Silliest theory ever?

[Spring Heeled Jack]

I don't quite know where this belongs, since it's not exactly a conspiracy theory as such, so I'm putting it here. The Omniscient Mods may move it elsewhere if they wish.

Anyway, I recently happened to encounter references to this book. As you can see, the gist of it is that the author believes the entire history of the world to be completely and utterly wrong. And judging by the size of the book he's written, I seriously doubt that he's joking.

Now that's a pretty big claim! I suggest an informal contest. Can anybody come up with a more ambitiously loopy attempt to deny vast chunks of reality? It must be a theory which appears to be genuinely held to be true by at least one person who has written a book or created a website to expound it. Blatant spoofs don't count, and neither does anything to do with a flat or hollow Earth because it's too obvious.

There's no prize, but everyone will have a giggle. The winner is whoever comes up with something so far out that the other entries pale by comparison. I think we'll all know it when we see it.

Now watch the dancing cat. You know you want to.

[panama]

That fella's daft as a brush. He has a bit of a point in that it's a bit difficult to date certain historical events to an exact year by our current calendars but to dismiss all documentary evidence as a medieval fake no matter what its provenance is plain stupid. To state that radio-carbon dating cannot date things like the Sinai Codex to its' era is just plain wrong.

From Wikipedia

The 2004 version of the calibration curve extends back quite accurately to 26,000 years BP. Any errors in the calibration curve do not contribute more than ±16 years to the measurement error during the historic and late prehistoric periods (0–6,000 yrs BP) and no more than ±163 years over the entire 26,000 years of the curve, although its shape can reduce the accuracy as mentioned above

Plus or minus 16 years over 26,000! More than accurate enough I think. But yer man thinks this is what happens...

The c14 radiocarbon dating procedure runs as follows: archaeologist sends an artefact to a radiocarbon dating laboratory with his idea of the age of the object to get a to ‘scientific’ rubber-stamp. Laboratory gladly complies and makes required radio dating, confirming the date suggested by archaeologist. Everybody’s happy: lab makes good money by making an expensive test, archaeologist by reaping the laurels for his earth shattering discovery. The in-built low precision (because of sensitivity) of this method allows cooking scientifically looking results desired by the customer archaeologist. General public doesn’t realize that it was duped again.
Just try to submit to any c14 lab a sample of organic matter and ask them to date it. The lab will ask your idea of the age of the sample, then it fiddles with the lots of knobs (‘fine-tuning’) and gives you the result as you’ve ‘expected’. With c14 dating method being so mind bogglingly precise C14 labs decline making 'black box' test of any kind absolutely. Nah, they assert that because their method is SO very sensitive they must have maximum information about the sample. This much touted method often produces reliable dating of objects of organic origin with exactitude (mistakes that) of up to plus minus 1500 years, therefore it is too crude for dating of historical events in the 3000 years timeframe!

Yu!p! Hard to beat that for silly.

[ZERO]

Can anybody come up with a more ambitiously loopy attempt to deny vast chunks of reality?

Religion.

[skbuncks]

Well, the Ickeverse is believed by many and is continuously growing in absurdity. A non-exhaustive list would include:

World governed by a secret cabal of super powerful business men aka the illuminati
World governed by a secret cabal of shape shifting saurian overlords
World to be rescued by a secret cabal of shape shifting saurian benefactors
Vaccines are mind control
Chemtrails are mind control
The media is mind control
The moon is hollow
The moon is a spaceship
911 was an inside job
7/7 was an inside job
David Icke is a lizard
We all live in a Matrix style universe therefore nothing is real and therefore negating just about even other one of his theories
Group consciousness exists
Weed can cure all deseases
Big Pharma is evil
Alt meds work (even when made by Big Pharma)
....the list goes on ad nauseam

skb

[skbuncks]

That fella's daft as a brush. He has a bit of a point in that it's a bit difficult to date certain historical events to an exact year by our current calendars but to dismiss all documentary evidence as a medieval fake no matter what its provenance is plain stupid. To state that radio-carbon dating cannot date things like the Sinai Codex to its' era is just plain wrong.

From Wikipedia

The 2004 version of the calibration curve extends back quite accurately to 26,000 years BP. Any errors in the calibration curve do not contribute more than ±16 years to the measurement error during the historic and late prehistoric periods (0–6,000 yrs BP) and no more than ±163 years over the entire 26,000 years of the curve, although its shape can reduce the accuracy as mentioned above

Plus or minus 16 years over 26,000! More than accurate enough I think. But yer man thinks this is what happens...

The c14 radiocarbon dating procedure runs as follows: archaeologist sends an artefact to a radiocarbon dating laboratory with his idea of the age of the object to get a to ‘scientific’ rubber-stamp. Laboratory gladly complies and makes required radio dating, confirming the date suggested by archaeologist. Everybody’s happy: lab makes good money by making an expensive test, archaeologist by reaping the laurels for his earth shattering discovery. The in-built low precision (because of sensitivity) of this method allows cooking scientifically looking results desired by the customer archaeologist. General public doesn’t realize that it was duped again.
Just try to submit to any c14 lab a sample of organic matter and ask them to date it. The lab will ask your idea of the age of the sample, then it fiddles with the lots of knobs (‘fine-tuning’) and gives you the result as you’ve ‘expected’. With c14 dating method being so mind bogglingly precise C14 labs decline making 'black box' test of any kind absolutely. Nah, they assert that because their method is SO very sensitive they must have maximum information about the sample. This much touted method often produces reliable dating of objects of organic origin with exactitude (mistakes that) of up to plus minus 1500 years, therefore it is too crude for dating of historical events in the 3000 years timeframe!

Yu!p! Hard to beat that for silly.

His 'theory' is fortunately very easy to test, simply send two samples from the same source to two different labs and give different expected origin dates...but I doubt he would bother doing that when baseless assertions work so much better.

skb

[skbuncks]

There is also Time Cube. Make what sense of that. I dare you.

skb

ETA: There is also the et corn gods, although I cannot for the life of me remember whether it is supposed to be serious or not.

[panama]

There is also Time Cube. Make what sense of that. I dare you.

skb

My head hurts...

[Croydon Bob]

Anyway, I recently happened to encounter references to this book. As you can see, the gist of it is that the author believes the entire history of the world to be completely and utterly wrong. And judging by the size of the book he's written, I seriously doubt that he's joking.

Now that's a pretty big claim! I suggest an informal contest. Can anybody come up with a more ambitiously loopy attempt to deny vast chunks of reality? It must be a theory which appears to be genuinely held to be true by at least one person who has written a book or created a website to expound it. Blatant spoofs don't count, and neither does anything to do with a flat or hollow Earth because it's too obvious.

This is an English translation of a Russian work. The idea was very popular in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s. Of course the new alternative history places Russia at the centre of almost every historical event, so it is probably going to go down less well with the UK loonies than with the ex-Soviet loonies. More info on Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko)

There was a talk at one of the early Fortean Times UnConventions by a school teacher who had his own alternative history theory. Basically he was trying to squeeze everything into 6,000 years (no prize for guessing why). The only bit that I remember now was his theory that different Egyptian dynasties ruled different bits of Egypt simultaneously.

And there was a British journalist who wrote books "proving" that all biblical and ancient events had happened in the British Isles and not in the Middle East at all. He was a proper mainstream journalist until he went nuts and was well known in the 1950s and 60s. Unfortunately I can't remember his name. His stuff is probably no more loony than Fomenko but is more entertaining to a UK audience since it places classic events and places (Troy, Jericho, etc) in unlikely, familiar to us, locations.

[asydhouse]

There is also Time Cube. Make what sense of that. I dare you.

skb

He must 've seen some old Children of God ranty pamphlets and thought, now he's retired, he's going to have some fun flapping at all the religious fools he's been surrounded by all his life... either that, or he's in full brain-rot from having been surrounded by religious fools all his life... or he's hoping to get some nutters to donate money to his cause... or whatever... I've skimmed some way down it all, but it's so incoherent, and so full of incitements to hatred and violence against teachers, that I find it quite a sickening, pointless exercise to actually read it.

Maybe I should have just concurred that it makes my brain hurt!

[skbuncks]

My head hurts...

...Maybe I should have just concurred that it makes my brain hurt!

I think it was maybe the 35 point centred font that threw you both. If rendered in a more typical size and colour then it all becomes amazingly clear. Here, let me help you both.

Simple Cube Divinity is the most perfect and life supporting form existing in the universe and on Earth - including Earth itself.

Do you realize that a 4 corner square rotating 1/4 turn creates a full circle?
A full rotated square will create 16 corners, 96 hours and 4 simultaneous 24 hour Day circles within only a single imaginary cubed Earth rotation.This amounts to a spiralling quad helix of Earth as it revolves around the Sun - rotating as it revolves around the Sun, to induce the value of the Sun revolving about the Earth. This act demonstrates that both Sun and Earth rotate around each other simultaneously - thus creating Opposites existing only as Opposites with a zero value existence between the binary and cancelling to nothing as One or God theism.

All Creation occurs between Opposites, and exists only as Opposites - with a zero value existence. As One or as a Godism, all Opposite values cancel out to nothing. The Circle you see around Earth divides Earth into Opposite values equal to a zero existence. As One or God, both Earth and Human cancel to nothing.

The whole of the Universe is composed of Opposites - with a zero value existence - that cancels to nothing as One or a God.

Humans worship ONEness of DEATH, thus they are destroying the LIFE of all Opposites by which all Creation exists. I have found Evil lies in the Bible that will rock religious and academic values to their primitive origin.

There is no Human or God who can match my Cube Wisdom as a Cube Phenomenoligist - The Cube God Measurer. While the Circle of Earth rotation is a perpetual embodiment as it is void of the Corner Time notches that accumulate as ageing Life for the 4 corner residents. Have you mentality to know 4 Days rotating simultaneously on Earth?

See. Simples

skb

ETA: Oh, there are videos of the author speaking at MIT.

[Spring Heeled Jack]

Some good entries here - keep 'em coming! The fellow Croydon Bob can't recall the name of is William Comyns Beaumont, who will be forever remembered (though not by many) as the guy who seriously thought that Jesus Christ came from Edinburgh. I wondered if anybody would pick up on him. I didn't in fact choose the loopiest conspiracy theory I knew of - I just thought it would be a good example to start some entertaining nonsense. However, I'm surprised to hear that this theory is actually not that obscure in Russia. I'm not terribly well-informed about paranormal beliefs in the former USSR, though I do know that they go in for very large freaky-looking UFOnauts as opposed to the weedy little Greys we're plagued by, but their equivalent of Bigfoot is a not terribly impressive ginger-haired monkey-man called an Alma, so it all balances out in the end. Perhaps a Russian member could enlighten us, if this forum has one?

These ET Corn Gods are certainly new to me, and I suspect that this is not a spoof. It's very complex without being genuinely funny, and there's also a nasty but all too familiar undercurrent of anti-semitism - look at the photo that crops up every time a Jew is mentioned. Spoofs are very seldom racist because people who are just having a laugh tend to be sane enough to know that some things are never, ever funny. This hidden primordial language thing reminds me very much of Richard Shaver and his "discovery" of "Mantong" - bad wikipedia article here, and considerably worse articles all over the net.

Incidentally, fans of H. P. Lovecraft might like to know that, although I've never seen this mentioned anywhere, HPL's very obscure tale (it hardly ever gets anthologised because he wrote it in collaboration with Zelia Bishop) "The Mound" first appeared in Weird Tales at precisely the right time for Shaver to blatantly pinch all its ideas for his subsequent paranoid classic I Remember Lemuria, which, along with his subsequent writings, helped to invent the age of the UFO, and seems suspiciously similar to certain ideas which later became part of Scientology. So maybe HPL was indirectly responsible for rather a lot of very silly things indeed that he doesn't usually get credit for. If you'd like to test my theory, the HPL story can be read here and Shaver's book here. See what you think.

As for the Time Cube, I'm afraid I'll have to disqualify that one, since I can't figure out what he's on about, except that he's very old, very mad, not very intelligent, and hates blacks, Jews, queers, and pretty much anybody who isn't him. Including Jesus Christ, for being too gay. Or possibly too Scottish. But it's all in VERY BIG LETTERS so it must be true. Maybe it should be a game-rule that there is at least some possibility of at least one person other than the author and his immediate family believing it? If you watch those videos, I think it can be safely said that no-one in the audience is there to do anything other than laugh at a muddled old weirdo.

I wonder how the would have fared if they'd had Francis E. Dec to reckon with? WARNING! Much of this text and audio content is VERY racist indeed, yet so disconnected from anything approaching reality as to be oddly harmless.

Or if that's too much for you, witness here the silliest miracle ever.

[panama]

I think it was maybe the 35 point centred font that threw you both. If rendered in a more typical size and colour then it all becomes amazingly clear. Here, let me help you both.

See. Simples

skb

ETA: Oh, there are videos of the author speaking at MIT.

Nope. It still made my head hurt and the videos wouldn't play.

[Croydon Bob]

Some good entries here - keep 'em coming! The fellow Croydon Bob can't recall the name of is William Comyns Beaumont, who will be forever remembered (though not by many) as the guy who seriously thought that Jesus Christ came from Edinburgh. I wondered if anybody would pick up on him. I didn't in fact choose the loopiest conspiracy theory I knew of - I just thought it would be a good example to start some entertaining nonsense. However, I'm surprised to hear that this theory is actually not that obscure in Russia. I'm not terribly well-informed about paranormal beliefs in the former USSR, though I do know that they go in for very large freaky-looking UFOnauts as opposed to the weedy little Greys we're plagued by, but their equivalent of Bigfoot is a not terribly impressive ginger-haired monkey-man called an Alma, so it all balances out in the end. Perhaps a Russian member could enlighten us, if this forum has one?

Ah yes, William Comyns Beaumont. Thanks. Well worth reading that link. Crazy name, crazy guy.

The "History: Fiction or Science" books were bestsellers in Russia, but "The Bible Code", "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", etc, were best sellers in the UK.