I'm usually fond of obsessive old kooks -- flat earthers, cryptozoologists, ghost-hunters and the like. There's often something admirably Mulder-esque, or at least Lone-Gunmen-esque, about these determined Cassandras. You want to avoid getting cornered by them at parties or after church, of course, but in small doses in the proper setting -- such as listening to their calls on Art Bell's radio show while driving late at night -- they can be a source of delight. The world would be a duller place without them and most of them are mostly harmless.
Unfortunately, some of them are not. Harmless. Some of them manage, somehow, to be taken seriously by a larger audience, and their unreal ideas become the basis for decisions in reality, which never works out well. In other cases, the kooks' elaborate theories turn out to be inextricably interwoven with a reflexive, and very dangerous, bigotry. In either instance -- or in the worst-case scenario when both of these things are true -- these people cease to be merely colorful and amusing. They end up hurting people.
At first glance, Marshall Hall seems like he might be a mostly harmless crank.* The retired schoolteacher from Georgia seems to have self-published more than a dozen titles on a variety of topics, all of which he seems to have desperate, passionate opinions about. Like many cranks of the fundamentalist variety, he speaks with an earnest certainty that expresses itself in a fondness for exclamation points, rampant capitalization and sweeping statements about the revealed truth of God. Ask someone like Hall about the weather and he's liable to respond, "False prophets deceive many with their UNSCRIPTURAL claims of only a 40-percent chance of rain!"
He is especially passionate about another such DECEPTION! that he feels particularly called to address -- what he calls the "Copernican Counterfeit" (it's not just inaccurate, it's a deliberate, malevolent lie). Hence the URL for his Web site, "www.fixedearth.com," where he states:
The Earth is not rotating, nor is it going around the sun. The universe is not one ten-trillionth the size we are told. Today's cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as "science." The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie.
A few commenters to the previous post have noted that there is a sense in which you could argue, due to relative motion and various perspectives, and if you squint a bit, that it's possible to create a geocentric model that's not utter hogwash. All very interesting and well and good, but not what Hall is claiming. He is claiming that the Earth neither revolves nor rotates, that it does not move at all, but sits fixed and still at the center of a very small universe.
Others have wondered if this isn't all some sort of Landover Baptist-style prank. I wondered this too. So did Danny Faulkner of the creationist organization Answers in Genesis,** who in his review of Hall's book argues that it is not:
Hall’s ... reasoning is so erroneous at many points that one has to question whether the book was actually intended as some sort of weird parody or satire. Private communications with a few people who have met Hall suggest that this is not the case. It appears that Hall simply failed to understand many of the things that he wrote about.
This seems, as I said, like something merely amusingly kooky -- the sort of thing that would make you turn up the volume on Art Bell so you could sit back and savor it's high-grade nuttiness.
Unfortunately, three things prevent me from finding any of this amusing: 1) Hall's pervasive anti-Semitism; 2) a legislative emphasis that seeks to make his goofball ideas the standard curriculum for American schools; and 3) Hall's demonstrated ability to have his theories respectfully heard, approved of and disseminated by actual officials who have the power to legislate No. 1 and No. 2 above.
Let's take these in order. In big red letters at the top of Hall's Web site, he warns against "Kabbala-based Big Bangism!" He uses the word "Kabbalist" a lot in a sweeping way that seems to mean both "Jewish" and "occult." He uses the word "Pharisee" as a synonym for this term as well, and not in the usual sense of "pharisaical" meaning sanctimonious or hypocritical. In his mind "Pharisee" seems to signify "Christ-killer."
Hall believes "Copernican and Darwinian" science is false, so he concludes it must be a deliberate Satanic deception. Who could be carrying out this grand conspiracy of deception as Satan's foot soldiers? Twenty years ago Hall might have said the Communists, but since they're not around anymore, he figures it must be the Jews. His main point is not "Jews are evil," this is just something he assumes is well-accepted.
The idea of an ancient, global, Jewish conspiracy behind all the evils of the world is a common thread among the more dangerous sorts of cranks (see for example). The claim that such a conspiracy exists is nothing unique to Hall who, again, seems to accept its existence as a given. His novel claim is that this occult conspiracy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This is what he is so excited about in the memo sent out in Rep. Ben Bridges' name: he wants to take the internationalist Jewish/Kabbalist/Christ-killer/Satanist conspiracy to court, citing Kitzmiller v. Dover as precedent.
This makes Hall's anti-Semitism impossible to minimize or dismiss as only tangential to his larger aim of passing anti-evolution legislation. It is not a separate thing tacked onto his primary agenda, it is a pervasive presence throughout that agenda.
Remember that Hall came to our attention because his wife, Bonnie Hall, is the campaign manager for Republican Georgia State House Rep. Ben Bridges. Set aside, for the moment, all of the "fixed earth" nonsense and just consider this: Bridges' campaign manager is married to someone promoting virulently anti-Semitic ideas on the Web and through his self-published books. This isn't some intern or lower-tier staffer, and it's not just a matter of some salty language directed toward the consequences of some church teaching. Bridges' campaign manager is married to an anti-Semite.
That's a big problem.
(Hall promotes his ideas through something called the "Fair Education Foundation." I wonder who might be on the board of that nonprofit.)
Neither Bridges nor his campaign manager seems to think Marshall Hall is loony. That's also a big problem, because none of what he argues makes any sense unless you accept his premise about an evil Jewish conspiracy.
Even if Hall only had a 30-second conversation with his wife's boss, that conspiracy would have been part of his quick pitch for the legislative strategy he sought Bridges' permission to promote under auspices of the legislator's office in a memo under Bridges' own name. That pitch, roughly, is this: The courts have said that teaching creationism is illegal because it's religious. Well, that means teaching evolution should be illegal too because it's based on Jewish religious teaching from the Kabbala.
Bridges' response to this was not to say, "Wait, what? You're claiming that evolutionism is Jewish?" Instead, his response was apparently that this sounded like a good legislative/legal strategy and that if Hall wanted to recommend this approach to Republican lawmakers in other states he should feel free to do so using Bridges' name.
Here is the memo. It was written by Marshall Hall, but begins, "MEMO FROM: Representative Ben Bridges" and uses the first-person throughout, as in the memo's first paragraph:
As Georgia's 5th [sic] term State Representative from the 10th District, I, like others, have made several attempts to challenge the evolution monopoly in the schools. These attempts have all been in vain for basically the same reason you and I and all others have encountered. ... The Courts have ruled that "creation science" (& "ID") has a religious agenda and thus is in violation of the "Establishment Clause" of the U.S. Constitution. "Evolution science," on the other hand, has been viewed by the Courts as "secular science" with no religious agenda and therefore has been deemed lawful under the Constitution.
Texas State Representative Warren Chisum received this memo from Bridges and passed it along to colleagues. Later Chisum "expressed chagrin that he didn't vet the material more carefully."
My guess is that Chisum stopped reading after that first paragraph, assuming he knew what followed. After all, it sounds like just another example of the generic "secularism is sectarian" argument popular ever since the publication of Richard John Neuhaus' The Naked Public Square. (Neuhaus knows a thing or two about such nakedness, since his argument reveals him to be wearing the emperor's new clothes -- but that's a subject for a separate post.) So he passed the memo along to his fellow Texas Republicans who, like him, could be assumed to agree with Bridges anti-evolution agenda.
Had Chisum continued reading, however, the goofy, geocentric and anti-Semitic nature of the Hall/Bridges memo would have quickly become apparent.
"All of that can now be changed!" Hall writes, launching into the hard-sell sales pitch that constitutes the remainder of the memo. You can read it yourself, but here's a summary of the remaining paragraphs:
1. My Web site explains the "Rabbinic ... Pharisee Religion ... Kabbala" roots of evolutionism, so go to my Web site and have a look.
2. Here's the link to part of my Web site, www.fixedearth.com, which you really need to go read.
3. Here's the link to another part of my Web site, www.fixedearth.com.
4. Here's yet another link to another part of my Web site, www.fixedearth.com.
5. Please join me in this effort, described at my Web site, www.fixedearth.com.
Read the memo. It's that transparent and that aggressive. The anti-Semitism and geocentric nuttiness are explicit and they eclipse (sorry) whatever else the memo may have to say.
This was sent by a Republican state representative in Georgia. It was passed along by another Republican state representative in Texas. None of the dozens of other Republican officials -- legislators in "Texas, California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio" -- who received this memo have seen fit to denounce its bigotry or to challenge its insanity.
My own state representative is a Pennsylvania Republican, I intend to ask him about this.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
* I'm using "kook" and "crank" here a bit more interchangeably than I probably should for two words that have, to me, different sets of connotations. "Kook" seems to me to indicate an eccentricity with a lighter touch. A "crank," on the other hand, seems angrier. Generally speaking, whether in AM talk radio or the blogosphere, I prefer kooks to cranks. Hall seems like a crank to me, both because he is relentlessly cranky, and because he endlessly cranks out more and more of this stuff.
** The problem here, of course, is that the reasoning of Answers in Genesis "is so erroneous at many points" that one has to question whether that group is "actually intended as some sort of weird parody or satire." In this particular instance, however, on the very specific question of whether or not Hall is for real, I'm willing to trust their conclusion. Hall's lengthy response to their book review is here. Reading it tends to buttress the conclusion that, in this instance, AinG is the more rational party.
So, does he also believe it's not vacuum up there above the atmosphere, but water? I am constantly amused to realize that Genesis says "God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse Sky."
Of course I'm using the Jewish Publication Society translation. The King James version says "And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven."
So, according to Hall, are the astronauts up there *swimming*?
Love, Kriz
Posted by: Kriz | Feb 18, 2007 at 07:10 PM
Fred, I live in Texas and am originally from Chisum's area. I think you are a little too easy on him. He is a well-known kook (although is described in newspapers as a "staunch conservative"). He does not believe in evolution and he apologized, not for the content of either the memo or the website, but only for "offending anyone". I've met him and I do not trust him.
Posted by: Cynthia | Feb 18, 2007 at 07:11 PM
*shudder I guess I was wrong about that site being a Landover-esque parody. *shudder* And our politicians trust it. Lovely.
Posted by: Bugmaster | Feb 18, 2007 at 08:00 PM
Calling all lawyers:
What if the theory of evolution really was the Kabalistic interpretation of some Rabbinic creation myth, BUT it was also indisputably the best scientific model to describe what we are and how we got here? Could Kitzmiller v. Dover be used to outlaw the teaching of the theory of evolution in that case?
I think the answer must be 'no'. After all, Genesis tells us that we live on Earth, which contains both dry land and water and is inhabited by a wide variety of plants and animals, but I can't imagine the Supreme Court would object to any of that being taught in schools. Still, law seems to inhabit a universe all its own, so maybe I'm missing something, and it really might make sense to base a lawsuit on that.
Posted by: Beth | Feb 18, 2007 at 09:31 PM
I suppose, in theory, if there were some wacko Jewish conspiracy running things, that would indeed violate the Establishment clause all the way out to Sheol.
I can't imagine he'll find any legitimate defendants, though.
Posted by: Mabus | Feb 18, 2007 at 09:35 PM
Well, I'm not sure the "Elders of Zion" (as described by the Birchers et al.) were interested in pushing a *religious* conspiracy so much as a tribalist/economic one. As appalling as that would be, it wouldn't be un-Constitutional. Otherwise, we'd be able to go after Halliburton.
Posted by: hapax | Feb 18, 2007 at 09:46 PM
The young-Earth creationists actually have an interpretation for that "waters above the firmament" language; they say it means that, before the Flood, the earth was surrounded by a shell of water vapor that blocked cosmic rays, conveniently causing radiocarbon dates from before the Flood to be wrong. I kid you not.
Posted by: Matt McIrvin | Feb 18, 2007 at 09:53 PM
"Reading it tends to buttress the conclusion that, in this instance, AinG is the more rational party."
Man, reading that sentence gives me the chills, if not the willies or, dare I say it, the screaming heebie-jeebies.
Posted by: Joshua | Feb 18, 2007 at 10:05 PM
To add to Matt McIrvin's description of a creation "science" theory, apparently that shell of water vapor blocking cosmic rays is the explanation for why Methuselah, et al., lived so long, and why ages went down so precipitously after the flood.
Fred:
Please, please, please, please, please describe Neuhaus' (metaphorical) nakedness in a future post. I've wanted a good response to people of his ilk, but I don't think I have quite the time or patience at this point in my life to actually stomach reading any of his propaganda disguised as academic argument. The only things of his that I can bring myself to read are his pitiful and laughable attempts to answer Stanley Hauerwas's arguments about pacifism (which reveal that Neuhaus simply doesn't understand a word Hauerwas says).
Posted by: Indecisive | Feb 18, 2007 at 10:19 PM
What if the theory of evolution really was the Kabalistic interpretation of some Rabbinic creation myth, BUT it was also indisputably the best scientific model to describe what we are and how we got here? Could Kitzmiller v. Dover be used to outlaw the teaching of the theory of evolution in that case?
Not actually a lawyer yet (still studying), but I think it would depend on the particulars. How closely it fit the Kabalistic interpretation and how closely it fit the science. I think a big part of what settled things in Dover was the general weakness of the science, and little it hung together without the central unifying religious premise.
Evolution's not likely to fit that standard, as it makes pefect sense to people whose Kabalistic knowledge consists of knowing that there's some sort of book involved. And it's rather hard to argue something's a religious belief when it doesn't have the specific God-shaped hole of intelligent design's designer. Concievably, I could imagine sufficiently specific religious texts that would require a rewrite of a few science texts, if you allow for the insane conspiracy manipulating everyone into including that as a worship tool. I can't imagine a plausible way to make the case he's describing for scrapping evolution altogether, though, let alone a reasonable one. It hangs together without deities (or super-powerful aliens), and it's hard to get something ruled religious in a US court without deities, unless you postulate super-powerful aliens serving the same roles (like Scientology).
Posted by: ako | Feb 18, 2007 at 10:51 PM
ako wrote:
it's hard to get something ruled religious in a US court without deities, unless you postulate super-powerful aliens serving the same roles (like Scientology)
Or, in the case of groups like American Atheists, the group gets a tax break from the IRS for being a religion.
Though I don't know if AA've been involved in any ligtigation as such. (Murray v. Curlett doesn't count. I think.)
Posted by: PepperjackCandy | Feb 18, 2007 at 11:50 PM
A few apposite quotes from fixedearth.com -- I won't try to reproduce the classically kooky use of italics and underlining:
So, to whom do we owe the evolution-based concepts we learn from kindergarten through Ph.D. programs? How did we arrive at our textbook Kabbalic “science” which assures us that we live in a universe which Kabbalist Carl Sagan described this way: “Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”1 (Sagan reveals the sad conclusion for those who follow the Kabbala-based Pharisee nihilism in another quote: “I would be delighted if there were a life after death….”)
(The link he provides for this quote is broken, BTW, but even when corrected it gives no such quotation. The closest I can find is: "If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote.... Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy."
(And I bet Dr. Sagan, were he still living, would be startled to find out he was a Kabbalist.)
How did Sagan—by all accounts, a perpetually stoned “exobiologist”-- (a “scientist” with no data whatsoever) become the programmer of NASA’s computers and, in league with NASA Administrator Kabbalist Daniel Goldin, launch the ongoing “Origins Program” to “search for our cosmic roots” in space (funded with many Billions of tax dollars, of course)? As the ramrod for “SETI” (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and the TV Series “Cosmos” (pure Kabbalist evolutionary cosmology), Professor Sagan of Cornell worked closely with Harvard’s leading Kabbalist Geologist/Biologist, Steven Jay Gould. Together, they kept the evolution drum-beat going in academia and the media. Hollywood mogul, Kabbalist Steven Spielberg’s movie blockbuster “ET” (Extra Terrestrial) cleverly carried the new evolution focus on extraterrestrial evolutionism into theaters and homes and Disney World’s “Magic Kingdom” managed by Kabbalist Michael Eisner in the same period….
One can go, and one must go, much further with the facts about Hollywood’s unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit reinforcement of evolutionism, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial. Kabblist-friendly Neil Gabler in his book, An Empire of Our Own, spells out in the clearest terms the fact that Hollywood—from its beginning until today, and from top to bottom—has promoted the ethics and values of the Talmud/Kabbala-based religion of the ancestors of the studio owners, while simultaneously and progressively stifling and ridiculing Bible-based ethics and values of the Christian religion. Nowhere is this ever-escalating bias toward a Kabbalic Universe mind-set more prevalent than in movies about evolved aliens from other worlds. Evolution-related dialog is also commonplace even in westerns, war movies, and a variety of other themes, as millions sensitive to this issue can attest.
Naahh, nothing anti-Semitic there.
Why was Kabbalist physicist Albert Einstein voted Time Magazine’s “Man of the 20th Century”? How did his “relativity theory” become textbook “science” when its premise states that even the apparent motion of what is known to be stationary is equated with the motion of that which is known to move?! This “thought experiment” of Einstein’s inspired one Englishman to sum up the concept of relativity with a tongue-in-cheek cartoon of a train-station master saying: “Has Manchester passed through here yet?” (paraphrased)
And what of Kabbalist physicist Arno Penzias’ Nobel Prize winning alleged discovery (with Wilson) in 1965 of “background radiation” from the alleged Big Bang? Is he one of the key members of a veritable priesthood of Jewish theoretical scientists who have erected this Big Bang capstone of the Kabbala-based Evolution Concept over the entrance to every school, university, and library in the world? Is this “secular science”?? Is it even “science”?! The evidence says it a special kind of “science” controlled by the Pharisee religion’s devotees who draw their inspiration from the mystic formulas of their oft-labeled “occult holy book”, the Kabbala.
What kind of “Jewish physics” is it that has garnered 26% of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to all the Physicists in the world when the total Jewish population is only ¼ of 1 percent of the world’s population?3 That means that a Jewish physicist is 104 times as likely to win a Nobel Prize in Physics as any other physicist. When other prestigious international awards in physics are counted in (e.g., the Wolf Prize; the Max Planck Medaille; the Dirac Medal; the Dannie Heineman Prize; the Enrico Fermi award; the Atoms for Peace Award) the percentage of Jewish physicists who win is over 43%. This makes a Jewish physicist 172 times as likely to win as any other physicist. Interesting, isn’t it?
Also, one must wonder if there is some incredibly rare merging of “coincidence” at work in this steady progression of “scientific” discoveries which just happen to have succeeded in transferring the evolution-based Kabbalic “creation scenario” of the Pharisee Religion into textbook “science”. Is there no evidence of a highly motivated Cabal apparent in this erection of a Cabalist world view which has deceived the world by its masquerade as secular theoretical science?
Posted by: Cactus Wren | Feb 19, 2007 at 01:29 AM
Wait... is he saying that "Kabbala" is the name of a book?
Wait... is he saying that Christianity and Kabbalism are incompatible, despite the fact that Jesus frequently spoke on Kabbalistic doctrine and in a Kabbalistic way?
Wait... is he saying that Stephen Spielberg was a mover and shaker in Kabbalism at 36, when men are not traditionally allowed to study Kabbala (I'm using his spelling) until 35? And also that he did so unmarried?
This crazy theory just doesn't hold together, I'm afraid.
Posted by: A. Kennedy | Feb 19, 2007 at 02:11 AM
The problem with kooks and the corridors of power is best expressed by my all-time favorite XKCD cartoon:
http://www.xkcd.com/c154.html
Posted by: Noah Brand | Feb 19, 2007 at 02:12 AM
What if the theory of evolution really was the Kabalistic interpretation of some Rabbinic creation myth, BUT it was also indisputably the best scientific model...
I believe Ako and Beth are correct. If the Kabala version were eerily identical to the scientific version and/or the scientific theory happened to be named for some Kabbalistic prophet who originated it, it might be subject to challenge. But as long as the teaching of the theory relied on science and didn't include the accompanying mysticism, I suspect it would (or at least should) survive the challenge.
After all, Pythagoras had him some truly wacky beliefs, but nobody seems to find the Pythagorean theorum objectionable. Heck, I had to work out the proof for it in school; I think I'd have preferred being able to say "because the gods have willed it to be so".
Posted by: Raka | Feb 19, 2007 at 03:54 AM
And yes, knowing that Marshall is the frenzied set of fingers behind fixedearth.com goes a very long way towards towards proving Bridges guilty of most the things I so fervently protested we couldn't assume him guilty of. At this point, the only way he can cling to any scraps of credibility or deniability is if he gave a much stronger verbal disavowal than the AJC bothered to quote and he's got an unequivocal press release making some strong and specific disclaimers coming out by 2/20 at the absolute latest.
And no, I don't really expect either of those to be the case.
Posted by: Raka | Feb 19, 2007 at 04:04 AM
but...but...*swings a weight on a string*
This is high school physics! It's demonstrated at MSI, Fermi, the United nations...
Oh...
Silly me.
Zionist-globalist conspiracy involving Focualt's pendulum. Can't use it to demonstrate common sense.
My bad.
Posted by: rowandoll | Feb 19, 2007 at 07:31 AM
I would apologize for my fellow Georgians, but there is something to be said for having your insane bigots out on the front porch where they're easy to keep an eye on.
Posted by: Jonathan Peterson | Feb 19, 2007 at 08:59 AM
I have two brothers. Between them, they've received diagnoses of GAD, schizophrenia and psychosis.
They talk exactly this way. There is no such thing as a miscommunications in their world -- only deliberate deception. They seem to misunderstand a lot of key facts in the world around them, and they build theories on these misunderstood facts like large, elaborate houses of cards -- they obviously have some overdeveloped ability to make connections, but an underdeveloped understanding of reality. They seem to live in their own reality, really. Add onto this an overdeveloped sense of importance, a feeling that they are part of some chosen few who understand the real workings of the world and must help others come around to their understanding of it.
I would bet that most people who put out these sorts of publications have something going on in that head of theirs -- other than just plain incorrect facts, that is.
Posted by: Amanda | Feb 19, 2007 at 10:28 AM
He also seems to think the English word "cabal" (from the Middle French "cabale" according to my Funk and Wagnalls, although I bet it's actually from Latin) is somehow associated with the Hebrew word "kabbalah." Or should I be charitable and assume this usage was either disingenuous or facetious? Do we know if this guy has a sense of humor? I read the entire original Left Behind series (yes, pity me) for the Reader's Advisory program at the library where I work (my advice to readers: don't) and I can attest that LaHaye and Jenkins in fact have no sense of humor. Despite many lame attempts at humor, I only laughed at the quality of the writing. Which, come to think of it, means I was laughing constantly...
Posted by: Blackadder | Feb 19, 2007 at 10:44 AM
I thought 'cabal' was derived from 'kabbalah'?
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cabbala
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cabal
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8715(197801%2F03)91%3A359%3C582%3AAAFE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5
Posted by: Ray | Feb 19, 2007 at 10:54 AM
Perhaps this was said in the comments in the previous post, I'm not sure (frankly there were just too many and I didn't have time to read through them all, got a thesis to write here), but if it has my apologies. The very first question that comes to my mind when I read about Absurd Nutbar Boy (aka Marshall Hall) is this: this guy taught high school?! Where? In what department? Holy hell people, what kind of education system are you people running down there? I mean, here in Canada even the gym teachers need to have at least a bachelor's degree in kiniseology.
It isn't just ANB's fantastic and rather terrifying views on science that worry me. Just the man's thoroughly inept handling of the English language should be a cause for concern in a teacher. I personally make a rule of paying little or no attention to any literate adult person who doesn't even have a basic command of the grammatical rules of his/her native language.
It seems to me that concern over the influence of ANB should have begun not when his wife was hired as campaign manager to a congressman, but when he was hired as a teacher. Come to think of it, wasn't Kent Hovind also a high school teacher too (another creationist conspiracy theory nut, though his videos are old enough now that the bits about the communist news network [CNN] are just plain funny)?
Posted by: Colin Toffelmire | Feb 19, 2007 at 11:37 AM
Hmmm. I've never seen that theory before. I don't quite follow the logic of how or why "kabbalah" morphed into "cabal" in the sixteenth century, and I still suspect these are actually homonyms of different origins. However, Hall clearly has some scholarly opinion on his side, so I'll duly wear a Bozo Button for speaking too soon.
Posted by: Blackadder | Feb 19, 2007 at 11:39 AM
Or, in the case of groups like American Atheists, the group gets a tax break from the IRS for being a religion.
Even actual religions don't get tax breaks from the IRS *for being religions*. They get them for being not-for-profit organizations.
Posted by: Jen R | Feb 19, 2007 at 12:09 PM
I could use some help here...
Fred wrote of "dozens of others...who received the memo" - as my state rep is an Illinois republican, I'd sure like to know if he was among them. But I can't seem to locate Fred's quote in any of the linked stories, let alone any mention of who those other officials might be. What am I missing? (I'm sure it's obvious but I just can't see it.)
Otherwise, it always freaks me out what some people will say and (apparently) believe about what it means to follow Jesus. Yikes! I just don't understand Christians who are determined to be scared of/feel the need to fight science.
Posted by: rev | Feb 19, 2007 at 01:06 PM
Anti-Semitic aggressive paranoia and a general state of fervent delusion I can handle. The factual errors and blatant inventions sprinkled throughout his site like sand grains in the Sahara are fine by me.
But for the love of all that is right and holy, someone needs to forcibly disable the font and style selectors in that man's copy of FrontPage.
Posted by: Raka | Feb 19, 2007 at 01:09 PM
Concievably, I could imagine sufficiently specific religious texts that would require a rewrite of a few science texts, if you allow for the insane conspiracy manipulating everyone into including that as a worship tool. I can't imagine a plausible way to make the case he's describing for scrapping evolution altogether, though, let alone a reasonable one.
Thanks, ako, I was afraid of that. So to buy into the memo (never mind the website), you'd have to not only believe that evolution mirrors 'Kabbalistic' beliefs, but that there's an actual conspiracy manipulating the former to fit the latter. And not only that, but the entire theory is a 'Kabbalistic' invention. Arguments like the one Matt McIrvin described sound positively sane by comparison. At least the people who believe that stuff accept that carbon dating actually exists, that it's reasonably accurate (at least for post-flood dating), and that it appears to support 'old earth' claims. The "shell of water vapor" stuff is still pretty loony, but it's a localized looniness. These guys are still willing to accept the general validity of science when it doesn't conflict with their specific beliefs. That seems a lot saner than rejecting modern physics and biology altogether.
cactus wren,
And I bet Dr. Sagan, were he still living, would be startled to find out he was a Kabbalist.
Except that it would probably be obvious to him, as it is to me, that in this context, "Kabbalist" is just code for "Jewish".
...the percentage of Jewish physicists who win [prestigious international awards in physics] is over 43%. This makes a Jewish physicist 172 times as likely to win as any other physicist. Interesting, isn’t it?
Damn, this would make a great rebuttal to people like William Donahue, if only it were parody: "You think the fact that the number of Jews in media means there's a Jewish conspiracy controlling it? Well Jews are also overrepresented in physics. Do you think that's a Jewish conspiracy too?" Scary to think there are people who would respond, "Yes, of course."
Thanks for the excerpt, CW. I've been curious about what the website really had to say, but haven't had the stomach to check it out myself.
Posted by: Beth | Feb 19, 2007 at 01:13 PM
Twenty years ago Hall might have said the Communists, but since they're not around anymore, he figures it must be the Jews.
I think it's the other way around: now that the anti-Semites no longer have the code word "Communists" to hide behind, they have to be much more explicit with their rantings. There was always an assumption that Communists were invariably Jews, and any Communist who wasn't a Jew had been brainwashed into it by an evil Jew somewhere down the line.
Hmmm. I've never seen that theory before. I don't quite follow the logic of how or why "kabbalah" morphed into "cabal" in the sixteenth century, and I still suspect these are actually homonyms of different origins.
Actually, it makes perfect sense to me if "cabal" was originally applied to Jews and all of those ongoing Jewish conspiracies to steal Gentile children and use their blood to make matzoh (aka the "blood libel") and then later spread out to be a more general word applied to all conspiratorial groups.
Of course, not all "sounds right" etymology is actually correct, as shown by the claims that the word "picnic" came from lynchings of African-Americans in the South.
Posted by: Mnemosyne | Feb 19, 2007 at 01:22 PM
Actually, it makes perfect sense to me if "cabal" was originally applied to Jews and all of those ongoing Jewish conspiracies to steal Gentile children and use their blood to make matzoh (aka the "blood libel") and then later spread out to be a more general word applied to all conspiratorial groups.
Er, it's clear that I think the above "conspiracy" is bullshit, right?
Posted by: Mnemosyne | Feb 19, 2007 at 01:25 PM
Amanda: They seem to misunderstand a lot of key facts in the world around them, and they build theories on these misunderstood facts like large, elaborate houses of cards -- they obviously have some overdeveloped ability to make connections, but an underdeveloped understanding of reality.
Maybe you can help me with a question. I have the impression that clinically insane people often produce systems that hang together logically without self-contradiction. In other words, except for embracing scientifically false premises, they can show just as much intellectual rigor as theologians. Does that fit your experience? Do you know of any hard evidence on the subject?
Posted by: hf | Feb 19, 2007 at 03:51 PM
I feel confident that all the theories I've seen involving Satanist blood sacrifice derive from anti-semitic conspiracy theories of the Middle Ages, generally by way of one Abbe Barruel. I've also decided that all forms of insanity tend towards anti-semitism unless they start out explicitly pro-Jewish (and sometimes even then).
Posted by: hf | Feb 19, 2007 at 03:54 PM
American Atheists ... gets a tax break from the IRS for being a religion.
American Atheists is a nonprofit 501c3 Educational organization. It is not classified as a religion by the IRS.
Posted by: Dean Booth | Feb 19, 2007 at 04:17 PM
Great post as usual, Fred.
That this sort of lunacy would get any political play at all is disturbing enough. What are we supposed to do if it starts getting lots? Is there some way we can insulate science and public education from these people, so that we don't have to keep expending energy fighting them off just to defend the most basic and simple scientific truths? Does living in a democracy have to mean constantly fighting against the takeover of our educational system by psychotics?
(I have a lengthy post about this on my own blog, in case anyone's interested.)
Posted by: ellis | Feb 19, 2007 at 04:26 PM
Great post as usual, Fred.
That this sort of lunacy would get any political play at all is disturbing enough. What are we supposed to do if it starts getting lots? Is there some way we can insulate science and public education from these people, so that we don't have to keep expending energy fighting them off just to defend the most basic and simple scientific truths? Does living in a democracy have to mean constantly fighting against the takeover of our educational system by psychotics?
(I have a lengthy post about this on my own blog, in case anyone's interested.)
Posted by: ellis | Feb 19, 2007 at 04:27 PM
The first testimony on www.fixedearth.com/testimonies.htm is from Martin Gwynne. I googled him and found this:
"An alleged pedophile who abducted, beat and starved two children 20 years ago should be extradited from Ireland and prosecuted, the children's father said yesterday." http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bring-home-abuser-to-face-the-law-father/2005/09/24/1126982270003.html
Crazy is as crazy does.
Posted by: Dean Booth | Feb 19, 2007 at 04:43 PM
Mnemosyne, I just can't think of a lot of Jewish loan words that entered either Latin or Medieval European languages. I'm also not sure that gentile knowledge of the term "Kabbalah" was so widespread in the Middle Ages that a European word would likely have been coined based on it. I guess it could have happened, but I'm still going to look into a possible independent Latin origin for "cabal."
Blackadder (still wearing Bozo Button)
Posted by: Blackadder | Feb 19, 2007 at 05:15 PM
The Internet seems to be in consensus that "cabal" comes from the Latin "cabala", which is either the root of or derived from the Hebrew "Kabala". See, for example, Wiktionary or Merriam-Webster.
Posted by: wintermute | Feb 19, 2007 at 06:02 PM
the sort of thing that would make you turn up the volume on Art Bell so you could sit back and savor it's high-grade nuttiness
And what a sad day it is that it's no longer, primarily, Art Bell's show, but Coast to Coast AM, hosted by George "you never know" Noory.
Posted by: jw | Feb 19, 2007 at 06:53 PM
Maybe you can help me with a question. I have the impression that clinically insane people often produce systems that hang together logically without self-contradiction. In other words, except for embracing scientifically false premises, they can show just as much intellectual rigor as theologians. Does that fit your experience? Do you know of any hard evidence on the subject?
Oh yes. Like I said, large and elaborate houses of cards. Their theories all fit together by a strangely sense-making logic -- if you accept their wacky premises. My brothers particularly are very obviously intelligent -- they just live in their own reality, really.
Posted by: Amanda | Feb 19, 2007 at 08:07 PM
There was an interview with a creationist geophysicist in new scientist a wile back who was reasonably well repected by other sane scientists becuase he came up with a very solid geophysical model that required him ignoring large aspects of his creationist beliefs - he however didn't mind because he believed that God had for some inexplicable reason increased the strength of the nuclear forces. He was apparently currently working on a model that could explain the sort of catastrophic geophysics that would have occured for certain aspects of his creationist beliefs to be physically possible.
Posted by: R. Mildred | Feb 19, 2007 at 10:13 PM
hf: I have the impression that clinically insane people often produce systems that hang together logically without self-contradiction. In other words, except for embracing scientifically false premises, they can show just as much intellectual rigor as theologians. Does that fit your experience? Do you know of any hard evidence on the subject?
I'm not a clinical psychologist, but I sat through a bunch of classes on it in undergrad. What you're talking about here is schizophrenia. People who are depressed or manic, or GAD or whatever don't necessarily make anything up. Delusion is a hallmark of schizo (or one of its milder forms - shizotypal personality, schizoid). As to how internally consistant they are, that'd depend on how high functioning the shizo person is. In its advanced forms you get quite a bunch of cognitive impairment, so wouldn't do well at high scholarship (see the movie "a beautiful mind").
Keep in mind, too, schizo doesn't mean "you now believe A B and C that are false premises and work rationally from there." It seems to be a weakening ability to separate internal thoughts from reality. That leads to a lot of seemingly strange things treated as absolutely true, hallucinations, hearing voices, etc.
hf: I've also decided that all forms of insanity tend towards anti-semitism unless they start out explicitly pro-Jewish (and sometimes even then).
Huh?!?! I take it you are not referring to clinical mental disorders here, but more to simplistic political extremism as it tends to play out in the Western world?
Believe me, there are plenty of depressed central Chinese peasants without an anti-semitic bone in their body.
Posted by: Alexela | Feb 19, 2007 at 10:48 PM
hf: all forms of insanity
Alexela: depressed central Chinese peasants
Hate to break it to you, Alexela, but insanity != depression. In the words of one of my teachers, depression is the flu of the psyche. Insanity is the death of the psyche.
Posted by: bulbul | Feb 19, 2007 at 11:23 PM
As for cabal and kabbalah, it's all right, settle down. Bulbul is here with a quote from the OED:
And this is what you get when you follow the cross-reference to CABBALA:
So cabal was borrowed from French. The French borrowed it from medieval Latin which got it from Hebrew.
Posted by: bulbul | Feb 19, 2007 at 11:44 PM
bulbul: Hate to break it to you, Alexela, but insanity != depression. In the words of one of my teachers, depression is the flu of the psyche. Insanity is the death of the psyche.
Your teacher is apparently lucky enough never to have had a major depressive episode. Garden variety blues are the common cold of the psyche, true enough, but clinical depression is its mononuclesis from hell (that's 'glandular fever' for the Brits).
Strangely enough, "insane" is a legal term. Psychologists don't reall use it. Mental disorders come is so many varieties and nuances, from an overactive fear of dogs, to being way too distractable, right the way through to travelling thousands of miles and having no idea how you got there. Some just come and go, others arrive to stay, others can be mitigated with effort... But anything that encompases all that plus panic attacks, and the odd disowning of a body part, just seems a bit much for that one word, "insane," to very meaningfully cover.
Posted by: Alexela | Feb 20, 2007 at 12:27 AM
Your teacher is apparently lucky enough never to have had a major depressive episode.
He did, several times in fact. And no matter how major, depression stil can't be compared to psychosis/schizofrenia/paranoid disorders and other host of mental disorders usually summed up under the heading of "insane".
Strangely enough, "insane" is a legal term. Psychologists don't reall use it.
Absolutely. HF shouldn't have used it all or at least s/he (where the hell is my notebook?) should have specified its meaning.
Posted by: bulbul | Feb 20, 2007 at 10:30 AM
Many, if not most, cryptozoologists and ghost hunters are looking for scientifically sound evidence of weird stuff and its causes.
Flat earthers, creationists, geocentricists, etc. start with a pet theory, which they will continue to believe no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. You could take a flat earther up in a space ship and go around the earth with him pointing out continents along the way, and when you set him back down on the ground he would convince himself that somehow you had faked the whole thing.
Posted by: McJulie | Feb 20, 2007 at 10:44 AM
Signs that your political career is over:
Sign #17: When the cryptozoologists are described as being more rational than you are.
Posted by: Bugmaster | Feb 20, 2007 at 12:48 PM
As a biology major, I was fascinated to learn that "panspermia" by aliens has been adopted as the preferred theory for the origin of life. Why didn't I get the memo?
It's truly depressing when other states make Florida's legislature look like intellectuals.
Posted by: Fraser | Feb 20, 2007 at 02:57 PM
Bulbul: He did, several times in fact. And no matter how major, depression stil can't be compared to psychosis/schizofrenia/paranoid disorders and other host of mental disorders usually summed up under the heading of "insane".
Then what we have here is an object lesson in the hazzards of generalizing from a single case. Depression is "better" than a lot of other disorders in that left alone it does tend to go away after a few months or years... although each episode you have predisposes you to more episodes. BUT, as with all of these things, there are ranges of sytmptoms. Someone with borderline schizo could lead a relatively normal, if quirky life, but someone in the grips of a severe depression may not be able to get out of bed. Plus depression is associated with substance abuse, suicide, etc. I can make a pretty good case that I'd rather have maybe a touch of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, than bad recurring depressions.
Posted by: Alexela | Feb 20, 2007 at 04:09 PM
In any case, I believe that Alexala's original point was that not all insanity tends towards anti-semitism, simply because insanity doesn't limit itself to the western hemisphere. If the clinically depressed peasant in China isn't a good enough example, then posit a schizophrenic the next province over. It's a big world we're living in.
(I have Animaniacs on the brain again. "It's a great big universe and we're all really puny, we're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Roonie, it's big and black and inky, and we're all small and dinky, it's a BIG univERSE and we're NOT!")
Posted by: Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little | Feb 20, 2007 at 04:41 PM