#371: Ralph Gordon Stair

A.k.a. Brother Stair

Brother Stair is a completely crazy radio preacher and self-proclaimed prophet who has appeared on numerous frequencies, and who panders every insanity anyone has ever associatred with fundamentalist, paranoid Christianity. He is, unsurprisingly, a Young Earth Creationist and Biblical Literalist, but he also rejects modern technology (radio apparently being an exception), modern medicine and all of science. He also rejects all religious holidays and demands that men wear beards, and so on – you get the general idea. On the other hand, he does promote complete isolation from modern society and all sorts of New World Order conspiracy theories.

Stair runs a cult in South Carolina and maintains stern control over his followers (they can allegedly engage in sexual activities only with his permission). The fact that he rejects medical interventions for his followers has – it seems – led to several infant deaths in his community.

To get an idea of where he comes from: Stair claims that every other Christian preacher (except William Branham) is a false prophet, since they didn’t manage to prophesize Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, which he claims to have done (predictably, no Stair prediction of either event can be dated to prior to said events). He did, however, get some attention when he predicted a nuclear war in 1988, and for his millennial predictions (God would come down with judgment at the start of the third millennium: “If the Lord God Almighty does not make a major move before the year 2000,” said Stair, “I'll tell God to go to Hell.” He didn’t do that).

Stair has, predictably, been arrested for (and plead guilty to) assault, battery and fondling of underage members of his community. But that, of course, comes with the job.

Diagnosis: Batshit insane. His base of followers is small, but Stair is a real threat to them and it is not entirely unlikely that he is already morally responsible for several deaths.

#370: Kim Stagliano

A.k.a. Stagmom

One of the things we try to achieve here is to keep track of the movers and shakers in the anti-vaxx movement, since these are demonstrably among the most dangerous loons out there. Kim Stagliano is another such. She is one of the most ardent bloggers at the denialist organization Age of Autism, and she even writes for the execrable pile of fecal waste, the Huffington Post. In her contributions she makes some feeble attempts at humor, but it is mostly a long row of standard fallacies (confusing correlation and causation, the fallacy of the perfect solution, non-sequiturs, strawmen, the Big Pharma gambit, selective use of evidence, double standards of evidence, blame the victim, moving goal posts, anecdotal evidence, appeals to emotion, and appeals to conspiracies, to mention a few of the more frequent ones).

She has also made appearances as a staunch defender of Andy Wakefield after the latter was unmasked as a fraud.

Furthermore, Stagliano is famous for what amounts to a remarkable lack of self-awareness. One of Stagliano’s schticks is the “censorship of vaccine critics” by the media. Of course, Stagliano confuses censorship and criticism (the fact that everyone with actual competence completely disagree with her is not “censorship” even if Stagliano demands to call it so). The irony is that she herself deletes all dissenting comments on her blogposts: “we have made a conscious decision to moderate the site so that it does not become a cesspool of dissent.” Her persecution complex is well-developed, however.

And of course she is enthusiastically peddling untested chemicals and woo for autistic children, which seems to be more or less part of the job description for anti-vaxx bloggers.

Diagnosis: Ignorant, ardent loon who are on the verge of taking the anti-vaxx movement well into TimeCube territory. The fact that she is unable to avoid a fallacy in every other sentence she writes should not be taken to indicate that she is anything less than extremely dangerous.

#369: Fritz Springmeier

A.k.a. Victor Earl Schoof (original name)

Whale.to stalwart Fritz Artz Springmeier carries the dubious honor of being one of the most hysterically insane loons in our entire Encyclopedia. He is a well-known conspiracy theorist and religious right wing activist. That combo spawns some interesting ideas, such as the notion that satanic forces are behind a move toward world domination by various families and organizations. And he is associated with the violent extremist group the Army of God, which we have encountered before) – he has even been convicted of armed bank robbery in support of the group, and for planting a bomb in an adult video store (a perfect opportunity for his fans, including Ken Adachi, to see a conspiracy here). There are shades of a budding David Koresh in Springmeier, in other words.

Springmeier has written and self-published a number of books based on the ideology of the ultra-right-wing group the Christian Patriot Association (which was shut down in 2002 after convictions for tax fraud and tax evasion). Springmeier has vigorously defended the veracity of Project Monarch, allegedly a CIA mind control project, with most of his defense being based on the testimony of the legendary Cathy O’Brien in his book “Deeper insights into the Illuminati Formula”. According to whale “[t]he book was coauthored with former Illuminati programmer Cisco Wheeler”. You can find Springmeier & Wheeler’s rantings online here. Wheeler’s credentials remain unverified.

Springmeier’s earlier “The Watchtower & the Masons” argued (by garbled insanity) that there was a strong relationship between Jehovah's Witnesses and Freemasonry (and hence conspiracy). His writings on the Illuminati are focused on the 13 families (“bloodlines”) that purportedly run the whole thing. Oh, and they are Satan worshippers who engage in mind control, for instance electric shocks, to make “porn slaves”. Indeed, they control the government: “George Bush’s double was promiscuous, while George Bush is a pedophile. His double was living in France after Bush was no longer President. By the use of doubles, (or one of the synthetics or organic robotoids) the elite are able to sneak away and perform satanic rituals.” Furthermore: “On important points, Bill [Clinton – this is a rant about his speeches] will move his left hand, to help imbed certain commands to his viewers. He will also use some subtle hand signals/codes to trigger mind-controlled slaves too. He will ask during his talks for people to imagine or visualize what he wants for them. Again this is manipulation directed at the right brain.” And they have agents everywhere, including Simon Wiesenthal (“One of the men who betrayed the human race and helped with the cloning […] a US intelligence [… who] seriously hunted Nazis that were not on the CIA’s payroll or CIA associated groups”] and Jim Morrison (“The Doors Singer, [who] used the occult code name Lizard King and The Exterminating Angel, […] was involved with mind control”). Satanism is rampant: “There are some locations, for instance, two entire towns in southern Utah […], which are entirely programmed multiples [… and] caught up in secret satanic rituals [and] also have occult mind-control programming along with those rituals. […] This is in fact, where the entire world is headed very rapidly.” [The punctuation is Springmeier’s]

Among the arsenal of mind controlling techniques deployed by the government are acupuncture and osteopathy (I suppose getting scientists to write it off as inert woo is part if the agenda). Springmeier is also a believer in phrenology and iridology, though he is pretty scared by it: “By looking at the skull and head, the skin, the body tone, the eyes, and other areas, the practitioners of Structure/Function can accurately tell a person’s personality”. Furthermore “[t]here is no doubt that Chinese martial arts are being used to mug people in order to alter their thinking.”

But then, Springmeier’s ventures into neurology contain some idiosyncracies: “[…] the human brain is actually 7 brains. The 4th or mid brain that lies between the upper 3 brains and the lower three and functions as a crossroads, joins with the optic thalamus, which forms the floor of the 3rd ventricle. The ceiling of the 4th brain is the floor of the 3rd ventricle. The 3rd ventricle and the Cave of Brahma make up the 5th brain. The 5th brain is connected to the cerebral hemispheres of the Cerebrum and is critical to creating concepts and storing abstract concepts. It feeds on ideas, and reflects. (Marijuana activates this brain)”.

He also takes anti-elitism to a whole other level: “It is an attitude of elitism that allowed the Pharisees to crucify Christ, the Nazis to kill Jews, and Moslems to kill Hindus, etc. […]” Elitist values are instilled in us in schools, in the military and so on. Springmeier, however, takes the process to be rather literal (physical): “The memories of our bodies are buried within the cells of our bodies […] Cellular level body memories are way beyond the grasp of the consciousness. Buried into a deep unconscious repression are the body memories of the social values (elitism).” Oh, and don’t watch TV: “The all pervasive Television, which has been so common place in the lives of Americans, is used a great deal to manipulate trauma-based mind-controlled slaves.”

You can read John S. Torrel’s not entirely coherent defense of/attack on Springmeier here (including the argument that the CIA is infiltrating church communities – all killing sprees related to religion, for instance, are performed by CIA-controlled mind slaves, and the purpose is to put freedom-loving Taliban fundies in a bad light, because fundamentalist Christianity is otherwise a threat to the Satanism of the CIA). Springmeier also has other detractors. In the words of one Marion Knox “I think he's a double-agent working for the other side [the Illuminati]”.

Diagnosis: Potentially another David Koresh/Jim Jones in the making? Not very influential but slightly scary nonetheless.

#368: Peter Sprigg

Peter S. Sprigg is Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at Gary Bauer & James Dobson’s Family Research Council in Washington (not the same as Paul Cameron’s Family Research Institute). His “research” and writings have addressed issues of marriage and family, human sexuality, the arts and entertainment, and religion in public life. He is unsurprisingly no fan of gay marriage and has frequently testified before federal, state and local courts on these issues. To take a quote from his interview with Chris Matthews: “I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided,” [“wrongly decided” does not mean “legally wrongly”, of course, but that Sprigg doesn’t like it – although he doesn’t see the difference between the two things]. Furthermore, he “think[s] there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.” On a direct question of whether we should outlaw gay behavior, Sprigg said “yes,” because he is a psychopathic Taliban monster. More here. You can see Sprigg struggling to argue that his (and anyone else’s) arguments against homosexuality are not based on religion here (yes, his failure is epic), and his tortured attempt to argue that gay marriage is still generally overwhelmingly unpopular among the public here. He vigorously attacked the Obama administration’s call to protect LGBT people from violence, calling it an “unconscionable” promotion of “the radical ideology of the sexual revolution,” apparently because protecting people from violence is un-Christian. To counteract the administration’s measures he reverted to the most efficacious weapon in his arsenal: prayer.

Sprigg has also been caught advocating fractally wrong claims about evolution, claiming that even secular evolutionists (though he doesn’t believe them) must support traditional marriage (by some less-than-non-fallacious appeal to nature). Sprigg is really an ardent creationist, however, from which it seems to follow that intellectual honesty should not be considered a virtue. He is known for complaining, with regard to a new book on evolution written by actual scientists, that it failed to address challenges to the theory of evolution but instead rehashed the same arguments (the book in question presented evidence, by the way, but Sprigg doesn’t understand the difference): “What's lacking is the true scientific debate about the merits and weaknesses of evolutionary theory as presented by Darwin.” Such a debate was evidently missing because evolution is obviously wrong and scientists don’t agree with him on that obvious truth.

Among his books are “Outrage: how gay activists and liberal judges are trashing democracy to redefine marriage,” and (with one Timothy Dailey) “Getting It Straight: What the Research Shows about Homosexuality,” which does, needless to say, not report what the research shows about homosexuality.

Sprigg was also a firm opponent of introducing the HPV vaccine in Michigan: “We don't feel using school attendance as a form of coercion to get parents to vaccinate their child is appropriate, simply because this disease is not transmitted through casual contact the way other diseases are that are subject to school mandates.”

Diagnosis: Certified Liar for Jesus, staunch denialist and ardently anti-science, as well as hell bent on  showing the world that he is a psychopathic monster. His life’s work is built on the delusion that “secularists are promoting a pro-science agenda as part of their age-old persecution of Christians”. He does have some influence, however, and should be considered dangerous.

#367: Roy Spencer

A.k.a. Official Climatologist of the Rush Limbaugh Show

Roy W. Spencer is a climatologist and a Principal Research Scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and one of a few climatologists who rejects (pretty much) AGW. Spencer is also an Intelligent Design creationist: “I finally became convinced that the theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution, for the creation model was actually better able to explain the physical and biological complexity in the world ... Science has startled us with its many discoveries and advances, but it has hit a brick wall in its attempt to rid itself of the need for a creator and designer.” He is demonstrably completely ignorant about evolution, and on that basis claims that it is pure religion.

Having shown that he has no clue about what a scientific explanation requires (hint: independent testing and confirmation), perhaps his understandings of such matters are better when he says that “catastrophic manmade global warming” is not occurring (hint: no)? Concerning climate models, Spencer claims that “the people that have built the climate models that predict global warming believe they have sufficient physics in those models to predict the future. I believe they don't. I believe the climate system, the weather as it is today in the real world shows a stability that they do not yet have in those climate models.” (No evidence provided). See also this. 

He has written the books “Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor” (Alex Jones style) and “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists.” (Reviewed very politely, in three parts, here, here, and here; overviews here and here.)

He also appeared in Martin Durkin’s movie “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, has claimed that environmentalism is genocide, and is one of the most ardent proponents of the DDT hoax. Spencer is nevertheless counted one of the most respected and cited and credible AGW skeptics (denialists), which should tell you quite a bit about AGW skepticism.

Diagnosis: A severe case of crank-magnetism, Spencer is your typical example of a crackpot with credentials, whose credibility is nonetheless approximately equal to Russell Humphreys’s. He is very influential, however, and a real threat to the world.

#366: Suzanne Somers

Suzanne Somers, erstwhile TV celebrity associated with shows such as “Step by Step” and “Three’s Company”, is a prominent ignorant-celebrity-turned-self-help-guru. Among her bestsellers are “Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones”, which peddles T.S. Wiley’s scientifically unproven and demonstrably dangerous Wiley Protocol, and “Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer – And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place”, hardcore cancer woo and conspiracy theories packed into the effective “who cares about clinical trials when we have anecdotal evidence and celebrity testimonials” rhetorical package. Her cancer writings have received apt criticism from the American Cancer Society. Of course, Oprah endorsed it (and received pretty harsh criticisms for it).

In 2001, Somers was diagnosed with breast cancer and declined to undergo chemotherapy (in favor of anthroposophic medicine). She claimed she was diagnosed with “inoperable cancer by six doctors”, which is false – even her doctors did not uniformly recommend chemotherapy, quite the reverse (and she did undergo lumpectomy and radiation, but according to herself it was of course the completely ineffective anthroposophic medicine that did the trick). She was furthermore (possibly) misdiagnosed in 2008, an event that (“invalidated Western medicine” and) seems to have spurred her bizarre crank adventures. Her interviews with frauds and cranks (such as Nicholas Gonzalez, Russell Blaylock, Stanislaw Burzynski, Burton Goldberg, and Jonathan V. Wright) over the course of 2008 provided the foundation for Knockout, which concerns alternative treatments to chemotherapy (and reality). The oncologists don’t understand cancer, you see. Fortunately Somers does it for them. Or it’s the conspiracies. According to Somers “Chemotherapy is big business, and the business end has been thoroughly thought out. Our med students are taught the company line, and after years of being intensively taught how to administer poisons, they are then graduated to go out and give these lethal medicines. To question this would discourage financial grants, and no one wants to be cut loose from pharmaceutical funding”. Then of course there is the Galileo Gambit (which Julian Whitaker invokes in the foreword to Somers’s book and Lee Schneider invokes at HuffPo).

Somers is also a water fluoridation conspiracy theorist and well into stem-cell woo.

Diagnosis: Ignorant dunderhead. Lacks any trace of a clue about pretty much everything she writes about and in possession of the critical thinking skills of a mole in a whack-a-mole game. She is probably being widely read by a host of other critical-thinking-challenged people (that is, the “critical-thinking-means-feeling-your-way-to-the-truth” crowd), and must as such be considered a threat to civilization.

#365: Wesley J. Smith

Wesley J. Smith is a lawyer, award winning author, and a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism. In fact, Smith is one of the Tute’s most highly profiled associates. He was a prominent figure in the discussion surrounding the Terri Schiavo case and a vocal opponent of assisted suicide and euthanasia, and also of human cloning research and environmentalism (which is “anti-humanist”). His opposition to bioethics has been criticized, unsurprisingly, for selective use of evidence, conspiracy mongering and for being “prepared to bend the truth to make a point, turn a stomach, and potentially radicalize a reader.” Who would have thought this about a Discovery Institute fellow? No surprise that he was a prominent critic of Obamacare’s death panels.

Given that his schtick is human exceptionalism, and that he promotes human exceptionalism in DiscoTute garb, his take on evolution is predictably dumb. Yes, it is the “confusing the truth of a claim with the consequences of believing it” fallacy, combined with a complete mischaracterization of what the consequences of believing it in fact are (as illustrated by his attempt to saddle Dawkins with promoting eugenics (though he did, in all fairness, apologize).

A good response to his contributions to the Schiavo case can be found here. 

His contributions to the stem cell debate are discussed here. It’s hard to single out what’s dishonesty, what’s ignorance, and what’s wishful thinking.

Diagnosis: More careful, and less obviously insane than many of his fellow Fellows, Smith is nevertheless driven by dogma in selecting which evidence he chooses to endorse. He enjoys a rather high profile, and must be considered dangerous.