Having some custom home finish skills from what seems now like a previous lifetime ago, a glorified painter, a master of a caulk gun, a glazer of windows, and an airless paint sprayer gunslinger, is an old skillset that has managed to stay with me. I get a phone call every once in a while for a job. I don’t advertise, I have plenty to keep up with already at home, but I will take a job now and then just to earn a little extra dough.
I had a job some time back, a huge house that the couple had saved up to build. It was their dream home, and it was massive. I was thrilled to be a part of helping someone achieve their dreams and I poured my soul into the work I did there. But… it should be known they are devout x-ians. Which isn’t so unusual in these parts, but that affliction often avails itself to other oddities.
The lower level of this house is 3000 sq ft, by itself. The upper level another 2000 sq ft or so, plus a large basement. When I got there the walls/ceilings had been painted, there was a coat of paint on the trim, but it was thin, so my job was to caulk it all up and put the finishing pizzaz to it. Well, I was there for a while. This is a big house and I’m working solo, they had 9 ft ceilings, 2 large staircases, a window transom over every major doorway, and more doors to do than I can remember, it took a while. So as it worked out I was there through the Thanksgiving holiday. They have a lot of family, who all came to visit, and I was privvy to some hair raising conversations.
I already knew they were hyper religious, which isn’t that unusal here, but I soon became aware the grandkids were all homeschooled. I was like “wow!” I didn’t know they were that religious. Now I know that home schooling isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but far too often it is because people want their kids to believe that the Flinstones was a documentary. They use materials from the likes of AIG to teach the kiddies that man coexisted with dinosaurs, and other nonsense such as a 6000 year old earth and how everything in the bible is 100% factual. How this B.S. is legal at all is beyond me, but it is a fine example of people living in some sort of an alternate reality.
Enter Essential Oils. The lady there was big into the essential oil thing, she is apparently one of the higher up distributors, as she goes to out of state meetings a lot, and seems well versed in essentail oil quackery. Quackery? I’m afraid so. The claims made by those distributing essential oils read like any other quack category as they claim to cure almost every malady known to science and they also rely on bashing modern medicine and appealing to the new age types by hyping it all as natural healing techniques long forgotten, and they do bemoan how they are unfairly dismissed by modern medicine. I won’t go into every claim made by the essential oil scam, it would be a long post on its own. I will leave a link or two though, and Google is your friend. There are some good links to follow from this fist link liste here:
https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/aroma.html
A convesation I overheard at this residence, involved one of the family members talking about the prospect of putting their kids in a public school and they would have to present shot records or they would have to sign some waiver that excluded them from such a satanic activity. So we can add anti vaxxers to the list.
Which brings us to the crux of the problem. Crank Magnetism. Crank Magnetism is a term, and I quote from Wiki: “coined by physiologist and blogger Mark Hoofnagle on the Denialism Blog in 2007 to describe the propensity of cranks to hold multiple irrational, unsupported or ludicrous beliefs that are often unrelated to one another…”
Essentially once you open yourself up to to believeing in one nonsensical claim, the reality is you may be predisposed to let other crank ideas reside in your head. Add to that the alternate reality propped up by the far right and its propaganda arm Fox News, and the sort of total morons who espouse their idiocies on the radio or youtube, such as Alex Jones/Rush Limbaugh, plus the fact we now have a president that totally believes in these alternate realities AND makes up his own, we are left facing, with a growing concern about a wholesale attack on fact based reality itself.
It seems to me that the idea is to promote so much of this kind of shit that it blurs the line between evidence based reality and the alternative reality they want to create. The problem is there are more than enough mouth breathing morons out there to support this nonsense. It is the zombie that never dies.
I’m going to go one step further and lay the blame of Crank Magnetism right at the feet of religion. Nothing, and I mean nothing, opens up the door to believing in complete nonsense as religion. It is the gateway drug to Crank Magnetism.
I saw it all in one house…
The only thing I can think of to combat this issue is ensuring a proper education for every child coming through the education system, and some sort of pushback from holders of a fact based reality. Which is pretty much the blogging community I know here, and the multitude of others like us out there in internet land. In other words, keep up the good work 🙂 We need it. Fact based reality needs it.
Evidence Based Reality 
I have a daughter in law big into Doterra oils. The big debate is between essential oils and doterra. It’s like debating Mormons vs Catholics…unicorns vs Pegasus. The running joke every time there is an issue in the world; “isn’t there an oil for that”??
LikeLiked by 1 person
In my internet browsing for this post I saw a pic of a guy in a shirt that looked like he had been shot or wounded on the lower right side. The caption read “It’s ok! My wife probably has an oil for this.” Or something close to that anyway, I can’t be bothered to look for it again 😉
LikeLiked by 2 people
Exactly! It’s interesting what health problems will drive one to try—and believe in. With all the oil floating around they’re still sick all the time, but believe in it whole heartedly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The placebo effect is real. All you need do is read the comment sections of any website that disses essentail oils to see the supporters lining up with their anecdotal evidence.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I went to the ear dr and asked about the anti tinnitus medication. He said that it’s just a placebo and works for some people. I said well, now you told be that I guess it won’t work for me. I’ll have to pass. Lol. Thanks doc!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the info!
My ears ring constantly. I damaged them shooting a damn 357 magnum revolver many years ago. I thought maybe the ringing would go away, it did subside some, but I wasn’t so lucky. Now I know to nevermind about the cure.
…diving for so long didn’t help any either. I know a lot of guys who have hearing problems just from the diving.
LikeLiked by 2 people
That’s a really busy house
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tell me about it. I was invited to chuch probably 3-4 times, I had to politely decline. Plus all of the wacky stuff I discovered along the way was just…odd.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Curious … when invited, how did you decline?
LikeLiked by 1 person
As I recall I informed her that I used to go to church, but didn’t have any interest in going now. It was the best I could do without lying through my teeth, which I don’t care for.
So I tried to alleviate any fear that I could be some godless heathen, which could have easily put me out of work, and at the same time not tell a big fat lie. It is tricky when you get put on the spot. 😉
It’s also a shame that one can be in such a position to begin with. But it is a reality for many in Jeebusville.
LikeLiked by 3 people
How many of those times did they offer to pray for you?
LikeLike
Thank all that is good in the world, the answer is 0. I’m not sure could take it.
LikeLike
You are a lucky fellow.
I hope their children will get the shots before they join public school
LikeLike
Hello Shelldigger. The fact is children are our species future. We should have the best and most talented teaching them. Everytime we have religious homeschooling using myth and fable as the foundation of their education and the bible as a all subject test book, we dim that future more and more. Hugs
LikeLike
I could not agree more Scottie. The way they poision these childrens minds with B.S. is a travesty.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey SD! I haven’t been around WP much lately as I like to stay off social media for my sanity. Today I happened by your blog and read this fabulous post, which discusses an important concept for deconverts.
People have often asked me why I can’t be more moderate in my views of religion…they tell me it’s crazy to go from my previous extreme devotion to my current extreme atheism. Crank magnetism is the reason why I can’t be a moderate. Once you embrace a little bit of woo (even the more subtle kind taught in moderate/progressive religions), you open the doorway to all sorts of magical thinking. As a deconvert I’m deeply aware of the problems that come from any amount of non-reason based thinking, and I refuse to allow a shred of it in my life. Thanks for giving me the words to explain it. Many hugs! 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well hey Violet! How ya been? …and good to see you 🙂
I stay off of social media myself. I don’t consider WP social medeia per se, as I would for the FB and the Twit. FB and Twit are a no go for me. For the life of me I can’t figure out what people enjoy so much about either of them, especially as we now know FB is a haven for russian swaybots and Twit is tRumps height of human interaction.
I stay away from them for my sanity 🙂
LikeLiked by 3 people
There is a part II to this comment. I was working on it and the rain (damn the rain!) moved in and killed my sat connection. I’m out and about now, picked up the wife and waiting for Little Caesars to get our pizzas done 😃
LikeLike
And now Part II:
…and yes you are so correct. I myself, I think, have shed my moderate distaste for religious nonsense in favor of a little more New Atheist outlook. That is a sweet way of saying, let’s not be so damn nice to something so undeserving of it. 🙂
Crank magnetism is a by product of gullibility, unswerving faith in a thing unprovable, and steadfast assuredness of absolute correctness, that itself only comes as a by product of steadfast bigotry. Living in that sort of bubble is what opens the door to letting all of the other silliness creep in.
Of course this would not apply to everyone religious, to claim it does would would be a fallacy obviously. But it is safe to assume a strong correlation.
I try to keep my mind free of such non evidence/reason based notions as well.
Hugs back at ya 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Not that I do not disbelieve you … but one house/family/observation does rather smack of anecdotal evidence. Just saying.
LikeLike
I am fairly certain it would not take long to find plenty of other examples lending credence. I have one here on my humble little blog now, which is some distance from a far reaching enterprise. 🙂
Yes I know it is one sample, and I admitted that it would be fallacious to assume this would apply to all religious believers.
That does not mean there isn’t any meat on the bone here.
LikeLike