Creationist Science Quiz

This image has been circulating on the Internet for awhile, but I ignored it because I thought it had to be a hoax. The ease with which pictures can be faked is well known, and it's hard to believe any school would ever administer such a quiz. I've heard of the controversies over school boards packed by conservative Christians who want to give teachers the "freedom" to teach alternatives to evolution, but a quiz like this really takes the cake. So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be real. That's right, there's an actual school that teaches this nonsense in science classes.

To start with, this photo is real, and was part of a quiz given at Blue Ridge Christian Academy, a private religious school. Since the school is private, and not public, this is not a violation of the First Amendment (unlike the flagrant stomping of the Constitution going on in Louisiana). In other words, this school can legally teach this. My complaint, therefore, is not a legal one. My complaint is one of simple reality. Young-Earth creationism is wrong, and it’s certainly not science. For that reason alone, ideally it shouldn't be taught as truth anywhere, let alone a science class.

And it’s not just wrong, it’s spectacularly wrong. It’s the wrongiest wrong that ever wronged. We know the Earth is old, we know the Universe is even older, and we know evolution is true. Any one of these things is enough to show creationism is wrong. In fact, all of science shows creationism is wrong, because creationism goes against pretty much every founding principle of and every basic fact uncovered by science. If creationism were true, then essentially no modern invention would work. Since you’re reading this on a computer, that right there is proof enough.

That this would come from a private religious school makes sense, as I can't imagine even a highly compromised public school being quite this blatant. Still, what's amazing to me is how this particular strand of creationist thought is presented as indisputable, when in fact Christian denominations can't even agree on how it should be interpreted. Mainstream Christian churches disavowed young-Earth creationism long ago. For that matter, even Pat Robertson, one of the most prominent conservative evangelicals, came out against it back in November. So it would seem that the folks running this school are determined to raise the most ignorant children possible when it comes to understanding not only the natural world, but also the theological discourse within their own religious tradition.

Plants and Qi

One of the research findings that I covered awhile back related Qigong practices to the generation of infrasonic waves. Any Qigong student will tell you that plants have a particular sort of Qi or energy, different from that of animals but present nonetheless. Researchers have now found that plants do in fact produce microscopic sound waves that can influence the growth of other plants. It may be that practitioners who work with Qi are able to sense these same vibrations, as well as issue sonic vibrations of their own.

It’s long been known that planting basil near other species can tend to encourage its neighbor’s growth, and it’s not new that plants communicate with each other through shade, chemical smells, root structures and other forms of touch. What scientists at the University of Western Australia were looking at specifically is if there’s any other ways that plants communicate, and what they found is astonishing. By planting chili pepper next to basil, then separating them from all known methods of plant interaction, the chili plant still grew as if it knew the basil was there.

“We have previously suggested that acoustic signals may offer such a mechanism for mediating plant-plant relationships,” they explained in their conclusion (PDF), “and proposed that such signals may be generated in plants by biochemical processes within the cell, where nanomechanical oscillations of various components in the cytoskeleton can produce a spectrum of vibrations.”

So maybe Qi really corresponds to "energy" after all - sonic vibrations have a measurable physical intensity. This might also explain why some people seem to have "green thumbs" even when they are very casual about caring for their plants. The plants themselves may just like the infrasonic vibrations produced by those individuals. It's also no big secret that sonic waves such as those corresponding to the vibration of names of power and so forth play an important role in magical operations. Closer investigation of the properties of these waves could prove very fruitful in terms of quantifying paranormal phenomena.

Unicorn Horns

Stories of the magical use of unicorn horns go back to the Middle Ages. The horns that still exist in museums come from the narwhal, a species of whale that like the mythological unicorn grows a single horn from the center of its forehead. As this article published in the Harvard Gazette back in 2005 explains, the horn of the narwhal is far more than a simple horn or tusk. According to researcher Martin Nweeia it is a complex organ for sensing the temperature, pressure, and composition of the water around it.

Ten million tiny nerve connections tunnel their way from the central nerve of the narwhal tusk to its outer surface. Though seemingly rigid and hard, the tusk is like a membrane with an extremely sensitive surface, capable of detecting changes in water temperature, pressure, and particle gradients. Because these whales can detect particle gradients in water, they are capable of discerning the salinity of the water, which could help them survive in their Arctic ice environment. It also allows the whales to detect water particles characteristic of the fish that constitute their diet. There is no comparison in nature in tooth form, expression, and functional adaptation.

"Why would a tusk break the rules of normal development by expressing millions of sensory pathways that connect its nervous system to the frigid arctic environment?" asks Nweeia. "Such a finding is startling and indeed surprised all of us who discovered it." Nweeia collaborated on this project with Frederick Eichmiller, director of the Paffenbarger Research Center at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and James Mead, curator of Marine Mammals at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution.

What's most interesting to me is that one of the principal uses of the unicorn horn in folklore is as a magical implement to detect poisons, and in fact when attached to a living narwhal it would be sensitive enough to chemicals in the water to do exactly that. So how did that particular bit of information make it into the stories? It seems like a remarkable coincidence that the narwhal would use its horn for the exact same purpose that magicians did, when the science of how the horn works was only recently discovered.

That's Called a "Miss"

The story all over the media today is the rescue of three Cleveland women who had been held in captivity for many years. Amanda Berry, the second woman kidnapped, had been held for more than a decade. Back in 2004, on The Montel Williams Show, Berry's mother was told by celebrity psychic Sylvia Browne that her daughter was dead. With Berry's successful rescue, it's now clear that Browne's alleged abilities were at the very least seriously off that day. This article, originally published in 2004 before the young woman's fate was known, covers the broadcast.

Desperate for any clue as to Amanda Berry’s whereabouts, and tired of unanswered questions from authorities, Miller turned to a psychic on Montel Williams’ nationally syndicated television show. The psychic said what the FBI, police and Miller hadn’t. “She’s not alive, honey,” Sylvia Browne told her matter-of-factly. “Your daughter’s not the kind who wouldn’t call.”

With those blunt words, Browne persuaded Miller to accept a grim probability that has become more likely with each passing day. Miller went back to the West Side home where she had been keeping Amanda’s things in careful order and cleaned up. She gave away her daughter’s computer and took down her pictures. “I’m not even buying my baby a Christmas present this year,” she said. Miller said she returned devastated from the show, taped this month in New York.

Is it overly cynical of me to suspect that Browne has no powers at all and was just playing the odds? Perhaps, but even though I believe that there are genuine psychics in the world, this is pretty transparent. At the time the show was taped Berry had been missing for nineteen months. If you look at actual criminal abduction cases, the odds that a missing person will reappear after being gone so long is probably something like one percent or less. Guessing they're dead is pretty much the definition of playing it safe.

Venus Talisman Ritual

It seems that I'm not the only one doing talismanic work lately. RO put up a post yesterday describing his own recent efforts in that regard around the time I was putting this one together over the weekend. The ritual described here has a lot in common with my Venus elixir ritual that I put together for the transit of Venus last June. The reason that I decided to go for Venus again had a lot to do with my studies of traditional astrology, in that a particularly favorable Venus election manifested last Friday morning during the first hour of the day. So it entailed rising early, which I'm not particularly fond of doing, but I'm expecting that the talisman itself will prove potent enough to justify the loss of sleep.

Venus is not just associated with love spells, which I'm not in need of at the moment, even though that's the most common sort of Venus rite most magicians perform and such rituals do work quite well. The state of consciousness associated with the planet is "the vision of beauty triumphant" and in traditional astrology the planet is considered the lesser benefic, the greater benefic being Jupiter. Venus is also associated with art, creativity, and aesthetic virtue in addition to this sort of general good fortune. I won't reveal the exact nature of the charge here as the talisman itself represents an ongoing operation, but its influence is intended to fall within those areas rather than the realm of love and relationships.

Because the nature of the talisman is generalized, the angel of Venus is conjured rather than the intelligence or spirit. The intelligence of a planet is best for Theurgic rituals intended to induce particular states of consciousness or obtain information about the divine realm or for protection, while the spirit is best for obtaining specific practical objectives - the more specific the better. This contradicts Agrippa's statement that the "intelligence is for good and the spirit is for bad," but my experience with these entities suggests that this stems more from a bias against "sorcery" - that is, practical magick - than anything inherent in their nature.

Some of this bias may also be due to the fact that a spirit conjured on its own without the influence of the intelligence behaves like a blind force that's hard to control, but the solution there is simply that you never do it. Even when calling on the spirit to perform an specific action, you conjure the intelligence first to provide a measure of control. With a generalized intent, though, that may involve both Theurgic and Thaumaturgic components in some unknown combination, the angel is usually a better option. You don't need any sort of additional sigil to conjure the angel; the planetary seal from Agrippa works just fine.

Ancient Egyptians Knew How to Party

Just in time for Beltane, it turns out that the ancient Egyptians took part in annual rituals involving widespread sex and drinking. While most Egyptian rituals were highly organized affairs revolving around the priesthood, this particular rite was a far more chaotic affair. Archaeologist Betsy Bryan has pieced together some of the details of these ceremonies from evidence uncovered during the excavation of an ancient temple complex.

Since 2001, Bryan has led the excavation of the temple complex of the Egyptian goddess Mut in modern-day Luxor, the site of the city of Thebes in ancient Egypt. And the ritual she has uncovered, which centers on binge drinking, thumping music and orgiastic public sex, probably makes "Jersey Shore" look pretty tame. At least it was thought to serve a greater societal purpose.

Bryan, a specialist in the art, ritual and social hierarchy of Egypt's New Kingdom (roughly 1600 to 1000 BC), has painstakingly pieced together the details of the Festivals of Drunkenness, which took place in homes, at temples and in makeshift desert shrines throughout ancient Egypt at least once and, in some places (including at the Temple of Mut), twice a year.

The sexual aspects of the rite were intended to represent and encourage fertility much like those associated with modern-day Beltane, and were also thought to facilitate the annual rise of the Nile which was vital to agriculture in the region. The drinking was related to the destruction wrought by the lion goddess in Egyptian mythology, and in fact it seems the point of it was to drink until one passed out. Everyone would eventually awake to the beating of drums.

Unsurprisingly, there is substantial evidence that many Egyptians disapproved of these rituals. I suppose that just goes to show killjoys have been with us from the beginning of time.

World's Priciest Dowsing Rods

Hardcore skeptics can be a real annoyance to anyone trying to explore paranormal or even unusual phenomena, such as those who insist that acupuncture doesn't work even though recent scientific studies show that it clearly does. At the same time, however, those who are honestly examining the data and working to eliminate fraud perform a valuable public service by preventing confidence artists from enriching themselves on the basis of phony paranormal claims. In a victory for the skeptic movement, and which should be considered a victory for the paranormal movement as well, James McCormick, the maker of a "high tech" bomb detecting device that essentially works as a dowsing rod, was recently convicted for fraud.

The devices did nothing at all to detect bombs. They didn’t even have any working electronics in them. Instead they rely on what’s called the ideomotor effect; small movements of the human body we aren’t conscious of, but can be affected by what we want them to do. The classic examples of this are Ouija boards and dowsing rods, both of which have no paranormal ability at all. They simply reflect what our brains are telling our muscles to do.

This has been shown to be true over and again, so much and so thoroughly that there’s little room for doubt. These bomb sniffers worked the same way, as was brought to light by skeptics James Randi and Air Force Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack. And as with dowsing rods, the people who use them swear they work, despite proof that they can't work, and are no better than random chance at detecting objects. Flipping a coin would do as well.

Kill the Mason!

Spoiler: Nope!

For those who might be tempted to dismiss obsession with Masonic conspiracy theories as harmless nuttery, this story out of New Mexico should make it clear just how dangerous such obsessions can become. A man there has been charged with vandalizing a Masonic lodge and attacking a church choir director that he believed to be a Mason. He claimed that his actions were motivated by Masonic involvement in a far-reaching conspiracy, which almost certainly is related to the "Illuminati" nonsense that has recently been all over the Internet.

Lawrence Capener, 24, told police that he tagged the Sandoval No. 76 Masonic Lodge in Rio Rancho with spray paint on Sunday, authorities said. Police later found red and blue spray paint on signs, outside walls and a door. Investigators said he also left the message, "I hope you guess who I am." Capener is accused of attacking a choir leader at St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church at the end of Sunday Mass services. At least two others were stabbed in the attack when they tried to stop Capener.

According to a criminal complaint, Capener vaulted over pews and lashed out at choir director Adam Alvarez, who had his back toward him. The complaint said church flutist Gerald Madrid saw Alvarez being attacked and attempted to "bear hug" Capener to try and stop him. Madrid was then stabbed five times in his back by Capener, authorities said. Capener later told police that he was "99 percent sure Alvarez was a mason" and that he thought Alvarez was involved in a conspiracy.