Skeptical adventures in the land of conspiracy

Devout Christians praying to a golden bull for material wealth. Seriously.

What is it that makes something valuable? You’ll probably get a different answer depending on whom you ask – a capitalist would say something about supply and demand, an academic might talk about the degree to which something increases our knowledge of the world, and so on.

But radical libertarians, alternative medicine proponents, ancient-astronaut pseudoarchaeologists, and five-year-olds on Ritalin will give you more or less the same answer: “That depends – how shiny is it?”

The obsession with gold, silver, and precious stones in the pseudoscientific subculture is massive.  You might be excused for thinking that this is based on some kind of materialistic greed – but mere wealth is no object for those who have transcended the material and focus entirely on the spiritual. Gold has a special vibration, a special frequency. Gold is one of the greatest sources of natural healing (next to silver, of course). Gold is the reason why ancient astronauts came to Earth; if you eat it, it reprograms your DNA to make you more intelligent, so aliens fed it to us so that we could mine even more gold for them. Gold is the only valid form of currency; if a country is not on the gold standard, it is doomed to failure.

Take for instance the GoldIsMoney forums, which is basically a gathering place for people who are so obsessed with precious metals that they get sexually aroused at the thought of diving Scrooge McDuck-style into a vault of gold coins. They actually have a gold porn thread.

^^^ Oh My God! Is that real??

I really miss my gold………………………….:(

WOW!!!! All of this gold is making me drool all over myself.

An old timer once told me it doesn’t matter how big it is. It’s how big everyone thinks it is that count’s. While I don’t entirely agree with that logic, there is an element of truth to it.

Continue reading →