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Sungenis Refuses to Face His Record

Bob Sungenis has recently complained that by posting material about his educational background and six areas in which he has publicly espoused conspiracy theories, I was piling on, trying to bring out every goofy thing he’s ever said or done just in order to ridicule and embarrass him. He summarizes, “but it was just too juicy of a ‘conspiracy theory’ for him to let it go. Making a fool out of Bob Sungenis is paramount. We must leave no stone unturned.”

Actually, Sungenis has it exactly wrong.  In fact, I withheld a great deal of other goofy and paranoid material that I could have brought to light on that page, precisely because I didn’t want to appear to be piling on.  I decided instead to pick a representative sampling of his views and minimize editorializing on them, letting Sungenis’s own words speak largely for themselves. In particular, I sought to be measured in regard to the paranoid and ugly views Sungenis expressed about Jews over the past twelve years, describing in just two sentences what amounted to literally tens of thousands of words on his part.

If Sungenis feels that this material puts him in a bad light and makes him look like a fool and “conspiracy nut”, then he has no one to blame but himself, because he repeatedly put up such material on his website and left it there for months and even years.  Now he’s trying to memory-hole all of this by even blocking the WayBack machine (the web archive), so no one can see for himself the scope of what he wrote and posted.

This latest move is particularly telling: if Sungenis doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with what he wrote, or if he is concerned that he is being quoted out of context, then why not leave the material there for others to judge for themselves?

In his latest complaint, Sungenis doesn’t retract or apologize for any of his conspiracy mongering. In fact, his entire piece reads as one long self-justification. He insists that he had every right to post what he did—and how dare somebody tell him otherwise!—but he has the weird notion that if he merely pulls this material down and says that he’s not “concerned” about this panoply of alleged conspiracies any more, then everyone else has a moral obligation to stop bringing any of it up.  In fact, if you don’t go along with his historical whitewashing, he’ll threaten you with a lawsuit (as he has done to me, Karl Keating, Dave Armstrong, and numerous others).

This is absurd. Nobody put a gun to Sungenis’s head and forced him to engage in almost twelve years of constant, public conspiracy mongering. And now, especially in light of the fact that he refuses to apologize for or retract any of it, nobody is under any conceivable obligation to refrain from pointing out his past. Absent a forthright apology for and retraction of the many offensive and paranoid statements he has made over the years, Sungenis, like any other public figure, will simply have to run on his record.

On the “Backgrounds” page of Geocentrism Debunked, I mention Sungenis’s espousal of lunar landing denial, his assertion that NASA makes crop circles from space to get “our minds off the Bible and Christ”, that 9-11 was an Israeli-inspired “inside job” most likely brought about using nuclear weapons, that likewise, Israel caused the tsunami leading to the Fukushima meltdown using nuclear weapons, that the Titanic was purposely sunk and that this is a “blueprint” for 9-11, and that dinosaurs and humans lived together and there’s a conspiracy to cover up the evidence (something he now claims is the “traditional Catholic view”).

On the basis of that list Sungenis accused me of obsessively leaving “no stone unturned”. Sungenis also attempted a tu quoque by digging into my own allegedly conspiratorial past and suggesting that we have similar histories in regard to conspiracy theories. In support of this contention, he pointed out that I significantly over-estimated how severe the disruptions would be from the Y2K bug (something I already publicly acknowledged on my own web site here). He mentioned that I once wrote that I believe some of John Paul II’s words and actions caused confusion among some of the faithful (which is also true). And last, he revealed that I have stated publicly that I enjoy drinking good beer and have a now unfortunately mostly defunct blog reviewing various beers. Again, guilty as charged. Presumably, this is the strongest evidence Sungenis believes he can marshal to prove that I am no different than he is in regard to conspiracy theorizing and the conspiratorial mindset. I’m content to let the reader compare these three items with the grocery list of Sungenis’s conspiracy theories listed above and below and decide whether there is any real comparison to be made.

That being said, perhaps I should also point out the obvious: I am not the one trying to convince the world to reject virtually the entire scientific community and the teaching of the Magisterium and follow me instead.  Bob Sungenis is.  As such, it’s perfectly reasonable to bring his other views to light so that people can consider whether or not he’s given evidence of being a trustworthy, rational, and credible person.

To be clear, this is not to say that conspiracies never happen or that anyone who believes a conspiracy theory is a dolt. In fact, many conspiracy theorists are extremely bright – perhaps too bright for their own good. When pride and distrustfulness are married to great native intelligence, bad things inevitably happen – as we have known from the Garden of Eden onward.

An apt saying comes to mind: “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.” If one intends to make damning, scandalous claims in public, one bears a tremendous responsibility to exercise extreme diligence and care in firmly establishing the veracity of those claims. But if one actually takes the time to carefully examine the work of conspiracy theorists in general (which is often a particularly arduous and unpleasant task that few have the desire or time to undertake), one will almost always find that the evidence doesn’t meet the standards necessary to actually prove the case. And Sungenis’ conspiracy theories are no exception to that rule. But, nevertheless, a few people completely buy into them as gospel truth. And some others who don’t entirely believe them are still left feeling unsettled, suspicious and distrustful. It’s sad and it’s wrong, but how much more so when such conspiracies are interwoven with matters of faith?

As a result of his public accusation, it seems necessary to bring the facts to light. Here are some additional conspiracy theories Sungenis has promoted at his website and that I didn’t mention initially. Even the list below is not comprehensive, by a long mile.

So, was I piling on or was I holding back? Judge for yourself.

• Sungenis publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that FDR purposely allowed the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor – because FDR was of Jewish extraction and wanted to help Jews gain the land of Palestine (link and link).

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that the number of 6 million Jews being killed in the Holocaust was “mere propaganda” and that the statistics show that the number of Jews alive before and after World War II was “virtually the same.” (see more documentation here.)

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that Jews were behind the assassination of JFK because he refused to give Israel nuclear weapons.

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that Jews sent Monica Lewinsky in to take Bill Clinton down because they didn’t like his foreign policy toward Israel.

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that Israel has control of the phone system in the United States and listens in on our phone calls.

• He publicly advanced as established fact that wealthy Jews behind the scenes are involved in a conspiracy to rule the world and more specifically the Catholic Church.

• He advanced the conspiracy theory that the Jews helped Hitler in the hopes of gaining the land of Palestine.

• He affirmed a questioner on his site who posited the conspiracy theory that Jews are establishing “5th columns” in all the world’s great religions.

• He publicly accepted without question a fraudulent “quote” from Benjamin Franklin about Jews supposedly conspiring to rule the nascent United States of America (link).

• He publicly gave credence to the thoroughly discredited Jewish conspiracy theory known as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

• He insisted that the conflict in the country of Georgia was actually caused by Jews because Georgia is a “Jewish stronghold” (even though Georgia only has a dwindling population 13,000 Jews out of a total population of about 5 million).

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that John Paul I was murdered as an established fact (link).

• He continues to assert that astronomer Tycho Brahe was murdered by Johannes Kepler, even though new forensic evidence has dissipated this claim (Galileo Was Wrong, 9th ed. vol. 2. pp. 514f.; see “Was Tycho Brahe Murdered? Probably Not“)

• He has co-authored a book asserting that numerous Popes have been involved in a conspiracy to hide the truth about the Fatima secrets from the Catholic faithful (link).

• In his 2005 article “Vatican II’s Death Warrant on the Modern Church”, Sungenis falsely attributed a heretical, but bogus, quote to John Paul II. When he was called on this, he then claimed that the quote came from Cardinal Ratzinger. When called upon to validate that, he produced a perfectly orthodox text that did not contain the original quote at all.

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that Pope John Paul II paid $250 million of Vatican money to cover over the fraud and money laundering of Paul Marcinkus, the director of the Vatican Bank, and also shielded Marcinkus from criminal charges.

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that Catholic Answers and EWTN were “becoming fronts for Zionism” (link).

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that Japan had been trying to surrender for 6 months prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, but Truman refused to allow them to surrender so that he could nuke the Catholic cities.

• He publicly advanced the conspiracy theory that his bishop was afraid of Jews because Jews supposedly own the mortgages on all the diocesan property. He insisted that, “It’s time for people to wake up and stop being corralled by the Jewish slave masters” (link).

• He publicly recommended the anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish conspiracy theorist Texe Marrs as a source on Jewish issues. Even Protestant apologist James White has described Marrs thusly: “Texe Marrs fills his publications with the latest theory as to how the world is going to be taken over. Both Ruckman and Marrs are true ‘anti-Catholics,’ defining the term for most folks.” (link)

• In his article “Politics, Religion, Israel and the Seduction of the Catholic Voter: The Neo-Con Connection”, Sungenis said of Attorney General John Ashcroft: “Attorney General John Ashcroft, a member of the Pentecostal religion who harbors a fear of calico cats because they are ‘tools of the devil,’ is also involved in promoting the Zionist eschatology.” A quick Google search on “Ashcroft calico cat” brings up a link to an article on www.snopes.com that totally debunks this urban legend.

• Sungenis posted a “news alert” on CAI’s home page claiming that hotel key cards retain private customer information (street address, credit card number, etc.) and can be used by rogue hotel employees for evil purposes: “An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.” The information here was allegedly taken from the “Pasadena Police Department”. What Sungenis didn’t bother to find out is that the Pasadena Police Department has specifically debunked this information as a hoax.

• Sungenis claimed that the Jonestown mass suicide was really a “CAI murder operation” (link).   [Was Sungenis offering a public confession here about his organization, Catholic Apologetics International (CAI)?  Or was this just a typo?  Conspiracy theorists want to know….]

• Sungenis posted a video by the notorious David Duke insisting that Jews are responsible for the bulk of organized crime (link and link).

• Sungenis posted an article claiming that the space shuttle Columbia was shot down by an Israeli missile (link).

• Sungenis posted an article alleging that the Oklahoma City bombing was a “false flag” operation perpetrated by the U.S. government (link).

• Sungenis posted an article on his cite claiming that the H1N1 virus was engineered in order to get people to take a personality-altering vaccine (link).

• Starting just a few weeks after the Sandy Hook mass shooting, Sungenis posted several pieces insisting that it was all a hoax (link, link, and link).

More Errors and Dishonesty in Sungenis’s Latest Replies

As those who have ever disagreed with Robert Sungenis on a controversial topic know from experience, he has a habit of boldly making easily disproven statements as if they were facts. I’ve demonstrated this repeatedly with regard to his writings on geocentrism (see for example here, here, here, and here). But it’s also true of various tangential arguments he makes in an effort to discredit his critics.

Let’s briefly look at three very recent examples: Sungenis’s assertion that I don’t know anything about science, his insistence that his patron, on-line geocentrist “John Martin,” is not hiding his real identity by using a pseudonym, and his attempt to defend the obvious conflict of interest created by the fact that Robert Bennett was simultaneously the supervisor/evaluator of Sungenis’s “doctoral dissertation” and co-author of the book that would result from this same “doctoral dissertation.”

Palm Has No Science Degrees and Doesn’t Know Any Science

On my Backgrounds page and also in A New Geocentrist to Catholic Answers: “Get Some Science Education!”, I pointed out the irony that leading geocentrist Sungenis—a man who seeks to set the entire world of physics straight after having, at most, taken some undergraduate courses while he “majored in physics” before dropping that and changing to religion instead—has the chutzpah to ridicule others’ alleged lack of formal science education. Now he’s taking that even further in his comments about me, several times going so far as make unequivocal statements such as, “David Palm not only has no degrees in science, he doesn’t know any science at all.”

This is a particularly silly statement because it’s so easily disproven. Sungenis knows that I am a professional, degreed engineer. While I don’t claim to be a scientist, it’s demonstrably false to claim that I know nothing about science. In fact, I have two Bachelor of Science degrees – which is exactly two more than Sungenis himself has.

As such, in terms of formal science education, Sungenis and I are at the very least equal. And, in light of the fact that he switched his major to religion, while I actually completed my two Bachelor of Science degrees (with a minor in Mathematics), I suspect that I probably have the edge in that regard. The major difference between us, of course, is that I don’t pretend to be an expert in physics – let alone one competent and qualified enough to accuse, lecture, and contradict the entire scientific community. Sungenis, on the other hand, does exactly this while repeatedly demonstrating his incompetence by making numerous scientific blunders (see e.g. here, here, and here.) But the bottom line is that Sungenis’s statements that I know nothing about science are easily disproven.

“John Martin. I know him personally”

On a number of occasions, I’ve engaged the arguments of someone going by the name “JohnMartin”, an avid Sungenis fan who has frequently popped into various on-line venues to promote geocentrism. In my own responses, I put “John Martin” in quotes to indicate that it is a pseudonym and not his real name. But Sungenis indignantly insists that I’m wrong. He writes:

It is not a pseudonym. His name is John Martin. I know him personally. This is just another case in which Mr. Palm accuses someone and, even after he is told that his accusation is wrong, he persists in making the same accusation. We’ve told Mr. Palm several times that John Martin is John Martin. He attends a seminary in Europe, last I heard, and he domiciles in Australia.

There are two problems here. First, Sungenis had never told me even once—let alone “several times”—that this “accusation” is wrong. But second, and much more importantly, none other than “JohnMartin” himself told Dave Armstrong in a public forum that “John Martin” is not his legal name, but one he chose specifically to give him “anonymity”:

I use my real baptismal and confirmation names – John Martin. It is my right to use such a name to be authentic and also retain some anonymity for privacy reasons (link).

While it seems ridiculous to have to explain it, this is precisely the design and purpose of a pseudonym. As Wikipedia puts it, the purpose of a pseudonym is “to hide an individual’s real identity.” And as explained here, a pseudonym can even have a “real” element to it, as in the case of “Dr. Seuss,” whose given name was Theodore Seuss Geisel. If I went around calling myself “John Francis” (my middle and confirmation names) on-line, in order to “retain some anonymity for privacy reasons”, I think it’s safe to say that Sungenis would consider that a pseudonym. And isn’t it odd that Sungenis does not know this about “John Martin,” someone he claims to “know personally”?

Interestingly, both he and Rick DeLano have harshly denounced anyone who chooses to post anonymously or pseudonymously as cowardly. But they’ve had nothing to say so far about Mark Wyatt, Robert Bennett, or “John Martin”, all of whom have posted on-line pseudonymously: see More Geocentrist Double Standards: Using Pseudonyms.]

Robert Bennett: Sungenis’s Ph.D Supervisor, Evaluator…and Co-author.

There are many ways in which Sungenis’s purported “Ph.D.” fails to meet the basic standards of a legitimate doctoral degree.  But to highlight just one, on the Backgrounds page, I pointed out that Robert Bennett, the supervisor/evaluator of Sungenis’ “doctoral dissertation” on geocentrism, had an obvious conflict of interest because he was also the co-author of the book into which they were turning this very same dissertation – Galileo Was Wrong (GWW).

I stated:

The standards at Calamus do not meet those adhered to at institutions accredited by recognized accreditation bodies–for a discussion of the standards at Calamus, see here and here. For example, the supervising professor for Sungenis’s ostensive doctoral dissertation was his own co‐author, Robert Bennett.

Sungenis has recently replied to me thus:

Mr. Palm continues to use this canard even though he has been told numerous times that his timing is wrong. Robert Bennett was asked to be my supervising professor for my dissertation BEFORE he became my co‐author for Galileo Was Wrong. The fact that he agreed to be my supervising professor and took interest in my writing of the dissertation on geocentrism was the very reason I later asked him to co‐author the book. But, of course, Mr. Palm isn’t interested in making known the alternative version to his juicy gossip. He would rather give the impression that his version is the only version, and I am guilty as charged.

But Sungenis completely misses the point. It’s irrelevant whether he asked Bennett to supervise (and evaluate, by the way – something Sungenis conveniently skips over) his “doctoral dissertation” before he became the co-author of GWW. The problem is that Bennett was supervising and evaluating Sungenis’s “dissertation” while knowing full well that he was going to professionally and possibly financially benefit from this very same dissertation when it was turned into GWW. GWW and Sungenis’ “doctoral dissertation” on geocentrism are substantially the same thing (see below). This is an obvious and blatant conflict of interest that no reputable institution of higher learning would ever have knowingly permitted.

And as we’ll see below, it only gets worse. The rationalization Sungenis tried above was irrelevant and deceptive, but there were no outright lies in it. Unfortunately, on 19 Dec 2013, in an e-mail to me, Sungenis was even more detailed and explicit in his “explanation” of what occurred:

Robert Bennett was not my “co-author” when I was doing the dissertation for Calamus. I began my dissertation in 2004 and received my degree in April 2006. The first edition of Galileo Was Wrong wasn’t published until late 2006. In other words, it was precisely because of Dr. Bennett’s favorable review of my dissertation that was one of the reasons I asked him to be a co-author of the book.

Here, the reader will note that Sungenis went beyond what he claimed above and explicitly asserted, replete with dates, that Robert Bennett had not come on board as the co-author of GWW until after he had completely finished his “doctoral dissertation” at Calamus (CIU) in April 2006.

And if that picture of things were true, we would not have a problem. In the scenario that Sungenis is trying to paint, Bennett’s objectivity would not have been compromised by his own professional and possible financial interests in Sungenis’s work.

The problem is that Sungenis is lying. Robert Bennett was indeed on board as Sungenis’s “co-author” of GWW while Sungenis was still working on his the doctoral dissertion at CIU. Here’s the proof:

First, in his article, “My Ph.D. from Calamus International University”, Sungenis wrote about “’Galileo Was Wrong,’ the book that was made from my dissertation with CIU”. So, by his own admission, his geocentric “doctoral dissertation” at Calamus is substantially the same as his book Galileo Was Wrong.

Second, Sungenis has publicly and privately stated that he worked on his “doctoral dissertation” for Calamus between April 2004 and April 2006.

Third, on 30 Dec 2004, Sungenis publicly stated that Robert Bennett was the co-author of Galileo Was Wrong. In a reply to Karl Keating on the Catholic Answers Forum, Sungenis wrote: “This, and much more will be explained in our upcoming book “Galileo Was Wrong” authored by me and my colleague Dr. Robert Bennett” (link; my emphasis). So, at least as early as December of 2004, Sungenis and Bennett had agreed to the co-authorship of Galileo Was Wrong, which was to be “made from [the] dissertation with CIU.”

And that’s basically all you need to know. The public record shows that Sungenis was lying when he said that Bennett was not his, “co-author when I was doing the dissertation for Calamus.” He was also lying when he said that it was only, “because of Dr. Bennett’s favorable review of my dissertation” that he later, “asked [Bennett] to be a co-author of the book”.

Rather, the public record conclusively demonstrates that Robert Bennett agreed to collaborate with Sungenis on the book Galileo Was Wrong while he was still supervising and evaluating the very “doctoral dissertation” that would become that book. As such, Bennett was evaluating and supervising Sungenis’s work while he knew that he would benefit professionally and possibly financially from that same work. That is an obvious and blatant conflict of interest that would never be knowingly allowed at any reputable institution of higher learning.

The following eye-opening details fill in more about the chronology involved:

• February 2004: In a discussion about a Protestant apologist’s claim of a “Ph.D.” from an unaccredited institution, Sungenis stated this regarding accreditation of a doctoral program: “If his outfit is a United States recognized accredited school, then I think we would have to accept his Ph.D. If it’s [sic] accreditation is not accepted by the US, then we don’t have to accept it. (I found out that the U.S. is the key to almost all accrediting in regards to overseas institutions)” (email discussion of February 6, 2004, emphasis added).

• April 2004: Within just two months he apparently did a complete flip-flop on this assessment and decided to link up with the unaccredited Calamus to get his “doctorate”. Sungenis himself documents his association with Calamus as running from April 2004 to April 2006 (see http://www.visualcv.com/robertsungenis.)

• April 2004 – April 2006: Since he claimed that the “dissertation” took three years to complete, the most charitable interpretation is that, at the very least, Sungenis is working on the “dissertation” throughout this entire two years.

In his article entitled “My Ph.D. from Calamus International University” he stated that he started the dissertation after he had selected CIU and that, “over the course of the next three years I wrote a 700-page, 1400-footnote, single spaced dissertation”. There’s a discrepancy of one year here, since April 2004 to April 2006 leaves only two years, not three, for the work to be done. Suffice it to say that Sungenis is on record that, at the least, the “dissertation” was written over the entire period between signing up at Calamus in April 2004 and wrapping up in April of 2006.

In the same article, Sungenis speaks of “’Galileo Was Wrong,’ the book that was made from my dissertation with CIU”.

• December 2004:  Sungenis states publicly that, “This, and much more will be explained in our upcoming book “Galileo Was Wrong” authored by me and my colleague Dr. Robert Bennett”

• April 2006:  Based on said “dissertation”, the unaccredited CIU awards Sungenis a “Ph.D.”

• June 2006:  Two months later, Sungenis’s close associate Mark Wyatt announces that Sungenis and Bennett have, “just released Galileo Was Wrong, Vol. 1” (link). Note this was not “late 2006” as Sungenis recently stated to me, but a mere two months after he claimed the “Ph.D.” from Calamus.

What Does it All Mean?

The reader who has no history with Sungenis is seeing just the tip of the iceberg here. This pattern of outright falsehood and deception could be documented from dozens of Sungenis’s own writings over the years. What’s more, over the course of more than a decade, he has espoused literally dozens of bizarre conspiracy theories (link).

Why bring all this up? It boils down to the matter of credibility.

Sungenis presents himself as both trustworthy and qualified to challenge virtually the entire scientific community in matters of physics, biology, geology, and other scientific fields. But much more seriously, he also claims that the Magisterium of the Catholic Church has for centuries been derelict in its duty to teach the true Faith. As the saying goes, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Clearly, then, his personal credibility becomes a matter of paramount importance. Unfortunately, Sungenis repeatedly deploys demonstrable falsehoods in a quixotic quest to advance his own personal view of the universe and of the Church.