#161: Marc Grizzard

Marc Grizzard’s Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, is renowned for their Halloween celebrations. Grizzard and his charming fellows make a big fire and burn books for Halloween (and roast chicken, apparently). But not just any books. Evil books. So they are burning Darwin and Nietzsche and SciFi and Dawkins, then? No. Grizzard and co. are burning bibles. Evil bibles: “We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God's Word, the King James Bible.” I am confident that Grizzard's mastery of Greek has been deployed to verify that the King James version is the most accurate translation.

But to create a really roaring flame they’ll not confine themselves to Bibles. They also burn “Satan's popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort, Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham Rick Warren Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa, The Pope, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.” Several familiar names there (the erratic punctuation is from the original).

Not content with that, they “will also be burning Satan's music such as country , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, contemporary Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.”

A good old-fashioned book-burning in other words. Charming. Grizzard is discussed here and here.

Diagnosis: Loon, but as long as he insists on shooting at the vanguard of his own lunacy movement, I won’t complain. He is completely without influence, unfortunately.

#143: William Gheen

William Gheen is an ardent teabagger and the leader of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC or ALIPAC (your standard “put minefields around the border” anti-immigration group).

He is probably best known for his claim that Lindsey Graham is a liberal traitor (seeing Lindsey Graham as liberal should be lunacy enough) because he has worked with Democrats. The reason he is a liberal traitor, according to Gheen, is because he is gay (something Graham denies). The implicit premise is, of course, that being gay leads to being corrupt: see here,
here, and here.

A fair analysis of the incident is here.

The organization’s website is here. It is exactly what you’d expect, for instance with respect to providing news about Mexico and Mexicans to show how bad they are and how dangerous they would be to the American Way of Life™ if they were let into the country.

Diagnosis: Kook and nutjob, hateful and evidently reality-impaired. Whether he actually wields any influence on opinion or just reflects a standard wingnut position is unclear.

#45: Rashid Buttar

Among the most belligerent quacks in the States, Dr. Buttar is a medical doctor who, apart from his genuine qualifications, espouses a line of treatment for autism that is as bereft of scientific rigor as transcommunication (see previous post).

Buttar has been under investigation by the North Carolina State Medical Board for a decade and for a variety of misconducts involving "unconventional treatments" to which he subjects autistic children and cancer patients - all for lots of money to line his pockets. He views the medical board, in his own words, as a "rabid dog."

Ultimately, the medical board has recommended restricting Dr. Buttar's license to prohibit him from treating children or patients with cancer. That hasn’t stopped him (discussed here; for a more neutral assessment go here).

Among his more famous autism treatments is the transdermal chelation cream (a.k.a. “Buttar’s butter”). He has been known to come up with some truly bizarre protocols to treat autism, with rumors that Dr. Buttar's armamentarium of woo even included urine injections to "boost the immune system". Of course the fees are exorbitant.

His cancer quackery is even worse, and Buttar has apparently said that ”it didn't matter what kind of cancer anybody had, he could cure it."

Uh oh.

And yes, it is there, all of it: Buttar believes most patients with cancer also have high levels of heavy metals, such as mercury, and other toxins, such as pesticides, because of environmental exposure”. His treatments include chelation, ozone therapy and hyperbaric oxygen chambers – dangerous, potentially lethal devices or regimes with not the slightest trace of evidential support for any claims to efficacy. He even has an AirEnergy Machine.

His website is here: http://www.drbuttar.com/Articlesview.asp?articleID=5

Buttar is most prominent, however, for being a rabid anti-vaccinationist, running all the usual canards. Remember Desiree Jennings? The gal who claimed to have her walking impaired by the H1N1 vaccine (but got magically cured right after the media forgot about her?) Guess who her accomplice was, the doctor who “diagnosed her and helped her”.

Diagnosis: Crackpot, and a severe case of confirmation bias coupled with belligerence. Very dangerous – many of his treatments are definitely harmful (and hardly beneficial), and they are being used. Should be stopped as quickly as possible.

Btw, his website prominently displays the following quote: "All truth passes through 3 phases: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed, and Third, it is accepted as self-evident." (Schopenhauer). Anyone who uses this quote as support for his or her ideas is a seriously delusional crackpot. That’s a law.

(Come to think of it, it’s a strikingly stupid and magnificently false claim Schopenhauer is making to begin with.)