The word HOAX is thought to be derived from the magician's utterance of silly "Hocus-Pocus" so-called magic incantation.
This is jibberish, of course--a fake Latin-sounding phrase mimmicking the Priest's words in Catholic Mass changing wine into the "actual" blood of Christ.
Yeah.
Only a conscious attempt to deceive separates a hoax from an otherwise mistake or urban myth.
According to folklorist Jan Brunvand, a 'hoax tends to indicate "relatively complex and large-scale fabrications" and includes deceptions that go beyond the merely playful and "cause material loss or harm to the victim". Brunvand, Jan H. (1998). American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. p. 587.
Unlike a magic trick or work of fiction, the audience is unaware of being deceived, whereas in watching a magician perform an illusion the audience expects to be tricked.
Governments and large Corporations often feed deliberate false stories into mainstream news outlets to manipulate political or financial outcomes.
This is usually described as DISINFORMATION rather than a "hoax" per se.
There are some few famous hoaxes in Christianity. Among these, folks still cling to defense of favorites even where disproof has come forth.
- Book of Jasher
- Kinderhook plates
- Letter of Benan
- Maria Monk
- Monita Secreta
- The Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles
- Priory of Sion
- Salamander letter
- Shroud of Turin
In the world view of the Jehovahs Witnesses, along the spectrum of mendacity, a great many HOAXES have been perpetrated.
"The public is not generally aware of how large an industry is the manufacture of serums, anti-toxins and vaccines, or that big business controls the whole industry. . . . the boards of health endeavor to start an epidemic of smallpox, diphtheria, or typhoid that they may reap a golden harvest by inoculating an unthinking community for the very purpose of disposing of this manufactured filth." (The Golden Age, Jan. 3, 1923, p. 214)
According to The Golden Age, vaccinations not only caused all kind of dreadful diseases, including the Spanish Flu, it even retarded the intellect of men and caused moral bankruptcy:
"..much looseness of our day along sexual lines may be traceable to the easy and continual violation of the divine commands to keep human and animal blood apart from each other. With cells of foreign blood racing through his veins a man is not normal, not himself, but lacks the poise and balance which makes for self control." (Golden Age, Febr. 4, 1931, p. 293)
"Vaccination is a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that God made with Noah after the flood." (ibid.)
The Golden Age became a forum for the most extravagant claims about science. And above all, Woodworth was a champion of his very special ideas about medicine and health. The Bible Students could enjoy a steady stream of health advice, one stranger than the other:
"There is no food that is right food for the morning meal. At breakfast is no time to break a fast. Keep up the daily fast until the noon hour... Drink plenty of water two hours after each meal; drink none just before eating; and a small quantity if any at meal time. Good buttermilk is a health drink at meal times and in between. Do not take a bath until two hours after eating a meal, nor closer than one hour before eating. Drink a full glass of water both before and after the bath." (Golden Age, Sept. 9, 1925, pp. 784-785)
"The earlier in the forenoon you take the sun bath, the greater will be the beneficial effect, because you get more of the ultra-violet rays, which are healing" (Golden Age, Sept. 13, 1933, p. 777)
Watchtower Society was serious about denying the "germ theory of disease" as a dangerous delusion from these "demon worshipping" medical doctors. Disease, they claimed, came from "wrong vibrations," and the WTS even marketed a special machine called the Electronic Radio Biola, which claimed to heal patients by sending special "radio waves" which corrected the vibrations. Needless to say, there were many letters from readers who had been healed by this device. The Golden Age carried advertisements for this wonderful machine, created by a Bible Student:
"Disease is Wrong Vibration. From what has thus far been said, it will be apparent to all that any disease is simply an out of tune condition of some part of the organism. In other words the affected part or the body vibrates higher or lower than normal. . . . I have named this new discovery . . . the Electronic Radio Biola, . . . The Biola automatically diagnoses and treats diseases by the use of electronic vibrations. The diagnosis is 100 percent correct, rendering better service in this respect than the most experienced diagnostician, and without any attending cost." (Advert in The Golden Age, April 22, 1925, pp. 453-454).
Even more astonishing than the quack science involved was the direct link to occult practices in this machine. The claim that the medical profession had descended from "demon worshipping shamans" becomes quite ironic when we see how this Radio Biola worked: The patient was told to write his or her name on a piece of paper. A tiny piece, only a dot, of this paper with ink was put into the machine. The machine (or rather, the operator) then somehow answered "yes" and "no" to questions about the patients health, reading the "electronic oscillations" of the patients organs based on this dot of ink. It was not limited to diagnosis; the machine had even been employed to answer questions about peoples life expectancy.
If the reader thinks this sounds like a fancy Ouija Board, he is quite correct. One Roy Goodrich, who was such a respected "Bible Student" that he was allowed to write a warning-article in The Golden Age, was convinced this machine was a clever spiritistic trap. The WTS leadership disagreed, and Mr. Goodrich found himself disfellowshipped (see The Golden Age April 22, 1925 pp 606-7; March 5, 1930 pp 355-62).
As we see above, the Watchtower Society argued that illness was caused by electrical "unbalance" in organs (which could be fixed: "Send for a Biola today. Price $35. Cash with order."). The idea that germs caused disease was not accepted in these quarters:
"medicine originated in demonology and spent its time until the last century and a half trying to exorcise demons. During the past half century it has tried to exorcise germs." (Golden Age, Aug. 5, 1931, p. 728)
The magazine further warned the Jehovahs Witnesses against x-rays (Sept. 23, 1936, p. 828), and tonsillectomy was worse than suicide:
"If any overzealous doctor condemns your tonsils go and commit suicide with a case-knife. Its cheaper and less painful." (Golden Age, April 7, 1926, p. 438)
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NOTICE WE HAVEN'T DISCUSSED FALSE PREDICTIONS?
We are all too familiar with constant bogus chronology schemes pointing to sources as amazing and mysterious as the measurement of passages
inside the Great Pyramid. In early versions of Studies in the Scriptures one set of measurements were given and in later editions a "doctored" set of measurements replace the first. This is something which doesn't trouble latter day Jehovah's Witnesses, naturally, it was so long ago it is easy to
dismiss. Therefore I won't go into them. I find the above description of hoaxes more deeply mendacious and horrifying.
Would you like to do somebody a real favor?
Why not copy these hoaxes down and print them out on large index cards and mail them to active JW's?
You might save some people victimization!
