#3004: Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson is a delusional wingnut pastor and committed Trump cultist – so committed in fact, that he declared that God had called him to serve as Trump’s spiritual running mate before the 2020 election. He also wrote a book, Praying for the Prophetic Destiny of the United States and the Presidency of Donald J. Trump from the Courts of Heaven, which, according to himself, was based on three prophetic dreams he had about Trump. Moreover, Henderson proclaimed (e.g. in his book Prayers and Declarations that Open the Courts of Heaven) that anyone who opposed or ran against Trump was “fighting with God” and that Trump “should never be criticized” because “he sits in the seat of the president of the United States of America” and it is an offense toward God Himself to criticize a sitting president when the president is the one Henderson wants to be president. Of course, if the president is someone else, things are different. With regard to the Biden administration, for instance, “everything that they’re seeking to accomplish, it is all designed to weaken America” (in order, perhaps unwittingly, to usher in a one-world government under the dominion of Satan).

 

In fact, Henderson claims to believe that he is partially responsible for Trump’s 2016 victory – that is, in part, the gist of those three prophetic dreams he claims to have had. The first dream concerned an imaginary phone call from Trump during the 2016 primaries in which Trump asked him, Henderson, to hold a pro-Trump conference, which he did and which ostensibly helped Trump secure the nomination. The second dream, occurring after Trump won, concerned Trump asking him to be a part of his Cabinet: Henderson interpreted the request as Trump asking him to be Trump’s representative in “the courts of Heaven”, which he promptly accepted and which, entirely and exclusively according to what Henderson claims to have dreamt, secured Trump’s victory in said courts. (The third dream occurred following Trump’s inauguration and was the one in which he (Henderson) was asked to serve as Trump’s spiritual running mate in 2020.)

 

A self-declared “apostle”, Henderson belongs to an “apostolic family” named Global Reformers, whose purpose is to “Secure Nation’s Destinies From the Court of Heaven”. According to Global Reformers, “the thing that has hindered the fullest manifestation of the kingdom of God in the earth is the satanic realm still is holding nations under their influence because we as the church have yet to enforce and execute into place the finished works of the cross”, and Henderson and his fellows have been granted, by the Court of Heaven, the legal right to enforce God’s edicts and policies; their declarations and prayers hence tend to contain a lot of pseudolegal jargon, such as requests to “revoke the rights” of “demonic entities” to influence American politics. And his prayers work: In September 2020, for instance, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died just weeks after Henderson claims to have asked God to remove her from the Supreme Court; “that’s no accident,” said Henderson (part of Henderson’s beef with Ginsburg was of course abortion, though for Henderson that issue isn’t primarily “about the babies” but “about a blood altar that is inviting demonic powers”). In other words, Henderson hired a (divine) hitman to murder a Supreme Court justice he didn't like. He is fine with that.

 

As for the 2020 elections, which he likened to 9/11, and his self-proclaimed divine mandate, Henderson would spend much of the period wearing a shirt with an American flag because it would cause God to remember the United States of America (the cognitive faculties of Henderson’s God have some notable weaknesses). And during the campaigns, he called on God to dispatch an army of angels across the country – specifically singling out Pennsylvania and Michigan – to prevent the Democrats from stealing the election. “We release and commission and dispatch the angels into that place in Pennsylvania and in Michigan, Lord, and in all these states that have yet to be called, Father,” ranted Henderson (it is perhaps noteworthy how clear Henderson was that said angelic armies were his to command – God is merely the supplier), and declare that “they would not purposefully be delayed for the purpose of fraud. We break that. We remove that.” Such assistance was needed, since Trump was up against powerful enemies, including Covid, which Henderson said was a demonic plan to disrupt the economy and thereby prevent Trump’s reelection. He also also diagnosed vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris as being governed by “the Antichrist spirit” and arranged prayer rallies to prevent said spirit from defeating Trump.

 

After his and Trump’s efforts failed, some people were understandably a bit miffed by all those self-declared prophets like Henderson who had declared that Trump was going to win. Henderson confidently dismissed their concerns: “Just because somebody prophesies something doesn't mean it’s going to come to pass”, said Henderson, and besides, the prophecy that Trump would win was “just one little piece of prophesying. In fact, I would say it’s a minor piece.” Silly people.

 

During the 2024 election campaigns, Henderson was again critical of Kamala Harris and stated that “the burning, searing, exposing heat of God now causes her campaign and her herself to wither away and become as nothing”. Meanwhile, Henderson did his part in trying to motivate people to vote for Trump. At self-proclaimed prophet Hank Kunneman’s Opening the Heavens conference, Henderson for instance reported having once miraculously healed a man who had developed a potentially fatal condition from voting Democratic: Some locals had told Henderson about some random person (apparently this is the kind of things random locals tell Henderson) of a man who was in the hospital with a serious condition that the doctors didn’t know how to treat; apparently this person was also a lifelong Democrat, even though people had told him that he “is in agreement with the spirit of death because of his vote” – which happens to be Henderson’s view on voting behavior as well (“Do you understand that when you vote, you come into agreement with spirits? So you need to make sure your vote is connecting you to the right thing in the spirit world”). So Henderson started praying for God to intervene and save this person from the “spirit of death that is claiming the legal right to take him out”. And lo and behold: five minutes later the hospital called someone in his audience to tell them the guy had been cured (that’s apparently the kind of thing that happens in Henderson’s audiences). “I want you to hear this: His vote connected him to something in the spirit world that had to be undone. Now, hopefully he repented. Hopefully he’s a good, solid Republican now.”

 

Diagnosis: Even by New Apostolic Reformation standards, Henderson is a deranged shitshow. Apparently he’s got some listeners, but those listeners would listen to anything anyways so it’s unclear whether Henderson and his delusions make much of a difference. Still.

 

#3003: Bryn Henderson

No, you can not.

We’ve talked about stem cell quackery a number of times before – but then it is a serious issue: Stem cell clinics in the US and beyond keep preying on people in genuinely shitty situations with ‘experimental’ but evidence-free, expensive and potentially dangerous cures and treatment regimes, sometimes accompanied by credulous anecdotes of “miraculous recoveries”. And people in shitty and desperate situations are easy targets for cynical and/or delusional grifters and woo-providers – they don’t, after all, even need to promise anything, since a mere glimmer of hope will usually do to part their victims from their savings (and said victims will often not be in any position afterwards to file any complaint).

 

One such business is (or was) the Regenerative Medical Group (RMG). RMG has claimed to provide “induced pluri-potent stem cells from your own cells via an affiliated laboratory” to not only regenerate cartilage and repair injury but to treat Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis, strokes, chronic kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease and even (of course) autism – executive director of RMG, Bryn J. Henderson (DO, JD, FACPE, CIME), claimed that RMG has helped “dozens” of children with autism using stem cells. As Henderson sees it, the stem cells circulate through the body, cross the blood-brain barrier and “make new cells” that change the course and prognosis of these kids and that most of the time, the change is major, along several parameters. If you wonder about the evidence for such claims you’ll look in vain beyond some alleged testimonials. Note also that there are, in fact, no actual live stem cells in the “amniotic stem cell treatments” people like Henderson and companies like the RMG are offering.

 

Now, although authorities have struggled (or been hesitant) to address the problem, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was ultimately sufficiently fed up with Henderson’s deceptive nonsense to bring deceptive advertising charges against him and his companies (in addition to RMG, Henderson was running something called Telehealth Medical Group) in 2018, in particular over his claims that amniotic stem cell therapies could restore the vision of blind people and “reverse autism symptoms.”

 

We’re actually not sure about the status of RMG these days, but Henderson is at least currently affiliated with something called InnovateMed, where he is described as an authority on regenerative medicine. 

 

Diagnosis: Well, maybe he’s learned something? We’re not particularly optimistic, though.

 

#3002: Albert Hendershot & Harold Sorenson

This is some old shit, but we deem it worth mentioning here since people like Albert Hendershot and Harold Sorenson are still around (Hendershot and Sorenson may, for all we know, be around themselves) and certainly up to no good these days either. Yes, Hendershot and Sorenson are birthers, and they were among a number of dingbats who filed lawsuits challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president after the 2012 election. Hendershot filed an unsuccesful suit in Alabama in December 2011 alleging that Obama’s birth certificate was forged – Hendershot claimed he had “staggering” evidence that Obama was using a fraudulently obtained social security number issued in Connecticut – and that he was therefore ineligible to be on the Alabama primary ballot. Sorenson filed a similar suit in 2012, with an additional request that Judge Helen Shores Lee, who is black and also had presided over Hendershot’s suit, should recuse herself because “she has racial bias and a lack of Constitutional knowledge.” The suit was not particularly more successful than the Hendershot one (and these were not the only ones in Alabama), and the court awarded the Alabama Democratic Party its costs and fees, though they promised not to collect the money from Sorenson as long as he refrained from “bad-mouthing the court and this decision.” It is worth mentioning that Sorenson filed a similar suit in 2008 challenging the eligibility of both Obama and McCain.

 

Diagnosis: Whatever. We have some suspicions concerning what these incoherently paranoid morons are up to today if they are still around, however. And there are plenty of others like them if they are not.

 

#3001: Megan Heimer

A.k.a. Megan Redshaw [current name]

 

Megan Heimer is a naturopath and “wellness” blogger for a blog called Living Whole, a cesspit of woo, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories and – of course – antivaccine (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anti-vaccination_movement) lunacy. (In fact, there seems to be several blogs of that name, and the suspicion that a name like that shouldn’t inspire trust is flagrantly borne out by most of them.) Indeed, Heimer, whose credentials, according to herself, are “a degree in Political Science and [I] am an Attorney, Doctor of Naturopathy, Certified Natural Health Educator, Registered Power Yoga Instructor, writer, and stay-at-home mama,” rejects all medicines she deems non-“natural”, not just vaccines – her approach really has nothing to do with facts or (really) health at all but with fundamentalist adherence to a more trendy set of religious tenets that allow her to feel a very religious form of righteousness and nurture a cadre of acolytes who treat her various pronounciations as authoritative – but she is indeed most famous for her antivaccine activism. Note, by the way, that although naturopathic schools in general offer nothing more than pseudoeducation, Heimer’s diploma – on the basis of which she has called herself “Dr. Heimer” – is from Trinity College of Natural Health, which is a straight-up diploma mill and which is, for instance, on the list of institutions whose degrees are illegal to use in the State of Texas.

 

And Heimer will use – and has used – most antivaccine PRATTs in the antivaccine toolbox to push her case, including lying through her teeth. In her (viral) “rebuttal” to a very sensible article on antivaccine activists’ lies, Heimer for instance asserted that “the vaccine court has rule [sic] that evidence of a causal relationship between autism and MMR exists”; she didn’t provide any link or even reference to any such ruling, of course, because the assertion is a pretty obvious and easily checked lie. Relatedly, Heimer just stated, utterly falsely, that “vaccine inserts, and countless court cases have confirmed this link”. Again, of course, no such inserts or court cases (this one obviously doesn’t count) exist outside Heimer’s febrile imagination; indeed, court cases have quite clearly established the opposite conclusion (in an update to her post, she did, in fairness, provide one link to a vaccine court case she claimed “ruled that evidence of a causal relationship between autism and MMR exists” even though the court explicitly did not rule on the question of causation). Or in other words: Insofar as it is obvious even to her readers that Heimer herself has no background whatsoever in any field that would make her a credible authority on vaccines (and despite her stand that “it takes no credentials, no formal education, and no ‘M.D’ behind your name to take an educated stance on this issue”), she does at least recognize the need to invoke authoritative sources (also beyond other non-experts like Neil Z. Miller); so she just makes them up. And yes: it is, for all practical purposes, lying: We have no doubt Heimer believed her own claims when she wrote them, but the fact that she responded to commenters pointing out her errors not by addressing the criticisms or updating her post but by deleting the comments and blocking the commenters, demonstrates in abundance that honesty is not her strong suit.

 

We don’t, by the way, feel the need to comment on her apparently popular post “God Does Not Support Vaccines” (she is, of course, not the only one who has tried to make that case). Here, however, is a discussion of her Dunning-Kruger approach to Vitamin K shots for newborns, which synthesizes virtually every myth or piece of misinformation about Vitamin K shots and vaccines in general ever produced for the Internet and draws its conclusions on the ‘makes sense to me’ strategy and Heimer’s lack of knowledge or understanding of the issues she is discussing. Of course, as Heimer sees it, criticism of her misinformation, lies and quackery is hate speech, no less.

 

Her response to a CDC questionnaire that tells you what vaccines are recommended for people with chronic diseases (from back when the CDC were trustworthy on these issues) is telling: “First,” says Heimer, “vaccines don’t prevent chronic disease”, which is a rather typical response, given that the CDC was claiming no such thing but rather gave their recommendations based on the fact that patients with certain chronic diseases are more susceptible to complications from many vaccine-preventable disease. “Secondly,” says Heimer, “vaccines cause chronic disease. It’s written all over the package inserts, PubMed database, and thousands of peer-reviewed studies. (Don’t bother telling the CDC, they already know.)” Do you think she actually provides any sources? Can you guess why not? “Third, if you have a chronic disease, you’re more likely to suffer from a vaccine adverse reaction” (by which Heimer of course means mythical vaccine injuries). The possibly novel spin here, however, is Heimer’s conclusion that the CDC publishing information about vaccine recommendations for people with chronic diseases at all, is just a “sad attempt by the CDC to pit parent against parent. Nothing else works. We’re educated and we see through their lacking data, intentional cover-ups, and misleading propaganda, including their latest ploy at ‘scaring’ parents into vaccinating.” But as Heimer states, “it’s like we’re immune to bull$h*t”, and we believe that statement: no facts or evidence will sway Heimer for this has, for her, never been a question of facts or evidence.

 

As mentioned, Heimer runs through all the familiar antivaxx tropes and talking points, but she often has an even more unhinged take on them than even regular anti-vaccine ranters, for instance with regard to the myth of “aborted baby parts”, e.g. in her post “What You Didn’t Know About the Aborted Baby Parts in Your Vaccines” (yes, the post does list a good number of things you certainly didn’t know, for obvious reasons). Heimer is referring to vaccines made with fetal embryo fibroblast or retinal cells from cell lines derived (they replicate infinitely) from a few electively terminated pregnancies (abortions) in the 1960s to 80; there are, of course, no aborted baby parts or tissue in vaccines, but Heimer is deeply confused about that: “Have you read the CDC’s vaccine ingredient list? Why would they list aborted baby parts as ingredients if they weren’t actually in vaccines?” responds Heimer, assuming that her readers don’t check and realize that the CDC of course doesn’t list aborted fetal parts as ingredients because vaccines don’t contain them. But Heimer is not going to let facts and reason resolve a good confusion: “you might have also heard that only two babies were used and it was a really long time ago, which justifies the continued use of shooting up live babies with dead babies” (nope), but that, she concludes, “just simply isn’t true and if you think it is, watch one of the many Planned Parenthood videos. These people are harvesting baby parts for a reason,” imagines Heimer. And since aborted baby parts obviously can’t be an effective means to achieve immunity from disease, she concludes that CDC is relying on some form of dark magic: “Aborted baby is supposedly some sort of magic that makes vaccines more effective”. Nope, she doesn’t try. It’s not her style.

 

Source: Don't remember; please inform us.

Now, LivingWhole isn’t (or wasn’t) merely about vaccines, though: as mentioned above, Heimer rejects modern medicine in general, in favor of Modern Alternative Mama Kate Tietje’s crackpot Earthley products, claims that there is an ongoing war on homeopathy and that measles is no big deal (“This Mama Isn’t Scared of the Shmeasle Measles”); according to her blog, she and her family “do not use any chemical products in our home or on our bodies”, they “believe in natural childbirth and had our last baby un-assisted at home” and they “home school”, something that, given her relationship with facts and knowledge, is a tragedy. Indeed, to many people, she is probably most famous for the brouhaha around her attempt to adopt two children from DRC, a story that, even if you trusted to her own descriptions doesn’t exactly portray her in a very sympathetic light.

 

And though she was most famous some years ago, when the adoption story was ongoing, it’s not like she’s gone. Here is a discussion of her 2025 post (“Why You Shouldn’t Be Scared of Measles”) about recent measles outbreaks. In the post, Heimer – now Redshaw – manages to get every claim wrong, and usually even in ways that can be easily checked if her readers bother, from the claim that among the people needing hospital care in the recent Texas outbreak “nearly half were fully vaccinated” (they were, in fact, all unvaccinated; nearly’ is doing some heavy lifting in Heimer’s claim), through misinformation about shedding, to her claim that alarmism about measles is unwarranted since, even though even she has to admit that people die, more people die from falling and she doesn’t see fearmongering about “staircases” or “sidewalks”. Maybe we’re completely off about American culture here, but we do have the impression that people constructing staircases and sidewalks, and not the least parents of small children, do have some concerns about the safety of staircases or sidewalks, and we are accordingly somewhat worried about Heimer’s execution of her role as a parent of small children. We are, as previously noted, not the only ones harboring such concerns.

 

For insights into Heimer’s lies, falsehoods and inaccuracies – at least up until ca. 2019 – this thread might be useful. Of particular note is Heimer’s own deployment of classical sockpuppetry.

 

Diagnosis: Paranoid, narcissistic and completely unhinged moron, and yes, we worry about the safety of both her and the people around her. Nonetheless, she seems to have a number of readers, and we worry about them, too.

 

Hat-tip: violentmetaphors

#3000: Pete Hegseth

Peter Brian Hegseth is a religious fundamentalist, wingnut, conspiracy theorist, author (American Crusade, The War on Warriors) former TV personality (e.g. Fox & Friends) and, currently and because we’re apparently living in the darkest timeline, the United States secretary of defense since 2025. As such, Hegseth is currently one of the most prominent threats to civilization the world is currently facing.

 

Already in his student days, Hegseth made his wingnut culture warrior credentials clear. As publisher of The Princeton Tory, Hegseth stated that he would “defend the pillars of Western civilization against the distractions of diversity” and claimed e.g. of The New York Times’ decision to print gay marriage announcements that it might just as well publish marriage announcements for incestuous, zoophilic, and pedophilic relationships (this is not merely ancient stuff: Hegseth has more recently also e.g. denounced TV shows portraying gay people as normal people as “evil,” “wicked,” “demonic,” and “a satanic Trojan Horse”). There is a decent resource on Hegseth’s background, including his work with Concerned Veterans for America, here.

 

During his stint at Fox and Friends, Hegseth had demonstrable influence on Trump 1. When Trump, in 2018, claimed that a migrant caravan traveling toward the US was infiltrated by “unknown Middle Easterners”, it was based on something Hegseth had made up; similarly, Trump repeated Hegseth’s attempt to correlate video games with mass shootings in 2019 based on nothing but a wish to draw attention away from the role of guns.

 

More importantly, Hegseth has served as secretary of defense since January 2025. Others have covered his tenure as secretary of defense comprehensively, including his attempts to get rid of critics (particularly notable are, perhaps, his frivolous legal campaigns against Mark Kelly and, not the least, this situation), to bring the military more effectively under the control of Trump’s whims, and to ban educational materials that don’t promote his own ideological stances; we’ll not go into detail on these issues here. His general level of competence – which was perhaps well illustrated by this situation early in his tenure, and remember that Hegseth was pretty vocal back in 2016 about Hilary Clinton’s “recklessness” with e-mails and recommended job firings and potential criminal charges) – and its significance is discussed e.g. here and here. At least his efforts to punish media over what he deems ‘unflattering’ photographs display petty snowflake dictator proclivities in full. His use of advice from and promotion of conspiracy theorists like pizzagate champion Jack Posobiec is worth a mention as well. And of course, he is arguably a murderer and warcriminal.

 

Fundie insanity

Hegseth is a religious fundamentalist and Christian nationalist with close ties to the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, which is a congregation in the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). Pilgrim Hill’s pastor Brooks Potteiger is Hegseth’s closest spiritual adviser, and Hegseth has a close relationship with Joshua Haymes, who runs the podcast the Reformation Red Pill podcast, which Hegseth has visited on numerous occasions. CREC, founded and led by Doug Wilson, promotes ‘sphere sovereignty’, that all aspects of human life, including the government, should be bound by biblical law as laid out in Old Testament precepts of ‘morality’ and punishment, as well as Postmillennialism, the view that Christians have a duty to ensure Christian domination of the world to facilitate the return of Christ. In particular, CREC promotes (e.g.) Christian nationalism, revoking women’s right to vote in the US, the idea that non-Christians and liberal Christians should not be allowed to hold public office in the US (or express their views in public), and capital punishment – potentially stoning – for adultery, abortion and homosexuality. Wilson and his followers understandably lauded Hegseth’s appointment as secretary of defense a major win for their ideology. At least one of Hegseth’s children is attending one of Doug Wilson’s ‘schools’.

 

Hegseth’s concern for how leftist ideology ruins kids goes behind educational concerns for his own offspring, of course. As a counterstrategy, Hegseth has suggested – e.g. at the CrossPolitic podcast hosted by Wilson-affiliates Toby Sumpter and Gabe Rench – creating a system of “classical Christian schools” himself to provide recruits for an underground army that will eventually launch an “educational insurgency” to take over the nation. Similar ideas were developed in his 2022 book Battle for the American Mind, which was coauthored with David Goodwin, president of Doug Wilson’s Association of Classical Christian Schools.

 

Indeed, Hegseth has himself explicitly endorsed the ideas of sphere sovereignty and promoted speeches by Doug Wilson e.g. arguing that women shouldn’t have the right to vote; people have also taken notice of his efforts to purge women from the military. Moreover, Hegseth has begun hosting monthly Christian prayer services during working hours at the Pentagon, using people like Potteiger and Wilson to lead them (from February 2026, they have also sent invitations to defense contractors, which have a particular motivation to participate and gain the advantage of face time with Pentagon officials that at least non-Christians and people with more integrity are barred from). The efforts have apparently had some effect: In the wake of the Iran attacks, military leaders told their service members that the war was “part of God’s divine plan”, that President Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus, and that the war would bring about the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those sentiments are certainly reflected by Hegseth himself, who has claimed that soldiers fight for the US because they believe in Jesus (and “the willingness to make sacrifices on behalf of one’s country is born in one thing: a deep and abiding belief in God’s love for us and his promise of eternal life”) and that they gain salvation for dying for a “Christian nation”.

 

And yes, Hegseth is, indeed, a Christian nationalist, as laid out e.g. in his 2020 book American Crusade (reviewed here). In the book, Hegseth defined “Americanism” as opposition to feminism, globalism, Marxism, and progressivism, called democracy a leftist (hence non-Americanist) demand, and described those with a different political bent than himself as enemies of freedom (however he defines “freedom”), the United States, and the Constitution, which he evidently has his own interpretation of. A victory for America, according to Hegseth, involves the end of globalism, socialism, secularism, environmentalism, Islamism (a central theme of the book central the destruction of Muslim holy sites in order to reclaim them for Christianity), “genderism”, and leftism. Note also that Hegseth has for a while (e.g. in his book The War on Warriors) complained against measures to prevent far-right militia members and white supremacists from gaining positions of power in the military; there is an ok essay on some of Hegseth’s ideas for the military here.

 

General wingnuttery and conspiracy theories

Hegseth was, of course, also a vigorous spreader of ridiculous 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories, and was a central promoter of the conspiracy theory that Antifa was involved in the January 2021 attack: he claimed to have seen evidence firsthand that Antifa members disguised themselves as Trump supporters, but when pressed, appeared to retreat to “reports” and ultimately that he didn’t need more evidence than his “common sense”.

 

Not the least, Hegseth has described climate change as nothing but an attempt at government control. In March 2025, he accordingly canceled climate change studies, decried climate change as “crap” on social media, and sought to eliminate climate planning from the Department of Defense – though he included an exception for extreme weather preparation, which would more than suggest that he was pretty aware that he was merely posturing for dimwitted fans was it not for the overwhelming evidence that he is a lunatic moron.

 

His general view of matters related to science and reality is well illustrated by the pride he takes in not having washed his hands in over ten years. Hegseth’s reason for not washing his hands is that Hegseth doesn’t believe that germs exist. If Hegseth cannot see them, he says, they are not real, unlike Antifa at Trump rallies or demons.

 

Diagnosis: One of the greatest and most immediate threats to human life, welfare or civilization the world has to offer at present, of course, and the kind of person no-one with a minimum of both wits and decency would let near any kind of situation where he could possibly exert any kind of power or influence over anything. We do not live in a world where wits or decency carry much weight, however.

 

#2999: Jake Hebert

Jake Hebert ostensibly has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas, but he is also a “Research Associate” for the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), so his current view of and relationship with science is, at best, complicated. Yes, Hebert is a young-earth creationist, and will do his desperate utmost to shoehorn observations that really, really don’t fit into his worldview (of course, the vast majority of the observations refuting his view he will just disregard) and use any gap in current scientific understanding – indeed, even the fact that scientists are still testing hypotheses – as proof that “hey, scientists don’t know, therefore their theories are wrong and the Bible is correct” (indeed, that there is still research to do in a discipline apparently means that the whole discipline is “a scam”).

 

His comments on the New Horizons mission to Pluto are instructive in that regard. The fact that the mission was even launched is, to Hebert, “a tacit admission that they do not yet have in hand a plausible secular explanation for the solar system’s origin”; in other words because there are details yet to uncover, the scientists don’t know anything, and the well-established theories they have – and all the evidence for them – can be safely dismissed out of hand (together with all the evidence against a recent creation).

 

Indeed, one of the very purposes of the mission, to gather information about Kuiper belt objects (comets), is, as Hebert derangedly sees it, evidence that science is bunk and the universe is young. You see, “comets lose their mass so rapidly that no comets should exist at all today if the solar system really were billions of years old” … well, unless there was a supply of new ones, like the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt. Hebert’s response? “The Oort Cloud is purely hypothetical” (it isn’t) and “Does the Kuiper Belt exist?” (yes). The mission to Pluto, then, is just a desperate attempt to disprove the youth of the solar system, and it will, as such, fail. Of course, in real life the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt exist; and at some point, even the young-Earth creationists at the ICR will struggle to deny that just like creationists gave up on denying dinosaur. And it will of course not change anything; it’s not like people like Hebert are fazed by falsification. Here is a similar effort with regard to the Big Bang: Since there are unexplained details (like the maturity of distant galaxies), we can safely reject the whole thing. In fact, the Big Bang theory is also non-scientific: you see, scientists have a tendency to fill the gaps in their theories through research and have thus far been rather successful; to Hebert, that fact, that scientists find explanations for hitherto unexplained data, means that their theories are unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. The theories are apparently also falsified. Yes, it’s a mess. “How much better to believe His testimony recorded in Genesis than to trust the speculative, ever-changing stories of those determined to deny our Creator!” asks Hebert.

 

That said, Hebert does think theology is absolutely essential to science. We’ll leave it to readers to assess his arguments (here).

 

But given his background, you’d think that Hebert would at least employ slightly more sophisticated gambits in his attacks on the theory of evolution? According to Hebert, “evolutionary doctrine” is “not genuine science” insofar as “[t]here is no empirical evidence that life can come from non-life, or that an organism can change into a fundamentally different kind of organism”. So nope; unless he’s lying, Hebert’s grasp of the theory of evolution is at the level of your average creationist youtube troll. This one is pretty striking, too. Here is a discussion of Hebert’s response to the obvious observation that creationism is really a kind of conspiracy theory; that observation is, as Hebert sees it, a pure ad hominem attack – besides, evolution is racist and communist and a lie that originates, like all lies, with Satan himself. So there. Also, “the creation-Flood model of the Ice Age is vastly superior to anything proposed by the Creator-denying scientists” because it just is, regardless of the evidence.

 

Hebert’s own attempts at research are published in things like Answers in Genesis’s house journal Answers (see e.g. this and this), which use … different standards than ordinary scientific journals.

 

Diagnosis: Aggressively insane fundie. He’s got credentials, and since creationism has a somewhat desperate shortage of people with genuine credentials, he’s quickly risen in their ranks. One genuinely wonders whether the ICR would have preferred that he stayed silent and just brandished those credentials, though; then again, it’s not like it’s people who know anything whatsoever about science that constitute their target audience.

 

#2998: Gary Heavin

Gary Heavin is the Texas-based founder of the fitness chain Curves International, a conspiracy theorist, a raving fundie lunatic and in general most of the things that are wrong with the world. Heavin is the author of a number of books (like Curves: Permanent Results Without Permanent Dieting and Curves On the Go) and his fitness chain was at one point the largest fitness chain in the world. More recently, Heavin and his wife Diane have been producing wingnut and fundamentalist films, including Mission Air (2013) and the 2016 action adventure film Amerigeddon (written by Heavin and Chase Hunter and directed by Mike Norris) about a takeover of the US by a UN/globalist-supported terrorist organization, which is about as subtle in its political commentary as you can imagine: it is basically a breathless summary of a wingnut conspiracy theorist’s fever dreams, in which the characters are simple mouthpieces for the views these conspiracy theorists have themselves (the good guys) and those they imagine anyone who disagrees with them really have (the villains), and the movie has been aptly described as “your drunk uncle rambling at a Christmas party as he wears a tinfoil hat” as it covers everything from crisis actors to one-world government fantasies (yes, Alex Jones was indeed involved in the movie because of course he was); it’s got anti-GMO messaging, too.

 

And note, not the least, how prominently Amerigeddon proudly displays its endorsement by the Oath Keepers – Heavin apparently enjoys something of a deep affiliation with that group, having for instance reportedly donated significant sums of money to them. As for the contents of the movie itself, Heavin views it as something akin to an educational film, writing at the time (2016) that a “shadow government” that worships Satan was using then-President Obama as a “puppet” to further its interests through “anti-American policies” like “the open border, the import of un-vetted Syrians, the decimation of our armed forces and the financial bankrupting of our country”, policies that “can best be explained by understanding the true intent of the globalists running our country”; the movie apparently provides that explanation. And apparently those elites aren’t, ultimately, human: According to Heavin (on InfoWars – Heavin was for a time a mainstay on the show), the Nephilim still roam the earth today and are actually demons, and although God has been trying to “cleanse the DNA” from humanity by destroying these entities, libruls of the deep state work hard to preserve their demonic bloodlines by judicious intermarriages. Among the worst representatives of the demonic deep state are, of course, the Clintons, which is “a machine that has a trail of bodies as far as you can see” – everyone who dares stand up to them should fear for their lives.

 

As such, the 2016 election did, of course, have a significance far beyond what you’d immediately think; according to Heavin, the election represented a “great battle” between globalism and nationalism, as foreseen in the Bible, “and this globalism the Bible predicts is going to happen,” it is “going to be led by the Antichrist himself. You know, you’re going to have to take the Mark of the Beast to buy or sell.” As for the mark itself, Heavin (with Alex Jones) of course tied it to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s discussion of a cashless society and how the Apple logo, in their feverish imaginations, represent the apple that Eve ate in the Garden of Eden. Whether the subsequent election results falsified a Biblical prophecy is unclear, but conspiracy theorists are not deterred by contradictions.

 

And although Trump apparently put in a brave effort to combat the deep state during his first presidency, he was up against a formidable foe. Indeed, as Heavin sees it, the whole COVID-19 pandemic was a weaponized virus created by “the powers that be in this country who want to destroy Trump’s presidency” (its effects on the rest of the world was just collateral damage). It is worth (or whatever you call it) quoting Heavin in some detail here:

 

“We know that it’s a weaponized virus because we see the RNA strands that were put into this virus from HIV, from MERS, and from the SARS virus [no, he does, for obvious reasons, not mention his sources]. There’s no way this could have happened in nature. So somebody built it, there’s no question about that. The question is who did, and who unleashed this on the world. I’m afraid that the powers that be in this country who want to destroy Trump’s presidency, who want to eliminate China’s threat to our hegemony – and by the way, there is a byproduct of this which is a depopulation effort. We’re going to end up providing some solution to our Social Security elderly problem. This sounds terrible, but this collateral damage to the American people, I believe was a desirable byproduct for the people that are in power”

 

Apparently even Texas Governor Greg Abbott lent an ear to Heavin and his ramblings, though it should be noted that Heavin was apparently not completely satisfied with just meeting Abbott, for according to Heavin, he was “trying to get to Trump to make him aware that this is not a nonevent. This is a very nefarious act against him”. Meanwhile, Heavin’s own promotion of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID was published by NaturalNews, who, on their side, presented Heavin as something of an expert on the issue mostly because he said what they wanted to hear but also because Heavin runs a gym and claims that he had “talked to doctors”.

 

Heavin is, of course, also a 9/11 truther –although he is officially just JAQing off – having promoted a number of false claims about the terrorist attacks, including the claim that no plane wreckage was found at the Pentagon and the claim that Building 7 was brought down by a controlled demolition. But of course, the ample evidence that Heavin’s nonsense is, indeed, nonsense doesn’t count for much to Heavin himself; Heavin’s got a different source for his evidence: according to Heavin, God Himself revealed to him the truth about 9/11 –and although he is aware that critics who care about facts dismiss his claims, he also notes that “ridicule is a strategy of the Enemy”, so the fact that he is criticized and his claims refuted is itself evidence that he is right. And once again, the real culprits behind 9/11 is the secretive and powerful “shadow government” that controls the world, “that wants us to die to have a diminished population,” and which is “setting us up for disaster”; Heavin knows this because he has “sensed that people that are in positions of influence” don’t care about or like Americans and that they support the creation of “a one world government.” Also immigration, of course, which is a deliberate government plot to incite unrest. And so on.

 

Diagnosis: We suppose Heavin will take this post as evidence that we’re the Enemy, but it’s hard not to ridicule someone as ridiculous as Gary Heavin. But he does have some influence, apparently, and America has learned the hard way not to dismiss angry clowns just because they are confused, incoherent or silly.