CHAIN THE DOGMA - Perry Bulwer

Monday

Jul192010

Quantum intentions and prayers to deities: two sides of the same supernatural coin

Monday, July 19, 2010 at 04:24PM

Perry Bulwer

Chain The Dogma July 19, 2010

Quantum intentions and prayers to deities: two sides of the same supernatural coin

by Perry Bulwer

Following my previous post on the BP environmental catastrophe and DreamHealer, the quantum quack who thinks that the collective, focused intentions of his followers will plug the hole and stop the oil gusher, I became aware of other supernatural wishful thinkers who similarily think that prayers, visualizations, intentions, thoughts, energy, light, love, etc., are what's needed to stop the oil. Here is a sample of some of the silliness I came across during the month of June.

On June 6 DreamHearler sent out another email in a series imploring his followers to focus their intentions on the gulf:

Let's optimize an extremely difficult situation in the Gulf. Change emotions of blame, fear and anger into healing intentions of light and love toward the recovery of our beautiful planet.

Visualize all of the healing energy in the Universe being pulled into the Gulf of Mexico. Saturate the waters with the healing energy of light and life.

Visualize your healing intentions rippling outward in all directions. Send streams of laser light to clean the water for sea-life to flourish again.

Remember the power of your own healing thoughts, as focused intention activates your thoughts. Assist in closing and healing Mother Earth's wound. Create a critical mass as we all send our healing intentions.

It didn't take long for Deepak Chopra to add his quantum nonsense to the mix. Thanks to PZ Meyers, the mind behind Pharyngula, who received an email from Evolutionary Leaders, a Chopra cult foundation, we get a glimpse at not only how these people think (or don't think) but also at how the words "intention" and "prayer" have become interchangeable to supernaturalists. Here's their email, without PZ's commentary, which you can read on his site at that link above:

Are you tired of sitting around while our environment is being destroyed?

Do you feel helpless, angry or powerless to make a difference as you watch millions of gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf every day with no end in sight and thousands losing their lives and their livelihoods?

Join The Gulf Call to Sacred Action!

The Evolutionary Leaders: In Service to Conscious Evolution have joined together to be a loud and important voice for all who feel powerless.

The People Need You ~ The Gulf Needs You

We begin by setting our collective intention. Join Deepak Chopra to set our powerful vision and participate in a worldwide Intention Experiment with renowned author and scientist Lynne McTaggart. Explore how our collective intention, our voice and our commitment can impact the cleanup of the oil spill. And then we will be graced by Jean Houston who will share with us why this time matters and why we matter.

Our collective prayers and thoughts have the power to cause a profound shift on the planet. Pray with some of the most powerful spiritual thought leaders -- Reverend Michael Bernard Beckwith, Joan Borysenko, James O'Dea and more. Together we discover that we have the power to change the world.

Open up and connect to the deeper heart of our planet where we hear our individual and collective call to action. Together with sacred activists Barbara Marx Hubbard, Gregg Braden, and Andrew Harvey, we will take back our power and move into powerful action that will forever change our lives and the lives of generations to come.

It is all just meaningless nonsense. In case you've forgotten, here is some of the craziness Chopra peddles:

Here is some of what Chopra, a former endocrinologist in Boston hospitals, believes and teaches.

That a person is a field of vibrating energy, information and intelligence connected to the entire cosmos.

That this view is substantiated by Ayruvedic medicine of ancient India as well as theories of quantum physics.

That all organs of the body are built up from a specific sequence of vibrations, and that when organs are sick they are vibrating improperly.

That certain herbs and aromas, when applied, can help restore proper vibrations to malfunctioning liver, heart, stomach, etc.

That certain gems and crystals can rejuvenate human skin.

That good thoughts can heal the body and reverse the aging process.

That people can levitate and that he, while sitting and meditating, has flown a distance of four feet.

That one can know God at seven different levels corresponding to physical and psychological reactions in the brain, and that miracles, including visits by angels and reincarnated relatives, occur when a person leaves the material level of existence and intersects a "transitional" level called the "quantum domain."

Chopra and DreamHealer ought to get along great, so I find it a bit curious that neither mentions the other since they both claim to be conducting scientific experiments on the power of intention, with DreamHealer going as far as claiming, on the basis of one flawed experiment, that "our intentions can change the physiology of others". Maybe DreamHealer wants to emulate Chopra's successful cult on his own terms.

Not to be out done by quantum kooks, or mere "mortals" who are actually attempting real-world solutions to the disaster, Christian politicians just had to get their two cents worth of supernaturalism into the act, blurring the already fuzzy line between church and state. On June 20, CNN reported that Louisiana lawmakers propose prayer to stop oil disaster:

While cleanup crews and technical teams continue efforts to stop crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana lawmakers are proposing a different approach: prayer.

State senators designated Sunday as a day for citizens to ask for God's help dealing with the oil disaster.

"Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail," state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week's unanimous vote for the day of prayer. "It is clearly time for a miracle for us."

The resolution names Sunday as a statewide day of prayer in Louisiana and calls on people of all religions throughout the Gulf Coast "to pray for an end to this environmental emergency, sparing us all from the destruction of both culture and livelihood."

And on June 27, the New York Times reported:

The wall between church and state came a-tumbling down on Sunday, as elected leaders from the five states on the Gulf of Mexico issued proclamations declaring it to be a day of prayer. Although days of prayer are not uncommon here — Governor Riley declared one asking for rain to relieve a drought a few years ago — these proclamations conveyed the sense that at this late date, salvation from the spill all but requires divine intervention.

In the two months since the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion began a ceaseless leak of oil into the gulf, damaging the ecosystem and disrupting the economy, the efforts by mortals to stem the flow have failed. Robots and golf balls and even the massive capping dome all seem small in retrospect.

So, then, a supplementary method was attempted: coordinated prayer.

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry encouraged Texans to ask God “for his merciful intervention and healing in this time of crisis.” In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour declared that prayer “allows us an opportunity to reflect and to seek guidance, strength, comfort and inspiration from Almighty God.” In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal invoked the word “whereas” a dozen times — as well as the state bird, the brown pelican — but made no direct mention of God. In Florida, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp asked people to pray that God “would guide and direct our civil leaders and provide them with wisdom and divinely inspired solutions.”

As I mentioned, the words "intention" and "prayer" have become interchangeable. The "coordinated prayer" referred to in that NYT article, is what people who believe in prayers do. They want as many people as possible to pray for the same thing, and even at the same time, if possible, and to continue praying. I guess their god is hard of hearing. But that is really no different than what those who believe in intentions do. They also want as many people as possible focusing their coordinated intentions. Collective prayers, collective intentions. Two sides of the same coin.

Another good example of that blurring of the distinction between intentions and prayers comes courtesy of Masaru Emoto, the Japanese 'scientist' who appeared in the film What The Bleep Do We Know?, promoting his belief in the supernatural properties of water. The Colorado newspaper, Post Independent, published a letter to the editor which included an email message from Emoto:

Yesterday we received a letter from Dr. Masaru Emoto, who many of you will recognize as the scientist from Japan who has done research and publications about the characteristics of water. Among other things, his research reveals that water physically responds to emotions.

Right now, most of us have the predominantly angry emotion when we consider what is happening in the Gulf. And while certainly we are justified in that emotion, we may be of greater assistance to our planet and its life forms, if we sincerely, powerfully and humbly pray the prayer that Dr. Emoto himself has proposed.

“I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings. To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, plankton, coral, algae, and all living creatures . . . I am sorry. Please forgive us. Thank you. I love you. “

We are passing this request to people who we believe might be willing to participate in this prayer, to set an intention of love and healing that is so large, so overwhelming that we can perform a miracle in the Gulf of Mexico.

We are not powerless. We are powerful. Our united energy, speaking this prayer daily ... multiple times daily ... can literally shift the balance of destruction that is happening. We don't have to know how, we just have to recognize that the power of love is greater than any power active in the Universe today.

Please join us in often repeating this healing prayer of Dr. Emoto's. And feel free to copy and send it around the planet. Let's take charge, and do our own clean up!

There is one way in which the quantum believers and the religious believers differ regarding the oil spill. The quantum believers do not appear to assign supernatural causes to the oil spill, at least not that I could find. Religious believers, on the other hand, are quick to claim that the oil spill is predicted in the book of Revelation, and that God, for various reasons, caused the oil spill as a punishment. For example, here's what the Christian conspiracy website, The World's Prophecy, has to say about it:

Is the oil spill in the bible? Yes it is:

Before you continue reading the verse below where it predicts the oil spill, keep in mind that the Book of Revelations are full of symbolism. One example would be the great whore “Babylon” is definitely not talking about an actual “whore” or “prostitute”. The beast in Revelation 13 is not exactly talking about an actual monster, but a representation of a man with the “number” 666. So when the oil spill in the verse below talks about an angel pouring it out, do not just swallow it in a dumb way interpreting the angel as BP. As you already know, it is not only BP that has the oil spill problem, but also Chevron. The “angel” is only used as symbolism.

Revelation 16:3

The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood like that of a dead man; and every living thing in the sea died.

From Yahoo! Answers:

What color is the blood of a died man?
I’m doing a little research and I want to know what the color the blood of a died man has. sense it rots would it be black?

The colour of oxygenated blood is shiny red but after the death of a person oxygen supply will be stopped resulting de oxygenation of blood causing the colour changed to darker red and later on it will turn into brown and then black because of the absence of oxygen and due to decay.

So, there it is in black and white, or I should say, black and brown. Oil looks like a dead man's blood, so the Bible predicted the gulf oil spill. And not just the book of Revelation, but the book of Genesis too! The wing-nuts at World Net Daily are circulating a video that claims the gulf oil spill is a fulfillment of a prophecy in Genesis related to Israel:

Is there a spiritual, biblical connection to the BP oil catastrophe?

A new video on YouTube is suggesting a possible link to the disaster due to America's recent treatment of Israel, and at least one well-known Bible analyst, Hal Lindsey, thinks there's a valid correlation.

The video was produced and posted today by Carl Gallups of the Hickory Hammock Baptist Church in Milton, Fla.

"April the 19th, Israel celebrates its independence in 2010," Gallups says in narration on the video. "On April the 19th, Fox News reports that the U.S. will no longer automatically support Israel in the United Nations. The next day, on April the 20th, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes. Coincidence? Or the hand and judgment of God?"

The minister cites an ancient promise God made to Abraham, the patriarch of the 12 tribes of Israel, one tribe of which is Judah, from which the Jews derive their name.

In the Book of Genesis, God told him, "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse ... ."

...

Referring to Israel as a "prophetic signpost," Gallups said, "It seems to me we're turning our back on Israel, and that's a very dangerous biblical or spiritual place to be."

Gallups is not alone with the sentiment America could be under a curse from God.

"I believe this is evidence that when you turn your back on Israel, especially when you've been a supporter, you're gonna see judgments come from God," said Hal Lindsey, author of "The Late Great Planet Earth."

So, some Christians believe that coordinated prayers are required to implore God to intervene and stop the oil, while other Christians believe the Bible predicted the oil spill, which obviously means the oil spill is God's will, intended as punishment for the wicked people he created. Still other Christians believe God caused the oil spill specifically to punish one wicked nation. What's a God supposed to do?

Wishful Thinking Won't Stop The Oil Gusher But Nuking It Would

Sunday, May 23, 2010 at 03:28PM

Perry Bulwer

Chain The Dogma - May 23, 2010

Wishful Thinking Won't Stop The Oil Gusher But Nuking It Would

by Perry Bulwer

Dreamhealer is it again, this time claiming credit for slowing the flow of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by having his followers focus their intentions on the ongoing environmental disaster. Adam McLeod, the man behind the Dreamhealer mask, is a quantum quack. I previously wrote about his claims that the quantum woo he pitches worked to reduce the height of tsunami waves headed to Hawaii after the recent earthquake in Chile.

Adam's first claim to fame was that he could heal people, even from great distances away, by way of quantum physics. That claim has made him a lot of money from gullible or desperate people who buy his books and attend his healing sessions. In fact, what he preaches is a pseudo-science that is almost indistinguishable from religious faith and faith healing. Adam's particular 'snake oil' is intention rather than prayer, but both are just different forms of wishful thinking, and wishing doesn't make it so.

Adam is anxious to have some scientific evidence to back-up his claims, so he undertook a flawed experiment that has not yet been replicated, verified or peer reviewed. He was quick to claim success, however, and on the basis of that small experiment he soon expanded his claims to include not just human healing, but the power of intention over natural disasters, such as reducing tsunami waves, and now even over man-made disasters like the oil gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Here's part of a message Dreamhealer sent out to his followers on May 12, 2010:

There are thousands of people on this newsletter who understand the power of intentions. We are summoning everyone to send their intentions for a successful repair job for this oil leak. Let's set May 13th and 14th at 7pm your local time to send intention to see this leak stopped. Set everything aside for at least 5 minutes and visualize the leak being sealed and the engineers being successful. For those who can stay with this visualization we would like you to continue the same visualizations for May 15th and 16th at 7pm your local time. "It is time for some good news on this issue."

On May 14th he sent this follow-up message with a link to a video to help with visualizing intentions:

We have put together a short http://www.dreamhealer.com/fix-leak to help you focus your intentions to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Please focus your intentions at 7pm (your local time) May 14th, 15th and 16th, as shown on the video. Keep this visualization in your awareness throughout the next few days and longer. Integrate your own memories of beautiful oceans, sea-life, and successful engineering feats and mechanical insights to personalize your visualizations. See this happening preferably when you are in your meditative state, or relaxed state for visualizations.

"Engage and Empower yourself, knowing that your intentions will make a difference."

1: Visualize the recovery pipe being lowered over the leak.

2: Visualize the oil being forced onto the awaiting oil tankers.

3: BP then seals the connector over the leak.

On May 15th he sent this follow-up message:

Thanks for your continued focus on stopping the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. We have updated the visualization on youtube which you could use for this purpose. We urge everyone to stay positive and focused on our main objective at this stage, which is to stop the leak. Create your own visualizations and modify with what resonates with you. Visualize with everyone on May 13, 14, 15 and 16 at 7pm your local time. Keep your visualizations in your awareness for as long as possible after these dates.

On May 17th Adam sent out another message to his followers saying that their intentions and visualizations were starting to work:

Much gratitude to the thousands who took the time to visualize a successful connection to the oil leak (gusher) in the Gulf of Mexico. A BP response to the oil spill now shows the first glimpse at containment of the oil spew into the Gulf of Mexico. Undersea robotic equipment successfully inserted a four-inch pipe into the Horizon well's "riser," which was leaking several thousand barrels of oil a day into the gulf. This is a temporary fix and we all have to work on the total elimination of the oil leak.

Our planet has been given a small reprieve from the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The damage to the ecosystem, the lives of those who depend on the ocean and the planet makes it clearer than ever that changes need to be made. Keep sending your focused intentions toward cleaning the mess up and giving politicians the courage to set a course toward clean energy. We have to change the voices that say "it can't be done" to voices that say "we can do it." Be confident when you visualize that the power of many others is with you. Mankind must learn something from this experience and become more focused on making our planet a safer and cleaner place to live.

In that same message Adam included a 'testimonial' from one of his followers, similar to those he included in messages falsely claiming success for reducing those waves headed to Hawaii:

Your suggestion to visualize to cap the oil leak was such a wonderful idea. With people all over the world concentrating on this visualization made it a reality. On the third night, May 16th, at 7:21 pm EST, CBS announced that the hookup was a success and that oil was being moved out through the pipe into a waiting ship. I was so excited that I started yelling to my husband, "We did it! We did it! It worked! Adam's visualization and all of the people doing this at the same time worked! What a wonderful thing to do for humanity and ecology. Thank you Adam for planting this seed in our minds and for the example of how we were to see it happening. You are going to go forward and show people that they can accomplish great things by just "seeing them happen." - Cross of Light Lady

That all sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Some quantum kook from Canada gets naive believers to visualize the oil gusher and focus their best intentions on the efforts to fix it, and hocus pocus: “We did it! We did it! It worked!” The only problem is that it didn't work. In his haste to declare success for his wishful thinking exercise, even if indirectly by quoting an eager acolyte, it seems Adam was persuaded by BP's propaganda, both on the size of the gusher and the effectiveness of their efforts so far to fix it. It is easy to see why Adam so easily falls for such corporate spin-doctoring since his intentions are now tied to BP's success.

It is now over a month since BP's oil platform exploded and oil began to gush into the gulf. It is becoming clear that BP has been covering-up and lying about the amount of oil that is gushing. They recently revised their estimate up to 5,000 barrels a day, up from their previous claim of 3,000 barrels a day. That is an awful lot of oil, but nowhere near the true amount. Scientists have more realistically estimated the gusher at 70,000 to 100,000 barrels a day. Now, who are you going to believe? The oil company with a vested interest in downplaying the disaster, or scientists with no interest other than in the facts?

So far, BP's efforts have failed to sufficiently stem the flow, which means there could be upwards of 3 million barrels of oil and counting spilled, with no end in sight. To save their investments, rather than the environment, BP has been trying one untested solution after another, which have all failed. They continue to explore other options into the second month of the gusher, except the only option that is most likely to work: blowing up the well. Explosions have been used for the last 100 years in the oil industry to seal runaway wells on land, and the Russians have done it to underwater wells at least 4 times using nuclear bombs, but conventional explosions might work just as well. However, that would mean the well would be sealed permanently and BP would lose millions in investments and assets, as well as access to all the remaining oil. Unless forced to by the U.S. government, I doubt very much BP would willingly choose that option. It seems BP is engaged in its own form of wishful thinking in trying to plug the well. Perhaps they should give Dreamhealer a call.

This article was found at:

http://www.perrybulwer.com/chain-the-dogma/2010/5/23/wishful-thinking-wont-stop-the-oil-gusher-but-nuking-it-woul.html

Update on Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 02:57PM by

Perry Bulwer

How long before the only option left is a nuclear explosion?

The New York Times reports that U.S. officials have not considered the nuclear option for stopping the oil gusher.

Government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear bomb would be not only risky technically, with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences from radiation, but also unwise geopolitically — it would violate arms treaties that the United States has signed and championed over the decades and do so at a time when President Obama is pushing for global nuclear disarmament.

It seems to me that first and foremost in their minds are the geopolitical issues rather than the environmental ones. Right now there are unknown, wide-spread disastrous consequences resulting from all of the failed efforts so far, and with hurricane season fast approaching no one knows how that will impact an already dire situation. So, it seems disingenuous for them to say they won't consider the nuclear option because of unknown consequences. After all, hasn't the U.S. conducted nuclear tests for decades? Surely there must be some useful data collected along the way that they could apply to this disaster. And although the Russian's success with nuclear explosions involved gas wells on land as opposed to oil wells on the seabed, certainly some of that experience and data could be useful in this situation.

The latest attempts by BP have actually made the situation worse, with up to 20 percent more oil gushing out. BP estimates it could be August before the well is sealed, but BP can no longer be trusted to give accurate information. It is entirely possible that nothing BP does will work and oil will continue to gush into the Gulf of Mexico indefinitely, and spread from there. What are the disastrous consequences of that? It may be that the nuclear option will only be considered once all other ideas are exhausted, but by then it may be too late.

Update on Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 09:17AM by

Perry Bulwer

Financial Post - Reuters July 2, 2010

Should BP nuke its leaking well?

Nastassia Astrasheuskaya, Ben Judah, Alina Selyukh | Reuters

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON -- His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former long-time Russian Minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to fix BP's oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

"A nuclear explosion over the leak," he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. "I don't know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved."

A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion -- nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world. Mr. Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he's an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than US$10-million. That compares with the US$2.35-billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. "This option is worth the money," he says.

And it's not just Soviet boffins. Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind U.S. research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and '70s says a nuclear explosion is a logical last-resort solution for BP and the government. Matthew Simmons, a former energy advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush and the founder of energy investment-banking firm Simmons & Company International, is another calling for the nuclear option.

Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton has voiced support for the idea of an explosion to stem the flow of oil, albeit one using conventional materials rather than nukes. "Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may become necessary ... unless we are going to do that, we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP," Mr. Clinton told the Fortune/Time/CNN Global Forum in South Africa on June 29.

Mr. Clinton was picking up on an idea mooted by Christopher Brownfield in June. Mr. Brownfield is a one-time nuclear submarine officer, a veteran of the Iraq war (he volunteered in 2006) and now a nuclear policy researcher at Columbia University. He is also one of a number of scientists whose theories rely not on nuclear bombs -- he did toy with that thought for a while -- but on conventional explosives that would implode the well and, if not completely plug it with crushed rock, at least bring the flow of oil under control. "It's kind of like stepping on a garden hose to kink it," Mr. Brownfield says. "You may not cut off the flow entirely but it would greatly reduce the flow."

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

Using nuclear blasts for peaceful ends was a key plank of Cold War policy in both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the middle of last century, both countries were motivated by a desire to soften the image of the era's weapon of choice.

Washington had big plans to use peaceful nuclear explosions to build an additional Panama Canal, carve a path for an inter-state highway through mountains in the Mojave Desert and connect underwater aquifers in Arizona. But the experimental plans were dropped as authorities learned more about the ecological dangers of surface explosions.

The Soviet program, known as Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, was launched in 1958. The project saw 124 nuclear explosions for such tasks as digging canals and reservoirs, creating underground storage caverns for natural gas and toxic waste, exploiting oil and gas deposits and sealing gas leaks. It was finally mothballed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.

The Soviets first used a nuclear blast to seal a gas leak in 1966. Urtabulak, one of its prized gas-fields in Uzbekistan, had caught fire and raged for three years. Desperate to save the cherished reserves, Yefim Slavsky, then Minister of Light Industry, ordered nuclear engineers to use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal.

"The Minister said, 'Do it. Put it out. Explode it,'" recalls Albert Vasilyev, a young engineer and a rising star in the project who now teaches at the Lenin Technical Institute in Moscow.

Mr. Vasilyev remembers the technology behind the program with obvious pride. "The explosion takes place deep underground," he says. "We pinch the pipe, break it and the pipe collapses." According to Mr. Vasilyev, the blast at Urtabulak sealed the well shut leaving only an empty crater.

JUST DOING A JOB

In all, the Soviets detonated five nuclear devices to seal off runaway gas wells -- succeeding three or four times, depending on who you talk to. "It worked quite well for them," says Nordyke, who authored a detailed account of Soviet explosions in a 2000 paper. "There is no reason to think it wouldn't be fine (for the United States)."

But not everything went smoothly. Mr. Vasilyev admits the program "had two misfires". The final blast in 1979 was conducted near the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. "The closest houses were just about 400 meters away," Mr. Vasilyev recalls. "So this was ordered to be the weakest of the explosions. Even the buildings and the street lamps survived." Unfortunately, the low capacity of the device failed to seal the well and the gas resurfaced.

Alexander Koldobsky, a fellow nuclear physicist from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute, insists the peaceful nuclear explosions were safe. The people who worked on the program "were brilliant professionals", he says. "They had a culture of safety, which did not accept the word 'maybe', but only accepted the words 'obligation' and 'instruction.' Any derivation from these in nuclear technologies is a crime."

Still, he concedes, "there were different scenarios of what happened after an explosion." At his first blast in a Turkmen gas field in 1972, "the stench was unbearable," he says. "And the wind was blowing toward a nearby town." He closes his narrow lips into a smile as if refusing to say more.

Mr. Koldobsky shrugs off any suggestion of fear or emotion when the bomb exploded. "I felt nothing. I was just doing my job."

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Not everybody is so sanguine about the Soviet experience. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an expert from Russia's largest oil exporter Rosneft, urges the United States to ignore calls for the atomic option. "That would bring Chernobyl to America," he says.

Vladimir Chuprov from Greenpeace's Moscow office is even more insistent that BP not heed the advice of the veteran Soviet physicists. Mr. Chuprov disputes the veterans' accounts of the peaceful explosions and says several of the gas leaks reappeared later. "What was praised as a success and a breakthrough by the Soviet Union is in essence a lie," he says. "I would recommend that the international community not listen to the Russians. Especially those of them that offer crazy ideas. Russians are keen on offering things, especially insane things."

Former Minister Mikhailov agrees that the USSR had to give up its program because of problems it presented. "I ended the program because I knew how worthless this all was," he says with a sigh. "Radioactive material was still seeping through cracks in the ground and spreading into the air. It wasn't worth it."

"Still," he says, momentarily hard to see through a cloud of smoke from his cigarettes, "I see no other solution for sealing leaks like the one in the Gulf of Mexico."

The problem, he goes on, is that "Americans just don't know enough about nuclear explosions to solve this problem ... But they should ask us -- we have institutes, we have professionals who can help them solve this. Otherwise BP are just torturing the people and themselves."

RADIATION RISKS

Mr. Nordyke too believes the nuclear option should be on the table. After seeing nine U.S. nuclear explosions and standing behind the control board of one, he estimates that a nuclear bomb would have roughly an 80 to 90% chance of successfully blocking the oil. According to his estimates, it would have to be an explosion of around 30 kilotons, equivalent to roughly two Hiroshima bombs or three times as big as Mikhailov's estimate. The explosion would also need to remain at least 3 to 4 miles away from other offshore wells in the area.

The bomb, says Mr. Nordyke, would be dropped in a secondary well approximately 60-70 feet away from the leaking shaft. There it would create a large cavity filled with gas. The gas would melt the surrounding rock, crush it and press it into the leaking well to close it shut.

Although the BP well is thousands of feet deeper than those closed in the Soviet Union, Mr. Nordyke says the extra depth shouldn't make a difference. He also says that so far below the ground, not much difference exists in onshore or underwater explosions -- even though the latter have never been tried.

Mr. Nordyke says fears that radiation could escape after the explosion are unfounded. The hole would be about 8 inches in diameter and, despite the shockwave, the radiation should remain captured. Even in the case of radiation escape, he says, its dispersed effect would be less than that of floating oil patches.

A LAST RESORT

But don't expect an explosion under the Gulf of Mexico any time soon. Even a conventional blast could backfire and cause more problems. There is a chance any blast could fracture the seabed and cause an underground blowout, according to Andy Radford, petroleum engineer and American Petroleum Institute senior policy adviser on offshore issues. The U.S. Department of Energy has no plans to use explosives "due to the obvious risks involved," according to a DOE spokeswoman.

There's also the question of time. Preparations for a nuclear explosion could take up to half-a-year; BP has said it will have a relief well in place to stop the leak by August. "I think it has to be considered as only the last resort," Mr. Nordyke says. But "they ought to be thinking about it."

Would he be willing to work on such an operation? "I'd be happy to help," he says.

This article was found at:

http://www.financialpost.com/Should+nuke+leaking+well/3227727/story.html

The Cult With No Name

Monday, May 3, 2010 at 02:17PM

Perry Bulwer

Chain The Dogma - May 3, 2010

The Cult With No Name

by Perry Bulwer

This past February there was a brief report in the Michigan newspaper, Huron Daily Tribune, on the sentencing of a Christian minister for the sex assault of an 11 year-old boy. It's the kind of story that is all too common these days, as my fast-growing archive of news articles related to religion-related child abuse demonstrates. The details in the article are similar to other cases of child sexual abuse in a religious context, except for one thing. The report makes no mention of the name of the organization to which the minister belonged, simply referring to “a non-denominational Christian organization” and “the ministry”. But have you ever heard of an organization with no name? When people organize themselves into groups, even for trivial purposes, one of the first things they usually do is decide on a name. So, who is this Christian organization and why do they claim to have no name?

One clue as to who this group is comes not from that news article, but from one of the comments posted at the end of it by a person named Sal who writes: "This ministry, known as the Two by Two's needs to be exposed.” Well, Sal, here's my little effort. After an easy web search, that clue leads to the revelation that this secretive group that claims to have no name does have a name after all; in fact, it has many names. It is referred to both by members and outsiders by many different names, including “The Truth”, “The Way”, “Two-by-Twos” and several others, and it is officially registered in the U.S. as “Christian Conventions” and in Canada as "Assemblies of Christians", and various other names in other countries. This particular religious ruse is used to perpetuate the conceit that this group has no modern founder, but can trace its origins back to the first Christians, and therefore it is the true church, not a sect or cult. However, as a survivor of a Christian fundamentalist cult I've heard that story before, so when I now hear people claiming to have "the only truth" and living "the only way" cult alarm bells sound off to warn me of the dangerous deceit.

When a reader of my blog recently alerted me to that news article mentioned above, she referred to some of those names for the group, but it was “The Truth” that most sounded familiar to me. I checked and, sure enough, just over two months ago I posted in my news archive an article from the student newspaper of the University of Illinois. It tells the story of a student, Jennifer Hanson, who escaped from the fundamentalist Christian sect she was born into so she could attend university and live her own life. Her's is a familiar story of religious repression, suppression, indoctrination, spiritual abuse and denial of human rights, but familiar only because of media reports of similar religion-related abuses in other more well known groups.

Having no name, or actually, many different names, helps this group fly under the radar by causing confusion as to who they really are and making it difficult for outsiders to 'connect the dots'. It is a common cult tactic, changing names or using many alternative names in different countries or for different aspects of their ministries. It appears to have worked for this no-name cult because “... none of the University professors of religion contacted had heard of Hanson's former group.” Get that? Professors (plural) of religion had never heard of this Christian organization that numbers at least in the hundreds of thousands and possibly in the millions worldwide.

So, is this no-name group a cult? According to the Apologetics Index, [see Update Note below] which keeps track of such groups, “... from an orthodox, evangelical Christian perspective, the movement is considered to be a cult of Christianity.” And according to a Canadian lawyer representing the father in a child custody case the group is a cult:

"We compiled a list of 47 different cult characteristics," says lawyer Arends. "The Two-by-twos meet all the points. They are extremely secretive, have no written doctrine or records, you can't get a straight answer from them, and yet they claim to be the only path to salvation. Their 'friends' must give unconditional obedience to the workers, or they're guilty of backsliding. And if they backslide, they're damned." Mr. Arends says his case is bolstered by California academic Ronald Enroth's work Churches That Abuse, Port Coquitlam author Lloyd Fortt's In Search of 'the Truth', and the testimony of a dozen former members in Alberta.

But it is the next paragraph in that magazine report that convinced me that the cult designation is an appropriate one. That paragraph cites J. Gordon Melton, a notorious cult apologist who thinks there is no such things as cults, only 'new religious movements':

However, Gordon Melton, the California-based editor of the Encyclopedia of American Religions, argues the Two-by-twos are simply an "old-line, 19th-century Christadelphian sect," an isolated subculture of non-Trinitarian Christians. They are not a cult because "there's no real threats or violence," he says.

Alberta Report, "Doubts About a Mystery Church", September 15, 1997

Of course, the absence of real threats or violence are not enough to determine whether or not a group is a cult. Furthermore, what does he mean by “real threats”? Melton seems to imply that spiritual threats, common in such fundamentalist groups, are not real threats, therefore they don't count. As the Canadian lawyer pointed out, he compiled a list of 47 cult characteristics and of those he mentioned none involved violence or real threats, as opposed to spiritual threats. There are many sociological and theological characteristics used to determine whether a group is a cult or not, which Melton, a supposed expert on religion, is well aware of, yet he simplistically dismisses the evidence. It's not the first time he's done that. Here's part of what I wrote about his working regarding the cult, the Children of God, now known as The Family International:

In both the 1986 edition and the revised 1992 edition of the Encyclopaedic Handbook of Cults in America, Melton wrote critically about The Family for five pages, concluding that “The sexual manipulation in the Children of God has now been so thoroughly documented that it is doubtful whether the organization can ever, in spite of whatever future reforms it might initiate, regain any respectable place in the larger religious community.” ²⁰ Yet just two years later, in 1994, he co-edited a collection of essays favourable to The Family entitled Sex, Slander and Salvation; Investigating The Family/Children of God. ²¹ Kent and Krebs describe ²² how that book was a result of Family representatives seeking advice from certain scholars, including Melton, on how to create a positive public image in the face of negative publicity revolving mostly around allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation. They also describe the substantial efforts The Family took to make sure any potentially discrediting information, such as sexual material involving children, was not available to researchers, and that researchers had access only to special, sanitized ‘media homes’ that were not at all representative of regular Family homes. Unsurprisingly, The Family touts that book, which they offer for sale on their Website, as “…proof of its legitimacy and the group has distributed copies to media in an attempt to gain favourable press.” ²³ The Family considers Melton, as well as Chancellor, experts on the group, ²⁴ and in 2000 Melton received USD $10,065.83 from The Family. ²⁵

A Response to James D. Chancellor's "Life in The Family: An oral history of the Children of God"

By the way, I used the term “researchers” lightly as the book of essays is merely propaganda that was entirely financed by The Family cult. In other words, they payed apologists like Melton to write favourable essays for public relations purposes in the wake of child sex scandals. So, if J. Gordon Melton says “The Truth” or the “Two-by-Twos” or the church with no name is not a cult, it probably is. From what I've read about it so far, and comparing it to other well-documented cults, there is no question in my mind it is. Jennifer Hanson's story provides enough details and warning signs for me to come to that conclusion, but there are also other stories out there that corroborate her's, many at the websites listed below. It turns out that a cult by any other name, or no name at all, is still a cult.

REFERENCES & WEBSITES:

Veterans of Truth - information about abuses in "The Truth" ministry.

WINGS For Truth - created by victims/survivors who have suffered sexual abuse within the "Truth" Fellowship along with individuals who have been both directly and indirectly impacted by CSA.

Christian Conventions - wikipedia entry

Apologetics Index - Two-by-twos [see Update Note below]

Apologetics Index - J. Gordon Melton [see Update Note below]

Rick A. Ross Institute on the Apologetics Index [see Update Note below]

University of Illinois student shunned by 'cult' for sake of education

Alberta Report, "Doubts About a Mystery Church", September 15, 1997

A Response to James D. Chancellor's "Life in The Family: An oral history of the Children of God"

xFamily.org - a collaboratively edited encyclopedia about The Family/Children of God cult.

exFamily.org - a source of truthful information about The Family

Cult survivor reveals deceptive recruiting tactics used by Scientology and similar cults

Update on Friday, May 7, 2010 at 03:12PM by

Perry Bulwer

Note on the Apologetics Index, a source cited in the post above

by Perry Bulwer

After asking the question, "So, is this no-name group a cult?", in the post above, I provided two sources to illustrate two different perspectives on that question. One source is a lawyer who provides an answer from a sociological point of view. The other source, the Apologetics Index, provides an answer from a particular Christian perspective. My purpose was to show that regardless of their position, many people would view this group as a cult.

However, it has now come to my attention that the person behind the Apologetics Index, Anton Hein, is a fugitive from U.S. law and is a registered sex offender in California for committing "lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years.” That child is his niece, who was 13 at the time. There is an outstanding warrant for his arrest should he ever attempt to enter the U.S. again.

Hein is not a credible source of information, and I should have been more careful to check into his website before citing it. I was in a hurry, but that's no excuse, because a quick search of cult expert Rick Ross's website would have alerted me to the problem with Hein. He has a page on Hein that would have been enough for me to omit any reference to or quotation from him. Lesson learned.