The Nonsense of Pastor Poppins

UPDATE VI:  "A German scientist named Klaus Conrad coined [the term] apophanie (from the Greek apo, away, and phaenein, to show) in 1958 . . . [to describe] the acute stage of schizophrenia, during which unrelated details seem saturated in connections and meaning. Unlike an epiphany—a true intuition of the world’s interconnectedness—an apophany is a false realization. . . . a weakness of human cognition: the 'pervasive tendency … to see order in random configurations,' an 'unmotivated seeing of connections,' the experience of 'delusion as revelation' . . . 'the tendency to be overwhelmed by meaningful coincidences.' . .

expert detectors of conspiracies in random events, whispers in radio static, and the Virgin Mary in grilled cheese."

Read Slate, It’s All Connected. 

UPDATE V:  Extraordinary coincidences are not godly miracles, in fact "extremely improbable events are commonplace. Since that may sound like a contradiction, let’s take a closer look.

The improbability principle is composed of five laws, analogous to the four laws of thermodynamics or Newton’s three laws of motion. These laws, the law of inevitability, the law of truly large numbers, the law of selection, the law of the probability lever, and the law of near enough, explain exactly why we should expect to encounter highly unlikely events, and indeed why we should expect to do so on a regular, even frequent, basis. Any one of the laws acting by itself can lead to a highly improbable event—like people winning the lottery twice, or 26 black numbers coming up one after another in roulette. (The details of these as well as many other apparently extraordinarily unlikely events are given in my book.) But the impact of the principle gets even stronger when the laws intertwine and work together."

Read Slate, It’s Not Actually a Miracle.

UPDATE IV: Pastor Truthiness (formerly known as Pastor Poppins) is fond of citing current events as fulfillment of 'prophesy' of the soon-to-be apocalypse (in support of his personal religious myths of course). Why are people addicted to such 'predictions?' Read The New York Times, Bold Predictions: Always Enticing, Often Wrong.


UPDATE III: Mike did a beautiful take down of Bob's complaint that he wasn't getting a social security COLA increase, pointing out that people are fiscal hypocrites.

The scary part, neither of them thought it was the lest bit ironic. Bob and Joe (who called later), people like him, and Pastor Poppins of Pensacola are clueless.


UPDATE II: Then Pastor Poppins of Pensacola spoke approvingly of the Republi-con bestiality candidate.

I wonder if his church members would agree?


UPDATE: On today's show, Pastor Poppins of Pensacola just said there were WMDs found in Iraq after the invasion.

Still makin that bitter medicine of the truth (there were no WMDs in Iraq) go down, with those spoons full of lies.

What do Pastor Poppins of Pensacola and Paul the octopus have in common? Nonsense correlations. Read The New York Times, The Oracle of Oberhausen.

So Thursday's question will be:

Is God speaking to us through Paul and oil spills and our very own Pastor Poppins, Pensacola's prophet with 'special insight', or

Is it just ""temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events," also known as synchronicity.

Tune in from 4:05 to 6:00 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY (and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers) and find out.