He's a skeptic about religion. He denies the whole idea of God, and he denies the existence of any realm except the physical universe in which we live. More sympathetic to that I could not be.
But, religion is deeply entrenched in our culture, even as regards the State. Reagan wore his religion on his sleeve. George HW Bush had countless prayer sessions with Billy Graham. How many times did we see Bill Clinton with a Bible tucked under his arm? So, it's definitely subversive, even incendiary, not to pay homage to religion in our culture. And I give kudos to Michael Shermer for standing up to that. Yes, it's time that people everywhere reject mysticism and mythology in all its forms.
But other than for religion, Michael Shermer is NOT a skeptic; he's the anti-skeptic. When the state tells us that a lone gunman killed John Kennedy, Michael Shermer says: don't be a skeptic. He says the same about the state versions of the murders of RFK and MLK: don't be a skeptic. And regarding the official story of 9/11, that the Twin Towers fell suddenly into their own footprints at free-fall speed in perfect symmetry, and also Building 7 which was never even hit by a plane, Michael Shermer says: don't be a skeptic.
And now, Michael Shermer has a new article about the JFK assassination, and not only is his analysis wrong, but it isn't even factually correct.
Why JFK Conspiracy Theories Won't Go Away
Michael Shermer
Sept. 24, 2014
We've known the truth for 50 years, but many continue to deny the facts
Half a century ago today, the Warren Commission released its comprehensive
888-page report, concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in
assassinating President John F. Kennedy. Since then, exhaustive
investigations, such as those by Gerald Posner (Case Closed, 2002) and
especially Vincent Bugliosi (Reclaiming History, 2007) have backed up that
original finding: Oswald acted alone.
Consider just a few of the many facts that are not in the conspiracy
believers' favor: Oswald's Carcano bolt-action rifle -- with his
fingerprints on it -- was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School
Book Depository building, where he was employed, in a sniper's nest he
built out of boxes that also had his fingerprints on them. Three bullet
casings there match what 81% of eyewitnesses in Dealey Plaza reported
hearing -- three shots. (And tests with this rifle found that three shots
are possible in the amount of time he had.) It was the same rifle Oswald
purchased by mail order in March 1963. Co-workers saw him on the sixth
floor of the Book Depository building shortly before JFK's motorcade
arrived, and saw him exit soon after the assassination. Oswald went home,
picked up his pistol and left again, shortly after which he was stopped by
Dallas Patrolman J.D. Tippet, whom Oswald shot dead with four bullets, all
witnessed by numerous observers. He then fled the scene and ducked into a
nearby theater without paying. The police were summoned and Oswald was
confronted. He pulled out his revolver and attempted to shoot the first
officer but the gun failed and he was arrested, saying, "Well, it is all
over now."
So why, 50 years later, do the conspiracies persist? There are several
psychological factors at work:
Cognitive dissonance. Big effects need big causes -- we want balance
between the size of the cause and the size of the effect. Example: The
Holocaust is one of the worst crimes ever committed in history and its
cause was the Nazi government, one of the most criminal regimes in
history. There's a balance. JFK was the most powerful political person on
the planet, yet he was killed by a lone nut, a nobody living on the
margins of a free society. There's no balance. To reduce this dissonance
and balance the scales, people have concocted countless co-conspirators
(some 300 total) to stack on the "cause" side of the scale, including the
KGB, Communists, radical right-wingers, the CIA, the FBI, the mafia,
Castro, pro-Cuban nationalists, the Military Industrial Complex and even
Vice-President Johnson (in a coup d'état). We saw a similar effect
unfold when Princess Diana died. The cause of her death? Drunk driving,
speeding, no seatbelt -- but Princesses are not suppose to die of common
causes. So, to dissipate the dissonance, conspiratorial cabals, everyone
from the Royal family to the MI5 British intelligence agency, were
conjectured to have been the real cause.
Anxiety. Psychological research also shows that when people are placed in
environments or conditions in which they feel anxiety and a loss of
control, they are more likely to see illusory patterns in random noise and
to look to conspiracies as explanations for ordinary events. Sociological
research has also found that natural disasters such as hurricanes and
earthquakes lead people to think that there are conspiratorial forces at
work. The assassination of JFK was exceptionally disrupting and
anxiety-producing, so it fits the bill.
Randomness. Another psychological factor at work is that the mind abhors
randomness. We humans are terrible at understanding chance and
probabilities. We find hidden patterns everywhere, even in purposefully
random sequences and noise. And yet much of what goes on in life, in
politics and in history at large is the product of chance and randomness.
By this I do not mean to imply that JFK was killed by a random event, but
that Oswald acting alone feels like a random factor when compared to a
vast conspiratorial cabal plotting to overthrow the United States
government.
Some conspiracy theories are real -- Lincoln's assassination, Watergate --
so we should not dismiss them all out of hand without first examining the
evidence. But once an unmistakable pattern unfolds before our eyes -- as
it has, for 50 years straight, in the case of JFK's lone killer -- it's
time to let the President RIP, for this conspiracy theory is DOA. QED.
Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com), a
monthly columnist for Scientific American, and an adjunct professor at
Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University. He is the author of
Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain. His next book is
The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice,
and Freedom.
I am not going to address all the psychobabble that comprises most of the article. I only wish to address the points of fact about the assassination and Oswald's supposed guilt.
Oswald's fingerprints were NOT found on the M-C rifle. Only his palm print was found and that wasn't until AFTER he was dead. In fact, it was not found until November 29, which was 6 days after the assassination.
There is no evidence that OSWALD built the sniper's nest of boxes, and many suspect the arrangement was done afterwards. Many fingerprints were found on the boxes, including Oswald's, but he often worked on the 6th floor, handling boxes.
No fingerprints were found on any of the three empty bullet shells found in the TSBD, or on the intact bullet. Nor were any prints found on the rifle clip that held the intact bullet and into which the shells must have been loaded by hand.
The issue of finding three bullet casings and people reporting to have heard three shots does not incriminate Oswald at all. So what?
Here is a good presentation on why the M-C rifle wasn't Oswald's and why it wasn't even fired that day. It's by the brilliant Gil Jesus, a former policeman.
Here is a good presentation on why the M-C rifle wasn't Oswald's and why it wasn't even fired that day. It's by the brilliant Gil Jesus, a former policeman.
So, Oswald was telling the truth when he said that he did not own a rifle.
Shermer said that tests proved that 3 shots were possible with the M-C rifle within 5.6 seconds, like the WC said. What tests are you talking about, Shermer? Nobody has ever duplicated the shooting feat attributed to Oswald. Craig Roberts was a sniper in the military and for the Tulsa Police, and he said that he couldn't have done it. The Warren Commission had to fix the rifle with shims before letting their sharpshooters use it, and none of them succeeded even with that cheating. Jesse Ventura, who was a Navy Seal with higher marksman scores than Oswald, tried it, and he didn't even come close.
So, where do you get off making the claim that Oswald's supposed shooting feat was duplicated, Shermer?
And no, co-workers did NOT see Oswald on the 6th floor shortly before the motorcade passed. Carolyn Arnold saw Oswald downstairs as late as 12:25, so how could he possibly get up to the 6th floor in time to do the shooting at 12:30? And shortly before that he reported being in the Domino room eating his cheese sandwich and apple, and he accurately cited two employees who were there at the time: Junior Jarman and Harold Norman.
Shermer, everything you said about Oswald's actions after the assassination which supposedly culminated in Tippit's murder are unsubstantiated and false. For a review of what really happened, here is John Armstrong, and this was written just last month, in September 2014.
And notice that unlike you, Shermer, Armstrong substantiates everything he says.
Regarding the false charge that Oswald shot Tippit, I'll let Jim Douglass explain it. This is from JFK and the Unspeakable:
As the gunman walked and trotted away from the murder scene while still holding the revolver, the Warren Report says he was seen by at least twelve persons: “By the evening of November 22, five of them had identified Lee Harvey Oswald in police lineups as the man they saw. A sixth did so the next day. Three others subsequently identified Oswald from a photograph. Two witnesses testified that Oswald resembled the man they had seen. One witness felt he was too distant from the gunman to make a positive identification.”[426]
The fleeing man identified later as Oswald was seen finally by Johnny Calvin Brewer, manager of Hardy’s Shoestore, located a few doors east of the Texas Theater. After spotting the man acting suspiciously in the recessed area in front of his store, Brewer went outside. He saw the man ducking into the theater up the block. The ticket-seller, Julia Postal, confirmed to Brewer that the man had not bought a ticket. She called the police.[427]
However, the man who shot Tippit, fled the murder scene, sneaked into the Texas Theater just before 1:45 P.M., and was identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, posed another bi-location problem. Oswald once again seemed to be in two places at the same time.
According to Warren H. “Butch” Burroughs, the concession stand operator at the Texas Theater, Lee Harvey Oswald entered the theater sometime between 1:00 and 1:07 P.M., several minutes before Officer Tippit was slain seven blocks away.[428] If true, Butch Burroughs’s observation would eliminate Oswald as a candidate for Tippet’s murder. Perhaps for that reason, Burroughs was asked by a Warren Commission attorney the apparently straightforward question, “Did you see [Oswald] come in the theater?” and answered honestly, “No, sir; I didn’t.”[429] What someone reading this testimony would not know is that Butch Burroughs was unable to see anyone enter the theater from where he was standing at his concession stand, unless that person came into the area where he was working. As he explained to me in an interview, there was a partition between his concession stand and the front door. Someone could enter the theater, go directly up a flight of stairs to the balcony, and not be seen from the concession stand.[430] That, Burroughs said, is what Oswald apparently did. However, Burroughs still knew Oswald had come into the theater “between 1:00 and 1:07 P.M.” because he saw him inside the theater soon after that. As he told me, he sold popcorn to Oswald at 1:15 P.M.[431]—information that the Warren Commission did not solicit from him in his testimony. When Oswald bought his popcorn at 1:15 P.M., this was exactly the same time the Warren Report said Officer Tippit was being shot to death[432]—evidently by someone else.
So, Shermer, Butch Burroughs places Oswald in the Texas Theater by 1:07, which was 8 minutes before Tippit got killed. And the notion that Oswald snuck in is preposterous. The man who snuck in was seen doing it after 1:30. There was an Oswald double, Shermer. Again: you need to read Jim Douglass and John Armstrong. The Lee Harvey Oswald that we know was in the Texas Theater long before Tippit was shot to death at 10th and Patton.
Your last claim was that Oswald tried to shoot at a cop in the theater. But, this link destroys that claim completely. It includes the WC testimony of FBI firearms expert Courtland Cunningham.
Face it, Shermer: the charge is crap.
And the bottom line is that EVERYTHING you said, everything you cited, supposedly pointing to Oswald's guilt is FALSE. You were wrong about everything, Shermer. EVERY LAST THING.
Now, I demand that you post this up on Skeptic, Shermer. You can respond to it, point by point. You can do what you should have done, which is to try to substantiate your claims.
Nobody gets to have their claims go unexamined and uncritiqued, Shermer, and that includes you. You claim to be a man of reason, but you're not, and I'll tell you what you are: You are just a guy who has parlayed his outspokenness against religion into being a mouthpiece for the State in all its lies. You're not rational; you're not objective; you're just a minion of the State, Shermer. A well-paid minion of the State.
If you're a man, you'll put this up and respond to it. Let's debate this in the light of day, Shermer. And if you're unwilling, it tells us all we need to know about you.
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