The difference Between Irrational and Supernatural

Over the weekend, I listened to a friend describe a conversation she had had with an acquaintance of her own.  Her acquaintance would not accept that my friend did not believe in anything supernatural.  Apparently, he ran down a long list of supernatural things, insisting that she must believe in at least one of them, and became increasingly frustrated as she refused to concede to believing in any of them.

I have noticed this many times before, and I have always found it either interesting or irritating, depending on my mood at the time.

First off, it should be said that everybody believes in something that is irrational.  You, me, everyone.  We are simply not physically capable of checking each and every one of our beliefs as they develop over time to ensure that all remain internally consistent and consistent with external information.  Some people own up to this belief (for example, my sisters are very clear that they are aware that there is no evidence to support their religious beliefs, but they believe nonetheless), but more often people are either unaware of the irrationality of their particular odd belief, or they maintain some sort of intellectual fig-leaf that allows them to convince themselves that their belief is rational when even the merest pressure applied to their justifaction would reveal just how hollow it is.  But, regardless, we all hold an irrational belief.

However, that does not mean that we all hold a supernatural belief.  I certainly do not believe in anything supernatural - no gods, no spirits, no "mystical energies", no ESP, no ghosts, etc. etc. etc.  I am a materialist - I hold to the provisional belief (that is, I'm open to disconfirming evidence, should any be made available) that the universe is governed by basic knowable (though not all currently known) laws and forces, that we live in a world of matter and energy - and not the Reiki/chi mystical energy, but the basic energy of physics.  So, I can say that I hold no supernatural beliefs.

As to irrational beliefs - I am certain that I have some, but I don't know what they are.  And this, in my experience, is common.  I know that I had previously held irrational beliefs, since abandoned, regarding politics, basic impulses of humans (humans are basically good/selfish/seeking sex/likely to break into the Macarena/etc.), relationships, regional stereotypes, etc. etc. etc.  Some of these beliefs were irrational over-extensions of initially valid observations, others were little more than wishful thinking, and some were based on prejudices.  Regardless, I have held many irrational beliefs over the years that I didn't realize were irrational until confronted with strong evidence demonstrating that this was, in fact, the case. 

Supernatural beliefs, though, are a specific sub-set of irrational beliefs.  They are the beliefs that require that the believer hold the notion that there is some sort of force, being, or power that is not bound by the constraints that bind everything else in the universe.  This may be a belief in gods or spirits that act by their own rules, or in "energies" that are somehow not tied to the physical world in the ay that real energy actually is, or it may simply be a belief in some thing that is so different from all other things in the universe that any attempt to test it is doomed to failure.  It is entirely possible for someone to not believe in any of these things. 

What I suspect sits at the base of the assertion that my friend encountered is something that is common amongst most people.  Most, perhaps all, of us seem to have a hard time grasping that the broad assumptions that we make about the world are not shared by others.  This is the reason why you will meet religious people who insist that there is no such thing as a true atheist (after all, everyone believes in some sort of divine force, right?  Well, no.), or many a hard-nosed rationalist will have difficulty accepting that a strongly religious person is unlikely to be moved by evidence showing their beliefs to be mistaken (this leads to many of them making comments about how religious believers "know that their religions are bullshit" when the believers rather manifestly do not "know" any such thing), or why a fire-and-brimstone sort thinks that they can scare non-believers with threats of Hellfire and Damnation (sorry buddy, but I really not only think that these things don't exist, but also think that your acceptance of them as coming from a  supposedly "good" authority means that you are a terrible person), or even people who believe in ghosts no being willing to accept that someone such as myself definitely believes that death is it, the end, fino, done. 

The person with whom my friend was speaking is religious, though he follows a non-mainstream religion and might therefore buck against the statement that he is religious (though it remains true), and he believes in a number of supernatural claims - though he is not stupid and does weed out many claims based on simple observation and common sense. 

Still, it is a curious thing.  Many, perhaps most, people seem to be astoundingly stubborn in their failure ot recognize that the way that they view the world is not necessarily shared by all, or even necessarilly most, people.

Astronomy, Rock Guitarists, and Editorial Mistakes

I doubt that I will ever stop being amused at the rather bad vocabulary of people who should know better. Case in point - I recently found out that Brian May, the lead guitarist from the band Queen, holds a PhD in astrophysics. I thought this was pretty cool, so I decided to see if he had written anything for non-professional audiences, and indeed he has. He co-wrote a book that describes the history of the universe and it's projected end. If his writing is anything like his speech on the subject, I can only expect that it is clear and well-written (I'll be buying a copy for my partner, a Queen fan and a budding science fan).

That's all pretty damn cool. But in the review section of the above Amazon.com link, there's this gem of a quote:

"Highly recommended for community library astrology collections and for anyone who wants a unbiased look at the universe itself." -- Midwest Book Review

This is being recommended for astrology collections? Don't get me wrong, I am fully in favor of people who are into astrology actually getting some background in science and learning that astrology is nonsense, but I kind of doubt that this is what the reviewer meant to imply.

It's a weirdly common mistake, though. I once had a housemate who was absolutely convinced that astronomy was the superstitious thing with the newspaper columns and 1-900 numbers, and that astrology was the science with the telescopes and math and whatnot. I had to show him several books on the subject (including Phil Plait's footnote about this in Death from the Skies) for him to believe me that is as astronomy that was the science.

Of course, within a week, he was back to confusing the words again.

Do You Believe in Magic?

Have you ever had one of those over-bearing co-workers who was so absorbed by their need to be a unique little snow-flake that they would do anything and everything to draw attention to themselves and make themselves look special*?

Some years back, I worked in a store in Modesto, CA with a fellow, let's call him Skippy, who described himself as a witch**, complete, he claimed, with the ability to cast spells. Now, I have worked with people with a wide variety of religious beliefs, and I generally don't spend much time worrying about them. But this guy was obnoxious. If a customer was not in the store, he was doing something to draw attention to himself - singing, or telling stories, or exaggerating the closeness of his relationship to somebody by whom we were supposed to be impressed, or, as often as not, he was talking about his alleged ability to cast spells.

Being the sort of person that I am, I began asking questions that were reasonable, but seemed impertinent to Skippy. It started simply by asking him to describe a spell. Ready to impress me with his knowledge, he explained that he could cast a spell that would make someone itch.

"Really?" I asked, "how would you do that?"

"I look at you, and then I say that you look like you're itchy. Maybe I'll say that you shirt looks itchy, or I'll say something about itchy hair, or something."

I stared at him blankly for a few minutes, and then said "that's not a spell."

"Yes it is."

"Well, a spell would involve magic, right?"

"Yes" he beamed triumphantly.

"So, you just described really crude basic psychology, you know, simple suggestion. There's nothing magical in that. It's about as mundane as you can get." I looked at him, waiting for a reaction.

His response: "Maybe you just don't understand what magic really is. Magic is all around us and part of everything we are."

There are probably a lot of people who would think that his response was somehow wise. The problem, though, is that it is faux-wisdom. It's a sound bite that might make someone sound deep or "spiritual" to a room full of half-drunk college students, but is actually completely devoid of meaning upon examination. If magic is all around us and part of everything we are, then magic is literally everything, and any term that is defined so broadly as to include everything is a term that ultimately has absolutely no meaning and is completely useless. It's like the people who define God (with a capital "G") to mean "love" or "goodness" and not "Judeo-Christian concept of an omnipotent spirit that glares at humanity." Just because it sounds good while one is stoned doesn't mean that it actually makes any damn sense. Statements such as this are wisdom vacuums, sucking all wisdom away and leaving a wisdom void in their wake. People who spout such things are prone to patchouli poisoning while under the influence of Deepak Chopra books.

Nonetheless, Skippy continued to talk about his magical powers and his ability to delve into the mystical arts. Meanwhile, I rolled my eyes frequently and occasionally cast an itch spell on him for good measure.

Oooooh! Such dark arts I weave!

Finally, one day, I began asking questions again. I don't recall the exact route of the conversation, but it was the usual back-and-forth of him claiming magical powers, and me claiming that he was full of it. By this point, most of the other employees at the store were at least willing to pay lip service to this guy having some sort of power, and he really wanted me to believe. So, I put it in simple terms: I would believe when he provided evidence.

"What?' Skippy asked, "do you want me to cast a spell on you?"

That wasn't quite what I was thinking, but I gave it a moment's reflection and figured that it would work.

"Yeah, sure. If you can cast a spell on me, I would have to concede that you have the ability to cast spells."

He hesitated for a moment, and then said "I...um...I don't have the ability to do that."

I figured he would have a cop-out of some sort, that he would say it was against some sort of magical code, it would be an unethical use of power, or something along those lines. So, I asked if he was unwilling to do it for an ethical or moral reason.

"Well, no." he said, trying to look confident and failing, "you don't believe. Your lack of belief in magic will shield you from a spell, so it just wouldn't work."

So, the only way for me to believe would be for me to have evidence, but the only way for him to provide evidence would be for me to believe. In other words, there was nothing to what he was claiming, it was all basic psychology fueling an illusion in people who were willing to be fooled, and deep down he knew it.

I felt a bit bad about this. On the one hand, the guy could be obnoxious, and his claims were pretty damn tiresome. But in retrospect, I can see that the guy felt like he had very little in the way of solid friendships, and his job as an assistant manager at a store in Modesto, while not bad for a guy in his early 20s like Skippy, fell far short of the glamour and excitement that he really wanted and that few of us ever achieve. He felt insecure, and his claims to this "magical lifestyle" was the thing that he had chosen to mark himself out as special and distinct from the crowd. And here was this smart-ass college student dismantling it.

I lost touch with him years back, but I can sincerely say that I hope that Skippy has since found something that excites him, and has made better social connections. He wasn't a bad guy, just an insecure one.

At the same time, I had already proven myself to be the sort of person who was going to ask questions and not accept faux-wisdom as an answer. So, while I probably could have handled myself better, he was also pushing the matter by trying to win me over. He bears some responsibility as well.

So, yeah, we were both being dicks.

In the end, we became friends of a sort. He stopped trying to push me to believe his various stories, and I stopped being overly analytical of everything that he said. We had some good times even after I stopped working there. But, as happens, we eventually fell out of contact.







*Which is, of course, completely different than those of use who keep blogs and announce our thoughts to the world. I don't have a giant ego in need of stroking, not at all. Move along, there's nothing to see here.

**There are, of course, actual witches, people who are members of various different religious groups which claim that name. I have met many such people over the years, and when I tell them about this fellow, they invariably roll their eyes and say something to the effect of "yeah, we attract a lot of those people, but they don't stick around long."

My Superstitions - Dice

I like to think that I am a very rational person, that I base my actions on good reasoning and hard data.

But the simple fact of the matter is that I engage in a few superstitious behaviors. These are behaviors that even I think are silly, and that I know to be pointless, and yet I engage in them and feel as if they are good and sensible, even while intellectually knowing how foolish they are.

Case in point: dice. I am superstitious about dice.

Okay, a little background is in order to make this all make some sort of sense. My name is Matthew and I...I...[deep breath]...I am a gamer. And not someone who sits in front of an X-Box or Wii and presses buttons. No, I am a role-playing game enthusiast. I enjoy sitting around with my friends, pretending that we are adventurers out to slay dragons

Okay, I've said it, I feel better now, like a great weight has been lifted from my chest.

Now, contrary to popular belief, we don't dress up in costumes, we don't run around with plastic swords, and we don't address each other as "my lord" and "my lady" - people who do that are called LARPers (LARP for Live Action Role Playing) and even the geekier tabletop gamers tend to think that the LARP scene is a little strange.

No, we're tabletop gamers, we gather 'round the eponymous table, papers with our character's descriptions and statistics in front of of, and we play out the game using dice to resolve situations with uncertain outcomes.

There is a lot of dice rolling in the average game. Enough that many players jokingly refer to these games as "roll playing" rather than "role playing" games.

And that is where my superstition comes in.

See, in most truly random distribution of numbers, there will be streaks where the numbers are high, and streaks where the numbers are low. It has nothing to do with the way that the numbers are generated (provided that the number generation is truly random), it's just the way that random distributions work. The NPR show Radiolab even has a segment on this in which a mathematician is able to determine which list of numbers was truly randomly generated and which was created to look randomly generated by noting that the truly random list had more streaks of the same number in it.

And so it is around the gaming table. Every gamer knows that there will be a point in every evening in which they seem to be on fire - making every roll that they need to and failing few, if any, rolls - and others when they seem to have a losing streak, consistently failing rolls and making successful rolls just enough to get their hopes up to have them dashed again.

This is exactly what one would expect from a random distribution of numbers, you know, like the kind of distribution that one gets from rolling dice. I have even tested this, thinking that maybe there are characteristics of the dice that might make them more likely to roll one way or another, but when I chart my dice-rolling experiments (good lord, I am a geek, it's a wonder anyone listens to me), I find that they consistently act in the way predicted by random chance.

But, as the saying (which I have been unable to find the source of) goes, luck is probability taken personally, and as much as I am aware that my streaks of good or bad rolls are simply random, it feels like the universe is screwing around with me. I know that it's random chance and there's nothing for it, but I feel like I should be able to influence it in some way.

And so I try to influence it. I have a large number of dice (though not a huge number, like many of the other players that I know), and when I hit a streak in which I am rolling poorly, I switch to another die or set of dice. Of course, I usually continue to roll poorly, which makes this attempt to influence fate into an exercise in frustration, but at least for the moment I feel like I have done something useful. When I am playing a game (such as the older versions of Dungeons and Dragons* or GURPS) in which for some types of rolls a high number is good, and a low number is good for others, I'll even keep track of which dice seem to be consistently rolling high or low and designate those dice for those types of rolls.

And do I roll any differently than anyone else at the table? No, of course not. I don't even roll any differently than on those occasions when I only have one set of dice to roll and therefore can't switch them around. The evidence proves that I am not doing anything that could change the outcome of my games, and I know that. But I still feel like I am doing something to change the outcome.

I have witnessed other superstitions as well. I used to play with two guys who would roll their dice for a good 15-30 minutes straight before gameplay started in order to "get rid of the bad rolls." I know other people who will only buy dice in certain colors. And I know people who will only use dice that have had a ritual done over them.

Does any of this actually help? Most people will acknowledge that it doesn't actually do anything other than make them feel better, and they treat the thing with a rather tongue-in-cheek attitude. However, some folks claim that it does help them, but actually watching their gameplay demonstrates otherwise.

And, perhaps that is why so many people cling to superstitious behaviors, because many folks won't except that something that feels like its working really isn't doing any good.

Well, at least it's good to know that I am not alone. The blogger noisms has also posted about dice superstitions.



*Incidentally, a common scenario or "adventure" used in Dungeons and Dragons is the dungeon crawl - in which the player characters move around in some sort of interior maze, usually caverns, a castle, or the eponymous dungeon, killing monsters and stealing their loot. This has led to one of the host of the podcast Fear the Boot to describe it as "Home Invasion: The Role-Playing Game."

Ghost Hunters: Addicted to Technology

I had previously posted an essay by my friend Dave about the problems inherent in most attempts to perform scientific analysis of ghosts. Well, Dave has written a follow-up, so here 'tis:

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So, a couple of weeks back I started talking about Ghost Hunting. As you may recall, I noted that I have a great deal of friends who are 'ghost hunters', and while I'm personally not a believer I have no particular desire to piss in anybody's Cheerios. One thing that does irk me a bit, however, is when ghost hunters and paranormal investigators claim to be doing work that is scientific, rather than passing their work off as a philosophical or spiritual endeavor.

Do I really need to go through this intro again? If you haven't read Part One, jump in my archives and go catch up. Don't worry, the internet will wait.

Did you read Part One? Great!

So in part one, we talked about confirmation bias when it comes to paranormal investigation, and how to try and eliminate confirmation bias using blind testing. Today, I want to talk about 'ghost hunting equipment.'

There's a school of thought that I've noticed a lot in ghost hunting which goes like this; "What we're doing is science because we use scientific equipment! Look at all this equipment! Boy, our equipment sure is expensive! And we sure have a lot of it! I mean, this has got to be science, right?"

The fact of the matter is, not only does the use of expensive scientific equipment like EMF detectors not legitimize haunting research, it's actually one of the things that makes ghost hunters look like hacks.

Let me explain...

As a ghost hunter, your primary goal is to try and convince the scientific community that ghosts exist, capice? In order to be scientific, I mean, truly, honest-to-Darwin, unbiased scientific, you can't take the existence of ghosts as a given. You with me so far? So if the existence of ghosts itself isn't a given, then you can't go ahead and make presumptions about the qualities of ghosts, or you've just shot any pretense of non-biased experimentation right in the balls...

I mean right square in the balls.

Hmmm... I see by your furrowed brow that I've lost you (or you're imagining being shot in the balls). Let me give you an example.

You can't say, "I'm trying to prove that ghosts exist. I've found an unaccounted for electromagnetic field, which proves there was a ghost here, because we know ghosts give out an electromagnetic field."

You see what the problem is with that statement? It's rife with circular reasoning. In order to use electromagnetic fields as evidence of ghosts, you have to leapfrog over a whole series of hypothesis that you've found no evidence to back up. How do you know that ghosts would give off an electromagnetic field? Because you happen to be looking for evidence of ghosts and there happens to be an electromagnetic field that you can't find the source of? In the atheism community, we call this the 'God of the Gaps' fallacy.

Do you know what electromagnetic fields provide evidence for? They provide evidence for electromagnetic fields. That's it.

Amongst other things, thinking that ghosts cause electromagnetic fields may very well be putting the cart before the horse. There's a theory that the opposite may be true; that proximity to electromagnetic fields can cause feelings of supernatural presence; in other words, ghosts may not cause electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic fields may cause 'ghosts', particularly if a person already believes in them.

It is, of course, an unproven and inconclusive theory, but one that takes far less of a stretch than the alternative hypothesis.

And I think it's sad that I even have to make this next point, but experience has shown that it's necessary; if you want to maintain even the slightest shred of scientific credibility, if you want even a glimmering hint of being taken seriously by scientists, for goodness sake put away the damned divining rods. If you want to present even a microbe of pretense that you're being scientific, don't pull out a medieval toy that's been considered a fraud for hundreds of years. By the same token, you do yourself no favors by bringing psychics or mediums into your investigations. Two unproven phenomenon do not make a proven phenomenon.

Let me reiterate; if you're doing ghost hunting for fun, or as a 'spiritual' or philosophical exercise, then knock yourself out. Invite Madame Cleo and go ghost hunting with a metal detector for all I care. But if you're wondering why the scientific community won't take you seriously, you may want to go looking for the receipt for that EMF detector you just bought.

And let me copy and paste what I'm sure will have to be a regular disclaimer: While you may think these posts are snarky, they really are meant to try and help out paranormal investigators who want to be taken seriously in the scientific community. The point of more rigorous testing isn't just to see you fail. Most scientists would think it would be brilliant if you succeeded; if you could discover a whole wonderful field of study that has real weight via the scientific method.

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By the way, if you want to know some specifics of the mis-use of techie stuff for ghost hunting, check out this.

Ghost Hunters and Science!

Some time back, I thought that it would be fun to write a series of posts on the basic problems that prevent the self-declared science of ghost hunting from actual science. It isn't that they have chosen to study ghosts, but rather that their methods for doing so are so blatantly unscientific that prevents their claims to scientific legitimacy from being valid. I had worked out what I would write about, and begun thinking my essays through...and then my friend Dave beat me to the punch by writing the same thing, but doing a better job than I would have. It was originally posted elsewhere, hence the talk of "tagging" people and whatnot, but the essay itself is pretty solid. So, without further ado, here's Dave's essay...

There's a post that's been floating around my head for... oh, roundabouts two years now; ever since I wrote the Shadow Circus show 'Paranormal Investigators.' I hadn't gotten around to posting it in the past because the more thought I put into it, the more the post seemed to grow in my mind until, at long last, I'm left with what can only now be an ongoing series of posts, which may or may not continue depending on how robust my attention span is (spoilers: it's as robust as a concussed kitten's).

I want to talk a little bit about ghost hunting.

I know a lot of ghost hunters. I expect that there are going to be a whole lot of people reading this post thinking that it's directed specifically towards them. If you're reading this and thinking that very thing then trust me - this post was inspired by you and at least fourteen other people... and the Sci-Fi channel, of course. (Or is it already the SyFy Channel? The Sigh Figh Channel? Who can keep these rebrandings straight?)

But I digress; I know a LOT of ghost hunters.

Despite being a non-believer, I largely approve of ghost hunters. Why not? I still enjoy a good ghost story, it's not my time or money being spent and I generally approve of any hobby that involves people getting out in the fresh night air or that generates interest in vintage architecture. Ghost hunting? There's worse things to do on a Friday night, and like most other beliefs that I don't share, as long as people don't come around saying "the spirits have told me that homosexuals shouldn't have rights, that non-believers should be tortured for eternity and that senior citizens should give me half of their fixed income! Whoooo!" then I don't really give two hoots what people believe.

But what irks me just a bit is that ghost hunters invariable say that what they're doing is science. They don't call it a philosophical exercise, or a spiritual activity or even 'running around playing grab-ass in the dark for kicks'. Ghost hunters want to beat the square peg of the paranormal into the round hole we call 'science.'

::deep breath::

The thing about the scientific method is that it has a pretty specific definition and that definition is not 'carry lots of equipment with blinky lights.' Mind you, I'm not saying that it would be impossible to define paranormal phenomenon, if it exists, using science. I'm just saying that ghost hunters aren't doing it.

Now, I shouldn't need to point out that I am not a scientist. I'm what Penn and Teller call a 'cheerleader for science.' In fact, I'm more than that; I'm the slutty cheerleader for science who will happily have sloppy animal sex with science behind the bleachers after the big game, especially if science happens to be that dreamy quarterback Paleontology.

But, I am tagging my friend Matt in this post, who actually is a scientist, so that if he feels so inclined he can chime in with other suggestions or, failing that, inform me that I am full of shit. I'm also going to go ahead and tag Greta Christina, who is not a scientist, but is my favorite skeptical blogger, and the thought of her weighing in on my thoughts makes me giggle with fanboyish glee.

::ahem::

So without further ado, I give you part one of:

GHOST HUNTING: SO YOU WANNA DO SCIENCE, EH?
Part One: Eliminating Confirmation Bias

So...

Whenever I hear about a ghost hunting case, or see one on TV, or I read about one, it almost always starts off the same way. Somebody will come along and say "I think my house is haunted! Strange things happen in the kitchen and in the children's bedroom!" Then the ghost hunters will go in and pay particular attention to the kitchen and children's bedroom and oftentimes will come back saying, 'oh yes. I definitely felt something strange - in those two rooms especially.'

Okay; quick quiz. Can anyone tell where I'm going to go with this? Anyone? Show of hands? Matt, you can put your hand down, you don't count.

If you tell people that a particular area is haunted, people are going to feel strange and uneasy there, and any trivial incident is going to be used to confirm the phenomenon. Batteries died? Equipment glitchy? Tripping over a cable that you swear wasn't there a minute ago? Well, this is the room where they told us the phenomenon happened - it must be the ghosts!

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking; when people look for other phenomenon, they go straight to where the sightings happened. If people say 'Hey, I saw a hairy man playing softball with his poop over in Africa', scientists are going to go to Africa to find it. I mean, duh. Why should it be different with ghost hunting?

Well, for starters, people who have looked for cryptids fall into two categories; successful (mountain gorilla, giant squid) and woefully unsuccessful (Nessie, the yeti, etc). The successful cases have always, and I mean always had physical evidence to back up the eyewitness accounts. They always had carcasses or feces or footprints or something. Searches that were based on anecdotal evidence alone have pretty much always been unsuccessful, and continue to be unsuccessful to this day.

In short, if somebody says that there was a haunting in a particular room and that room is covered in ectoplasmic substance that science can't identify then, by all means, target the fuck out of that room.

You also have to consider what your end result will be. When people were trying to show that the mountain gorilla exists, all they had to do is go to Africa and catch one. Ta-da; here's your gorilla. Case closed, muthafuckah! Unless you happen to be Harold Ramis, you can't do that with ghosts. Being ephemeral by nature, you're left with an even greater burden to give evidence free of confirmation bias.

You need a blind study.

What you do is this; have an outside party identify a house which is supposed to be haunted. Ideally, it should be a house where specific rooms are haunted with specific phenomenon on a regular basis. Then have the outside party find five or so other houses which are not supposedly haunted, but are reasonably similar in age, upkeep and style. After that, let the paranormal researchers investigate all of the houses for an equal amount of time (this is the important part, guys) without knowing which house is supposedly haunted.

If the haunting is a true and repeating phenomenon, at some point the phenomenon should manifest itself in the supposedly 'haunted' house in the rooms that were previously specified in a way that does not surface in the other houses. I understand that the phenomenon might not surface immediately. Ghost hunters may have to scour all six houses for months. But at the end, if the hypothesis is sound, the ghost hunters should be able to identify which specific house is haunted and which specific rooms in the house are haunted without any prompting at all.

I'm sure that there would be some ghost hunters that would balk at the idea of a blind study such as this. They might complain that the test is unfair, that you can't hold the non-material to the same standards of evidence as the material, etc, etc, etc...

And you know what? That's fine. But blind-studies are the sorts of things that scientists have to do all the friggin' time to try and eliminate bias. If you think that this testing is unfair, so be it, but for goodness sake, stop trying to pass your field off as science.

Besides, if you think this kind of testing is unfair, wait until I write Part II - 'Showing your work and why your toys don't impress us.'

And remember, folks. While you may think these posts are snarky, they really are meant to try and help out paranormal investigators who want to be taken seriously in the scientific community. The point of more rigorous testing isn't just to see you fail. Most scientists would think it would be brilliant if you succeeded; if you could discover a whole wonderful field of study that has real weight via the scientific method.

But to do science, you have to have scientific standards.

The Obligatory Sex Blog Entry

One of the things that most fascinates and frustrates me when people talk about morality (or, I suppose I should say "morality" with quotes) is how much of what they are focused on is what could, for lack of a better term, be called "victimless crimes."

Not coincidentally, most of these "moral" rules reveal a bizarre obsession with sex. Now, a few points up front. What I am talking about here is responsible sex between those who are capable of making responsible decisions. So, it is sex that avoids unnecessary risks amongst those who have the maturity and frame of mind necessary to make an intelligent choices regarding responsible behavior (so those who are too young/inexperienced in life to make such decisions, those who suffer from conditions that impair their judgment, and so on are not being considered here - they are, by definition, a special case that the general rules don't apply to). I am talking strictly about sex between reasonable and responsible adults - don't try to put words in my mouth and claim I am saying otherwise. Also, don't try the bullshit "slippery slope" argument that what I am saying automatically leads to sex with children, animals, etc. etc. The fact that I specifically state that I am talking about individuals capable of making responsible decisions automatically shows such responses for the bullshit that they usually are anyway.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have had someone lecture me about the "immorality" of pre-marital sex. Now, don't get me wrong, considering the possibility of both pregnancy and infection with disease, not to mention the emotional issues that it causes for many people, sex is something that demands responsibility. However, responsibility can be taken by the unmarried as easily as the married (in fact, because they are more likely to be forced to see sex as something other than a matter of course, it's possible that the unmarried might be more likely to think about sex and therefore be responsible). Contraception can be used, couples can discuss the possibilities of emotional entanglements both before they begin a sexual relationship and throughout the duration of that relationship, individuals and couples can avoid risky behavior, and individuals can be routinely tested for STD's. Just as importantly, each individual should know what they think and feel about sex and its consequences (both certain and potential), and make sure that they find a partner who is compatible - what sex is and means is different for everyone.

These things being done, the responsibilities associated with sex can be dealt with just as effectively as they would be for a married couple - indeed, comparing the married vs. unmarried couples I know side-by-side, the unmarried couples routinely show a greater responsibility regarding their sex lives (you don't want to know the number of married couple I have crossed paths with where one member routinely lies to the other regarding sex, sometimes having severe consequences for both of them, while the unmarried couples I know tend to be rather open and honest with each other). Hardly a scientific survey, I know, and perhaps not completely representative, but it does give the lie to the notion that unmarried people are not likely to be responsible.

Yet, this being the case, many (usually, though not always, religious) folks rant about the evils of pre-marital sex. Why? While many claim that there are many bad consequences inherent in pre-marital sex, the scenarios provided consistently either caricature pre-marital sex into something that it is not (for example, it is very likely that someone reading this will claim that I am advocating wild promiscuity, which is the very opposite of the responsible behavior that I am advocating) or else ignore that the same problems associated with pre-marital sex are frequently also associated with sex between married couples (for example, I bet that someone right now is thinking that I haven't taken infidelity into account, but I have, and it is unfortuantely common amongst married couples). It is an unfortunate fact that married couples often experience abuse, infidelity, STD's, and other such problems. Don't believe me? Talk to a marriage counselor some time, they can tell you tales to curl your skin back from your bones. The fact that such problems are common for unmarried couples does not in any way change the fact that they are also common for married couples.

Now, some folks will claim that the non-married couples have shown less commitment. Not necessarilly true. I have met many non-married couples who have been together for decades, and many people who have been married multiple times within the space of a few years. Legal recognition of the relationship does not confer commitment on the part of the members of the couple - unfortunate, but true. All of that aside, though, so long as the couple is responsible, if no physical or emotional results from the sex (again, also quite possible for married couples), what is the harm done? If you guessed "well, none, really," give yourself a cookie.

Others will claim that pre-marital sex does psychological harm to those engaged in it. However, all of the studies that I am familiar with indicate that people with an active sex life, whether they are married or not, tend to be happier and healthier than those who lack one (who may be married or non-married). Moreover, many of the married couples that I know have found their sex lives unsatisfying when they married someone with whom they were incompatible, often doing psychological harm to both members of the couple. So, the psychological harm argument doesn't hold water.

Some folks will, at this point, claim that pre-marital sex results in "spiritual harm," by its very nature not a qualifiable or quantifiable thing. The "spiritual harm" argument is one of the most arrogant bullshit arguments that humanity has ever conceived - designed to be untestable, it exists merely so that someone who has reached an ill-informed a-priori conclusion can continue to hold that view despite overwhelming evidence. It essentially says "I, personally, dislike this thing, and so I will claim that it is wrong and evil despite all evidence or arguments against my conclusion!" Anyone who uses the "spiritual harm" argument should be ashamed of themselves for their basic dishonesty, but they probably won't be.

So, if there is not necessarilly a qualitative difference in pre-marital and marital sex, and there is no real evidence that responsible people will somehow be less responsible if they are not married, where does the claim of immorality come from?

Well, mostly it comes from tradition. Traditionally, most people claimed to wait until marriage for sex. Whether or not this is true is unclear at best - the first systematic sex surveys were not conducted until the 1950's, so hard data is lacking. However, it is known that prostitution was rampant through to the early 20th century (up through the early 20th century, every sizable town, and many small settlements, in California, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada had brothels - and that's just the region that I personally know about, I suspect that it is equally true for regions that I haven't studied), "deflowered girls" were often hidden by family, "illegitimate" pregnancies were a well-known phenomenon, churches routinely preached about the "evils of premarital sex" (why they would be preaching about it if it wasn't a relatively common "sin" is a question worth asking), and STDs were endemic in most populated areas (consider the estimated syphilis rates prior to the discovery of antibiotics) - so while people may have been claiming to "wait for marriage", a large number of them clearly weren't.

As a result of the expectation, however, most people simply didn't talk about sex. As a result, people assumed that almost everyone was following the "traditional" practices, despite the fact that this clearly was not happening. So, a tradition of a "tradition" grew up, and people began to think of this as the norm, and it is an unfortunate tendency for human cultures to mistake a perceived (though often not real) norm for "morality". In addition to all of this, the lack of discussion regarding sex has led to a substantial misunderstanding of it.

For example, in my hometown, I often heard people scream that sex is "for procreation, not recreation!" This attitude reveals a truly diseased misunderstanding of the physiological, social, and psychological dimensions of sex. Across human cultures, sex serves for procreation, yes, but also as a bonding tool between individuals, as a form of recreation, and as a release for tensions and anxieties. Physiologically, the benefits of sex are becoming clearer through medical research, but so far they are known to include: relieving physiological stress, boosting the immune system, maintaining healthy hormone balances, and helping to maintain overall health. So, sex does much, much more than simple procreation, and to claim otherwise is to show a vast ignorance of what it is (incidentally, most of these benefits come from any form of sex, not strictly heterosexual missionary position vaginal intercourse).

So, then, what is the harm of responsible premarital sex between adults? Well, nothing, really. We claim that it is immoral because it goes against a dubious tradition that tends to be uncritically accepted.

Now, that's not to say that pre-marital sex is a good idea for everyone. There is a wide range of human variation, and for some individuals, premarital sex may be a bad idea - and that is up to the individual to decide. But it is not for that individual to push their own feelings on the rest of society and arrogantly call it "morality."

But the point is that pre-marital sex is not inherently a bad thing by any verifiable measure, and may even be a good thing in providing health benefits for the unmarried and allowing the unmarried to find a partner with whom they are compatible before they enter into a legal contract (which is what marriage is in our society). Pre-marital sex is not inherently bad, so how can it (as opposed to risky sex, abusive sex, etc., which can be engaged in by married people as well as unmarried people) be considered immoral when nobody is harmed? This is the problem of most conventional measures of "morality" - they are arbitrary and focused on preventing things for no real reason, while often distracting society from very real problems and threats.

More broadly speaking, why is sex the focus of so much of our society's arguments about "morality?" Matters such as violence, poverty, and disease are usually just paid lip service, and are only rarely directly addressed as moral concerns (as opposed to legal or financial concerns). Debate about sex has been a constant feature of our social arguments about morality - be it the right of pharmacists to not sell contraceptives (while still selling Viagra - go figure), arguments against such complete non-issues as gay marriage, or constant tries to push "abstinence-only" education on the public despite the fact that it has been consistently shown to not actually work. Why is it that issues that impact all of us are pushed into the background while the personal lives of independent adults are opened up for public scrutiny? Also worth asking - why is it that most of the people doing this pushing are the self-proclaimed "conservatives" who want "less government" except for when and where the government interferes with people's personal lives?

Worse, our obsession with sex as a focus of "morality" has led to a clouding of issues and an ignorance of very real problems. For example, the HPV vaccine has the potential to eliminate most cases of genital warts and many cases of cervical cancer, yet many religious groups oppose it because they insanely believe that anyone who engages in sex outside of marriage deserves to get a deadly disease (and they are open about this, go to Google and look up "HPV Vaccine religious and moral opposition" to see these folks say it themselves)*. Likewise, most anti-prostitution crusaders focus on the sex, not on the medical and violence risks faced by the prostitutes (or even by our culture's attitudes towards sex that creates an underground prostitution market). Also, many religious lobbyists actively put pressure on the government to cut funding for HIV/AIDS research despite the fact that this research can save lives the world over not only by stopping HIV, but also because the odd biological problems that must be tackled for this research will contribute greatly to the treatment of a wide variety of other diseases.

To add to the problem, many folks realize the inherent silliness of classifying pre-marital sex as evil or "sinful", but because of the immature attitudes that this "morality" fosters, they often swing to the opposite end and assume that extremely risky behavior is somehow more "natural", "moral", "sophisticated", etc. Of course, this is just as ridiculous, but it is the sort of soft-headed response that one should expect from a pervasive soft-headed immoral "morality" that demonizes sex.

In short, the "moral" focus on sex has led to an ignorance of real problems (such as violence), the demonization of segments of the public who are doing no harm (such as unmarried couples and homosexuals), and the creation of a society in which promising medical research is attacked or ignored because by dealing with sex it makes many people uncomfortable. This is sick. Moreover, it has led to a society in which "moral" crusaders consistently waste the time and money of the government pushing for the government interference in our personal lives (making various forms of sex illegal, interfering in medical treatments, interfering in the right of responsible adults to marry whom they choose) and attempting to silence criticism of this absurd behavior. This is really, really sick.


* This should not be confused with actual debate in the medical community regarding the use of the vaccine, which is usually based around, ya' know, evidence and not presumptuous notions about morality.

Note: I previously posted this elsewhere. It has been mildly edited to make it more readable.

Sleep Hallucinations

Early last Monday morning, I woke up to see Kay cuddled up beside me. As I looked at her, she opened her eyes, looked up at me, and intoned a series of strange syllables in an ominous tone of voice. She then closed her eyes and turned away from my face.

Was Kay posessed? Did some malevolent force enter her mind and force her to do it's bidding?

No. I had a very common, if somewhat unnerving, experience.

My body had begun to wake up, but my brain was still slumbering. As a result, I could perceive what was really around me, the room, Kay cuddled up, the light coming in from the window, but I was also still dreaming and my brain was incorporating what was really around me into the dream. In other words, I was halfway asleep and as a result I hallucinated. This is very common, it happens to all of us from time-to-time, and is nothing to be alarmed about.

It is also the source of many false perceptions that are taken to be "proof" of the supernatural.

After Kay did her little bout o' speakin' in tongues, I blinked, and there were a few subtle differences in the room. The position of the light on the walls was a bit different, Kay's position was a bit different, and the arrangement of the blankets was a bit different. All of it was subtle, and would have been easy to miss if I hadn't thought to look for it, but all of it also clearly showed that what I had just seen hadn't actually happened, and because I knew a little bit about how we sleep and how we wake up, I knew enough to be able to figure out what had, in fact, occurred.

Here's another example: As a teenager, I woke up one night to hear the sound of artillery shells, and saw that my room was occupied by somewhat luminescent and translucent World War I-era soldiers, preparing to leave the trench for the machine-gun fed slaughter that was mistakenly called a "battle" during that war. I knew that I had to go with my comrades, as futile as it was, and so I began to don my backpack, pcik up my rifle, and get ready. I was still in my room, but I knew that once I opened the door, I would be int he trench, and ready to fight. I went to the door, opened it, and saw my hallway...by this point, I had completely waken, and felt a bit foolish to be standing there in my backpack, holding a dowel that I had been keeping in my room for who-knows-what reason.

Again, I could have viewed this as some sort of weird visitation or out-of-body experience, but instead I reflected on the fact that earlier in the evening I had been watching a television show about WWI-era trench warfare, and that the descriptions of the misery of the soldiers had really disturbed and gotten to me, and I also had been having trouble sleeping lately. Putting the two together, it became obvious that I was experiencing a mundane, if somewhat creepy, event.

The point to all of this is pretty simple. When I collect ghost stories from people, most of them tell me about events that occurred while, or shortly after, they had been resting, usually (but not always) in bed. The descriptions are usuall pretty simple - they see someone standing over them that vanishes, they hear strange sounds that they can't identify, or they perhaps even get out of bed and see/hear/smell something unusual. Invariably, the teller of the tale assures me that they were awake, and I hear those words "I know what I" saw/heard/smelt/etc. However, I have yet to hear one of these stories that is not absolutely compatible with near-sleep hallucinations. I also have never had a conversation with someone about such and experience in which they said that they had bothered to look for dosconfirming evidence before deciding that their experience was a supernatural one.

"I know what I saw!" is always used as if it could somehow settle the matter in the mind of the person hearing the story. I don't doubt that the person honestly perceived what they tell me that they perceieved, just as I perceieved a possessed Kay and a spectral platoon. Nonetheless, these things were, faaaaaaaar more likely than not, simply artifacts of our brains' sleep patterns. Demanding otherwise will not change that fact.

As for "but I wasn't asleep when this happened!"...well, that's a bit like a guy in a bar demanding his keys because "I'm not drunk!"

And, hey, if I tell you that it was probably a hallucination, I'm not saying that you're crazy, though most people seem to think that only the insane have hallucinations. The truth is that we all have these experiences, I have described two of my own right here. You're not crazy, you're human, like the rest of us. Now, come on up to the bar and let me get you a drink.

The Curse of SLC-6

This post is cross-posted at my my ghost story blog, but it is the sort of thing I would also put on this blog, so there ya' go.

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Vandenberg Air Force Base is located just north of the California Bight - the point where the California coast turns from a north-south course to an east-west course. The Chumash, the native people of the region, considered Point Conception and the surrounding area to be the gateway to the afterlife*. When Camp Cook was established in the first half of the 20th century, and later expanded as Vandenberg air Force Base, this upset members of the Chumash community still present in Santa Barbara County. To make matters worse, when the Air Force built Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, AKA "slick" 6) during the 1960s, it is said that the construction disturbed an archaeological site containing human remains. Whether due to the disturbance of the human remains, or the actions of a shaman, the site became cursed (or did it...be sure to read the commentary below).

The project became embroiled in political problems and government blunders. The SLC was originally developed for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, but this project was shut down after construction. The SLC was then to be the site of space shuttle launches, but these were cancelled after the Challenger exploded in 1986 (an event that some people lay at the feet of the curse). Several rocket launches were attempted, and all failed.

The construction of the complex was also not without problems - bad welds, exhaust ducts trapping gases, extremely bad winds (which, in truth, is normal for this area), and cost over-runs all plagued the project.

Finally, the contractor running the facility on behalf of the air force contacted a shaman, who performed a ceremony to lift the curse. Ever since then, the facility has run smoothly.


Commentary: Okay, alot going on here. Let's start with the "dry facts" and then get into the interesting stuff. First off, this is a classic "built on an Indian burial ground" story. In this case, as in most other such stories, there was in fact no archaeological site at the location of SLC-6, and therefore no burials.

Also, the initiation and cancellation of programs related to SLC-6 makes perfect sense in the context of the nature of and changes to military spending throughout the 1960s and 1970s, so you don't really need a curse to explain that. Likewise, the construction problems are rather typical of the sub-rate contractors who sometimes manage to wrangle their way onto military bases, as well as unique elements of the weather and environment on the base that make construction difficult to begin with.

In other words, you don't need a curse to explain what happened.

Which leads to an interesting question - why did the story of the curse arise to begin with, and why does it persist?

In order to understand that, you have to understand when the story originated. And that would be the 1970's.

As Dwayne Day points out, the story began in the 1970's, during a time of social change and ethnic empowerment movements. The Native American movement resulted in the organization of tribes into politically vocal (and eventually effective) groups that began to protest the treatment of Native American archaeological sites as well as the mis-treatment of Native American individuals and groups. In the midst of this, the development of Point Conception became a hotspot for protests, and, to a lesser degree, so did the development of southern Vandenberg.

Day argues that the curse story began as a way to place blame for the problems at the expensive complex. There may be some validity to this argument, but I think that the explanation may be simpler. The stories probably began as jokes, engineers talking about how the place was "cursed". But regardless of how they started, the stories probably spread for two reasons: A) everyone loves a good spook story, and will tend to share it whenever possible, and B) alot of people hold to the, frankly racist, belief that Native American sites are filled with, for lack of a better term "bad mojo" - which is why the old "built on an Indian burial ground" trope gets tossed around whenever weird things happen at a particular location.

Regardless, the story annoys and offends many of the local Chumash (although I have met a few who think that its funny). This is understandable - how would the average baptist feel if they heard that a place was haunted because their church's pastor had cursed it? Also, beliefs such as this reinforce the "mystical red man" stereotype that has, unfortunately, helped to keep many racist beliefs about the native peoples of the Americas alive.

For this reason, when the contractor hired a shaman to "lift" the curse, this upset the locals, and resulted in the Air Force brass having to do some fast work to try to mend the damage to an improving relationship with the Chumash community.


Wackiness: When I was an intern in the environmental conservation office at Vandenberg, we had, in our library, a paper that had been written by a student at the local community college about the curse. The paper, filled with all manner of hokey pseudo-intellectual silliness, demonstrated that the author was overly-reliant on spell check - the paper constantly made reference to "viscous underworld beings."

So, if the site is cursed, it's okay, the underworld beings who haunt it move reeeeeaaaaalllllll slow, so you can make your getaway without breaking a sweat.


Sources: Personal Accounts, Local Folklore, Internet, Internet, Internet


*Or so it is typically believed, the truth is a little messier, and there are alot of different stories concerning the afterlife and how to get there. The Chumash were not a single monolithic group, but were comprised of numerous different autonomous villages who all shared a language family and material culture. There were probably alot of different beliefs concerning the afterlife, and the confusion regarding whether or not Point Conception was important to it probably comes from the conflation of alot of different stories from alot of different groups.

Measure of our Madness

Ahhh, election season is upon us. We have the usual empty promises, politicians pandering to special interest groups (and, unlike most people, I am not so delusional as to think that I myself am not a representative of one or more special interest groups – we all are), and, here in California, the usual raft of ballot initiatives which run the usual gamut from sensible (useful discussion about whether or not we should accrue more public debt with the goal of improving infrastructure, education, public transportation, etc.) to the mind-numbingly stupid to the disturbing.

Chief of the disturbing is Measure 8. It is deeply disturbing due to the fact that so many of its adherents are blinded by emotion, cultural training, and bigotry as to the true nature of the measure.

Measure 8, for the uninitiated, is a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage. Support for this measure follows from one of the most disgusting forms of conclusion-based reasoning – people have decided that homosexuals are bad, and are therefore A) opposed to recognizing them as fully human (and a lot of people will say that this is false – but if you are denying them a right that you willfully give everyone else, then you are failing to recognize them as fully human, no matter how much you try to delude yourself into believing otherwise), and B) will find all manner of rationalizations for this course of action, denying all the way that they are rationalizing.

There are two particular lines of rationalization that I see time and again:

1) Homosexuals choose to be sinful homosexual, and
2) Homosexuality is a mental illness.

Let’s start with the second point first. The claim that homosexuality is a mental illness comes from work done in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Up to that point, and really through relatively recently, homosexuality was, for no apparent reason other than religious prohibitions (themselves owing more to ancient Hebrew prohibitions against sexual rituals for the simple reason that such a prohibition set the Hebrews apart from the surrounding tribes, not because there was a problem with the rituals per-se), treated as little more than a criminal offense (talk about your bizarre victimless crimes).

The notion that it was a mental illness developed when psychiatrists began to interview and study homosexual men who came to them worried about their sexual orientation and bothered by other aspects of their lives. Psychiatrists soon believed that they had found a few patterns in the upbringings of these people including parental neglect and early childhood abuse* (considering what was found later, I am skeptical that these patterns were not illusory).

Things started to change in the 1950’s. The most obvious change came in the form of the work of Alfred Kinsey, who began studying human sexuality in the late 1940’s and whose work exploded onto the scene in the 1950’s**. Among his findings were the fact that sex was more widespread than had been thought (or in other words, it wasn’t limited to heterosexual couples and moral reprobates with prostitutes), and that human sexuality wasn’t strictly “heterosexual” or “homosexual” except in a few rare cases, but rather was best represented by a spectrum with hetero- and homo-sexuality at the ends and most people falling somewhere in between (though typically near one of the ends). While Kinsey’s work has been critiqued and re-worked, the basic models have remained more or less intact. So, the traditional models of sexuality were left in ruin.

The other thing that happened is that a small group of psychiatrists recognized a basic methodological flaw in the reasoning behind the “homosexuality as mental illness” model – it was based entirely on work with homosexuals who were suffering from more general psychological problems. When these psychiatrists began to study homosexuals who lacked any such problems, who were perfectly happy and normal people by and large, they found no pattern of abuse or neglect. And as these new results were brought into the broader studies, the rates of abuse and neglect amongst the homosexual population began to normalize and look pretty much like the rest of the population.

In other words, evidence that homosexuality was mental illness began to erode, and by the 1970’s had been chucked on the trash heap of history.

Since then, research into human sexuality has found that human sexuality is a remarkably complex and multi-faceted thing, and our usual labels are probably insufficient to truly describe it. However, one thing that has come out is that homosexuality is simply a normal part of the human sexual spectrum, and not an illness. All of the data has borne this out, and those who believe otherwise routinely show their total ignorance of all research into the subject.

Which brings us to the first objection that people often give to treating homosexuality as normal – they claim that homosexuals choose to be that way.

The usual formulation that I hear on this is one of two things: “Well, I could have chosen to be gay, so they must have chosen to!” or “it’s too complicated to be genetic, therefore it’s not biological!”

To the first one, research in human sexuality has found that it is common for the vast majority of people to have occasional interest in other members of their sex. In our culture, and in fact in many cultures, the usual practice is to suppress these urges, and as for most people they are not long-lived, they tend to go away (except under a few specific types of situations – consider the history of Sparta, for example). For this reason, it is common for people to look at these occasional flashes of interest and conclude that they could have “chosen to be gay.” But that’s not what this actually means – give in to them or not, these interests go away. For someone who trends towards homosexuality, on the other hand, they do not. So, no you cannot “choose to be gay” or to be straight – it has to do with desires that you have no real control over. You can control your actions – whether or not you act on your desires – but not your desires.

To the second one, people constantly conflate the terms “genetic” and “biological”. All things that are genetic are, by definition, biological, but not everything that is biological is genetic. Everything from differences in nutrition to exposure to diseases to some types of variances in immune systems are biological without being genetic.

What’s more, study of human sexuality has found a wide range of things that appear to feed into formation of sexual orientation. Genes do seem to play a role, but only one role of many. Other factors ranging from pre-natal to neo-natal environment, variations in hormones, etc. etc. all appear to play a role. In truth, sexual orientation probably owes to a lot of different factors. The one factor that seems to play little role is individual choice. The nature of one of the elements that is core for most of us is out of our control.

So, then, if homosexuality is not a choice and not a mental illness, then why are people so convinced that it is? Simple. The only real argument against it comes from religion, where it is treated as a sin. If it is a sin, then it must be a choice, otherwise you would simply be as God made you and the Bible would be wrong (of course, the notion of sin with an omnipotent and omniscient and benevolent being having set everything into motion doesn’t actually stand up to scrutiny anyway, but that’s another matter). Some people are able to dodge the mater by treating it as an illness, so that a person can be “set right” and it becomes permissible to oppose them “for their own good.”

Both positions are simply examples of conclusion-based reasoning, wherein the conclusion is reached first and the “evidence” found later, ignoring all evidence that goes against the chosen conclusion (it is no coincidence that many, though not all, of these folks are also creationists, and engage in the same tactics of “evidence” gathering).

Some folks will go a bit farther and claim that homosexuality is bad for society. There is a wide range of arguments that people make for this, but I have yet to see one that stands up to scrutiny. Some will claim that homosexuals are more likely to be child molesters (not true, the belief gets carried because it reinforces existing bigotries, but it doesn’t stand up to any real scrutiny), the homosexuals are more likely to be promiscuous (in some communities there is some truth to this, but consider that this is likely in large part due to the fact that the people making these anti-gay arguments also try to use the force of law to destroy monogamous relationships, and, well, it looks like this promiscuity is at least in part due to the success of anti-homosexual activists – also consider that there are plenty of promiscuous heterosexuals, who do you think keeps the Nevada brothels in business?), that homosexuals are more likely to suffer diseases such as AIDS (while AIDS hit the gay community hard early on, it currently is ravaging heterosexual minority communities at an alarming rate), and so on. Even in those cases where there is some truth to the claim, promoting marriage between people would reduce the problems by recognizing the relationships, promoting monogamy (and therefore reducing the spread of disease), and establishing stronger bonds of responsibility between individuals.

In other words, same-sex marriage would solve many of the problems that its opponents point to.

So, then, Measure 8 would be preventing the marriages of people who are of sound mind, and who are following a desire with another legal adult*** that they have no more control over than a heterosexual person does, and would also be reinforcing the legitimate problems that exist within some portions of the homosexual community. So, from that standpoint, opposition to same-sex marriage makes no fucking sense.

And then we get to the part that will make my Libertarian sisters very happy with me.

Ask yourself a question – do you really want the government having much say over your personal life? So long as you are doing nobody any harm, how is it any of the government’s business what you do in your marriage?

I find it both fascinating and frustrating that the same people who support the gay marriage ban also tend to shout slogans such as “the government that governs least governs best!”

Apparently this only applies to large corporations and people in positions of power. When it comes to you or me, these same nominal “conservatives” are in favor of all manner of government interference in the most intimate elements of our personal lives.

There is no good public policy reason to ban same-sex marriages. To claim otherwise is to simply feed one’s own bigotries. And a truly politically conservative position would embrace the removal of yet another needless law and pointless government interference. So, by supporting this, those who would call themselves “conservatives” show their true colors – they are authoritarians, wanting our personal lives rules by laws from on high rather than our own consciences except where we harm others. This is not a conservative position, it is an authoritarian theocratic position. We have outgrown these as a species, and we need to realize that.

So, to put a long story short, with Measure 8, we have the option of taking yet another step on our road to growth and improvement as a species, or we can chuck logic, reason, evidence, and reality, and continue to marginalize people for no reason other than to reinforce old bigotries. What is it going to be, do we give in to the better nature of humans, or do we continue to wallow in our ancient an bestial nature?






*Interestingly, but not surprisingly, it has become extremely common in recent years to see many Christians claim that atheism is caused not be someone actually thinking the matter through and realizing the rather obvious fact that there is no evidence to support god-belief, but rather due to abuse and neglect. I guess some people will always try to throw bigotry against those unlike them, rather than simply face that those people might be something other than victims or monsters.

**Not surprisingly, Kinsey’s work got a lot of reaction from people who weren’t interested in how he reached his conclusions, only in the fact that they disliked his conclusions. Amongst these were the authors of a book called “None of These Diseases” which claimed to systematically and scientifically prove Kinsey’s work wrong. How did they do this? Well, by systematically chucking science out the window and quoting the Bible. Go figure.

***Usually, someone will try to claim that if we allow homosexual marriage, then we also will soon have to allow pedophilia. Well, since homosexuality doesn’t actually cause anyone trouble, and pedophilia does, everyone other than the scum at NAMBLA would be opposed to pedophilia. If worries about pedophilia are your first reaction, then, I hate to break it to you, you are a bigot, and you need to find a way to deal with your bigotries,

What's Wrong With the Natural World?

I'm off to Portland for a few days, but in the meantime, I thought I'd leave you with this - an essay by my friend Dave - see the link on the left-hand side of the page for his amazing puppet shows. As so often happens, Dave has written an essay that corresponds with my own ideas, but is far more eloquent than I could have written. Enjoy:



What’s so Bad About the Natural World?

There are lots of various reasons that people give for believing in gods or the supernatural. It's neither my purpose nor desire to coerce anybody out of their beliefs provided they are not using these beliefs to cause harm. However, I do think that there is a spectrum of quality for these arguments for belief, and that while I personally subscribe to none of these arguments, I can concede that there are some arguments which are better than others.

There is one particular reason that people give for believing in the supernatural that I have always found spectacularly bad. Unfortunately, it is one of the more common reasons that people give for their faith. The reason is this:

"I believe in ______ because I just can't imagine that this is all there is."

If people mean by this that there has to be more to life than just waking up, going to work, paying your bills, growing old and dying… well, yes. There's a great deal more to life than that, I wholeheartedly agree. But if you're saying that there has to be more out there than just the natural world… well, frankly, I'm a little bit stumped. Are people even looking at the natural world?

On this planet right now there are an estimated 5-10 million species of animal life on the planet – that's animal life, not counting flora. We live on a planet with naked mole rats and anglerfish and venus flytraps and kangaroos - and yet the current state of Earth's species is the briefest snapshot of the planet's four billion year history of life. Four billion years! Can you imagine it? We've had a history of life so incredibly diverse that the human imagination, when trying to invent mythological animals, can do little more than rearrange the wonderful designs that nature already gave us.

And that's just Earth! The Hubble telescope once took a deep field image which showed approximately ten thousand galaxies. The average galaxy can have anywhere from a few million to one trillion stars. That photo represented only one thirteen millionth of the night sky – and that's only the observable universe!

So when I hear people say things like, "Well, the natural world can't be all there is," it positively boggles my mind! The horizon of the natural world is so vast, that the word 'infinite' seems so shamefully inadequate as to seem insulting. How can people look at that, roll their eyes and say, 'is that all there is?' (Unless, of course, you happen to be Peggy Lee, in which case, you can do it because you're awesome)

I suspect that for some people, the vastness of everything is part of the problem. I fear that for a certain type of person the belief that 'there has to be more than just this' really means 'there has to be more than just this for me.' The universe has to have a plan for me. There must be an underlying meaning that involves me. My spirit and my soul and my ego have to survive death. I can't imagine the universe could work any other way.'

I like to think that particular outlook is the minority position. Not to be unkind, but the perception that we have to have a cosmic plan involving us really is rather childish. The universe does not owe us some grand importance, no more than it owed importance to dinosaurs, trilobites or amoebas. Our lives can certainly have meaning or importance, of course, but they are the meaning and importance that we ourselves choose to strive for; a freedom that sounds far more appealing than being pawns in a cosmic chess game. We cannot expect to be handed our significance.

I'd like to think that childish entitlement towards the universe is rare. I hope that most people are simply unaware of the wondrous complexity of the universe around them, or that in their day-to-day activities they tend to overlook it. It's easy to do. When you've got a splitting headache at work, you're not thinking about how amazing your circulatory system is. When your boss is yelling at you, you don't marvel at the gradual development of human language. But it is all still amazing. Even when we take it all for granted, or get distracted by trivial minutiae's, the natural world is still more brilliant than anything that any mind could ever imagine.

I can almost understand people who say that they have to believe in the supernatural because the universe is so beautiful and amazing that it must certainly have a loving intent behind it. I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment, but it can still resonate with me – a belief in the supernatural based upon awe for the natural.

The point of this essay is not to try to discourage people away from their faith. But if I can be so bold, I would like to make a humble suggestion. This is a suggestion for non-theists and theists alike. Every once in a while, just stop and really pay attention to the natural world. Take a moment to put aside both your day-to-day life and the afterlife. Try to take the time to look at the world, not as something to transcend, not as something to shuffle off when you go to your perceived heaven, but as an amazingly beautiful thing in and of itself. Don't blow off the universe.

After all, that's one of the things the Wiccans get right.

"Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy"
- Carl Sagan

Crashing Into Reality

I feel like I should be trying to write more funny entries, but I keep writing stuff like this. It’s nothing new, the sort of thing I’ve griped about before, but it bugs me, and it’s my blog, so there.

A few years back, I was at a beach with some friends. A fellow who was a friend of one of my friends tagged along. I will call this fellow Brian, because I can’t remember his actual name. It was a nice evening, warm but not uncomfortably so, and relatively dry air despite the proximity of the ocean. We were enjoying ourselves immensely, and at one point Brian and I ended up at the back of the group talking about science fiction books.

After a few minutes, Brian asked what I did for a living. I told him that I was an archaeologist. Brian became silent, and just glared at me. After a few minutes of this, I asked him what was wrong.

“You’re out to destroy our faith.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. You’re one of the anti-Christian people.”

“What the Hell are you talking about?”

“Archaeologists dedicate their lives to trying to prove the Bible wrong in order to destroy Christianity.”

I then proceeded to explain that A) I am a North American Archaeologist, meaning that the Bible is completely irrelevant to my own work, and B) archaeologists aren’t out to prove or disprove anything in particular, we go where the evidence leads – and if the evidence agrees with someone else’s beliefs, that’s okay, but if it disproves those beliefs, well, that’s okay, too.

I thought of this conversation recently when I heard someone going on a diatribe about how medical science is solely about trying to “destroy people’s health in the name of profit!” This person was, not surprisingly, trying to convince people to buy into that great-grandmother of snake oil fraud, homeopathics*.

Now, there are plenty of shady dealings in the medical industry, make no mistake. But one has to be intentionally ignorant to not notice that medical research has resulted in at least a few small advances in furthering public health, like, oh I don’t know, curing polio, finding the vectors for transmission of HIV (thus allowing its prevention), dietary research and effective guidelines, and creating vaccinations for rabies, just to name a few. Or, hey, how about revealing that microbes spread disease, and hey, that soap stuff is pretty handy for preventing this. However, medical research (along with chemistry and physics) has also demonstrated that homeopathics are nothing but a sham, and was thus undercutting this person’s worldview.

And this has all got me thinking about why research is viewed as threatening by so many people. The basic goal of good research is not to prove or disprove a point, it is simply to follow evidence and get as close to reality as possible. Now, there are researchers with agendas, yes, and there are things outside of pure evidence that do influence research, true. However, over the course of time, these things tend to wash out – agendas change and/or fade, outside influences shift, but the data remains existant and methods sharpen and improve, meaning that, even though a blind alley or wrong direction may be chosen temporarily, it tends to be corrected over time. The end result is that research in general, and science in particular, tends in the long run to move along without any particular direction towards proving or disproving one idea or another.

The problem for many people is this – if you hold a belief that is based on assumptions (a belief without or despite evidence such as: the Bible is inerrant, homeopathy is something other than nonsense, cooked food is bad for you, or that L. Ron Hubbard is a god and his teachings will allow you to alter your blood’s salinity), then you are going to be threatened by any person, people, or institution who are honestly attempting to find truth without an agenda. And the problem is two-fold: A) someone who holds such a belief has based their worldview on a shaky claim that is likely to be toppled by scrutiny, and B) the clinging to beliefs derived by fiat rather than evidence and reason puts such an individual immediately at odds with reality and any exposure to a systematic method of examining reality is going to seem alien – so alien, in fact, that many folks I meet don’t know the difference between an assumption-based worldview and one based on evidence, hence the fact that many folks incorrectly perceive science as being simply a religion (despite the fact that the methods of the two could not be more different), or just another “way of knowing the world” no different from any other – despite the fact that methodologically it is unique and wildly different.

Add this to the basic human desire to not be proven wrong, and you have a potent stew to serve up at a denial of reality dinner. And this is a problem, not only because it means that there are a whole lot of people who are, put simply, basing their worldview on what are really superstitious assumptions and failing to recognize that their worldview may not be based in reality. These folks then become hostile to anyone who introduces a bit of reality, and (based on my experience, anyway) withdraw farther away from any sort of reasonable discourse or engagement with the real world that they live in.







* Now, I know that someone is going to write to me claiming that homeopathy works because they got some herbs that cured some condition, etc., etc., etc.. Homeopathy often gets confused with naturopathy (which includes the use of herbs), but is something completely different. Homeopathy is the practice of taking a substance that causes an illness in a well person, diluting it to miniscule amounts (often to the point that any given dose of a homeopathic treatment contains none of the allegedly active ingredient), and then using that to “cure” a sick person. If this sounds crazy, that’s because it is. Which is probably why homeopaths don’t seem to object to people confusing them for naturopaths – while naturopathy is not nearly as effective as many people seem to think it is - and some of the more popular remedies are actually completely useless - there are some naturopathic remedies that actually work – but there are no homeopathic ones that do, so being confused for naturopathy works in the homeopath’s favor.

Oh, THAT Paradox

I have not posted for a bit, so I think it’s time for an update. Since I don’t have anything worthwhile to post, I’ll just give a grumpy but pointless spiel about a particular email forward that keeps being sent my way.

I have learned to hate email forwards. Partially because I tend to see the same ones over and over again (and yet, the people sending them think that they are somehow the first one to do so), but mostly because if they are almost always either A) either rather obvious statements listed and presented as if they are profound observations when they are little more than saccharine or overly-nostalgic trash when not statements of the mind-blowingly obvious, or B) they are half-wit claims and observations made by someone who is a complete fucking idiot, but presented in a way that implies that the complete fucking idiot is delusional enough to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow foolish.

A good example of this is the “Paradox of our Time” forward, which various members of my family keep sending my way. It is astounding in that it is both obvious statements listed and presented as if they are profound observations when they are little more than saccharine and overly-nostalgic trash and simultaneously half-wit claims and observations made by someone who is a complete fucking idiot, but presented in a way that implies that the complete fucking idiot is delusional enough to believe that anyone who disagrees with them is somehow foolish. And, to top it off, it keeps being mis-attributed to George Carlin (if you see this particular forward, it lately has been making the rounds with a picture of ol’ George attached – the fact that Carlin hasn’t been striking out with fury from the grave at this is about as much proof that there is no afterlife as any reasonable person could need).

For those of you who have been lucky enough to avoid this particular piece of glurge (as the folks at snopes.com call it), I’m about to shatter your innocence by exposing you to a small portion of the insipid thing.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but
shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more,
but have less; we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and
smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees
but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more
problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

Okay, so, to start off:

Taller buildings but shorter tempers: Other than the common “oh, things were so different before everything changed” moaning about how much better the past was, where the hell does this claim come from?

Wider Freeways but narrower viewpoints: Yep, narrower viewpoints in the past. Mind you, lynching is frowned upon these days, we accept that, hey, maybe gay people aren’t inherently evil, and your Italian neighbors probably are not members of an organized crime family. But, it’s the present, and nto the golden past, so, hey, we must have narrower viewpoints.

Spend more but have less, buy more but enjoy less: Actually, we have more, that’s the problem. If we enjoy it less, and here I think that the author may actually have stumbled onto an observation that isn’t idiotic, it’s because we have become so bloated on consumption that we are failing to appreciate what we have in favor of gaining more.


We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little,
drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too
little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We have multiplied our
possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and
hate too often.

Drink too much? Rates of alcohol consumption are quite low currently compared to much of history. Smoke too much? Same story.

Spend to recklessly – yep, that one is true, but also rather obvious.

Laugh too little? By whose count? If anything, we as a population appear to turn to entertainment even when we should be taking in some rather important and serious matters. Consider, how many people can name the entire cast of “Friends?” Right, now, how many of those people can name three Supreme Court Justices?

Laughing too little? No. Thinking to little? Yes, but I’m not convinced that that’s anything new.

Drive too fast? Probably, but, again, rather obvious.

Get too angry? Well it depends on what we’re getting angry about. There are things out there that should have us in a fury, but about which we are apathetic.

Stay up to late and get up too tired? By whose account, exactly?

Read too little? Yep, but giving the inanity of this list, I suspect that the author is among the guilty on this claim. Same for watching T.V. too much.

Pray to seldom? Let me get this straight, someone is upset because not enough of us are offering supplication to imaginary beings? We don’t pray too seldom, in fact, quite the contrary. Reflect too seldom, yes. Pray too seldom? Definitely not.

Multiplied our possessions but reduced our values: Ummm, weren’t we just told that we spend more and get less? A little proof reading of the list for consistency might be useful. As for reducing our values – yeah, we have problems, but, again, I’d point out that lynchings are not longer commonplace, and I think that counts for something. More of the rose-colored nostalgia filling in for a grasp of history.

And it just sort of continues on like that, painting the present as a wasteland and the past as a golden field of wisdom and love. The reality, of course, is that, things have been thoroughly screwed up throughout history. Some things have gotten worse, certainly, but some have gotten better. And, thanks to people who actually study the world around us and don’t waste time harkening back to a non-existent golden past, there is a chance of things actually improving. Of course, if there are enough half-wits like the email writer, then these improvements will not come to pass.

Oh, one last paragraph in the forward always strikes me as hilariously stupid:


It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the
stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time
when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.


Pardon me, but isn’t it more than just a mite bit arrogant for some half-wit with a propensity towards grand pronouncements based on sappy sayings and common prejudices towards the present to label their own deal “insight” and try to guilt you into passing it on, as if it will somehow improve the world when all it will really do is annoy your friends and relatives?

The real paradox of our time is that someone can be educated enough to use a computer, and yet still think that emails that range from sappy to stupid to offensive are somehow insightful.

Still, at least it’s better than the “I’m a Bad American” forward – which is nothing but a loud announcement of how proud the author is to be a bigoted, racist, superstitious, empty-headed asshole. For some reason, that one also gets attributed to George Carlin, even though it’s obvious to anyone who knows anything about Carlin that it ain’t him.

Okay, next time I’ll try to write something interesting and/or useful instead of just ranting about email forwards.

Give me pills!

So, I was looking over at another blog, Skepchick (www.skepchick.org), and saw that they had linked to stories regarding an attempt to organize a day of protest against the birth control pill.

No, really, check it out: http://thepillkills.com/index.html

At first I thought this was a joke (and, perhaps this site is a well-concealed joke, though it increasingly looks unlikely), but then I started thinking about the pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control pills based on the belief that they cause spontaneous abortions (my understanding, while this claim may not be completely unfounded, it is rather spurious, but ask your doctor for more information, really, you should).

An amusing dissection of the matter can also be found here:

http://feminocracy.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/the-pill-kills-omg/

But, let's be realistic, the use of contraceptives, including the birth control, realistically create less opportunities for abortion, and therefore, probably results in less abortions, not more. This is not about preventing abortion (if it was, folks such as those who oppose the birth control pill would be in favor of contraceptives and comprehensive sex education, not the abstinence-only travesty that they tend to push). Hell, I'm not even convinced that it's about "controlling women" - the accusation usually levelled at them. It seems much more likely that it is about a knee-jerk fear of sex coupled with scientific illiteracy which is fed by a denial of reality and a fear that maybe they don't know what the "way, truth, and light" is after all.

In other words, these folks are afraid of the world as it is, and so they're trying to force their beliefs down the throats of everyone else.

Oh, and also from Skepchick - how about a teacher who was fired for wizardry: http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=79533

I can't make things like this up...

Built on an Indian Burial Ground

This entry is poorly constructed and probably barely legible to anyone other than myself. I'm not proud of those facts, I'm just lazy. You have been warned.

So, I was listening to the pilot episode of a new radio show called Curiosity Aroused, which was a pretty cool show (you can hear it here:http://curiosityaroused.wordpress.com/). In one segment, the host (Rebbecca Watson of http://www.skepchick.org/) discusses media coverage of an alleged ghost sighting at a gas station (what a lousy place to spend eternity). As usual, one of the various folks interviewed by the news crew comments that "this place used to be an Indian burial ground."

Yep. An Indian burial ground. How many times have you heard this one? It's as if the entire continent has seen Poltergeist one too many times. Feel uneasy at your house? Must be built on an Indian burial ground. See something weird at your office? Must be built on an Indian burial ground.

I wonder what kind of burial grounds the British blame their misfortune on.

Incidentally, I once worked in an office building that actually WAS built on an Indian burial ground. What's more, we frequently had human bones in the office. Want to know what happened there? Absolutely nothing - unless you count the soul-crushing boredom of Monday morning staff meetings.

Wait a minute...maybe the human remains in the office from our excavations put a curse on the building, and the burial ground put another curse on the building, and the two curses ate each other! Hmmm...I may yet make a name for myself in parapsychology!

I also once spent a week carting human remains (mostly bone, but also some preserved soft tissue) around in the trunk of my car - at the insistence of the Sheriff Coroner's office I might add - and other than some trouble with my starter and alternator, my car shows no signs of being haunted or cursed (and I'm inclined to chalk the electrical troubles up to the fact that my car is 13 years old and has never had any part of the electrical system replaced - though it is fun to yell obscenities at the spirits when my car won't start on a cold morning). Still, those were remains of white people, and therefore most of my fellow honkies will likely superstitiously not believe that they have the power of 'dem Indian bones.

But I digress. Back to the main point...

...anytime I talk to someone who feels uneasy in their home or thinks that they or someone they know has a haunted house, inevitably the old "built on an Indian Burial Ground" trope gets brought out. If all of the places that were allegedly built on burial grounds were, in fact, built on burial grounds, then I can say with confidence that there are more dead people in North America than there were ever alive people on the continent. For those who doubt the truth of that statement, I'll have you know that I arrived at that conclusion by using my archaeological training to compile and analyze data before pulling a conclusion completely out of my ass.

So there.

I used to work in the Central Coast Archaeological Information Center at UC Santa Barbara*. This facility houses all of the records for all recorded archaeological sites within Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. In other words, this was the perfect place to examine the claim that any of the alleged haunted places in the county were built on Indian burial grounds.

So, I looked at the locations of several places that I had heard were haunted due to being built on burial grounds. One was built on a location that used to hold a flake scatter (where a couple of Chumash fellows had been manufacturing or modifying stone tools - but where there would have been no burials), all others were built on "archaeologically sterile" ground - no sites of any kind, including burials.

I did find a few buildings that were actually built on burial grounds. One was a building where I would eventually work, as described above (and where, when questioned, nobody who worked there had ever experienced anything odd at all). One was a museum that one would think was ripe for ghost stories for a number of reasons, and, yet, it had none at all. And one was a physics/engineering laboratory where several friends worked, and none of them had ever experienced anything that they would consider strange.

Oh, and one was a sewage treatment plant - unpleasant, but decidedly not haunted by anyone's estimation.

So, the places that really did hold burial grounds were all not haunted. The places that were supposedly haunted but definitely did not have burial grounds all had the rumor of a burial ground attached to them. That should tell you something.

And yet, stories of hauntings due to burial grounds continue to proliferate. When the folks behind the Amityville hoax decided to pull their prank, they even concocted an Indian burial ground/insane asylum story as part of the hoax.

My personal favorite rant about the horrors of Indian Burial grounds comes from this lunatic: http://www.demonbuster.com/burial.html**, who draws some rather odd conclusions about how people behave around these sites. For example, if people avoid burial grounds, how do we account for the vandalism often seen at these sites? Also, I got a good laugh from the claim that construction workers stop work at burial sites out of fear of the supernatural. If there's not an archaeologist like myself or a Native American monitor present to stop them, construction crews will blow right through burial sites without a second thought.

Don't believe me? Go to Google and type in "Playa Vista Gabrielino Burials". When the construction company has the legal right to plow through, or else the management thinks that they won't be caught, they do just that. The fear of the supernatural does nothing to stop them.

What's curious is that so many of these stories allege specifically Indian burial grounds. While you will occasionally here about a more run-of the mill white-bread cracker cemetery being the source of a haunting, it is usually the Native Americans who get the blame. Why is this?

Well, I don't know for certain, but I suspect that it has to do with three things: 1. Unlike most historic cemeteries, prehistoric Native American cemeteries don't have clear surviving grave markers that are obvious to the layman, and therefore it becomes an untestable hypothesis to most folks (it's essentially a "god of the gaps" argument - in the face of ignorance a questionable conclusion is drawn, and since you can't disprove it, it must be true! The illogic of the position should be pretty obvious). 2. Even prior to the current re-evaluation of North American colonialism, most folks at least agreed that the native peoples of the continent weren't happy with the European who were the ancestors of many of us, and therefore would have a motive for wanting to do all manor of horrible things to them - apparently including annoying them by moving their descendants car keys and knocking picture frames off of walls - hardly a fitting retort to genocidal policies, really. 3. There is a, frankly, racist notion that non-white people are somehow mystically powerful and therefore terrifying and not to be trusted (which has been a recurring theme throughout much of western colonial history - incidentally, the current obsession of young white people with India is typically little more than a current manifestation of this long-running racist belief) and this notion that even the dead non-white people are mystically powerful seems to be little other than a continuation of this tendency.

So, next time someone tells you that a place is haunted due to being built on an Indian burial ground, point at the person and laugh. You'll be glad you did.






* For some reason, the people of Santa Barbara consider themselves the "Central Coast" despite the fact that they are clearly in Southern California - but it gets even goofier when you consider that the Information Center in Fullerton is called the South Central Coast Information Center - there is nothing central about Fullerton! It's in fucking Orange County! San Luis Obispo County could arguably be described as the South Central Coast - but not Orange County.

** This guys has other entries with titles such as, and no I am not making this up, "Gall Bladder Disease and Demons", "Car shopping and Deliverance", "Dolls, toys, and stuffed animals - better burn them too", "Candles - Don't Burn Them; Get Them Out Of Your Home!", "Diabetes - Squid like demons attack ten parts of your body", and oh so many more.

Oh, and my favorite sentence on the site, from the page on doctors, is this "The dental symbol is a triangle in a circle. This same symbol is the highest satanic symbol." Yep. Your dentist is a Satan worshiper.

You can go to http://www.demonbuster.com/ yourself to see the true insanity of it all.