#1349: Tommy & Matthew Barnett

Tommy Barnett

Tommy Barnett is the senior pastor of Phoenix First Assembly of God (an Assemblies of God megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona), and chancellor of something called Southeastern University (Lakeland, Florida), sometimes partner of Joyce Meyer and Ted Haggard (Barnett was part of his “apostolic oversight team” after his fall), and author of multiple books. He is, in fact, a pretty influential figure on the, shall we say, more radical end of religious fundamentalism in the US.

Matthew Barnett

Barnett is, for instance, deeply involved in various strategic level spiritual warfare projects. His Master’s Commission programs, initiated in 1985 by him and Lloyd Zeigler, is now an international program for post-high school students with a curriculum in discipleship, evangelism, and spiritual warfare. In June 2008 Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker at the Master’s Commission graduation ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God, and the graduates were given samurai swords to “help” in the aforementioned war.

With his son Matthew he started the Los Angeles Dream Center, a Pentecostal Christian Church mission in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. There are now 130 of these Dream Centers which combine urban social services with “city transformation,” missions, and spiritual warfare – like the efforts of charming groups such as Repent Amarillo. With the New Apostolic Reformation (though somewhat more lowkey) the Dream Centers are involved in “spiritual mapping” of areas to combat demon infestations. As the one in Atlanta says: “We take teams out on to the streets of down town Atlanta to cast out demons, heal the sick, and demonstrate the power of God … We have seen many people get healed from aids and broken arms and legs restored [as well documented as Cindy Jacobs’s claims to have raised dead children in Africa, of course]. We also do outreaches at churches and schools. Our goal is to bring unity to the church through God’s power and healing. We go out at least three days a week to invade the streets with the Kingdom, while living a lifestyle that is surrendered to our King.”

Diagnosis: Barnett himself is relatively lowkey, but the extremist fundamentalism he promotes is a serious cause for concern. Dangerous.

#1348: Hank Barnes

A.k.a. David Steele (apparently real name)

Hank Barnes is a personal injury lawyer who runs the website Barnesworld and You Bet Your Life blog (or at least used to run them – don’t know if they are still up), where he promotes HIV denialism. No, Barnes apparently doesn’t believe that HIV causes AIDS, and he thinks those who do commit the fallacy of appeal to authority, since they tend to appeal to the conclusion of scientists who know things about diseases, and the fallacy of argument ad populum because they appeal to the fact that the vast majority of scientists think that HIV causes AIDS. For the record, that’s not quite how the fallacies “appeal to authority” and “argument ad populum” work. Furthermore, Peter Duesberg is being persecuted – after all, most people think Duesberg’s conclusions are wrong and crazy and call his bullshit “bullshit”, and if that isn’t persecution, then Barnes doesn’t know. (He doesn't know.)

Nor does Barnes like peer review. “Peer review enforces state-sanctioned paradigms. Pollack (2005) likens it to a trial where the defendant judges the plaintiff. Grant review panels defending the orthodox view control the grant lifeline and can sentence a challenger to ‘no grant.’ Deprived of funds the plaintiff-challenger is forced to shut down her lab and withdraw,” says Barnes. Yes, they are all out to get the brave, maverick dissenters who deny that HIV causes AIDS by science, logic, reasoning, evidence, reality and all those other sources of bias, and like dictators refuse to give equal time and resources to thoroughly debunked fringe denialist views. In my humble experience – purely anecdotally, of course – peer reviewers tend to like novel ideas; I guess it’s the fact that they also like those ideas being backed up by evidence to support them is what really irks people like Hank Barnes.

You can see a fine example of how Barnes reads the scientific literature here. As Steele (his real name), he has apparently also been involved in some unsuccessful legal cases involving HIV denialist claims representing Duesberg (also here).

Diagnosis: Irritating denialist who has at least shown that he doesn’t understand logic, reasoning or evidence, trading them for his own definitions based on how logic, reasoning or evidence should work to support his conclusions. His impact is unknown, but HIV denialism is actually rather scary. 

#1347: Carol Barnes

We’ve encountered the proponents of magic melanin before, and Carol Barnes is another one. The idea, if you need a reminder, is that high levels of the pigment melanin lower your THAC0 and AC, open your chakras, are “the chemical basis of the soul” and gives you a multitude of special magical abilities; and consequently, people with lower levels of melanin are considered degenerate, albino mutants. Of course, since white people are at least subconsciously aware of their deficiencies, they have instigated all sorts of nefarious conspiracies to subjugate people with higher melanin levels. As Carol Barnes puts it: “Melanin is responsible for the existence of civilization, philosophy, religion, truth, justice, and righteousness. Individuals (whites) containing low levels of Melanin will behave in a barbaric manner.”

Barnes puts the claims forward in Melanin: The Chemical Key to Black Greatness, which, according to the blurb, “is designed to familiarize the Black Human with Melanin and its importance to life, memory processes, ancient African history, sunlight, music, dancing, anti-aging, anti-cancer, religion, electromagnetism, and any other scientific and cultural parameter.” According to one Amazon reviewer, it is “a must have for any Nubians,” since “carol made it clear why being black or reddish brown, to be correct, is the resplendent and etheral and supernal force in the known universe, whenever you see black you see god, melanin is the key to unlock the secrects of the known and unknown universe, a must have for your shelf,hotep,wadu.”

Otherwise, Barnes is best known for his (yes, I’m pretty sure it is a guy) claim that cocaine is part of the racist plot because melanin and cocaine are both alkaloids and have a high affinity for each other. Barnes also claims that blacks can test positive for cocaine up to a year after use, because cocaine co-polymerizes into melanin. However, melanin is not an alkaloid and does not co-polymerize with cocaine in vivo, but hey – that’s reality, and reality is a conspiracy, apparently.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific rubbish. Promoting such bullshit is hardly going to help achieve equality for historically oppressed groups, and Barnes must hence be considered a moderate threat to humanity.

#1346: Ralph Barker

Ralph Barker is part of the The Christian Worldview Network and a UFO enthusiast (one wonders whether he is also the author of the obscure 1968 book Great Mysteries of the Air). Irreconcilable views of reality, you think? Well, no (disregarding the fact that UFO beliefs tend to be irreconcilable with reality), not to Ralph Barker. In his two-part series “UFOs and the Gospel of Christ” for the Worldview Weekend, he claims that although UFOs exist, various New Agers and similar people use them “to routinely attack, ridicule, or undermine Christianity. The aliens don’t seem to be threatened by Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other ism. They focus their attacks on Christianity. Could this be because Christianity is the only true religion? This would be my bet.” In other words, there is a conspiracy to use UFO sightings to make Christians sound silly. Methinks Ralph Barker may have got his defense of religious fundamentalism off on the wrong foot.

Given that the existence of extraterrestrials sits poorly with the kind of literal, Biblical fundamentalism Barker espouses, who are running the UFOs? Well, “If we do allow for alien life then certain questions must follow at least from a Christian standpoint. For example, are aliens fallen beings? Do they need redemption? Did Jesus die for them? Did Jesus die for all beings, earthling and alien? Did He die just once here on earth or did He have to visit and die on each planet? All good questions.” So, not aliens: “Personally, I think they are something else. In my youth I held to the idea that they were truly alien visitors. Today, I still think they are alien visitors but not visitors from another planet. I am convinced they are visitors from another dimension, a spiritual dimension. I believe they are demons. Just think about it.” I don’t think the piece of advice at the end would make any minimally rational person arrive at the conclusion Barker wants them to arrive at.

Apparently he once broached the question of whether there was extraterrestrial life to a congregation in Texas: “As we were discussing this, a local magistrate in the congregation had a question. His question definitely caught me off guard. He wanted to know if aliens did exist, could we eat them. I think he was a hunter. What do you think? Can we eat them?”

Diagnosis: “In conclusion I submit that the evidence or lack thereof points to a satanic deception and it is working,” says Barker. But the evidence incontrovertibly points toward poor reasoning skills and a tenuous grasp on reality. Where do they find these people?

#1345: Toni Bark

Toni Bark was once trained as an MD, but currently she practices Classic Homeopathy (which, in case you need a reminder, is premised on the falsity of all of modern science and has also been demonstrated beyond reasonable and unreasonable doubt not to have any beneficial health effects). Anything science-based she has left behind long, long ago. Bark does, however, run something called the Center for Disease Prevention and Reversal (uh huh), and through her web site she peddles a variety of crap including Essential Living Foods. She also appears to be a sometimes partner of “holistic women’s health psychiatrist” Kelly Brogan, one of the rising stars of pseudoscientific nonsense and health-related conspiracy theories at present (just chew on the phrase “holistic women’s health psychiatry” and let it feed your stereotypes).

Bark is the narrator for much of the movie “Bought” (by Jeff Hays), an insane conspiracy flick crammed with an impressive amount of misinformation and appeals to imagined persecution. Its main claim is that vaccines are ineffective and can cause autism, an idea so thoroughly debunked that it presently makes its promoters seem like gravity denialists. The movie also combines vaccine denialism with GMO paranoia, but fails – predictably – to cite a single source for this discredited line of ideas either.

Diagnosis: So that’s Toni Bark for you – an anti-rational critical thinking denialist who appears to systematically go in the opposite direction of the evidence. And she’s not alone, which really is exasperating.