Was it a demon?

There are few topics which raise my sceptical hackles as much as somebody attributing a supernatural explanation to something which has a more plausible natural explanation. When I read this article today on news24.com in which a man was interviewed on local radio about his repeated nite-time rape by a tokolosh I knew that there must be a simpler answer.

For my readers who are not familiar with the tokolosh, it is a mythological creature, belief in which is widely accepted by the Zulu and Xhosa segments of the South African population. The tokoloshe is believed to be an evil spirit which is created by a shaman to harm his enemies. Many people puts bricks under their beds to protect them from the tokoloshe which may be hiding under their beds to attack them, and rape the women, at night.  

The idea of a demonic creature raping women at night is not limited to the tokolosh. The incubus is a male demon who allegedly rapes women in their sleep and can trace his lineage back to ancient Mesopotamia and the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the hero’s father is said to be an incubus known as Lilu. Incubi appear in various forms from the alp of German folklore to the Boto of the Amazon Basin. In Christian mythology Satan often takes the form of a demon and copulates with women, the offspring of such unions are supposedly witches and sorcerers.

The many faces of the incubus make for interesting reading, but as a sceptic and an athiest I find it hard, impossible actually, to accept that mythical demons are actually raping people. What could be a more rational explanation for the experiences described by Radio OFM’s interviewee? Unfortunately, a transcript of the interview is not readily available on the internet (as far as I can see), so I will have to use the information provided by the news24 article. We are told that the interviewee was raped nightly by a demon, and then a caller identified as R. Thirtle provides us with the following opinions;

“It is a fact that the Spirit Incubus rapes people in the evenings,” Thirtle said.

“And it is particularly common among the black people… who follow the traditional religion of ancestor worship. But more general among black women, who are raped by the tokolosh in the evenings.

“It is not a story, it is a fact, there are thousands of witnesses to verify it. It is a very traumatic experience to be raped in the dark by a heavy thing sitting on your legs, over which you have no control.

“And to know that it is a demon that is doing it, is even worse.”

Let us address Thirtle’s claims; firstly he states that it is a FACT that incubi rape people in the evenings. Where there are facts, there is evidence. The only evidence which Thirtle can offer is the testimony of “thousands of witnesses”. I know that I may start to sound like a stuck record, but anecdotal evidence is very weak evidence indeed. His point that tokoloshe rape is a social phenomenon causes alarms and red flags in my brain. Which other social phenomenon shares the properties of incubi? It happens at night, victims feel powerless, afraid, are subjected to examination of the reproductive organs and sometimes raped and impregnated?

You guessed it! Alien abduction. In 1961 Betty and Barney Hill provide us with the first popular account of an alien abduction and the narrative has become a widespread and varied tale which is ertold by thousands of abductees. There is no reliable evidence and as a result there are two distinct camps in the alien abduction world; those who believe and those who don’t. The prevailing academic explanations for abduction are that it is either a folk myth or the result of vivid dreams experienced during sleep paralysis. For an insight into how frightening and disturbing the dreams of someone who experiences sleep paralysis can be please read Michael Meadon’s account of his own encounter with hypnopompia (sleep paralysis experienced on waking).

As a famous sceptic once said; “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (Carl Sagan – incase you don’t know). The claim that people are being raped by demons, or abducted by aliens for that matter, is extraordinary to the eleventy billionth power. As responsible, reasonable people we have to demand equally extraordinary evidence which supports the claim. Failing this we have to weild Occams razor and produce a few more reasonable explanations for the experiences, such as sleep paralysis, as an explanation for otherwise “inexplicable” pregnancies out of wedlock, as a defence provided by mortal rapists, or by a victim being assaulted by someone he / she trusts who finds it “easier” to blame a mythical demon then the person responsible.

Sources;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokolosh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus
http://skepdic.com/satan.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_abduction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnogogia

God

Well, we have come to the end of another fine week and I have found something very funny for you to read. This extract comes from a forum called b3ta which I frequently browse when I need to kill some time. Here are one b3tan’s thoughts on religion;

A message to the believers:
No, ID does not have sound arguments, and its claims are bogus. In no sense are they comparable to naturalistic claims such as one finds within evolutionary biology.
No, evolution is not “just a theory”.
No, there is no reason at all to respect your beliefs. You, perhaps. Your beliefs, not so.
No, scientific uncertainty does not mean that we ought to listen to every single hypothesis. Some are clearly wrong.
No, you don’t have a right to your beliefs. If they turn out to be mistaken, you have a duty to ditch them; and a person does not wrong you by correcting your errors.
No, your failure to come up with an explanation of the world that does not include god is not evidence for the existence of god; it is evidence of your ignorance.
No, the persistence of religious belief is not evidence that there must be something behind it.
No, the belief in god is not a prerequisite of morality.

To the agnostics:
No, sitting on the fence does not indicate humility and open-mindedness. It indicates intellectual barrenness. Grow up.

To the atheists: don’t think you get off. You happen to be correct, but that isn’t an excuse for being a prissy little blockhead – and being correct counts for nothing if it’s not for the right reasons. You could get that from blind luck.
No, the persistence of evil is not an argument against the existence of god.
No, the persistence of evil actions by religious people is not an argument against religion.
No, you don’t have a right to your beliefs, either.

And, finally, the hippies.
No, god is not “inside you”.
No, your claims to be a “very spiritual person” do not demonstrate that you are “profound”. They demonstrate that you are a cretin.
No, things do not happen for “a reason” if, by “reason”, you mean something more than “mechanistic cause”. If that is what you mean, your statement is trivial, and it doesn’t make you sound deep. You are not even shallow.

If you’d like to read more on the “God” topic click here.

Not a good place to grow a tree!

It’s time for one of my childhood stories again, I’m sorry, I just can’t help it! When I was a little kid I refused to swallow the seeds of any fruit I was eating because I was terrified that they would germinate in my stomach and a fruit tree would grow out of my ears.  I have no idea how this idea was planted in my head, but swallowing pips is something I avoid to this day. I don’t believe that trees will grow inside my body, but I refuse to swallow them anyway. I’m telling you about this rather ridiculous habit of mine because the image of leafy green branches sticking out of my ears was the first thing which came to mind when I read this news article about a man in the Urals who went to his doctor with terrible pain in his chest and coughing up blood.

After x-raying the man’s chest, the doctor was ”100% sure” that his patient had lung cancer, so he prepared to remove a large section of the diseased lung tissue. This is where the story gets really interesting; the doctor claims to have found a 5cm long fir tree growing inside the lung! A tree! Growing in his lung! The doctor then allegedly removed the tree and the patient is recovering.

Here are the photo and x-ray provided as evidence of the tree in Mr. Sidorkin’s lung;

I have to confess, I am a *tiny* bit sceptical about all of this. My first question is how did the seed manage to get into the lung? The article suggests that Mr. Sidorkin inhaled the seed directly into his lung. This is unlikely, but plausible. I do not know how big a fir seed is, and I am inclined to think that a person would cough up anything smaller than a raisin which went up their nose (I know from personal experience that raisins can become lodged in the nose of a two year old toddler, hence my choice of the upper limit of the size of the seed). However, the seed could be inhaled through the mouth and land up in the lung. Unfortunately this means that location itself is not impossible (even though it is highly improbable).

The next serious question I have is whether or not a seed would actually be able to germinate inside a human lung. Wikipedia frames the precise requirements for seed germination with an excellent explanation for each and I will take a brief look at each below;

1. Water – I am not a medical doctor, however I HIGHLY doubt that there would be sufficient water in the human lung to facilitate germination and continue to provide for the plant’s requirements until it reached 5cm tall. If there was this much water in Mr. Sidorkins lungs, surely he would have drowned?

2. Oxygen – Not a problem, there is plenty oxygen flowing in and out of our lungs on a daily basis. All the seedling would have to do is snatch a little of the supply before it is absorbed into Sidorkin’s bloodstream.

3. Temperature – The inside of the human body is hot, a healthy persons axial temperature (measured under your arm) should be in the range of 36deg Celsius. That’s the external temperature under your arm. The inside of your lung would most probably be too hot for a fir seed to germinate.

4. Light – While sunlight may not be necessary for the fiir seed to germinate, it is the essential source of energy for green plants. A seedling could not grow to the size of the one supposedly extracted from Sidorkin’s lung without sunlight. 

Please take a close look at this recent picture of the fir tree in question, which I sourced here. I know it is small and perhaps a little difficult to make out, but there is one very important detail missing; the roots! Where are the roots? They are not visible in this image or in the original image propagated with this news story (of the chunk of lung with a twig sapling jammed growing within).

About that chunk of lung; it is a LARGE piece of lung laying out on a piece of gauze. Judging by the ruler I would say it is at least 10cm across, unfortunately no sense of depth is apparent. That’s a mighty big chunk of lung to remove from someone who does not have cancer.

In closing, I think that what we are dealing with here is a hoax. Plain and simple.

Images of lung and x-ray sourced here.

Ants in your brain?

Every now and again I receive an e-mail hoax so ridiculous that I simply cannot ignore it, even though that is the course of action recommended by all of my skeptical friends. “It’s just so preposterous!” they say “Don’t waste your time on something so obviously fake”, well I can’t ignore it! Clearly too many people believe this particular load of bollocks, too many concerned friends are forwarding it without checking, I mean it actually landed in MY inbox! Well, here is the “live ants devouring your brain” e-mail I received a few days ago;

Dear All,
Please read this and advise your friends and family! You may save
others’ lives!

Incident One:   A little boy died because surgeons found ants in his
brain! Apparently this boy fell asleep with some sweets in his mouth or
with some sweet stuff beside him.

Ants soon got to him and some ants in fact crawled into his ear which
somehow managed to go to his brain. When he woke up, he did not realize
that ants had gone to his head.

After that, he constantly complained about itchiness around his face.
His mother brought him to a doctor, but the doctor could not figure out
what was wrong with him. He took an X-ray of the boy and to his horror;
he found a group of live ants in his skull. Since the ants were still
alive, the doctor could not operate on him because the ants were
constantly moving around. The boy finally died. So please be careful
when leaving food stuff near your bed or when eating in bed. This might
attract ants. Most importantly,

NEVER you or your child eat sweets before going to bed. You or your
child might attract ants while you are asleep.

Incident Two:   Another similar incident happened in a hospital in
Taiwan . This man was warded in the hospital and was constantly warned
by the nurses not to leave food stuff by his bedside because there were
ants about. He did not heed their advice. Ants finally got to him. His
family members said that the man constantly complained about headaches.
He died and a postmortem or autopsy was done on him. Doctors found a
group of live ants in his head. Apparently, the ants had been eating
bits of his brain. So friends, better be safe than sorry. Never leave
food stuff beside your bed you when you go to sleep.

Please forward this to your friends and relatives.

WAIT! Don’t forward it to anybody! Not until you have thought about what you have just read. We are talking about ants crawling into a person’s ear and somehow managing to enter the brain, then surviving long enough in this inhospitible environment for them to do damage to your brain – enough damage to kill you… OK, lets take a closer look, shall we?

The above image is a detailed diagram of the anatomy of the human ear and I am going to use it to help illustraste the potential hazards along the marching route of a platoon of tiny invader ants. You can clearly see the ear canal which is protected against insectoid invasion by ear wax and many tiny hairs to impede the passage of ants and other foreign objects. Directly between the ear canal and the middle ear lies the human eardrum. This is a barrier made of three layers of living tissue. Exquisitely sensitive tissue as anyone who has suffered a rupture of the eardrum could tell you. Any brain seeking ant would have to chew through this membrane in order to enter the deeper levels of the human ear, a violation which would not pass unnoticed.

Beyond the eardrum lies the confusing crossroads where the ants must choose to enter the fluid filled chambers of the cochlea, or hazard the sewer of the human ear, the Eustachian tube. A wrong turn here would see the ants ejected through your nostrils or swallowed unnoticed, their invasion foiled.

If our platoon of ants were to somehow survive the journey through the inner ear they would still have an insurmountable task ahead of them; traveling through the auditory nerve to the first of the brain’s defenses. You see, dear reader, the ants would then have to burrow through the three meningeal membranes which cover the brain and spinal cord, and hold the brain comfortably within it’s layer of cerebrospinal fluid.

From the above battle plan it should be abundantly clear that ants cannot possibly survive the journey through the human ear to the brain, any ant general proposing such a plan would be put up against the wall and shot! It cannot happen! Your brain is not under threat from insect invasion.

Furthermore, I’d like you to ponder the following points / questions after reading this e-mail (or any other e-mail making similar claims);

1. What kind of ants are we talking about here? It may seem sticky, but details are very important, especially in cases such as the ant-in-th-brain e-mail,
2. Where did this happen? Specifically which hospital / doctor treated the patients?
3. The only “evidence” provided is anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence does not carry any weight and cannot be considered as convincing proof of a claim, especially one as extraordinary as brain eating ants.

NO! This e-mail is too many kinds of fear mongering rubbish to have any basis in reality. Before you pass it on to your address book, press delete!