Table of Contents:
Reader Roger Wells:
I always considered the LA Times to be a pretty reasonable paper. I am beginning to change my mind. In the issue reached by the following URL, there is a featured article that gives serious consideration to the "science" behind prayer, reiki and other long distance healing studies. One quote from the article:
The study of distant healing was once the realm of eccentric scientists, but researchers at such prominent institutions as the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Chestnut Hill, Mass., Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina and the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco are involved in the field. And the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has spent $2.2 million on studies of distant healing and intercessory prayer since 2000 — a small fraction of the agency's annual budget, which totaled $117 million in 2004.
I must admit that I am unfamiliar with any of the "prominent institutions." To cap it all, the same issue of the paper has a breathless article on the monster in Lake Tahoe, at www.latimes.com/features/outdoors/la-os-tessie3may03,0,683237.story?coll=la-home-outdoors
The recent "bashful bride" episode in which Jennifer Wilbanks of Georgia had reported that she'd been kidnapped, resulted in the expected rush of psychics to solve the case. And, as usual, the police — almost by duty — responded to these flakes by seriously considering the possibility that they might receive supernatural assistance; the drawing shown here was offered by the woo-woo crowd, and was circulated.
I'm sure you know that Jennifer was just joshing. She had fled her scheduled wedding on her own, and there were no kidnappers to find. What I want to point out here is that this is a very generic drawing, fitting about 30% of the population, and taking into account that the gender and general description had been provided by Jennifer. Had there been any real kidnappers, it's almost inescapable that there would be correspondences pointed out: the right number of eyes, shape of chin, etc., etc. We were just lucky with this case of "psychic power" at work.
Reader Mark Badman of Grand Falls, New Brunswick, Canada, reports:
Now, I am sure that this only applies to the Bible but surely now other groups can demand to have their "sanitized" holy books treated in the same manner.
It boggles the mind that because of one intelligent effort to improve infectious disease control by simply removing a book, we tax payers will now have to pay for books to be given away and for the minimum of monthly disinfections just for the sake of political correctness.
Why the religiously inclined cannot bring their own books to hospital with them, just as most bring their own reading material, or why religious groups cannot supply these books to those who can't afford them, is beyond me.
When I first read this story I was quite proud of our local institution for making a sensible stand and then to read it in your weekly column did make my chest swell a little. Unfortunately I have to report that it was all for naught. Bunkum is alive and well and prospering in New Brunswick.
Keep up the good work. Your weekly columns are truly a "candle in the dark."Just wanted to drop you a line about your April 29th commentary on the removal of Bibles from hospitals in New Brunswick to lessen the chances of infection being passed from one patient to another. Well, the uproar from the religious community has made the hospital back down a notch, if not step back two paces. In today's Telegraph Journal it was reported that the hospital will allow Bibles in the rooms but they will be sealed in disinfected plastic bags and if the patient opens the bag they will be invited to take the Bible home with them once they are discharged. Also, if the Bible is not removed from the plastic then the encased book will be removed and disinfected after each change of patient, or once per month.
Reader Conrad Askland is in doubt....
The What The Bleep website at www.whatthebleep.com links to my little forum website at www.Religious-Science.com The movie is a fraud and Dr. Emoto is a fraud. I released my paper to all the Church of Religious Science ministers three weeks ago and things have gotten very weird. I have people coming to my house telling me to shut up, and people calling my minister asking her to shut me up.
I have been attending the Church of Religious Science for 17 years and hold a full time position as music director and composer for my church. I am just blown away by all this. The lies continue. As I delve more and more into the truth of what's being presented, I am slowly coming to the realization that perhaps I myself have been a member of a cult all these years and haven't known it.
I can only imagine what you have been subject to for your views. I am just a little nobody and things have gotten way out of hand in response to my report.
One note: On Wednesday meditation the minister had a long talk with me to let me know that she does not support New Age teachings and that our church is definitely not "New Age." She then proceeded to spray the room with the essence of the Archangel Gabrielle to bring Unity. To this a member said, "I can smell spirits when they visit, I thought the odor was a visiting spirit." And they had a discussion on the different odor properties of various spirits.
I want my brain back.
Dr. Emoto is speaking at several Religious Science churches, WhatTheBleep.com links to primarily Religious Science websites, and the false info of Emoto and What The Bleep are being taught from the pulpits of Religious Science churches on a nationwide basis.
Get on line, Conrad. It's a long one....
From Norway, reader Ragnar L. Børsheim writes to tell us that according to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) of 04.05.2005:
New German research on the use of acupuncture for headache patients concluded that the placement of the needles on the body was of no importance whatsoever. One Klaus Linde at the University of Technology in Munich conducted the experiment. The silly old Chinese notion of "meridians" and energy-lines and spots in the body, are again falsified by medical experiment.
This experiment should maybe be repeated on people with visible medical problems like eczema, psoriases etc, for which it would be very evident if the treatment actually works. Then they could conclude that it is not just the placement of the needles on the body that are of no importance, but that poking people with needles is no proper way to treat any illness, whatsoever. Poking ill people with dozens of needles is otherwise something that should only be associated with the deranged occasional sadist in horror films.
Basically this research only shows that physical (skin) contact has some kind of effect on humans (oh, surprise!), at least a placebo effect. But how do you "objectively" measure the "degree" of headache, and how do you determine the effect of the treatment?
Hey, nonsense applied anywhere is still nonsense.
FORMAL PREPARATION OF MYTHOLOGY
Too good to be true. As if in response to my need for really stupid examples of nuttery, UK reader Justin Wells sends me to www.rexresearch.com/agro/biodynam.htm, where we find "Biodynamic Activated Ferments," an article by Robert Nelson describing how to prepare exotic (?) materials to assure effective compost and manure heaps. Folks, you just can't make this up! An excerpt:
Activated Oak Bark ~
Obtain the skull of any domestic animal. The skull must be new and undamaged. Remove the brain through the occipital foramen of the cranium with a small stick, then immediately fill the skull with pulverized oak bark. Close the opening with a piece of bone, and bury the skull in a wet place during winter. The skull can be buried in a leaky barrel filled with compost. The activated oak bark will be ready by spring. It is to be diluted by homeopathic potentization and applied as a spray to the soil, compost pile or manure heap. The activated oak bark influences the calcium process in plants.
Activated Dandelion ~
Dandelion ferment affects the relationships of silicic acid and potassium in the plant organism. Collect young dandelion flowers, dry them, and fill the mesentery [intestine bag] of an ox with them. Keep this in a cool, dry place covered with peat moss until October, then bury it in the soil during winter. By Easter it will be ready for use in the compost heap. The dandelion ferment is applied at a rate of one or two grams in 10-20- ml water per 2 cubic meters of compost.
Chamomile Preparation ~
Collect the flowers in May or June, dry them carefully, and store them in glass jars until autumn. Then obtain a large, fresh piece of cow intestine, cut it into 12-inch sections, and stuff them with the flowers to form sausages. Bury them in good soil during the winter, and dig them up in the spring. Use one or two grams of ferment per three cubic meters of compost.
Activated Yarrow ~
Obtain the fresh bladder from a stag and fill it with yarrow, then dew the hole. Hang the bladder in the sunlight during the summer. It must be protected from birds by a cloth-covered wooden frame. During the autumn and winter it must be buried in the earth until spring. Keep the finished preparation in the bladder, and use one or two grams to enliven manure or compost heaps by sulfur processes.
Stinging Nettle Preparation ~
Collect as many young nettles as you can, let them fade a little, then bury them in the ground. Isolate the plants from the soil with a layer of peat moss above and below. They must remain buried for one winter and summer. They are to be added in small amounts to the compost pile, Activated nettles affect silica processes in their sphere of influence. The preparation of these activated ferments may seem bizarre, yet they are very potent and virtually magical in effect when concocted correctly and applied in homeopathic dilution as described elsewhere in this article.
If you're not already too overwhelmed by this pseudoscientific sorcery, or you've run out of oxen, cows, or stags, read their appended explanation of the essential magical manipulation of this magic juice that's required, the "potentization":
Biodynamic farmers apply the activated ferments in extremely dilute solutions, called "homeopathic potencies," to stimulate plant growth and the fermentation of compost. Homeopathic preparations work by virtue of the specific "vital essence" of a substance, liberated from the material form by the process of "potentization" (dilution and vibration). The quintessence permeates the compost, soil and plants like astral perfume, and affects plant growth with subtle yet powerful forces of the cosmos.
Homeopathic formulas are prepared by grinding the substance into fine powder; one part of this powder is mixed by grinding with nine parts of lactose (milk sugar), thus forming a "1x potency." The grinding process is called "trituration." By another method of preparation, the substance is diluted with nine parts of water or alcohol. The solution must be stirred vigorously, and/or stimulated with select frequencies by a signal generator. This treatment with vibrations is called "succussion."
Homeopathic remedies are prepared in successive dilutions on a decimal scale. A 1:9 dilution is a 1x potency; 1:100 is 2x; 1:1000 is 3x, and so on. Each time the next higher potency is prepared, one part of the preceding potency is diluted with 9 parts of water or lactose. Some triturated powders can be prepared in a lapidary tumbler, using steel balls to do the grinding. A blender also can be used to prepare both triturations and successions.
From a chemical standpoint, the quantity of the triturated substance in a homeopathic dose of 6x or higher is negligible, being scarcely a trace, yet the effects are clearly pronounced. Homeopathic theory posits that the mechanical energy applied by trituration and succussion distends the molecules of the original substance, thus altering the fundamental nature and releasing its essential energy. Homeopathic Potentization ~
So now we have a new phenomenon — "distended molecules" — surely a surprise to real scientists! My problem, I'm sure you can see, is to come up with more equally silly examples of flummery. But fear not; I'm already searching....!
Brenda Dunne is the Laboratory Manager of the "Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research" (PEAR) lab, where masses of data have been turned out in the last 25 years — none of it replicated, of course — by dedicated experimenters with a novel approach. They dump all data into one huge record, thus obtaining a tiny margin of what Any scraps of positive data that might have gotten in by error or design, would skew the total data. This is a bizarre and novel approach to such research, indeed. When Drs. Ray Hyman and James Alcock considered looking into the PEAR procedures, they were welcomed by Program Director Dr. Robert Jahn, who told them they could perform any tests at the lab that they wished. Hyman and Alcock declined the offer when Ms. Dunne informed them that if they did so, their data would be subject to anonymity — not labeled as theirs — and mixed in with all the rest. As well, they would be forbidden to publish it. This seemed — and still seems — like a strange and limiting element, thus their loss of interest in using the lab.
I recently wrote to Ms. Dunne:
(You will forgive me for continuing to use the term, "paranormal" since I do not — yet — share your conviction concerning the matter. However, I am more than willing to be shown my error in that respect.)
I am asking you if you are interested in the possibility of taking the JREF prize. Of course, if academic restrictions, or any other impediments, exist that would bar you from taking the prize personally or as a group, I will suggest — as I always do — that you might wish to win the prize and donate it to any charity or worthwhile cause of your choosing.
Please read our standard offer at www.randi.org/research/index.html. As I'm sure you know, we are always willing to establish — with your help — a proper protocol that would test the existence of any paranormal event, ability, or power of any kind — your choice. Your extensive lab experience in designing and carrying out scientific tests of paranormal claims would be most useful in facilitating the implementation of a set of tests, and you doubtless already have on hand an appropriate protocol that could be put into action.
As you will find when reading the rules concerning the JREF challenge, we do not accept prior accounts of success, and require original tests under a protocol arrived at with the co-operation of all concerned, and with the input of experienced and capable scientists such as yourself. This requirement reflects the fact that this is an offer of one million dollars, not merely a casual inquiry, and we therefore feel that only original experiments should qualify in this regard.
I am sure that the PEAR lab will not choose to respond with the tired canards which amateurs use: "There is no prize money," "Randi is the sole judge," and "The JREF cheats" are commonly heard. Reference to www.randi.org/research/faq.html and www.randi.org/research/faq.html#randi should assuage any such doubts.
I look forward to hearing back from you, and I stand ready to answer any and all questions you may have. Thank you for reading and considering this message.I've recently been forwarded several copies of a statement from you that says you have "an immense body of empirical evidence" obtained "under controlled laboratory conditions" to prove the existence of certain paranormal events. That's very interesting, indeed. You have also suggested that this evidence is "sufficiently robust that the term 'paranormal' is now inappropriate." That being so, it would appear that the PEAR is prepared to establish this in a set of tests that would try for the JREF million-dollar prize.
I promptly received this response:
For over a quarter of a century the PEAR laboratory has confined its research to anomalies arising in human/machine interactions that involve random physical processes, and to quantification of information acquisition in remote perception experiments. In the course of those studies we have accumulated huge databases that indicate that such anomalies can be demonstrated, evaluated, and correlated under controlled laboratory conditions. The observed effects are very small, however, and manifest as statistical deviations from chance behavior only over the course of extensive repetitions that require major investments of time, effort, and financial resources. Given the costs associated with such investigations, we simply cannot afford to divert our program agenda to performing ad hoc demonstrations designed to persuade skeptics of the validity of our findings. Our research data are available in the form of numerous archival publications, downloadable from our website http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ for all who care to examine them, from which they may make their own interpretations and conclusions.
Although we must decline your offer, we still recall your visit to our laboratory many years ago and our invitation for you to return at any time still stands.The statement to which you refer was a private communication; it was not addressed to you or to any broader audience. Notwithstanding, we thank you for your invitation but, after reviewing your website, we must respectfully decline. As we explained to the individual whose letter initiated your expression of interest, we in no way regard our PEAR research program as directed toward proof of the existence of "paranormal" phenomena, nor do we engage in any "scientific tests of paranormal claims."
I answered Ms. Dunne briefly:
I fully understand...
Yes, I fully understand Ms. Dunne, believe me. She writes that her work is "in no way...directed toward proof of the existence of 'paranormal' phenomena" — which was not the direction of my inquiry, at all. And, she wrote, "nor do we engage in any 'scientific tests of paranormal claims,'" though it seems to me that both "human/machine interactions that involve random physical processes" and "information acquisition in remote perception experiments" are certainly paranormal events, and would qualify for the JREF prize. Ah, but she "simply cannot afford to divert [her] program agenda to performing ad hoc demonstrations designed to persuade skeptics of the validity of [her] findings." Ms. Dunne is more perceptive than that. And smarter, too. She has chosen the escape so many others have, to be too busy to win a million dollars.... And, would that investment of PEAR time and facilities not pay off handsomely for the lab? Note, too, that Ms. Dunne diverts the intent of the investigation to appear as if she would have to "persuade" us of something or other; that's obviously not true, though I assure you that paying out the JREF million-dollar prize would most certainly persuade us that her data is Earth-shaking and important! But perhaps I am not sensitive enough to her inability to "afford" to meet our challenge. What a pity....
So, the PEAR lab — via Ms. Brenda Dunne — joins Sylvia Browne, Uri Geller, James Van Praagh, John Edward, Alison Dubois, Gary Schwartz, and the rest of the crowd, under that apparently massive rock....
Reader Mike McCarron alerts us to a Grade A, Number one, Certified Prime, example of quackery at its very best, based on the preposterous "research" of a Dr. Masaru Emoto — see www.randi.org/jr/052303.html:
At www.mybiopro.ca/howitworks.aspx?ID=juan you'll see yet another example of pure quackery that I won't get further into except to provide these pseudoscientific howlers:
BIOPRO is based on 3 core principles:
Harmonization/Neutralization through Quantum Physics....
Transference through Water....
Resonance in Cells....BIOPRO Products are based on years of independent, groundbreaking research. The core premise driving the development of BIOPRO Products is the clinically substantiated fact that our bodies are in a constant state of vibration through our cells' own oscillations. Exterior stressors and electromagnetic pollution such as EMF have the ability to put our bodies in a state of disease or unease. Through a groundbreaking, proprietary EMF-Harmonization Process, BIOPRO technology assists our body in placing it back into its natural state of harmony, allowing it to function optimally and most effectively. While negative, destructive EMF pollution is cumulative, BIOPRO's preventative, proactive technology begin [sic] its positive effects immediately.
If you have the taste for nonsense, other "core principles" are available to you at their site. Just more crap....
A reader, John Gasaway, comments on my recent statement:
At least Catholicism tells everyone that they believe wine becomes human blood and bread becomes human flesh — if you doubt that, look it up under "transubstantiation."
Mr. Gasaway says:
I don't expect that you will make a correction, since you are bored with the subject (understandably so). However, please do not continue to print falsehoods about Catholic doctrine.This is incorrect. Catholic doctrine teaches that the Eucharist is the body of Christ as He is now in heaven in his glorified state, not the body of Christ before his resurrection. Therefore, you should not spread the false belief that Catholics are eating human flesh. Shame on you. Disbelief should not lead you to misstate the beliefs of others.
Mr. Gasaway, I have a habit of researching my statements from the original sources. You apparently cling to certain preferred fantasies and interpretations, but I ask you, please do not continue to circulate falsehoods about Catholic doctrine. From The Catholic Encyclopedia, at www.newadvent.org/cathen/05573a.htm#3:
Hence the bread must have become the Body of Christ, i.e. the former must have been converted into the latter. The words of Institution were at the same time the words of Transubstantiation. Indeed the actual manner in which the absence of the bread and the presence of the Body of Christ is effected, is not read into the words of Institution but strictly and exegetically deduced from them. The Calvinists, therefore, are perfectly right when they reject the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation as a fiction, with no foundation in Scripture. For had Christ intended to assert the coexistence of His Body with the Substance of the bread, He would have expressed a simple identity between hoc and corpus by means of the copula est, but would have resorted to some such expression as: "This bread contains my body", or, "In this bread is my Body." Had He desired to constitute bread the sacramental receptacle of His Body, He would have had to state this expressly, for neither from the nature of the case nor according to common parlance can a piece of bread be made to signify the receptacle of a human body. On the other hand, the synecdoche is plain in the case of the Chalice: "This is my blood", i.e. the contents of the Chalice are my blood, and hence no longer wine.The total conversion of the substance of bread is expressed clearly in the words of institution: "This is my body". These words form, not a theoretical, but a practical proposition, whose essence consists in this, that the objective identity between subject and predicate is effected and verified only after the words have all been uttered... When, therefore, He Who is All Truth and All Power said of the bread: "This is my body", the bread became, through the utterance of these words, the Body of Christ; consequently, on the completion of the sentence the substance of bread was no longer present, but the Body of Christ under the outward appearance of bread.
And from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transubstantiation:
In the twentieth century, some modernist Roman Catholic theologians sought to interpret transubstantiation as only a change of meaning and not a change of substance. This was again rejected by Pope Paul VI in 1965. His 1968 "Credo of the People of God", reiterated that any theological explanation of the doctrine must hold to the two-fold claim that after consecration (1) Christ's body and blood are really present and (2) bread and wine are really absent, and this presence and absence is real and not merely something in the mind of the believer, a reiteration of conciliar dogma of the 12th Century.
And on the Consubstantiation idea:
In England in the late 14th century, there was a political and religious movement known as Lollardy. Among much broader goals, the Lollards affirmed a form of consubstantiation — that the Eucharist remained physically bread and wine, while becoming spiritually the body and blood of Christ. Lollardy was effectively ended with the execution of John Badby for heresy by burning at the stake.Consubstantiation is a theory which (like the competing theory of transubstantiation, with which it is often contrasted) attempts to describe the nature of the Christian Eucharist in terms of philosophical metaphysics. It holds that during the sacrament the substance (a technical philosophical term which refers to the fundamental reality of a thing) of the body and blood of Christ are present alongside the substance of the bread and wine, which persists. This view is often incorrectly attributed to the Lutheran church, which, although the writings of both Martin Luther and of the church itself often refer to the body and blood of Christ as "in, with, and under" the bread and wine, refuses to describe the Eucharist in terms of any philosophical theory....
This man Badby was convicted in 1410 P.E. by the Worcester diocesan court for his denial of transubstantiation, having sensibly maintained that
"...if every host consecrated at the altar were the Lord's body, then there be 20,000 Gods in England."
A further court in London condemned him to be burned to death. It is said that the Prince of Wales offered Mr. Badby both his life and a pension if he would recant, but he refused.... Heed the fate of John Badby, Mr. Gasaway! You appear to have more than one fantasy going for you. You wrote, "I don't expect that you will make a correction...." Au contraire, sir. I will publish this entire exchange.
Mr. Gasaway, reading this, hastened to advise me:
Again, thank you for the opportunity to clarify my position. I enjoy your website, and I believe we are all better off when we understand each other's arguments. If I am mistaken, then I will certainly benefit from a clearer understanding of my faith. Likewise, if your understanding of what the Church teaches is incomplete, then you will gain some knowledge.
If you publish our exchange, I hope you will do me the courtesy of including my clarification that I was not arguing that the Church doesn't teach transubstantiation as I am not fond of "extra crispy." I was arguing that it teaches that the body and blood of the risen Christ is not just "human" flesh and blood.I appreciate your time and I welcome the dialog. I'm not sure, but you may have misunderstood me as trying to argue that the Catholic Church doesn't teach the Eucharist becomes the body of Christ "truly, really, and substantially" (i.e. transubstantiation). What I was arguing is that the Church does not teach that the change is that of Jesus in his human body before his resurrection but that of a completely risen Christ as He is now in heaven. The Church does not view the Eucharist as "human flesh and blood." Your quoted material does not specify that the Church is speaking of human flesh and blood, only that it is the body and blood of Christ. For example, you quote newadvent as writing "Hence the bread must have become the Body of Christ." While you may not see a difference between "human" and "Christ," the Church certainly does.
I will leave it to readers: what the Catholic Encyclopedia states does not appear, to me, to express the subtle differences perceived by Mr. Gasaway. To my amateur examination — and I admit that I do not profess to have the developed skill to see what the hidden meaning behind such straightforward words might be — the statement that after the incantations, "Christ's body and blood are really present and bread and wine are really absent" means, well, that Christ's body and blood are really present and bread and wine are really absent. Where did I go wrong?
Reader Dr. Joseph E. Pesce, from the Department of Physics & Astronomy at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, shares my dismay at the wild use of legitimate scientific terms and theories to validate pseudoscience and quackery. The nutcases freely toss in "quarks," "supernova," "vibrations," and "quantum" as if they were words with which they are familiar. In regard to the actual processes at work in celestial physics, Dr. Pesce says:
These objects are vital to us, and the processes so elegant and beautiful, in ways that the charlatans can't possibly imagine when they use "catch phrases" to make themselves sound scientific.
Thank you for an appropriate closing word, sir.
