Crystal Healing 101, Humanist Activist Victory, Scientology, A Letter to James Van Praagh

Crystal Healing 101

The Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) has proudly announced that this fall, a “reiki master” will be holding a seminar on “crystal and mineral healing” at the college. This, we’re told, is “a type of alternative therapy that involves laying crystals or gemstones on the body. Each student will experience a crystal therapy session and get a really good idea about how it changes your energy and rebalances you.”

This instructor at CCRI also performs “Cranio Sacral Therapy,” and uses such advanced quackery as “Bio Magnets,” “Light Life Tools,” “Dowsing,” and “Pendulums.” She assures students that she is also a teacher and practitioner of many other alternative healing methods, and says that crystals have their own “intrinsic energy,” and “interact with points on the body’s energy field, known as chakras, to promote balance and well-being.” “Each crystal has its own properties and attributes when laid on the body with a specific chakra,” she says. This collection of talents puts her well up in the tree with the top woo-woos, but she’s teaching at a state college. 

This is all unmitigated nonsense. Reiki is a mystical system of hand-waving, blowing, tapping, and other useless gestures. It has never passed any medical testing procedures, it has never been shown to have anything but psychological effects, and it therefore poses a distinct danger to persons who may choose to depend on it for curative results and ignore proven therapies. It is simply advanced quackery that consists of laying crystals or gemstones on the victim’s body, followed by gesturing. Yes, hard to believe, but the Community College of Rhode Island will accept $50 for 5½ hours of a “Healing with Crystals/Minerals Workshop,” designed to “deepen [the students’] understanding of it.” Myself, I already have a very deep understanding of this flummery; it brings money to CCRI and re-establishes their endorsement of such silly notions. 

Chuck Doherty, a Randi.org reader, also took exception to CCRI offering this to the public, and he made a formal complaint, asking: 

Should I expect the school to next offer courses in Tarot reading, phrenology, and dowsing? The fact that this course is offered on a “non-credit” basis does not change the fact that this sort of pseudoscientific claptrap has no place at all in any legitimate learning institution. Please leave this sort of nonsense to the likes of The Learning Connection and other such outlets. 

A response to Mr. Doherty came from Richard H. Coren, Director of Marketing, Communications and Publications for the Community College of Rhode Island, saying: 

Students told us they wanted to further their knowledge of alternative healing methods, and the course was designed to introduce students to the practice of crystal and mineral healing. By offering the class, the college and its noncredit arm, CWCE, do not endorse the practice as science; we are simply responding to demand in the community for personal development courses such as this. 

That was enough to prompt me to write Mr. Coren thus: 

Sir, just where you would draw the line on offering courses in “personal development” to “further [the students] knowledge of alternative healing methods?” How about chanting with tom-toms around a camp fire? Would CCRI consider looking into blood-letting? Or sacrificing lambs? Both Reiki and “crystal healing” have zero basis in science. ZERO! Those who claim expertise in either of these notions, are—and always have been—eligible for the JREF’s million-dollar prize if they can produce ANY effect resulting from their efforts, and there has been NOT ONE APPLICATION from any “reiki master” or “crystal healer” in the almost ten years now since that prize has been offered, though we’ve challenged them repeatedly! They know the prize is there, but they also know that they can’t produce any evidence for their flummery, so they don’t even try. And you, Mr. Coren—the appointed Director of Marketing, Communications and Publications for the Community College of Rhode Island—could, yourself, earn the JREF one-million-dollar prize if any of the students or the instructors at CCRI show just ONE demonstration of either discipline. And you agreed to promote this nonsense in the name of education? 

Shame on CCRI, I say. They take money from students in return for total nonsense and laugh all the way to the bank. And the students have learned nothing … 

Here’s an idea: I have metaphysical proof that children can bend spoons by just looking at them. Can I be permitted to teach a course in this subject at CCRI? 

I await a response. 

Evangelical Christian Sheriff Loses Fight Against Secular Humanist Activist 

I am gratified to report on a story we’ve been following that Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, has had his hot head chilled. Judd was the subject of a news item five years back when he and his colleagues cornered a murderer in the woods and pumped 68 bullets into him, then titillated the media when they questioned him on why the officers had used so much ammunition: “That’s all the bullets we had!” Now, Sheriff Judd is a little subdued because of a reversal of his attempts to silence EllenBeth Wachs, a retired attorney and the Legal Affairs Coordinator and Vice-President for Atheists of Florida by bringing obviously trumped-up criminal charges against her. 

Ms. Wachs had been facing over 20 years in prison if convicted on all the charges that Judd brought against her. She’s been arrested twice, in March and in May of 2011 as part of retaliatory actions by Judd to suppress her activism in church/state separation matters. EllenBeth had brought public attention to Judd’s having improperly transferred certain public property to area churches. Judd is an outspoken evangelical Christian who has proudly stated that he is “on a mission from God.” Although no god has so far validated that claim, he keeps a Bible prominently displayed on his sheriff’s office desk. 

The charges were ludicrous. Ms. Wachs was first arrested for “practicing law without a license” by using the letters “Esq.”—an honorific used by practicing and retired attorneys—with her signature on Freedom of Information Act requests to Judd asking for information about the illegal transfers of property. Well, I happen to know a little something about the use of the title “Esq.”, having used it myself on the cover of my 1992 book titled, Conjuring. I looked it up, something that the Holy Sheriff apparently didn’t do, and found that it is commonly used in the United States by lawyers—of both genders, retired or active. Elsewhere in the world, it either indicates that the person is one rank beneath a knight, or is an independent person, operating without association of any other agent or agency. I intended that last application for my own—quite casual—use of the honorific. 

Since Ms. Wachs was well within her rights to use this attachment, Sheriff Judd was obviously attempting to harass her, and had performed an illegal arrest, but he got away with it because he’s a small-town Florida sheriff, I guess. Then EllenBeth was arrested at her home for a second time, based solely on a neighbor’s allegation that he and his child had heard “a sexual sound” (?) coming from her home some 48 days prior, but he apparently took that long to recall the event. She was now charged with “lewd and lascivious conduct in the presence of a minor,” a felony. I’m sure that Sheriff Judd was now—almost—in heaven, as we say. 

Back to terra firma. The criminal charges against her have now been dismissed. Prosecutors, in their great wisdom, realized that it was not in their best interest to move forward to trial and they offered a settlement agreement that dismissed the felonies and averted convictions on all charges. The fact that they looked like petulant children might also have prompted them. With the charges now behind her, EllenBeth Wachs—who is also the President of the Humanists of Florida Association—is resuming her efforts to maintain the separation of church and state. She’s the lead plaintiff in a federal “prayer” lawsuit against Lakeland, Florida, and to stop any further religiously-motivated persecution against her, she’s brought suit against Sheriff Grady Judd in Federal District Court, asserting that his actions—which include the two arrests and a search of her home—violated her civil rights. Said she: 

Mr. Judd’s despicable actions against me shined a bright spotlight on the intolerance and bigotry that atheists face every day. The secular community around the world came out in force to support me and speak out against this persecution. [Judd’s] abuse of power angered and mobilized the atheist movement to action reminiscent of an earlier civil rights era. 

Galactic Overlord Xenu Strikes Scientology 

The Australian government may be about to make a decision that could bankrupt the Church of Scientology (CoS) in that country—and perhaps further. An Australian federal senator, Adelaide’s Nick Xenophon, has made public the church’s abuse of their own staff; they’re paid some AUS $50 a week (U.S. $53) and have been receiving that salary for some 30 years now. The legal minimum wage there is AUS $590/week (U.S. $630). One way the church gets around this minor problem is by pretending that the staff consists of volunteers. 

You see, the CoS is registered there as a South Australian charity, and thus pays no taxes. They’ve researched the tax picture all over the world and discovered that by using an Australian address for the Church of Scientology Religious Education College Inc. (COSRECI)—which they did by simply choosing a suburban house—the church can have its U.K. and some European and Canadian facilities claim charity status through the COSRECI umbrella corporation, based in Adelaide. Their tax-exempt status is currently under examination, and the legal definition of “charities” is also being looked into. 

But all that is far less critical for the CoS than another matter. They could be required to pay millions of dollars in back pay—as well as taxes on that pay—and would have to raise every worker’s minimum wage into the future. Such a decision would immediately bankrupt the church there, though they could of course draw from their huge American reserves to pay for it. 

Much of the CoS funds are spent on international management, and they’ve also been buying real estate, so they can’t use that money to pay their staff. If the minimum-wage situation is applied in Australia, the next place that will follow is Europe, and perhaps—just perhaps—we here in the U.S.A. will finally catch up with the rest of the world, if we can overcome our fear of burdening any religion, no matter how puerile. 

Membership in the CoS has been falling, with some observers estimating the international membership rolls totaling no more than around 40,000 (and certainly nowhere near the 8 million that the church claims), so they’re pleading for parishioners in America to raise money for new facilities. Local Australian authorities still haven’t done anything about COSRECI not paying taxes. The U.K. churches can get around paying taxes—not through their status, but by showing losses and debts each year, so there appear to be no profits on which they can be taxed. 

In the U.S.A. and around the world the CoS is looked upon as one of the fringier of the fringe religions. Their Holy Writ—and by that I mean the writings of the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard—claims that a galactic overlord named Xenu imprisoned millions of people from all over the Milky Way in our volcanoes and then had them erupt, thus freeing those souls to infect our species here on Earth. Yes, this has to be a comicbook scenario, but that’s what Scientologists actually believe! And Xenu itself (herself?, himself?) is a one-eyed gray blob of glossy sludge that looks like a spilled Slurpee made from cigarette ashes and Vaseline, and smells like a boiled vulture. (Hey, if L. Ron can make it up, so can I!) 

An Open Letter to “Psychic Medium” James Van Praagh 

To: James Van Praagh
Spiritual Horizons, Inc.
P.O. Box 9675
South Laguna, CA 92652
September 9, 2011
via USPS Certified Mail
& via E-mail

Dear James Van Praagh: 

As you know, the James Randi Educational Foundation has a long-standing challenge to self-proclaimed psychics, paranormalists, and mediums such as yourself: if you can demonstrate real psychic abilities under fair, mutuallyagreed- upon conditions that prevent cheating, we will give $1 million USD to you or to any spiritualist group or charity you wish. 

I wanted to write to you personally to encourage you to take up this challenge and negotiate a testing protocol with us. From your statements, you appear to have faith in your ability to talk with the dead and obtain information to share with the living. You have also devoted much time to promoting belief in the supernatural, and to promoting spiritualist beliefs as a form of self-improvement and emotional comfort. 

If you believe that what you do is real, and you want to help more people believe in the positive benefit of your claimed supernatural abilities, then what better way could there be to accomplish that than by taking our challenge and participating in a fair test of your psychic abilities? 

If you proved your abilities and won our prize, millions of people would be persuaded overnight to believe in the spiritual world as you describe it, and you could use the million dollars to fund your work. 

We at the James Randi Educational Foundation encourage you to accept our Million Dollar Challenge and we eagerly await your reply.