Patrick M Brennan

I’m grateful to Republican State Representative Ben Bridges of Georgia for pointing out some interesting facts which I had somehow never heard of.

It seems that this “Evolution” thing – you know, the idea that plants, animals and people are descended from older forms which evolve over geologic time – isn’t just untrue. No, friends, it’s much, much worse. The ideas that, for example, the universe is billions of years old, that it is billions of light years across, even, apparently, the idea that the Earth moves in space – are all lies. And not only that, there is a sinister conspiracy to spread these lies and fix them in our minds.

Who do you think is spreading these lies? That would be the Jews.

Oh, and this “Gravity” thing is a Jewish lie, too.

You know, it’s one thing to come across some crank’s web site. Honestly, I’d rather just talk about that, because, Jesus Jones, is it hilarious. We’ll come back to it.

But here we have a really scary brew: we have a lunatic who has a crackpot theory of the world, driven to invent an evil conspiracy which is suppressing his theory. And where does he turn to supply the bad guy? To the closest little nub of hate he has in his heart, naturally. But then he gets support from not one, but two elected officials in two different states. The mixture of fanatic belief, conspiracy theories, scapegoating minorities, and government power, even though it is sort of small and comic in this episode, is something to keep a careful watch over. It’s like a pile of paint-soaked rags in your basement – you don’t want to tolerate it, even if you think the risk is small. You can expect that if there ever is a fire like that in America, this will be the place it starts.

The two elected officials in question are scrambling to backpedal their support for the kooky crank. They didn’t mean for a lot of people to notice that they were endorsing the view that Mathematics is a conspiracy to destroy Christian America. Just the kooky cranks in their districts. It’s entertaining to watch little men twist themselves into pretzels trying to pretend they don’t actually agree with this view, while putting out the wink to show the True Believers that, yes, actually, they do.

It goes without saying that they’re Republicans, doesn’t it? I think it’s probably true that the majority of Republicans would admit that the Earth moves, but in every important way, they truly are the party of reality-denial. We have been and will continue to pay the price for having them in office, as we shoulder the burdens of bad decisions based on delusions and lies.

But enough of that. Let’s get back to FixedEarth.com, a product of a gentleman named Marshall Hall.

I had thought that the battle between actual, enlightened, reality-dwelling people and kooky fanatics had moved off of the question of whether the Earth moves around the sun, and had moved into the issue of how human beings came to evolve into their present form. That’s what I thought the last time I wrote about this issue. It seems that, at least as far as Mr. Hall goes, I was wrong. He wants to take up the battle against Copernicus all over again. It’s too bad he’s about 460 years late to the party. His site (which is incidentally, a masterpiece of clueless Web design), shouts:

The Earth is not rotating…nor is it going around the sun. The universe is not one ten trillionth the size we are told. Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as “science". The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s “knowledge” about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.

Marshall Hall is a wheel in the political effort to remove evolution from the public schools in Georgia. Since he’s a fundamentalist, he’s gone back to the fundamentals. He feels he needs to demolish Copernicus in order to topple Darwin. I suppose he’s on to something, although it seems to me the facts of biology would remain the same if the Sun went around the Earth. But never mind that, and never mind the fact that even though Darwin is bedrock biology, Copernicus is even more deeply embedded in astronomy. In another part of the web site, he proclaims:

…the Copernican Model of a rotating, orbiting Earth is a factless, observation-denying deception that is the keystone which is holding up all of modern man’s false “science” and “knowledge". It’s time for the truth.

See? He’s right! There are no facts and no observations which support the idea of a rotating Earth! Stellar parallax? Poppycock! The retrograde motion of Mars? A Kabbalist illusion! Foucault’s Pendulum? A clever trick. There really is an entire section of the website devoted to showing how any observations which support the motion of the Earth are, in fact, lies and deceptions.

He even explains why geosynchronous satellites prove that the Earth does not move, and it’s such a mishmash that’s it’s damn near impossible to figure out. I don’t think he quite understands how geosynchronous satellites work in the first place, and comes really, really close to disavowing that there is such a thing as Gravity. (He also confuses gravity with atmospheric pressure, which is very funny if you’re a nerd like me.) As best as I can reckon, his explanation for why geosynchronous satellites prove that the Earth does not move is :

1. The Earth doesn’t move.
2. Geosynchronous satellites rely on the “earth-is-moving” hypothesis to work the way they claim to be.
3. But since the Earth isn’t moving, there can’t be any geosynchronous satellites.
4. If this gets out, it will expose The Conspiracy.
5. Therefore the Earth doesn’t move!

(Actually, it’s right there on his page, right after his paragraph which begins “Five things are certain at this point:"… I’ve just clarified the language.)

I also think it’s fun to note that his web site only vaguely implies that the Earth might be a sphere. Nowhere does he set that out explicitly.

At what point do you think Mr. Hall will admit that the Earth moves, and is more than 6000 years old? Let’s ask Thomas Kuhn:

During the century and a half following Galileo’s death in 1642, a belief in the earth-centered universe was gradually transformed from an essential sign of sanity to an index, first, of inflexible conservatism, then of excessive parochialism, and finally of complete fanaticism.

Well, Galileo’s been dead for more than three hundred years now…

This is rather bizarre. I got a letter from the Army today:

Now don’t imagine I’m not flattered. I think it’s about time the Army decided they needed a guy of my caliber. But, you know, I have read that they’re having a tough time finding new people to ship off to Iraq, and it seems to me that they’re kind of deluding themselves if they’re sending this to me. Right? Clearly they think I’m about, oh, half my age or something. They got my address right. I am the only Patrick Brennan living at this address. And I’m sure my records are good, judging from the other junk mail I receive. Commercial marketers know very well, for example, that I have a mortgage, a wife, a baby girl, and a degree. They know I’ve paid my student loans off. They don’t send me solicitations geared toward recent high school graduates. So how come the United States Armed Forces can’t figure that out?

There are all kinds of ways this letter diminishes my already infinitesimal respect for our current government’s ability to manage information properly. I mean, I’m not even trying to hide. What chance have they got against the terrorists? Speaking of which: talk about the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing! While the Army is trying to recruit me, the Department of Homeland Security thinks I’m someone who needs special scrutiny before I’m allowed to board an airplane. I suppose I’d rather the government thinks I’m a potential soldier instead of a potential terrorist, but they’re so laughably wrong on both counts that it just makes my head spin.

I’m not down on service. I even gave it some serious thought myself, for about ten minutes back in the eighties. The early eighties. (When, you know, I really was a recent high school graduate.) But ultimately I decided it wasn’t for me. (Believe me, I made the right decision for me and for my country.) Twenty-odd years later, I’m more sure than ever that being an infantryman is not really what I want.

Maybe I’m wrong about the Army. Maybe – just humor me now – they’re just being clever. Too clever by half, perhaps, but still. Maybe they think that if they flatter me, I’ll be more disposed to sign up. (Sure, I’m too old to join the Army now, but they’ve recently raised the maximum age for enlistment. Maybe by the time I’m 50, the maximum age will be 51 or something.) The letter was accompanied by a postcard which promises a cool knit cap with an Army logo. All I need to do is fill it out with all my personal information (or fill it out online). They’re gonna need that data in 2009, when they’ll need lots of new guys to occupy Tehran. And I’m torn about filling out that card, because on the one hand, I want to help the government keep its records straight. They only have all my tax returns, after all. On the other hand, if I fill out the card, I’m taking the risk that the Army won’t stop pestering me. When I retire, they’ll be asking me what I’m planning to do with my college degree. When I’m 90, I’ll be getting letters asking me about serving in the National Guard (”one weekend a month“). And they’ll still be promising the same lousy pay, bad benefits, and the constant possibility of being shipped off to a hostile country to be maimed or killed.

But maybe – just maybe – if I sign up, they’ll take me off their no-fly list.

No promises.