Bruce M. Hood is the director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre in the experimental psychology department at the University of Bristol. His book Supersense: Why We Believe The Unbelievable has been featured in Time Magazine and been praised by the likes of Steven Pinker and Susan Blackmore.

Active on Twitter (with the account “Supersense”), and recently featured in the media for his investigations on dowsing-rod-like “bomb detecting” devices, he elaborated on his blog-posts and views about “interesting times for skeptics.”

Sturgess: On Twitter recently you wrote that it’s “interesting times for skeptical bloggers, libel laws, bomb-detectors and homeopathy—what’s next?”

Hood: Yes! I think I was pointing out, as a number of skeptics have done, that there appears to be a lot of activity this time of the year. I was just kind of giving a shout out to everyone involved, not just the people who are the most prominent figures in the whole thing, but everyone who is behind a campaign. Basically a pat-on-the-back.

Sturgess: I think you deserve a pat-on-the-back as well because of the GT200 bomb-detector! How have you become involved with investigating that?

Hood: People often ask: what does a psychology professor have to do with international frauds and bomb-detecting?! It was a weird set of coincidences and circumstances that got [me] to that situation. I’d written about it last year and the first time the “bomb went off” was in October 2009. I mean, James Randi had written about these devices a long time ago. And people have been blogging about it and there are certain bloggers who [have] dedicated their activities to these things, so I followed up with a blog-post on my site.

The strange thing was that nothing really much happened until the second explosion in December 2009, which really kind of hit home when I discovered that the company making that particular device—the one used in Iraq is the ADE651—were based locally! So this was no longer a kind of issue happing across the world, this was [in] my backyard.

So I guess it’s kind of unusual in that sense that I made a direct challenge to Jim McCormick who was the director [of ATSC, makers of the device]—and to my surprise he posted a comment on my site and challenged me to come down and test the validity of this device, which of course I accepted. And so that’s how it really got underway because I was suddenly in a situation where I was helping to expose what was clearly a piece of nonsense.

At that point I realized that people had been trying to shut these guys down for quite some time without much success. So what I thought was needed was something that was much higher profile, because it had been in The New York Times; it had been in The Guardian and, you know, Dr. Ben Goldacre had talked about it, but nothing was happening.

So, I contacted the BBC and by coincidence the Newsnight team [was] also interested; Caroline Hawley who is the Middle East correspondent—she’s worked out there and she knows all about these devices. When they discovered that I had this meeting set up with McCormick, they thought, “here’s an opportunity to catch him out.” So there was kind of a plan to spring onto it with a full camera-crew just to demonstrate it.

But he started stringing me along; it was quite clear by that point because he had just been called over to Baghdad to explain the device and there’s footage shown on television of him with the Iraq troops demonstrating that it can detect a grenade… in full view! What a big surprise!

He was already starting to get nervous; he did agree to meet with me if I signed a nondisclosure, which of course defeats the whole purpose. It’s like a gagging order, I wouldn’t have been able to say anything. So at that point, we decided to turn up at the offices in the West Country, where I’m based, and of course he didn’t appear on camera. At that point the police chief had instigated the arrest of McCormick for fraud and the Newsnight team produced a documentary about exposing it all!

So, my role was really bringing together a number of components of it—for example, they got their hands on the device cards, so they could show that it contained nothing but a security tag from a shop.

Sturgess: Wow, that’s an interesting development!

Hood: Yes, well, I don’t know if you saw it, but the GT200 is a similar device; there’s an interesting history there, too. Just this week they opened it up and there wasn’t even the security tag within; [the makers] didn’t bother with the pretence of there being any electronics in it! So that’s kind of how I got involved with it and of course the data [were] based on a well-known phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect. So that was my scientific contribution to it. But really, I felt as a professional and someone in academia that I couldn’t sit by and do nothing.

I think we had a very remarkable success. But still, there’s a lot to be done because these devices are still out there; they’re still being used in Iraq and we have the elections coming up this month, so I predict that there’ll be more atrocities. We do have to try to keep pressure on, particularly [on] the British government because they’re partly responsible for what’s happening. I mean, we knew about these devices ten years ago, and my personal opinion is that they should have stepped in and done something, done something to stop it.

Sturgess: So where do people normally go when they do want to step in and stop something in these cases?

Hood: It’s very hard to influence policy; to try to get real action is notoriously difficult. Unless you’re on the front page—I mean, Ministers of Parliament are notoriously difficult: they’re very retroactive; they’re not proactive in their activities in my experience.

So, it’s very difficult to make change. But in the case of the bomb detectors, that was a combination of pressure and basically publicity. That publicity was driven partly by the tide of opinion. A part, obviously, [was due to the fact] that it was a bit of ‘woo’! But it just goes to show you, people will believe things and usually when you charge—it was about twenty thousand dollars for each device—the cost of it seems to suggest that there must be something to it. There’s a number of factors going on [to make one] suspicious.

Sturgess: The political-lines: people always wonder who’s really making the decisions there and what people really can do.

Hood: Yeah, both the Iraq and Thai governments have said that they’re investigating, so we’ll see what happens there. But these are sold in over twenty countries! Even the UN brought fifteen of these devices! So, they’ve been very successfully sold.

Sturgess: One of the places people can read about this is your blog, and I’ve noticed that another post that has attracted quite a few comments, one called “Hopeopathy No Longer Available On The NHS” or the National Health Service in the U.K. What’s been the overall reaction?

Hood: It’s funny, because I seem to have got[ten] quite a bit of flack about that! As you’re aware, the Science and Technology committee made their judgment about homeopathy and there were recommendations that funding should be stopped. Although that’s a recommendation that has to be processed through government, I think that in all likelihood it will be a recommendation that will go ahead—one can’t tell for certain, there seems to be some reactions towards it from MPs.

But yes, this is a result of again, various campaigns—certainly the 10:23 campaign and those speaking about the lack of a scientific basis for homeopathy. I made comments that it’s clearly based on notions of sympathetic magic, you know, the notion of “like cures like”; and the idea of infinite dilutions are clearly nonsense and don’t have any scientific basis.

But my point was a little more subtle: look, you know, maybe we should also consider the fact there’s a real place for the placebo effect in modern healthcare. And homeopathy works from a placebo-point, although homeopaths claim that it’s stronger than placebo—I don’t think that can possibly be true. So, if it’s working as a placebo, then maybe we should consider it in that context; in which case I think there is a place for placebos in modern health care, because I think that frankly, there’s a substantial number of people who get better and yet you don’t want to be giving them active ingredients.

Indeed, [from] practices in the U.K. and in America, it’s quite clear that half the GP’s, the practitioners, are prescribing placebos. Now, they’re not inert. Typically they’re antibiotics or vitamins. Now, this is a typical patient and they’re expecting something; you have to give them some sort of intervention, and I made the point that there is a danger of giving out antibiotics, so maybe giving out homeopathy is a convenient way of giving out an inert substance that is not going to harm them and is probably going to make them feel better. So, that kind of gets into the ethics of giving treatments that actually don’t have any effect or are certainly not targeted to any complaint that the patient might have.

So, that was the point I was trying to make: that effectively, by removing homeopathy, you’re removing an opportunity to give patients something that is not going to do them any harm. Now, that raises a whole new set of issues—you might say “that’s not ethically right; doctors shouldn’t be doing it,” but the truth of the matter is that they do.

The other point is that if you’re able to use that strategy, then you get patients who have all matters of issues, so you have to send them for scans and blood-tests that ends up costing even more—so from a pragmatic view-point, I was just throwing out there the possibility that actually, it would be useful to have this course of action to give people something that is not going to do them any harm. Because people don’t like to think that it can all be in the head, that there’s a psychosomatic component. Not that homeopathy works—unfortunately some people have taken my position to mean that it’s somehow “supporting homeopathy.” I’m not supporting homeopathy; I’m supporting the opportunity to give placebos.

Sturgess: One of the points that was raised was “will this make homeopathy disappear or will it make it go underground or have it unchecked?”

Hood: I think that’s true. Imagine if you turned away a patient, if you said “sorry, there is no medical treatment for you.” That’s going to leave them very unsatisfied and then they’ll seek alternative treatment, and that’s when you’re going into the realms of alternative medicines, which are potentially dangerous. Certainly there are examples of people who have denied conventional medicine in favor of homeopathy and it has lead to deaths; I’m not saying it’s totally innocuous. But we do have to be aware if you don’t give people something, and if that’s not regulated, then it’s potentially dangerous.

Sturgess: I guess I’m not that surprised, since even in your book Supersense, you wrote “I might come up with concepts that may challenge the really hard-core skeptics out there,” so I think it’s really appreciated that you continue to question and raise awareness in this manner.

Hood: Well, that’s the beauty and the power of skepticism: to try and evaluate the evidence and to take a balanced view. I think that dogma, whether you’re a believer or nonbeliever, is not appropriate, and you need to have the flexibility to change with the evidence. That’s what a true skeptic should be, not someone who dismisses it off-hand.

Clearly there [are] issues with the scientific basis and evidence and so forth, but then there are more other subtle issues about the fact that you’re always going to have a hardcore portion of your society who are going to believe in this and it’s how you deal with that. If there’s a “scale of skepticism,” then I’m probably a moderate—I’m not at the far end! People believe weird stuff!

Sturgess: People do!

Hood: So, it will be interesting to see what happens with homeopathy; I suspect it will be removed from the NHS. I think that the cost to the NHS is not particularly high but then people [will] protest that any cost that supports supernatural thinking is wrong. But balance that with the costs of further investigations and having to give them something, then it turns out not to be a simple equation.

To Be or Not to Be—Is That the Question?

The main function of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)¹ is to keep evolution in schools and keep creationism out.

NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott once said to me: “Our goal is to do our work so well that we’ll eventually be out of our jobs.”

“You want to go out of business?” I asked.

“Yes. That’s the purpose,” she confirmed.

Some organizations aren’t meant to last. Or rather, it is hoped that the need for them won’t last.

Ideally, educational and relief organizations would not need to exist. To that end, some organizations have project plans, milestones, and deliverables. They have specific, achievable objectives, for example, the aim to teach evolution in schools and exclude pseudoscience from the school syllabus. Skeptical organizations endeavor to promote critical thinking in schools and society at large. But this last lofty goal raises a few questions, such as “should skeptical groups aim to go out of business?”

It has occasionally been said that skeptical movements should, like some other educational organizations, aspire to ultimately become redundant. I’ve heard a range of suggested estimates: that we should plan to disband in ten years, or twenty years, or fifty years. There are as many vague, unsupported predictions for the end of skeptical groups as there are predictions for the End of Times.

But there won’t be a paranormal and pseudoscientific apocalypse. There won’t be some sort of Hundredth Monkey Effect whereby we’ll all wash our skeptical sweet potatoes and critical thinking will disseminate instantaneously. There is no instant gratification. Skepticism is spread by stealth.

How will we know when our job is done? When homeopathic products are no longer sold on pharmacy shelves? When astrology columns are no longer published in newspapers? When the crystal ball becomes a desk weight? When the “Going out of Business” sign appears on the Church door?

The skeptic’s role isn’t like educating people about evolution or eradicating smallpox. There is no single task or single solution. There is no one theory or theme. Skepticism has a broad mission, and there are a wide range of topics that we need to tackle—constantly. We need to be vigilant. Often we’re putting out fires and quashing the myths as they rear their heads. There are ever-emerging fads, ever-shifting concerns, and seemingly “unsinkable rubber ducks.” Beliefs and practices evolve, and so skeptics must also evolve with our methods, our marketing, and our message.

These are changing and continuing challenges. But these complexities don’t mean that skeptics are misguided, that our objectives are hopeless, or that our efforts are ineffective.

Skepticism is an anti-propaganda machine that teaches people how to think, not what to think. However, since skeptics are in the business of changing minds, our effects are not always obvious. We need to be patient; our achievements aren’t always immediate but are mostly observable over time.

Our results aren’t as testable as the approaches we use to arrive at our conclusions. Often we only see these results on a case by case basis. For example, the Lancet’s retraction of the Wakefield study that erroneously linked autism to vaccinations², the dissolution of anti-vaccination organizations³, and the victory of evolution over creationism in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial⁴.

Ironically, like the anecdotal evidence we criticize, the positive feedback we receive is often testimonial and personal. For instance, my mother ceased making her own colloidal silver after I supplied her with evidence that showed that this is an ineffective and dangerous practice. I was also able to help convince my friend with skin cancer to stop seeing alternative practitioners and start undergoing chemotherapy.

Often we will never see the results of what we do. Often we will never know the good we do.

But we do hear about the “bad” we supposedly do. The motives of skeptics are frequently misunderstood. Skeptics are stereotyped as cynics, naysayers, self-righteous snobs.

In the hunt to explain skepticism, some accuse skeptics of being antagonists. We are portrayed as adversarial, pitting James Randi against Uri Geller in a cynical sport. It was once said to me, “You skeptics thrive on people like Sylvia Browne and John Edward.” I replied that skeptical organizations exist because of these people; these people don’t exist for us.

Skepticism isn’t a game. I have yet to meet a skeptic who thrives on news stories like the one about a young girl who died of whooping cough because parents in her community neglected to vaccinate her on the advice of anti-vaccination groups. I have yet to encounter a skeptic who relishes family arguments about religion around the holiday dinner table. I have yet to find a skeptic who enjoys watching a psychic medium tell a crying widow that he has a message from her deceased husband. And I have yet to find a skeptic who delights in the unsolved mystery above the solved one.

We are dedicated volunteers and grassroots activists with humanitarian motives. Pseudoscientist Frank Sumption⁵ once disparagingly asked me, “Who pays you bozos for the work you do?” We are skeptics for love, not money. We are skeptics because a lack of critical thinking can affect our lives negatively. We are driven by ethics and by practical, real-world concerns. We want our children to be safe from preventable diseases such as polio; we want our education systems free from misinformation; we want our society free from superstition; we want to find truths and preserve them.

And we’re skeptics because we can’t live any other way; As Isaac Asimov says, we are skeptics “because we must”:

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.⁶

Alternatively, skeptical groups are accused of being self-propagating. Some believers perceive us as skeptical vampires who feed on pseudoscience and the paranormal. It was once said to me, “You need the supernatural to justify your existence!” But skepticism fills a gap, it doesn’t create one.

There is a multi-faceted and ongoing need for skepticism.

Skeptical organizations and publications have a practical purpose in addressing this need. These outlets create a sense of community, raise awareness of critical thinking, examine beliefs and practices, and engage in activism, especially beyond our own groups. We aim to educate, motivate, and inspire the public to think—critically, of course.

Reading skeptical magazines has a practical purpose too. This isn’t like flicking though a gossip column while you wait in the foyer of your dentist’s surgery (where you are no doubt having those dangerous amalgam fillings taken out of your mouth). We are readers with responsibilities who walk away with an everyday duty to society and a personal duty to friends and family.

You warn your father that the grapefruit juice he drinks is contraindicated against his heart medication. You advise your colleague against participating in that multi-level marketing scheme. You gently explain to your friend that the belief he is dabbling in is more cult than religion. You comfort your frightened child with the truth that there’s no ghost in the cupboard.

We are all on the front lines of skepticism.

Is a lack of critical thinking something we can eliminate entirely? Have we effectively purged ourselves of credulity?

A self-professed “hard-core skeptic” I know praises the benefits of water divining his rural property during drought. He doesn’t invariably find water, but there are times he does, so it obviously works! Whether we buy lotto tickets, give acupuncture a go, or pop vitamins, skeptics are not immune to uncritical beliefs.

Even skeptics are really skeptics-in-training. There will always be something for us to teach, but also something for us to learn. We need to preach beyond the choir but also continue to preach to the choir. No one knows all the songs.

Skepticism is a work-in-progress for all of us. Just as there will always be a need for reason, science, logic, critical thinking, and plain old common sense, there will always be a need for skepticism.

Will skepticism go out of business?

I doubt it.

References:

1. National Center for Science Education. Accessed 02/22/10.
2. Bad Astronomy. AVN may be closing doors; Meryl Dorey stepping down. Accessed 02/22/10.
3. Lancet Retracts Study Tying Vaccine to Autism. The Wall Street Journal. Accessed 02/02/10.
4. National Center for Science Education. Intelligent Design on Trial: Kitzmiller v. Dover. Accessed 02/22/10.
5. Frank’s Box: The Broken Radio. Naked Skeptic CSI Web column. Accessed 02/22/10.
6. The Humanist Community of Central Ohio (PDF). Accessed 02/22/10.

According to doctors, Rom Houben has been in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for over twenty years. In November 2009, however, Laureys declared that three years ago his PET-scans had shown signs of consciousness in Houben’s brain and that now the patient was able to communicate. All over the world video footage showed the man fluently typing complex messages with one finger, with the help of a “facilitator.” This trained assistant guides his hand over a keyboard, trying to feel and amplify (facilitate) the patient’s minute intentional movements. In interviews Laureys claimed that his scans showed that up to 40 percent of patients previously diagnosed as PVS were trapped in a paralyzed body and could be “released.”

Many commentators expressed disbelief, and so did SKEPP, for several reasons, medical and others. The method of facilitated communication (FC) has since been discredited. Controlled experiments have consistently demonstrated that none other than the facilitator is directing the “conversation.” In The Times and Der Spiegel, Laureys claimed that he had performed controlled experiments, which had convinced him of the reliability of FC. Later he expressed doubts and planned new tests, but by then the news of the miraculous rebirth after twenty-three years had already circulated the globe. How many new tests are needed, and why wait months? Apart from some medical objections, one single observation should have been sufficient to discard the whole story: many of the videos show that the patient is typing with his eyes closed. Nobody can blind-type whole sentences with one finger. If you can, the €10.000 SKEPP prize will be yours, and perhaps you can also apply for the $1,000,000 Randi prize.

On February 4, 2010, at the request of the medical institution where Houben is cared for, SKEPP was present as advisor for a planned test of this controversial method of communication, and we also conducted our own tests. We learned from the institute staff that during two years all attempts to establish any form of communication with the patient by detecting and coding minute movements of the eyes or any other body part had failed. With FC he now seemed to produce correct words and elaborate sentences. Indeed, his answers to our simple test questions were intelligible and sometimes elaborate, but when the facilitator did not know the questions, his answers were completely wrong. Most of the time he typed with his eyes closed, but as soon as the keyboard was shielded from the facilitator’s view, the typing produced gibberish and halted. There clearly was no communication with the patient, only with the facilitator. We wonder what world-shaking news there would have been to communicate if it hadn't been for the spectacular answers the facilitator produced.

Our intent was not to test Houben but to test FC, and once again we demonstrated that the method is a sham. This is not to deny that Houben may have some limited consciousness. If so, how frustrating must it be for him to hear all the bogus messages produced in his name, without the ability to protest? We had a long conversation with Laureys after our test. He insisted that we test more facilitators before drawing conclusions. We declined and advised him to clearly distance himself from the FC scam, which he has done today. Out of respect and to allow the institute time to discuss the results with the family and the dedicated staff, we agreed on a two-week embargo before making the results of our test public. Of course, not everyone is convinced yet. In a phone conversation Houben’s mother told us that she still believes in FC, because “sometimes it had produced answers that only her son could have known.” She is convinced that Laureys will ultimately find a method to communicate with her son. His team is experimenting with other methods. Let's hope her wish comes true.

The international news coverage of this case has given many relatives of coma patients false hope, and advocates of the illusionary facilitated communication got an undeserved publicity boost. The emotional impact on patients’ families can't be underestimated. The decision to present this case before the international media was premature, to say the least.

When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.

—John D. Bogart

As evidence for human-caused climate change has mounted, global warming denialists have responded by blaming the messengers. Climate researchers have endured abuse by bloggers, editorial writers, Fox News pundits, and radio talk show hosts who have called them liars and vilified them as frauds. The attacks had become increasingly vile as the past decade, the hottest in human history, came to an end. Angry activists have called for firings and criminal investigations, and some prominent scientists have received physical threats.

Politicians have also gotten into the act. In 2005, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) referred to global warming as the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) sent a harassing letter to Michael Mann (now a professor at Pennsylvania State University) and his coauthors of the famous “hockey stick” paleoclimate paper, demanding that they drop everything to provide him with extensive documentation about what he claimed were “methodological flaws and data errors” in their work.

Denialists have attempted to call the science into question by writing articles that include fabricated data. They’ve improperly graphed data using tricks to hide evidence that contradicts their beliefs. They chronically misrepresent the careful published work of scientists, distorting all logic and meaning in an organized misinformation campaign. To an uncritical media and gullible non-scientists, this ongoing conflict has had the intended effect: it gives the appearance of a scientific controversy and seems to contradict climate researchers who have stated that the scientific debate over the reality of human-caused climate change is over (statements that have been distorted by denialists to imply the ridiculous claim that in all respects “the science is settled”).

Science, however, has ground rules. Those who don’t follow the rules are entitled to their opinions but cannot legitimately claim to be participating in a scientific debate. One rule that must be followed for scientific results to be accepted is that they must be subjected to review and published in a scholarly scientific journal. This is a necessary but insufficient condition (nobody is compelled to accept the conclusions of a paper just because it has been refereed).

This rule is not intended to create a “high priesthood” of scientists or keep others from participating. On the contrary, the culture of science welcomes dissent and encourages contrarians to publish their ideas so they can be subjected to the same scrutiny that is applied to conventional thought.

Peer review is designed to screen out material that is demonstrably wrong, flawed, illogical, or fabricated. Non-specialists are not always able to quickly spot errors in a highly technical piece of work, so experts are recruited to make sure any mistakes are corrected and necessary documentation is provided before the science is published.

The first thing I do when I read an editorial or blog entry is check to see if the supposed science has been published in scientific literature. If not, I don’t see why I should bother to read what nobody could be bothered to put through scientific peer review. My reasoning is not that such material is necessarily wrong, but without any scientific review I have no assurance that anyone has checked to see if the equations are right, data sources correctly cited, figures properly attributed, or other workers’ conclusions fairly represented.

The global warming debate continues, at least among the science-challenged. The calculation of the mass of CO₂ produced from burning a gallon of gasoline was the subject of a recent vigorous disagreement on the letters page of our local newspaper. This is a question that a decent high school chemistry student should be able to answer, but the highly opinionated letter writers were not able to resolve their differences, despite the fact that reaction stoichiometry is indisputably settled science.

Likewise, a competent high school physics student understands how the so-called greenhouse effect works and that conservation of energy is also settled science. It has been known for over a hundred years that adding CO₂ to the atmosphere increases its infrared opacity, and when this happens, more energy from sunlight enters Earth’s atmosphere than escapes. The atmosphere must heat up on average. There is no scientific debate about this fact, and nobody has ever published a “zero-warming” theory to explain how it could be otherwise.

There is, however, a healthy, open, honest, and active scientific debate in the peer-reviewed scientific literature about the degree of climate change. The best scientific estimate of the amount of warming (when CO₂ levels double, which is likely to happen this century) is about 3°C. There are scientists who disagree—some think it’s higher and some lower—and have published the basis for their disagreement.

Having lost the scientific debate, denialists have now resorted to hacking into a computer system and stealing private correspondence to distract those who prefer controversy to science. To those of us in the scientific community, it came as no surprise that researchers who had endured personal attacks had trouble rising above the fray. But the harsh tone of some messages by Mann and others caught the attention of the voyeurs who read them precisely because they were in sharp contrast to the way scientists usually speak in public. The attempts to force editors not to publish papers critical of the scientists and suggestions to boycott journals were inappropriate and unsuccessful (journal editors resisted pressure and published the papers anyway). They also were not unusual—certainly not beneath those in the opposite camp. And even though the widely reported “trick” used to “hide the decline” was legitimate (using real temperatures instead of a faulty tree-ring proxy to represent the temperature record), it sounded like something denialists would do, so it was assumed to be crooked.

The very fact that Climategate was newsworthy is evidence that reporters hold scientists to a much higher standard than they hold denialists, even if they won’t admit it in their quest to report a controversy.

It takes only one fateful bite to turn from ordinary theater actor into The Wolfman. The sheer amount of discount-quality cheese in The Wolfman could cause even those without a history of lactose intolerance to be overcome with a rumbling discomfort.

In The Wolfman, Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is summoned back to his childhood home to help find his brother, who has gone missing under mysterious circumstances. When he arrives, he meets Gwen (Emily Blunt), his brother’s love who sent for him, and sees his father, John (Anthony Hopkins), for the first time in years. During his investigation, he uncovers a family secret, faces his past, and meets the creature that will change his life, and body, forever. The creature creates such a stir that Scotland Yard sends investigator Fredrick Abberline (Hugo Weaving) to find it.

There is no easy way to explain the feeling of an intelligent brain going through the process of goo-ification. Most instances of goo-ifications happen after a person has been thrown from their car or drowned in freezing water and are now lying in a coma while their family bickers about whether or not to pull the plug. It is rare to be in perfect health and feel its onset. The Wolfman’s greatest feature is that it can give any audience member this special, one of a kind feeling without any lasting damage. (This statement has not been assessed by the FDA.) The formula for temporary, reversible cognitive damage is (3 parts loud, overly dramatic, outdated, music) + (5 parts terrible theater-style acting) +(4 parts abysmal writing) + (2 parts embarrassingly bad wolfish visuals).

Benicio Del Toro’s acting in The Wolfman was the stuff of nightmares. Not the nightmare where a big, wild animal eats you or when someone you love turns into a monster. It is the far more frightening nightmare where a person with stage fright has to give a speech in front of a class and forgets to put on his pants. Del Toro is not frightening and does not portray deep or conflicted emotion. His performance could make a dead person uncomfortable.

Anthony Hopkins does nothing to assuage the misery Del Toro inflicts on the audience. In abysmal scene after abysmal scene, Hopkins manages to strip the audience of any potential interest in his character by making him as trite as possible.

Not that Del Toro and Hopkins are completely to blame; they were sucked into the black hole made when writers Andrew Kevin Walker and David Self rubbed against each other and their script imploded. Working together, they managed to word every line of the script in the least natural language possible. The plot, while complete, was full of shallow, meaningless moments. In the strain to make The Wolfman into cheesy goodness, Self and Walker just made Velveeta.

Ultimately, director Joe Johnston is to blame for the audience’s painful intellectual dismemberment. Johnston gives us three kinds of breaks from the insipid dialogue. The first is the meaningless visuals that show a costume or uninspiring scenery or extraordinarily obvious phase-of-the-moon shots that add nothing to the story arc or mood. Secondly, overly dramatic, vacuous montages take up nearly one third of the length of this never-ending film. Third, and most heinous, is the nearly unwatchable wolfman effects and characteristics.

The Wolfman takes most of its inspiration from the 1941 movie The Wolf Man—far too much inspiration. The phony looking wolf hair and masks could be forgiven in the 40s but is utterly unforgivable now. Many of the scenes shot in silhouette were supposed to showcase the creature’s claws, a decision that would have made sense only if Johnston was slow or stoned. Lastly, the actions of the wolfman don’t make any sense. He is feared because he is out of control, but he can still make rational decisions. He misses opportunities to kill and at other times kills at random. His nature is completely inexplicable.

Johnston’s bonus failure is the use of music. He offers the audience not a single moment without screeching violins and pounding piano keys. The more hyper-dramatic the music, the more it highlights the actors complete failure to impart any dramatic feeling.

I love a cheeky, cheesy movie as long as the writing is fun, the actors can pull off the characters with sincerity, and the director knows when to pull it back. The Wolfman has dreadful writing, the two main actors came up short, and Johnston—well, we really don’t need to go over that again, do we?

After participating at the First National Congress on Atheism in Argentina, on December 2008, at the city of Mar del Plata, and with a brief opening lecture (see photo below), CFI/Argentina Executive Director, Alejandro J. Borgo took part in different activities related to critical thinking, science divulgation and religion issues.

In January 2009 was released the last issue of Pensar, Ibero American Magazine for Science and Reason. We hope that in the next future we would be publishing it again.

CFI/Argentina’s Website: spreading critical thinking in YouTube

CFI/Argentina’s Website, www.cfiargentina.org was updated and has a new section, “Videos” where people could be linked to a variety of videos regarding pseudoscience, and showing the appearance of its Executive Director on many TV shows, as a journalist and another as a host of brief documentaries.

Alejandro J. Borgo appearing on several TV shows, debunking pseudoscience.

We invite Spanish-speaking people to see these videos and visit CFI/Argentina’s Website!

CFI/Argentina course on Critical Thinking at the University of Buenos Aires

Pensar last issue, Vol. 6, No. 1, January/March 2009

During September-October 2009, Alejandro J. Borgo, Director of CFI/Argentina held a course titled “Beliefs, Pseudoscience and Critical Thinking” at the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas, cultural center which belongs to the prestigious University of Buenos Aires.

This was the first time that a course of this kind was being carried out at a building belonging to the University of Buenos Aires.

We hope this course to be carried out on 2010. This is part of the efforts of CFI/Argentina to spread critical thinking among university students and general public.

Cultural Center Ricardo Rojas, belonging to the University of Buenos Aires

The wonderful paranormal world: from mere entertainment to social danger. CFI/Argentina

Alejandro J. Borgo at the lecture in Tandil, Argentina

Lectures

CFI/Argentina was invited to give two lectures in different cities of Argentina. One was held in Tandil and the other in Mar del Plata, both dealing with critical thinking and pseudoscience (see photos below). And another related to freethinking and religion was held at the Cultural Center Ricardo Rojas, during the course mentioned above.

Book on critical thinking

Finally, CFI/Argentina Executive Director signed a contract in order to write a book on critical thinking that will be published on 2010 by one of the most important editorials of Argentina. Its tentative title is: Why all this is happening to me? The most common errors we made in thinking. If not the first, it will be one of the few books on critical thinking published in Argentina to date.

From the CFI/Argentina we are encouraging people to apply critical thinking to politics and economics, fields which are in urgent need of critical thinking.

In Legion, God is pissed, and it is all our fault. Incomprehensible theology, a bumbling bunch of characters, and a taffy-stretched plot is not saved by randomly strewn bits of hunky ethereal badassery.

Humanity’s gone and done it; God has to wipe us out again. The characters have no direct contact with God on screen; he never appears, but he is the villain of the story. He devises a plan to off us using angels to possess human beings to give zombie kisses to the people of the world. He also sends flies to muck up the cabins of innocent SUVs. The angel Michael (Paul Bettany), goes against God and leaves heaven to protect Charlie (Adrianne Palicki), a pregnant waitress whose baby is the only hope for human survival. He happens across her at work, along with her boss Bob Hanson (Dennis Quaid), his son Jeep (Lucas Black), their cook Percy (Charles Dutton), and a gaggle of customers in a remote greasy spoon called Paradise Falls.

Writer Peter Schink and writer-director Scott Stewart’s Legion reminds me of my human sexuality class in college. My professor committed the sin of making a topic of universal interest, sex, boring enough to dry socks. Schink and Stewart tripled the transgression by taking morality, god, and guns and turning them into a treatment for insomnia. Even though there is always something happening on screen, there is a distinctive lack of plot movement.

When Legion’s ending credits begin to roll, there is a painful yearning in the souls of the audience to encounter the middle of the story. Little about the characters, their purpose, or the consequences of their behavior is explained because Schink and Stewart nixed the climax and the resolution and stretched out the introduction until it was nearly transparent. Legion’s one hundred minutes easily could have been compressed into twenty. They could have completed the story with the left over eighty minutes. I guess they, or more likely the studio, did not think we are worthy of such trivial and expensive indulgences.

God doesn’t just evaporate Charlie or her baby. He doesn’t have an angel possess her body and kill her baby that way. When Michael is killed for going against God’s wishes, God resurrects him, giving him back his angel body, presumably so he can stop Gabriel from doing as he was ordered. Even though he took mercy on Michael and allowed him to save them, Charlie, Jeep, and the baby are still in peril.

Any way you dissect it, in Legion, God is a son of a bitch in ways that only a creature without the restraints of human morality could be. What is unclear is whether he is impotent to change course, is too lazy to do so, or is a slightly retarded deity with short-term memory issues that make emotional or philosophical consistency impossible.

The mythological issues get worse if we acknowledge their obvious biblical inspiration. If we presuppose that the god character in Legion is the same one as the one in the bible, and we accept the dogma and midrush of the last 2,000 years, we have serious consistency issues. The Christian god as revised in the New Testament is: 1. all-powerful, 2. all-knowing, 3. all-loving, and 4. all-forgiving. It is also important to note that in the past, God created a prison for an angel who went against his wishes.

Applying these new factors, the god character in Legion knew when he created people and angels how things would go and chose to do it anyway. He knew his love would be exhausted and his forgiveness would run out circa 2010. He knew when Lucifer fell from grace that Michael would eventually do the same thing. He could have prevented Charlie from getting pregnant in the first place so there was no chance of his plan being derailed. If he had real moral concerns about the consequences of human existence, he could have chosen not to create people or he could blink out existence so there would be no suffering, but he chose not to do it that way.

In fact, God manages to have none of the personality traits he developed in the New Testament of the bible. Just like he did in the story of Noah, he maximizes the suffering of everyone on the planet, thus making himself anything but all-loving. Unlike the story of Noah, he can be undone by the birth of a single child, which makes him not all-powerful. God doesn’t know what he needs, so he isn’t all-knowing. The fact that he’s decided to wipe everyone off the planet means he certainly is not all-forgiving.

Trying to resolve the theological issues of the movie is a tiresome task. There is no context in which to put the story that does not leave the gears in my brain seized with smoke coming out of my ears. Schink and Stewart’s only accomplishment is making Legion as consistent as the bible.

Just like in the bible, the rough edge of the sins of inconsistency can be smoothed away with action and adventure that entertains the brain while engaging the imagination. Not surprisingly, Legion is rough around the edges. Legion does not have long lingering pauses; that would make the lack of both plot and action too obvious. It gifts the viewer with back story that is meaningless to the plot, hints of foreshadowing that turns out to just have been worthless words whispered only to waste our time.

For all the guns being carried around, there is little shooting. The close quarters and high stress leads to only minimal infighting. Some of the deaths are inexplicable or hallow both visually and emotionally. It feels like the editor decided that plot could be replaced with action. When he realized there was not enough action to go around, he supplemented with some leftover scraps he found on the cutting room floor.

The only thing about Legion that makes perfect sense is Paul Bettany. He’s eerily still and angelic. If he flew down and stood in front of me, I would find it hard not to be in awe of him. Thinking about him right now makes me think that angels might exist…

Legion might have been fun had they completed the plot instead of leaving it open for a sequel. Sitting there for so long, fiddling with my bottom lip to cope, made me wish God had given up on me and sent an angel zombie my way.

One person’s broken radio is another’s groundbreaking invention that enables human contact with aliens, angels, and the dead.

The Ghost in the Machine

Instrumental Transdimensional Communication (ITC) refers to the use of electronic devices such as tape recorders, fax machines, television sets, and computers to attempt to contact nonhuman entities. These are usually standard machines used in nonstandard ways to collect “paranormal” images and sounds. Auditory data are the most common types of ITC, known specifically as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP, also known as Raudive Voices, named after early proponent Konstantin Raudive). This communication is believed by some to be evidence for the existence of an afterlife.

Unlike the machines listed above that are built with more orthodox purposes in mind, the Frank’s Box is designed specifically to capture EVP. It was invented by amateur radio enthusiast Frank Sumption, who was inspired by a “How To” hobby article about recording EVP that appeared in the now defunct Popular Electronics magazine.¹ Upon receiving design instructions from the spirit world and the article, Sumption built a radio receiver that reputedly facilitates real-time communication between the living and the dead, not to mention extraterrestrials, angels, spirits, and assorted entities from other dimensions.

The Frank’s Box device is one of several incarnations. It is also known as the Ghost Box, Joe’s Box, the Spiricom, the Mini-Box, the Telephone to the Dead, or the Shack Hack, according to the design, the manufacturer, and the faction.

How Frank’s Box Works (or Doesn’t Work)

The Frank’s Box is a homemade radio frequency receiver. However, this radio isn’t designed to find your favorite religious radio station; it’s built to be broken.

Frank's Box - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

The scan-lock mechanism is disabled on this “radio.” Therefore, the machine continuously scans radio frequencies at a predetermined rate. This is like twisting the knob on a radio backwards and forwards quickly, producing random noise. This “sweep method” creates an untunable radio of erratic white noise. The rushing sound of unused frequencies is punctuated by mostly unintelligible fragments of speech or music when the scanner momentarily picks up a station. It is Sumption’s belief that “spirits” and other entities from beyond manifest in an “echo chamber” built into the unit and harness the random signals to create messages intended for the mortal listener.

The Association TransCommunication explains that the Frank’s Box is like a radio for alien DJs.

“Radio-Sweep” is a technology that involves rapidly changing the tuning of a radio receiver to produce a sound track composed of bits of sound from whatever radio programming is on the air and from whatever radio station is detected by the radio at the time. In theory, the communicating entity somehow arranges for the radio programming of local stations to have the needed sounds and that the sweep will detect that sound at the right time to produce the desired message.²

Inside the Box - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

Sumption describes how he believes his device works as a medium. (Nb: all quotes in this article are unedited.)

[This is] Simply another method of supplying “raw” audio that spirits and other entities can use to form voices. Raw audio is a sound source that contains bits of human speech, music and noise, and a convineint source of raw audio is a radio with it’s tuning swept across the entire band, AM, FM, or shortwave. The sweep can be random, linear, or even done by hand.³

On his discussion group EVP-ITC, Sumption expands on his belief that the Frank’s Box channels spirits, not channels.

It’s been my experience that if one supplies something that the spirits/entities can use to make voices out of “they” will speak. That something is called “raw audio”, and contains bits of speech, music and noise. The entities re-modulate this raw audio to form voices. At least I think that’s how it works, and who really knows? A swept radio is a convenient source of raw audio, and that is all the Ghost Box is, and we are spirit as well-hint hint..and it alsoseems to be a form of quantum communcation, allowing instantaneous communication over stellar distances.”⁴

Sumption added in personal correspondence:

“I think it’s no more unbelievable than the so called thought experiments of quatum physics. If I had a Ph.d, maybe what I say would be accepted without question as well.”

EVP-ITC list member “Tom” explains his theories of how the Box may be powered by electromagnetic waves, Sumption’s remodulation hypothesis, or psychic powers.

We Don’t really KNOW how it works, but only that it DOES seem to work.

In EVP we have at least two major theories. In the EM (Electromagnetic)theory, we assume thatthe spirits are communicating with voice modulated EM waves--either via a kind of “radio technology” or the “fact” that sound waves from the other side are Electromagnetic relative to our own universe. This explains why we often need a device like a electric sound recorder to hear the waves.

The other major theory, and the one I subscribe to, is that the voices are made from existing background sounds. This is sorta like using an electronic larynix or holding an electric razor to one’s lips and “mouthing” words. The vocal appratus changes shape and resonance characteristics, making a sufficiently randomized sound(like a buzzing razor) sound like words. Spirits may do something similar, near an EVP recording microphone, either “semi-manefesting” a vocal apparatus or by utilizing some of their own sound altering technology.

The third theory involves the listener putting the background noise together somewhat selectively--in one’s own mind, so to speak. The noise itself which forms which is called a “random field”--- One of the “psychic levers” which effectively enhances one’s psychic abilities to useful levels.

Wiring - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

Since radio stations provide the fodder for any “speech” heard, the broader, unspoken claim is that the “entities” are controlling the airways in general, on the off chance that a human is using a Frank’s Box through which “they” can communicate.

The Light Bulb Goes Off

In a contentious claim popular among the paranormal community, prolific inventor Thomas Edison is credited as the father of EVP and real-time spirit communication. There is an urban legend that while Edison was inventing the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the electric light bulb, he was also in the process of creating an apparatus enabling communication with spirits. This belief appears to be traceable to an 1890 interview in which Edison spoke about the fringe idea of communicating with the “life units” or atoms of the deceased.⁵ In an article published in a 1920 issue of Scientific American Edison speculated about the possibility of building a device that could communicate with the dead, and he was quoted as saying:

“If we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.”⁶

There was also gossip that Edison held séances and endorsed the abilities of several psychics. Some believe the talk of spirit machines was a marketing prank. Edison was apparently agnostic, although he lived during the height of the Spiritualism movement, when belief in an afterlife and the ability to communicate with the dead were common. However, with over one thousand patents, he never registered any machine for contacting spirits, and there is no evidence to suggest that he built or was building such a device.

Most damning to the claims is the refutation on the Edison National Historic Site:

Did Edison make a machine that could talk to the dead?

This seems to be another tall tale that Edison pulled on a reporter. In 1920 Edison told the reporter, B.F. Forbes, that he was working on a machine that could make contact with the spirits of the dead. Newspapers all over the world picked up this story. After a few years, Edison admitted that he had made the whole thing up. Today at Edison National Historic Site, we take care of over five million pages of documents. None of them mention such an experiment.⁷

Unfortunately, the rumors have given credence to the concept of electronic spirit communication and to the Frank’s Box. Moreover, claims that Edison pioneered spirit communication have further mutated to assert that he dictated the design of the Frank’s Box to Sumption, and that he actually communicates through the device. Sumption has made, withdrawn, and denied these claims over the years. His latest statement on the matter was:

“I have in fact heard a voice that said ‘Edison here’ there was no real information conveyed that I could understand.”⁸

However, Sumption added that these spirits could have been “mimicking” Edison’s voice.

Frank’s Assumptions

Sumption initially e-mailed me in response to a series of articles I published in which I mention the Frank’s Box as a tool for collecting EVP.

I make those boxes. What you say about it/me is highly exagerated. I don’t even use it for the usual paranoraml BS, as in Ghost Hunting. I don’t buy the usual Hollywood/TAPS paranormal crap that’s mostly urban legend. “skeptic” usually just means your mind is made up, and no other evidence is required, sought, or wanted. I don’t sell this shit, I don’t do ghost investigations, and don’t believe in hauntings. Something talks that is not radio broadcasts, often addresses people present by name, and sometimes cusses and swears.

He extended an invitation to demonstrate his invention should I ever be in the area. And so, accompanied by Matthew Baxter of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, I recently met Sumption in his hometown of Littleton, Colorado.

Sumption told us that he is in frequent communication with a number of “higher-level spirits” via his Boxes. These regular contacts include “Otto” and “about ten women with German names.” Because he wears a purple-striped shirt and a purple earring, Sumption explained that “the guys” deem him to be royalty and have dubbed him their “Purple Princess.” He refers to himself as Purple, the Purple Space Friend, the Purple Princess, and the Purple Alien Girl. Sumption’s original e-mail explains: “I use the name ‘purple alien girl’ cuz ‘they’ claim I’m their long lost Purple Princess from some other planet. The only actual voice I heard in my head was ‘Kiera(key-ra), it’s time to come home,’ the name of the Princess.”

Purple's Ghost Box - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

He has maintained this claim all along, stating on his EVP-ITC list:

“They” claim I’m their long lost Purple Princess, kidnapped from my home planet long ago when Earth had space flight by the ancient Egyptians. I couldn’t be rescued at that time, so I was transported forward in time, to now, at the end of the current Earth cycle when I could go home. It gets wierd from there. Other entities that talk though the box claim they see a woman where I should be.

Sumption also claims his Boxes have provided doomsday prophecies and predicted world events and disasters, including the May 12, 2008, earthquake in China.

They have told me I go home at the end, and Earth is doomed since day one, but who knows really? Besides, the main message of EVP is life is forever. I get stuff that seems to be talking about 2012, like they talk about the “Monster,” or gioant asteoid of comet thats supposed to hit. They also say “Earth goes Boom.”

When the predictions fail, the spirits are to blame for their dishonesty.

You can’t take this shit like it’s written in stone, or some kind of friggin’ gospel, as most seem prone to do. So far, irregardless of how clear the voice is, or what method is used, the only thing that can be said with certainty is that they consistently lie!

You can ask questions of the box, and many get direct, and immediate answers, as well as names and other information. I don’t ask questions because “they” always seem to turn deceptive and misleading to me.

Sumption’s followers claim they can assist the deceased victims of catastrophes to “cross over.” A group of users are trying to contact the victims of the Haiti earthquake that struck January 12, 2010.

My guide David just came back for a few hours tonight Bruce, then he just now left again, had to go back, seems they have now over 400,000 coming in, either to the light or going to lower plains, he says they are “not all Christian” it’s because they have a bit of the Voodoo religion mixed in with it I guess He says, “it’s a mix of Christianity and Voodoo.”⁹

Sumption’s cronies also claim that the Frank’s Box can be used for solving crimes, finding missing persons, medical research, and in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. One user reports: “I asked about Autism and I heard: ‘MAN MADE’ and when I asked about vaccines (being a cause) I heard ‘YES.’¹⁰

Sumption believes that the Frank’s Box is not the sole means by which he is contacted by entities. He believes he has psychic abilities, revealing that he has “visions” and also hears “voices” through his television, through running water, and that he even hears messages in his head, such as his wife calling him to dinner. He also invented the Video-Box, a device made from a VCR tuner module, with which he claims to have captured an image of a “Man In Black.”

Sumption contends that his devices provide “proof of an afterlife.” However, he insists that the phenomenon is “not paranormal,” which to him refers to magic and witchcraft. To Sumption, Frank’s Box is technology. “It functions on the quantum level,” he explained.

“What do you mean by ‘quantum’?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and admitted, “I don’t know.”

Sumption’s beliefs and claims are inconsistent, and once he announced on his site Frank’S Boxes: “The box does not work… But I will leave the site up for people that would like to tinker with it.”¹¹

Sumption explained that making the Frank’s Boxes is a hobby that he does not profit from. He has made over sixty of these devices, but they have not evolved considerably in design except in size and one recent addition. The spirits told him to add crystals but did not explain what kind to use or how to attach them; they are not connected to the wiring in any practical manner, “But they seem to help clarify the voices for some entities, as do magnets used in the same way.”

Sumption has posted his schematics online so anyone can build a similar device from scratch. But apparently, the most “effective” boxes are the Sumption originals.

Sumption brought along a Frank’s Box Number 63, a compact unit stored in a Rubbermaid container. We each took turns using the device. Sumption suggested we select the AM band as these channels feature more speech than music, but none of us could produce more than a string of unintelligible noise.

Sumption suggests users record their sessions and try techniques to elicit messages:

For me, it works better to announce out loud I’m doing an EVP recording, and just record a few minutes, then I give a five second count down to indicate I’m stopping--just to be polite, and don’t forget a “thank you.” I don’t do any protection BS, and no prayers, that just seems to tell yourself there’s something to fear. I prefer to listen off tape--analog tape. I use tape recorders that have the “que” and “review” functions. Digital recorders work ok as well, and have the que and review function, but they tend to lack a large speaker. Curiously, I have on rare occasion been able to ask a question, or make a comment while listening to a recording and get a meaningful-instant response from tape. I can’t tell if the recording changed, they made it like that ahead of time, or it’s just perception.

For those wondering about the nature of these miraculous messages, Sumption lists some recent examples on the EVP-ITC list: “This is from tonight, start out ‘crystals inside the box’—‘Frank Sumption is keeping this’---‘C’mon Purple--Keep This –box’—‘we love you Princess,’, and ‘this is Otto.’”

Sample recordings of messages such as “Purple - Good Morning” and “Purple Bitch – We use the radio” can be downloaded at Frank’s Boxes. Sumption is also a proponent of Reverse Speech and believes some messages are hidden in the data but are revealed when played backwards.

At the end of the meeting Baxter asked, “Can we take a photo of the Frank’s Box?”

“You can borrow it,” Sumption offered.

Testing, Testing, Testing…

Sumption has a history of loaning Frank’s Boxes to interested parties to “test.” These loans have often resulted in bitter battles about ownership and application.

Despite Sumption’s generosity in making his devices available for “research” purposes, he is resistant to experimental research and the critical evaluation of his claims. Sumption and his biased believer beta testers are not interested in testing their hypotheses but in collecting data that is confirmation bias for their beliefs. They also have a suspicion of science and misunderstand the scientific method. In e-mail correspondence he states:

I opened it up to all experimentors in and attempt to verify my results, which is in fact an application of scientific method, known as peer review.

I am open to honest box discussion, however, believe it or not I am not a true believer. I don’t buy anyone’s dogma- religeous, newage or scientific. I don’t sell anything, I share all information freely, I do this work strickly out of curiosity, and I don’t have an agenda to prove or disprove.

Sumption seems to believe that as the builder of the Boxes only he knows how the devices truly work and how they are to be used: “What really chaps my hide, as maker of the box, is to have someone who knows nothing of electronics, and technology completely ignore everything I say about the box, and presume to tell me how it really works, how it should be used, and what is acceptable from it.”¹²

Sumption claims that any results are private messages intended for the listener only, and that subjectivity is the strength of his device.

Testing is irrelavent! It’s not the device, it’s the user. The messages received are for the user, and rarely does anyone hear the same thing as the original listener. You test it by use, you judge it by what comes through and what it means to you, you can’t play the sound snipets to a panel of numbnuts(objective listeners)) and expect to get an unbiased/honest test. No two people hear the same, so an “objective listener” is an insult to most people doing this work.¹³

In personal correspondence, Sumption denied the existence of objective fact, saying “There is no objective hard physical truth or universe. We all create what we want to see, and everyone thinks their truth supersedes everyone else’s truth.”

However, some users claim that the occasional recording of a word, identifiable to some listeners, means that the results are objective. If there is no consensus, the operator is psychic. “Tom” explains:

The fact that the operator CAN and DOES make recordings and files of understandable words and phrases shows that we are dealing with an OBJECTIVE rather than a subjective phenomenon here. Two things appear to be going on though. First there is an actual voice modulated signal. Different people who listen to it often hear the same thing. The sound is not perfect and is very noisy, so that would explain others who cannot hear the message. The second thing is that some people can listen to the noise as a “random field,” and with a slightly altered state of mind, this field will induce latent “mediumship” ability in the operator and he or she will get a lot more information and voice material than another listener.¹⁴

There are no consistent claims about the Box. Different users have conflicting theories and agendas.

That Which We Call A Frank’s Box By Any Other Name… Wouldn’t Work Either

After Sumption, Christopher Moon is the biggest advocate of the Frank’s Box. Moon is a “professional paranormal investigator,” senior editor of Haunted Times magazine, and founder of Ghost Hunter University. He was once a “primary tester” of the Box, spurring Sumption to remark that Moon was the only person who understood how the device “should” be used. That is, until Moon turned the Box into a business. He permanently borrowed a few Frank’s Boxes from Sumption, installed the device in a fancy display case, rebranded it the “Telephone to the Dead,” and fashioned himself as a necromancer who “summons the dead.” Haunted Times tells the story as Moon sees it.

Skeptical, Christopher met with Mr. Sumption at his workshop for a demonstration. Christopher was astounded to find that the device that Frank Sumption had built was actually designed through the EVP of deceased scientists. It quickly became obvious to Christopher what Frank Sumption had done; he had completed the infamous Thomas Edison Telephone to the Dead.¹⁵

Sumption retorts: “I did not make a ‘telephone to dead,’ I don’t kow what the f--- that is, and I don’t endorse it! Nor do I appreciate my name being connected to the so called ‘Telephone to dead’ on every friggin’ ad for Moon’s public appearances.”¹⁶

If it was even possible, Moon exaggerates the wild claims. Further to Sumption’s belief that he has regular spirit contacts such as Otto, Moon developed the idea that each Box has an operator assigned on the other side, known as a “Spirit Technician.” Contrary to Sumption’s belief that the message is intended for and meaningful to the user only, Moon claims that he can decipher the “messages” like an oracle with the assistance of his Technicians. Thomas Edison is one of these spirit operators, but the dependable “Tyler” is his favorite Technician. As Engineer Paul Turner explained in personal correspondence: “Mr. Moon claims to be one of the few who can interpret these random noises and claims to be making direct real-time contact with the dead using Thomas Edison’s spirit as some type of cosmic switchboard operator.”

Sumption responds to the Spirit Technician theory but in doing so contradicts his own view that the messages are personal and intended for the listener only. “Even if anyone else could hear the voices, why do you need someone to interpret what’s veing said. I say if not many can hear it, of something similar, it ain’t real!”¹⁷

Confusingly, he told me in person that there “may be something to the idea of Spirit Technicians.” However, Sumption disputes Moon’s claim that Edison is a contact with the persuasive EVP, “Grandpa Edison never spoke to Chris,” as evidence.

Moon further claims there are only thirty chosen people who can correctly hear and “translate” the messages received via the Box. The spirits told him so. Unsurprisingly, Moon is a chosen one, as is his psychic mother and theatrical medium Chip Coffey. Foolhardy amateurs who are not chosen run the risk of encountering evil entities and opening portals to demons.

Unfortunately, Moon has a cult-like following. With his assistants Dina Everling and Michelle “Babs” Babiarz in tow, Moon provides a (dis)service with the glorified Frank’s Box. He conducts private consultations and public readings, charging $100 per fifteen minutes. For an additional fee he offers his spirit translation and third-party expert analysis of the “messages.” Unlike the inane “phrases” and “words” that Sumption receives, Moon’s messages include whole sentences—that only Moon can hear. His machine produces an incomprehensible snippet of sound, but his translations suddenly decode long-winded messages featuring complex concepts and complete sentences.

Like a magic wand, rabbit, and hat, Moon has featured the Telephone to the Dead as his gimmick in productions such as TruTv’s patently ridiculous Door to the Dead, a television show following a team of credulous ghost hunters in their investigation of a Hollywood hired “haunted” house.

Herein lies the most poignant criticism of the Frank’s Box and all other forms of spirit “communication.” Using these devices to provide a service is a scam; while using them at all is futile, charging money from vulnerable, grieving victims is unconscionable.

Moon’s ploy is to carry out personal or public readings and then to leverage this client list by contacting these people and promising, “The telephone is calling for you.” But you’ll have to pay for a session to receive the message.¹⁸ Turner adds:

Many of Moon’s customers or victims have spoken out against him saying that they were not happy with the session, then weeks after the session he contacts them again saying he has talked to their loved one and that he has the information they were looking for. But it will cost an additional fee.

A YouTube video shows Moon giving a public performance of the device at a college. It is distressing to watch. In this cold reading, a young girl asks the tragic question, “I love you, and I want to know…was it an accident?” We hear nothing but white noise as Moon announces flatly, “No.” The girl bursts into tears, and Moon adds, “But you knew that.” He tries to console her with feigned sympathy, “He said it’s okay. He said it’s okay. He said it’s okay.”¹⁹

Jeannette Osborne, a former client of Moon’s, is a guest on the Reap Sow Radio episode “Dark Side of the Moon.” Seeking “something tangible” to prove there is life after death, Osborne spent thousands of dollars having sessions with Moon. During these readings she was told her family was plagued by demons, and she underwent two exorcisms via the device, which she calls “Boxercisms.” She received unsubstantiated warnings about her son, a soldier stationed in Iraq, and she even exposed Moon’s deception by planting bogus information, which he fed back to her as fact. She also recounts the heartbreaking story of nursing her dying brother, and how she created a code word for him to send from beyond the grave via the Telephone to the Dead.²⁰

Sumption has publicly criticized Moon’s methods and ludicrous theories, but his complaints often center around the fact that Moon has neglected to return, or pay for, the Boxes Suption has loaned to him, with which Moon turns a considerable profit. While Sumption’s assumptions are scientifically ignoble, he believes his “personal research” and noncommercial use of the device are somehow noble compared to Moon’s money-making schemes. Neither position makes the public use of Frank’s Box any more ethical or the device any more legitimate.

Both Sumption and Moon exploit the public with their claims and practices.

Opening a Pandora’s Box

I was very fortunate to be able to enlist the assistance of a number of skeptics with backgrounds in engineering and electronics to assess the Frank’s Box. Because I would have had difficulty getting the Frank’s Box through airport security, the device remains in Colorado. Project Engineer Paul Turner examined a series of photographs of the device, and after originally commenting that it was an “elementary school class project,” he provided the following technical explanation of the model.

The Frank’s Box Model 63 that you possess is an alleged Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) device, the term would imply a two-way communication between the spirit world and that of the living. However, after examining the photographs you provided and the builder’s own schematics, I fail to see where or how this two-way communication occurs as the device itself is nothing more than an AM/FM receiver with modifications. Without a personal examination it is of course difficult to unlock any great secrets the box may contain. The results that the builder claims would be a matter of personal belief in the metaphysical.

The First Circuit in the chain is a salvaged RCA AM/FM tuner card. It would appear to have come from an older tabletop style radio. The first thing that struck me as unusual about the card is that the builder placed two quartz crystals on the tuning coil using antenna lead and silicon to secure them between the coil and the housing. It is not possible for these crystals to interact with the tuner, except for the slight possibility the crystals, acting as spacers for the excess antenna lead, could slightly change the characteristics of the reception of the tuner, perhaps reducing its selectivity. Or this is an attempt by the builder to make the device seen more magical.

There are two hand wired circuit boards, which again seen to be populated with a combination of new and salvaged parts. These parts are wired to a proto-board, normally used for prototype circuits. One containing the modifications necessary to linear scan the tuner, this is accomplished using the XR 2206 function generator integrated circuit. This IC generates the sawtooth wave which enables the modified tuner to scan frequencies from top to bottom then back again. This is the same process as spinning a tuner knob on an old-style radio up and down the dial. The adjustment for the rate of scan is controlled by an attenuator on the front face.

This board also contains the preamps and microphone amplifier for an external echo box which is optional. The speaker for the echo box is driven by the RAW speaker output on the front panel, the volume being controlled by the RAW drive attenuator on the front panel. The return microphone from the echo box when the switch is engaged would only feed the line output jack, which then could feed a recording device.

The workmanship of the device is sloppy, it would appear to be an effort of trial and error as opposed to a well-thought out design. While some of the circuits are clever it is in no way elegant or innovative; perhaps a better classification would be haphazard. I speculate that the builder has a rudimentary knowledge of electronics, perhaps at a ham radio level or late 1970’s trade school. So if entities indeed gave him the knowledge to build the device as he states in his schematics apparently they did not keep up with the technical journals.

In conclusion, the Frank’s Box Model 63 does an adjustable linear sweep of the AM or FM band depending on which is selected. The result is a random noise generator. It does not have the capability of receiving any signals except that of the AM or FM broadcast band. It does not have transmit capability. Its sole function is to linear sweep the broadcast band producing bits and pieces of audio from those broadcast stations. Since the claim is that spirits speak through the random noise, I could well see that after a few moments of listening to this random audio, the sensory trait of pareidolia would come into play creating false positives. This is the only logical explanation to the builder’s claims.

You Say Potato; I Say Gobbledygook

The supposed efficacy of the Frank’s Box hinges on its output. However, these results are unconvincing. The communication is incomprehensible, subjective, and incapable of being replicated. Most of all, it isn’t actually communication.

The recordings made by the Frank’s Box and similar devices include random words, word fragments, language-like sounds, music, and radio noise. They do not exhibit the features that characterize natural language. There is no grammar; the “messages” are pieced together, and they do not produce authentic utterances. The most important distinction to make is that these collective sounds do not constitute “speech.” The data from the Frank’s Box may contain bits of speech, but it isn’t speech.

The alleged messages are construed to suit the agenda of the listener. The claim that “I love you” is heard confirms the bias that the believer has contacted Uncle Bruce, while the skeptics laugh when their question, “Is Chris Moon a fraud?” is answered by a car salesperson-like “Guaranteed!”²¹ This kind of evidence is anecdotal only.

Frank’s Box aficionados listen to their devices obsessively to acquire “Class A” recordings (that are still very poor). For them it is addictive like a psychic slot machine, and they are convinced by the pay-offs: the subjectively more intelligible sounds. But these are merely better quality gibberish.

Moreover, the “messages” are nonsensical and do not contain information. They are meaningless from a pragmatic perspective, but they are infused with meaning by the listener. This is idiosyncratic meaning based in personal experience; it is individual but not shared meaning.

However, sometimes this meaning can be shared artificially. Listeners are suggestible and want to hear something meaningful. As believers, they are often expecting to hear something. They are selective listeners who mark the hits and ignore the misses, sometimes even “recognizing” the “voices.” In this mindset they have a tendency to be lead and to conform their perception to what others think they hear. Michael Shermer calls this “priming” the brain to see or hear something.²² Having others hear what you hear seems to legitimize the results. However, even if more than one person arrives at the same interpretation, it is still subjective.

Indeed, many believe there is a special way to “hear” the messages and that this ability requires practice, sensitivity, training, and time. Tom explains, “In some cases the ‘impression’ is not as ‘clean’ and one has to develop ‘an ear’ so to speak, to hear them (like sea legs, but for EVP).”²³

To make the results more persuasive, some users edit the recordings, ostensibly cleaning up the ambient noise, but often affecting the result. It’s not that the messages are garbled or inaudible to begin with, it’s that they aren’t messages at all. As Baxter put it to me in conversation, “The longer you listen to it the more it seems to make sense, like looking for patterns in clouds.”

In personal correspondence, Sumption states:

When I first started making the linear sweep boxes, at first all I could hear was gibberish, then all the sudden I could hear “the guys” talking to me. It seems not everyone can hear it, especially just starting out. It takes time to tune in the ear, and maybe develop some intuition. The box is extremely complicated, and talking about it for a mere two hours just is not enough time, two years would be better. It takes time to develop a feel for the communications. I get very frustrated when I get voices that seem perfectly clear, and no one else can hear it. I don’t know the mental mechanisms involved, maybe a new brain circuit has to be created, or maybe the the possibility of the box function has to be “allowed.” I don’t think the skeptic allows this possibility, there fore they are stuck on “it doesn’t work.”

The best explanation for this phenomenon is that listeners are experiencing a form of pattern recognition known as apohenia, a kind of audio pareidolia. Shermer prefers the more user-friendly term patternicity, which he explains in this instance as “finding meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.” The “messages” are perceptual errors.

The Frank’s Box and similar devices have even been debunked by promoters of EVP. In a listening test of the Mini-Box made by Paranormal Systems, the author determines that the radio sweep method for collecting EVP only produces pareidolia. The paper concludes: “While we have not been able to find reason to think the technology produces EVP, we have found substantial reason to think it does not.”²⁴

One theory down, one to go…

The Frank’s Box is used as a cold reading tool. The meaning is supplied by the reader, the listener, and the client. The responses are coincidental, like finding water when dowsing, randomly selecting a “prophetic” reading from the Bible, and all other forms of divination. These devices are tarot cards for the technological age. The Frank’s Box is no more “technology” than a Parker Brothers Ouija board…but with its underlying malicious intent and mental instability, it’s no game.

Ironically, the natural explanation for the data acquired from the Frank’s Box can be found in a quote from Sumption himself: “It’s not ‘picking up’ the dead, presummably. As I understand it’s operation ‘they’ use the existing bits of speech, mucis and noise to remodulate inot their own voices. Of course, that remains a guess as to how it works.”²⁵

As he admits, his “remodulation” theory is a guess, and the alleged messages are simply composed of ordinary speech, music, and noise.

We’ll allow Sumption to have the final say about his broken radio: “EVP is useful only to the experience, I guess. Yet another reason why I hesitate to build more boxes, there’s no way to determine if it works, or is it just imagination/perception.”²⁶

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to Paul Turner, Matthew Baxter, Bryan Bonner, and Stu Hayes for their invaluable assistance in researching, examining, and testing the Frank’s Box.

Notes:

1. Konstantinos. 1995. Ghost Voices: Exploring the mysteries of electronic voice phenomena. Popular Electronics. October issue, pp.37–41.
2. Association Transcommunication. Available at atransc.org. Accessed 1/21/10.
3. Frank’S Boxes. Available at purplealiengirl.tripod.com. Accessed 1/17/10.
4. EVP-ITC. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
5. History Detectives. PBS. Season 7, Episode 1. Available at pbs.org.
6. Museum of Hoaxes. Available online at museumofhoaxes.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
7. Thomas Edison National Historical Park. Available a www.nps.gov/archive/edis/edifun/edifun_4andup/faqs_fables.htm#talk. Accessed 1/20/10.
8. Bonner, Bryan. In print. The History of the Frank’s Box. Modern Paranormal Investigator.
9. Inside the Box/Ghost Box Research. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/20/10.
10. Speaking to the Dead with Radios. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/16/10.
11. Frank’S Boxes. Available at purplealiengirl.tripod.com/. Accessed 1/18/10.
12. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/20/10.
13. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
14. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/18/10.
15. What is the Telephone to the Dead? Haunted Times. Volume 4, Issue 3, Winter 2010, p.28.
16. Bonner, Bryan. In print. The history of the Frank’s Box. Modern Paranormal Investigator.
17. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
18. Dark Side of the Moon. Reap Sow Radio. Available at reapsowradio.podomatic.com.
19. You Tube. Available at youtube.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
20. Dark Side of the Moon. Reap Sow Radio. Available at reapsowradio.podomatic.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
21. Ibid.
22. Michael Shermer. Telephoning to the dead. Scientific American. January 2009. p.46.
23. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/20/10.
24. Butler, Tom. Radio Sweep: A Case Study. Association TransCommunication. Available at atransc.org. Accessed 1/20/10.
25. Skeptic Blog. Box of Fiends. Available at skepticblog.org. Accessed 1/19/10.
26. Ibid. Accessed 1/19/10.

Creation author and conservationist Randall Keynes sat down on an extremely rainy Monday in San Francisco to discuss his book, the movie adaptation that hits theaters on Friday, and the controversy surrounding the movie’s release. A well dressed, perfectly mannered British gentleman, he sat attentively at the table behind his neatly stacked map of The City, glasses, and copy of his book.

For those who do not already know, the film Creation, based on Keynes’s book by the same name (also published as Annie’s Box) has been followed by a wake of controversy in the religiously charged United States. Even the name Creation was a controversial choice for a book and movie about Charles Darwin, because it has obvious intelligent design connotations. The book/movie title choice perplexed many people who accept natural selection as fact and angered theists who do not. Keynes explained the ambiguous meaning was part of the decision to change the book name from Annie’s Box to Creation.

“It was chosen because of its double meaning. It is about where life came from, the arts and religion. Darwin’s insights took imagination and boldness as well as science.” Keynes explained.

The movie Creation had difficulties finding a distributor in America. The film, which covers the life of Darwin around the time of his daughter’s death and the writing of On the Origin of Species, was immediately hands-off to the major U.S. distributors, because it may be offensive to Christians. It was after some debate and time that Newmarket Films, ironically the distributor of The Passion of the Christ, picked up the distribution of Creation.

This distribution issue infuriated many non-theists. Many felt a great sense of injustice regarding the Christian-centered point of view of the major Hollywood distributors.

When asked about his reaction to the controversy over the film, Keynes didn’t seem particularly surprised. He explained that he had been part of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York’s Darwin Exhibit in 2005–2006, which presented evidence for evolution.

“They couldn’t find a corporate sponsor. It may not have been because the businesses did not accept evolution,” said Keynes. “We expected spray painting or vandalism but there was none.”

Keynes then explained that he thought Christians and atheists alike could enjoy Creation because it is a love story about a complicated man. He seem surprised when read these specific passages from the review of Creation on Movieguide.org, a Christian movie reviewing community by Ted Baehr, Jeff Holder, and Tom Snyder: “‘Creation’ uses fallacious ‘straw men’ arguments by crudely depicting the Christians in its story as closed minded, cruel people.” It continues later in the review, “The fact that ‘Creation’ is so well done makes it an even more dangerous piece of one-sided propaganda.”

“The facts [specifically about Reverend Innes] are verified by sermons he wrote down and evidence of punishments during the time,” Keynes stated confidently. “It is unfortunate that they missed the positive messages about Emma’s faith.”

Keynes went on to explain that when he wrote Creation, he hoped he could begin to quell these controversies by shedding light on Charles Darwin the man, not the theory. “I hoped people would see how difficult it [developing the theory of natural selection] was for Darwin.”

He came across the inspiration for the book Creation by accident. Keynes is Darwin’s great-great grandson and had access to family keepsakes. While milling through a chest of drawers once owned by Charles Darwin’s daughter, Ettie, he came across a small box. He was told that it was Annie’s box. Inside were a variety of writings in Darwin’s hand about his experience during Annie’s illness and eventual death. Annie was Charles and Emma’s oldest daughter, who died at the age of ten. Charles went into a state of grief and guilt about Annie’s death.

“He [Darwin] was careful to conceal how high-strung he was. Only two people knew the full extent of his grief, Emma and Parslow the butler. Emma would write down his symptoms in her pocketbook when she felt like it or when she was caring for him.”

In the film, Darwin is depicted as having a relationship with Annie after her death, sometimes speaking to her directly. It is unclear if she is a hallucination or a ghost.

“There is no evidence that Darwin saw Annie as a ghost or hallucination. That’s the film maker imagining it in a way for movie audiences,” Keynes smiled. “I would have been disappointed if they didn’t. They had to get the big things right. It is ok to re-imagine the small things for the audience. It is a movie. It is not a book with footnotes,” he said as he gently wiggled his copy of Creation in the air.

“I hope the movie will help people see Darwin and his ideas more positively. He was not malicious. He honestly believed everyone would benefit from a better understanding. Darwin believed it helps us to understand our nature to understand the history of nature.”

In Creation, a film adaptation of Randall Keynes book of the same name, Charles Darwin comes to terms with the death of his daughter Annie, the meaning of his work, and the pain his discovery causes his devoutly reverent wife Emma. Heart-grasping acting and beautiful cinematography occasionally lose their shimmer due to momentary cases of the doldrums.

Wrought with sickness, Charles Darwin (Paul Bettany) is pressured by Thomas Huxley (Toby Jones) and Joseph Hooker (Benedict Cumberbatch) to finish his work on natural selection. They are convinced that if he does, his stomach issues will be resolved. Emma Darwin (Jennifer Connelly), Charles’ wife, is a devout Christian and worries about the implications for her husband’s soul should he continue to write his book. Their family reverend, Innes (Jeremy Northam), vehemently opposes even the idea of dinosaurs and engages Darwin in discussion to challenge his theory. Darwin’s devoted daughter, Annie (Martha West), is her father’s constant companion whenever he is working on his studies. When Annie falls ill and dies, Darwin cannot find the resolve to finish his book. Wracked by the guilt he feels, his relationship with his wife begins to unravel.

Paul Bettany’s portrayal of Charles Darwin in Creation makes this much-revered scientist more than just the brilliance of his theory. Darwin becomes a human being with insecurities, flaws, and resolute love. Bettany endows Darwin with such amplitude for self torment that it is impossible for the audience not to be affected. His tender touch with Martha West’s Annie is endearing and paternal. Bettany manages to strain the relationship between Charles and Emma far, but it never goes beyond the reach of the love they have for each other.

The supporting cast is Bettany’s equal. Jennifer Connelly makes Emma reverent but not condescending. She is regal but still warm and endearing. Any fan of the real Thomas Huxley will be satisfied by the nearly pit-bull-like portrayal by Toby Jones. Even the young Martha West makes Annie an adorable symbol of sorrow.

Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany in a scene from Jon Amiel's Creation - photo courtesy of Liam Daniel

Where Creation goes a bit off track is in its repeatedly long, tedious scenes that add nearly nothing to the quality of the story. I am unsure how many times we need to see pigeons die, dunked, or stripped of their flesh before even that gets a bit boring. On more than one occasion, I found attention wandering from the screen to my fingernails, back to the screen, to my itchy eyelid, and finally back to the screen. Director Jon Amiel and writer John Collee should have either supervised the editing more closely or written a more precise script. It would have given the audience more reason to be invested in the characters. These moments are fleeting but they occur often enough to be noticeable.

I am not a Charles Darwin historian, but it is obvious that the filmmakers took more than a bit of creative license when it comes to Annie. After her death, Darwin sees her everywhere in what could be misconstrued as a form of madness rather than a form of grief. Since Americans get a great deal of their information about history from movies, I am concerned that theists may use Creation as a weapon to claim Darwin was mad while writing On the Origin of Species. Taken only as a movie though, his ongoing relationship with Annie is a poignant, visual representation of the degree of his grief. The more he sees her, the more lost he is in his devastation.

People who know a bit about Darwin will be delighted by a few of the details in the film. Pay close attention his walking loop, Huxley, and the drawings in the book as he writes it. They give a bit of a nod to people in the know.

Creation is not a story about nature or the method of speciation. It is a love story about the love between a father and a daughter, the love between a married couple, and the love of knowledge. It does not try to put forth questions about natural selection or intelligent design but only the consequences of love. It is a love story that will leave skeptics feeling especially nourished.