If you liked this cartoon, there are stacks of others.
Good Reason
It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong.
Category: frauds (page 1 of 2)
Back in 1981, a newspaper article arrested my adolescent attention. It was so striking that I clipped and saved it, and here it is all these years later.
Believer predicts ‘liftoff’
By CHARLES HILLINGER
Los Angeles TimesTUCSON, Ariz. — The “liftoff” is just a trumpet call and a day away, Bill Maupin says.
Tomorrow, June 28, a trumpet heard around the world will sound in the heavens and “all of us on Earth who have accepted the Lord will slowly rise from the ground in our bodies and drift into the clouds,” he says“Millions of people will ascend into the heaven toward evening on June 28. It is prophesized in the Bible.”
Maupin, 51, founder and president of the 50-member Lighthouse Gospel Tract Foundation here, has been predicting this day of “rapture” since 1976. Now, he and the other group members believe they are spending their final days on Earth.
“We know we are going to ascend into heaven June 28.”
Holmer Pappageorge, 53, former owner of a restaurant, says the Lord led him to Maupin’s door. “I’m saying my goodbyes to my friends,” Pappageorge says.
“Television news crews and newspaper photographers all over the world will be filming us going up,” Scott Braun, 28, predicts.
“I was a merchant seaman sailing on a ship in the Far East when the Lord told me one night to go to Tucson. I had no idea why he wanted me in Tucson. He led me to this house.”
Joe Wade, 20, a busboy at a local restaurant, says his mother told him God is coming back. “He will meet us in the clouds and take us with him to heaven.”
“It’s going to happen soon. I‘ve got goose bumps all over.” Wade displayed his arms, which were indeed covered with goose bumps.Maupin, his wife, Elizabeth, and their five children live on an estate in northeast Tucson on an acre of land. Their living room is the size of a chapel and is filled with folding chairs, a podium, a piano and musical instruments and religious tracts.
The Maupin bedroom is a greenhouse crowded with scores of trees and plants. A spiral staircase leads from the foot of their bed to the ceiling.Maupin says Satan will take over the world for seven years after the massive ascension on the last Sunday of this month. “Satan and his cohorts will chop off the heads of a billion people still on Earth who turn to the Lord during a 50-day period begnning Dec. 2, 1984,” Maupin says.
“It’s all in the Bible. On May 14, 1988, one day before the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, Christ will come back to Earth. bringing along all of us who went to heaven June 28.
“When he returns to Earth he will reign for 1,000 years.”
Maupin says the prophecies all are in the Bible but it takes years of study to determine the dates on which the prophecies will be fulfilled.
What if the prophecies do not come true? Maupin was asked.
“There is no question in my mind. I’m absolutely conviced without a doubt.”
“Trust in the Lord,” chanted his assembled followers.
“Every human being since Adam who has been saved will rise from their graves and join the living in the liftoff,” Maupin says.
Now once you’ve lived a while, and you’ve seen rapture movements come and go, you see how silly it all is. But despite growing up in a Millennial church, this was the first time I’d seen someone predict the End of the Times so unambiguously, and I’ll be honest — I was a little freaked out. Of course, the guy wasn’t a Mormon, so what did he know? But despite the semi-sarcastic tone of the article, a part of my brain said, “What if he’s right?”
The day came and went, and then on June 29, a follow-up article appeared in the paper. How would Maupin explain the failed prediction? He made a move that failed rapture predictors typically make the first time around: reschedule.
This time he’s absolutely sure of rapture date
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — The mass, bodily ascension into heaven erroneously forecast by a fundamentalist sect for June 28 will occur instead on Aug. 7, the group’s leader says.
“This time, I’m absolutely positive,” said Bill Maupin, spiritual leader of the Lighthouse Gospel Tract Foundation. It’s Aug. 7.”
Maupin, 51, and the approximately 50 members of the church-like foundation received nationwide publicity last month after predicting the ascension, or rapture, based on an interpretation of dates and “signs” related in the Bible.
Maupin said “a slight miscalculation” caused the incorrect date.
“There was a period of time there (in the Bible) that I just didn’t see,” he said. “It had to do with Noah and the flood and the 40 days and 40 nights. I got out my Bible on the 30th of June, and the Lord showed it to me.”
And after August 7 passed uneventfully? Maupin declined to set another date, but instead claimed that the rapture was no big deal really, and that ‘the important thing’ was that they were making people aware of Jesus or some crap like that.
‘Rapture’ put off again
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Fundamentalist leader Bill Maupin has once again postponed the day on which his followers are to ascend to heaven, saying the auguries that were to precede the event have not occurred.
Maupin declined to set another date for the “rapture,” or ascension, “It sure isn’t very far away,” he said Saturday.
Maupin, who heads a group of about 50 followers of the Lighthouse Gospel Tract Foundation here, first predicted that the faithful would experience rapture on June 28.
When that deadline passed, Maupin said there had been a “slight miscalculation” and said the ascension should occur by noon Saturday.This time, however, he hedged his bets, saying that it would first necessary for Israel to capture Damascus, Syria and Lebanon and for someone from the United States to intervene in that holy war.
“The rapture is not main thing I expected to occur,” Maupin said. “When we started, it was not so much the date of the rapture. It was making the people of the world aware of the events that precede the rapture. The events have not occurred.”
Maupin still believes a Mideast war is imminent. He said he expects Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s government to attempt to regain Israel’s biblical borders.
Maupin said he does not know if his followers are disappointed to find themselves in Tucson instead of in heaven, but he said he believes they remain strong in their faith.
There have been a lot of raptures since then, and whenever they’ve come along, I’ve thought of ol’ Bill Maupin and these clippings. In a way, the non-event helped me become a skeptic and helped me understand how ridiculous religious people can be and how shifty their advocates are when they’re proven wrong.
I only just found these clippings, or else I would have posted them just after the failed Harold Camping prediction as a way of showing how eerily similar their rationalisations were. But never mind, there will always be more, whether in 2012 or beyond. That’s another thing I learned from rapture predictors.
If you’re not in Australia, you may not have heard of “The One“. It’s a TV programme on Seven, which attempts to find Australia’s best psychic. This is sort of like trying to find Australia’s healthiest cadaver.
I’ve only seen one episode — the psychics try to divine the famous owners of sporting equipment, find a boy in an underground tunnel system (without going underground), and pick out the fake fencer out of a group of six.
Can we have them take the masks off? I’m having trouble cold-reading them.
At first, I was expecting to hate it. The fact that there’s an industry of charlatans (and a culture of people that believes them) drives me nuts. Also, it seems wrong that someone will win the title of “best psychic” even if they do no better than random chance, just by outlasting the other contestants. And it was painful to see all the contestants — deluded people (at best) convinced that they had Teh Powerz. But I ended up really enjoying it, and here’s why.
First off, there’s a “skeptical judge”, Richard Saunders, who keeps things on track. At first, I was worried that he was being played by the format, and lending credibility to the silly newage nonsense. And in fact, he does make noises about being sometimes “intrigued, but not convinced”. But there’s nothing wrong with staying open minded; that’s one of the things about being a skeptic. He certainly does a better job than I would. I’d be making catcalls and rolling my eyes. He’s much nicer than I am, and he explains random chance and probability, to the annoyance of the “gullible judge”. (She’s suitably woolly-headed.)
It’s also fun to watch the contestants make ad hoc justifications for each new failure. Will the psychic-believing viewers start to notice the constant dissembling? It seems unbelievable to me that someone at home wouldn’t become more skeptical after watching excuse after excuse, though that might be offset by seeing the occasional random hit.
The thing I’m most glad about, though: While the show does give a forum to psychics, it’s also promoting the idea that it’s good to test paranormal claims in a somewhat controlled way. Does “The One” do this ideally? Probably not, but I’m glad someone’s doing it at all. Even though it’s meant to promote psychics and the paranormal sub-culture, it inadvertently sets them up so they can fail publicly, again and again.
Check out this short film “Doubt” from the Climate Reality Project.
What they did to obscure the facts about smoking is what they’re doing now to muddy the waters about climate change: Manufacture enough phony controversy and confusion to get people to ignore the science.
And according to the film, “they” are the same people in both cases.
Religions are in the business of providing emotional comfort (among other things), and after 11/9/1, Americans’ sense of stability was rocked. I think this played out in a predictable way for Mormons.
I visited my US home ward in late 2001, and it was the strangest thing: I’d never heard so many references to Satan before. Naturally, when people feel like events are out of their hands (what’s known as an ‘external locus of control’), they develop superstitions, and here it was unseen malevolent agents. I saw something else on that visit that I’d never seen before: In Priesthood Meeting, they’d developed the habit of reciting their ‘group values’ in unison, chanting a sort of ‘we believe’ mantra. Even as a believer, it struck me that here was a group of people too frightened to think.
From a look at this WaPo column, Mormon president Thomas Monson sure misses that time.
There was, as many have noted, a remarkable surge of faith following the tragedy. People across the United States rediscovered the need for God and turned to Him for solace and understanding. Comfortable times were shattered. We felt the great unsteadiness of life and reached for the great steadiness of our Father in Heaven. And, as ever, we found it. Americans of all faiths came together in a remarkable way.
And the bottom line couldn’t have been better.
Side note: what’s with the capital H on ‘Him’? I haven’t seen that in Church publications since the 1920s.
Sadly, it seems that much of that renewal of faith has waned in the years that have followed. Healing has come with time, but so has indifference.
Isn’t it too bad that we don’t have more horrible tragedies to turn our hearts to god? Darned if Monson doesn’t feel some nostalgia for that time of national agony. What a ghoul.
Whether it is the best of times or the worst, He is with us. He has promised us that this will never change.
But we are less faithful than He is. By nature we are vain, frail, and foolish. We sometimes neglect God.
Then we’re even, because God was more than a little neglectful on that day. He failed to save the lives of 3,000 people, but left instead a steel cross. You know, just to let us know he’s there, thinking about us.
If you object to this, saying that ‘super-hero’ isn’t part of god’s job description, consider: What would you have done if you’d had the knowledge of what was about to happen that day, and the ability to do anything? Well, god had all that, and still failed to do what you — a normal human, with all your goods and bads — would have done. Why do people say that god is good?
Mormons talk interminably about what they call the ‘pride cycle’: People get prosperous and prideful, they forget god, then god (that sicko) burns them up in fires, buries their cities in earthquakes, or sinks them into the sea (and that was gentle Jesus, BTW). Then the people remember to grovel sufficiently before him, and he prospers them. Because it’s all about him.
One could rewrite the narrative thus: Tragedies happen, and the feeling of vulnerability drives people into authoritarian religions. But life goes on, and people stop feeling frightened, at which point they abandon superstition, becoming secular or at least joining liberal churches. Until the next tragedy. Rinse, repeat.
Small wonder, then, that Monson is banging the drum for a more godly society. The vacuum cleaner salesman wants everyone to buy vacuum cleaners, and the god salesman… you get the picture. It’s just business.
Everybody knows not to play Three Card Monte, right? It’s an old scam that relies on a little sleight of hand and a lot of psychology.
It’s not just one operator, but a whole team, including confederates who make winning look easy, and blockers who separate you from your more sensible friends. And if you do manage to pick the Ace, a shill will bet more on the wrong card so the dealer will take their fake bet instead. There will even be some ‘muscle’ on hand to give you a few broken ribs if you make trouble.
It’s fascinating to watch, but it’s a dangerous game, and you always lose. Don’t play.
Here’s a presentation I made last week for the UWA Atheist and Skeptic Society. It’s called “End of the World… Again” and it’s about the Family Radio 21 May Non-Rapture. If you’re one of the saved, you’ll need to hurry and watch it before you go up, but I guess you won’t really need it. If you’re one of the doomed souls, then you get about five months.
Unfortunately, the video didn’t come through on the feed. All you get is the sound.
The End of the World… Again (Audio) from UWA Atheist & Skeptic Society on Vimeo.
So play the audio, and while that’s going, sort through this PDF for the slides. It’s a bit more work, but what did you expect during the Tribulation?
By the way, what are we going to call this failed prophecy? How about ‘Apocalypse Not’?
UPDATE: I muffed that scripture. It didn’t say ‘Two women will be in a bed.’ It said ‘Two women shall be grinding together’. Which I suppose you could take how you wanted.
Mormons may not know until the hereafter what causes same-sex attraction, but “God loves all his children” and expects everyone to do the same, an LDS Church leader said Sunday.
While the message — delivered to more than 200,000 Utah Mormons — may not seem significant, the messenger was.
As second counselor in the governing First Presidency, Dieter F. Uchtdorf is one of the highest-ranking leaders in the hierarchy of the nearly 14 million member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the thorny topic of whether same-sex attraction is inborn.
Ain’t that sweet?
But what qualifications does Uchtdorf have to address whether SSA is inborn? None — he’s just a mystic. No, he was sent to ‘Save the Sale’. Church doctrine changes when it looks like it’s going to affect the bottom line. Hating on homos made good business sense in the past (and thus good doctrine), but it’s been playing increasingly poorly as of late. Answer: Downplay Packer, so Uchtdorf gets to be the good guy.
“Many questions in life, however, including some related to same-gender attractions, must await a future answer, even in the next life,” Uchtdorf said. “Until then, the truth is, God loves all his children, and because he loves us, we can trust him and keep his commandments.”
Have you ever noticed how that ‘wait until the next life’ thing gets played a lot?
Some audience members welcomed Uchtdorf’s approach, which seemed more consistent with the church’s position.
“It seemed fairly close to the line we’ve been getting lately — the idea that the practice is sinful, but homosexual tendencies are acceptable within the church as long as people don’t act on them,” said Jennie Pulsipher, a Mormon who watched the regional conference via satellite at her east-side Salt Lake City stake center. “He also emphasized that [gays] should be treated lovingly as children of God.”
Hear that, gay people? Mormons will treat you like humans, as long as you never have sex for the rest of your fucking life. Sounds like a deal to me.
Many thanks to everyone who has responded to the news of my mother’s death. I’ve appreciated everyone’s comments, and I was especially intrigued by this one from a long-time commenter.
I would love you to meet my good friend, I’ve spoken of her before, the clairvoyant one.
I would like you to test her objectively, with your atheistic views intact. Ask her to get in touch with your mother.
I should add (for the religious minded amongst your readers) she is a pure Catholic – purest of pure hearts. And I should also add I am almost an expert on the biblical views on visionaries, prophets, and the like. So no-one can argue badly against her without my intervention!
She is likely to get some wisdom and advice from your mother – you can test it for yourself.
I’m challenging you to a duel of sorts, on belief.
Now, I don’t think spirits exist, since no one’s yet presented evidence for them. And the idea of having a medium contact dead relatives is silly. If my Mom’s going to go to the trouble of crossing boundaries of time, space, and matter to give me a message, then I think she’d come to me, and not someone who has to fish around for information, saying “I’m getting the colour red; what does that mean to you?”
I don’t like what psychics and mediums do. I think they’re either fooling themselves into thinking they can communicate with spirits, or they’re vultures, preying on the grief and desperation of the bereaved. Their techniques are well-known — cold reading is something that you can learn to do. You throw out a lot of suggestions, wait for the subject to feed you information, take credit for the hits, and hope they forget all the misses.
In short, I’m with this guy.
It’s the whole problem of rigour. Going to a medium wouldn’t be a good test for me, since I’m as capable of fooling myself as anyone else. (And maudlin emotionalism, too. After Dad died, I cried watching Blades of Glory, for Pete’s sake. On a plane! It doesn’t take much when you’re in a state.)
With all that in mind, I think the Medium Challenge is a great idea. Even though I don’t believe in spirits and psychic phenomena, I could be wrong, and if we don’t do the experiment, we won’t learn anything new. So I’d like to run the experiment. But it’s going to be a controlled experiment. I want to get not one, but three clairvoyants, psychics, mediums, what have you. As a control, I’ll also need three non-mediums — people who don’t believe in psychic power or readings — doing their best at their own readings.
To make sure I’m not feeding the mediums information, some tight controls will have to be in place. I will be obscured from view by a screen, so the readers won’t be able to read my actions. (It should be all the same to the spirits.) I will only respond to direct questions, and I will only say “yes” and “no”. Other than that, I’ll be very helpful, truthful, and accommodating. The test will be whether the mediums are able to get hits with any greater frequency than the non-mediums, or random chance.
I’d like to video this and turn it into a programme — YouTube at the least, possibly more. Full recordings of all the sessions will be made available via the Internet. And — this is important to me — I’ll be publishing the results no matter what they are, even if they run counter to my current belief. (Or those of the psychics.)
The test needs to be blind, so I won’t know who the mediums or non-mediums are. For this reason, Maureen has kindly agreed to assist in lining up the readings for various nights in November or thereabouts. So if you would like to volunteer as a medium or a non-medium (you-know-who, your friend has priority), please contact her at mediumchallenge@gmail.com.
I still need to work out the particulars of the experiment, so watch this space for the full list of rules and conditions here in comments.
Beaker has alerted me to this Darryl Cunningham cartoon which is critical of homeopathy. (You may have seen his earlier cartoon about the MMR.)
He points out that homeopathy is ineffective, and dangerous when chosen in preference to real medicine, which (surprise!) is the preference that homeopaths will steer you toward. I like how he explains not only why homeopathy doesn’t work, but also why people feel like it does.
He’s also included a bit about Penelope Dingle. I hope this retelling of her story helps to prevent others from following her course of action.
I confess it still puzzles me why Peter Dingle seems to have no particular qualms about homeopathy. If I’d been through what he’s been through, I’d be trashing it even more than I currently do. But then I’m not overly invested in quackery, so that may be where we differ.
© 2024 Good Reason
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments