#161: Marc Grizzard

Marc Grizzard’s Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, is renowned for their Halloween celebrations. Grizzard and his charming fellows make a big fire and burn books for Halloween (and roast chicken, apparently). But not just any books. Evil books. So they are burning Darwin and Nietzsche and SciFi and Dawkins, then? No. Grizzard and co. are burning bibles. Evil bibles: “We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God's Word, the King James Bible.” I am confident that Grizzard's mastery of Greek has been deployed to verify that the King James version is the most accurate translation.

But to create a really roaring flame they’ll not confine themselves to Bibles. They also burn “Satan's popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort, Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham Rick Warren Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa, The Pope, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.” Several familiar names there (the erratic punctuation is from the original).

Not content with that, they “will also be burning Satan's music such as country , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, contemporary Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.”

A good old-fashioned book-burning in other words. Charming. Grizzard is discussed here and here.

Diagnosis: Loon, but as long as he insists on shooting at the vanguard of his own lunacy movement, I won’t complain. He is completely without influence, unfortunately.

#160: David Ray Griffin

We’ve already covered the cranky 9/11 conspiracy theorist Richard Gage. Here’s his mentor. David Ray Griffin is a retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology. His philosophical work consists of attempts to justify a certain view of God by drawing upon diverse resources. In other words, his whole life was spent starting with the conclusion you wanted to reach and then trying to find a way to justify it. That, of course, is confirmation bias set into system, and might help explain why he so easily would be drawn to conspiracy theories like this one.

He has written several books on the subject, and they have become increasingly insane, ending up being featured on Alex Jones’s show. Among his books is “Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action”, and Griffin has pointed out that “If 9/11 is not a religious issue, then I don't know what is.” Griffin is really in at the deep end of trooferism, and he is really crazy.

Known for snowing and making extensive lists of things he objects to in the “official stories” (so that when one is thoroughly refuted he has at least thirty more – most of them resting on such fundamental misapprehensions (and paranoia) that they are not even properly characterized as “wrong”).

He is also a creationist, by the way (quoted by Behe), claiming that there is no evidence for evolution anywhere. It just struck me that the whole problem may simply be that Griffin just doesn’t understand what evidence is.

Also diagnosed here.

A masterful debunking of some of his recurring arguments can be found here.

Diagnosis: Virulent crackpot who has carved himself quite a lot of influence, Griffin is confirmation bias embodied. He started out as an übernut professor of philosophy of religion and has plummeted downwards from there. Mind boggling.

#159: Harold Green

Harold Green may be a relatively minor figure. He makes up for that through his sheer amount of lunacy, however, and by being a colorful fellow. Harold Green is apparently the go-to-guy if you’ve got questions about the quadrant sign code conspiracy (and have already determined that you want a certain kind of answer). So what’s that? “Embedded in our nation's road sign system is a secret coding designed to target vital sites, facilities, routes and resources for military confiscation during a National Emergency. Though, concealed by the lies of the Department of Transportation for many years”. Right … it starts sounding a little more ominous when you add: “Secretly embedded codes like these [pictures on his website] are part of "Operation Garden Plot" where U.S. forces/National Guard and *Partnership* NATO/UN military will police and patrol our streets and highways during MARTIAL LAW.” He even found the name for the campaign. He doesn’t tell us where, as far as I can see, but I think I’m able to guess.

Oh, he does have proof – meaning proof that there exist official emergency measures in case of nuclear attacks. That’s hardly a secret. However, he doesn’t need any further premises confirmed in order to go from that to “The United Nations military has plans to become the cop soldiers of the world. Unknown to the general populace, a "Rapid Deployment" force stands ready to enter U.S. borders at the request of the President of the United States.” Somehow, pictures of reflective marks on roadsigns are supposed to establish that – and that these signs are marking where the military can, apparently at random, confiscate property.

And that’s the first point of this overly paranoid world-picture – the UN is ready to seize your property under any pretext, and these signs supposedly show them what to seize. The second point is that the measures are not there in case of emergency – the government and UN are in a conspiracy to put these plans of confiscating property into action any day now. It’s really all about the dangers of the U.N. and their wicked plans to overthrow the United States of America (and the UN is really evil, as the criminally insane Texe Marrs point out). And then there are passages referring to the Bilderbergers, Kissinger, black helicopters and links to creation science websites. His whole webiste strikes one, in a cute way, of being constructed by a mental health patient who is desperately but not quite successfully trying to appear sane when he tries to convince you that his main worry is a real one.

Harold Green is a “constitutionalist” and a militia guy, providing an interesting glimpse into that paranoid segment of society. He is also a committed rapture-will-come-soon Biblical fundamentalist.

Diagnosis: Thoroughly kooky, and presumably completely harmless on his own. The kind of extreme paranoia he lives under is common enough to be at least worrisome, however.
(ed. note - Unable to locate a photo of the correct Harold Green (it's especially difficult because there is a more famous fictional Harold Green out there, who I presume isn't the same guy), so I've included one of his photos of "coded" signs instead.)

#158: George Grant

Keeping in line with last days’ religious kooks, George Grant is another Christian reconstructionist in the same league as deluded, fanatic, dishonest cranks like Gary DeMar, Gary North and David Barton. Grant is a result of the despicable late D. James Kennedy’s televangelism, and a blatant theocrat: “Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice […] It is dominion we are after. World conquest” ().

Not much fluffy feel-good woo there. Grant admires the tactics of the Taliban, thinks homosexuality should be punishable by death and claims that humanism is destroying the world.

He is also a climate change denialist, but that will surprise nobody, I suppose; crank magnetism is a well-known phenomenon.

He has written a huge number of books (see here for a comprehensive list), including one coauthored with Mike Huckabee. You can see Grant respond to a question of whether society should recognize pluralism and democratic values here.

Diagnosis: The reasonable reaction would be to laugh and point at these loons. But we don’t. Rather, we give them airtime and treat them with respect. Thus they also get a degree of legitimacy. That is scary.

#157: Ron Graham

If Billy Graham is in many ways a tactful and (relatively) sane proponent of fluffy-feelgood Biblical literalism, then his namesake Ron is his maniacal, deranged, twisted and distorted mirror-image. The latter is an uncompromising fundamentalist who criticizes those, like Billy, who try to change God to suit their personal beliefs and wishes (i.e. making him anything but a psychotic mass-murderer). See him criticize people for taking verses out of context, and doing the exact same thing himself when trying to prove that God isn't quite as nasty as his actions, words and apparent intentions really entail. In this one he also apparently claims that any non-Christian is non-human (so God’s killing them would more be like pest control taking care of ants, or gardeners cutting down the tall weeds, as they used to put it in Rwanda). His argument-style is called SPAG, and it’s probably fun.

If you want to leaf through Graham’s rants (not necessarily recommended), you’ll find the collection here. Graham is a Biblical literalist. No, really – he is really, really a literalist. Meaning (mostly) that he assumes Medieval musers’ (Dante, Pico etc.) interpretation. That doesn’t go very well with science, of course, but Graham is willing to bite any bullet that comes his way: “Scientists would have us all believe that the edge of the universe is billions of light years away […]. I submit to all those enthralled by man’s fabrications that the heavens are simply rolled out as a scroll just as the Bible states. I’ll even take it a step further and say that all we humans see in the night sky, as far as deep space is concerned, is only a wonderful holograph, an illusion if you will. Well, my theory is no more farfetched than that of the proponents of billions of years.” Except that intuition and incredulity aren’t really the arbiters of scientific truth. Furthermore “[S]cientists tell us it all occurred with a big bang. God was there in the beginning, where were the scientists?” That one will sure be a partypooper at any physics conference, I bet. I suppose it is redundant to mention what Graham thinks about evolution (but if you insist). His whole view of science is summed up here.

At least he has some charming views about those who disagree with him. It is supposedly watertight - since he speaks the words of God (SPAG), it follows that those who disagree with him speak the voice of Satan.

And of course there is the usual stuff: “the real landslide of the decay of our society began years ago when we allowed the Bible to be taken out of our public schools. Soon after that we had the legalization of abortion and the teaching the lie of evolution as a fact not as a theory, even to the exclusion of any other possible scenario for life to have occurred on earth. Then, more recently, we’ve seen the teaching in our public schools of the abomination of homosexuality as being a fully acceptable and normal lifestyle.”

Diagnosis: Completely insane, and the kind of figure bad parents use to scare their children – an excellent Halloween prop, really. It is hard to imagine that he has many followers, but you never know.

#156: Franklin Graham

Franklin Graham is Billy Graham’s son, and a loon. Now, I was a little torn about whether to include Billy himself – Billy Graham is definitely one of the more influential forces in 20th century America (though he is currently rather elderly and frail, suffering from prostate cancer and Parkinson’s, and has retired from evangelical proselytizing), and one of the very main reasons why fundamentalist, conservative bible-thumping is so widespread in the US (rather than the liberal theology common in Europe). Billy has, for instance, claimed that America’s turning away from religion and God has been one of the main reason for the current surge of violence and crime (when, of course, all research shows that crime rates have dropped markedly). Partially, of course, the fundamentalist turn was due to the need to mark the distance to the godless communists during the Cold War (a point Graham repeatedly emphasized).

But Billy is sometimes viewed as a moderate evangelist (although ‘moderate’ as used of evangelicals seems to be a category mistake by definition – Graham does accept the Bible as the infallible word of God), and has been spiritual counselor to several U.S. presidents (from Harry Truman and onwards). He has a reputation for being apolitical, but has apparently always been a registered Democrat. And his general lunacy is somewhat offset by his admittedly valiant fight for civil rights in the 50s and 60s, his fight against apartheid, and other matters. He also refused to join Falwell’s Moral Majority (though can legitimately be blamed for being responsible for the resurgence of this kind of fundamentalism), and has in general avoided speaking out on matters concerning sexual orientation and suchlike. He also apologized for his meetings with Nixon where they discussed a Jewish "stranglehold" on the media, and I have frankly no reason to think the apology was insincere.

Oh, he is delusional – the extent of his delusions is well illustrated by this one – and he must be held partially responsible for harm (his unerrant fighting for evangelicism is one thing; the upshot of unarguably mad Southern Bapitst characters – Chuck Colson springs to mind – another).

Even if we suspend judgment on Billy, however, his son, Franklin Graham, is obviously a true loon. For instance he claims that Obama is (somewhat) Muslim since his forefathers were (apparently it is a hereditary trait). In fact, all religion is inherited, according to Franklin, apart from Christianity, which you have to choose. And of course, he received some flak for his demon-possession explanation of the VA Tech, uhm, incident.

Franklin has also claimed that God sent Hurricane Katrina to destroy New Orleans because we took God out of schools, and is in general much better aligned with creatures such as Falwell or Pat Robertson.

He also claims that Islam “is a religion of hatred. It's a religion of war.” (which is admittedly plausible in the same manner as it is plausible to claim that Christianity is). Building the cultural center near Ground Zero, he says, means Muslims "will claim now that the World Trade Center property ... is Islamic land." It may be true to the same degree that Graham would probably claim that Baghdad was Christian land if they built a church there. It is still a loony argument to make.

He is also the leader of the Samaritan’s purse, a non-profit proselytizing, evangelical organization posing as a humanitarian aid organization. Franklin also possesses a healthy dose of fringe-loon persecution complex.

Alan Borass associates Franklin (but explicitly not Billy) with Christian nationalism.

Diagnosis: While the jury may be out on Billy (he’s done a lot of good, but is also at least partially to blame for the resurgence of fundamentalism), Franklin’s case is more clear cut. He is, quite simply, a wingnut and a loon. Thereby he also illustrates how easily Billy’s position ends up in bigotry and crankery.

#155.5: Bill Gothard

William W. Gothard stands to Pat Robertson roughly as Ray Comfort stands to Bill Dembski. He is a minister, writer, and speaker, and the founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBPL).

A staunch defender of homeschooling (to avoid having kids exposed to, you know, such satanic values as tolerance, truth, dignity, rationality, reason, sanity, evidence-based justification, sympathy, humanism and reality), Gothard and his organization publishes homeschooling material (such as “Men’s Manual” and “Our Jealous God”). Gothard’s teachings prohibit dating and rock music (including Christian rock, which is a redeeming feature, I guess, but hardly sufficient to take his name off the loon list). On the other hand, women working outside the home are characterized as “evil”. He also has a slightly curious obsession with certain toys (Cabbage Patch dolls can cause “strange, destructive behavior"). Matthew Murray was raised using Gothard’s curriculum, and he got famous. Other people who have been associated with his organization are “Taliban Dan” Webster and Sarah Palin, though the latter’s connection is admittedly a little tenuous.

To top it, Gothard claims that diseases have spiritual roots, and modern medicine is Satan’s work. You can read more about Gothard’s teachings here.

Diagnosis: The cartoon version of Pat Robertson, cultmaster Bill Gothard is so irredeemably insane that it is hard to believe he is real. Yet he is, and he continues to ensure that people’s lives are ruined at a frighteningly rapid pace. A real threat to sanity and civilization.