Benny Hinn and Peter Popoff Faith Healers

Benny Hinn: let the bodies hit the floor



Benny Hinn cures cancer



Exposed




James Randi and Peter Popoff



Class Break

Faith Healing Frauds

This week, we are going to be talking about faith healers, their extraordinary claims, and their utterly unremarkable lack of success.

• Carey has found Benny Hinn, professional dirtbag.
• Peter's found quackbusters.
• Elise has written about Peter Popoff, who Randi debunked big time on the The Tonight Show.
• Vince has found Oral Roberts, whose son is apparently carrying on the family tradition of fraud and impropriety.
• How about Kathryn Kuhlman, a faking fakir of yesteryear, courtesty of Carolyn?
• Chris has gotten the messy practice of psychic surgery all over his hands.
• Michael has an appointment at Dr. Helena Steiner-Hornsteyn's House of Wacky.
• Brian found Aimee McPherson wandering in the desert, looking pretty good.
• Peter found Jose Silva--I think I went to college with him.
  

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Extra day of apocalyses!

Some Russians have gone down into a cave and aren't going to come up until we are all dead, sometime next year. It's a matter of what lasts longer, the world or their food supply.

HJ

Prophecy...

This week, we are looking at prophesies as well as end of the world myths. You might also, I suppose, choose people who claimed to be prophets (like Nostradamus).

The Oracle at Delphi (actual footage)

• Elliot remembers the time when the world's computers did not all simultaneously crash during the biggest non-event in the history of anything, Y2K.
• Carey has discovered that when you get a Greek high priestess jumped up on wacky tobaccy, she is liable to say all sorts of wacky stuff.
• Catherine Zeta Jones, alien. Caroline shows you how!
• Elise conclusively shows that the world did not end in 1988.
• Michael has a pretty cool post about a pretty nifty clock...I should have known about this one!
• Haley has found a psychic who even puts himself to sleep.
• Peter argues that the world did not end in 1700.
• I would put your money into stocks for canned food and shotguns.
• Brian's got a whole Mayan thing going on.
• Ben ordered a heaping serving of Apocalypse at the International House of Yahweh (warning--moving pictures are not really alive).
• It's the end of the world as Eileen knows it, and she feels fine.
• Vince has discovered what Elise has already done. Oh well.
• Chris found Nostradamus.
  

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Cryptozoology

As you know, but I will remind you anyway, I would like to get as broad a coverage as possible of the field of cryptozoology. This means, as always, the sooner you do your blog, the more likely you will be to get your first choice of topics.

• Go to cszczes.blogspot.com for all your El Chupacabra-related needs.
• Mothman vs. Chupacabra: A WWF Cage Match! Brought to you by Elise.
• Check out Elliot's personals ad: "Wanted: Winged creature about 50 feet long, with giraffe like neck, six legs, head of a bulldog, and smells like a wet dog." (The Monster of Elizabeth Lake)
• Peter found the mud monster, and it's so close to St. Louis that no local necking teenage couple is safe! (Really, it sounds like a 1950's b-movie plot)
• Michael has a few things to say about the Jersey Devil.
• It's a man. It's a moth. It's...Chris's blog!
• Haley, returning from the innermost reaches of the African badlands, has found a bear/hyena/hallucination thing called Nandi Bear.
• Brain's post will make you believe that the Billiken is sort of normal (the Maryland Goatman).
• Peter will get the Nobel Prize for proving evolution wrong (fur-bearing trout).
• Eileen and the Cryptid Apes (could a be a snappy band name).
  

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The Supernatural Services Industry

Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your break and that the very, very few blog entries that have been posted does not mean that you have put off doing your library assignment, because if you all show up on the same day, the librarians are going to have my head in a display case.



ANYWAY, this week's topic is, broadly conceived, the Supernatural Services Industry, which is not a real industry. Basically, people who are turning coin by perpetuating beliefs about the non-religious supernatural.

• Peter, who is pale and wears lots of black, has put us in touch with the goofiest thing that I have ever heard of in the longest time. This is truly a symphony of weird.
• Who is that creeping around your house at night? It's Michael!
• Vince finds that not only are psychics phony, but they are also affordable.
• Carey discovers that if there are not ghost hauntings, there are at least ghost hunter hauntings.
• Elise finds a former cop (I wonder why he is "former") who investigates the paranormal, doubtlessly fingerprinting them and taking them downtown.
• Brian house has a fear-demon who won't stop killing his pets....who can help him?
• Haley found evidence of a haunting...
• Peter--just clear your head...don't think of anything!!!!!
• Eileen learned that if Noreen touches her wallet, the energy tells her that it will get $1000 lighter.
• Elliot be callin' on Mrs. Cleo for help with his reggae groove, mon!

B

Hoaxes

Most of you have not completed your blog assignments on time. Just saying.

• Peter E seems to know a suspicious amount about crop circles.
• Isn't it enough to enjoy the beauty of a garden without having to believe that the Cottingley Fairies are at the bottom of it, Haley?
• I thought that Mountain Dew glowed anyway, Carolyn.
• Caroline exposes the most hilarious threat posed by bananas.
• Carey has been visited by aliens, or weird tornadoes, or something.
• Elise convincingly argues "that Marx uses the term ‘objectivism’ to denote not sublimation, as Sartreist existentialism suggests, but postsublimation." She's doing the Sokal Hoax. For a convincing example of what postmodernism reads like, go to the Postmodern Essay Generator, which is completely random but grammatically correct and amusing.
• Elliot has uncovered the truth about the fire-breathing beaver-people of the moon. There are also unicorns.
• Chris Yay! wonders, "Now, where did I put my kidneys?"
• Ever wonder why Vince's has a kitten shaped like a Coke bottle?
• Peter has unearthed the carefully constructed story of the Cardiff Giant.
• Eileen has the title of the week: Loch Ness...Model?
• Chris finds it really does taste like chicken.
• Ben discusses the first Nazi superweapon: a lung-powered airplane!
• Your instructor has encountered the least convincing hoax ever. Really. Wow. Wow.
• Brian has his own private Idaho.
• Mary limps across the finish line with the very important Piltdown Man Hoax.
  

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