#738: Marshall Hall

Marshall Hall is an absolutely delightfully crazy fundie who blames the perseverance of the alleged lie of evolution on the uncritical acceptance of the even greater lie that the earth moves. Yes, Hall is not only a creationist, but a geocentrist. He runs the “non-moving Earth and anti-evolution page” of the Fair Education Foundation (consisting primarily himself), with its absolutely astonishing font- and color scheme; it is here. The site purports to ”Expos[e] the False Science Idol of Evolutionism, and Proving the Truthfulness of the Bible from Creation to Heaven,” though for the ”scientific evidence” (confirmed by the Bible) that the Earth is the center of the universe, and does not move around the sun or rotate around its own axis, you have to cash out $400 (plus $20 shipping) for a hard copy (for some reason one suspects that customers receive a copy Bible, really). From the website the evidence appears to consist primarily of quote-mining the Bible and claiming that modern science is fundamentally wrong, so much so that Hall doesn’t even have to engage with anything beyond the Michelson-Morley experiment.

Hall denies that other stars and planets exist, and considers the theory that the universe is 15 billion light years across to be a ”Kabbalist lie.” In fact, the website is particularly hostile to Kabbalah, allegedly a Jewish conspiracy supporting a modern heliocentric view of the universe, and there is also a page minimalizing the Holocaust that, well, to quote Hall ”Check it all out. Decide for yourself,” something Hall himself has abundantly demonstrated that he lacks the ability to do in any remotely responsible way. Here is Hall’s list of Biblical rules which will be in place once the global government is seated.

In fact, Hall does not limit himself to geocentrism and anti-semitism. He appears to be a big fan of David Icke, and his site contains material such as ”NASA's Real Achievement: Establishing Extraterrestrial Evolutionism!!” and ”Copernicanism: The Granddaddy Of All Conspiracies”, as well as links to the work by Icke and one M. Alexander Masters, who allegedly ”refutes the dominant Plate Tectonic Theory as well as NASA’s claims”. Hall also claims that ”The Global Warming Obsession Rests on Acceptance of Billions of Years of Evolutionism,” but his global warming denialism is admittedly just a tiny layer of icing on the cake.

Diagnosis: Astonishingly lunatic maniac who still manages to surprise despite the great number of unhinged cranks we have been through in our Encyclopedia. Impact uncertain, but he might deserve a cookie. And help.

#737: Boyd Haley

Boyd E. Haley, is a retired professor of chemistry at the University of Kentucky with real knowledge of chemistry and a rather reputation-marring involvement in the mercury scare (the University of Kentucky seems to have distanced themselves from Haley). As it has been put, rather laconically, Haley’s “views about mercury and dental amalgams go against the consensus held in the medical community.” As such, Haley has been one of the leaders of the idea that Thimerosal in vaccines is not only involved in the etiology of autism, which Haley has called “mad child disease”, but also the toxic agent involved in the Gulf War syndrome. Haley has also argued that there is a link between people with dental amalgams containing a high level of mercury and the level of mercury in the blood and urine, and has, as such, been one of the primary forces behind the amalgam scare as well – he is, for instance, behind the organization Toxic Teeth. To top it off, he has speculated that gold salts may induce a wide range of improvements in overall health, in a manner similar to that of chelation therapy, and also be useful in the treatment of autism.

Well, we can all be wrong, of course. Crackpottery is defined not by being wrong, but by one’s reaction to the fact that one is, indeed, wrong. Haley, of course, responded by going vocal (but then, it is a little unclear whether he ever knew how to measure evidence to begin with).

In 2007, Haley registered the corporation Chelator Technologies with the Kentucky Department of State. Subsequently, at conferences attended by parents of autistic children and medical professionals who share his unorthodox convictions regarding autism causation, he revealed that he was developing a new drug for the purpose of mercury detoxification, OSR#1 (Oxidative Stress Release), officially (I’m not sure he mentioned that) marketed for cats. Basically, Haley was pumping children full of an industrial chelator. Eventually the practice drew the attention of the FDA (Haley, as expected, consistently expressed irritation that people other than the converted would express curiosity about his treatment). The FDA, of course, ordered him to stop illegal marketing of the drug as a treatment (also here), which is, apparently, probably a conspiracy.

He has also been deeply involved in “alternative” dental practice (detoxification).

Former Indiana Representative and legendary patron saint of all things woo, Dan Burton, was a fan of Haley (he was also a fan of Rashid Buttar, which tells you a bit about where he came from).

Diagnosis: One of the grand old cranks of the mercury scare and enormously influential. Though the amorphous blob of woo that is antivaxx has slithered away from Haley’s original claims to the newest fashionable species of quackery, Haley is still a substantial presence. Extremely dangerous.

#736: Rebecca Hagelin

Rebecca Hagelin is a conservative author and columnist (e.g. for the WND), and past vice president of the Heritage Foundation (a good resource on the foundation is here. I suppose you guess where this is heading. On Occupy Wall Street, Hagelin claimed that Van Jones orchestrated it, calling him “one of the most radical individuals in American culture today, whose purpose is to overthrow timeless values and our American system of a republic and a democracy.” That tells you little about Jones, but quite a bit about Hagelin, and to color out the remainder she added that Occupy Wall Street is “as dangerous as we think it is” because its goal is “the complete overthrow of the United States constitution.” I guess she is worried that they are not engaging in calm, rational debate over the issues (another example of Hagelin’s reasonableness is here; and this is yet one more). Hagelin supported Santorum in the 2012 Republican primaries, which itself should qualify her for an entry in thie Encyclopedia.

It’s a bit tiring to repeat the nonsense these people have tried to argue about homosexuality by know, but she has at least asserted that gays are “bullies” and “power-mongers,” cautioning that gay rights leads to pedophilia and “chaos.” Indeed, the gay right movement is really a liberal conspiracy to silence her, and blamed the Penn State child abuse scandal on greater approval of homosexuality. “It won't stop at homosexual marriage,” claims Hagelin. “Look for polygamy and marriage between adults and children to be legalized. There is no greater dream for a paedophile than to be able to legally acclaim a child as his lover.” No, she can’t grasp the rather blatant difference. There is a report of an appearance in Australia here, and it is somewhat fascinating to see the scandal Hagelin’s appearance made – at a fringe event arranged by well-known extremists – whereas in the US she is almost mainstream.

Not willing to accept the medical experts on the existence of transgender children, Hagelin has also used her extensive background on the subject of gender (she’s a mother and implies that she has read the Bible) to deny the existence of transgender youth and attack their medical treatment.

Diagnosis: Batshit crazy, even for a person in her position (WND columnist). Her impact is hard to measure, but it can’t be good.

#735: John Hagelin

John Hagelin is the perennial presidential candidate for the absolutely crazy Natural Law Party, and a yogic flying guru. Yes, flying: “the practice of Yogic Flying creates maximum coherence [no, they don’t know what “coherence” means, and that actually explains a lot] in brain functioning and a powerful influence of coherence in society, spreading waves of harmony and peace to the surrounding population,” according to this website for “yogic flying clubs for students". In a bizarre chain of events Hagelin also sought the nomination for the ReformParty in 2000 to challenge Pat Buchanan’s hostile takeover.

In any case, Hagelin apparently started out as a serious quantum physicist until he went mad sometime in the 1980s, became a disciple of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and a proponent of Transcendental Meditation (TM) (a good article on TM here), including yogic flying and vedic architecture (the idea that he layout and direction of a building can have positive or negative effects on its inhabitants; specifically, buildings should only face east; other directions, especially south, invites bad “energies," and can even propagate criminal behavior). He also became a “Professor of Physics” at Maharishi University of Management and “Minister of Science and Technology” of the “Blogal Country of World Peace.” His later physics publications, by the way, seems to have been published in the “Journal of Modern Science and Vedic Science”, so his physicist credentials are not impeccable, and he is known for claiming that the unified field theory and consciousness “as a field” are interrelated, without providing anything resembling evidence or explanation (he may have attempted the latter, but seriously: no, the incoherent babble that falls out of Hagelin’s mouth does not count as “explanation”).

TM fans started the Natural Law Party in 1992 with the purpose of implementing “scientific” solutions to all our societal woes, where “scientific” means Transcendental Meditation. In fact, Transcendental Meditation was proposed as the solution to absolutely every problem, including crime, budget deficits and defense. For instance, in the 1990s Hagelin offered the services of 7000 yogic flyers to create enough positive vibes to end the war in Kosovo. The party was disbanded in 2004 to become a cult devoted to Maharishi Yogi (which is what they always were anyways), but party leader John Hagelin went on to form something called the “United States Peace Government.” He is also Executive Director of the International Center for Invincible Defense, which promotes Hagelin’s solutions to war. According to the Global Good News website “on 28 November 2006, the United States achieved invincibility and is stabilizing the number of Yogic Flyers – rising from 1,600 to 1,730 – assembled at the Invincible America Assembly in Fairfield, Iowa.” They also say their program (thinking about peace very hard) has been “field tested” for 25 years and has shown clear reductions in terrorism, but they haven’t released the data.

in 1993, Hagelin brought 4,000 TM-Sidhi program practitioners to Washington, D.C., where they practiced the TM-Sidhi techniques twice daily in a group for several weeks. Hagelin obtained data from the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department and claimed to have shown that the energy created by the TM had significantly reduced crime. Serious researchers dismissed the study, not only as idiotic but as pure and simplefraud, but Hagelin and his coauthor, Maxwell Rainforth, Assistant Professor of Physiology and Health and Statistics at Maharishi University of Management, complained that the criticisms (i.e. the scientific misconduct complaints) were “superficial”, without attempting to explain precisely what was wrong with them. The same happened when Robert Rabinoff claimed that the “Maharishi effect” was responsible for reducing crime and accidents while simultaneously increasing crop production in the vicinity of Maharishi University in Fairfield. James Randi checked with the Fairfield Police Dept, the Iowa Dept of Agriculture, and the Dept of Motor Vehicles and found that Rabinoff’s data were invented.

Hagelin did appear in “What the Bleep Do We Know”, as one of their scientific authorities. Cracked.com counts him as one of the six most insane people to ever run for president, though that is probably incorrect (though his interview with Larry King, transcribed here: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/12/lklw.00.html, makes a good case for that classification).

One Ellen Grace Jones, in an article for Huffington Post, claimed that Darwin was wrong based in part on discoveries allegedly made by John Hagelin. The reasoning is unclear. Indeed, the article must count as one of the most incoherent jumbles you will ever read.

Diagnosis: Hagelin is, in fact, a rather dangerous cult leader, and the fact that he is slightly more insane than regular cult leaders doesn’t exactly make him less disconcerting. Nor has it prevented him from having had a certain impact.

#734: John Hagee

John Hagee is a wackjob televangelist preacher who preaches the prosperity gospel and endorses all the ridiculous claims often endorsed by wackjob televangelist preachers, such as the idea that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for American toleration of homosexuality and that Hitler was sent by God to help bring about the establishment of the state of Israel through persecution of the Jews, and therefore the Holocaust was really God’s will and therefore an instance of perfect justice. In essence, Hagee is a fire-and-brimstone preacher notorious for preaching on political subjects, taking exactly the views you’d expect from someone with little aptitude for reality but lots of hate to spread. He also runs the John Hagee ministries, which is responsible for distributing that hate and insanity to many countries around the world, and Hagee is the founder and National Chairman of the Christian-Zionist organization Christians United for Israel. Nonetheless, he admits that that the preemptive nuclear attack on Iran that he favors will lead to the deaths of most Jews in Israel, but that is apparently OK since God, Hagee, the Bible, himself and stuff (it should be mentioned that he has a history of trying to rewrite past statements). There is a fine summary of some of his views here.

Hagee’s views on religious liberty are well illustrated by his assertion that atheists should leave the US, as “they are not wanted and won't be missed” (by him, of course), and he has called on Congress to “outlaw the practice of witchcraft and Satanism in the US military, lest we offend the God of Heaven”, which I suppose is the only First Amendment Hagee finds it worthwhile to endorse.

He is, of course, a Biblical literalist, and his track record as a prophet resembles that of Hal Lindsey. In his 2005 book Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, Hagee takes the Bible to predict that Russia and the Islamic states will invade Israel and be destroyed by God. This will cause the antichrist, the head of the European Union, to create a confrontation over Israel between China and the West. The causal mechanisms are unclear, but sufficient causes are superfluous in Jesus-dynamics, I suppose. In Defense of Israel (2007), he argued that Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah for the Jews, only the Savior for the Christian Church, and therefore, that attempts should not be made to convert Jews. The conclusion is, I suppose, fair, but the premises are less well-hinged. Hagee denies being anti-semitic, though, which is proven by the fact that he leads Christians United for Israel, although he admits that he is willing to see most Jews (who themselves are to blame for the Holocaust – in fact, according to his Jerusalem Countdown Hitler himself counts as a Jew) killed as a means to limit the influence of Islam. And so it goes.

Involvement in politics

In the 2008 elections Hagee endorsed McCain (this is a superb commentary). McCain apparently expressed gratitude for the endorsement, which led to a spite with the deranged dimwit Bill Donohoe, of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, over the fact that Hagee is on record as calling the Catholic Church “the great whore”. Much hilarity ensued, and McCain was in the end forced to denounce Hagee. Hagee, by the way, has earlier been a strong supporter of Alan Keyes for president.

According to Hagee, prayer appears in general to be a powerful political force. He even has evidence. According to Hagee it was prayer and fasting that ended the Civil War. It is hard to see how to start.

Involvement in pseudo-politics

Hagee is also a conspiracy theorist, having stated not only that global warming is non-existent, but that the Kyoto is as a conspiracy aimed at manipulating U.S. economy. In that regard, he has also condemned the Evangelical Climate Initiative, an initiative signed by 86 evangelical leaders acknowledging the seriousness of global warming and pledging to press for legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions. And to make sure that no one ever mistakes him for anything but a conspiracy-theorist, he has touted the “one world order” conspiracy involving the Illuminati and international bankers, agreeing that there is a “Satanic liberal Jewish conspiracy”, consisting in particular an unholy combination of the Federal Reserve and the Rothschild family. Who knows what they’re up to, but it is probably not Armageddon, since Hagee seems to be all game for contributing to ushering in the endtimes.

Apparently secular humanism has become the pagan religion that is dominating the country, and apparently it is responsible for societal ills such as rape, spousal abuse, drugs, divorce and crime. Hagee has, in a predictably feeble effort to do an effort to turn the tide of such evils, warned that books Harry Potter and Heather Has Two Mommies (along with abortion) are ways for the secularists to corrupt America’s children. Because it is always about “other religions corrupting children” (also here; and to emphasize: gay equality and abortion are “demonic forces attacking our nation” and gays are “defiling America’s purity”, whatever that is supposed to mean). Unsurprisingly universities are “poisoning the minds of America’s young people” as a result of Saudi financing (little evidence given) of “anti-American” professors. Indeed, as so many delusional wingnuts Hagee has perceived the close collaboration between radical Islamists and secularists – no matter that his own views, as opposed to secular liberal vies on social and political issues, line up pretty smoothly with the Taliban – since both “hate America and love Big Government”. At least he cuts to the chase without bothering with irrelevant details or explanations. And both groups like to “tell us what to think”; Hagee would never dream of doing that himself, would he? Immediately afterwards he repeated his warnings to his congregation that if they read Harry Potter books they are “opening the gates of your mind to the Prince of Darkness and he will invade, and once he's invited in, he doesn't go out until he is cast out,” and that infernal rock and roll music, which “is nothing more than Satanic cyanide”, needs to be taken outside of the home and burned. Well, ok; he is not telling you what to think. Indeed, one suspects that Hagee doesn’t really want you to be thinking at all.

Hagee also thinks that the US is facing decline (it is unclear in what respect it is supposed to be declining) because of prohibitions on public school-organized prayer and legal abortion. More on Hagee on abortion here). Indeed, it seems that God is prepared to kill 100 million Americans as punishment for abortions: “You say, ‘I have a hard time believing that.’ May I refer you to Noah and the flood? Believe it,” which, as evidence, comes dangerously close to Pygmies+Dwarfs.

Miscellaneous

As for the proposed “decline”, in 2010, Hagee released the book Can America Survive? 10 Prophetic Signs That We Are The Terminal Generation. The signs are generally rather mundane, and often in internal conflict, but I suppose coherence is not for divinely inspired prophets such as Hagee (for example).

There is a fine Hagee resource here.

His son, Matthew Hagee seems to be following in his father’s exact footsteps.

Diagnosis: Demented fuckwit. He is pretty loud, and a scary number of other demented fuckwits seem to be listening.