#2228: Ben Scripture

J. Benjamin Scripture is a creationist with a PhD in Biochemistry (he is sometimes presented as having a PhD in biology, which is different). Since he has a PhD, he was eligible to sign the Discovery Institute’s silly petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, but calling Scripture a “scientist” would be, shall we say, a bit of a stretch, and his dissent from Darwinism is not remotely scientific. He is nevertheless teaching biology and biochemistry at Grace College and Manchester College, dark and angry fundamentalist Bible schools that wouldn’t welcome real biology in their classrooms anyways.

Hardly a bigshot in the creationist movement, Scripture nevertheless gives talks and participates in “debates” on creation and creationism. Indeed, he even appears to have his own radio show, “Scripture on Creation”, where he e.g. rejects the results of radiometric dating, recommends Expelled, points to evidence of dinosaurs being described in the Bible (the behemoth – it is likely to be a dinosaur since “what animal alive today fits this description?” ) and discusses the layout of the Ark. He is, however, perhaps most notable for his inability to distinguish random rocks from fossilized brains.

Diagnosis: A reasonably minor character, but Scripture is making his own, small contribution to the erosion of trust and truth as generally recognized values in today’s society. 

#2227: Tamara Scott

Tamara Scott is the Iowa state director for Concerned Women for America, whose mission is to “protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens,” and member of the Republican National Committee. In addition, Scott has promulgated bigotry and delusion on radio and cable TV shows since 1998, and currently hosts the weekly online show “Tamara Scott Live”. She was also Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign co-chairperson for Bachmann’s 2012 presidential campaign, and has been involved in organizing political prayer rallies.

Anti-gay activism

Scott is, unsurprisingly, most notable for her persistent opposition to gay rights and marriage equality, and she has alleged that the legalization of gay marriage hurt Iowa’s economy: “It costs you, the taxpayer, as high as $280 billion a year for fragmented families, that’s according to the Family Research Council.” Now, the Family Research Council is hardly a reliable source for anything but hate, but even assuming their figures one might reasonably wonder how encouraging more people to marry would lead to “fragmented families”. Scott is apparently also concerned that marriage equality will pave the way for man-Eiffel Tower marriage. It is perhaps telling that she doesn’t even dimly recognize the significance of consent.

Scott has also argued that it is ironic for feminists to be in favor of gay marriage; after all, feminists want equality, and it is by banning same-sex marriage one ensures an equal number of men and women were married. “So my laugh is, why wouldn’t you want equality in a marriage?” continued Scott. We suspect that there are aspects of feminist thought (the thoughtpart, for instance) that Scott hasn’t yet quite grasped. She also said she couldn’t support civil unions either because that would lend state support of “the act” that “God has not condoned” and thus violate her religious freedom to remain unaware of gay couple having sex: “I can’t condone what he’s condemned, […] So to ask or to force American citizens to condone something that’s against their deeply held religious convictions is wrong. So whether you call it marriage or you call it a civil union, you’re still asking your fellow citizens to embrace something that goes against their First Amendment religious protections.” This is not how the First Amendment works.

Among things Scott asks listeners to ponder are questions like: “If homosexuality is something to be celebrated by the left, by Hollywood, then why does it need all of these protections? And if it needs these protections, then why do we promote it as an everyday lifestyle and a regular choice for our youth?” (she doesn’t really want you to ponder it) and “if homosexuality is truly just something that happens, then why, one, do we have to recruit it in our kindergarten through college-level educational system and, if it’s just an everyday thing, why does it need all these special protections in the civil rights?” She did make it clear for “all those haters out there” that she was just “asking the question”, though.

Religion, race and politics

Scott is in general firmly opposed to the separation of church and state (it is “nowhere” in the Constitution, according to Scott, though we have already sort of established that Scott has some difficulties understanding the Consitution). Indeed, Scott does not only think that state-sponsored school prayers should be reinstated, but that we need to repent the decision to end them in order to get back on God’s good side. Apparently, not allowing state-sponsored school prayers has led to “assault, rape, murder”. To back up her claims, Scott cites “studies” done by David Barton, a source that is systematically less reliable on matters of fact than the Deepak Chopra quote generator. (In reality, the rates of violent crime and sexual assault have plummeted over the last two decades, of course; and this is certainly not the only time Scott has relied on questionable sources.) She also suggested that instead of passing a “horrible” anti-bullying bill currently being considered in the state legislature, Iowa should just return Christian prayer to schools.

Later she doubled down on her claims, and argued that removing forced prayer from public schools decades ago led to plummeting test scores, increased violence, more parents divorcing, everything in Ferguson, riots, Antifa, and the Resistance. She then accused critics of lying by quoting her verbatim.

In 2015 she weighed in on the Charleston church shooting claiming that the tragedy was “being hijacked to a racial issue.” According to Scott, the shooting in a black church by a gunman with white supremacist views who explicitly stated his desire to start a race war wasn’t as much a “racial issue” as an attack on religion (it is “being made into more of a racial issue than it was”). Scott then accused critics of the Confederate flag of turning a symbol of “fun” into something divisive.

Scott is of course also opposed to immigration, and has pointed out that “we have no idea what’s coming through our borders, but I would say biblically it’s not a Christian nation when you entice people to do wrong;” she has apparently realized that it is good to give reasons for her claims, but has clearly not figured out how it works or what reasons are. She did, however, warn us that child refugees may be “highly trained warriors”. Elsewhere, she has claimed that lenience toward undocumented immigrants would be a betrayal of the founding fathers, because “we put blood on the line to get the liberty we have, so we can’t allow others not to do the same in their country or we bring those wars here.”

Anti-vaccine views

Given the level of density at play, it should perhaps come as little surprise that Scott is also an antivaxxer. According to Scott, antivaxxers are unfairly demonized: disease outbreaks in school do not happen because people don’t get their kids vaccinated but because the “socialist” schools make kids share pencils and have become places where students are now “facing each other”. Apparently Trump’s antivaccine views are just one more reason to vote for him, as Scott sees things.

On Trump

Scott has criticized fellow Christians for not being sufficiently supportive or forgiving of Trump: “Let’s not be judgmental ourselves. Maybe God’s called someone to a camp for various reasons;” indeed critics of Trump are being judgmental and “not very loving” when they criticize Trump, for “only God” knows the candidate’s heart “and God has allowed what has taken place this far.” This sentiment only applies to rightwing politicians of course; as Jesus taught us that forgiveness is a partisan matter. Note also, Scott points out, that Trump promised that “he’ll end the war on Christianity”; Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, “created the war on Christianity,” which is a surprising claim even for someone who stands out for their lunacy among the religious right. At one point she also suggested that Obama in 2016 was trying to bring in massive amounts of refugees to the US to help sway the election. “Am I suggesting that they’ll be voting?” said Scott. “I’m not saying that.”

Diagnosis: Even we will have to admit to being impressed by Scott’s ability to stand out from her associates; even by the standards of wingnut lunatics Scott’s level of deranged confusions are rather exceptional. She does enjoy a modicum of popularity and influence, and remember: she isa member of the RNC.

#2226: Ami & Steve Sciulli

Ami and Steve Sciulli are “sacred sound healing musicians who use quartz crystal bowls and electronically enhanced world flutes to create an environment for healing, expansion, and relaxation” under the name Life in Balance. Apparently, Life in Balance “is committed to using sacred musical instruments merged with current technology to create an integrated sonic environment for transformation. They perform both Sound Healing Meditation (Inbreath) and Dance/Music Concerts using global rhythms (Outbreath).” (We sheepishly admit that we couldn’t quite get ourselves to sample their music.) The Sciullis offer energy – “sound healing energy transmission”, in fact. Moreover, if you listen to their “bio-electrical sound current” (it would perhaps be interesting to hear their definition of “bio-electrical”), then “The Sound becomes a fertile field for potential and intention to be made manifest”. It’s like The Secret, with quartz crystal singing bowls: Ami Sciulli, ostensibly “a longtime student of metaphysics” (we suspect she would be in for a shock if she enrolled in a philosophy program at an accredited institution), has “developed an ability to remain in a space of expanded expression and to transmit this frequency through pure thought and the perfect structure of quartz crystal bowls” (you’ll have a hard time falsifying that claim!), and “[u]nderstanding that there is a unifying energy that connects everything, she produces sonic wave vibrations that reach the receiver at their own level, allowing them to connect with and then resonate with the vibrations as they grow stronger.”

As one Jim Brenholts, producer of Tracks Across the Universe: Chronology of Ambient & Electronic Music, described them, “Steve and Ami have been on a mission for years promoting the holistic healing arts of music. They are at the edge and in the center, knocking on the door to the perpendicular universe!” Oh, ye poor, narrow-minded souls who are chained to the idea that words are best used to produce sentences that mean something. 

Diagnosis: New Age word salads don’t come much more nebulous than in the Sciulli’s promotional materials, at least. Still, if you wish to vibrate at the doorstep of a perpendicular universe, you’ll probably not find any better option.

#2225: Joseph Sciambra

We have encountered a couple of ex-gay activists before, and have to admit that it is sometimes difficult not to feel some empathy or pity for them. In the case of Joseph Sciambra concern might be appropriate as well. Sciambra claims to be an “ex-gay” porn star, and says that anal sex “release[s] into the world these rare demonic entities”; indeed, unless everyone immediately commits to abstaining from homosexual activity, we risk that the “devil could be given birth to anally.” 

Sciambra describes it all in his book Swallowed by Satan, where he also claims to have been a neo-Nazi and a Satanist. The book doesn’t exactly scream trustworthiness. Much of it is dedicated to graphic accounts of brutal sex with other men, voices Sciambra heard in his head that he claims are demonic spirits, and even having sex with demonic figures; in one story, he goes to a club to get “gang-banged” and during sex “conceives” a demon in his anus. After sex, the demon apparently “gushed from my body” in his discharge and “would grow and pitilessly hover about me. Sometimes, it spoke.” He blames his descent into homosexuality on innocently using a Ouija board as a child and “an occult sex ritual that I engaged in” with “a gay cabal of male witches,” where he had group sex with a man with “the head of a goat or ram.” At some point he was also possessed by a Nazi ghost. (For those who may be interested, some further excerpts and claims are discussed here). No wonder Sciambra “cannot understand why the gay experiment has not been abandoned like other failed utopian philosophies that resulted in mass murder – fascism, Nazism, communism.”

His YouTube page includes a biopic, “Death in Room #122,” as well as video commentaries like “How to Stop Masturbating,” “Gay Marriage: A Satanic Ceremony” and “Former Gay Porn Star Tells of His Possession by Demons and Deliverance from Satan”. Apparently Bryan Fischer was impressed and invited Sciambra on his show, where they talked about how Sciambra was “devoured by the Prince of Darkness” when he “entered the homosexual lifestyle,” an experience Sciambra described as “scary”. Then he warned kids against coming out as gay and implored gay people to “stop the silliness, stop the lies and stop the deception because how high does the body count have to get before we will admit that the gay lifestyle has been a disaster?” Sciambra knows a lot about lies and silliness, at least. 

Diagnosis: As reliable on homosexuality as he is on Satanism and Nazism, we suppose. We are, however, willing to concede that there might, indeed, be some unusual sexual proclivities at work here. 

#2224: Rob Schwarzwalder

Rob Schwarzwalder is currently Senior Lecturer at Regent University, Pat Robertson’s mockery of educational institutions. And prior to that, Schwarzwalder was vice president of the fundamentalist hate group the Family Research Council. In that capacity, Schwarzwalder would for instance call for boycotts of Starbucks, warning that the company may be endangering the country’s economic health by supporting marriage equality. How, you might ask? Well, because “[b]y supporting a movement that would further vitiate the already weakened family unit, [Starbucks CEO Howard] Schultz is tacitly but actively advocating the continued erosion of the institution – the two-parent, heterosexual, traditional and complementary family unit – without which no economy or society generally can thrive.” How recognizing same-sex marriage would lead to erosion of the family unit is not entirely clear (unless Schwarzwalder believes that gay people, if denied same-sex marriage, would instead opt into stable, loving heterosexual marriages), but this really has nothing to do with reason or evidence, of course. Apparently it has something to do with supporting gay rights being a matter of  “show[ing] a lack of love” and sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage leading to “the withering of the soul and the erosion of society.” President Obama thus got it all wrong, since “there is no love in affirming something God declares wrong and harmful, whether it relates to human sexuality or thievery or malice or deception or anything.” Schwarzwalder has also suggested that legalizing gay marriage might lead to civil war.

To change it up a little, Schwarzwalder claimed in 2016 that defending trans rights is “fascistic” and “the banning of dissent”. Apparently legal or political decisions Schwarzwalder don’t agree with are violations of his First Amendment rights and thus contrary to democracy. And indeed, Schwarzwalder is much concerned about First Amendment rights, in particular religious freedom; he has little idea what religious freedom involves, though. “Everyone should be free to agree with me” is not quitethe correct interpretation.

Schwarzwalder has weighed in on other issues, too. He has for instance argued that conservative Christians do not “cherry pick” the Bible when they claim that the Bible’s command to stone rebellious children doesn’t really mean what it says. The guiding principle to reading the Bible is apparently that you should adhere to the Biblical commands Schwarzwalder favors the way he interprets them, and that principe should be applied universally and without exception. He is also a creationist and climate change denialist, of course.

Diagnosis: Precisely what you’d expect from someone in Schwarzwalder’s position: complete rubbish.

#2223: Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Jeffrey M. Schwartz is a psychiatrist with a genuine research background. He is also a religious fundamentalist, signatory to the Discovery Institute’s nonsense petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, and featured in the 2008 creationist promotion “documentary” Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, where he told Ben Stein that science should not be separated from religion, that is, that dogma should be allowed to overrule empirical research if you don’t like what the data tell you. As for evolution, Schwartz seems to accept evolution in general, but thinks that humans are exempt and able to transcend their origins for reasons that seem to lay closer to Deepak Chopra than to Kent Hovind.

Schwartz is, however, most famous as a proponent of non-materialist neuroscience. Schwartz’s argument for dualism is basically a combination of an argument from incredulity, and a (handwaving) appeal to quantum theory and the New Age (and false) notion that quantum physics somehow demonstrates that a “mind” is a necessary component for anything to happen (Schwartz’s coauthor is Henry Stapp, who is a defender of this, shall we say, non-standard  – though “refuted” would be more accurate – interpretation of quantum mechanics, which would, if true, be evidence for classical idealism, not dualism); there is a concise discussion of their silliness here. Schwartz provides no actual alternative dualist hypothesis that has been worked out in any detail, such as testable predictions, whatsoever, of course, preferring to handwave about a “mental force” that he argues solely by assertion is a natural feature of the universe and not magic. And no: neuroplasticity and what Schwartz calls “reprogramming the brain” is of course not evidence for dualism, insofar as nothing can be evidence for a hypothesis that has not even been coherently defined.

Jeffrey M. Schwartz must not be confused with Jeffrey H. Schwartz, who is also something of a crackpot but does, as a physical anthropologist, at least have a rudimentary understanding of the basics of evolution (and whose writings have been a source of quote mining among creationists like Ray Comfort).

Diagnosis: Pseudophilosophy in the service of religion. Schwartz is a real scientist and has done some real science; but his reframing of his research in handwavy mumbo-jumbo has nothing to do with science. Now, some might say that Schwartz’s views are arguably not that radically silly; still, he has aligned himself with the anti-science movement and stalwartly supports their campaigns against science, reason and civilization.

#2222: Robert L. Schulz

Robert Louis Schulz is an engineer by training, Founder and Chairman of We the People Foundation for Constitutional Education and We the People Congress, and “a constitutional activist with a decades-long focus on holding government accountable to the Constitution, through the First Amendment Right to Petition” – or put differently: a tax protester loon and tireless promoter of what might be termed civics woo, a type of woo that is arguably crazier and more likely to cause immediate harm even than most medical woo. Schulz has been credited with “setting the cornerstone for this new era of militias, tax protesters and ‘sovereign citizens’,” and has apparently filed well over one hundred court actions, on a pro se basis, against government actions he asserts are unconstitutional deprivations of individual liberty. His success rate is, predictably, dismal. Like most central characters in the sovereign citizen movement, Schulz has had plenty of opportunities to test out some of his hypotheses in real life settings, but since he is rather poor at assessing the rich data set his experiences have given him, he appears to have learned exactly nothing. For instance, in 2007 he got in trouble (United States v. Schulz, (529 F.Supp.2d 341)) for selling a scheme based on the premise that withholding tax was voluntary; at least the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York was not impressed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the injunction (517 F.3d 606) (the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case).

Schulz had already gained some attention for making similar claims in 2001, with an ad that named three former IRS agents who claimed that most Americans owe no income tax and that the 16th Amendment, which authorizes the U.S. government to levy income taxes, is fraudulent and invalid, and that only employees of foreign-based companies owed income taxes. The campaign won a surprising amount of traction. And of course, Schulz’s arguments, which have been rejected repeatedly by the courts, has predictably been the source of some impressive prison sentences. “Our effort is called ‘Project Toto,’” said one of Schulz’s USA Today ads: “Just as the little dog in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ pulls the curtain back and exposes the truth about the Wizard, our series is intended to ... reveal [that] ... the tax system is founded upon fraud and operates as a giant hoax.”

In 2008, Schulz placed an ad he claimed to be worth “tens of thousands” of dollars in the Chicago Tribune to express his foundation’s belief that Obama was not a US citizen and therefore ineligible for office. Schulz was also a core player in organizing the Jekyll Island Project in 2009 and a subsequent 11-day “continental congress” in St. Charles, which gathered an impressive range of paranoid rightwing extremists and conspiracy theorists, including such fascinating fellows as Tom DeWeese, John Stadtmiller, Robert Crooks, leader of the California nativist group Mountain Minutemen, and Edgar Steele, author for instance of the 2002 essay “It’s the Jews, Stupid!!!”, where he claims that – you guessed it – “Jews are the problem. Jews have been the problem since before they saw to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.” Schulz himself was also a speaker at the We Are Change 9/11 conference in 2010. The St. Charles meeting resulted in the creation of an “Articles of Freedom” document that declares that the federal government “now threatens our Life, Liberty and Property through usurpations of the Constitution.”

Diagnosis: Of course, it continues to baffle us that people never stop to consider whether the question “is this going to fly when I am taken to court?” might actually be relatively independent of the question “is this correct at a theoretical level?” even when they are stupid enough to convince themselves that the answer to the latter is, wrongly, “yes”. Whether Schulz asks himself that question is moot, but at least he seems to encourage his listeners not to; and he seems to have quite a number of listeners.