#2212: Michael Scheifler

Liam Scheff, famous HIV denialist, woo promoter, antivaccine and anti-GMO activist, and wholesale conspiracy theorist, seems to have passed away (at 46, from a “mystery illness” for which he apparently consulted every naturopathic trick and vitamin supplement in the book). 

Michael Scheifler isn’t quite as high profile as Scheff, but we have no reason to think he’s not alive – though his webpage (here, if anyone is interested) admittedly bears all the hallmarks of 2003-style, allcaps paranoia. The website concerns “Antichrist, 666, and the Harlot Church Dressed in Purple and Scarlet”, and appears to try to establish – through fascinatingly wild and speculative connections between random observations and Bible passages – that the Catholic church is an institution of the Beast, and important in bringing about the ever-imminent End Times (“The Vatican (STATO DELLA CITTÁ DEL VATICANO), which means City-State of prophecy, is the woman of Revelation 17, Jezebel, the apostate harlot, the mother universal church, the persecutor of the saints that sits on seven hills in Rome and claims authority over the kings of the earth”). There is plenty of numerology, too, used to try to associate various aspects of the Catholic church with the number “666”. It relies on some serious research into obscure sources, and is utterly, derangedly crazy. Do check it out.

Scheifler himself is an Adventist. He is, of course, also a young-earth creationist. Indeed, the fact that the Catholic church officially recognizes evolution – a “modern scientific dogma” [INSERT SCIENCE V. RELIGION MEME], as Scheifler sees it in light of a particularly Orwellian understanding of “dogma” from someone who takes the Bible as the only source of authority – is apparently further evidence that Catholicism is of the Beast. Then he links to Kent Hovind.

For some reason Scheifler also links to some scare articles about artificial sweeteners from Joe Mercola’s website.

Diagnosis: Apparently he has been bantering with several Catholic “scholars”, too. Well, if Scheifler’s deranged rants count as scholarship in certain circles, it doesn’t reflect too well on those circles.