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The Drake Equation is the famous formula developed by the astronomer Frank Drake for estimating the number of extraterrestrial civilizations:

N = R × f_p × n_e × f_l × f_i × f_c × L where…

• N = the number of communicative civilizations,
• R = the rate of formation of suitable stars,
• f_p = the fraction of those stars with planets,
• n_e = the number of earth-like planets per solar system,
• f_l = the fraction of planets with life,
• f_i = the fraction of planets with intelligent life,
• f_c = the fraction of planets with communicating technology, and
• L = the lifetime of communicating civilizations.

The equation is so ubiquitous that it has even been employed in the popular television series The Big Bang Theory for computing the number of available sex partners within a 40-mile radius of Los Angeles (5,812). My favorite parody of it is by the cartoonist Randall Munroe as one in a series of his clever science send-ups, entitled “The Flake Equation” (on xkcd.com) for calculating the number of people who will mistakenly think they had an ET encounter.

Such multiplicative equations for calculating the product of an increasingly restrictive series of fractional values are effective tools for making back-of-the-envelope calculations to solve problems for which we do not have precise data. To that end I thought it a useful addition to the Skeptic toolbox to create a Flake Equation for all paranormal and supernatural experiences (and in the Flake Equation I’m interested not in beliefs but in actual experiences that people report and that we hear about, because this becomes the foundation of paranormal and supernatural beliefs):

N = P_w × f_p × f_m × f_t × n_t × n_o × f_m where…

• N = Number of people we hear about who report having experienced a paranormal or supernatural phenomena,
• P_w = Population of the United States (January 1, 2012: 312,938,813),
• f_p = Fraction of people who report having had an anomalous psychological experience or witnessed an unusual physical phenomena (1/5),
• f_m = Fraction of people who interpret such experiences and phenomena as paranormal or supernatural (1/5),
• f_t = Fraction of people who tell someone about their experience (1/10),
• n_t = Number of people they tell (15),
• n_o = Number of other people told the story by original hearers (15), and
• f_m = Fraction of such stories reported in the media or on Internet blogs, tweets, and forums (1/10).

N = 28,164,493, or about 9 percent of the U.S. population.

To compute this figure I used the 2005/2007 Baylor Religion Survey, which reports that

• 23.2% say that they have “witnessed a miraculous, physical healing,”
• 16.3% “received a miraculous, physical healing,”
• 27.5% “witnessed people speaking in tongues at a place of worship,”
• 7.7% “spoke or prayed in tongues,”
• 54.5% experienced being “protected from harm by a guardian angel,”
• 5.9% “personally had a vision of a religious figure while awake,”
• 19.1% “heard the voice of God speaking to me,”
• 26.1% “had a dream of religious significance,”
• 52% “had an experience where you felt that you were filled with the spirit,”
• 22.1% “felt at one with the universe,”
• 25.7% “had a religious conversion experience,”
• 13.8% “had an experience where you felt that you were in a state of religious ecstasy,”
• 14.2% “had an experience where you felt that you left your body for a period of time,”
• 40.4% “had a dream that later came true,” and
• 16.7% “witnessed an object in the sky that you could not identify (UFO).”

This works out to an average of 24.4 percent, thereby justifying my conservative 20 percent figure for f_p and f_m. The other numbers I gleaned from research on gossip and social networks, conservatively estimating that 10 percent of people will tell someone about their unusual experience, and that within their average social network of 150 people they will tell at least 10 percent of them (15) who in turn will pass on the story to 10 percent of their social network of 150 (15). Finally, I estimate that 10 percent of such stories will be reported in the media or recounted in blogs, tweets, forums, and the like.

Of course the final figure for N will vary considerably depending on what numbers are plugged into the equation, but the result will almost always be a number in the tens of millions, which goes a long way toward explaining why belief in the paranormal and supernatural is so ubiquitous. Experiencing is believing!

Please send us your course syllabuses, reading lists, video/YouTube links, classroom demonstration ideas, student projects and experiments, research project ideas, and the like to my graduate student Anondah Saide. I want to add them to my own course syllabus on Skepticism 101, and create an online Skeptical Studies Program at Skeptic.com for teachers and professors everywhere to go to in a creative commons/open source system so that we can build a new academic field going forward with skepticism into academia.

I know that such courses are being taught around the world because for the past two decades of publishing Skeptic magazine and writing skeptical books, I receive a lot of mail from teachers and professors seeking permission to use our materials.

What I would like to do is to create academic departments of Skeptical Studies, as the next step in the skeptical movement. (See, for example, Phil Zuckerman’s program of Secular Studies he is implementing this year at Pitzer College in Claremont, where I teach a graduate course in the spring. We have magazines and journals, trade books and conferences. The next step is a more organized penetration into academia via courses, textbooks, departments, and the like. I want to create a clearing house, an open-source site for people to access materials that will be made available to create your own course in Skeptical Studies, such as Skepticism 101: syllabuses, books, articles, assignments, videos, demonstrations, experiments, research projects, and the like. I am envisioning something along the lines of how psychology became an academic field a century ago.

To start the process off I share with you my own course syllabus for Skepticism 101, which I am teaching this semester starting this week at Chapman University on Tuesdays from 4–7pm with 36 freshman, the future of the skeptical movement!

Download Shermer’s Course Syllabus for Skepticism 101

Email Us Your Ideas

The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has to be the most interesting field of science that lacks a subject to study. Yet. Keep searching. In the meantime, is there some metric we can apply to calculating the probability and impact of claims of such a discovery? There is.

In January, 2011 the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society published 17 articles addressing the matter of “The Detection of Extra-Terrestial Life and the Consequences for Science and Society,” including one by Iván Almár from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Margaret S. Race from the SETI Institute, introducing a metric “to provide a scalar assessment of the scientific importance, validity and potential risks associated with putative evidence of ET life discovered on Earth, on nearby bodies in the Solar System or in our Galaxy.” Such scaling is common in science—the Celsius scale for temperature, the Beaufort scale for wind speed, the Saffir-Simpson scale for hurricane strength, and the Richter scale for earthquake magnitude. But these scales, Almár and Race argue, fail to take into account “the relative position of the observer or recipient of information.” The effects of a 7.1 earthquake, for example, depends on the proximity of its epicenter to human habitations.

An improvement may be found in the Torino Scale that computes the likelihood of an asteroid impact and the risk of its potential damage—from 1, a near miss with no danger, to 10, certain impact with catastrophic consequences. But Almár and Race note that “the scale does not include any consideration of the observations’ reliability.” Building on SETI’s Rio Scale for evaluating the effect on society of an ET discovery, Almár and Race propose the London Scale that multiplies Q x δ, where Q (scientific importance) is the sum of four parameters:

• life form (1–5, from Earth-similar life to completely alien),
• nature of evidence (1-6, from indirect biomarkers
  to obviously organized complex life),
• type of method of discovery (1–5, from remote sensing
  to return mission sample), and
• distance (1–4, from beyond the Solar System to on Earth).

This sum is then multiplied by δ (a reliability factor) ranging from 0.1–0.5, from probably not real to highly reliable. The maximum Q can be is 20 x .5 = 10.

For example, Almár and Race compute the odds that the Allan Hills 84001 Martian meteorite contains alien life as (2+2+4+4)0.3 = 3.6 for scientific importance and credibility, noting that “several scientific counter-arguments have been published and the discovery has not been generally accepted.” I would assess the recent claim of arsenic-based life in Mono Lake as (2+1+4+4)0.2 = 2.2, fairly low by comparison.

Such scientific scales attempt to bring some rigor and reliability to estimates of events that are highly improbable or uncertain. The process also reveals why most scientists do not take seriously UFO claims. Although the first two categories would yield a 5 and a 6 (completely alien and complex life) and its distance is zero (4, on Earth), the method of discovery is highly subjective (perceptual, psychological) and open to alternative explanation (1, other aerial phenomena) and the reliability factor δ is either obviously fake or fraudulent (0) or probably not real (0.1), and so Q = (5+6+1+4)0.1 = 1.6 (or 0 if δ = 0).

The Phoenix lights UFO claim, for example, was a real aerial phenomena witnessed by thousands on the evening of March 13, 1997. UFOlogists (and even Arizona governor Fife Symington) claim it was extraterrestrial, but what is δ for this event? It turns out that there were two independent aerial events that night, the first a group of planes flying in a “V” formation at 8:30 that started a UFO hysteria and brought people outdoors with video cameras, which then recorded a string of lights at 10:00 that slowly sank until they disappeared behind a nearby mountain range. These turned out to be flares dropped by the Air National Guard on a training mission. Ever since, people have conflated the two events and thereby transmogrified two IFOs into one UFO. So δ = 0 and Q shifts from 1.6 to 0, which is how much confidence I have in UFOlogists until they produce actual physical evidence, the sine qua non of science.

On Friday, June 17, a film crew came by the Skeptics Society office to interview me for a documentary that I was told was on arguments for and against God. The producer of the film, Alan Shaikhin, sent me the following email, which I reprint here in its entirety so that readers can see that there is not a hint of what was to come in what turned out to be an attempted ambush interview with me about Islam, the Quran, and the number 19:

Dear Michael!

I am the director of a film crew hired by a non-profit organization, Izgi Amal, from Kazakhstan, which has no connection with the American brat, Borat. We have been working on a documentary film on modern philosophical and scientific arguments for and against God for almost a year. We have been taking shots and interviewed theologians, philosophers and scientists in England, Netherlands, USA, Turkey, and Egypt.

We are planning to finish the film by the end of this year and participate in major film festivals, including Cannes. We will allocate some of the funds to distribute thousands of copies of the film for free, especially to libraries and colleges.

Our crew will once again visit the United States and will spend the rest of June interviewing various people, from layman to artists, from academicians to activists.

Though we are far out there, we know your work and we think that it contributes greatly to the quality of this perpetual philosophical debate. We would like to include perspective and voice in this discussion. We would appreciate if you let us know what days in JUNE would be the best dates to meet you and interview you for this engaging and fascinating documentary film.

Since we are planning to interview about 10 scholars and experts of diverse positions such as atheism, agnosticism, deism, monotheism, and polytheism, it is important to learn all available days in this month of June.

Please feel free to contact us via email or our cell phone numbers, below. If you respond via email and please let us know the best phone number and times to reach you.

Peace,
Alan Shaikhi

In hindsight perhaps I should have picked up on his admission that “we are far out there,” which in fact they turned out to be. Present were Mr. Shaikhin, another gentleman named Edip Yuksel, a couple of film crew hands, and a woman videographer who was setting up all the lighting and equipment. Before we began Shaikhin explained that they were actually filming two projects, and that his colleague (Mr. Yuksel) would be interviewing me after he, Shaikhin, was finished. Yuksel, in fact, was very fidgety and throughout the interview with Shaikhin I could see him out of the corner of my eye feverishly taking notes and fiddling around with books whose titles I could not see.

Shaikhin’s interview, in fact, included mostly standard faire questions for such documentaries: Do I think there’s a conflict between science and religion?, What do I think about this and that argument for God’s existence?, Why do I think people believe in God?, etc. He was unfailingly polite and professional. Toward the end he did make some vague reference to Islam and our cover story of Skeptic on myths about the Islamic religion (the myth of the Middle East Madman, the myth of the 72 virgins, etc.), but I begged off answering anything about Islam because I haven’t studied it much nor have I read the Quran.

My first clue that the interview was about to take a sharp right turn came when Shaikhin acted shocked that I would edit an issue of Skeptic on Islam without myself having read the Quran. I explained that I write very few articles in Skeptic and that my job as editor is to find writers who are experts on a subject, which was, in fact, the case with this issue when our Senior Editor Frank Miele interviewed the University of California at Santa Barbara Islamic scholar R. Stephen Humphreys. Nonetheless, Shaikhin continued to act surprised, repeating “you mean to tell me that you edited a special issue of Skeptic on Islam and haven’t read the Quran?” I again explained that editors of magazines are not always (or ever) the world’s leading expert on the topics they publish, which is the very reason for contracting with experts to write the articles for magazines.

With this first part of the interview completed, Edip Yuksel leaped up out of his chair like a WWF wrestler charging into the ring for his big match. He grabbed a chair and pulled it over next to mine, asked for a bottle of water for the match, and instructed the videographer to widen the shot to include him in the interview. Only it wasn’t an interview. It was a monologue, with Yuksel launching into a mini-history of how he wrote Carl Sagan back in 1992 about the number 19 (he didn’t say if Sagan ever wrote back), how Carl had written about the deep significance of the number π (pi) in his science fiction novel Contact, how he is a philosopher and a college professor who teaches his students how to think critically, and that he is a great admirer of my work. However (you knew this was coming, right?), there is one thing we should not be skeptical about, and that is the remarkable properties of the number 19 and the Quran.

At this point I had a vague flashback memory of the Million Man March in Washington, D.C. and Louis Farrakhan’s musings about the magical properties of the number 19. The transcript from that speech confirmed my memory. Here are a few of the numerological observations by Farrakhan that day in October, 1995:

There, in the middle of this mall is the Washington Monument, 555 feet high. But if we put a one in front of that 555 feet, we get 1555, the year that our first fathers landed on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia as slaves.

In the background is the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorial, each one of these monuments is 19 feet high.

Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, and 16 and three make 19 again. What is so deep about this number 19? Why are we standing on the Capitol steps today? That number 19—when you have a nine you have a womb that is pregnant. And when you have a one standing by the nine, it means that there’s something secret that has to be unfolded.

I want to take one last look at the word atonement.

The first four letters of the word form the foundation; “a-t-o-n” … “a-ton”, “a-ton”. Since this obelisk in front of us is representative of Egypt. In the 18th dynasty, a Pharaoh named Akhenaton, was the first man of this history period to destroy the pantheon of many gods and bring the people to the worship of one god. And that one god was symboled by a sun disk with 19 rays coming out of that sun with hands holding the Egyptian Ankh – the cross of life. A-ton. The name for the one god in ancient Egypt. A-ton, the one god. 19 rays.

This is a splendid example of what I call patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise. And Edip Yuksel launched into a nonstop example of patternicity when he pulled out his book entitled Nineteen: God’s Signature in Nature and Scripture (2011, Brainbow Press; see also www.19.org) and began to quote from it. To wit…

• The number of Arabic letters in the opening statement of the Quran, BiSMi ALLaĤi AL-RaĤMaNi AL-RaĤYM (1:1) 19
• Every word in Bismillah… is found in the Quran in multiples of 19
• The frequency of the first word, Name (Ism) 19
• The frequency of the second word, God (Allah) 19 x 142
• The frequency of the third word, Gracious (Raĥman) 19 x 3
• The fourth word, Compassionate (Raĥym) 19 x 6
• Out of more than hundred attributes of God, only four has numerical values of multiple of 19
• The number of chapters in the Quran 19 x 6
• Despite its conspicuous absence from Chapter 9, Bismillah occurs twice in Chapter 27, making its frequency in the Quran 19 x 6
• Number of chapters from the missing Ch. 9 to the extra in Ch. 27. 19 x 1
• The total number of all verses in the Quran, including the 112 unnumbered Bismillah 19 x 334
• Frequency of the letter Q in two chapters it initializes 19 x 6
• The number of all different numbers mentioned in the Quran 19 x 2
• The number of all numbers repeated in the Quran 19 x 16
• The sum of all whole numbers mentioned in the Quran 19 x 8534

This goes on and on for 620 pages which, when divided by the number of chapters in the book (31) equals 20, which is one more than 19; since 1 is the cosmic number for unity, the first nonzero natural number, and according to the rock group Three Dog Night the loneliest number, we subtract 1 from 20 to once again see the power of 19. In fact, 19 is a prime number, it is the atomic number for potassium (flip that “p” to the left and you get a 9), in the Baha’i faith there were 19 disciples of Baha’u’llah and their calendar year consists of 19 months of 19 days each (361 days), and it’s the last year you can be a teenager and the last hole in golf that is actually the clubhouse bar. In point of fact we can find meaningful patterns with almost any number:

• 99: names of Allah; atomic number for Einsteinium; Agent 99 on TV series Get Smart
• 40: 40 days and 40 nights of rain; Hebrews lived 40 years in the desert, Muhammad’s age when he received the first revelation from the Archangel Gabriel and the number of days he spent in the desert and days he spent fasting in a cave
• 23: The 23 enigma: the belief that most incidents and events are directly connected to the number 23
• 11: sunspot cycle in years, the number of Jesus’s disciples after Judas defected
• 7: 7 deadly sins and 7 heavenly virtues; Shakespeare’s 7 ages of man, Harry Potter’s most magical number
• 3: number of dimensions; number of sides of a triangle, the 3 of clubs—the forced pick in one of Penn & Teller’s favorite card tricks
• 1: unity; the first non-zero natural number, it’s own factorial and it’s own square; the atomic number of hydrogen; the most abundant element in the universe; Three Dog Night’s song about the loneliest number
• π (pi): a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, or 3.14159…. Make of this what you will, but Carl Sagan did elevate π to significance at the end of Contact:

The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle—another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.

At this point in the filming process I interrupted Yuksel and told Shaikhin that the interview was over, that he could use the footage from the first part of the interview but not this monologue mini-lecture that was an undisguised attempt to convince me of the miraculous properties of the number 19. I didn’t sign any waiver or permission to use any of the footage shot that day, but just in case I was relieved when the videographer came to me in private to apologize and explain that she had nothing to do with the rest of the crew, that she was just hired to do the filming, and that after I had put an end to the interview she stopped filming.

At some point I asked Edip why he felt so compelled to convince me of the meaningfulness of the number 19 in the Quran, when I told him that I haven’t read the Quran and hold that all such numerological searches are nothing more than patternicity. The impression I got was that if he could convince a professional skeptic then there must be something to the claim. I asked him what other Islamic scholars who have read the Quran think of his claims for the number 19, and he told me that they consider him a heretic. He said it as a point of pride, as if to say “the fact that the experts denounce me means that I must be on to something.”

P.S. Edip Yuksel did strike me as a likable enough fellow who seemed genuinely passionate about his beliefs, but there was something a bit off about him that I couldn’t quite place until I was escorting him out of the office and he said, “I see you are a very athletic fellow. Can I show you something that I learned in a Turkish prison?” With scenes from Midnight Express flashing through my mind, I muttered “Uhhhhhh… No.”

Patternicity Challenge to Readers

As a test—of sorts—I would like to hereby issue a challenge to all readers to employ their own patternicity skills at finding meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise with such numbers and numerical relationships, both serious and lighthearted, related to the number 19 or any other number that strikes your fancy. Post them here and we shall publish them in a later feature-length article I shall write on this topic.

Jesse Ventura (photo by Cory Barnes, used under CC BY-SA 2.0)

On Monday afternoon, April 11, I appeared on Southern California Public Radio KPCC’s Patt Morrison show to briefly debate (dare I saw wrestle?) the former Navy Seal, Minnesota Governor, professional wrestler, television host, and author Jesse “The Body” Ventura, who was on a book tour swing through Los Angeles promoting his latest conspiracy fictions he believes are facts entitled The 63 Documents the Government Doesn’t Want You To Read. (The figure of 63 was chosen, Jesse says, because that was the year JFK was assassinated.) Presented in breathtaking revelatory tones that within lies the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers, what the reader actually finds between the covers are documents obtained through standard Freedom of Information Act requests that can also be easily downloaded from the Internet.

Order the book from Amazon.com

No matter, with bigger-than-life Jesse Ventura at the conspiratorial helm everything is larger than it seems, especially when his unmistakable booming voice pronounces them as truths. I had only a few hours to read the book, but that turned out to be more than adequate since most of the documents are familiar to us conspiracy watchers and what little added commentary is provided to introduce them appears to be mostly written by Ventura’s co-author Dick Russell, the pen behind the mouth for many of Jesse’s books. (Since he is no longer wrestling perhaps he should change his moniker to Jesse “The Mouth” Ventura.)

Surprisingly, given his background in the military and government, Ventura seems surprised to learn that governments lie to their citizens. Shockingly true, yes, but just because politicians and their appointed cabinet assigns and their staffers sometimes lie (mostly in the interest of national security but occasionally to cover up their own incompetence and moral misdeeds), doesn’t mean that every pronouncement made in the name of a government action is a lie. After all, as in the old logical chestnut—“This statement is untrue” (if it’s true it’s untrue and vice versa)—if everything is a lie then nothing is a lie. Likewise, I noted up front on the show, if everything is a conspiracy then nothing is a conspiracy.

Given the helter skelter nature of talk radio and Jesse’s propensity to interrupt through his booming voice any dissenters from his POV, I tried to make just four points. Let’s call them Conspiracy Skeptical Principles.

Conspiracy Skeptical Principle #1: There must be some means of discriminating between true and false conspiracy theories. Lincoln was assassinated by a conspiracy; JFK was not. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a conspiracy of Serbian operatives that triggered the outbreak of the First World War; Princess Diana was not murdered by the Royal Family or any other secretive organization, but instead died by the most common form of death on a highway: speeding, drunk driving, and no seat belt.

Conspiracy Skeptical Principle #2: Cognitive Dissonance and the need to balance the size of the event with the size of the cause. Jesse Ventura said: “Do you mean to tell me that 19 guys with box cutters taking orders from a guy in a cave in Afghanistan brought down the most powerful nation on earth?” First of all, America is alive and well, thank you, even though Ventura has since moved to Mexico. But, yes, as a matter of fact, that is the only way such an event can happen: Sizable cohorts of operatives in prominent positions (Bush, Rumsfeld, Chaney, the CIA, the FBI, et al.) are too noticeable to get away with such a conspiracy. (By the way, 9/11 was a conspiracy: 19 members of Al Qaeda plotting to fly planes into buildings without telling us ahead of time constitutes a conspiracy.) It is the lone nuts living in the nooks and crannies of a free society (think Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinkley, etc.) who become invisible by blending into the background scenery.

Order the Skeptic magazine 9/11 issue and read Phil Molé’s take on the “9/11 Truth Movement” on Skeptic.com

Conspiracy Skeptical Principle #3: What else would have to be true if your conspiracy theory is true? Jesse proclaimed on the show that the Pentagon was hit by a missile. His proof? He interviewed a woman on his conspiracy TV show who said she worked inside the Pentagon and never saw a plane hit it. Well, first of all, earlier in the show when I brought up Jesse’s conspiracy television series he discounted it, saying “that’s pure entertainment.” But now he wants to use an interview from that same show not as entertainment but as proof. As well, hardly anyone working in the Pentagon that day saw anything happen because they were inside the five-sided building and the plane only hit on one side, and even there, presumably (hopefully), people are actually working and not just sitting there staring out the window all day. But to the skeptical principle: As I said on the show, “If a missile hit the Pentagon, Jesse, that means that a plane did not hit it. What happened to the American Airlines plane?” Jesse’s answer: “I don’t know.” Sorry Jesse, not good enough. It’s not enough to poke holes at the government explanation for 9/11 (a form of negative evidence); you must also present positive evidence for your theory. In this case, tell us what happened to the plane that didn’t hit the Pentagon because there are a lot of grieving families who would like to know what happened to their loved ones (as would several radar operators who tracked the plane from hijacking to suddenly disappearing off the screen in the same place as the Pentagon is located). Finally, I directed Jesse and our listeners to www.skeptic.com to view the photograph of the American Airlines plane debris on the lawn in front of the Pentagon, below. Are we to believe that the U.S. government timed the impact of a missile on the Pentagon with the hijackers who flew the plane into the Pentagon?

010911-N-6157F-001 Arlington, Va. (Sep. 11, 2001) — Wreckage from the hijacked American Airlines FLT 77 sits on the west lawn of the Pentagon minutes after terrorists crashed the aircraft into the southwest corner of the building. The Boeing 757 was bound for Los Angeles with 58 passengers and 6 crew. All aboard the aircraft were killed, along with 125 people in the Pentagon. (Photo by U.S. Navy Photo by Journalist 1st Class Mark D. Faram) (RELEASED)

Conspiracy Skeptical Principle #4: Your conspiracy theory must be more consistent than the accepted explanation. Jesse says that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda did not orchestrate 9/11, and instead it was done by the Bush administration (or, he says, at least by Chaney and his covert operatives). As evidence, Jesse wants to know why Osama bin Laden has not been indicted for murder by the United States government. As well, he says, why was no one fired for not acting on the famous memos of the summer of 2001 that warned our government that Al Qaeda was financing operatives in America in flight training schools and that Osama bin Laden would strike on U.S. soil. Hold on there Jesse—first you say that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are innocent of this crime, and then you present evidence in the form of documents that the U.S. government was forewarned that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda would attack us? Sorry sir, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t hold to two contradictory conspiracy theories at the same time and use evidence from each to support the other. (Well, you can, but that would be a splendid example of logic-tight compartments in your head keeping separate contradictory ideas.)

Finally, in frustration I presume, Jesse accused me of being a mouthpiece of the government, just parroting whatever my overlords command me to say to keep the truth hidden. That conspiracy theory happens to be true, except for the part about the mouthpiece, the government, the parrot, and the truth.

P.S. During my recent lecture tour swing through Wisconsin I was confronted at a restaurant by three 9/11 Truthers who were unable to attend my talk that night or even join the local skeptics group meeting that afternoon with me, and instead handed me a pile of literature and a DVD to watch touting the merits of the group known as Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, who appear to hold fast to the belief that the WTC buildings were intentionally demolished by explosive devices AND that the hijackers (whoever they really were) somehow managed to fly the planes into the WTC buildings at precisely where the demolition experts planted the explosive devices—at the exact correct floors, at the exact angle at which the wings were tilted, because that is where the collapse of both buildings began. Check it out yourself below, along with our issue of Skeptic on 9/11 conspiracy theories, which was being read in Wisconsin by the little Wombat given to me by my hosts at the University of Wisconsin.

On Thursday, March 31, Deepak Chopra and I squared off for a second time in person in a public venue, this time accompanied by the physicist Leonard Mlodinow on my side and Stuart Hameroff on his side (along with other panelists). The question on the table was this:

“Is there an Ultimate Reality?” and if yes, “Can it be accounted for by science such as mathematics, biology and physics?”

My answers: YES and YES

I explained that I am a Materialist and a Monist. I do not believe that there is a body and a soul, there is just a body. There is no brain and mind, just brain. The mind is just a word we use to describe what the brain does. I said, “you know I’m right” (which got a surprising laugh from the audience) because of the evidence from strokes, tumors, brain damage, senility, dementia, and Alzheimer’s, all of which kill brain cells, and along with the loss of brain comes the loss of mind. I asked Deepak and Stuart where Aunt Millie’s mind goes when her brain slowly disappears from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease.

I noted that consciousness is just a word we use to describe our inner thoughts about the workings of the brain, and that our “soul” is just a pattern of information stored in our genes and our brains. Consciousness is just an emergent property of integrated brain modules and patterned firing of neural networks.

By contrast, I believe that Deepak’s use of the word “consciousness” is very anthropocentric, once again returning humans to a central place in the cosmos as the “observers” who, in quantum mechanics, brings things into existence. If Deepak is right then the moon doesn’t exist unless it is observed, and yet, quoting that great scientist Bill O’Reilly, “times come in, tides go out—never a missed communication—and they would do so whether or not humans, or any other conscious (or unconscious) being existed.

In fact, I said, Deepak’s quantum consciousness is not holistic but reductionistic in the extreme. We don’t need to go down that far. Quantum mechanics is not needed to explain brain functions: the neuron is the individual unit of thought, the “atom” of mind. I then worked in a little joke I wrote earlier in the day:

Quantum mechanics is spooky and weird.
Consciousness is spooky and weird.
So what? Charlie Sheen is spooky and weird, but we don’t need quantum mechanics to explain his behavior. His “tiger blood” theory works just fine.

Haha.

In Deepak’s worldview, everything is conscious, which means that there is no way to distinguish between consciousness and unconsciousness, which is how I often feel when I listen to Deepak.

Thought Experiment:

• If humans went extinct instead of Neanderthals, how does that effect the universe?
• What if the Earth were suddenly demolished by a rogue planet (as in 2012)? Would that mean the end of the universe because observers would disappear?
• Are whales, dolphins, gorillas and chimps conscious and therefore integral to the universe?
• What can it possibly mean to say that the universe is conscious? If you will pardon the nerd science pun, that is such a vacuous concept!

Before the debate Deepak asked me to read a paper by himself and Menas Kafatos and Rudolph Tanzi published in the Journal of Cosmology, entitled: “How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe.” Deepak asked me to comment on it, which I did in the second half of the debate. I noted that given the prominence of “consciousness” to the central theme of the paper that one might expect it to be defined with semantic precision. Nope. Here is what the authors write:

“We will sidestep any precise definition of consciousness, limiting ourselves for now to willful actions on the part of the observer.”

What can it possibly mean for the universe to be conscious in the sense of having willful actions? The universe behaves with willful action? The universe is an observer? As well, quantum mechanics only requires an observation of any kind: an electron microscope will do. Is an electron microscope willful? Does an electron microscope take action? The authors of this paper write:

Werner Heisenberg concluded that the atom “has no immediate and direct physical properties at all.” If the universe’s basic building block isn’t physical, then the same must hold true in some way for the whole. The universe was doing a vanishing act in Heisenberg’s day, and it certainly hasn’t become more solid since. And Heisenberg again: “The atoms or elementary particles themselves … form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”

No, sorry, these are different levels of analysis. To prove it I challenge Deepak to climb to the top of this building and jump off and see if the ground is a potentiality or a thing! They also write:

Heisenberg: “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” Reality, it seems, shifts according to the observer’s conscious intent.

Once again, NO! This would imply that anyone’s method of questioning is just as valid as anyone else’s, which would mean that the way astrologers question the universe is just as valid as that of astronomers. I concluded by saying that if you want to get a spacecraft to Mars the questions that astronomers ask are absolutely objectively really better than those of astrologers. Q.E.D.!

In Deepak’s rebuttal, in discussing quantum mechanics, he actually used the phrase “the womb of creation.” Nice. It’s that sort of precise language that makes people all gushy and mushy about science. I pressed him for a definition of consciousness, which he gave me as “consciousness is the ground of existence.” I replied that this sounded tautological to me: since reality needs consciousness to come into existence, this means that reality = consciousness = existence; or existence = existence. A is A. Very Aristotelian. But what does that really tell us?

In the end I pressed both Deepak and Stuart Hameroff for an answer as to where Aunt Millie’s mind goes during the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. Stuart’s answer was so rapid fire and jargon laden (something about the collapse of the wave function inside the microtubules in the neurons inside Aunt Millie’s brain) that I couldn’t quite get an answer, so Deepak clarified it for me later: Aunt Millie’s mind is in the matrix. Okay, I asked, how does poor Aunt Millie access the matrix. “We’re working on that,” was the reply. Okay, fine, and if our memories really are stored somewhere outside of our brains, then that would indeed be one of the greatest discoveries ever made in the history of science: Nobel worthy. But, until that is proven, I remain … skeptical.

Post Script

I am often asked if I believe that Deepak believes what he says, with an underlying assumption behind the question that Deepak is knowingly selling snake oil and doesn’t really believe his public patter. Having gotten to know Deepak over the years I can assure you that he absolutely positively believes what he says, and that while he may make a lot of money in the process of writing books, giving lectures, hosting radio and television shows, and running his various business enterprises (but, hey, that’s not exactly something anathema in America), this fact is quite orthogonal to his deeper mission in life: to shift the Western worldview Eastward.

I had never met Stuart Hameroff before, but I liked him as well, sharing a beer after the debate while watching a Laker game and schmoozing about science. Although I do not accept his theory of consciousness (most neuroscientists are skeptical as well), it would be fun to engage him again in a spirited debate over the brain and the mind.

Dear Michael Shermer,

My Name is Prof. Peter Kopelman from the London Youth Community Here in London UK. We want you to be our guest speaker at this Year ST’ GEORGE UNIVERSITY , which will take place here in UK. We are writing to invite and confirm your booking to be our Guest Speaker at these year ST’ GEORGE UNIVERSITY Event.

The Venue as follows:
VENUE: St George’s University of London,
Cranmer Terrace, London, SW17 0RE.
Email:stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com
Expected audience: 500 people
Duration of speech per speaker: 7PM-8PM
Name of Organization: ST’GEORGE UNIVERSITY
Topic:MEDICAL
Date: Wednesday 30 March 2011.

We came across your profile on http://www.amazingmeeting.com/speakers and we say it’s up to standard and we will be very glad to have such an outstanding personality in our mist for these overwhelming gathering. With your multi talented speech more lives will come close , Sorry about our late invitation it is due to the fact that our Speaker had back out because of her sudden illness.

Arrangements to welcome you here will be discussed as soon as you honor our invitation. If you have any more publicity material, please do not hesitate to contact me. A formal Letter of invitation would be sent to you as soon as you honor our invitation. We are taking care of your traveling and Hotel Accommodation expenses including your Speaking fees.

Remain Blessed
Prof. Peter Kopelman
stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com
ST’GEORGE UNIVERSITY.
Ofice(+44) 702-401-8034

I responded that I wanted $5000 with partial payment up front and a first-class or business-class flight, plus hotel. Only later in the day did I look carefully at the email and notice this guy’s spelling and grammar was pretty bad for a university professor, plus the fact that his university uses a gmail account! His March 16 response to my request reads (and by “mist” does he mean the famous London fog?!):

Respected Michael Shermer,

Thanks for indicating your interest to be our Guest Speaker at this year ST’ GEORGE UNIVERSITY. We are  very excited and happy to have such a wonderful personality in our mist. We the event organizing committee had a meeting earlier today to deliberate on getting you available here within a short period of time. We believe we serve the lord of possibilities.Arrangements are stated below.

We have agreed to buy your flight ticket and to pay your Hotel accommodation expenses . Also your Speaking fee is amounted to $5,000(USD), Three Thousand (USD) deposit is to be paid as soon as you procure all relevant travel documents  so as to avoid any disappointment.You are informed to get across your CERTIFICATE to us so your deposit can be approved according to our mandated rules and regulation.

You are advised by the Event Organizing committee to immediately contact the BRITISH EMBASSY to procure your ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATE as soon as possible

This will enable us to proceed with all arrangements to welcome you here in London. Contact the BRITISH EMBASSY information below.

BRITISH EMBASSY CONTACT
Name: Dr Alex Alfred
British Email: britishembassyservice@gmail.com

Please confirm to us the closest Airport to your location so we can start making arrangements to buy your flight tickets .Understand that you need to expedite action because of the short notice. Feel free to ask any question.

We have attached a formal Letter of Invitation  and contract agreement.Please reconfirm to us your office Address for our perusal and further action.Note you are meant to arrive a day before the commencement of the event.

Please return a signed copy of the contract agreement for proper documentation.

We await your earliest response

Remain Blessed
Prof. Peter Kopelman
stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com
ST’ GEORGE UNIVERSITY.
+44 702 401 8034
Ofice(+44) 702-401-8034

Um, strange, “Alex” at the British Embassy also has a gmail account. And I wondered what this “anti-terrorism certificate” was all about, which I was quick to find out when I received this letter from the British Embassy Service:

ATTN CLIENT,

YOU ARE HEREBY ADVISED BY THE UK BORDER AGENCY TO IMMEDIATELY OBTAIN AN ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATE IN ORDER TO BE GIVEN THE PERMIT WITHOUT ANY DELAY.THESE VITAL DOCUMENT WILL ONLY COST YOU ONLY 1000POUNDS,YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY SEND THE MONEY TO THE UK BORDER AGENT IN CHARGE OF YOUR PROCUREMENT VIA THE INFORMATION BELOW THROUGH WESTERN UNION.

UK BORDER AGENCY.
NAME:MRS KELLY CONMAN
ADDRESS: 114 ROMFORD ROAD LONDON,UNITED KINGDOM.
POSTCODE E12 6PY

AS SOON AS I RECEIVE THE WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER RECEIPT I WILL TAKE THE PAYMENT RECEIPT TO THE OFFICIAL AT THE AGENCY,SO SHE CAN PROCEED ON PROCURING THE ANTI TERRORIST CERTIFICATE WHICH IS VALID FOR 3YEARS.ATTACHED BELOW IS THE ANTI-TERRORSIT CERTIFICATE APPLICATION FORM PRINT AND FILL IN THE INFORMATION BLOCK,REATTACH AND RESEND IT TO ME ALONG SIDE WITH YOUR WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER RECEIPT.

IN YOUR SERVICE,
DR ALEX ALFRED
BRITISH EMBASSY SERVICE.

So the British Embassy now sends letters out in ALL CAPS with no stationary? And “Mrs. Kelly Conman”? I think I know her husband, “Lefty Conman.” I replied:

Peter,

Michael

“Prof Peter” replied:

Let me know how much you can afford then we can add to you from the university. I will be waiting to hear from you .

Wow, so the British Embassy is willing to negotiate the price of this certificate, depending on how much someone can afford. I responded:

Peter,

Michael

“Prof Peter” then wrote:

This is the form for you to fill out for me so we can transfer you the deposit as soon as possible. I will be waiting to hear from you.

NAME ON THE CARD:
BILLING ADDRESS:
CARD NUMBER:
EXP DATE:
CCV:
CARD LIMIT:
AMOUNT OWING:
BANK NAME AND ADDRESS:
BANK TOLL FREE NUMBER:
DATE OF BIRTH:
MOTHER MAIDEN NAME:
SSN:
CELL PHONE NUMBER:
HOME PHONE:
DEBIT AND PREPAID CARD ARE NOT ACCEPTED

Um, credit card information? It was time to up the ante in this little game. So, I wrote:

Hello Peter,

Michael Shermer

The morning of March 17 I received the following email and photographs:

Dear Michael,

Good morning to your , have just got your mail and is nice hearing from you . Attach is the some of the photos of the university compound, the staff my photo of myself as well also the inside of the conference , am also standing in front of the university glass. Also as soon as you have procure the ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATE, the hotel confirmation will be send to you as soon as possible.

Also get me aware as soon as you have send your payment to Dr Ales , so i can start up with the bookings of both the Flight and Hotel

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as possible ..

Remain Blessed,
Prof Peter

Golly, that photo of Prof Peter standing in the doorway is so real looking! Time to get crazy with this loon:

Dear Professor Peter,

Thank you,
Michael

“Prof Peter” Replied:

Dear Michael,

Thanks for your mail , the woman you are talking about is one of the student and she is just 29 yrs old , there is no problem about that, I will hook you up with her when you get here . Also send your payment to Dr Alex to the address he gave to you , you can mail him if they can receive credit card.

I will be waiting for the signed copy of the contract agreement.

Remain blessed.

Well, if he’s willing to bless me and fix me up on a date with one of his students, how bad could this guy be? Let’s find out…

Dear Prof Peter:

Michael

I then received this March 18 reply from Prof Peter:

Dear Michael,

Thanks for your mail , i did not have any prove after all you ask me to get a photographer of myself at the front of the university and
have done that , i  have show you some prove , i have never deal with such a speaker like you before you are making this issue long. Also
the woman you are talking about , i have see her yesterday and i have discuss with her , she can not also wait to see you.

Well i have conclude with the Committee organization and they have agree with you opinion , paying the 1500usd for both of you, and the
university has agreed to pay the remaining of the payment for the certificate .

As you can see that we did not have much time to waste on this , and again do not disappoint us , because the university can’t wait to have
you in our mist event the woman .

The name of the woman is MARIA BRETT, and you can get in touch with her on the following email address … mariabrett28@yahoo.com.

Make the payment to Dr Alex as soon as possible , then try and call me on +44 702 401 8034 as soon as you have send the payment to him , so i can start up with the Flight Booking and Hotel accommodation.

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as you receive my mail

Remain blessed.;
Prof Peter.

Time to get crazy with “Maria” (who, of course, is just this dude with a different email address):

Dear Maria,

Blessed be to you,
Michael

Then I wrote to Peter:

Maria has written me back. I am even more excited about coming to London, now just 13 days away! We are going to go out on a date!!

Michael

Then, amazingly, “Maria” writes back:

Is not that i did not want to send it , but i want you to come to Uk first then we can meet ..And again , Prof Peter told me that you will be coming to UK  soon that you have not procure the certificate , make it as soon as possible so we can meet . I will be waiting to hear from you . Also i will be waiting to receive your lecture here in UK  as well .
  
Maria

I responded:

Dear Maria, 

Michael

The reply from Prof Peter finally came:

Dear Michael,

Have just taken a photographer which you requested for we are trying to best just for you to know that this is a real event coming up. As soon as you have send the payment to Dr Alex, send me the copy of the certificate, also the signed copy of the contract am still expecting it .

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as possible, I will also love to have a coffee with you when you get here.

Remain blessed,
Prof Peter.

And from “Maria”:

Dear Michael,

You are right , but i will have to confused you that am also happy that this event is coming up and i will love if you can understand . I know how you feel but i also want to know you as well . See my photo and i hope you will like them those are my new photo . also send me yours as
well . And again , i will be waiting for you in UK to meet you first before anything .

Bye for now
Maria

Time to get tough with Prof Peter … I wrote:

That’s not what I requested. This is just a photoshopped picture. Obviously you are not serious. I have $1500 in my bank account and I was going to go down to the Western Union office and wire it to Alex today, but I see no need to continue to waste my time and money when you cannot agree to my requirements, goodbye.

Prof Peter decided to get tough back … He wrote:

Dear Michael,

We did not have time to waste and let me know if you are not interesting any more .

Bye.

Time to play my trump card—the “anti-terrorism” certificate, constructed for me by Pat Linse, the Art Director of Skeptic magazine!

Dear Professor Peter and Dr. Alex,

Blessed be to you,
Michael

I also wrote to Maria:

Maria,

Michael

Finally, on Sunday March 20, Prof Peter wrote back:

Dear Michael,

I did not understand you at all , and again i did not know what you mean about the confirmation you are talking about and again you hav
procure a wrong certificate this is not the certificate we issue and you are not to procure Los Aneles but UK certificate. i will advise
you to go back to them and collet your money back that you did not need that certificate again , then you send the payment to the address
Dr Alex gave you .

I will be wating to hear back from you as soon as you have receive my mail .

Remain Blessed,
Prof Peter.

I didn’t respond for awhile, so Prof Peter wrote me with more “proof”:

Dear Michael,

Maria brought this photo to me on my office and told me that this is what you have been requesting for , i hope you are satisfy now .

I will be waiting to hear back from you .

Warm Regards.

Okay, now it’s time to get really crazy! So I wrote back:

Prof. Peter and Dr. Alex,

Michael

Surely now the spam scammers will realize that they are being scammed! Apparently not, as this came in a day later:

Dear Michael ,

I got your mail and i was so sad because if you have listen to me this will not have happen and is because you did not following my word
and all you think is maybe we are trying to scam you . Well as you have stated in the mail , go back to them and collect your money back
, then send it to Dr Alex. As soon as you have send the payment to Dr Alex get back to me so i can start up with the Flight booking and
Hotel reservation and again the payment you are paying to Dr Alex will be payed back to you as soon as you come to London .

We can not wait to have you in our mist, also to have a coffee with you also Maria can not wait to go with a date with you .

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as you have read my mail.

As soon as you have get the payment back send it to Dr Alex , then when you get here we will talk about the Donor together with the staff here in the university.

I will be waiting to hear back from you .

Warm Regards
Prof Peter.

That brings us up to date to the present moment. I think I’ll pull the plug on this silliness now and get back to work, but at least I wasted this guy’s time and distracted him from possibly duping someone into actually sending in money. Oh, by the way, when I noticed that he said he got my name from The Amazing Meeting list of speakers, I queried the other speakers at TAM and, sure enough, they all received the same invitation to speak!

So much for scamming the spam scam scammers. It was worth a few laughs.