#2586: Richard Boylan

For those really looking to get lost down a rabbit hole, New Age psychotherapies is an obvious place to go. New Age psychotherapies range from the feebly bizarre to the dangerous, and some have even managed to go relatively mainstream. Richard Boylan is a classic in the genre, though what exactly he offers is not entirely easy to wrap one’s head around. Boylan is, according to himself, a “Ph.D. behavioral scientist, anthropologist, university associate professor (emeritus), certified clinical hypnotherapist, researcher, and Councillor”, as well as “a consultant to Star Kids and Star Seed adults seeking to understand better their origin, identity and mission, in order to have full awareness and clarity about their identity, inner growth, spiritual development, and future path.” Precisely. He is also president of the Star Kids Project, Ltd., and “provides hypnotherapy for recalling the full details of partially-remembered close encounters with the Star Visitors which are stored in subconscious memory.”

 

Oh, yes, it is aliens! Boylan is not only an anthropologist, but an “exo-anthropologist”, and has ostensibly, since 1989, “conducted research into human encounters with the Star Visitors,” which is apparently what spurred him to found his “Star Kids Project, Ltd in 2003”, which seeks to work “with these genetically-upgraded children with advanced abilities, and their families.” Yes, and the really scary ones here would presumably be the parents seeking out Boylan’s services.

 

Apparently Boylan fancies himself a real scientist, and he has presented his research at several conferences, all with scientifically legitimate-sounding names like “the 1992 M.I.T. Abduction Study Conference”, the “1995 Cosmic Cultures International Conference” and the “2008 International Symposium on Star Nations, Rome”. Boylan is also the author of numerous books, including

 

-       Close Extraterrestrial Encounters (1994)

-       Labored Journey To the Stars (1996)

-       Project Epiphany (1997),

-       Star Kids: the Emerging Cosmic Generation (2005)

-       The Human - Star Nations Connection (2012), which promises to teach you not only “how both the Sunday School explanation of where we came from and Charles Darwin’s are both wrong,” but who are really pulling the strings “behind the constant crises, wars, financial turmoil, and political intrigue that keeps our society off-balance,” as well as “the real reason why the UFO Cover-Up has been going on for 70 years” and how to “[d]iscover latent abilities which your children and you never knew you had.”

 

On his website you can find a questionnaire you can use to determine whether your kid is a star seed. We normally don’t link to this kind of stuff, but will make an exception here. You probably recognize precisely the kind of parent for whom this questionnaire is designed. It is also increasingly gloriously deranged as it proceeds, and we suppose that special attention is indeed warranted for parents who answer ‘yes’ on questions that their child has “experienced a 'Walk-In' [replacement of the original human (dying) personality by a new (off-world) personality, which takes on the existing body and continues the life, having memory of earlier years but with different abilities and personality]” or  “has an unusually large bioelectromagnetic-photic field extending outward from their body, (e.g., over 3 feet [1 meter]), as measured by dowsing rods”.

 

Diagnosis: Magnificently insane and utterly unfettered by the constraints that hold others back from completing their path to enlightenment, such as reality and reason. His program, though, can hardly be classified as entirely harmless, even if the parents attracted to it would probably have found other ways to subvert the wellbeing of their offspring anyways.

#2585: Paul Boyer

Anti-vaccine activists in state legislatures seem to be on the rise (admittedly, we haven’t actually counted), but Arizona’s Paul Boyer was antivaccine before it was mainstream in wingnut circles. Boyer has been a member of the Arizona State Senate representing District 20 since 2019, after having been a House representative from from 2013 to 2019, where he e.g. served as the Chair of the Arizona House Education Committee; he’ll be out now in November, however, after voicing his disagreement with Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories (good on him).

 

Nonetheless, getting it right on that score won’t excuse his antivaccine sympathies. In 2019, Boyer introduced a bill that would restrict childhood vaccine coverage under the guise of “informed consent”, Which, of course, has nothing to do with informed – that is kind of the point here, and it’s a common antivaxx gambit. What Boyer’s bill attempted to do was to mandate that parents be told exactly which ingredients and chemicals are in a vaccine before their children are inoculated – the purpose being not to make the parents better positioned to make informed decisions (unless you have a background in chemistry and medicine), but to mislead as many as possible into dropping vaccines by a variant of the toxins gambit and appeal to general chemophobia; there’s a reason why the bill didn’t mandate updated information about the science behind the vaccines.

 

Apparently Boyer himself was scared to learn from the CDC that some vaccines may contain contain phosphate, bovine serum, formaldehyde, fluoride, yeast extracts or human diploid fibroblast cell cultures (cultures of human fetal tissue), all of which might be scary-sounding to chemically illiterate people like Boyer (and yes: it’s both a toxins gambit and a “human fetal parts” gambit there). While emphasizing that he was “not necessarily opposed to vaccinations for children”, he refused to answer questions about whether he himself believed vaccines were harmful. Then he rattled off a list of anti-vaccine talking points, mostly in the “too many, too soon” genre but also, predictably, this: “I don’t know that most parents know that bovine extract or animal parts or fetus parts are in certain vaccines,” said Boyer. “And I just think, as a parent, we should know the answer to that.” That answer is “no”. There are no fetus parts in any vaccines, and there are no animal parts in vaccines.

 

Diagnosis: That this guy would come across as a voice of reason among his colleagues is telling. Good grief.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

#2584: Don Boyd

A self-described “musician and psalmist”, Don Boyd is primarily an absolutely insane, South Carolina-based anti-gay activist. In 2014, Boyd, who also claims to have been “anointed and assigned as a watchman for the souls,” filed a federal motion to intervene in a South Carolina same-sex marriage case on the grounds that same-sex marriage would interrupt his ability to worship, lamenting that the state was inadequately defending his interests. According to the filing, “people errantly identifying and calling themselves lesbian and gay WOULD PURSUE DISMISSAL of what is in essence and in truth a RELIGIOUS matter couched of late as a secular deprivation of constitutional rights by the Gay Agenda [… insert lots of pseudo-Biblical ranting here …]”; gay people “have now of late by hellish Plot turned to the World for circumvention of authority by the Church”, and they are aided and abetted by journalists and others who are also aligned “with the Black Agenda”, which “also having tasted blood and agreed to cry ‘racism’ in all else remaining, themselves still wicked Egyptians…” And so on. You may read extended excerpts here. Grammar and spelling are not his strong suits, but he tends to get the general character of his thinking across.

 

In any case, “Any Court decision ratifying – thus proliferating – gay marriages would deprive Don Boyd of a personal life and other equal liberties and protections guaranteed by Amendment Fourteen of the Constitution of the United States”, and if same-sex couples were allowed to marry, Boyd would be forced to “assume a life of a protester and wedding crasher.” He’s even got “exhibits”, including photocopied pages from the Bible and wedding announcements by random straight couples from local newspapers with the word “married” circled. The motion failed.

 

Diagnosis: Probably fun at parties for a while, but you’d quickly tire of him. Hopefully he gets the love and attention he needs.

#2583: David Boyd

Bob Jones University is a fundie bible school located in Greenville, South Carolina, and one of the more infamous among a rather significant number of schools in the US that offer a Biblical literalist alternative to education. Its biology program, for instance, is young-Earth creationist to the core, and though the Head of the Department of Biology, David W. Boyd, has a real degree from the (questionable but accredited) nearby Clemson University, he views his education mostly as having been a test of faith. Biology at Bob Jones is not about science but about how to best retain one’s belief in a literal reading of the Biblical account of creation despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

Boyd also writes articles for Answers in Genesis. Here, for instance, is a commentary on an article of his about bird speciation: there are more than 10,000 species of birds, and not all of them could have been on Noah’s Ark, so which ones were? According to the pseudoscience of baraminology, Noah’s Ark carried kinds of animals from which current species have … well, you shouldn’t say “evolved”. Apparently, though, the number of birds is a bigger problem for “a scientist with a materialistic worldview” who has to explain evolution from “the first bird”, and “that would need millions of years”; someone (Boyd uses “scientist”, but that seems like the wrong word) who conforms to a Biblical view of things, however, “would only need thousands of years”. Yeah, silly materialists. How would Boyd’s alternative work, though? Well, there were apparently just under 200 kinds of birds on the Ark (because!), and if each of those underwent speciation once every 750 years, we would have about 10 000 of them today. Though Boyd is dimly aware the claim “does not account for many variables”, it seems to him much preferable to all that complicated science stuff.

 

Here is a comment on his review (with one Brian Vogt) of Michael Behe’s silly book Darwin Devolves. They recommend it – and at least they recognize it for the religiously motivated screed it is.

 

Diagnosis: AiG is still running its bizarre sideshow, and we suppose some people who don’t know better and were prone to motivated reasoning could mistake someone like David Boyd and his religiously motivated cargo cult science for a scientist doing science, given his titles and how he presents himself. Utterly ridiculous.

 

Hat-tip: Sensuoscurmudgeon

#2582: Jennifer Hollie Bowles

Jennifer Hollie Bowles is a homeopath and astrologer and generally promoter of anything fluffy and magic and nonsensical she comes across without the faintest trace of concern over whether what she says has anything whatsoever to do with reality. Bowles is the astrologer for the website Holistic Horoscopes, and has putatively, for some reason, “studied Astrology for almost twenty-five years”. Her fundie musings (for at this level, astrology is a brand of religious fundamentalism – a very snowflakey brand, but fundamentalism nonetheless) have been published on a variety of websites – including NaturalNews – and she has even written a book, Eyeteeth of Goddesses, which we don’t pretend to have bothered to look up.

 

According to Bowles, however, astrology is serious business: “the study of astrology involves a deep learning process with high-order concepts, calculations, history, and beyond.” And astrologers “must check their theories and knowledge of planetary energies and aspects with actual chart data and people data at every step of the way.” Notice that testing the hypotheses against reality is not part of the scheme. “How is this process ever considered non-academic or ‘fluffy’ enough to be excluded from formal education in the United Sates?” wonders Bowles, and cites anti-astrology bias and conspiracies going back to the scientific revolution, when such practices were apparently discarded for being insufficiently objective. Not for Bowles the simpler (and correct) story where modern science has been concerned to check whether the hypotheses actually work, and have found that astrology doesn’t. No: here be oppression. Scientists are afraid. Evidence? Scientists tend to label astrology “bunk”, yet – asks Bowles – isn’t such labeling precisely “how people react when they are afraid of something”? (not for Bowles to consider the possibility that people use the label ‘bunk’ because astrology is, you know, bunk). You see, “astrology poses a threat to knowledge that has been controlled and dominated by the few” and is “a threat to those in power who seek to control and dominate the individual.” Just the fact that some of you might react to her reasoning by asking for evidence shows how deeply mired you are in the oppressive paradigm of science, whose goal is to keep free-spirited ranters like Bowles in their place.

 

As a Holistic Practitioner – who needs med school when you’ve been writing horoscopes for decades – Bowles pushes homeopathic remedies, but can also talk about prayer, gemstones, astral projection and Tarot reading, among other things. Apparently, she believes that “we are all manifestations of Spirit, and our Spiritual Bodies manifest through the development of our relationship with Mind-Body-Soul, or the Divine Trinity”, which is what it is, we suppose. At least it departs significantly from last entry Geoff Botkin’s hard and hatefilled fanaticism.

 

Diagnosis: Good grief.

#2581: Geoff Botkin

Hysterical fundie preachers are a dime a dozen, so anyone wanting to make a name for themselves will have to find something unusually stupid to stand out. Geoff Botkin of the Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences, a fundie ministry that promotes Christian homeschooling and Christian Patriarchy, went for Disney’s Frozen – not a particularly original choice, perhaps, but he nonetheless managed to distinguish himself through the sheer insanity and fury of his attack. At the session “a “The Decline of Freedom: From the Bill of Rights to the Ten Planks of Communism, America’s Domestic Enemies and Where They Came From” at the 2015 “Freedom 2015: National Religious Liberties Conference” (attended by three then-presidential candidates), Botkin said that the song “Let It Go” is part of America’s rebellion against God and reminded his audience that the country is already under 50 divine judgments that will only subside once the government and the wider culture begin to abide by biblical law (so it’s unclear what difference the song would make). Likening it to Eve’s temptation by the serpent, Botkin called the song “Satan’s rebellion anthem” for its potential to corrupt children. Were it not for the venue, we would have been pretty convinced the whole screed was a poe. According to Botkin, the “spirit of licentiousness” characterizing the song, and its popularity, shows that people don’t want to follow the totality of the Bible; and God “will chasten our nation” as a result of the movie’s popularity – fans of the song are “rejecting God’s law” and are therefore “enemies of God”, and that means that God “does go to war against you”, which, if you think about it, does not reflect a very reasonable way of being in the world.  

 

But that’s his creed. Botkin is hardcore: Old Testament laws should not only be taken literally; they should be taken as your sole guide to life. As Botkin sees the world, outsiders (non-Christians) are to be hated (he repeatedly warns his audience to avoid friendships with people outside of the church militant), five year-olds can be “false prophets” (one reason why parents must be part of a “family militant” alongside the “church militant” as part of the Great Commission) and rape victims who don’t cry out for help deserve death – and Botkin emphasizes the duty of good Christians not to ignore their duties to carry out God’s justice in such situations (!). And Botkin is apparently a figure of some authority in Christian homeschooling and Christian Patriarchy Movement circles.

 

He’s got a website, too, where he publishes mostly materials advicing people on how to lead, interspersed with unhinged fundie rants and calls for donations.

 

Diagnosis: Geoff Botkin’s feeble attempts at reasoning tells you all you need to know to conclude that it’s best not to have anything to do with this deranged boogeyman in any context. His is a world built solely on hatred, anger and unforgiving coldness.

 

Hat-tip: lovejoyfeminism

#2580: David Bossie

David Norman Bossie is a political activist, chairman of Citizens United, member of the Council for National Policy and the 2016 deputy campaign manager to the Donald Trump presidential campaign. In 2020, Bossie became a central, early promoter of Trump’s conspiracies surrounding the integrity of the election. That December, for instance, Bossie was a signatory to a letter falsely declaring Trump to be “the lawful winner of the presidential election” and urging state legislators to ignore certified election results and appoint pro-Trump electors. During Trump’s tenure, Bossie was a central promoter of deep state conspiracy theories, e.g. in his book (with Corey Lewandowski) Trump’s Enemies, which “reads in part like Trump’s Twitter grievances in book form”, and which was a deliberate attempt to demonize law enforcement and intelligence officials and dismiss all checks and balances to the president’s power as “a vast left-wing conspiracy”. 

 

Under Bossie, Citizens United has produced a number of movies that blur the line between documentary and feverish fiction to attack political opponents. The 2008 film Hillary: the Movie, would happily report the weirdest conspiracy theories, including the allegation that Hillary Clinton had the cat of a woman who made claims of sexual harassment against Bill Clinton killed. It was, of course, also the movie that gave us the 2010 Citizens United ruling that weakened campaign finance laws and ushered a flood of dark money into U.S. elections.

 

In 2010, Bossie produced the film Generation Zero for Citizens United Productions, written and directed by Steve Bannon. According to the film, the financial crisis of 2007–2008 is partially to blaim on the moral failings of the Baby Boom generation – perhaps not an unreasonable claim in itself, but these people are silly, so by “moral failing” Bossie and Bannon were referring to the loss of “parental values” among zeh hippies and Vietnam protestors. Bossie and Bannon also released the bizarre “Christian war film” Torchlight.

 

Diagnosis: Mostly a spineless, power-hungry and unscrupulous political navigator, but we think we have to assume that he actually believes at least some of the nonsense he produces, in copious amounts, deliberately to poison public debate. Since he is also one of the most powerful figures in the US, he definitely needs an entry.