Junk-Science and Crypto-Cult

Cartoon From: 'Of course, the really big money is in junk science.' - CartoonStock

In a post titled "The Moon Confirms a Young Universe" Ken Ham, arch-supremo of a fundamentalist theme park adamantly informs us: 

On this International Moon Day, I thought I’d highlight how the moon confirms a young universe.....

Every year, it drifts about an inch and a half further away from us due to gravitational forces involved with the tides. Every year, it drifts about an inch and a half further away from us due to gravitational forces involved with the tides.....this rate gives a maximum age for our earth-moon system....... the moon is supposed to be 4.5 billion years old. Over that amount of time, an inch and a half a year adds up! It adds up so much that if we extrapolate this recession rate back into the past, the moon would’ve been touching the earth just 1.5 billion years ago. And that doesn’t match with lunar origin stories or the scientific data 

Of course, rescuing devices have been proposed, but they all fail for one reason or another. The truth is that our moon displays the glory of God and confirms exactly what we’d expect starting with Scripture: It’s not billions of years old. [But does it confirm that it is a mere 6000 years old?]

Ken links to an article that discusses the issues with the lunar orbit more fully.  That article, which is equally as adamant, tells us...

For decades, creationists have cited this phenomenon as powerful evidence in favor of the Bible’s history. 

So, in view of those confident statements does this mean that Young Earthists have at last come up with powerful evidence confirming that the universe is only about 6000 years old? Needless to say neither post derives a 4000 BC creation date from any evidence. Instead, they use an escape tactic we've seen before: They take a complicated system that current science has yet to successfully model and then use this proto-science as confirmation and powerful evidence of a young universe. For example I've seen Young Earthists attempt to exploit the surface appearance of Pluto as evidence of a 6000 year old Solar System. Also, the problem of the origin of comets has been exploited to convince the unscientific of Young Earthism. See here: 

Quantum Non-Linearity: Comets: Deconstructing fundamentalist anti-science.

Quantum Non-Linearity: More Substandard Analysis from "Answers in Genesis"

Quantum Non-Linearity: Of Comet Tails and Cat Tails

The professional science in these areas is prototypical. In fact given that the epistemic distances here entail a relative paucity of observational samples, then it may never become settled science....least of all allowing Ken to say that it's scientific confirmation of a 6000 year old Earth. However, Ken's intellectual sleight of hand  will fool many of his followers, as indeed it fools Ken himself. 

Ken and his sidekick have only succeeded in showing  that simplistic models of the Moon's recession don't sufficiently explain the phenomenon: The recession is likely related to ocean tides transferring energy to the Moon's orbit. That in turn is a function of landmass positioning. So, given that continental drift has a complex history and that the epistemic distance imposed by time means that the observational data samples are sparce, then the issues here may never be finally resolved; least of all allowing YE "science" to settle on a 6000 years old Earth. 

The article Ken refers to is a cliche surfing post which will convince the scientifically uninitiated......

****

 

YOUNG EARTHIST: Evolution is based on a uniformitarian approach, that is, that “the present is the key to the past. Yet in an attempt to solve their lunar recession problem, secular thinkers claim that the earth was much different in the past than it is observed to be today

MY COMMENT: I'm not aware that this Young Earthist's naive caricature of uniformitarianism is valid anymore: "the present is the key to the past" is an age-old heuristic quip that only approximately captures the epistemic of science. Behind this naive YE idea of uniformitarianism is the Young Earthist "observational science vs historical science" philosophy,  a fallacious concept of science which fails to understand that all science is about joining the dots of observation abductively. The science of the past is not a case of using the present as key to the past via a simple back extrapolation of present day processes, but rather that of farming & joining the dots of observation into narratives as best we can in the face of varying epistemic distances. 

But the above YE sales-talk will strike a chord with those scientifically benighted followers of Ken who have heard the same YE fallacies time and again. 

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YOUNG EARTHIST: We can use this limit as a sort of clock. According to this clock, the earth-moon system cannot be more than 1.5 billion years old. 

MY COMMENT: ....no we can't conclude that because as this Young Earthist admits.... 

YOUNG EARTHIST: Lunar recession is not precise enough to give us the actual age of the earth-moon system (which is only thousands of years). 

MY COMMENT: ....the reason why it is not precise enough is because the phenomenon is complex and the observational data samples relatively thin on the ground. Least of all it certainly doesn't  give us an Earth age of only a few thousands of years.. 

****

A more thorough analysis of this Young Earthist junk-science is possible but as I have already thoroughly aired YE "science" in many posts, I nowadays consider it to be time ill-spent. In any case Kultic-Ken can only spiritually abuse those who contradict him rather than provide a rational response.

Christian-Right self send up

The self proclaimed  prophet who calls himself Third Eagle of the Apocalypse clarifies the situation

See also:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Right Wing Campaigner

As one commentator said: "The Third Eagle of the Apocalypse gives batshit crazy a bad name"

A tyrant's death toll after 4 years of total war.

 

Vanity of vanities: "My reputation & imperial glory
 or else......or else you die"

To save his vanity the Russian "mafia" boss pictured above has persisted in his violent pursuit of conquest against Ukraine. He has dug himself into a hole and he cannot easily backout without losing face; for how is he going to justify the loss of thousands of lives if his expansionist goals are not achieved? His vanity means that he wants to be feted as a successful autocrat bringing victory, wealth and empire to his country. Therefore he must go on and continue to dig his hole come what may.  Those who serve him are either sycophants whose interests lie with his mafia regime or are deluded by his media control as he exploits the very natural human desire for tribal pride and  a "home team" win. The rest serve him out of fear of imprisonment or assassination.

He continues to pursue his vain project of conquest even though that pursuit has the possibility of triggering nuclear Armageddon. That's no problem to this proud gangster and his acolytes. The thousands he has already killed will be portrayed by his propaganda machine as someone else's fault and a justifiable response to conspiracies threatening national existence.

He is a slave to his pride and that slavery will likely mean that many, many more will die to add to the thousands of Ukrainians and Russians who have already been killed in his seeking the feelgood fix of imperial power and conquest. He is no novelty in human history; the past is littered with would-be warmongering tyrants like him who murder rivals and kill thousands in their ambitious wars as they seek to satisfy their need for kudos, accolade and glory as great empire builders. He is just another face in a rogues gallery of tyrants enslaved to their base nature, classic studies in the squalid side of the human condition.

Relevant Links

1.  Former Russian tycoon and Kremlin insider blasts Putin: "He is leading us into the abyss"

2. Can the EU find a Russia whisperer to mediate an end to the war in Ukraine? - BBC News

Quote: Now the EU is looking to join the [mediation] effort and ensure that any deal, if ever done, is the best for both Ukraine and European security. Vladimir Putin claims he is open to the idea as long as whoever is appointed "has not said all sorts of nasty things about us"

That statement by Putin may express just how historically out-in-the-European-cold Russian autocrats have felt. This feeling may well go back hundreds of years. They've so often been out of the rich European club. Does this have its roots in the Byzantine vs Rome split? What Putin won't accept is that the best contemporary way forward for Russia is a constitutionally argumentative democracy, not an empire building autocracy where disagreement is forbidden. 

3. I was part of Putin’s propaganda machine. Ordinary Russians won’t overthrow him

QUOTE:“When I came to Channel One, it was an absolutely ordinary TV channel. We broadcast news from all over the world – from the United States, from the United Kingdom, from Europe – and there were no special restrictions. But step by step, the rules changed, and more and more topics became forbidden,” she says.

By the time she left, “we couldn’t say anything positive about Europe, about Western Europe, about the United States, and we had to show Putin as the saviour of Russia. If something was going wrong, we had only one rule. We had to say Putin is good, but his officials are to blame.”

Interesting but  not really anything we didn't already surmise!

4. Putin remains uncompromising on Ukraine, but is public discourse on war changing in Russia? - BBC News

It's Putin's destiny to keep digging. 

The Shaming of Shawn Bolz of Bethel

 

Investigator Mike Winger is on the left. The subject of his recent exposé, Shawn Bolz of Bethel, is on the right

Mike Winger is a Christian trouble shooter who, when it comes to  exposés dares to go where other Christians are too frightened to go in case they reveal something they don't want to believe. I had a look at Mike's work in relation to Bill Johnson's Bethel fellowship as far back as 2020....see here:

Views, News and Pews: Prosperity Christianity Part V: Soft-cop theologian examines Bethel Biblically.

I was impressed with Mike's work: To me it came over as thorough, dispassionate and fair. I'd naively hoped that since 2020 Bethel had cleaned up its act a bit. But then came Mike's recent revelations about Bethel's prophetic faker Shawn Bolz. Read more about that here...

Bethel Church admits cover-up of prophet Shawn Bolz fraud and abuse allegations | Premier Christianity

....and here....

Why the Church needs to re-think what prophecy really means | Opinion | Premier Christianity

Emilia Fuller, an ex-member of Bethel, wrote the following article in the Christian Magazine Woman Alive ....

Bethel, Shawn Bolz, and the question of accountability | Opinion | Woman Alive

The quote below taken from Emilia's article struck a chord with me:

When the news broke [about Shawn Bolz] through a 6-hour YouTube video by  American evangelical theologian, Christian apologist, and YouTube personality, Mike Winger, my phone erupted with messages sharing the link. I was honestly neither surprised nor affected by the revelations. Having experienced many years of sustained psychological, emotional and spiritual abuse in my time working at Bethel, I was curious to see what response would come from both Bethel and Bolz. If I’m honest, I didn’t expect much – as my own experience had shown me when I tried to bring things into the light, I was either gaslit, stonewalled or silenced by their culture of honour. 

We have seen two very different responses, from Bolz – a letter to his subscribers notifying them he is taking a sabbatical with no admission of guilt or ownership. And then Bethel, who by all accounts have taken full ownership and I would say are in the process of repentance, that I believe is actually genuine. This I was not expecting. 

Well, there's good and bad in there....

The Bad: Ms. Fuller's attempts to shine a light on Bethel's issues were met with stonewalling by Bethel members. That's very much the kind of thing which happens among the cults. It's so drummed in to cult members that they are part of a radically righteous elite Christian community they find it impossible to think there is any need for healthy self-criticism. They simply don't want to believe the victims of abuse because it challenges their rose-colored-spectacled view of the cult and above all it puts a question mark over the huge social investment they have made toward the cult community. Cult members are so taken in by the cult's teaching that they are also unwilling to question what they themselves have become in order to fit in with the cult's ethos. The cult's teaching is usually administered at the inception of the movement by some utterly self-believing, uncompromising charismatic leader (who may well have personality disorders such as narcissism). The resulting community bonding effect which inculcates members with a fierce loyalty was very clear at Noel Stanton's Bugbrooke cult.  Bethel may not classify as a cult in the strongest sense of the word, but the precursors are there. Those precursors helped to make them susceptible to Bolz's teaching. 

The cult isn't all bad: But therein lies the rub: Cults offer real social benefits such as a satisfying cooperative community, a sense of belonging & acceptance, unity & gravitas of purpose and above all a message of ultimate meaning; all much sought after in these modern days of social fragmentation, tension and emptiness. But this is just the bait which ultimately draws the uninitiated into a tight social matrix, disconnected from the outside world and which is very hard to shake off. In order to stay bonded with the cult ethos members may have to live a life of pretense which can take its psychological toll. 

The Good: However, if Emilia is right, it does look as if genuine self-criticism has set in at Bethel. (I wonder if Emilia feels that they didn't listen to her because she was a woman?) Self-criticism does happen sometimes. For example, once Noel Stanton had died and his fierce & intimidating charismatic hold released, the Bugbrooke cult, under outside pressure, self-examined and decided that the community was so blighted, flawed and pathological that it should dissolve itself; and none too soon too. Now, that unfortunately didn't happen at Jones Town; we know what happened there; it's too upsetting to mention.

NOTE:

Shawn Bolz looks uncannily like Mark Driscoll, another controversial figure who I wrote about here:

Views, News and Pews: The Mark Driscoll Affair

Views, News and Pews: The Mark Driscoll Affair. Part II

Views, News and Pews: A Foot Note on The Mark Driscoll Affair.

The theme here seems to be that of dominating Alpha males!!

Mark Driscoll