#629: Russell Doughten

The absolutely rabidly insane 

antivaxxer activist Meryl Dorey 

used to be American, but 

she works in Australia at the moment and must be counted as primariy “their problem” (though she is, indeed, a serious problem, and deserves any negative exposure she can get).

Russell Doughten, on the other hand, could only happen in the US. Doughten rose to fame in the late seventies and early eighties through a series of films promoting a dispensationalist, premillennialist view of the endtimes and the rapture; in short he produced a series of Taliban fundamentalist sci-fi flicks most aptly described as forerunners for Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series. The titles of Doughten’s efforts are “A Thief in the Night”, “A Distant Thunder”, “The Image of the Beast” and “The Prodigal Planet”, and they are uniformly distinguished by their badly acted and extremely dated dialogue and fashion. Ideologically they are close to Hal Lindsey’s legendary The Late Great Planet Earth, and plotwise they contain exactly what you would have predicted: a liberal Christian minister misses the rapture since he doesn’t take the Bible literally (though he later comes to see the errors of his ways), and The United Nations declares a state of emergency from which they rise to become a world empire (complete with mobile guillotines to behead anyone who doesn’t accept having the mark of the beast tattooed on their forehead), thus rising to become the Kingdom of Earth predicted in Revelations. (The precursors of the films, Ron Ormond’s movie “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” featured a communist world empire instead, but conspiracy theories have to evolve with the times.) A more thorough commentary on the movies can be found here, and they can be watched here, here, here, and here. Anyone who watches them all deserves a prize. 

Diagnosis: The crowd at Rapture Ready are apparently huge fans, however, which is an indictment as damning as any we could come up with. If he is currently more of a fascinating cult relic than a real threat to civilization, that is not for lack of trying. 

#622: Jimmy DeYoung

Jimmy DeYoung a noted prophecy teacher and conference speaker with a Bible school “doctorate”, a radio host (WNYM in New York), author, and producer of much audio and video material on the standard batshit crazy endtime stuff, which he fully endorses (yes, he is one of the RaptureReady guys). DeYoung is currently actually located in Jerusalem, presumably as a means to being able to experience the imminent endtimes first hand, to evangelicize (bring Jesus to the Jews), and to convey garbled idiocy in the form of opinion pieces back to his US audience about the persecution of Christian majority everywhere. His knowledge of Middle Eastern politics is breathtakingly lacking for someone who has lived there for even a short time, but he seems to try to make up for the lack of insight in appallingness and insane conspiracy theories.

Among his video productions is The Daniel Papers and its accompanying study guide, which explains Daniel's calculations for the coming of the Messiah, his outline of the end times, and his description of the coming seven years of tribulation. Among his more outré beliefs is the claim that the Ark of the Covenant must be found in order for the Jewish people to build the Temple. “I believe it is underneath the Temple Mount,” said DeYoung, because prestigious rabbis have (apparently) been “mere inches” from seeing it. He doesn’t seem to mention Ron Wyatt, and is apparently also semi-oblivious to the fact that it is dusting away in an American storehouse, as per the real-time documentary “Indiana Jones”.

Here’s DeYoung on Glenn Beck. Although DeYoung “agrees with him politically” he can unfortunately not accept Beck as a spiritual leader because Beck is a mormon.

Diagnosis: Breathtaking moron

#610: James Davis

Yet another end times kook, James Davis president of the Global Pastors Network’s “Billion Souls Initiative,” and a zealous missionary intent on bringing the word of Jesus to every person on the planet. That goal is a common one, but Davis’s agenda is unusually insidious: “As we advance around the world, we’ll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.” In other words, Davis is actually determined to do his best to bring about the end of the world, and the purpose of his missionary work is to accomplish exactly that – an agenda he shares with the most deranged comic book villains and which should really mark him out as one of the most evil persons alive. He should, of course, be viewed and treated accordingly (apart from the fact that he doesn’t quite possess the comic book villain’s means for achieving that goal), but for some reasons his motivations and goals are widely treated as acceptable if mildly weird by many.

Whoever runs this blog disagrees with Jim Davis for reasons that are even more insane than Davis himself. No, seriously.

Diagnosis: Demented fuckwit.

#604: Ed Dames

A.k.a. “Dr. Doom”

The absolutely legendary Major Edward Dames is a retired US Army soldier who worked as a remote viewer in Project Star Gate and was trained by the equally legendary Ingo Swann (though Dames quickly became known as “extreme”, having target sessions on Mars, Atlantis, and alien spacecrafts). After he left the military Dames founded the company Psi Tech to offer his remote viewing services to the general public. Much hilarity would ensue, though Dames has not yet quite got the joke.

For these purposes Dames teamed up with Harry Deligter, a guy who ran a company producing videos on paranormal subjects. The companionship ended in a court settlement after Dames ran off with some of Deligter’s material and tried to produce them with his own employee F.M. Bonsall. After the court case Dames was apparently forced to retire, and his ex-wife Joni Dourif took over Psi Tech (no, I haven’t quite managed to disentangle the various intertwined narratives here). So Dames founded another company, the TRV intstitute. Somewhat later, according to Psi Tech’s new CEO Dane Spotts, Bonsall would break into Dourif’s house and steal lots of material that he would bring to Dames.

Psi Tech is still running, though, and offers paranormal assistance for instance to criminal investigations, as exemplified by (Spotts, Dourif, and others) making profound fools of themselves in the Elizabeth Smart case (also here). Their product is demolished by Randi here, but they nevertheless continue to offer educational opportunities, in more or less complete disregard of the fact that no remote viewer has ever been close to figuring out anything whatsoever.

Ok, that’s the rough background story. Remote viewing apparently involves viewing not only distant locations but also the future, and Dames has made a name for himself predicting large-scale disasters and destruction (hence the “Dr. Doom” alias, though something in the vicinity of “Nostra-Dames” would have been equally daft). Among the more interesting predictions is the claim that the world would be destroyed by alien fungus spores in 1998, as well as “the killshot: […] a series of powerful, deadly solar flares which will be impacting the Earth in the near future.” As evidence that he actually has the ability to see the future he offers the alleged fact that two remote viewerseach won the “Texas Pick Three” lottery twice. In 1993 Dames declared that he and his team had remote-viewed UFOs landing in the New Mexico desert, and that the desert is home to colonies of hibernating aliens. Furthermore, there were alien-human hybrid children in existence “not far from Earth.”

Dames is of course a mainstay on Coast to Coast AM, and particularly respected for his continued commitment to “evidence” for various theories that Art Bell has admitted to having fabricated (though it is easy to see Dames’s predicament: Bell makes a claim, Dames concurs and claims that he has remote-viewed what Bell claims to have seen; then Bell admits that he made it up … what is Dames supposed to do?)

If you want to do some remote viewing yourself, you can always buy TRV’s Magical Technical Remote Viewing Pen (now “anyone can learn this formally top secret skill and for less than a dollar convert an ordinary pen into a magic pen worth millions”). There is a fair and balanced review of said item here). On TRV ‘News’ you can furthermore learn that if you attend TRV University “… you will be trained along with the best and brightest minds on the planet” to use your Magic Pen to be able to “accurately sketch a nuclear weapon located inside a mountain in China, thousands of miles away” (wtf?) and “probe the mind of Osama bin Laden in real time, uncovering his current intent and next move.” (this was written before bin Laden’s demise, but I am not sure that would have mattered much). The “university” offers you a certification: “Having the Technical Remote Viewing Certification guarantees you a certain level of credibility amongst the law enforcements, amongst science and technology – who already know about us by the way.” I suppose. Whatever.

A too generous but comprehensive description of the failures of Ed Dames can be found here.

Among Dames’s pupils and, I suppose, TRV University alumni you will find the absolutely incredibly insane Aaron C. Hanson.

Diagnosis: Incorrigibly out of touch with anything but his highly incoherent imagination, Dames still manages to collect money enough to keep things going. Dangerous insofar as he panders to people in desperate situations, although the world would admittedly be a less colorful place without him and his helpless attempts to locate himself anywhere close to reality.

#583: Ronald Conte jr.

Ronald L. Conte jr. is a Catholic lay theologian and fanatic. His website is rather fascinating, particularly because of the tension created by his fanaticism and his pretty ardent attempt to trying to stay in line with official Catholic dogma. He does, to a certain extent, accept the theory of Evolution, for instance, though he has to add some twists and take away a few bits that he doesn’t feel fit in with his fundamentalism – the result sounds a little more like Old Earth Creationism – and much of his website is devoted to debunking “private revelations” claims, which actually seems like a reasonable project (including a section “Tricks Used by False Private Revelations”)

But the madness is pretty ardent as well. Some may react to his breathtakingly detailed rules for sexual behavior within marriage (sex outside of marriage is of course not a topic, and he is opposed to contraception, suggesting instead “Natural Family Planning”), but Conte settles any question about his rationality with his prophecies. These include the claim that “Jesus will return in 2437 AD”, “nuclear attacks on New York in 2010 [which launches World War III] and Vatican City in 2013.” He predicts that the Holy Father will die in 2009 or 2010, to be replaced with two popes (both killed in the nuking of Rome in 2013). Hillary Clinton will be elected President and will become pro-life in 2009, Muslims will dominate the world from the 2020s to 2040s; then domination goes to Russia, to be followed by the dominance of Africa, India and China in the 23rd century. The tribulation will start on April 10, 2009, when each person on Earth will be presented with a vision explaining his or her sins.

As you may have noted some of these predictions are a couple of years old, but Conte seems unaffected by the fact that their accuracy has turned out to be, shall we say, disputable. He did, however, correctly predict the name of pope Benedict – which is remarkable, since he had as much as four or five names to choose from. His fans do, however, have to downplay the fact that he also predicted this pope to be black.

His latest prediction (from 2011) is that the Apocalypse will begin in 2012. Luckily he’s written an Apocalypse Survival Guide for Christians that you can buy from his website.

Diagnosis: At least he avoids the vagueness of Nostradamus; he can do that, since he seems to be entirely unaffected by his lack of accuracy. Overall Conte is an interesting fellow, and hopefully harmless, though there are concerned reports on the web about people actually taking him seriously.