- The Book of Idiosyncratic Ideas
- has many volumes and many authors.
- The world is blessed when anyone
- sets pen to paper,
- but most idiosyncratic ideas
- are undocumented
- and can appear in normal company
- without the benefit of too much sunshine.
- Alfred Lawson claimed
- there’s no such thing as energy or time.
- Instead, movement is motivated by suction,
- balanced by pressure,
- and permitted by the penetrability
- of substances with different densities.
- These truths explain heterosexual behavior
- and lead us to the conclusion
- that light, heat, and sound are not waves
- but are substances subject to pressure and suction.
- Lawson claimed to have discovered
- the key to perpetual motion, “Lawsonpoise,”
- the “equidisposition
- of composition and decomposition.”
- To complete his philosophy
- and “The Base of Absolute Knowledge,”
- Lawson taught that Isaac Newton was wrong.
- Left to its own, a mass
- will not move in a straight line,
- but will follow a path Lawson described
- as “universal Zig-Zag-And-Swirl.”
- Human beings naturally see patterns
- whether inherent or accidental.
- Rupert Sheldrake claimed that parts of natural systems
- can communicate with each other
- because they inherit a collective memory
- from all previous things of their kind.
- Biological growth and behavior is guided
- by patterns established by its predecessors.
- Therefore, patterns that we recognize
- are inherent in things, and are shared with us
- as in natural systems, telepathically.
- Gene Ray drew a cube around the earth
- and claimed that there are four days, not one.
- Each of the four vertical edges of the cube
- sweep out a day in the same twenty-four hours.
- The two opposite pairs symbolize
- creation—mom versus dad, son versus daughter.
- Oneness is death, hell, and boring,
- whereas cubic thought is divine intelligence.
- Anatoly Akimov and Gennady Shipov
- claimed that the quantum spin of particles
- can be transmitted through space faster than light
- by means of neutrinos,
- thus explaining telepathy, telekinesis,
- faster-than-light travel, ESP, levitation,
- clairvoyance, perpetual motion, UFO propulsion,
- superconductivity, and miracle homeopathic curative boxes
- that you could pay good money for.
- L. Ron Hubbard claimed to know
- how to eradicate the “reactive mind”;
- thereby eliminating sociopathy, neurosis, and psychosis.
- He claimed that dianetics
- would improve intelligence and health,
- curing arthritis, allergies, asthma, coronary afflictions,
- poor vision, ulcers, migraines, homosexuality, and death,
- by purging painful memories called “engrams” from the mind.
- Following his therapy, known as “auditing,”
- a person is supposed to reach the state of “clear,”
- however, no person has been proven to be “clear”
- by any objective testing.
- Hubbard pitched dianetics as a “scientific” therapy
- and lost control of it after a bankruptcy;
- whereupon he started a religion based on dianetics
- that he called scientology.
- A scientologist is taught to believe
- that we are afflicted by immortal aliens called thetans,
- which have unlimited capabilities,
- adhere to humans, control our bodies,
- and whose existence spans multiple lifetimes,
- that 75 million years ago,
- the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy
- whose name was Xenu (or Xemu),
- brought billions of aliens to earth,
- placed them around volcanos,
- and killed them with hydrogen bombs,
- whereupon their souls were trapped on earth,
- that problems with previous lives on other planets
- have to be cleared,
- that fixing an aberration by clearing engrams
- is like erasing a computer memory,
- that after death a person’s soul goes to a station on Venus,
- where it is redirected,
- perhaps to be reincarnated as another human,
- and that their symbol with circles and diamonds
- is carved into the ground in New Mexico
- as a beacon for returning souls.
- Neither dianetics nor scientology are sciences
- because they lack empirical testing of claims.
- We might never know inner secrets of scientology
- because they are accessible to only their paying elite.
- An ungenerous interpretation
- of the life of Joseph Smith, con artist,
- is that he successfully presented
- a wild fantasy that he had written
- as translated from golden plates (now unproducible)
- with help from the angel Moroni (or maybe Nephi)
- in order to justify his own polygamy.
- Smith allowed people to lift the box
- in which he said the golden plates were hidden,
- but allowed only eight people to see them.
- He “translated” their texts from “reformed Egyptian”
- by gazing at his “peep” stone in the bottom of his hat.
- Among the crazy things that Smith taught
- is that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri
- and the second coming of Jesus will be there,
- that Satan owns the water of rivers, lakes, and seas
- so Mormons are discouraged from enjoying these,
- that the race of Cain became black-skinned
- but when a black becomes Mormon he turns white,
- that Jesus and the Archangel Michael created the universe
- and Michael was actually the first man, known as Adam,
- that there are three heavens—celestial, terrestrial, and telestial,
- and how well you follow Mormon teachings
- determines how close to the highest heaven you’ll get,
- that God doesn’t live in heaven, per se,
- but on a planet near the star Kolob,
- that Mary wasn’t a virgin but had intercourse
- with God who appeared in human form,
- that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are separate creatures
- having bodies of flesh and bone,
- that the earth is 7000 years old, so dinosaur bones
- are recycled from earlier planets,
- and that native Americans are from Jaredites and Israelite tribes
- who arrived less than 5000 years ago in boats.
- Another set of golden plates were produced
- and “translated” by James Strang
- who led a somewhat successful schism from Smith’s group,
- and a third set, the Kinderhook plates,
- were produced by non-believers to discredit Smith,
- though Smith didn’t fall for the hoax.
- Franz Mesmer believed
- all living things including carrots and beets
- possessed an invisible natural force
- that he called “magnetic fluid.”
- Mesmer believed there was only one disease,
- one disease with many symptoms,
- and there was only one cure,
- which rebalanced the flow of bodily humors,
- and that was animal magnetism.
- Mesmer convinced many
- that he could transfer this fluid
- from himself to his patient
- after putting the patient into a trance
- during which the patient
- would cure himself or herself.
- A follower of Mesmer reported
- that the power of suggestion
- brought about the trance state,
- and that cures could be achieved
- without the magnetic fluid,
- merely by the power of suggestion.
- Hanns Hörbiger received an explanation
- for the physics of the cosmos in a vision—
- namely, that ice (that is, frozen water)
- determined the development of everything
- including planets and the Milky Way.
- Our solar system was formed
- from the explosion of a large star
- when a dead waterlogged star fell into it,
- resulting in giant blocks of ice
- that influenced the development
- of the moons and planets.
- Whoever thought saints would be appropriate
- in a monotheistic religion?
- How is sainthood different
- from Roman emperors becoming gods after death?
- Revering a shriveled finger reputed to be a saint’s
- seems totally barbaric to me,
- but in context of a church that accepts
- stigmata reflecting the wounds of Christ,
- apparitions of the Virgin Mary,
- blood from wooden statues,
- assertions of incorruptible corpses,
- inadvertent levitations,
- and miraculous healing from blessed water
- maybe miracles wrought by the dead
- are not so difficult to swallow.
- Once you believe in miracles,
- why not give dead people credit for them?