heath, 2004). As such, it is not sur-prising that astrologers questionedDean and Kelly’s credibility. Otherastrologers did acknowledge Deanand Kelly’s findings, but chose tomaintain their beliefs nonetheless,and attack the credibility of the re-search and the way it was reported.

In a study by Lord, Ross, andLepper (1979), research participantswho were either for or against capi-tal punishment were presented withstudies whose results both supportedand contradicted their current be-liefs. Participants in this researchspontaneously generated argumentsagainst the studies that refuted theircurrent beliefs, such as questioningthe validity of these studies’ method-ology and results.

So, it is little wonderastrology believers ac-cepted their own side’scase uncritically andlooked to tear down theopposition. But, the argu-ments Dean and Kellyreport astrologers madeagainst their research areso weak that it seemsastrologers really did noteven get as far as objec-tively criticizing theirmethodology and results.Giving credit where it is due, theirresearch is far more elaborate, rigor-ous, and comprehensive than thelittle survey I conducted recently.Nonetheless, I hope the results of mylittle survey are of interest to somereaders.

And the Survey Says…Late last year I had the opportunityto pose one question, at no cost, toabout 500 people on an internet sur-vey website. I didn’t have any imme-diate ideas about what I should ask.(Imagine that you could ask 500people just one question and youwant all their answers, what wouldthat question be?)

And then, as I was looking at anewspaper, widely regarded as one ofthe best and most reliable sources ofnews and information in Australia,

the question came to me. This broad-sheet newspaper, a supposed bastionof fact-checking and journalistic in-tegrity, had a third of a page devotedto the daily horoscopes. On seeingthis section I thought, “How can thispaper claim to endeavour to producea high standard of news reportingwhen it devotes a substantial bit ofspace to fiction portrayed as fact?Really,” I thought, “the paper wouldbe more credible if it made a deliber-ate decision not to print this non-sense. I wonder if other people feelthe same way?” Which led me to myinternet survey question aboutwhether printing astrology columnsaffects people’s newspaper purchasedecisions. The question, the alterna-tive answers, and participants’ re-sponses are in the Table below.

With these results only being forone question I don’t want to maketoo much from too little. Nonethe-less, the results look quite promis-ing. As the table shows, for mostrespondents the inclusion or exclu-sion of astrology columns in a news-paper would not affect their pur-chase decision. However, 4.8% wouldbe less likely to buy a newspaperomitting horoscopes and 6.8% wouldbe more likely to buy a paper omit-ting horoscopes. Given the number ofpeople in the survey there would be32 people more likely to buy a paperwithout horoscopes and 22 lesslikely, a net gain of 10 people in 474.A number that would be greatly in-creased if applied to regular circula-tion figures for most major Austral-ian newspapers. For any newspaper

editor or publisher who wants todrop horoscopes this could mean anincrease in circulation, a decrease inprinting costs (dropping a third of apage each day or replacing it withadvertising), and dropping one mem-ber of staff from the payroll — whichwould, no doubt, add up to a tidysum.

The survey results get more in-teresting when we look at the break-down by gender. Ten percent of malerespondents indicated they’d bemore likely to buy newspapers with-out horoscopes, compared with 4.3%of female respondents. In addition,as the survey shows, fewer men thanwomen said they never buy newspa-pers. Thus, on average more menthan women buy newspapers andthus, more of the people who buynewspapers would like to see horo-

scopes omitted.However, disproportion-

ately more women thanmen responded to the sur-vey. As such, given a morerepresentative sample ofthe people who buy news-papers the percentageswho would prefer to buynewspapers without horo-scopes would likely behigher in the overall sam-ple than in this survey.While this is the response

to only one question a sample size of474 is not too shabby. However, Ihave made the inference that anewspaper is likely to appear morecredible if it doesn’t have a horoscopesection, which would be my reasonfor buying a newspaper that doesn’thave horoscopes. Others who re-sponded to the survey saying they’dbe more likely to buy a newspaperwithout horoscopes may have doneso for completely different reasons,and this one-question survey can’ttell us what those reasons may be.As such, I think newspapers wouldbe well advised to conduct largerscale market research of their ownon this question, rather than actingon the results of mine. Nevertheless,it would seem worth their time to doso given the potential impacts ontheir revenue and expenses that Imentioned above.

F (n=275) M (n=199) Tot (n=474)

% % %

Much more likely to buy it 2.3 7.0 4.4

More likely to buy it 2.0 3.0 2.4

Decision unaffected 75.4 76.9 76.0

Less likely to buy it 4.7 2.5 3.7

Much less likely to buy it 1.6 0.5 1.1

I don’t buy newspapers 14.1 10.1 12.3

If a newspaper were to stopprinting daily astrology predic-tions/horoscopes would you be…

Horoscopes


ConclusionFrom the weak arguments oftenused to justify and defend astrology,to the facts that don’t appear to sup-port it, to the weak attack by astrolo-gers on strong evidence against as-trology (Dean & Kelly, 2003, 2004),astrology seems to be on shakyground in claiming to be a valid andrespectable practice. As such, does itseem sensible to include astrologypredictions as though they were fac-tual in otherwise credible sources ofnews? I don’t think so. The results ofmy little survey suggest that morepeople than not would prefer news-papers without a horoscope section.Perhaps they think a newspaperwould be more credible without anastrology column too.

References:Coon, D. (2001). Psychology: Gateways to

mind and behavior (9th ed.). Australia:Thomson Learning.

Dean, G., & Kelly, I. W. (2003). Is astrol-ogy relevant to consciousness and psi?Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10,175-198.

Dean, G., & Kelly, I. W. (2004). Predict-able outrage. the Skeptic, (24:1), 9-11.

Fragale, A. R. & Heath, C. (2004). Evolv-ing informational credentials: The(mis)attribution of believable facts tocredible sources. Personality and SocialPsychology Bulletin, 30, 225-236.

Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R.(1979). Biases assimilation and attitudepolarization: The effects of prior theorieson subsequently considered evidence.Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 37, 2098-2109.

Note.For a good guide to logical arguments

and fallacies try Carl Sagan’s DemonHaunted World or http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html

AaAbilAdduAdduAdeonaAdsallutaAdsmeriusAhijahAkuAlbiorixAllatuAmon-ReAmurruAnathAnuAnubisApsuArianrodAshtorethAssurAstarteAxonaBaalBelisamaBeltisBeltuBelusBileBorvoCaletosCenteotlChalchihuitlicueCocidiusConsusCronosCunina

The next time anyone asks if you ‘believe in God’ you might care to refer tothis item to be found in The True Believers: Oddities and Curiosities of Reli-gious Faith; Peter Bowler (Metheun Australia, 1986 ISBN 0 454 00986 0).

Sir Jim R Wallaby

H. L. Mencken’s List of Dead Gods

H. L. Mencken, in Selected Prejudices, gives a list of ‘dead gods’—that is, godswho were once believed in, feared, honoured, worshipped, adored and vener-ated but, who now are no longer anyone’s god; at best, a relic of a past mythol-ogy—at worst, simply unknown. ‘They were gods of the highest standing anddignity,’ says Mencken, ‘gods of civilised peoples—worshipped and believed inby millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. Andall are dead.’

DaganDagdaDagonDarmonaDaukeDeaDiaDervonesDevaDianaDimmerDisDrunemetonDumiatisDumu-zi-abzuEaEduliaElElaliElumEn-MersiEngurraEnkiEnurestuEponaEsusFurrinaGasan-abzuGasan-lilGazagaGoibniuGovannonGrannosGunfledGwydionHadad

HuitzilopechtliIsisIstarIsumIunoIxtliltonJupiterKaawanuKerridwenKuski-bandaLagasLerLeucitiusLlaw GyffesLleuLugal-AmaradaMa-banba-annaMamiManawyddanMardukMarsMarzinMeditrinaMelekMemetonaMerodachMictlanMiderMixcoatlMoccosMogonsMolochMorriguMu-ul-lilMulloMulu-hursang

NeboNergalNi-zuNinNin-azuNin-lil-laNin-manNirigNuadaNuskuOdinOgmaOgmiosOgyrvanOllovidiusOmacatlOpsOsirisPersephonePlutoPotinaPtahPwyllQarraduQuitzalcoatlReshephRigantonaRobigusSahiSamasSaturnSebekShalemSilvanaSinSirtumu

Sokk-mimiStatilinusSuliusSuqamunuSutehlTagadTammuzTaranousTarvesTezcatilpocaTialocTilmunTlazolteolU-dimmer-an-kiaU-kiU-MersiU-sab-sibU-Tin-dir-kiU-urugalUbargisiUbiluluUerasUra-galaUxellimusVaticanusVediovisVenusVestaVintiosVitucadrusXichtecutliXipeYacatecutliYauZaraquZer-panitu

Divers Deceased DeitiesCuriosity


Since last this journal reached you,the Editor has undergone a proce-dure known as a bilateralunicondylar hemiarthroplasty. Be-fore that shocking news causes youto swear off lacing your breakfastcereal with gin in perpetuity, all itmeans is that I had a partial surgi-cal reconstruction of both my knees.Titanium, no less. Much as I wouldlike to boast that my osial degen-eracy was the legacy of a brilliantsporting career or of a wound ac-quired during some gallant militaryaction, the truth resides elsewhere— an inherited tendency towardsosteoarthritis.

Over many years, as my gait be-came ever more eccentric, a plethoraof well-wishers has offered me varie-ties of “alternative” (non-surgical)treatments, guaranteed to free-upthe joints. The most intriguing ofthese was an oily potion that smelledlike nothing so much as Frenchsalad dressing. Ever the openminded Skeptic, I tried rubbing it in,but gave up when I noticed fruit flieshovering around my trousers. Drivenby inherent cowardice, I might havegone on for years becoming less andless mobile, however I was finallyforced to grasp the nettle when Inoticed that little old ladies weregoing out of their way to help meacross the street.

Forced into action, I finally ac-ceded to the advice (or even insist-ence) of my GP (Dr Richard Gordon,Physician, Gentleman, Skeptic,Friend of the Working Girl, Golf Ma-niac and Purveyor By Appointment ofLearned Medical Advice to the Skep-tical Hierarchy) and made an ap-pointment to see an orthopaedic sur-geon.

It wasn’t so much the thought ofthe operation that threw me into amoral funk — after all, joint replace-ment has had a fairly long and suc-cessful history — it was the fact thatI had not undergone a general anaes-thetic since having my tonsils re-moved in the early 1940s. As this wassoon after the science of anaestheticshad progressed from the ‘bottle ofrum and a leather strap between theteeth’ stage, I was fairly confidentthat things had improved in the in-terim, but try explaining that to yoursubconscious.

Entering the consulting rooms ofthe surgeon (whom I will not embar-rass by naming here) for the firsttime, I was reassured by noting thathis walls displayed photographs ofRugby and Tennis greats of recenttimes, but it was two photos of DonBradman in full flow, that convincedme. Here clearly (as events were toprove) was the right man for the job.

Time isOut of Joint

or The Kneebone’s Connected to the Ore Body

Barry Williams, who always wanted to be theMan of Steel, settled for Knees of Titanium.

A self-indulgent Editor wouldlike to tell you about his

operation

Indulgence


For someone like me who has longbeen an advocate of medical treat-ment based on evidence and scientificprinciples, but whose personal under-standing of the medical/hospital sys-tem had also been ‘informed’ by hor-ror stories appearing in the yellowmedia and the propaganda broadcastby shills for the “alternative medi-cine” industry, reality came as apleasant surprise. I experienced noevidence of being patronised by over-bearing doctors, being ignored byoverworked nurses, given the wrongtreatment, nor of having large surgi-cal implements left in my body cavi-ties.

To the contrary, both the surgeonand the anaesthetist went to somelengths to explain in detail (argu-ably far too much detail for a patientwho steadfastly refuses to watcheven fictional medical dramas onTV) what was going to happen andthe risks attendant on each proce-dure. It might be that this attitudeof openness within the medical pro-fession is new (though it isn’t in mylimited experience) and has beenencouraged as a countermeasure tothe oft-repeated (though seldomsubstantiated) claim by proponentsof alternative medicine that “Doc-tors treat patients like fools anddon’t explain anything.” If that is so,then at least it is evidence that somegood can come from altmed, albeitperipherally. However, I suspect it ismore likely a result of our increas-ingly litigious society (which mighteven be evidence of something usefulemanating from lawyers).

The operation itself was a breeze(for me if not for the doctors). Oneinstant I was lying in the operatingtheatre, chatting with the anaesthet-ist, then the surgeon bustled in andput me at ease by saying, “Goodmorning Barry. I suppose I had betterdo a good job on you if I don’t want toend up in your magazine” (You didanyway, Doc, but in the nicest possi-ble way). The next instant (subjectivetime) a pretty nurse was saying “Areyou awake? How do you feel?” I feltterrific, though the prominentlyplaced clock told me it was more thanfour hours later.

The nursing and ancillary staffand the physiotherapists in both thehospital and the rehabilitation hos-pital where I spent two weeksrelearning how to walk, were allprofessional and friendly (and pro-vided evidence of what a trulymulticultural society we have be-come; I heard accents from all conti-nents during my recovery.) Theywere always careful to ascertain myidentity before conducting any proce-dure (“What’s your full name anddate of birth?”) And the hospital foodwas good.

The only departure from this pro-cedure, and one which caused mesome mirth, occurred when twoyoung chaps arrived to take me tothe Radiology Department for a post-op X-ray scan shortly after the op-eration. As they wheeled me downthe corridor I asked how they knewthey had the right patient. “You’reMr Williams who has just had a dou-ble knee replacement, aren’t you?”said one. He was not at all convincedby my claim to be a mother of threewho had just had a hysterectomy,though he did give me a funny look.

Mind you, I did find that I wasbeing injected with rat poison daily,but then I am informed that Warfa-rin is both a legitimate medical anti-clotting agent and a form of rodentcontrol. The medical profession is

very concerned with clots (as areSkeptics, but in a different context)in post operative patients. This wasfurther manifested by my having towear elasticised “anti-embolismstockings” for some weeks, much tothe amusement of my visitors. Whilethese are not exactly fashion items, Isuspect that any 19th Century Re-gency buck would have given half hisfortune for stockings that wouldn’twrinkle around his ankles.

Among other matters, the surgeonwarned me against marathon run-ning, dancing and tennis playing. As

these are activities I have man-aged to eschew for more than sixdecades, following doctor’s ordersshould present no problems. Sadly,though, my inability to kneelmight scotch my chances of beingelected as the next Pope. I usedmy confinement to proselytise theSkeptics cause among the hardworking and long suffering mem-bers of the medical professionsand am delighted to report thatwe have some new subscribers asa result.

I have but two (minor) com-plaints about my ordeal.1. If hospital beds are not alreadybanned under various Genevaconventions, they should be.

2. The view from the window of myhospital room, comprised the mainbuilding of the Royal North Shore

Hospital, an edifice of such surpass-ing ugliness that it must surelyhave won many architecturalawards when it was built.

Thanks to this procedure I cannow walk more easily than I have fora decade, and I have knees that setoff alarms in airports (I have testedthis claim).

To all who were involved in mytreatment and to all the Skepticswho sent me their best wishes, andwho wished me good luck, I thankyou. However, the Skeptic in meforces me to say that the medicalexpertise of all those involved ren-dered luck redundant.

Aarggghh! Me knees have turned Bolshie, Eccles.


No Dent in RealityMargaret Dent Psychic Connections,March 10, 2004, Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL Club.

Margaret Dent claims to talk withdead people. She makes money fromperforming, using this claim as thebasis of her show. Together withlong-time subscriber, DarylColquhoun, I attended her show. Ifwe were expecting something excit-ing or even paranormal, wewere soon disappointed. Evenas a dedicated Skeptic, I wasstill quite ready and willingto accept any real communi-cation with the departed. Iwould even have been happyjust to have seen a new trick!

Each of the tables in theauditorium held small slips ofpaper containing messages,front and back, as shown inthe box:

Slips were collected beforethe show and placed into a‘bingo barrel’ on the stage tofacilitate the first part ofDent’s performance. Then shepicked some out at random,read them aloud and gave usthe benefits of her amazinginsights. This must surelyrate a new low in pure lazi-ness — any self-respectingcold reader simply does notneed to gather just about all theinformation they need in this fash-ion.

On one slip was written, Is thereanyone who has passed that wants totalk to me?, to which Dent re-sponded, On your father’s side thereare two brothers, on your mother’sside there are five women and a littlegirl. How am I supposed to knowwho you want to hear from?” Funny,I thought that was the just the sortof thing she claimed to know! Alas,the audience just accepted it and

even applauded. Feel free to clap, itraises the vibrations!”

The second part of the show wasmore personal with Dent walkingabout with a microphone to ‘answerquestions’. One of her best ‘hits’came from the line, I see a toy trainset… who was it that played with thetrain set? to which a man responded,I’ve worked on the railway for years.A miss turned into a hit by someonewanting to make a connection.

When Dent got it totally wrong,she herself turned a miss into a hit.For example, a question Who wasKen? elicited the reply from a man,“Ken is my uncle. Yes, that’s right,replied Dent turning a ‘was’ or ‘dead’Ken into a living Ken. Or to awoman, Someone played the pi-ano….. Who was that?.. No? Someonedid! Think about it. This gave theimpression that Dent knew some-thing about the woman’s past orfamily that the woman herself didn’teven know. It’s a standard cold read-

ing trick. No matter what your vic-tim says, you appear to be right.Imagine the hit Dent would havehad if the woman recalled childhoodmemories, as many, many people dohave, of someone dear to them play-ing the piano. At no stage during hershow did Dent stray from text bookcold reading techniques. In fact shespent a good deal of the time simplyagreeing with whatever people toldher and people told her a lot.

So, just what is going onhere? I think there are twopossibilities.1. Could she have an illnessthat makes her think she ishearing voices and seeingthings?

2. Is she an outright fraud,using cold reading to makemoney?

A third possibility, moreapplicable to other ‘clairvoy-ants’ such as Tarot Card read-ers, where they are simplyself-deluded, acting on feel-ings and intuition, at all timesbeing reinforced in their delu-sion by compliant clients. It’shard to see this being the casewith Dent as she makes itclear from the start that she ishearing and seeing messagesfrom the dead.

Whatever the real situa-tion, one thing was crystal clear.This sort of act, if taken seriously,corrupts and distorts the preciousmemories people have of their lostloved ones. That day all her readingsended with words to the effect that,Your (lost loved one) is happy and iswatching over you. If that is whatyou want to hear (and many peopledo) then such mechanistic reassur-ance can be given by any totalstranger who knows no more aboutyou than Dent does. But are falsereassurances of any real value?Somehow I doubt it.

Report

Cool Appraisals of Cold Readers

SURVIVAL READING

(A loved one that has died) for example: your husband, wife,mother, father sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, friend etc;

Your Christian name

Surname

Relationship - My

How long have they been in the spirit

PSYCHIC READING

Only one question

For example; Will I move house? Will I find a job? Will my sonmarry? (give age of son) Will I find a relationship? Will I changemy career?

Your Christian name

Surname

Your Question


Dent has a stock reply she hasused for years when asked aboutsceptics: Those who believe need noproof, for the sceptic, no proof is everenough. This is just the sort of soundbite the media love and while thefirst point is true enough, the secondis clearly nonsense. If Dent wouldsubmit to a mutually agreed test ofher claims and pass, I would be thefirst to trumpet her success.

Seeing Margaret Dent in action iscertainly an emotional experience.My emotions ranged from contemptto anger to pure disgust as I watchedher victims break down in tears. Hercold reading routines were no betterthan those used by many other ‘psy-chics’ whose activities have beencatalogued in the Skeptic over manyyears, and were worse than many.Anyone reading Ian Rowland’s FullFacts Book of Cold Reading couldlearn how many of the tricks of coldreading work. My dear friend LynneKelly can do it better than any ‘psy-chic’ I’ve seen and she is a skepticthrough and through. I have evendone it myself and amazed peoplewith my mystical insights (alwaysbeing careful to explain that it isonly a trick.)

Not 36 hours after Dent’s perform-ance, the world learnt of the appall-ing train bombings in Madrid. 200people lost their lives. What a pityno one on the other side let her in onthe secret.

Re-bunking an Unsinkable RubberDuck

One of my favourite sayings comesfrom James Randi:

They [psychics] are like unsinkablerubber ducks. No matter how manytimes they are disproved, they keepcoming back.

Ian Rowland uses the term ‘Re-bunking’. Again, no matter whatSkeptics do to show something isclearly false, all it takes is one bituncritical media exposure and the‘psychic’ is once again flying high. Acase in point is the so-called “control-led and scientific” tests of three ofAustralian’s leading psychics, car-

ried out by TodayTonight (Ch 7)shown on April 19.

Firstly, what makes someone ‘aleading psychic’? Real ability? Fame?Connection to a particular maga-zine? For the TodayTonight story, thethree psychics were, Ann Ann, psy-chic columnist of Woman’s Day,“Rev.” Glennis Saggers of The Chris-tian Spiritual Fellowship inWynnum, Qld and Anne Dankbaar,winner of the 1987 Bent SpoonAward for claiming to have psychi-cally discovered the remains of thelegendary Colossus of Rhodes. Theirchoice seems to rest on their claimsto have been in contact with thedead for over 25 years.

Briefly, the tests consisted of eachof the ‘psychics’ sitting behind a cur-tain, out of sight of the subjects, andbeing hooked up to an ‘electro-en-cephalograph’ to record theirbrainwave activity. (Why, I have noidea, but it gave viewers the impres-sion that something scientific wasgoing on.) The subjects were allowedonly to give their names and agesand then only to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’to the psychic’s questions.

What ensued was nothing morethan stock-standard cold reading. Itreally did not matter that the sub-jects were behind a curtain, or thatthey were limited to answering ‘Yes’or ‘No’, as these answers still gavethe ‘psychics’ valuable feedback.However it gave the illusion of thetests having strict protocols. In factthe protocols were laughable.

At one stage Glennis Saggers wastrying to get a ‘hit’ with the nameAlice. The subject had no idea whoAlice could be, but Saggers was in-sistent. (This is a standard cold read-ing trick.) Suddenly, SandyMcGregor of the CALM ResearchCentre, the man recording brain-wave activity and not a subject of thetests, chimed in saying that Alice ishis sister’s second name! “But they’reover there…” says Saggers, implyingthat the message is from beyond thegrave. “Then it could be my Grand-mother”, answers McGregor. Somuch for the protocols!

Another gem was when Dankbaar,clearly getting nowhere with the

subject, complains, “Sorry, I’m goinghave to cut this one... I did not havethe contact… she is not openminded.” Putting the blame for apoor performance onto the subject isanother cold reading trick.

Overseeing this sham was “thenation’s foremost expert in the studyof psychic phenomena”, parapsy-chologist Dr Peter Delin from Ad-elaide University. (I’m not sure howsomeone becomes a “foremost ex-pert” in this field, given the lack ofany concrete results.) But whateverhis history, he was clearly out of hisdepth. I would have thought anyexpert on these matters could havespotted the tricks a mile off. He wascritical of science in general for notbeing accepting enough of psychicresearch, but if this was an exampleof his research, is it any wonder?

Despite Anne Dankbaar in par-ticular being shown to have as muchpsychic ability as a donut, it was noimpediment to her and the othersreceiving thousands of dollars of freeTV publicity and apparent scientificendorsement. Truly unsinkable rub-ber ducks.

TodayTonight could only presentsimple black and white alternativesfor their viewers — either the psy-chics are real, or they are frauds. Athird possibility and the one I sus-pect accounts for a great many psy-chics, is that they are sincere butself-deluded. The only time I haveever heard this possibility beingexpressed on TodayTonight, I wasthe one expressing it! Having saidthat, I have more than a few doubtsabout the sincerity of people whoclaim to talk with the dead.

Richard Saunders


The Skeptic’s Guide to the Par-anormal, Lynne Kelly; Allen &Unwin, Crows Nest, 2004. ISBN 174114 059 5; pb 260 pp, $19.95

How does one go about reviewing abook written by a friend? Confessionup-front seems to be the acceptedmethod, so here we go — Lynne Kellyis a mate, a cobber and a bonzer sheilainto the bargain.

There have any number of bookswritten by Skeptics about the commonissues we confront, many of which arevery good, although the quality tendsto vary a lot. Some, sadly, are writtenin terms that would only be readilycomprehensible to someone withhigher degrees in philosophy or theo-retical physics (or who are hard-coreSkeptics) but to few others. This bookis not like that at all; it is written witha lay readership in mind and does notassume that the reader will have hadyears of being steeped in the Skepticalethos.

All the major themes are here;prophesy and divination (various), psiphenomena, spiritualism, talking tothe dead, ghosts and past lives, UFOs,alien abductions and crop circles, psy-chic detectives and spoon benders,spontaneous human combustion andwalking on hot coals, cryptozoologyand much more.

Lynne Kelly lays out the claims forthese phenomena as they are offeredby those who promote them, includingtheir explanations for how or why theymight work. Then, wielding Occam’sRazor with a skill of which SweeneyTodd would be proud, she proceeds tocut through the dross to expose theunderlying truths (or otherwise) of theclaims. In doing so, she is not harshlyjudgemental of those who choose (orare led) to believe in these mattersand she always maintains that indi-viduals have the right to believe what-ever it is they wish. She does, how-ever, adhere to the view that making

an informed choice depends on havingall the facts available, not merelythose which support the various con-tentions. She is somewhat less kind,and rightly so, about the blatant char-latans who use these beliefs to prey ontheir fellow humans. Each chapterconcludes with a list of books andarticles, by both proponents and skep-tics, as references for any reader whowants more information.

This is not merely an academicexercise, compiled by someone whohas trawled thorough the literature topresent all the claims and all theskeptical explanations. Lynne has“walked the walk” — she has inventedher very own form of divination, using“masks, rods and staves” (actuallybookmarks and chopsticks), which shecalls “tauromancy”. She has performedthis “ancient art” at psychic fairs andcarried it off with a panache thatwould make many a ‘psychic’ green. Inthe book she recounts how she oncedid this on an Australian Skepticsstand in a science show, with a sign onher table that read “Psychic Fraud -

$0.00”. She still managed to achieveconsistent results (as assessed by theclients) of 80-90% accuracy. All donewith cold reading, confidence and tell-ing people what they wanted to hear— just like a “real” psychic. As onewho has experienced a Kelly reading, Imust confess that I had to keep re-minding myself that I was a profes-sional Skeptic to resist the urge tohand over all my wealth to this mostpersuasive guru.

Lynne Kelly has been teaching sci-ence and maths for over 30 years butthere are few overt traces of pedagogyin The Skeptic’s Guide. Rather shecarefully lays out the claims and ex-planations made for various commonlyheld beliefs then leads the reader gen-tly towards consideration of otherexplanations. I suspect this is the truemeasure of a successful scienceteacher.

This is a book that no Skeptic canafford to be without. It will give youthe wherewithal to answer all thosequestions that constantly crop up atdinner parties, meetings of the knit-ting circle or football club, and interms that require no deep under-standing of quantum physics or abnor-mal psychology. Lynne Kelly has per-formed a valuable service and shedeserves every success.

And a pat on the back for Allen &Unwin who have not only publishedLynne Kelly’s book and PaulLivingston’s delightfully surreal lookat new age beliefs, Releasing the Imbe-cile Within (reviewed in the Skeptic23:3) but also the best book I haveread about the Australian campaignsin Papua in WWII, Peter Brune’s ABastard of a Place.

Barry Williams

The Skeptics Guide to the Paranor-mal and Releasing the ImbecileWithin are available from our onlineshop at: www.skeptics.com.au

Review

Buy This Book


then, while with pomp and unctioninvoking the name and the powerand the curse of pilgarlic Paul’sLord Jesus Christ, lighting anylucifer. In the process, from the largebody of Hebrew scripture both oldand new-testamental there was acareful culling of those books thatwere to be revered as distinct fromthose that were not.

Mr Priest became an expert inboth groups of material. What to dowith this compendious knowledge?He has produced 1307 questionsabout the Bible and 24 about the“other holy scripture”. Then hun-dreds more “revision questions”. Theanswers are often supported by in-teresting explanations, well refer-enced. The author liberally adds hisopinions.

Is it effective? A novice with ashort attention span might find thisan entertaining way of picking up afew bits and pieces of Biblical knowl-edge. However it seems more for theconverted, who might enjoy search-ing for something they don’t know. Aboon for priestly diversion. I canimagine Fathers Ted Crilly andDougall Maguire, snowed in onCraggy Island on a dark winternight:

Father Ted: Now Dougall, payattention. The question is: What wasdistinctive about Ehud, theBenjamite judge of Israel, who slewthe very fat Eglon, king of Moab,with a dagger?

Father Dougall: Ted! … I’ve noidea.

Father Ted: He was left-handed.

Father Dougall: Righto. Fair playto him. Must tell Bishop Len aboutthat lad….

And, Behold, a Burning Bush. BillPriest; Self-published PO Box 427Mittagong NSW 2575ISBN 1 74008 147 1

God, isn’t God a shit! – RandolphChurchill

We each have our different reasonsfor reading the Bible. To put thatquote in context we go to the BritishMilitary Mission in Croatia at theend of WWII. A boisterous, irrepress-ible Randolph Churchill is irritatinga crusty Evelyn Waugh, with hisconstant intrusions and “pep talks”.As Capt Waugh (Royal HorseGuards) explained in a letter toNancy Mitford:

In the hope of keeping him quiet fora few hours Freddy and I have betRandolph £20 that he cannot readthe whole Bible in a fortnight. Itwould have been worth it at theprice. Unhappily it has not had theresult we hoped. He has never readany of it before and is hideouslyexcited; keeps reading quotationsaloud ‘I say bet you didn’t know thiscame in the Bible “bring down mygrey hairs in sorrow to the grave” ‘or merely slapping his side andchortling ‘God, isn’t God a shit!’

Mr Priest studied the Bible insideand out, as he grew up in a Method-ist parsonage. He tells us that atUniversity he lost his faith. A loss ora gain? No Mr Priest, the glass ishalf-full not half-empty. You gainedcognitive reasoning.

Mr Priest became dissatisfied atthe way humans had decided whatwritings were divinely inspired andwhat were to be discarded. Therewas general squabbling about thisuntil the Council of Trent roderoughshod over the various factionsin 1546. (This has not stopped dis-sension to this day. As a good Presby-terian I was amazed to discover thatthe ‘Choppers’ used a Bible withextra bits.)

Mr Priest disputes the wisdom ofthe Council’s selection. Thanks tothe tolerance of our secular society,he can speak his mind. I think sar-casm like the following passagewould have earned him a bonfire inthe days when the Church was incharge:

Pre-destined from the foundation ofthe world, the new Church as thebody of Christ on earth was to nur-ture Christendom through the DarkAges. While in the first millenniumscholars of the Middle East fumbledabout in the gross gloom of philoso-phy and such undistinguished sci-ences as astronomy, arithmetic,geometry and medicine, the enlight-ened thinkers of Christendom wereforging the brave new sciences ofdogma and allegorisation. Usingtheological method, they strove todiscover empirically which diseasemight best be treated by applying tothe patient the bone or some otherrelic of which particular saint, thenreciting which particular prayer orrebuke, and proving conclusivelythat the contagion of heresy can bestbe stayed simply by unifying theaffected dissident with any stake,

Holy Trivia

Martin Hadley always looks like this.

Review


Mortal Minds; a biology of the souland the dying experience. G MWoerlee De Tijdstroom, UtrechtISBN 90 5898 057 X 282 pp

Millions long for immortality whodon’t know what to do with them-selves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.– Suzan Ertz

They say that two things you can becertain of are death and taxes. Evenmost barristers now acknowledgethis. The big UNcertainty is still:what happens after death? Who dowe turn to for an answer?

Whether anyone can report to usfrom the ‘other side’, is a vexed issue.We gain little confidence in the ‘yes’case from the charlatans interestedin making a quid out of the process.Most of the remaining proponentsappear mired in superstition á làShirley Maclaine. It brings to mind“Rampaging” Roy Slaven’s pro-nouncement about aliens: “Of all thealiens who come across the universeto planet earth, why do they onlyspeak to people who are insane?”

Then there is the quality of themessages. Usually drivel and to mymind, significant discouragementagainst believing in the other side.Despite all the dead geniuses outthere ticking over, we have not had

any Mozart-standard music or pro-found mathematics. I’d settle for anew chess opening. If there is another side, seems to me it is not aplace conducive to creativity. Mustbe worse than the last quarter of a20-hour flight, cattle class.

Meanwhile, we have people whobelieve they have got close and takena shuftie, but lived to tell the tale.Some report their experiences totheir doctor immediately on ‘return-ing’ so there is no problem withmemory or distortions as the storygets passed from person to person.Often the doctors have known theirpatient for years and insist that theyare of the highest integrity. Littlewonder we are fascinated by storieslike this one from the victim of aheart attack:

Suddenly, I felt relief from my terri-ble chest pains. Now I felt exhilara-tion. I can’t fully express it. I wasfloating into an area that looked likeheaven. It was wonderfully brightwith streets of gold and I saw a fig-ure with long hair in a brilliantwhite robe. A light radiated allabout him. I didn’t talk to him. I amsure that it was Jesus. As he tookhold of my hand, the next thing Iremember was a jerking on my body.You were shaking me and then thepain came back. But I was back onearth again!

Matters of Lifeand Death

Martin Hadley, Secretary of the NSW Skeptics,was admitted to the Bar once and has beenthrown out of them on numberless occasions.

Review

Looking into the bigquestions


The patient often feels their souland body separating. They leavetheir body, and look back:

I saw myself or what was left of melying there (on the operating table),and how busy the doctors andnurses were with me. You could saythat I had left my body like leavinga coat. The worst part of it was thatat this point I lost all connectionwith my body, something whichbothered me for quite some timeafterwards. After I had floated closeto the ceiling for a short time, I wassucked into a tunnel… It was blackand dark around me, somewhatfrightening, but this did not lastlong; at the end of the tunnel I saw aclear light towards which I trav-elled.

The author of this book is an expe-rienced anaesthetist. He takes onthree questions:

♦ What is the true nature ofdeath?

♦ What will I experience as Idie?

♦ Will some part of me survivemy death?

The quest has not long begun be-fore he must tackle the big issue: canthe soul exist apart from the body?My perception is that most peoplehave an inner conviction about thisand feel no need to prove that it can.The existence of the soul is a given. Amature and intelligent friend wasabout to explain to me why she, anurse and an exponent of scienceand reason, followed theRosicrucians. “We only ask you tomake just one simple assumption —that the soul is immortal.” It neveroccurred to her that this might betwo assumptions.

Dr Woerlee ponders the existenceof the soul in detail. People believein the soul because of convincingexperiences of many types. The bookbecomes very interesting as he con-siders these experiences and showshow they can be explained withoutthe need for a soul. You would expectan explanation of out-of-body experi-ences and near-death experiencesbut you also get auras (yes, people

really see them), paranormal sensesand diabolical nightmares.

Our dreams reflect what we are. Iam a barrister. Most nights, despitemy best endeavours to the contrary, Ihave long dreams about appearing inCourt or working hard on preparinga case. I wake up to find that I havedone all this work but there is no oneto pay me. A lawyer’s nightmare.

This book describes the night-mares that seem like a real experi-ence of being removed from the body,taken far away and molested by de-mons. No one was molested in anyway that is outside their culturalbackground. Christians used to con-front the devil and other Christiandemons; Muslims faced their owntormentors. Now aliens have mostlytaken over, because writers haveinvented them.

There is enough fascinating stuffin this book to make up for the some-what sludgy repetitive style. Don’tbe deterred, but I have warned you.Whenever something is to flow froma proposition, it will be stated even ifit this has already been done severaltimes before. I suppose the authorhas decided that extra verbiage is afair price for guaranteeing that thereader does not lose their way. Andperhaps something is lost in transla-tion between the publisher inUtrecht and us here. We find sen-tences such as: “Mild oxygen starva-tion is the mildest degree of oxygenstarvation.” Very well.

This reminded me of when I dis-covered that, in any field, the mostconfident expert is to be found in aLondon pub. I overheard two oldcodgers discussing how people die infires. Imagine this, pronounced withtotal authority in heavy cockney, likea combination of Justice MichaelKirby and Arthur Daley: “First yousmell smoke; then you get smoke in-halation; then you get acute smokeinhalation; then you die.”

Now if you’re thinking, “Fair goHadders, that last paragraph shouldhave been put in a footnote”, you willfeel likewise when you read thisbook. For example, when he is con-sidering the idea of predicting thefuture, he takes roulette, which has

a pre-set negative return unless your‘luck’ is better than probability. Peo-ple play for fun, but anyone whoseriously expects to come out aheadis implicitly claiming to be able topredict which numbers will come up.Interesting, but was it necessary tospend a few hundred words givingthe entire rules of roulette in detail?I find it hard to conceive how anyonesavvy enough to want to read thisbook, would not know those rules.

Perhaps this flows from the au-thor being in a profession wherecaution must prevail over agility. Hisown personality must play a parttoo. I see a man who would think itmore fun to drive a tractor than amotorbike — preferably a Volvo, ifthey make tractors*; I cannot believethey make motorbikes. If they playrugby in Utrecht he would be quitehappy to see a match decided bylumbering forwards with noEllamagic back-line movements. Asfor music, Mozart? Acceptable.Beethoven? Unreliable. Haydn? Thatis more like it…

Don’t get me wrong. I wish I hadread a book like this in my early 20s.It reveals much about how we per-ceive the world and what others areon about when they describe theirexperiences. I would never have sus-pected a correlation between reli-gious enlightenment and altitude.

And how to live after death? Trueeternity would entail an infiniterepetition of every conceivable expe-rience, Ho hum. But if we live onlyonce and for good we will have eter-nity through the memories that oth-ers will have of us. Compared to thecarrots and sticks of religious dogma,that is a better reason to treat peoplewell; as if the worst thing would beto do wrong to a good person, and todie before apologising.

* I once had the pleasure of seeing,at an Agricultural Field Day nearOrange, a tractor bearing the proudbadge Lamborghini. A fine thing ifyou want to plough your wheat pad-docks at 180km/h. Ed.

Review


Has Science Found God? VictorStenger; Prometheus 2003ISBN 1-59102-018-2

One of my all-time favourite songs isPositively Fourth Street by BobDylan. One of the features of thesong is that the words of the titlehave nothing to do with the lyrics ofthe song. I feel much the same aboutthe title of this book, which doesn’tsay much about scientists looking forGod and probably should be some-thing like:

Have young-earth creationists,pseudoscientists talking about intel-ligent design or deluded scientistsusing apologetics to hammer thesquare peg of science into the roundhole of the Bible proved the existenceof God, or have real scientists provednot only the non-existence of God butalso the impossibility of His exist-ence, or have people misunderstoodwhat Stephen Hawking wrote, andwhat the hell is Paul Davies onabout, he’s a physicist?

Put another way, I don’t thinkthat the book answers the questionposed in the title at all. But then, itis probably a question which cannever have a simple “yes” or “no”answer.

Having said that, ProfessorStenger does a good job of demolish-

ing the more usual supposedly scien-tific arguments for the existence ofGod. He spends a bit too much timeon the young-earth creationists be-cause what they do hardly fits anydefinition of “science”, but they arethe noisiest of the ilk and the oneswhich most people would be familiarwith. The proponents of “intelligentdesign” are a bit more slippery, butthey are exposed as just more crea-tionists with better disguises, relyingmostly on retreaded versions of theancient “Argument from Design” (ifsomething was designed, there musthave been a designer), the “Doctrineof First Cause” (if everything has acause, something uncaused musthave been the first thing to happen),and “The God of the Gaps” (if it can’tbe explained, God did it).

People practising apologetics aremuch more difficult to deal with.Instead of adopting the creationistargument that the Bible tells theliteral truth of what happened in thepast, an argument open to scientificrebuttal, the apologists accept thatscience is correct and then, througha combination of semantics, soph-istry and wishful thinking, try toexplain how the words of the Bibleaccord with reality. Because apolo-gists accept science, thecounterarguments descend to se-mantics and theology, although there

NeverendingQuest

Peter Bowditch is Vice President of NSWSkeptics and, although he’s not a ratbag, heowns a website called www.ratbags.com that isworth looking at.

Review

Looking for answers thatmight not exist


can be some blatant torturing of thefacts to make them fit the theory.Luckily for the skeptics, most of theapologists eventually end up usingone of the three arguments above orthe Anthropic Principle (the universeis like it is otherwise we would notexist).

There is a lot of useful informa-tion in this book. One example is thedescription of the overlap betweenentropy theory and informationtheory and how they work togetherto refute the old creationist argu-ment that evolution (either biologi-cal, geological or cosmological)breaks the second law of thermody-namics. Professor Stenger showshow the expansion of the universecan provide the increase in entropynecessary to (more than) compensatefor the increased order revealed inthe organisation of matter to formstars, Galapagos finches and us.Another example is his thought ex-periment to show how something cancome from nothing in the void with-out violating conservation of energy.

There are two things which con-cern me about this book, one majorand one minor (and really just apersonal irritant).

The major problem is that Profes-sor Stenger adopts some of the tech-niques which he rightly criticises hisopponents of using. In his discussionof the Anthropic Principle, he bringsup the idea of multiple universes. Herightly points out that according toHeisenberg’s Uncertainty Principlethere is a sphere with the diameterof the Planck length (10-35 metres)around every point in the universe,and we cannot know anything aboutwhat is inside that sphere. As ourown universe evolved from insidesuch a sphere it is possible that thisis still going on and we live in a uni-verse that is just one in a foam ofmillions or billions of other uni-verses, all of which are undetectablefrom and cannot interact with anyother than themselves. If the argu-ment against a deist god is that sucha god cannot possibly be measured ordetected, then the Multiverse hassimilar problems.

In another example, ProfessorStenger counters the First Causeargument by positing that time iszero-sum symmetrical across bothsides of the big bang. He says, cor-rectly, that with almost no excep-tions, all events and interactions inour universe could be run in reversewithout violating any physical laws.Some of the backward transactionsmay be very unlikely, but very im-probable is not impossible. A stickingpoint in arguing against First Causehas been that time has been de-scribed as starting at the big bang,with nothing that we can talk aboutinside our universe happening beforethat instant. This allows God to existoutside of time to kick-start time andour universe. Professor Stenger pro-poses the possibility of t=0 being amid-point, with a universe existingbefore the big bang where time ranin the opposite direction to ours.Beings in that universe would notsee it contracting towards a point (asthe oscillating universe theoristsbelieve) but would see themselves ina universe with an infinite futureand a limited past, just as we do.This would allow time to stretch toinfinity in both directions, so therewould be no “time before time” forGod to exist in.

Hmmm. Multiple universes whichwe cannot know anything about,events which might not happen evenonce in infinity and places wheremaybe things work differently, allsuggested to explain the unexplain-able. I seem to hear the phrase“Physics of the Gaps”.

The other personal matter whichannoys me is one of ProfessorStenger’s hobbyhorses. He reallydoesn’t like the idea that in medicineand the social sciences a relativelyhigh level of possible error is accept-able. He points out that, for initialresearch at least, a doctor or psy-chologist is prepared to say that theyhave found an effect if there is lessthan a 5% chance of being wrong,but in physics it might have to be athousandth of one percent or evenless. He seems to suggest that thismeans that medical research issomehow less rigorous than physics.

This is wrong on two counts. Thefirst is what the accountants callmateriality. Drug effects can bemeasured in time intervals fromfractions of a second up to months oryears. The variability in the resultscan be quite wide, unlike physicalreactions which may have little or novariability within the equationswhich describe them (much of thevariability can be an artefact of themeasuring instrument anyway).Medicine does not have equationsbased on universal constants.

The second count is that you canonly measure things to the accuracyof the measuring instrument and thegranularity of what is being meas-ured. Physicists may be able to intel-ligibly talk about things like thePlanck length and the charge on theelectron and measuring the cosmicbackground temperature to withinone twenty-millionth of a degreeKelvin, but human beings are notthat precise. Professor Stengershould have left this discussion outof this book.

So, would I recommend this book?Yes, with the reservations above.The question posed in the title is notanswered, but I didn’t expect it to beanswered. If, as I suspect, there areaspects of the universe which areinherently hidden from ever beingdiscovered then the question willnever be answered to everyone’ssatisfaction, but that doesn’t dimin-ish the intellectual fun of the search.


How Mumbo-Jumbo Conqueredthe World. A Short History of Mod-ern Delusions. Francis Wheen.Fourth Estate, London, 2004.

Many of us were brought up with theconcept that natural phenomenacould be explored by rational experi-ment and thus lead to the formula-tion of laws that are universallyvalid. Wheen rightly traces this ideaback to the Enlightenment philoso-phers of the 17th century, who thusgenerated two centuries of produc-tive rational argument. We are in-creasingly aware of how this rationaland scientific approach has beeninfiltrated and indeed overcome bythe return of superstition and illogi-cality; the wholesale adoption ofWheen’s Mumbo-Jumbo.

Wheen fixes on the year 1979 asthe turning point in this change inattitudes, for 1979 was the year thatboth the Ayatollah Khomeini andMargaret Thatcher acceded to power.

It is a little hard to understand thischoice of a date until one discoversthat a major part of this book dealswith how Thatcherite andReaganite economics replacedKeynesian ideas in the UK and USA.The two first and the two last chap-ters deal with this theme and ex-pand it, rather strangely dividedfrom the rest of the book. This em-phasis on economics is probably aresult of Wheen’s previous successfulstudy of Karl Marx.

In between these chapters, Wheendeals deftly with the topics most ofinterest to us skeptics. He discussesthe “post-modern, post-industrial”post-everything cultures that seek todeny reality and any basis for logicalargument. He describes how struc-turalist and deconstructionist argu-ments developed into the unintelligi-ble arguments of post-modernist“progressives”, thus generating asituation where no argument can berefuted because there are no rules,and in any case there is no compre-hensible meaning to the variousstatements. Obscurantism can thusreign unchallenged.

There is a public obsession withimpending catastrophe which isnourished by the lack of criticalthinking. Thus our old mateNostradamus is an extremely popu-lar authority on the future, as isastrology. We are told that 48 percent of Wall Street stockholders usehoroscopes when deciding to buy orsell. More worryingly, heads of stateare subject to irrational beliefs.President Reagan was influenced byastrological predictions when mak-ing decisions of state, and the Blairsmix some odd cult practices withmore orthodox religion. Wheen seesCherie Blair’s interest in alternativetherapies as having some influenceupon the acceptance of Indianayurvedic medicine into the UK Na-

tional Health Service. He also dis-cusses the continuing belief in ho-moeopathy, especially by members ofthe Royal Family, despite recentdemonstrations of its ineffectiveness.

The inability of the public to dis-tinguish between fact and fiction isillustrated by the use of The X-filesas an authority by students in es-says. This blurring of the boundarybetween observation and inventionis enthusiastically promoted by thepopular press. The latter deservedlygets a serve in relation to the reac-tion to the death of Princess Diana,an outpouring described by Wheenas “Diarrhoea”. He is not a kind manwith words.

What of the book as a whole? Ifind the structure a little odd, sincethe reader returns in the last twochapters to themes that open thebook. This is not too disturbing, but Ifeel that the overall argument couldbe better sequenced. The promise ofthe title is not quite fulfilled. The“How” is covered by a description ofthe manner by which the conquestoccurred, but the book does not de-scribe how, in a mechanistic sense, itwas done. I gather that Wheen be-lieves that mumbo-jumbo conquerssimply because people believe whatthey wish to believe, but he does notdevelop this argument. I believe thatit is largely correct; the environmentof beliefs and behaviours that we arebrought up in strongly influenceswhat we will later accept as rightand can adopt into our belief system.Occasionally, an overbearing earlyindoctrination produces a reaction tocontrary beliefs.

However, in addition to this, Ibelieve the post-modern andobscurantist movements have devel-oped as a jealous reaction to science.If one finds scientific notions difficultto understand, it is easy to take ref-uge in verbiage that has as an axiom

Delving into Delusion

Hugh Crone graduated with a PhD in Bio-chemistry from Cambridge. Having spent mostof his career with Australian defence science,reaching the position of Research LeaderNuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence andDisarmament, he has now retired.

Review


.

the idea that nothing has meaningand thus cannot be refuted. It alsohas elements of mental laziness. Noneed to puzzle out complex argu-ments your solutions to which willoften be proved wrong by experiment.Take a position that cannot be provedwrong.

In a way it is the engineer ratherthan the scientist who is the frontline defender of the rationalist posi-tion. For it is the products of the engi-neer that prove the correctness of thescience. If the aerodynamics arewrong, the plane crashes. Or if thesoftware has a glitch, the programwill not run. The faults in the aerody-namics or in the software are discov-erable and fixable; they do not showvariations in the reality of their exist-ence. Thus in my estimation the bestexhibit of Enlightenment success isthe well known photograph of I.KBrunel in front of the anchor chainsof the Great Eastern. You can hearhim say: “Here I am, steel real anddirt on my boots. Bugger you doubt-ers, I make it work!” Here is the prac-tical disciple of Bacon and his col-leagues.

Can Wheen write? Yes he can, andhow! I know of no book that I havefound written more clearly or enter-tainingly, despite the topics beingserious matters. He can destroy anutter with two words or a turn ofphrase, and is merciless in this execu-tion. The reader is torn between afeeling of gloom as the recital ofcrackpot thinking progresses andbetween great amusement as Wheendemolishes the absurdities. I recom-mend it to all skeptics and believeyou will enjoy it. We have a hard bat-tle ahead, and therefore must wel-come Wheen as a powerful ally.

Meanwhile, the world persists inits weird dual acceptance of two op-posed philosophies. The products ofrational scientific and technical de-velopment (television, word proces-sors, aerial transport) are happilyused to propagate irrational beliefs,without any perception of incompat-ibility. Descartes got it wrong. Heshould have written: “Credo ergosum”.

Crop Circles: Quest for Truth DVDand Video.115 minFrom the official web site:

Crop Circles: Quest for Truth is acompelling and provocative feature-length documentary full of never-before-seen footage and interviewswith leading Crop Circles research-ers and scientists, some of whomagreed to be on camera for the firsttime. The film is an in-depth exami-nation of prevail-ing theories aboutthe origin andnature of CropCircles and thepossible implica-tions for us andfor the future ofPlanet Earth.

Crop Circles:Quest for Truth, isa close look atthose who believethat strangethings indeed aregoing on in thecrop fields of Eng-land and otherpart of the world.They call themselves ‘researchers’but what is evident from watchingthem in action and hearing their far-fetched theories, is that these peopleare after only one sort of truth. Cropcircles are messages from aliens. (Orthe collective human spirit. Or theplanet Earth. Take your pick.) Any-thing is preferable to the simple ex-planation of pranksters. This ‘possi-bility’ is covered for only fiveminutes and only to give the believ-ers a chance to totally write it off. Idoubt if any of them have tried toactually make a crop circle for them-selves. But the effort they do putinto their research is truly impres-sive. I’m sure they’ll find their secretcoded message, whether it is there ornot.

This video reminded of my owneffort in the field of documentary

film making, The Mighty Mitta Mus-ter Water Divining Test. Most of whatI did on the day was to set the cam-era up in front of the diviners andjust let them talk. I could neverwrite a script that could match thegems the believers themselves comeup with to explain their world view.

Crop circles are, for the most part,quite beautiful and should be consid-ered true works of art. This docu-

mentary is full ofstunning aerialphotos of best ofthem. They arehowever also aform of vandall-ism, at least whenthey are createdwithout the per-mission of thefarmer. But thereis absolutely noevidence, nonewhatsoever, thatthey are the resultof anything otherthan direct hu-man activity.

It was not easyto find this docu-

mentary. I searched many video andDVD shops before I finally found itin a Blockbuster video library. If thisfilm was indeed a revelation aboutvisitations from space aliens or someother amazing phenomena, I’m sureit would found be in everyone’s col-lection. If you are interested in thetruth, I recommend you visitwww.circlemakers.org. Here you willlearn how crop circles are reallymade and how to make them your-self. There is even a downloadableradio report from the BBC in whichthe reporter joined the pranksters,helped make a crop circle and turnedup the next day only to hear the be-lievers declaring it as ‘real’.

Richard Saunders

What a Load of Crop CirclesReview


The Ghosts of England andBelgrave Hall

This video, produced by the Califor-nian based “International Societyfor Paranormal Research”, claims todocument the presence of ghosts ata number of sites in England. Theinvestigative team travels to thesesites, most of them historic build-ings, and sets out to identify andthen communicate with the spir-itual beings lurking within.

After a particular investigation iscomplete, the data gained from thespooks is compared to a local histo-rian’s account of the past inhabit-ants of the house. In all cases thehistorian’s version matched almostexactly the information theparanormalists had gleaned. Theyclaim that the team members haveno prior knowledge of this historicalinformation, however no references orsources are provided, so this is impos-sible to verify.

The antics involved in communi-cating with the ghosts were some-times comical but mostly just ridicu-lous. There was one instance where amale team member was almostchoked, allegedly by a highly aggres-sive ghost. The female investigator,who also happened to be a clairvoy-ant, often burst into tears during herspiritual liaisons and like the rest ofthe team, was always highly emotion-ally charged.

From a skeptical viewpoint, thesealleged ghostly encounters would bepretty much impossible to eitherprove or debunk because no objec-tively testable claims were ever putforward. The encounters that areclaimed are based entirely on theinvestigators’ personal experienceand emotional reactions, which couldjust as easily be explained in terms ofwell-known psychological phenomenaor straight out fakery.

The ‘remarkable’ agreement be-tween the paranormally obtaineddata and the site’s historical facts ishighly questionable to say the least.It seemed to me that the investiga-tors knew the details of the formerinhabitants of these buildings prior to‘communicating’ with their ghosts.This was especially the case, I be-lieve, in the “Jack the Ripper” epi-sode. I cannot prove this — but Idon’t have to. They are the peoplemaking this extraordinary super-natural claim and they need to pro-duce the evidence; something theyhave completely failed to do.

There was one testable claimmade, and that was the supposedcapturing on security video footage ofsomething vaguely resembling aghost. A fleeting white blob caused bya raindrop was a more rational de-scription, and to my surprise, thiswas also the conclusion arrived at bythe so-called paranormal investiga-tors.

On reflection, though, it should not

have been a surprise at all. I believethese people were too smart to fallinto this trap. If they were to claimthe image as a ghost, it would havebeen quickly and publicly debunkedby real scientists, thereby erodingtheir overall credibility. By onlymaking claims that are untestable,they avoided being exposed in thisway, and may in fact have even bol-stered their perceived credibility bydebunking the video image.

My suspicion is that these peopleare not simply deludedparanormalists. They appear to havea vested interest in ‘finding’ spiritualentities wherever they look for them.A quick look at their web site revealsthe charges you would be up for ifyou wanted them to investigateghostly inhabitants in the familyhome. Just to have a photo or videoanalysed will cost you US$125.00. A

full testing and evaluation of yourhouse by one of their clairvoyants willset you back US$1450.00. At thisprice, I would feel a little ripped off ifno spiritual entities were discovered!

Ghosts of England and BelgraveHall: a mildly entertaining videothat, if nothing else, shows that tosuccessfully dupe the gullible andcredulous, you need only to act like acomplete idiot without any associatedembarrassment or sense of humour!

John Sweatman

Ghostly or Ghastly?Review


LettersThree Sisters defamed

Colin Bembrick.Bathurst, NSW

In his article “Creationist Weds ThreeSisters” (24:1), Paul Blake soundly criti-cises (and rightly so) Dr Tasman Walkerfor his creationist “interpretation” of theThree Sisters. This tourist icon of theBlue Mountains apparently formed inNoah’s Flood!

The sub-title of Blakes’ article, “Evi-dence that creationists don’t know whichbed they are in”, should have been “Ge-ologists (from Queensland) don’t knowwhere the Three Sisters are —stratigraphically speaking that is”.Blake specifically says “The Three Sis-ters are made of sandstone that is partof the rock unit known as theHawkesbury Sandstone, ....” . This in-correct statement does not appear inWalker’s website article, where he(Walker) refers correctly (several times)to “... the overlying Hawkesbury Sand-stone...”.

The Three Sisters are in fact part ofthe Narrabeen Group sandstones whichstratigraphically underlie theHawkesbury Sandstone. Most of thewestern Blue Mountains spectacularscenery is formed in these sandstones— Grose Valley, Narrow Neck, HassansWalls, etc. The article on Walker ’swebsite has an excellent photo of theThree Sisters which clearly shows theyare formed by three distinct horizon-tally layered rock units. The topmostlayer (the Three Sisters themselves) isthe Banks Wall Sandstone, underlyingthis is a tree covered bench which is thesofter Mt York Claystone, while thelowermost layer of massive clifflines isthe Burra-Moko Head Sandstone.These are not “supposed to be” 230 mil-lion years old as Walker says, but are

well known early Triassic sediments.The Triassic Period ranges in age fromapproximately 210 to 250 million yearsold. They were deposited in fluvial sys-tems largely originating from the northand north-west of the centre of the Syd-ney Basin — quite a different prov-enance from the overlying HawkesburySandstone which is derived from thesouth-west.

By all means let’s demolish the pat-ently absurd “geology” of the creationistsat every opportunity, but don’t let ourenthusiasm for doing this lead to mis-stating the facts of well-known geology.

In conclusion I would recommend asa very good layman’s introduction to thegeology of the Blue Mountains theglossy colour booklet Layers of Time byJohn Pickett and Dave Alder. Publishedin 1997 by the Geological Survey ofNSW (Dept of Mineral Resources), thishas excellent colour photos and dia-grams. Make sure you get the accom-panying map (Katoomba geological, 1stEdition, 1997, at 1:50 000 scale) — origi-nally compiled by Ron Goldbery in 1969and revised by Bembrick in 1973. (Yes,this is a plug). Both of these were atone time on sale (for a miserly sum) atthe NPWS bookshop at Govetts Leap.

The Templeton Prize

John Warren Annandale NSW

For a long, long time people who thinkthat supernatural forces or beings haveplayed a part in the world have had todefend that belief against the encroach-ment of evidence from scientific inves-tigation. The question arises: is Sciencecompatible with Religion?

Many books have been written to ar-gue for compatibility and since 1973

those attempts have been financiallyencouraged by the John TempletonFoundation. Every year that Founda-tion gives a prize for progress in reli-gion and, in particular, for research atthe boundary between science and reli-gion. The prize is now worth $US1.4million and is the biggest prize in theworld given to an individual. It is de-liberately set above the level of theNobel Prize.

This year the prize was awarded toProfessor George Ellis, a South Africancosmologist and Quaker, for his book Onthe Moral Nature of the Universe: theol-ogy, cosmology and ethics written jointlywith Nancey Murphy, a philosopher andmember of the Church of Brethren.There is a touch of irony in the title since,in their book The Cheating of America,which is subtitled How Tax Avoidanceand Evasion by the Super Rich Are Cost-ing the Country Billions - and What YouCan Do About It, Charles Lewis and BillAllison list John Templeton as one whohas benefited from the tax haven of theCaribbean: not usually regarded as ei-ther moral or ethical.

Professor Charles Birch in 1990 andProfessor Paul Davies in 1995 havebeen two Australian prizewinners.There have been other well-known pro-fessional scientists including: FreemanJ Dyson, physicist; Arthur Peacocke,physical biochemist and Anglican priestand John C Polkinghorne, mathemati-cal physicist and Anglican priest.

The contributions by these scientistsare all very thoughtful. They have allbeen faced with the problem of marry-ing their spiritual feelings and theirpractical investigation of the materialworld, of rationalising faith-based be-lief in God with conflicting, evidence-based scientific knowledge, as havemany others. However, they are all com-mitted believers and consequently themajor weakness in their argument is


G

that it has had to be constructed so thatthat belief in God remains unshaken.

In science such an approach of ma-nipulating data to fit a predeterminedresult is regarded as unacceptably bad;it is not the way one elicits truth. SirJohn Templeton’s encouragement mighthelp to spread awareness of the pointof view of the prizewinners but it doesnothing to repair their argument.(See also Liz Armstrong’s piece on thesame topic in this issue. Ed)

A mission for Skeptics

Geoff SherringtonNorth Balwyn VIC.

Proposition one is that a work group insociety is paid in proportion to the suf-fering it relieves; and as a rider, thesooner the more acute pains are re-lieved, the higher the fee.

Proposition two is that the greedygravitate to the work structures of high-est reward, whether they have the req-uisite skills or not. As a by-product, thisexplains, say, the medical charlatan.

People have made income lists forvarious trades and professions and theybroadly fit with proposition one. OurJournal is filled each issue with exam-ples of proposition two.

The Australian Skeptics received amagnificent bequest which enabled usto move from being a minor, introspec-tive interest group to a force in societyinteracting with Universities and Mu-seums and the like and providing in-formation of benefit to those who chooseto accept it.

It seems to me that the work of theSkeptics, once unleashed and displayed,should be given more of a long lead.Absent an individual benefactor, wemight look to the social groups whohead the list of proposition one. (“Phy-sician/dentist/vet, heal thyself”).

With some thought and planning, Ithink that we could convince a grouplike the AMA to make a substantial do-nation to the work of the Skeptics. Thebenefit would be a weeding out of thefree-riders from proposition two. I amsure that there are many genuine pro-fessionals who detest the fringe elementbut lack a mechanism to rid them.

I have no troubled conscience aboutSkeptics acting as guardians of themoral good. Years of membership andreading has demonstrated a responsi-bility and a capacity by Skeptics to dothis well.

Why do we not discuss a plan alongthese lines?

Religions - are gods to blame?

Keith BirneyNgunnawal ACT

As always in any discussion (argument,brawl) over religion, people keep ondragging the idea of some kind of over-all creator (God or Gods) into it.

Surely there are two different hy-potheses here: one is the concept of somesort of creator and the other is thatsomehow people — special people withspecial insights, of course — can receiveinstructions direct from this entity andimpose those on others less well en-dowed.

The first hypothesis — the creatorone — is probably unverifiable andunfalsifiable and, therefore, not worththe effort. If anyone insists on foistingit on the rest of mankind, the onus ison them to provide third party evidenceof the event, not on others to do theimpossible and prove a negative.

Religions involve people. Those pro-moters of religions want the rest of usto believe, without any evidence, thatcertain events happened and, as a con-sequence of these unverifiable events,we must obey certain people — not Godor Gods — otherwise some disaster willoccur. Religions involve people not godsand those promoting them should pro-vide at least the same level of evidenceas we require of any other activity.

Whether or not people choose to be-lieve in certain religions is entirely theirown business. However, I do not see whythe community should facilitate the pro-motion of dubious and sometimes dan-gerous superstitions and myths by pro-viding tax-free benefits to these cultsand to assist them, through financialassistance to their schools, to inflicttheir myths upon future generations.

Until the religionists can providesome verifiable evidence for the safety

and efficacy of their therapies, I sug-gest that they be treated as any othergroup of scamsters.

More please

Geoff SherringtonNorth Balwyn VIC

Please, can we have more of the prom-ised articles on Humbug by the delight-ful Jef Clark.

In my opinion, he is correct to pointto the need for critical evaluation of top-ics of life beyond the occult, charlatansand anti-scientists. Scepticism really isa universal trait.

His short story on art appreciationreminds me of a close parallel, the tast-ing of wine. It is preposterous that peo-ple making money by filling others witha known poisonous chemical should re-sort to gushing poetry, when the real-ity is that they are rogues who shouldbe locked up for damage and huge coststo the social structure.

Bravo, Jef Clark. May your studentsprosper from your clear teachings.

Skeptical enough?

Tony JurgensenInnisfail QLD

I thought normal Skeptic practice in-cluded, among other things, examina-tion of different viewpoints and rejec-tion preferably refutation of thoseconsidered improbable, unreal, falseetc, before arriving at a conclusion.

Colin Keay [whose articles I usuallyfind interesting] wrote in his article inthe Skeptic (24:1) that he consideredterminating his subscriptions to Scien-tific American and [horror of horrors!]the Skeptic because they printed viewson Bjorn Lomborg’s book which werecontrary to his own.

Maybe the points made by Ian Lowe[22:4] and for that matter Chris Guest[22:2] have been refuted somewhereelse but I cannot recall any refutationsof their points in the Skeptic. Is Colinbeing sufficiently skeptical in his writ-ings?


For several years the NSW Skep-tics has been running a highlysuccessful series of quarterlyDinner Meetings at theChatswood Club, that regularlyattract 100 or more guests. Guestspeakers, usually selected fromamong our talented subscribers,inform and entertain a convivialaudience. They have covered top-ics as diverse as quackery, globalwarming, magic (always a bigdraw-card), plastic surgery,UFOs, and many more. Speakershave come from as far afield asthe UK and Tasmania.

Our 2004 series kicked off witha dazzling presentation by TheMystery Investigators, who dem-onstrated how scientific princi-ples can be mixed with show-bizpizzaz to make understandingscience fun.

An interesting story lies behindthe Mystery Investigators. Twomembers of our committee, RichardSaunders and Alynda, have put to-gether this new venture to take criti-cal thinking into science classroomsin a fun and fascinating way, by test-ing paranormal phenomena anddemonstrating the relevance of sci-ence to the real world.

The idea came to them while theyand other Skeptics were developingmaterial for the Great Water Divin-ing DVD. In order to test their ideas,they asked a Sydney high school ifthey could demonstrate to a scienceclass how to construct a proper dou-ble blind test. (The results are for allto see on the DVD .) Feedback from

the school suggested that the stu-dents found it a fun and interestingway to learn about double blind test-ing. During the filming they demon-strated other paranormal tricks andnoticed how receptive the studentswere to seeing scientific method ap-plied to paranormal claims.

This was followed up by demon-strations another school, where theydemonstrated several other tests ofparanormal claims, while keepingwithin the science curriculum. Forexample; applied kinesiology usinganatomy and levers, optical illusionsto show how easily the sense may befooled, and testing psychic claims byplaying the Heads and Tails game to

demonstrate statistics and statisti-cal errors among many others.

These experiences encouragedAlynda and Richard to set up aprofessional unit to take their mes-sage to a wider school audience.The NSW Education departmenthas a program called the Perform-ing Arts Unit, through which theywere able to audition to receiveauthorisation to take their showinto public schools.

This year they will be workingtowards building their repertoire ofsegments, as different age groupshave different areas of interest anddifferent curricula. They have re-ceived great feedback from theshows they have performed in thelast few months of visiting schoolsaround Sydney, and they are plan-ning to take the show on the road

to visit country area and interstatein the future.

We wish them every success andcongratulate them on their enter-prise. For more information aboutThe Mystery Investigators, visitwww.mysteryinvestigators.com

For the next Dinner meeting atthe Chatswood Club, on SaturdayJuly 24, our Special Guest will beLynne Kelly, author of The Skeptic’sGuide to the Paranormal (reviewedin this issue). Lynne will talk abouther book, and no doubt will havemuch to say about the perils faced byan author during a major book pro-motion as well as demonstrating herown impressive ‘psychic’ skills.

Please note it in your diaries now.

Notice

NSW Dinner Meetings

July Dinner MeetingChatswood Club, 11 Help St Chatswood

$35Reserve places at Australian Skeptics Inc; PO Box 268 Roseville NSW 2069

Ph: 02 9417 2071, Fax: 02 9417 7930, email: [email protected] shop at www.skeptics.com.au


Notices

The Great Skeptic CD2

We all knew it had to come to an endsometime, and now that day is uponus — the Great Skeptic CD, that won-derful compilation of all issues of theSkeptic from 1981 to 2000 (plusmuch more) has ceased to be. Wehave sold out. (No, not our princi-ples — the disc.)

Don’t despair if you missed out,however, because the good newsis that the Great Skeptic CD 2 isNOW on sale (detils on the website). It contains not only all thetext of the previous best seller, butanother three years of the Skep-tic, plus even more extra works,and it has been made even moreuser-friendly. (So friendly, in fact,that it will almost certainly wagits tail and lick your face.)

Ah, we hear you cry, but do youexpect me, having forked out $55to buy CD 1, to again cough up a

similar sum to get this new and im-proved version, even if you are includ-ing a set of steak knives?

No you don’t — if you don’t alreadyhave one it will still cost $55, but ifyou were one of those adventurous in-dividuals who got in on the ground

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Australian Skeptics appeals to rational individuals of common sense, intelligence and with a social conscience, who areinterested in actively pursuing the truth about claims of paranormal or pseudo-scientific phenomena and other irrational popularbeliefs, from a responsible and scientific perspective. For more than twenty years it has established a national network of like-minded groups which, by investigation and the application of critical thinking, aims to help free our society of the results of fearbred by irrational thinking.

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Documents

the Skeptic - Volume 4 Number 2...the Skeptic Vol 24, No 2 Winter 2004 ISSN 0726-9897 Editor Barry Williams Contributing Editors Tim Mendham Steve Roberts Technology Consultant Richard