Nathan Mallory, the junior at north Georgia’s Berry College who performed an “exorcism” on a fellow student (and later bragged about it), has been removed from his position as a resident hall adviser by the school. The young woman on whom he performed this exorcism has reportedly transferred to another college. I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll hear of this.
Archive for the ‘superstitions’ Category
GA college “exorcist” removed from school post
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Podcast #66 – Freethought in Mexico
Monday, September 28th, 2009
We interview Danny Zepeda, a skeptical blogger living in Morelia, a city in central Mexico. He talks about the state of freethought South of the Border, the prevalence of superstition and alt-medicine quackery in Mexican society, and the challenges of raising children to be critical thinkers. Visit Danny’s Spanish-language blog Un Papá Escéptico (A Skeptical Papa) at papaesceptico.wordpress.com. If you can’t read Spanish, try pasting the URL into the Babel Fish text translation tool: the results are sometimes a bit iffy but readable.
Gran Torino, MD
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
I think I’ve figured out how they could pull off a sequel to the recent film Gran Torino: as the new movie opens, Clint Eastwood’s über-curmudgeon Walt Kowalski lies in intensive care, riddled with bullet holes but not dead. Grimacing, he opens his eyes. Standing at his bedside is a horde of his Hmong neighbors, looks of concern on their faces. With them is a Hmong shaman, a large rooster tucked under one arm and a shit-eating grin on his face.
Evolution, Lucky Edition
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
We stumbled across this yesterday, quite by accident, while doing our grocery shopping. It’s Evolution Wine, a blend of nine white varietals produced by Sokol Blosser Winery in Oregon. Too bad it wasn’t around for Darwin Day back in February, but this vintage wasn’t released until September 9th. Still, it’s the perfect choice for the upcoming 150th anniversary of the release of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species on November 24th. And you know we’ll be celebrating that!
A total eclipse…of reason
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009Well, the upcoming solar eclipse (visible in Asia) will be accompanied by the usual superstitious blither-blather.
Hopefully there won’t be any harmful consequences associated with astrological predictions and other dire portents.
Carving a niche for “official superstitions”
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no well-drawn line to tell the government when it can interfere with parental discretion. Cases like that of Daniel Hauser (the 13-year-old boy with a six-inch-diameter tumor whose parents wanted to treat with “natural” remedies instead of chemo) seem fairly clear-cut to me–the courts should interfere. But are you a bad parent if you don’t give your child EVERY available vaccine? What if you don’t take your kid to the dentist every six months? When does the government step in?
Podcast #57 – Bruce M. Hood
Friday, June 26th, 2009
We interview Bruce M. Hood, author of SuperSense, which theorizes a genetic predisposition toward religious belief, superstition, and other irrational behaviors (and that includes you, too, atheists!).
Read John’s review of SuperSense, or buy your very own copy (highly recommended) at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Visit Bruce M. Hood’s Official Website.
Exorcist/child-abuser scot-free in GA
Thursday, June 25th, 2009Another perfect example of religion as a cover for insanity and criminal behavior. Read this article and tell me that, had the mother’s excuse been “I’m performing a ritual in the name of the High Folderol,” or “Instead of taking him to a doctor, I just thought this was the rational thing to do,” she wouldn’t be sitting in jail right now.
3 more years of this and you’ll WISH it was the end of the world
Sunday, June 21st, 2009The 2012 frenzy has begun. In case you didn’t know it, the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. As far as I know, the Maya themselves attached no significance to this fact, but every whackjob, wingnut, and opportunistic New Age prophet have latched onto this bit of trivia to spin a tale of global catastrophe and cosmic dread. The next time you wander into your local bookstore, check out the impressive amount of shelf space devoted to something that has no historical or scientific basis. And I hate to be a pessimist, but I’m willing to bet there’ll be a non-trivial number of people whose lives will be ruined by poor decision-making based on the premise that It All Comes to an End on 12/21/12. Tim Farley, keep those pencils sharpened.
A lung? My bad…
Sunday, June 27th, 2010This is a rather grotesque story. If you have a sensitive constitution and/or a hair-trigger gag reflex…you’ve been warned.
Nicolas Cocaign has just been sentenced by a French court to 30 years in prison for (…wait for it…) murdering his cellmate, cutting open his chest and “cooking [part of] the man’s left lung with shallots, garlic and some left over rice.”
Now, a number of interesting questions come to mind (we’ll get to the one about what would motivate anyone to do such a thing in a minute). First, where the fuck were the guards while all this was happening? (Answer: No one has explained this that I have heard.) Second, what kind of prisoner has access to cooking utensils, shallots, garlic and rice? (Answer: French ones.)
One morbidly hilarious aspect to this incident is that Cocaign actually intended to eat the victim’s heart. It’s hard to see how he could make such a mistake, I mean, I’m no expert, but I think it’s pretty much common knowledge that lung tastes like lung, and heart…tastes just like chicken.
Finally, what would motivate someone to do such a thing? According to Cocaign, he had convinced himself there was no god and he could indulge himself with impunity. Ah, who am I kidding? He murdered his cellmate in order to “take his soul.”
I know I’ve beaten this drum before, but once again I have to wonder why it is that profoundly delusional people almost always have religious delusions? Why are there no psychotics who obsess over the lack of an afterlife and take things to the (il)logical extreme? Is there some connection between run-of-the-mill religious belief and (not to put too fine a point on it) insanity?
Tags: nicolas cocaign
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