16AR21-32

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AR 21:32 - Floating with the fringe

In this issue:

CONSPIRACY THEORIES - "Over half of all Americans believe in one." Do you?

MORMONISM - Richard Mouw: sucker, salesman, seducer, or ...?

THEODICY - the best resources over the past 40 years?

Apologia Report 21:32 (1,305)
September 14, 2016

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

"Climb Aboard, Ye Who Seek the Truth!" by Bronwen Dickey -- "Conspiracy theories are more popular than ever. Over half of all Americans believe in one. So what do you get when you stick some of the conspiracy world's biggest celebrities and their die-hard fans on a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for a week?"

Answer: A majority "were older people, and each of them had paid $3,000 (not including airfare and beverages on board) to participate in the first-ever Conspira-Sea Cruise, a weeklong celebration of 'alternative science' [where they] debated UFOs, GMOs, government mind-control programs, vaccines, chemtrails, crop circles, and the Illuminati's plan for world domination, all while soaking up the mystical energies of three Mexican tourist towns....

"Wondering whether the world is actually as it seems is a uniquely American sport [when one considers that] this is the country of Watergate and the Tuskegee experiments and the NSA tapping your phone." So why not a cruise "for people who scraped together three grand to be reassured that their fears and suspicions and theories aren't the lonely fever dreams of basement-dwelling outcasts, that those fears and suspicions are valid, and that others share them. ...

"Dip your toe into Reddit or Disqus and you will be bombarded with proof that Bigfoot lives in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and that our government is run by giant lizards posing as politicians. Charlatans with slick websites can now manipulate data, doctor images, and fabricate documents, collecting thousands of followers. [T]here's a difference between caution and paranoia - between reasonable skepticism and a wholesale rejection of scientific method. [T]here are people who kind of wonder, fleetingly, whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone before their thoughts return to work and family and whether to take the freeway or the local roads. And then there are people who fly far from home, at great expense, to spend a week on the Conspira-Sea Cruise. ...

"The week's seminars appeared to be split into two broad categories. There were those with a magical or highly new age component.... And then there were those that detailed concrete, terrestrial dangers.... A subset of the second group concerned itself with the U.S. legal and banking systems. ...

"Most of the cruisers - the vacationers, not our group—were generally outfitted in bright colors and loud prints. ... The conspiracy group, on the other hand, was mostly serious-looking senior citizens in 'Infowars' T-shirts. ... None looked like he or she could afford to spend money frivolously. One eighty-year-old man's toes poked through the tops of his worn leather loafers. ...

"Dr. Susan Shumsky [is] the founder of [cruise sponsor] Divine Travels and (claim to fame) one-time personal staff member of Beatles' guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. (Her doctorate in divinity is from the Teaching of Intuitional Metaphysics in San Diego.) 'I'd like to begin with a prayer.' Nearly everything the woman wore was either bright pink or sparkled. 'Breathe in divine light!' she said. We closed our eyes and inhaled. Across the hall, in Gatsby's Casino, slot machines clanged to a piped-in soundtrack of Taylor Swift and Rihanna."

The 16 presenters made diverse claims such as "aliens, including some prominent U.S. politicians, are already living on earth in disguise;" "Dannion Brinkley, a New York Times best-selling author, announced that he had risen from the dead three times" and said "'Death is not real;'" another "spoke of 'commercial redemption,' a philosophy that promises each American citizen access to giant piles of secret money" and also said that "'to understand commercial redemption, you have to go into the fifth, and even sixth, dimensions.'" In addition, "There were pitches for wishing machines, astrological charts, and dowsing rods, followed by screeds against Big Pharma and Monsanto. Sean David Morton, whom AM radio host Art Bell called America's Prophet, vowed to help us get out of debt while sticking it to the American court system." (Morton is also known to have "tried to escape [Securities and Exchange Commission] fraud charges by declaring himself the ambassador of a nonexistent country called the Republic of New Lemuria.)

"The biggest name on the program was Andrew Wakefield, the discredited former British gastroenterologist [who] had assumed rock-star status among the growing American anti-vaccine movement."

Brinkley proclaimed: "'Whether or not you believe me doesn't matter. Because ultimately I'm going to win the argument. You are not going to die, and some of us can get up from the dead.'"

Another presenter, Leonard Horowitz, had "theorized the AIDS and Ebola viruses are genocidal weapons engineered by the U.S. government to depopulate the planet through vaccination programs. On the cruise, however, he would be lecturing on the key to lifelong health and world peace: the 'miracle frequency' of 528 hertz."

On and on it goes. Eventually, in the eyes of his shipmates, the author became known as a serial skeptic and went from outsider, to outcast, to outlaw. Good thing he lived to tell the story. Popular Mechanics, Sep '16, pp85-93. <www.goo.gl/Z3cA64>

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MORMONISM

"Richard Mouw: Defending a brand of Mormonism many Mormons don't believe" by Bill McKeever -- we were glad to see this item on a subject that's received far too little attention. Mouw's largely uncritical, sympathetic approach to Mormonism has been a frustration for years. McKeever observes that "Mouw places a lot of weight on two interviews that were given by the 15th [LDS] President Gordon B. Hinckley back in the 1990s. ...

"What many saw as a purposeful dodge on the part of the Mormon leader, Mouw sees as a shift in emphasis. ...

"Mouw is of the opinion that Hinckley was not a deceiver. He believes that 'Hinckley was signaling a decision on the part of the Mormon leadership to downplay the couplet [by 5th LDS President Lorenzo Snow, "As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be"] within the corpus of Mormon teachings about the deity, not just to outsiders, but within their own community.'

"Perhaps Mouw is too trusting, for in the [LDS] October general conference following the interview with [journalist Richard] Ostling, Hinckley downplayed what some may have thought was a lack of knowledge on his part when it came to LDS teaching. Putting this notion to rest, Hinckley told followers, 'You need not worry that I do not understand some matters of doctrine. I think I understand them thoroughly, and it is unfortunate that the reporting may not make this clear.' At this the audience laughed. ...

"Should the Mormon Church actually denounce the couplet - any part of the couplet - it would not only declare Snow to be a heretic in the context of Mormonism, it would also cast a huge shadow on Smith's claim to being a prophet of God in the eyes of LDS members." McKeever is far from alone in this response to Mouw. Mormonism Researched, Jul/Aug '16, p1-2.

POSTSCRIPT Feb 5 '17: Paul felt this review by Gerald McDermott of The Mormon Jesus: A Biography fit the bill <www.goo.gl/KccQ4D>

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THEODICY

"Evil and Suffering and the Sovereignty of God" by Daryl E. Witmer -- this one-page annotated bibliography covers "five of the most insightful messages that I've come across in over 40 years of reading on this subject, both as a pastor and as a Christian apologist." Featured authors are Timothy Keller, D.A. Carson, R.C. Sproul, Wayne Grudem, and John Piper. Areopagus Proclamation, 26:4 - 2016, p1. <www.goo.gl/qSneZL>

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