#1789: Robert Jeffress

Robert James Jeffress, Jr. is a megachurch pastor (First Baptist Church in Dallas) and host of Pathway to Victory, a widely broadcast radio program aimed at insane wingnut fundamentalists. To get a rough idea about where he stands: Jeffress is a staunch opponent of the First Amendment’s religious protections, which – since the Amendment makes it legal for people to disagree with him on theological and metaphysical issues – he claims will “kindle the anger of God against us”. “What we call diversity, God calls idolatry,” says Jeffress (yeah, blame your hate and bigotry on God, will you), but precisely why we should worry is a bit unclear, since Jeffress thinks the death and destruction of the endtimes are imminent anyways.

Of course, Jeffress is all in favor of religious freedom (and claims that God supports such freedoms) when he perceives that his freedoms are under threat – which they aren’t: what he means is consistently feels is threatened is really his freedom to prevent others from exercising their religious freedoms.

Infidels, Muslims and Catholics

Jeffress has claimed that Islam “promoted pedophilia” and has called it an “evil, evil religion” “from the pit of Hell”. It’s not the only one. “Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists and virtually everyone else” are cult members, according to Jeffress, and in 2010 he referred to Roman Catholicism as “the Babylonian mystery religion” found in the Book of Revelation and claimed that the Catholic Church represents “the genius of Satan.” (Mormons may be the worst, though.) He has also pointed out that “you can’t be saved being a Jew” – Jews are all going to hell together with Muslims and gays and Catholics and Mormons. At least he assured us that he has a Jewish friend in New York, so he can’t possibly be anti-Semitic.

Jeffress is also heavily engaged in the imaginary war on Christmas; in December 2010 he established a “Naughty and Nice List” where businesses were identified based on whether or not they openly celebrated Christmas: “I wanted to do something positive to encourage businesses to acknowledge Christmas and not bow to the strident voices of a minority who object to the holiday.” He didn’t identify any representatives of that minority.

Here he blames Satan for the non-existent persecution of Christians in the US. According to Jeffress, Christians in America today are being treated just like the Jews in Nazi Germany before they were rounded up and slaughtered. It’s unclear whether the description is pure demagoguery or whether Jeffress really is that delusional. Apparently the alleged evidence is that fundamentalist Christians are being “marginalized”; I don’t think the primary problem for Jews in Nazi Germany was being marginalized.

Homosexuality

But of course. Jeffress has claimed that homosexuality is like plugging a TV into the wrong outlet and “blow that TV to smithereens.” In his 2008 sermon “Gay Is Not OK” Jeffress stated that “what they [homosexuals] do is filthy. It is so degrading that it is beyond description [the TV analogy apart, apparently]. And it is their filthy behavior that explains why they are so much more prone to disease.” He has called same-sex marriages “counterfeit”, and lamented (lied) that legalizing gay marriage is going to make the government shut down Christian radio stations. It’s not a lie if you cross your fingers behind your back and whisper “Jerusalem” under your breath afterwards.

Moreover, “pro-LGBT businesses” are a greater threat to religious freedom in America than ISIS, according to Jeffress. Now, as earlier pointed out Jeffress is in fact opposed to religious freedom; another interesting thing about the claim, however, is the abysmal level of delusion you have to adopt to seriously entertain the idea that ISIS is a threat to religious freedom in America.

In 2013 Jeffress defended Phil Robertson’s claim that gays are a sexual threat to children and claimed that, while he and Robertson have a right to defend their interpretations of the Bible, “people don’t have the right to label Phil or me or tens of millions of evangelical Christians as hateful because we hold to a historical understanding of the Bible.” People do have that right. Jeffress also refused to pinpoint where in the Bible (or science) it is claimed that gay people are a threat to children. Here is more obliviousness from Jeffress. Also, “... [i]t’s been my experience as one whose been on the forefront of these culture wars that it doesn’t matter how much you smile, how much you show compassion, that if you label homosexuality as a sin you’re going to be labeled as ‘intolerant’ and a ‘hate monger.’” Indeed.

While still a pastor in Wichita Falls (1998) Jeffress got some attention for his attempts to have two children’s books about children with gay or lesbian parents removed from the public library by checking out the books and paying for them rather than returning them to be recirculated. The attempt backfired somewhat after the story was mainstreamed, whereupon the library received multiple copies of the books as donations and demand for the books increased significantly.

Oh, and of course gay marriage is a sign of the end times, like everything else Jeffress doesn’t like. (Fifty shades of gray, for instance; one wonders if he’s read it.)

Politics and Jeffress’s dream of a Taliban-style theocracy

Jeffress’s claim that Romney is non-Christian (“[Mormonism] is not Christianity, it is not a branch of Christianity. It is a cult”) probably didn’t ultimately help the candidate he supported in the 2012 nomination, Rick Perry (only Perry can defeat “the most pro-homosexual, most pro-abortion president in history”). Nonetheless, Jeffress ended up supporting Romney, although he complained that Romney was too focused on economy and not on “the moral and spiritual deterioration of our country.” Being a cult-member and subscribing to an ideology straight from the pits of hell is apparently not a deal-breaker for Jeffress.

In general, Jeffress’s approach to politics is pretty much what you’d expect from a lunatic fundie (though he is perhaps even more blatantly incoherent than most): God sent 9/11 just to warn us that he was displeased with our godlessness, and so on. Though he acknowledged in 2012 that “President Obama is not the Antichrist,” he emphasized that “the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.” Political discourse with these kinds of people is like trying to play chess with a rabid bat.

In a 2012 sermon, Jeffress complained about Supreme Court decisions on the separation of church and state that have “so weakened our nation’s spiritual and social structure that collapse is inevitable.” These would be Engel v Vitale, which forbids schools from forcing students to recite government-composed daily prayers; Roe v Wade; and Lawrence v Texas, which struck down state laws against sodomy; Jeffress lamented that “these explosive, wrong choices our country has made and the inevitable implosion of our country” (yeah, both explosion and implosion at the same time). Moreover, Stone v. Graham, which in 1980 struck down Kentucky’s law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in all public school classrooms, led directly to a tragic 1997 shooting spree in a Kentucky high school by a 14-year-old student.

He has also complained that many people in the clergy “falsely perceive Christ as this little, wimpy guy who walked around plucking daisies and eating birdseed and saying nice things;” according to Jeffress, Jesus was – coincidentally rather like himself – a hateful, flaming bigot. Nonetheless, when declaring his support for Trump in the 2016 election he stated that if Jesus Christ was a candidate himself, he “would run from that candidate as far as possible” and still vote for Trump – apparenty the Bible calls for “a strongman”. Moreover, according to Jeffress, Trump is like Saul/Paul, and will be led by people close to him to a “road to Damascus” experience – Jeffress himself is on Trump’s evangelical advisory board and is currently preaching the gospel of Trump (Trump is like Nehemiah, who also built a wall and was attacked by “the mainstream media”). Of the election itself, in which God miraculously intervened and got Trump elected (which is not voter fraud), Jeffress has said that “[t]his isn’t about partisan politics. This is about good and evil.” It seems to be about partisan politics. Then he accused Hillary Clinton of hate speech.

In general, Jeffress warns us that churches that don’t embrace right-wing politics are going to “surrender the control and the direction of this country to the godless, immoral infidels who hate God,” and has compared failure to endorse wingnuttery to failure to stand up to Hitler (of course).

As for police violence, Jeffress maintains that no one has anything to fear from police officers because they are ministers sent by God to “punish evildoers,” which is such a ridiculous thing to say that one is tempted to laugh were it not so tragic. Apparently if only black people “would teach [their] children to respect law enforcement officers, they wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

Selected publications

Jeffress has written a couple of books, including Countdown to the Apocalypse: Why ISIS and Ebola Are Only the Beginning, which probably doesn’t need further comment, and Twilight’s Last Gleaming (foreword by Mike Huckabee), which claims that “America’s days are numbered, because this world’s days are numbered,” but that the inevitable end of the world is an opportunity to evangelize. Yes, it’s a relatively common belief, but I suggest taking a moment to think about how rabidly delusionally insane it actually is: it really does outcrazy tinfoil-hats-and-pyramids-protect-me-from-alien-mind-control by quite some distance.

Diagnosis: Incoherent, blathering lunatic running on hate, bigotry and persecution complexes. He is, however, frighteningly influential.

#1788: John Jay

John Joseph Jay is the owner of the blog Summer Patriot, Winter Soldier, most famous (though still pretty obscure) for his views on the war on terror. Jay has suggested that we should “kill [Muslims] in sufficient number and with sufficient purpose and zeal that it causes them to stop killing us, and then we should kill them a little bit more, just to drive the point home.” That is, instead of waging a war on terror, we “should declare war on iran, syria, egypt and saudi arabia, as well as libya and the sudan and somalia, and we should kill people by the scores. no science. no precision bombing. no shock and awe designed to ‘impress’ and send ‘signals,’ but old fashion war with wholesale slaughter including indiscriminate death of innocents and babes. down to the last muslim, if necessary.” Jay responded to criticism by pointing out that The Left is lying about him since Muslims are murderous, which isn’t really pertinent to the content of the criticisms. It’s not only Muslims, though; to combat the liberals who at least up until recently were running the country (apparently, to Jay, a front for the Black Panthers, who were apparently contemplating FEMA concentration camps) “you are going to have to kill folks, your uncles, your sons and daughters, to preserve those liberties.” After all, The Left is, according to Jay, prepared to kill you, as demonstrated by the fact that abortion is legal.

It is a bit unclear to what extent and in what role Jay is involved with Pam Geller’s and Robert Spencer’s group Stop the Islamization of America. Daily Kos has described him as a “SIOA co-founder”, something he has denied. Spencer has referred to him as a SIOA board member, though.

Diagnosis: Not among the good guys; that’s for sure

#1787: Cathy Jameson

Cathy Jameson is an anti-vaccinationist and blogger at the antivaxx websites Age of Autism and The Autism File, where she continues to believe, against all evidence, truth and credibility, that vaccines cause autism and for instance gives advice on how to deal with vaccine “bullies” (or how to try to baffle those who know what they’re talking about with bullshit). And of course, Jameson – like so many antivaxxers – gets bullied everywhere, from the mainstream news who “refuses to offer both sides of the vaccine story” to shills for the pharmaceutical industry (who you can recognize by the fact that they seem to know their stuff and therefore disagree with antivaxxers who don’t – many people are apparently not “aware of the many risks of vaccinating or realize how much money goes into this industry”) to doctors, who continue to encourage vaccines despite Jameson’s delusional rantings (“Why is my doctor bullying me about this?”). She also defends Andrew Wakefield. “Do know the lingo,” is one piece of advice she gives to her readers, and reminds them, with regard to Wakefield’s retracted study, to “[t]ell [vaccine advocates] first that it was not a study; it was a paper.” No, seriously. Here she apparently aims for some kind of record in Dunning-Kruger: The conclusion, at least, is that vaccines don’t work and that the CDC must be in a conspiracy to get you hooked on them for nebulous reasons. Also toxins.

Here is Jameson recommending you to stay away from the flu vaccine by pointing out how she “survived the flu naturally” (which in her mind seems to cast doubt on the “CDC’s over-used scare tactic of ‘36,000 flu deaths per year’ statistic” because she didn’t die and it's all about her), and she proudly described how she felt completely awful for several days. No, there’s no price for discovering the problems with her reasoning. The idiocy is so thick the mind boggles, even remembering that we’re dealing with an antivaxx loon. Oh, we’re not done: “Now that I’m over it, and as my family and I get back on track boosting our immune systems naturally with some vitamins, supplements and essential oils, I believe we’ll be able to get through the rest of the flu (and flu-shot) season unscathed.” Reports that she’s able to operate a doorknob remain unverified. Suffice to say her case for the efficacy of those “natural remedies” isn’t impressive.

At least her screeds are useful for illustrating the religious fervor of anti-vaxx dogmatism and how it contrasts with scientific inquiry.

Diagnosis: At least she’s ready to take on the conspiracies that continue to silence her by ignoring her, armed with all the fallacies in the book. Probably one of the most impressive examples of Dunning-Kruger we’ve had the opportunity to cover.

#1786: Steve Jalsevac

Steve Jalsevac is co-founder and managing director of LifeSiteNews (LSN), a “news” site pushing the usual wingnut stuff: creationism, anti-gay rhetoric (e.g. praise for the draconian Ugandan anti-gay act, and their Matthew Cullinan Hoffman has argued that anti-gay organizations needto become “nastier”) and climate change denialism (Jalsevac, a Catholic, was none too happy that the Pope weighed in on environmental issues). LSN has also demanded that the Catholic Church excommunicate Democratic politicians (Gerard Nadal), maintained that feminists were to blame for the Costa Concordia disaster (Hilary White), compared gays and lesbians to pagans (David Krayden of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies), and fervently supported ex-gay ‘reparative’ therapy. Jalsevac has even asked for donations to promote “freedom from the homosexual lifestyle”. That kind.

Some examples:

In 2013 LSN came out heavily in favor of gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli (a fan). In fact, they even claimed that he won the election: “Notice that the map seems to be almost solid red. And yet, Ken Cuccinelli somehow very narrowly lost to his Democrat opponent. To me, something smells about this race,” said Jalsevac. Of course, hat candidates win by numbers of people and that Cuccinelli’s opponent McAuliffe dominated more urban areas just aren’t relevant facts to Jalsevac, who rather “suspect[s] Ken Cuccinelli actually won Virginia, but certain things happened, beyond the betrayal by some Republicans, campaign weaknesses and other reported issues, to ensure that that would not be the official result.” Note that it cannot be because of voter fraud (in that case he couldn’t have used the dominance of redness on the map as evidence); it must have been … who knows: perhaps basic arithmetics is a liberal conspiracy or something. And the fact that the party breakdown of the results in Virginia’s counties in the 2013 gubernatorial election looks very similar to those in the 2012 presidential election? The 2012 election was rigged, too, of course.

Later in 2013 Jalsevac wondered why Obama has “not been booted out of office” and “not been charged” over his handling of the George Zimmerman case (yes) – alleging that Obama led a “failed attempted lynching” of Zimmerman as part of a “lib-leftist generated Latino vs African-American race confrontation” – and the fact that he has “hatefully undermined the entire social and historical foundations of the nation.” Jalsevac apparently found it incomprehensible that Amricans can support him and his “Black baby-killing abortion genocide.” Indeed, it  “seems to me to be a kind of Jim Jones social suicide cult under the hypnotic control of their cult leader,” said Jalsevac. When Rightwingwatch reported on his claims, Jalsevac responded by accusing them of being funded by George Soros. Also, Benghazi.

Diagnosis: Yet another one. The LSN seems to have a certain readership, however, and the readers are probably not only people looking for a laugh over fuming, raging, crazy conspiracy theories. Scary. 

#1785: Robert Jahn

Robert Jahn is a retired American plasma physicist, Professor of Aerospace Science, and Dean of Engineering at Princeton University. Those are some pretty impressive credentials. But Jahn was also a founder of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR), a parapsychology research program that was up and running from 1979 to 2007.

At the PEAR lab, which he co-founded with Brenda Dunne following an undergraduate project to study purported low-level psychokinetic (PK) effects on electronic random event generators, Jahn studied psychokinesis for many years. Over the years, he and Dunne claimed to have created a number of small-physical-scale, statistically significant results that they think suggested direct causal interaction between subjects’ intentions and otherwise physical events. As such – we conjecture – they are responsible for an impressive number of contemporary New Age-based misunderstandings of quantum physics. (Roger Nelson, a colleague of his in the experiments, later introduced the notion of “field consciousness” and currently heads the Global Consciousness Project, for instance.) It culminated in their book Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. Jahn also experimented with remote viewing and other topics in parapsychology.

His results don’t appear to have impressed many outside of pseudoscience and New Age communities. When the US Army Research Institute formed a scientific panel to assess parapsychological evidence they visited the PEAR laboratory, but concluded that results from macro-PK experiments were unimpressive and that virtually all micro-PK experiments “depart from good scientific practice in a variety of ways,” concluding that there was no scientific evidence for the existence of psychokinesis. Other critics have faulted Jahn’s experiments for failing to randomize the sequence of group trials at each session, inadequate documentation on precautions against data tampering and possibilities of data selection, and pointing out the absence of independent replications and detail in the reports: “very little information is provided about the design of the experiment, the subjects, or the procedure adopted. Details are not given about the subjects, the times they were tested, or the precise conditions under which they were tested.” Moreover, the effect was minuscule (50.02 – barely above random), and significance reached only over large numbers of trials (millions of trials with 33 subjects over seven years; most of the “excess” results seem to have been obtained by one of the subjects, who seems to have been a PEAR staff member) – since the apparently “random” results were generated by machines (random number generators), any deviations from randomness over such a large number of trials may simply be the result of the results not being entirely random in the first place. Perhaps most significantly, even though critics pointed out these shortcomings with the experiments over a long time, and the shortcomings would have been easy to fix (double-blinding, for instance), the PEAR lab didn’t. Other researchers have later tried and failed to replicate the experiments, and physicist Milton Rothman at least claimed that most of the faculty at Princeton considered the work of PEAR an embarrassment.

Although PEAR shut down in 2007, Jahn and Dunne have apparently set up a new International Consciousness Research Laboratories, and are currengly selling “a multi-DVD/CD set entitled The PEAR Proposition” for a modest $62. Jahn is also the vice President of the fringe-science group Society for Scientific Exploration (many of his parapsychology papers appear in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, but also in similar pseudoscience publications – none made it to prominent science journals), and has apparently received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Andhra University (which we don’t think is anything to be proud of). His latest book seems to be the 2012 book Quirks of the Quantum Mind. Yes. No.

Diagnosis: A rather embarrassing waste of a career, really. On the other hand, Jahn has had quite some unfortunate influence over particular groups of people (who seem to have wished for rather more spectacular results than the ones Jahn achieved through what are probably confirmation bias and technical shortcomings).