Growing Up in the Amityville Horror

by Trevor Fehrman

The principal subject of Eric Walter’s superb documentary, My Amityville Horror, is a ghost. His restless, estranged spirit flickers and moves past us like a projection, doomed every day to relive the ordeal which finally drove him beyond the land of warmth and living things. He’s a shade, a shadow, a churning confluence of ireful energies. His name is Danny Lutz. He works as a UPS delivery man. In his free time he plays passable, if vapid riffs on a tacky electric guitar. He sees dead people. Or…at least he saw them, anyway.

My Amityville Horror is largely composed of extended interviews with Danny in which he gives, for the first time ever, his perspective on what is probably the most famous ghost story in America. Danny, now a stocky, bald, middle-aged man with a volatile, blue-collar demeanor and a smoking habit, was only a 10-year-old boy at the time he lived in the Amityville house that became the greatest ghost story in recent memory. During his short stay in the house on Ocean Avenue, a time he describes as “like being awake in your own dream,” he claims to have been possessed, thrown up a flight of stairs by an unseen force, swarmed by hoards of flies, had a window magically smash his hand so forcefully that he describes the injury to his fingers as “skin on skin” (though it was miraculously healed later that night), witnessed glowing red eyes through a second-story window, strange smells, temperature changes, odd garage door behavior, mysterious green slime, and other spooky flotsam and jetsam.

His claims don’t end there, however. He also claims to have hated his step-father, George Lutz, with the fury of hellfire. He says George forced him and his mom to move to Amityville in the first place, and that George forced Danny to change his last name to his own, that he made Danny call him “Mr. Lutz” or “Sir,” and that George kept books on “hypnotism”, “Buddhism,” “mind control,” and “the occult” on his personal bookcase. He claims that both his mother, Kathy Lutz, and George on more than one occasion beat him and his siblings with wooden spoons then made them march about the house like soldiers. He claims there were repeated violent outbursts.

He claims to have tried to kill George, and that he’s happy George is now dead. He claims that he “believes there is such a thing as evil,” but it seems Danny’s evil is a device of Satan and not the human heart. He claims that after he begged his mother to let him leave home for years, she finally acquiesced when he was fifteen. He claims that before he left to go live in the desert, sometimes sleeping under the stars, sometimes on friends’ couches, she made him a few peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches and washed some of his socks.

Depending on how you ask the question, somewhere around half of all Americans believe in the existence of ghosts. According to one poll done by CBS, 22% of Americans claim to have actually “seen or felt the presence” of one. Why do so many people believe? A desire to believe that the soul persists after death, a desire to believe that our presence will still be felt on earth after we’re gone, the desire that there should always be retribution for evil actions, and that humans have an evolutionary tendency to essentialize things, or believe that an “essence” exists beyond material substance.

From a skeptical perspective, if we take it as a given that Danny Lutz didn’t actually get thrown up the stairs by a poltergeist then we’re left with three possibilities.

The first is that Danny was hallucinating, but that’s probably not right. Today, Danny is a testy, sometimes explosive person, but there’s no evidence that he’s insane. He doesn’t see ghosts anymore (and, tellingly, hasn’t since he felt like he was in control of his own life), he holds down a job, he’s able to drive on the right side of the road, file his taxes, and carry on conversations like any normal person might. Not only that, Danny wasn’t the only person who claimed there were ghosts in the house.

The second explanation is that Danny has been perpetrating a con these last 40 years, but that’s even less likely. First of all, Danny hasn’t profited much from this. Unlike George and Kathy Lutz, who enjoyed a brief period of talk show appearances and world speaking tour, Danny sees the entire experience as a burden. He’s tried to keep the fact that he was one of the children in the Amityville house on the down-low for most of his life. He says that when people find out, he’s inundated by inane questions and mild forms of harassment. That, at least, isn’t terribly hard to believe.

The third explanation, which is both the most plausible and the most interesting, is that Danny really thinks he’s telling the truth, at least for the most part. We’ll note first that he has both a tendency to exaggerate and an accompanying tendency toward extreme credulity. Take the window smashing incident: Danny says that his hand was so swollen it looked like “a child’s baseball glove” and that it was “five times” its normal size. In an oddly touching reunion, when his mother’s friend Lorraine (a devout Catholic who has always believed Danny’s claims and declares that she gets visited by the spirits of various holy figures) takes out a crucifix which she says is embedded with a piece of wood from Jesus’ cross, it never occurs to Danny to ask how she came into possession of such a priceless artifact, why it’s not in a museum, its provenance, etc. He simply mouths the word “wow” at the documentary crew. During another conversation (this time with reporter Laura DiDio, one of the first to cover these events back in the 1970s) we hear about a trip to the doctor in which Danny tells him how he witnessed George move a wrench with his mind in the garage—this was before Amityville, by the way. The doctor met with Danny’s mother for a few minutes afterwards and then she and her son drove silently home. Laura responds by pointing out “Right, ‘cause, most doctors would say…” but then Danny interrupts her, completing her sentence with an unhinged confidence: “Get a new boyfriend!” She replies, “Or…this kid needs tests.”

Through a combination of the plasticity of memory (of your garden variety, but also the kind the world became familiar with through the tragic Michelle Remembers debacle), fossilized embellishments, groupthink, general credulity, a traumatic upbringing in which the existence of ghosts was accepted as fact, as well as several other factors, we can construct a reasonable hypothesis as to how Danny became convinced of things which are impossible. And the real question becomes: once you begin an invention of that scale, and the whole country watches, how do you stop it? Well, if you’re a child, maybe the sad truth is that you can’t. And so it becomes a part of you—invisible, but moving through you, influencing everything you think and do. You become haunted by it.

Many who believe in ghosts will ask: “Well, what’s the harm? What does it matter if I believe in ghosts? Who does it hurt?” It could be they really think they saw one, or have a friend who did. It could be they have a distorted idea of what it means to be open-minded. Maybe it’s mildly entertaining for them to believe it. Maybe it comforts them in some strange way. Maybe they don’t even know why they cling to the idea but can’t particularly be bothered to figure it out. I’d offer a compromise: hauntings are indeed very real. We can be haunted by our regrets, our past traumas, our unfulfilled ambitions, and the personas we’ve built for ourselves and now can’t escape. And maybe, for some, the aggregate entertainment and comfort of 150 million people or so is worth the permanent emotional disfigurement of one little boy, but of course it isn’t just the one. Anyway, it wouldn’t be worth it to me even if it was. One haunted child is one too many.

The Struggle of Bangladeshi Bloggers

by Avijit Roy

What comes to mind when you scan the picture above? A gang of thieves who have been caught red-handed, or perhaps a picture that border guards posted of some poachers that they have recently detained. Alas, this is a group of brilliant writers known as the Bangladeshi Bloggers; the items that are displayed in front of them—the bloggers’ own computers and laptops—have been seized and searched by Bangladesh’s law enforcement. What a nice catch our police force has made!

At times, I fall speechless when asked if I have anything to say about the sorry case of the writers in our country. So many readers like me read their writings with such devotion, using their articles as a means to enhance our knowledge as well as our own logic skills. Several weeks ago I was even personally acquainted with one of the accused “atheist” bloggers, Subrata Shuvo, who had wanted to publish one of his articles on Mukto-Mona (a site for freethinkers of mainly Bengali and South Asian descent which I use to moderate). His proposed story was on Mr. Shahidul Haque [aka: Shahidul mama (Uncle)], who was a freedom fighter of 1971. It was through Shuvo’s writing that I learned how S. Haque was the major eyewitness of the war criminal Kader Mullah’s trial. Since S. Haque was a guerilla fighter, he saw the brutal genocide conducted under Kader Mullah’s command. Haque was also an activist in the protests and riots of 1966 and of 1969.

Before reading Subrata’s story, I never knew a person such as Mr. Haque had existed—a person who is so passionate, brilliant, and brave, a person who loves his country more than I do. This fearless soldier came back from Sweden just to testify against Kader Mullah, in the hope that he and countless others would finally achieve justice. “I won’t complain against the tribunal, but the sentence (that Kader Mullah was only given life in prison) is simply outrageous,” said Mr. Shahidul, where many had expected the vicious criminal to be hanged until death. Shubrata’s writings covered various topics, examples of which are titled, “Interview: Ferdousi Priyovashini on freedom fighters & war children” and “Daily Shangram: their contribution on covering 1971’s 25th March.” Both articles were proof of the profound love that Shubrata felt for his homeland. There is no doubt that, because of youths like him, the Shahbag movement could awaken the people of Bangladesh.

And how does our government respond to his actions? Instead of praising or even acknowledging his patriotic contributions to the Bangladeshi community, they locked him behind bars. Their rationale? His “atheism.” After hearing about such horrific proceedings, I started reading Subrata’s blog on mukto-mona to see for myself why the government had taken such offense. To my surprise, I could not find a single entry indicative of the so-called radical atheistic mindset that he was being accused of. Well, Subrata did write an essay on Richard Dawkins, one of the famous atheists of our time. Even people with the vaguest interest in science are mesmerized with Dawkins’ writing and logical analyses. Just as a skilled piano player spellbinds us with his keys or as a poet captivates us with his lines, Dawkins’ logic entrances us with his in-depth explanations…and anyone can express gratitude towards him for this reason alone! I myself have done so several times. As I read Humyun Azad’s Shab kichu nashtoder Adhikare jabe (“All Will Go to the Rights of Evil”), or when I recite Bangladesher Katha (Story of Bangladesh), I encounter the same contentment as when I read Dawkins’ works. Should such feelings really be measured on a spectrum separating atheism and theism? Even Einstein, arguably the most celebrated man on the planet, abandoned the idea of a personal savior, saying,  “I don’t try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.” The beauty and sublimity of Einstein’s words will no doubt affect a person’s mind, regardless of if he is an outspoken atheist or deeply religious.

Russell Pervez is another arrested blogger famous for his unique writing style in various Bangla blogs. His writings always reminded me of the panache of the late Christopher Hitchens, because both writers used their immense knowledge in history, politics, science, literature, and religion to produce quality works. In a recent newspaper article Arif Jebtik, the eminent blogger and columnist, wrote an essay in an online newspaper (BDNews24) under the title Ekmatro Bikalpa Bhalo Manushder Shakriyata (“The Only Alternative is the Activeness of a Few Good Men”)¹. He began by asking why an exceptional scholar such as Russel would leave his comfortable and respectable life in the U.S. to teach kids science in Bangladesh. Russell loved Bangladesh so much, that he left America for Bangladesh with his two year-old-child, despite the fact that his wife was still busy finishing her Ph.D. He took his son with him to book fairs, cultural programs, and to Shahid Minar to show gratitude towards our martyrs. He left America’s high-paying corporate jobs and took over teaching science in school instead. Soon, his wife joined him in Bangladesh, and she started teaching as well. One instant, Russell was busy spreading love for his country and knowledge about the freedom war of 1971; the next minute, he is in jail, accused of being an atheist, which has suddenly become a punishable crime in our country.

The day after Asif Mohiuddin—another reputed blogger—was arrested and interrogated by the detective branch about his earlier protests against the raised fees that Jagannath University’s students had been afflicted with. His writing—which was heavily critical of religious dogma, bigotry and superstition—and his political activism angered the government, as well as marked the beginning of the threats he received from fundamentalists. These threats eventually led to action in mid-January this year. Mohiuddin was brutally stabbed and severely injured by three suspected but unidentified Islamist fundamentalists. When Asif returned, the BTRC (The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission) allegedly told the blog communities to stop spreading his messages. Complying with the threat, Somewherein, Bangladesh’s first Bangla language community blog site, ultimately banned Mohiuddin, who used to write there regularly (and was even 2012’s User Winner for “Best Social Activism Campaign” at the Deutsche Welle’s International Blog Awards)². Now he is arrested. While Asif has been an object of criticism for a number of groups, many young freethinkers in Bangladesh look to him as a nonconformist idol who has fought against the tyrannical state machinery until the very end. Asif’s last status and a forceful writeup (published in richarddawkins.net just before he got arrested) about the arrested bloggers reads:

There was a time in the 17–18th century in Europe when women who excelled in knowledge, science and philosophy more than men were blamed for witchcraft and were burned alive by the churches and their theocratic government. Education and thus advancement for women has always been a threat for radicalism so this is why the church and the government indulged in burning the progressive women by branding them as witches. The exact same situation is in Bangladesh right now. The whole new generation who brought in a revolution in Bangla blog community with their advancement in science, philosophy and critical mind, who wrote against the religious fundamentalism and in favor of our great liberation war, freedom of speech, secularism and democracy will be burned alive just like witch-hunt in the late middle ages. I was threatened a lot when I spoke against government’s autocracy from so many other bloggers, but where are they now? Are they supporting the two headed snake government who acts secular but shelters the fundamentalists?”

Asif went to jail with his head held high. This was enough to give the government a reassuringly sharp slap in the face, courtesy of the blogger community.

However, in the darkest of hours I still see a slither of light. Prominent citizens and intellectuals like Dr. Salahuddin Ahmed, Dr. Zillur Rahman Siddiqui, Dr. Sirajul Islam Chowdhury, Dr. Anisuzzaman, Dr. Ali Akbar Khan, Dr. Ajoy Roy, Qayyum Chowdhury, Ramendu Majumdar, Dr. Sarwar Ali, Advocate Sultana Kamal, Rasheda K Chowdhury, Khushi Kabir, M M Akash, Dr. Yasmin Haque, Dr. Iftekharuzzaman, Tarek Ali, Dr. Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, Shaheen Anam, and Robaet Ferdous stand boldly on our side. They have requested the government not to block free speech and free thinking³. “Everyone has the right to practice their religion, but nobody should block free speech”, they proclaimed. It provides me with some solace that even when the free thinking spirit is being gagged, we still have so many enlightened people on our side. Several days later, the teachers and students and online activists formed a human chain in front of Dhaka Central Jail on April 22, demanding release of four bloggers. They gathered there wearing black badges and masks and holding placards, some of which read, “Either release the arrested bloggers from jail or put us into it.”⁴

We also have the international support from a few influential organizations. IHEU, the world umbrella organization for freethinkers and humanists, issued a strong statement titled, “Government is stepping right into the trap set by these Islamic fundamentalists”⁵ . A few days later they issued another alert: ‘Call to action: Defend the bloggers of Bangladesh’⁶ . Atheist Alliance Int’l (AAI) also demanded immediate release of the bloggers. The American Humanist Society also sent a petition to the U.S. Ambassador to get involved. CNN, BBC, Huffington Post, and Slate published articles criticizing Bangladesh’s actions towards the bloggers. Psychology Today published an article on April 10, 2013 titled, ‘Atheism Shouldn’t Be a Crime: Blasphemy should be celebrated, not outlawed.’ In it, Dave Niose reminds us of the obvious, yet necessary, point that atheism should not be criminalized:

One of the many problems with the concept of protecting religion from defamation is that ideas (including religious ideas) cannot be defamed—only people can be defamed. If governments feel that any idea must be shielded from scrutiny, questioning, or even ridicule and satirical commentary, that idea must be extremely weak, or alternatively the society in question must be repressive.

This is why blasphemy should not be criminalized, but celebrated. Those subversive individuals with the bad manners to remind us that no idea is sacred—that governmental defense of any theology necessarily weakens the legitimacy of both the government and the theology—should be thanked for making us think and for reminding us that we live in a free, open society.

Nonbelievers are valuable contributors to society and deserve no inferiority complex or stigmatization, yet their government encourages it. “Theistic supremacy” is too often the official governmental line, only because politicians find it easy to pander to religious voters by exalting religious belief. It may not be akin to throwing atheists in jail, but it still isn’t right.

Amnesty International issued a statement titled, ‘Bangladesh: writers at risk of torture’. Center for Inquiry (CFI), a New York-based global secular group has requested the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to “pressure the government of Bangladesh to reverse its policy of arresting atheist bloggers who were critical to religion.” CFI sent a letter to Secretary Kerry and Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Suzan Johnson Cook “to do all they can to raise public awareness of this situation.” Other influential organizations such as Free Society Institute of South Africa, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Global Voice Advocacy, and several other bodies have also called for immediate release of the Bangladeshi bloggers and appealed to several other foreign authorities to press Bangladesh on the issue.⁷

Besides these organizations, many influential writers and activists, including Taslima Nasrin, Hemant Mehta, and Maryam Namazie, publicly expressed their support. Among them, the Iranian-born activist, commentator, broadcaster, and 2005’s Secularist of the Year award-winner, Ms. Namazie called for 25 April to be an international day to defend Bangladesh’s bloggers and activists.⁸ Dhaka University students and teachers have also called for a strike on April 25th to press for the release of the four bloggers. An international coalition of atheist and humanist organizations led by CFI also planned demonstrations in New York, Washington D.C., London, Ottawa, and other cities around the world on the same day⁹ . The rallies being organized by groups such as Center for Inquiry, American Atheists, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union were supposed to be held outside Bangladeshi embassies and consulates to demand the release of the bloggers who were arrested on charges of blasphemy.¹⁰

Then struck the Savar tragedy. An eight-story building collapsed on April 24th in Savar, a small town in the outskirts of Dhaka, killing at least 300 people and injuring more than 1,000. April 25th, the day after the tragedy, has been proclaimed the National Day of Mourning in Bangladesh. In effect, official protests to be led by CFI have been postponed to May 2nd. Dhaka University students and teachers also cancelled the strike anticipated for the 25th of April.¹¹

However, several freethinking groups, including the American Atheists and Secular Coalition for America, decided to continue with the protests that were originally planned for April 25th, since the day had already been declared “International Day to Defend Bangladesh’s Bloggers.” American Atheists led protests at the consulate office in New York City and the embassy in Washington, D.C. (with assistance from the Secular Coalition for America). Defending his decision, American Atheists’ president David Silverman said,

My decision to continue…is based on the fact that I feel this is an urgent problem. People are in jail for doing nothing but self expression, and that is wholly immoral. This protest is weeks in the making, international in scope, and we aren’t canceling it because of an impromptu day of mourning imposed by the very people imprisoning atheists like us.

Maryam Namazie led another protest rally in Trafalgar Square in London. A day prior to the demonstrations, she wrote a powerful blog titled, “While we remember the dead, let us also remember those fighting to live.” In it, she expressed:

Today 25 April has been declared a day of mourning in Bangladesh for the victims of the nation’s worst factory disaster. … Today is also the International Day to Defend Bangladesh’s Bloggers, four of whom are imprisoned, and more than 80 others who face death threats by Islamists. Here too their safety and lives have been ignored by the Government. In both these cases, the Government has failed to defend fundamental rights. Unfortunately, it is too late for the many garment factory workers. But there is still time to save Bangladesh’s bloggers. The Government must act before it is too late. On 25 April, whist we remember the dead, we must also remember those who are fighting to live.

Protests in Columbia, MO also ensued. Members of local groups of skeptics, atheists, secular humanists, and agnostics convened on Thursday at the University of Missouri’s campus to be part of the global movement.¹²

The worldwide demonstrations on May 2nd were very successful. Several humanist groups (including Center for Inquiry, CFI-Canada, and the British Humanist Association etc.) took part in places as far-reaching as the U.S., Canada (Ottawa, and New Brunswick), the UK, and Bangladesh. A few particularly moving pictures are displayed below.

It is clear that international pressure against the Bangladeshi government is rising (please refer to my piece which can be found in BDNews24, an online Bangla newspaper, and in Mukto-Mona Bangla Blog). If Bangladesh does not change its course of action, it is clear that our country will not progress. Of course, only time will tell what direction it takes. If the bloggers are kept against their will, Bangladesh will be well on its way to being a fundamentalist autocracy; if it does, however, let the bloggers go in peace, there may be some hope for redemption. For now, the cards are in the government’s hands.

Of Martians and Media

book review by Sharon Hill

“Such is the nature of the media with its focus on the unusual and the sensational that it often paints a distorted picture of the world.”

So begins Bartholomew and Radford’s book The Martians Have Landed: A History of Media-driven Panics and Hoaxes.

After this book went to press, we saw additional media panics and hoaxes in the false news spread in the hours before and during Superstorm Sandy that hit New Jersey and New York City in October of 2012, such as the nurse who committed suicide after being the victim of radio hosts calls to the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton’s hospital ward, and the public outrage, fear and conspiracy mongering that took place immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting. All of these events have their antecedents in stories documented in The Martians Have Landed.

The volume consists of 36 mostly short chapters written primarily by the two main authors but with several guests. The guests’ contributions tend to be slightly longer and more detailed, which makes for unevenness in the flow, but this book is meant to be a panoply of examples. Some of the examples feel familiar (even though I was not there), and readers can see how humans repeatedly react to the same stimuli with different variables even decades later.

Today, the Internet disperses rumor and gossip globally in hours. And once the horse is out of the barn, the act of closing the door is difficult if not impossible. And if it is, only a small sliver of the original audience hears about it. And the myths are perpetuated.

Broken into sections corresponding to the source of the story—radio, television, newspapers, the Internet, friend of a friend, and everywhere at once—this collection contains fascinating stories that you might not believe could happened…but they did. Not all the pieces are satisfying—some are too short or just end abruptly—but collectively, it’s an enjoyable parade of illustrative examples.

The first chapter hooked me. Did you know there was a major radio hoax that terrified London in 1926 before the famous H.G. Wells “War of the World” Martian invasion event? I didn’t. The best part was that American reporters noted that the same kind of thing could not happen here in the U.S. We wouldn’t fall for such mania! Yet, we did and still do. Over and over. Why?

We rely on our networks (the media, our friends and family) to inform us about trouble. It’s not that everyone is just gullible. It’s more about weighing what we see and hear and feel and making the decision we need to make from what we have to work with. If that means thinking that wild animals are on the loose in the city (Central Park Zoo escape hoax) or worrying that there is a razor wielding slasher sneaking around (Ghost slasher of Taiwan) or being paranoid that strangers are waiting around every corner to abduct our kids (Stranger Danger and the Predator Next Door), we reveal what social animals we are.

Problems arise when the information is not accurate or is a deliberate concoction. In the case of radio and TV fictional dramas that (at least some of) the audience thought was real, we see the failure of the disclaimers. People miss them or don’t pay attention. Or, other factors overwhelm assurances, such as a serious tone, historical context, or delivery from trusted sources.

For example, in a chapter devoted to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s that was sparked by a best selling book and then fueled by problematic psychotherapy techniques, the authors note that claims of upwards of 50,000 victims of kidnapping and sacrifice went unchallenged. Yet, there was not a single verified case! The tales drew from a societal fear of an evil secret network where victims were subject to horrific scenes with trusted members of the community doing unspeakable things. These stories grew in conjunction with the expansion of television programming. With the explosion of talk shows, hosts such as Geraldo Rivera garnered lots of viewers when the topic generated a moral panic such as the lurid tales of Satanic ritual abuse.

My favorite chapter was about The Batmen on the Moon, an 1835 story that marked the beginning of tabloid journalism. The hoax story included sciencey bits that are so often compelling to readers to convince them of trustworthiness. But the rival newspapers, attempting to fact check, couldn’t confirm the story and worried that they were either missing out on a huge story or, if they bit, they would look foolish for falling for a hoax. Today, with the immediate transmission of news, rumor and gossip on the same social media channels, it hardly matters. The push is for speed, not accuracy. Scoops, not integrity.

The media does not anticipate nor feel very much responsibility for the consequences of spreading less than true tales. We have seen the results in the decline of vaccination rates due to unfounded fears and the spread of conspiracy theories into the mainstream.

That’s why the topic of media-driven panics and hoaxes is very important to comprehend. We are fooled. Often. And we should remember that media is a business more so than a public service. Hyperinflation and sensationalism is the M.O. It has been in the past and will be as far as I can see down the road, and so The Martians Have Landed serves as both a history and prophetic caution for future skepticism of the media.

It’s Getting Better All the Time

book reviews by Edward Hudgins

What does the future hold for humanity? One answer—an optimistic one—is outlined in these two volumes that come at the question from two perspectives. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, takes a purely positive perspective, while Robert Zubrin’s Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism comes to its optimism by means of debunking the pessimists. As a bonus, both offer us components for a new Enlightenment synthesis that can usher in profound cultural changes well beyond the particulars in the pages of these books.

Interestingly, both Diamandis and Zubrin are prominent new space advocates who see a future for humanity in the heavens. Diamandis heads the X-Prize project. It offered $10 million to the first private party to build a reusable vehicle capable of carrying three humans into space twice in a two-week period. Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne won that prize in October 2004. Since then entrepreneur Richard Bransen has created Virgin Galaxy to use Rutan’s systems to provide commercial sub-orbital flights. In 2009 Diamandis partnered with futurist Ray Kurzweil to found Singularity University, which seeks to leverage the power of exponential technologies to meet humanity’s grand challenges. And in 2012 he co-founded Planetary Resources Inc. with space entrepreneur Eric Anderson, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, and filmmaker/explorer James Cameron, dedicated to mining asteroids.

Dr. Zubrin, with degrees in aeronautic, astronautics, and nuclear engineering, founded the Mars Society in 1998 to promote the exploration, settlement and, ultimately, terraforming of the Red Planet to make it into another habitat for humanity. His innovative mission model potentially would allow humans to visit Mars for a fraction of the cost projected by NASA. Zubrin has also written on energy policy and even penned a sci-fi satire.

Abundance is Possible

Let’s start with the thesis of Abundance:

Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standards of living for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Within a generation, we will be able to provide goods and services, once reserved for the wealthiest, to any and all who need them.

Abundance highlights advances in a number of sectors and technologies that the authors argue will work together, create synergies, and leverage one another to propel the world into an era of plenty. The authors attempt to demonstrate that building on the still-in-full-force information and communications revolutions, innovations in areas like healthcare, energy, education, robotics, and food production will yield double dividends. This, they explain, is because those innovations will allow for what F.A. Hayek called catallaxy, that is, the ever-expanding benefits of division of labor; Hayek himself applied this term to pricing, resource allocation, and all market activities. Diamandis points to three forces that, at this point in history, make exponential material progress possible.

First is the Do-It-Yourself revolution. For example, most Americans know of the late Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple Computer, operated it initially out of his parents’ garage, challenged the IBM-Big-Mainframe model, and transformed the communications and information sectors. Diamandis himself helped spur the private, low-cost commercial space revolution with the X-Prize. And Craig Venter tied the big-budgeted U.S. government in the race to decipher the human genome.

A second force is generous financial support from such techno-philanthropists as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk; the latter now heads SpaceX, which has sent two private rockets to the International Space Station. Such techno-philanthropists are funding many of the innovations that will create the prosperous world of tomorrow.

A third force is the bottom billion, the poorest of the poor who are finally plugging into the global economy thanks to the communications and information revolution and huge drops in transportation costs. Their talents and efforts are contributing to that economy of which they are also the major beneficiaries. They are becoming what Diamandis calls the “rising billion.”

With the thesis that global abundance is now possible thanks to these forces, Diamandis and Kotler turn to the revolutions in particular areas.

Drinking Water

It is estimated that the bacteria in contaminated water that causes diarrhea alone accounts for the deaths of 1.8 million children annually. So the authors introduce us to Dean Kamen, best-known as the inventor of the Segway, which we see scooting around city streets and factory warehouses. But he is also tackling the challenge of bringing potable water to the bottom billion. Kamen needed to create a device that not only could filter virtually any liquid, no matter how contaminated, into drinkable water but also that could operate in parts of the world where electrical outlets are a rarity. So Kamen employed an engine that in a pinch could even run on animal dung. The filtering device had to be small, like a mini-fridge, and rarely need repairs since obtaining spare parts in the least-developed parts of the world is often impossible. And the device had to be affordable.

Kamen created the “Slingshot,” which can produce 250 gallons of clean water per day. The cost of making a prototype was about $100,000, but with mass production he figured the device, including its engine, would cost about $5,000, with a five-year operating life. Still, even $5,000 is too pricy for the poorest of the poor. But Kamen is teaming up with Coca Cola to help build, distribute, and use its supply chain—the largest in Africa—to help maintain the Slingshot.

Health

Diagnosis is the sine qua non for any medical treatment. In the developed world the all-important X-ray is easily available, but involves quarter-million dollar machines the size of dishwashers. The authors introduce us to Carlos Camera, a UCLA grad student researching materials properties who made an important discovery. Pull a piece of scotch tape off of a roll in a dark room and you see it gives off a glow. Camera found that those little flashes, called triboluminescence, contain X-rays. So Camera teamed up with entrepreneur Dale Fox to found Tribogenics to develop the smallest and cheapest X-ray devices based on this principle. Soon poor Africans might have in their reach tools for diagnosing injuries and illnesses.

Diamandis and Kotler also introduce us to entrepreneur George Whitesides, whose long-term goal is “zero-cost diagnosis.” Here is one of his inventions to help bring this about:

A piece of paper about one centimeter on a side, able to wick fluid. Place a pinprick of blood or a drop of urine on the edge of Whitesides’s paper, and the fluid soaks in, migrating through the fibers. A hydrophobic polymer printed on this paper guides the fluids along prescribed channels, toward a set of testing wells, wherein the sample interacts with reagents, turning the paper different colors … brown in the presence of sugar … blue in the presence of protein.

The authors give us other examples of technology that not only will help the bottom billion but can deliver to those lucky enough to live in advanced counties better healthcare as well.

Education

In the chapter on education Diamandis and Kotler don’t introduce us to new killer-app inventions but, rather, show us how laptops, tablets, the Internet, and the other components of the communications and information revolution are revolutionizing teaching and learning.

The authors explain that today education in the developed world is a legacy of the 19th century Industrial Revolution. That model had teachers inserting knowledge in one-size-fits-all assembly-line style into the heads of students as they moved from one classroom to another. But while this approach brought basic literacy and knowledge to millions of people in the past, it neither reflects how children actually learn nor prepares them for a world in which information relevant for their lives is changing at an ever-increasing rate.

To show us how to think about education, the authors introduce us to Sugata Mitra, a physicist in India who got interested in education. A thick wall separated his office building from a nearby impoverished slum. So he devised an experiment:

He cut a hole in the wall and installed a computer with a track pad, with the screen and pad facing into the slum. He did it in such a way that theft was not a problem, then connected the computer to the Internet… The kids who lived in the slums could not speak English, did not know how to use a computer, and had no knowledge of the Internet, but they were curious. Within minutes, they’d figured out how to point and click. By the end of the first day they were surfing the web and … teaching one another how to surf the web.

Mitra followed through with similar experiments, seeking to understand what students could learn and retain on their own, with minimal encouragement and guidance. The answer was, a lot! The authors offer us insights concerning how technology can transform education in both the developing and developed world. Most important, they show us that education, to be effective, must be tailored to the individual student.

Entrepreneurial Drivers

We glean three important insights from the review by Diamandis and Kotler of innovators and their innovations.

First, respect for the power of human reason gives us an almost infinite capacity to change the world for the better. The pre-modern and post-modern ideologies hold that humans are ultimately ignorant and impotent in the face of divine providence or the forces of nature. This erroneous philosophical assumption has no place in the abundance worldview.

Second, individuals are the driving force behind human progress. It’s Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Venter, Kamen, Camera, Whitesides, Mitra, Rutan, Musk, Kurzweil, and a long list of others—not impersonal social forces—who make the difference between poverty and abundance.

Third, the individuals creating the world of abundance love their work. Yes, they say that they work for the good of humanity and a more prosperous world for all is certainly the result of their efforts. But it is their love of meeting impossible challenges, challenges that call on the best within them, that really motivates them and that deserves our emulation.

Environmentalist Fallacies

Arguably, the most serious concern about the abundance scenario is the authors’ views about environmental problems. They begin the book by citing the prediction of the English thinker Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) that while production grows linearly, population grows exponentially. This means that as human populations grow, there will inevitably be shortages. Populations must be limited because resources are.

Fast-forward to 1968 and we find Paul Ehrlich predicting in The Population Bomb that decades hence will find millions of dead bodies in the streets as humans run out of resources to exploit. In 1972 the Club of Rome published The Limits of Growth as a clarion call to recognize that resources and, thus, human progress are limited and that we must resign ourselves to lower living standards.

Diamandis and Kotler say that while many of the Malthusians’ “more dire predictions have failed to materialize, for the most part the years haven’t softened the assessment. Today we are still finding proof of … [their] veracity most places we look.” But the thesis of Abundance is that technology offers a way out of the Malthusian dilemma and the other concerns of environmentalists.

Perhaps we should assume that the authors are saying “all other things being equal, Malthus is right, but all other things are never equal, thanks to technology.” Or one might simply argue that the revolutions the authors highlight are good in any case even if one rejects Malthusian and extreme environmentalist assumptions and fears. But there are very serious dangers lurking in those assumptions and fears that today are undermining the vision of a bright future that the authors see as possible.

Zubrin vs. Malthus

Here we turn to Robert Zubrin’s book Merchants of Despair. Zubrin’s thesis is that two diametrically opposed views of human beings are in conflict in our world today. One is that humanity is “something precious, worth protecting and fighting for.”

Starting with the Biblical idea of the human spirit as the image of God, taken forward by Renaissance humanists defending the dignity of man, our greatest thinkers developed a concept of civilization dedicated to human betterment and “unalienable rights” among which are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”

He contrasts this view with the one expressed in a Club of Rome report, that “The World Has Cancer and the Cancer Is Man.” Zubrin explains that according to this view, humans are “a horde of vermin whose unconstrained aspirations and appetites are endangering the natural order. This is the core idea of antihumanism.” The consequence of this view is that “One does not provide liberty to vermin. One does not seek to advance the cause of cancer.”

Zubrin argues that Malthus was not simply speaking as a scientist conveying the unfortunate fact that population always outstrips food supplies and, thus, will be limited one way or another. Malthus was attacking the Enlightenment notion that “human liberty, expanded knowledge, and technological progress could ultimately make possible a decent life for all mankind.”

Zubrin next turns to a review of the assault on humans unleashed by what he calls “Darwinism.” Charles Darwin himself described how the process of natural selection and the struggle for survival explains the emergence of various species. But as Zubrin explains, “this purported universal law of nature when applied to human affairs leads to wildly incorrect conclusions … and catastrophically unethical policies.” Zubrin is clear that he accepts evolution as a fact; he’s no Creationist. He might, however, be open to criticism for the constant use of the term “Darwinism.” Today Creationists, who are enemies of science and reason, focus on the unsound ideas and immoral policies—documented by Zubrin—that were promoted in the past as extensions of evolution. Then, in an intellectually dishonest move, these Creationists suggest that these ideas and policies discredit the fact of evolution itself.

But Zubrin’s discussion is of more than antiquarian interest. First, the essence of the antihuman idea perpetuated by the Darwinists was placing the group above the wellbeing of individuals, an idea that’s still very much a threat to humanity today. And second, many of the very individuals who promoted the mistaken applications of Darwin’s insights later went on to found and to influence major parts of today’s environmental movement. Zubrin reviews the well-known horrors of Nazi eugenics and the attempts to create a Master Race on piles of human corpses, done in the name of Darwin. What is eye-opening is Zubrin’s documentation of how many prominent individuals in Western Europe and America also were seeking a better race at the expense of the individual before this goal was discredited by the Nazis. Progressive president Teddy Roosevelt, for example, argued that in Europe “the amount of Nordic blood in each nation is a very fair measure of its strength in war and standing in civilization.” And he argued that “It has taken us fifty years to learn that speaking English, wearing good clothes and going to school and to church does not transform a Negro into a white man.”

Zubrin writes of institutions and their backers seeking a superior race justified on Darwinian grounds. In 1894 the Immigration Restriction League was founded to keep “undesirables” like Jews and southern Europeans out of America. In 1905 the American Breeders Association, dedicated to producing better dogs, added a human genetics section. The second and third International Eugenics Congresses were held at the American Museum of Natural History; Henry Fairfield Osborn, the museum’s long-time president, arranged those meetings. The Eugenics Record Office was founded in 1910 and funded by the famous Harriman and Rockefeller families; it advocated forced sterilization. Zubrin relates how even feminist icon Margaret Sanger promoted this policy. Zubrin explains “scientific error in ascribing human progress to natural selection of hereditary traits”:

Human beings, unlike other organisms, are capable of systematically passing on information through non-hereditary means, such as artifacts and words. … Because people can use their minds to create novel adaptations varying from technological innovations to better forms of social organization, human progress is chiefly governed by what people accomplish during their lives, rather than chiefly through the process of their winnowing out by death.

Too Many People?

After World War II, many of those involved in the eugenics movement, rather than acknowledging their errors, shifted their focus to controlling population size or to imbuing the environment with a value superior to humans. For example, Frederick Osborne, Henry Fairfield Osborne’s nephew, had been president of the American Eugenics Society and of the racist Pioneer Fund, which praised many Nazi policies in the 1930s. After the war he teamed up with John D. Rockefeller III to found the Population Council. In the decades that followed, they and others of their ilk spread the “people are pollution” dogma. As Zubrin explained, “Instead of seeking to rid the world of poverty, the new goal would be to rid the world of the poor.”

Population control became a centerpiece of American foreign aid. Funds were doled out to help countries not so much develop their economies, but to limit the number of their people.

Diamandis and Kotler rightly echo Zubrin in denouncing the attempts to control population by government, which often involved forced sterilizations and other such abuses. The Abundance authors argue, correctly, that as health improves in poorer countries, populations naturally stabilized. Parents are assured that most of their children won’t die before adulthood, that they will have offspring to take care of them in their old age, and thus they don’t need large families. But Zubrin would argue that Diamandis and Kotler need to appreciate what motivates many in the population control and environmental movements. For example, Paul Ehrlich stated that:

A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. … We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense.

When he advocated forcibly sterilizing every man in India with over three children, he said “Coercion? … Perhaps, but coercion in a good cause.” One can hardly think of a more Malthusian moral monster than Ehrlich. Yet he is still treated with adoration by many environmentalists today and even received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 1990, decades after his failed Population Bomb predictions.

Antihuman Environmentalism

Zubrin reviews a number of hot button concerns of environmentalists. He does not criticize those environmentalists who wish to reduce real and measurable threats to the lives and health of humans from, for example, polluted air or water but, rather, those who would prefer to reduce the lives and health of humans.

Zubrin shows that one of the greatest boons to humanity was DDT, which was utilized as an insecticide starting in the 1930s. During World War II it was credited with saving tens of thousands of lives by killing lice and other vermin. In subsequent years it saved millions of lives in India, South Africa, and many other countries. For his role in adapting its use for public health, Paul Müller won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1948.

But Zubrin shows us how many environmentalists raised their voices in opposition. Most notably, in Silent Spring, published in 1962, Rachel Carson offered scientifically unsound hysteria that became a cause célèbre for the environmentalists. Even though no studies have shown DDT to be a major danger to birds, as Carson contended, much less humans, American politicians worked to ban it and to promote the ban in other countries. Zubrin says perhaps 100 million died in subsequent decades, mostly in Africa, because of restrictions on DDT.

Zubrin reviews the “Green Revolution” that started in the 1950s. Its hero was Norman Borlaug who, with his team, produced genetically modified strains of wheat and rice that could grow in a wider variety of environments and increase crop yields many-fold. Countries like India were finally able to feed their people. But many environmentalists were not celebrating this incredible achievement. Zubrin contends that their opposition to such crops was not based on any scientifically demonstrable health hazards; indeed, if the options are either starving or eating something that might bring a minor disease risk increase, it’s an easy choice. Rather, it was from a deep-seated antihumanism.

Because the documented benefits of such crops were clear and the downsides non-existent, Zubrin argues that opponents offered a bit of intellectual flimflam known as the “Precautionary Principle”: No invention should be permitted that cannot be proven in advance to be completely harmless. By this criterion, virtually none of the products, innovations, and technology that make up the modern world would have been allowed. Indeed, the fires lite by the first cavemen would have been quickly stomped out.

Zubrin similarly examines the environmentalist opposition to nuclear power, which he argues is an inexpensive and safe alternative to fossil fuels. For motive, he quotes Ehrlich, with Richard Harriman, saying “Power is too cheap. It should certainly be made more expensive and, perhaps, rationed, in order to reduce its frivolous use.”

Zubrin also examines the global warming controversy. He concedes that in the past century there has been a small amount of warming, that CO₂ is a likely culprit, and that humans played a role. But he argues that over many centuries and millennia the climate has changed radically, without the help of humans and without destroying humans. He contends that warming is slowing and that the adverse effects on humans of proposed policies to slow it further would dwarf the alleged adverse consequences of warming. Again, Zubrin tells us that for many environmentalists, “The cure of choice for global warming is human sacrifice.”

In all of the cases Zubrin reviews, one could argue that individuals sought to protect humans from harmful technologies, products, or practices. No doubt this is what many rank-and-file environmentalists believe. And it is always risky to ascribe to individuals insidious motivation rather than honest error. Some readers will be put off by the moral damnations that Zubrin offers. But Zubrin allows many of his subjects to damn themselves in their own words and their callousness toward individuals—sterilization, starvation—that cannot be excused as innocent. And he might have pointed to recent calls for radical reductions in population as evidence of the accelerating erosion of humanist values.

And there are those today who grant intrinsic value to nature apart from its value to humans—valuing a forest because we enjoy its beauty or harvest its trees for lumber. This implies nature has “rights” and that we humans must sacrifice our own wellbeing lest we violate them. That is antihumanism. Zubrin challenges readers to examine closely their own beliefs.

A New Enlightenment

This brings us back to the thesis of Abundance and the unquestioned philosophical assumptions and values held by the inquirer wishing to know if humanity’s material future is bright or bleak. Diamandis and Kotler persuade us that prosperity is possible and inspire us with examples of those who are creating such a benevolent world. But they would be wise to heed Zubrin’s warnings of the antihuman ideology in the environmental movement. To overcome this ideology, these authors should understand that human well-being must be the beacon for guiding all value judgments and that the human unit is not the group but the individual. Zubrin is right that “Human beings, on balance, are creators, not destroyers.” That’s how Diamandis and Kotler see the “bottom billion” who they want to empower to rise and flourish rather than to kill off. Indeed, to be a human is to create the means of one’s physical survival and spiritual wellbeing.

We see in the optimism of Diamandis and Kotler, and in the insistence by Zubrin that we must always put humans first, the elements of a new Enlightenment synthesis that can take up where the first Enlightenment left off that transformed the world over three centuries ago.

Witch Doctors and Con Artists
A First-Hand Account of Witchcraft in Africa

by Justin Chapman

I’m a freelance reporter and travel writer. Over the course of three months in 2012 I traveled by myself by buses and trains from Cape Town, South Africa to Mityana, Uganda. One of the things that struck me was the apparent contradiction of the practice of witchcraft, especially in East Africa. As I reached Zambia I started to hear about the history of witchcraft. I was surprised to find out in Uganda that the practice is still very much alive, even among otherwise intelligent people.

The Ugandan constitution allows all kinds of worship, but has a (very weak) provision from 1957 called the “Witchcraft Act” setting forth punishments for those who practice it. However, a court later voided the sections about witchcraft for having vague definitions. You are not allowed to threaten someone with witchcraft, but proving that someone has practiced it, let alone succeeded in utilizing evil spirits, is impossible at best.

Unfortunately, the villagers are wary of modern hospitals and doctors, and once they are convinced witchcraft is being practiced, the sick will not visit a hospital because they think the doctors will not be able to find, let alone cure, the problem. This really is a tragedy because if someone has malaria, for instance, obviously the hospital is the place to go. But if they believe witchcraft is the source, they won’t go, leaving themselves open to sickness and death.

While in Uganda I traveled around with a local journalist named Luke Kagiri and helped him cover his various assignments. One day we rode on a boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) about halfway between Mityana and the capital city of Kampala, about an hour’s ride, for a witchcraft ceremony. The driver turned off the highway onto a walking path that led us deep into the bush to the village where a man named Ronald Kapungu had been accused of practicing witchcraft or hiring witch doctors to curse a nearby family. As proof of Ronald’s wrongdoing, the afflicted family claimed that a male relative had died, the husband was supposedly acting crazy like he was possessed, and the wife was ill.

Several villagers had attacked Ronald’s house the week before and he fled the village, hundreds of miles away. Riot police had to come and shoot tear gas into the crowd to disperse them. So the villagers called a “traditional healer” to come and use his “powers” to confirm or deny whether Ronald had in fact been practicing witchcraft.

When Luke and I arrived, there were about 200 people from the surrounding small villages to witness the ceremony. I was the only mzungu (white person) there. Of course everyone was staring at me, but they knew I was with Luke and that we were filming the ceremony for Bukedde TV, the local news station. This gave us access that the crowd didn’t have.

Under the Ugandan constitution, large gatherings of people are not allowed without permission from the police and without police presence. Indeed, there were several uniformed officers, who stood in front of the crowd (which was compacted together on a small hill 20 feet from Ronald’s battered house, people watching among the trees, cows, pigs, and chickens in the bush) while riot police, automatic rifles at the ready, stood at various points in a circle about 40 feet from and around the crowd.

The traditional healer, a well-dressed man in his late 50s wearing an expensive watch (not what you would picture a witchcraft healer would look like or be wearing), had to get clearance from the local police as well as the chiefs of the village before he arrived.

The healer took his time, walking around the square house, tapping at various things with his black walking stick that curved near the top like a handle and continued up another foot (supposedly the source of his “powers”), and finally entering the house to look around. He didn’t bring a bag, but two men came with him and one of them had a thick black rain jacket on with many pockets. The healer exited the house and the three of them took a canister filled with local brew and walked around the perimeter of the house, splashing the alcohol against the outside walls of the house. They did the same thing with a canister of milk, then one of the guys tossed small stones up to hit the tin awning that stretched out beyond the roof.

The healer then placed a bag of flour and a wooden bowl filled with an unknown substance at the foot of the door. He lit his pipe, smoked slowly, answered his expensive cell phone and talked for a minute or so, looked around like he didn’t care, and used his stick to mix the substance in the bowl. After smoking for a few minutes, he went back into the house. Luke motioned for me to follow him. We walked into the house in time to see the healer’s associate, the one wearing the black rain coat, slip a curved, cone-shaped wooden handle with herbs sticking out of the top into a soft, weathered briefcase on the ground.

We went outside and the healer emerged with the bag, which he informed the crowd he suspected contained the witchcraft items.

After another few minutes he opened the bag and pulled out the wooden handle. He held it up to show the crowd (see photo at top of this article), which went wild with excitement, for this was supposed to be the witchcraft item used by Ronald to bewitch the family. I already knew the whole thing was baloney, of course, but when I saw what the healer did, I realized the scam. The man who was wearing the black raincoat had the cone-shaped handle hidden in his jacket pocket the entire time.

Their suspicions confirmed, the villagers began throwing large pieces of wood into a pile in front of the house to make a fire. They brought two chickens over and removed the feathers from their necks, then sliced the heads off right in front of me and threw them into the pile. A guy doused the wood with kerosene and lit the fire. The healer threw the bags in as well as the witchcraft item, which supposedly contained all the evil spirits. People grabbed whatever they could and threw the stuff into the fire. More gas was splashed on, and it became the tallest, hottest bonfire I’d ever seen. Everyone had to back away about 20 feet because it was so hot.

Then the already elated, besotted crowd marched behind the healer down a path to the victim family’s home, about 100 yards down the hill. Luke and I ran in front to get pictures and film the single file hikers. When we got there, the healer approached the sick woman and rubbed the curve of his stick around her head, muttered a few words, and gently lifted his hands to the air, as if to say, “Evil spirits be gone.”

I followed the healer into the victim family’s home, which he inspected thoroughly but still with an uninterested attitude. I saw the room where the family members slept, on thin mats on a hard floor.

The crowd was angry. They wanted vengeance. Everyone marched back to Ronald’s house with the intention of destroying it. The police were there to stop them, and Luke told me, “If there is violence, stand behind the police, because they will shoot in front of them into the crowd, not behind.” So we stayed behind the police who stood between the crowd and the house. Ronald’s father, a very old, frail man on crutches, claimed that his son was innocent. The police told the crowd to disperse. The crowd timidly backed off, but would surely be back later to demolish the house.

The police told Luke and me that they were leaving and that we should leave as well, because if something happened they would not be able to protect us. I wanted to see some mob violence, but it’s probably better that we got back on the boda-boda and booked it out of there, following the healer who also rode on a boda-boda. I didn’t think we were in danger but Luke told me that the crowd knew they could be identified on television and so when the police left they could potentially attack us.

The villagers will go looking for Ronald, and if they find him or if he ever returns to the village, he will be killed. Many people die this way. Even if Ronald was practicing witchcraft or had hired a witch doctor to put a curse on the family, so what? This stuff isn’t real. The only thing he is allegedly guilty of is sending bad vibes. The accused are the victims, not the “bewitched.” People practice witchcraft in Africa for various reasons, but usually because they are jealous of someone for having more money, allegedly having an affair, having beautiful children…anything. And people are killed and their homes destroyed because of it.

Meanwhile, the traditional healer is paid between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Ugandan shillings (about $200–$400 U.S.) for his “services,” which is a lot of money for villagers to cough up. He’s ripping them off, and he also adds to the confusion by spreading rumors about certain people practicing witchcraft.

According to the Ugandan constitution, in order for the police or a traditional healer or anyone to search your home, they must have a search warrant, like in America. At this ceremony, they had no search warrant and yet the healer and others were allowed to enter Ronald’s home, search it, seize items from it, burn them, probably destroy the house, and later most likely murder him. If Ronald knew the law, which he doesn’t, he could sue the police, the healer, and others. He could say his name and image were tarnished and be compensated 2,000,000 shillings for that as well as for the destruction of his home and property, such as the bags. The chances that he would win the case are extremely high, because how can anyone prove in court that evil spirits were the cause of the victim family’s illnesses and death? I told Luke I wanted to help Ronald, to give him the pictures and footage we took of the ceremony so he could use them in court to prove he was not served with a search warrant.

“Ronald could only use the footage and pictures if we published them in the newspaper or broadcast them on TV,” Luke told me. “If we supply him with the raw clips and photos, the villagers would think we were spies trying to help him the whole time, instead of attending the ceremony to write and shoot a legitimate journalism story about it.”

We would be outcasts in the community, and since Luke lived there and people knew who he was, he couldn’t do that for Ronald. The fact remains that if these people really want to hold onto this outdated belief system, fine. But why not try a healer and a real doctor in a real hospital? What have they got to lose? They just think it’s a waste of time, because the real reason for unexplainable things is invisible spirits and powers that can’t be proved. The fact that Ugandans are mostly Christian doesn’t dissuade uneducated segments of the population from letting go of their superstitious beliefs regarding witchcraft.

How interesting. How bizarre.

Scientology Exposed

book reviews by Jim Lippard

Times are tough for the Church of Scientology. Since Skeptic’s Scientology cover issue went to press near the end of 2011, the Church of Scientology has faced increasing media attention on revelations from high-ranking defectors as well as internal criticism over its strategy of continual fundraising to build “Ideal Orgs” (or, as some wags have dubbed them, “Idle Morgues”). The latter spilled over into public view as the result of an email sent to thousands of Scientologists on December 31, 2011 which argued that this fundraising violates L. Ron Hubbard’s policies, citing and quoting chapter and verse. The sender was (at the time) a Scientologist in good standing who was well known to members of the Church—Debbie Cook, former Flag Service Organization captain known as the “face of the Sea Org” for her appearances in Sea Org recruiting videos. The Church of Scientology sued her in January, but was embarrassed by her testimony in an open court hearing in February about the abuses she witnessed at Scientology’s “Int Base,” where executives were kept in prison-like conditions in a pair of double-wide trailers known as “The Hole.” The case was quickly settled in April, and Cook moved to the Caribbean and then to Mexico.

2013 is shaping up to be even worse for the Church. In just the first six weeks of the year three major critical books have been published and an hour-long critical documentary aired on cable television. On January 7, BBC journalist John Sweeney’s The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology, was published. On January 16, a documentary of Nancy Many’s My Billion-Year Contract, about her time in the Sea Org including her time in Scientology’s dirty tricks organization—the Guardian Office—aired on the new Investigation Discovery channel. January 17 saw the publication of Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, a book that grew out of his February 14, 2011 New Yorker story, “The Apostate,” a profile of Oscar-winning film director Paul Haggis’s noisy departure from Scientology. And last but not least, a memoir from the niece of the head of the Church of Scientology, Jenna Miscavige Hill’s Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape, was published on February 5.

Timed to distract from the Many documentary and Wright book, the Church of Scientology paid $50,000 for an “advertorial” on the website of The Atlantic magazine on January 15. The piece, titled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year,” argued that Scientology is growing like never before, citing the opening of numerous “Ideal Orgs.” The Atlantic’s “sponsored content” prompted such a backlash that the article was pulled from the website before the day was over. On February 3, perhaps in an attempt to garner some distracting publicity from Jenna Miscavige Hill’s book, Scientology purchased television advertising in several local markets during the Super Bowl’s half time to air an advertisement, titled “Knowledge,” which it had already released on YouTube on December 18.

Each of these books recounts a different slice of life experience with Scientology. Sweeney’s book reports the experience of a critical journalist as Scientology’s power to intimidate is beginning to decline, Hill’s book is about growing up as a third-generation Scientologist and family relation of the head of the Church, and Wright’s book focuses on Scientology as seen by its senior executive clergy and celebrities.

Wright’s book, Going Clear, is a carefully researched, detailed, and entertaining story that follows the life story of Paul Haggis from his youth in London, Ontario where he was first recruited into Scientology, to his successful career in Hollywood as a writer and director, with side trips into the life of L. Ron Hubbard, current head of the church David Miscavige, and other celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta. In the process, Wright explains much of Scientology doctrine and history, often uncovering new facts not reported in previous books.

Wright begins with Haggis’ adoption of Scientology after being handed a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and being told, “You have a mind. This is the owner’s manual. Give me two dollars” (p. 3). Haggis becomes a representative of the typical public (and subsequently celebrity) Scientologist for Wright, who notes in the book’s introduction that “Few Scientologists have had a conversion experience—a sudden, radical reorientation of one’s life; more common is a gradual, wholehearted acceptance of propositions that might have been regarded as unacceptable or absurd at the outset, as well as the incremental surrender of will on the part of people who have been promised enhanced power and authority” (pp. xii–xiii). Haggis moved to Hollywood, became “Clear” #5925, and then established himself as a successful writer. Although he recognized that parts of Scientology seemed absurd—including in particular Scientology’s origin myth about Xenu the galactic warrior—Haggis has “no doubt…that he had gained some practical benefits from his several years of auditing and that his communication skills had improved” (p. 17). Because he was immersed in a community where Scientology was prevalent, with his wife, sister, and circle of friends as adherents, he came “to understand implicitly that those relationships would be jeopardized if he chose to leave the church” (pp. 17–18). These become some of the bars of the “Prison of Belief” of the book’s subtitle.

The event that ultimately led to Haggis’ departure from the church was the apparent sponsorship of California’s Proposition 8 by the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Tommy Davis, then still a spokesman for the church, said that it wasn’t actually the San Diego church that had adopted a position on the proposition, but “one guy who somehow got it in his head it would be a neat idea [to] put Church of Scientology San Diego on the list.” Davis got the church removed from the list (p. 310). Haggis, however, insisted that the Church of Scientology should issue a public statement disclaiming responsibility, while Davis declined, saying that a public statement would simply give undeserved attention to the issue. While Davis thought the issue was resolved since he heard nothing more from Haggis, Haggis began investigating criticisms of Scientology on the Internet. In the process, he came across a YouTube video in which Davis, acting as public spokesman for the church, falsely denied the existence of the practice of “disconnection” from family members or friends who are critical of the church. Haggis developed more reasons to leave, culminating in writing and sending a letter of resignation to Davis that used the church’s stance on homosexuality as the primary reason for his departure. Davis tried to bring Haggis back in to the church, but when Haggis gave permission for former #2 in the church, ex-member Marty Rathbun, to post the resignation letter on his blog, Haggis became a lost cause.

Wright’s book is an excellent introduction to the Church of Scientology, its history, and its doctrines, with a focus on the celebrity experience from recruitment to disillusion, and on what keeps current celebrity members involved. The odd experiences of Tom Cruise, who drifted away from the church only to be pulled back in, illustrate life at the very top of Scientology. David Miscavige, “chairman of the board” (“COB”) of the Religious Technology Center, who runs the church, lives a lavish lifestyle which Wright describes in detail, including his eating habits (dinner is a five-course meal, with a choice from two prepared entrees), sleeping habits (he regularly starts his day at noon, and ends at 3 or 4 a.m.), travel habits (he flies by Boeing business jet, accompanied by his hairdresser and chiropractor) and his acquisitions (he collects guns, motorcycles, automobiles, and expensive clothing) (pp. 271–272). Meanwhile, many Scientology staff work long hours for sub-minimum wage and dine on beans and rice.

The book is another damning critique of the Church of Scientology’s corruption, deception, and extraction of money from its members to build its “Super Power” building in Clearwater and its “Ideal Orgs.” Wright estimates that it has $1 billion in liquid assets and 12 million square feet of real estate worldwide, including 26 properties in Hollywood worth $400 million. There’s a stark discrepancy between Scientology’s claims and reality, which was presaged by Hubbard’s tall tales in his youth. While members think that Scientology was the product of scientific research by Hubbard, Wright’s re-examination of Hubbard’s life shows, once again, that Hubbard mixed his own tall tales and subjective experience with things he picked up from others—Korzybski, Parsons, Crowley, the U.S. Navy, and so on—to create the policies and doctrines of Scientology.

Wright’s book, though lacking the daring escape stories or depth of reporting on the Lisa McPherson case that are strengths in Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology, seems to me to more comprehensively describe Scientology doctrine and history than her account. Scientology has responded to his book similar as it did to hers, by denying its accuracy (resulting in numerous humorous footnotes in the book reporting Scientology’s absurd denials of reports by multiple witnesses). The only error I’ve seen noted in the book is his mistaken dating of Hubbard’s “tomato auditing” photo to 1968 (instead of 1959 or 1960), an error which is widespread apparently due to Life magazine’s attribution of the photo to the Evening Standard, January 1, 1968.

Wright closes his book with a comparison to other religions—Islam, Christianity, Amish and Mennonite communities, Christian Science, and especially Mormonism, a religion whose early history seems to have many parallels with Scientology. As Wright puts it, “Joseph Smith was plainly a liar” (p. 355). But such observations are unlikely to get through to the prisoner of belief, as Haggis found when he tried to persuade his friends in Scientology to read material critical of Scientology in the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times), only to be told by composer Mark Isham that “it was like reading Mein Kampf if you wanted to know something about the Jewish religion” (p. 328). If a reputable newspaper criticizes your religion, it must be equivalent to Nazi propaganda and therefore not worth reading. But for those who do read the material, even if they first rationalize it away as the false complaints of unethical apostates, as Scientology encourages its members to believe, they often accumulate personal experiences confirming what they’ve read, which helps them find their way out. I hope that Wright’s book will help.

When investigative journalist John Sweeney set out to make a segment of the BBC documentary series Panorama about Scientology in 2007, he had some idea of the risks involved, but was unable to prepare sufficiently to avoid famously losing his temper in response to prodding from Church of Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis. The YouTube video of that outburst was picked up by the mass media and seen by millions.

This book, the first of three major books about Scientology published in the first six weeks of 2013, is narrowly focused on a specific set of events in 2007, when Sweeney conducted his investigation and interviews for what became Panorama’s “Scientology and Me.” What makes this book remarkable is that it doesn’t just include Sweeney’s perspective, it includes a Church of Scientology viewpoint, as revealed from recent leaks of internal documents and interviews with high-level defectors who coordinated the response to Sweeney’s investigation and who have now been speaking out. They were monitoring his activities, having him followed, and periodically confronting him, sometimes while he was in the middle of interviews with Scientology critics and defectors. The inside information shows how the Church, at a turning point in its history, dealt with a perceived threat.

While Sweeney received much less harassment than investigators of prior decades (notably Paulette Cooper, Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos of the Los Angeles Times, Richard Behar of Time magazine, and Richard Leiby of the Washington Post), it was apparently much more focused attention than recent investigators such as Janet Reitman and Lawrence Wright (so far as we know to date, anyway). Then-church media spokesman Tommy Davis and head of the Office of Special Affairs Mike Rinder were the key players against Sweeney, along with a “Communicator” apparently being told what to say by David Miscavige (like a Stanley Milgram “Cyranoid”). Though Rinder was nominally the senior, Sweeney perceived him at the time to be of lesser status—confirmed by the fact that Rinder had only been spending time in “The Hole,” a sort of prison for out-of-favor senior executives, but had been released to work against Sweeney. Rinder and Davis have now both left Scientology, though only Rinder is speaking out publicly.

Also noteworthy in Sweeney’s book is the record he establishes of Scientologists who have reached Operating Thetan III, yet are perfectly willing to lie by issuing false denials of familiarity with the story of the evil Galactic overlord Xenu found in that level of Scientology. Sweeney states: “A ‘religion’ that hides its core belief from the world is not a religion because a true religion must be open about itself to all.” But this is a tendentious definition of “true religion” (Sweeney attributes it to the Charity Commission in the UK) that excludes esoteric and occult traditions, as well as the Druze faith. It is in fact not uncommon for religious traditions to excuse both secrecy and lying to non-members about the secrets.

The book is somewhat marred by a number of errors including repeated misspellings of the names of Kirstie Alley, Kendrick Moxon, and the Kia Sedona minivan. More significant mistakes include an assertion that Hubbard was a friend of Aleister Crowley (they never met, though Hubbard lived with Crowley follower John Parsons in 1945–46 and borrowed elements of Scientology from Crowley’s work), and a claim that in 1993 the “Inland [sic: Internal] Revenue Service reversed its previous position and declared the Church a religion” (the IRS doesn’t determine what counts as a religion).

Sweeney’s book doesn’t cover the broad ground of books like Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear and Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology, but it is an entertaining and revealing look at the experiences of a journalist investigating Scientology at a turning point in its history.

Jenna Miscavige Hill was a third-generation Scientologist. Her maternal grandmother, Janna Blythe, started with Hubbard’s science fiction in the 1950s, was an advocate of Dianetics by 1957, and joined Scientology in 1969. Blythe and her husband and their nine children all joined the Sea Org on the ship Excalibur, but most returned to being “public” Scientologists after only a few months. Jenna’s mother, Elizabeth or “Bitty,” refused to leave the ship even though she was still a minor. On her father’s side, her grandfather, Ronald Miscavige Sr., also brought his whole family into Scientology when he joined in the 1970s. His two sons, Ron Jr. and David, both joined the Sea Org as teenagers. Jenna’s parents had been Scientologists for 15 years by the time she was born, though they both left the Sea Org beforehand. But just before she was two, they decided to rejoin the Sea Org, at about the same time her uncle David was taking control of the entire Church of Scientology.

Beyond Belief tells Jenna Miscavige Hill’s story of life growing up not only in Scientology, but in the Sea Org as a close relative of the head of the church. While her name gave her some occasional benefits, her family’s lifestyle was not like that of her uncle (described in Lawrence Wright’s book). Her parents’ positions in the Sea Org meant that in her early years she lived in a small two-bedroom apartment with another family, the Rinders. She would go for months at a time without seeing her mother, and would often see her father only once a week. She thought that joining the Sea Org herself held the promise of seeing her parents more often, and she signed her own billion-year contract at the age of 7. But the promise was a false one, and she saw less of them rather than more. Her exposure to the world outside of Scientology was virtually nil, and once she was in the Sea Org, even the life of a public Scientologist became foreign to her.

As a child cadet in the Sea Org, Jenna lived at a Scientology boarding school known as “The Ranch” in the California desert, not far from Int Base at Gilman Hot Springs, where her father and uncle lived. Her days would begin at 6:30 a.m. with cleaning, followed by morning muster, roll call, and personal inspections at 7 a.m. This was followed by “Chinese school,” where students would repetitively and in unison read aloud L. Ron Hubbard quotations written on sheets of butcher paper. All cadets had assigned work positions in a formal organizational structure with children as commanding officers. Seven-year-old Jenna’s assigned post was Medical Liaison Officer responsible for treating sick children (p. 55) and providing vitamins to the healthy. While Scientology didn’t permit the use of medicine for the treatment of pain or fever (“touch assists” were prescribed for such ailments), it did allow for MMR vaccinations (p. 57). At 9:15 a.m. was second muster, followed by “deck work” or labor intensive projects, which lasted until 12:45 p.m. on weekdays and all day long on Saturdays. Projects included laundry, pool cleaning, weeding, planting trees, digging trenches, and hauling rocks. Hard labor in the “Heavy MEST [Scientology acronym for matter, energy, space, and time] Work Unit” was assigned as punishment for underperformers (p. 61). After deck work came lunch and cleanup, followed by academic course work from 1:45 p.m. to 6 p.m. Following Hubbard’s educational methods, there was no formal instruction, but only self-directed study under the watchful eye of a “course supervisor.” Dinner and more cleanup ran from 6–6:45 p.m., and the study of Scientology until 9 p.m. Hubbard policy applied to all aspects of life, and courses had to be taken and their prescriptions followed for everything—how to clean a room, how to make a bed, and how to ride a bicycle (p. 80).

While Jenna found this environment unpleasant, she was afraid to complain about it to her parents and instead decided to run away with another unhappy cadet, stealing fresh eggs from a chicken coop that were reserved for her uncle. They were quickly apprehended and assigned to “lower conditions” as punishment, which forced them to work their way back into the good graces of their fellow cadets. She notes that this was actually the second time she had stolen her uncle’s eggs, having previously taken some and put them into a dresser drawer hoping to hatch chicks. When she was caught at that, she was forced to write a letter of confession to David Miscavige. Rather than getting in trouble, he “wrote…back and explained that my drawer was probably not warm enough for the eggs, and that I would need an incubator if I wanted to succeed in hatching them” (pp. 83–84).

Several of Jenna’s early experiences with her uncle, described in the book, depict him as a normal, kindly relative, even as she started to accumulate evidence that her parents were hiding something from her. For example, while living with her mother, who was a senior Sea Org executive in Clearwater with a nice apartment to herself, she would occasionally visit her mother’s office. Her mother told her not to be in the office when her Uncle Dave was there. On one occasion she heard him coming down the hall and tried unsuccessfully to hide, which he subsequently joked about with her (pp. 139–140). Her father similarly escorted her out of a situation where Miscavige was about to berate some staff over a sound system problem at a Scientology event (p. 141).

After her mother got caught having an affair and was put on the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), Jenna started receiving “sec checks,” E-meter sessions that were intended to uncover evidence of wrongdoing rather than self-improvement (p. 185). Her brother was also put on the RPF, and ended up leaving the church. In 1997, she saw people protesting the death of Lisa McPherson at the Ft. Harrison Hotel building in downtown Clearwater. Some picket signs made reference to Xenu, the Galactic overlord of OT III, which Scientologists are not permitted to know about until they are properly trained. Sea Org members were no longer permitted to walk between buildings, but instead were shuttled in vans with contact paper over the windows to shield them from seeing the dangerous material (pp. 221–222). The only error I noted in the book was Hill’s statement that the Lisa McPherson Trust, which helped organize these protests, had “a staff of five, four of whom were former Scientologists, the fifth was [funder Bob] Minton” (p. 220); Jeff Jacobsen and Mark Bunker were two LMT staff members who were never Scientologists.

The book continues with her life through the reconciliation of her parents and their departure from the Church of Scientology, and her decision to stay even though she was still under 18. The church remained suspicious of her loyalties and controlling of her life, which caused further friction when her love life was involved. An assignment to Canberra, Australia with her new husband gave her a level of exposure to the world outside of Scientology and a chance to examine information critical of Scientology online. Ultimately, she departed the church, reunited with her family, and became a co-founder of exscientologykids.org.

Beyond Belief is one of the better books by an ex-member. While she suffered nothing like the abuses of members who were assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF), physically beaten by senior executives, coerced to have abortions, and separated from their spouses, her book is unique in a number of respects. I believe it is the only book by a third-generation Scientologist that describes life as a child of parents in the Sea Org, and certainly is the only book by someone in such a position who is also a relative of the head of the Church of Scientology. Jenna Hill didn’t advance very far “up the Bridge,” during her time in the church—she didn’t even become clear, let alone achieve any of the OT levels, and, like most of the general public who has heard of Xenu, she learned about OT III from the animated television series South Park (p. 372). Her lack of progress in Scientology and the occasional preferential treatment she received will likely be used by Scientology as reasons why her book should be disregarded. But the contrary lesson is probably the better one—her story shows that even members of the head of the Church of Scientology’s own family get mistreated, which is why David Miscavige’s brother, his brother’s family, and his own father have left.