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Something that facinates, and also terrifies me, about Evangelicals is their ability to read Satanism and occultism into everything. This runs from being silly in stuff like Deception of a Generation and Turmoil in the Toybox, to the Satanic Ritual Abuse cases of the 80s. The first of those is just them going SATAN and pointing at toys like He-Man and my little pony. Or freaking out at ghosts and magic in cartoons. The second though would essentially hijack the justice system in many places with claims of vast Satanic cults and their activity, which included child abuse and murder. All over the US, so called Experts would offer their services, for a fee, to local police to help uncover the Satanic goings on in their communities when there was a murder, especially if it was of someone young. "Oh look, we found the dead girl in this abandoned school, where a pentagram was found on the wall, clearly evidence of SATANIC CULTS! Arrest the kids who listen to Heavy Metal!". The idea that there is a huge active cult still exists in Evangelical circles. They see a Cannibal Corpse album cover, or anything to do with LeVey Satanism (which is pretty much objectivitism with some mysticism and goatees added in) as proof of it. Innocent people went to prison and lives ruined based of this kind of stuff, like the West Memphis Three and the McMartin Preschool are probably the best known cases. In some cases, the police tried to investigate properly, but the local Evangelical community demanded that they just arrest this weird guy because he is clearly a Satanist. I remember reading about a case where it was abundantly clear that a child was killed accidentally by his father while he was drunk, who panicked and buried him in the woods, but the locals insisted that Satanists were involved, because the poor kid was buried near a place teenagers go to drink and smoke and gently caress, so its covered by graffiti, which of course includes "slayer rules!" and normal dumb kid stuff. Or another case where a runaway was found dead after an OD in again an abandoned location where dumb kid graffiti was found. Even though it was obvious she had died from injecting to much heroin, the locals insisted it was Satanists. Oh yea, and calling anything that has to do with non-christian religions as occult. Yes, Occult and Satanic symbols such as the Star of David, the Ying Yang or Hindu Mandalas.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:59
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I'm pretty sure when they say Occult, they mean evil, because that's how they use it. They're not concerned with the actual meanings of words.
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Jul 15, 2015 03:30
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Yea, thats why I was talking about it within the context of the Satanic Panic, which was less about actual doctrain and more about paranoia and the beliefs of individual members, and how Evangelicals can run roughshod over everyone in the exercise of their beliefs.
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Jul 15, 2015 04:07
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The old testament its really clear Satan is in Gods employ, tempting and questioning faith to make sure that people are truly faithful and not just paying lip service. Job is a story where Satan actually seems like the better of the two, because he's just saying "Job is your most faithful because you gave him all this great stuff!" and then God destroys all that to prove his faith is true. If I remember the bible doesn't outright say that Satan is an opposite of God, that all evil springs from him. Doesn't the name even come from the Hebrew word for prosecutor? I think the best discription i've seen is Satan pretty much comes from biblical Fanfiction and from Biblical apocrypha.
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Jul 15, 2015 21:48
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Cardboard Box A posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POcrePsnDyw Yep, exactly what I was talking about. I love how the 2 guys in Not Just Fun and Games look pretty much the same, and the guys in Deception of a Generation look like a late 70s porn star and someone who would get arrested sneaking off from his family to have anonymous gay sex.
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Jul 16, 2015 03:07
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The Satanic Panic involving D&D was a lot of hucksterism too. Not the Occult aspects, but the straight up "It's literally teaching children spells to summon demons that inhabit their friends who make them curse and swear and not want to go to church, do chores and obey their parents". There was a number of cases where kids committed crimes, including murders, and there was a belief that a demon summoned during a D&D game inhabiting them. I think the woman who started Mothers against D&D son was acused of this. Of course no one actually took the time to look beyond the lurid fantasy artwork on the covers of the books, which if anyone knows old D&D stuff, the first edition artwork is awesomely bad. MonsterTalk has a great episode all about this http://www.skeptic.com/podcasts/monstertalk/15/03/04/
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Jul 16, 2015 06:20
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I know a decent number of people who grew up in Evangelical households, and all of them had very similar bible experiances as kids. There was bible study, which was not "read the bible and see what you got out of it" but more "we are going to tell you where to read and what that means'. Reading ahead or beyond was a big no no because that would create uncomfortable questions like "if this passage says we should hate gays, shouldn't we also nail women's mouths shut if they speak out of turn?". One clever Pastor said that all the extra stuff in the bible, the stuff we're supposed to ignore, was added by God so you can identify false prophets because they will quote that stuff.
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Jul 22, 2015 05:31
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Here is the backdrop to the press confrence her laywer just finished up So Osama Bin Ladin is still alive! And he's converted to Christianity!
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Sep 7, 2015 00:59
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I'm pretty sure that's a result of the Southern Strategy and the later Evangelical movements entry into politics in the late 70s and early 80s. The establishment Republicans knew that they needed to expand their voter base to they reached out to racist southern whites (which also worked for racist northerners too) in the 60s, then by bringing in Evangelicals, they added a whole bunch of people who previously had no real interest in politics. Thats how you can have a big tent with your Wall Street and Silcon Valley rich guys, and redneck racists and God hates fags Christians.
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Sep 9, 2015 00:25
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Yea, they like to pretend that being rich is a reward for hard work and good, christian values when in reality its 99% born into it, 1% luck.
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Sep 9, 2015 00:40
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ToxicSlurpee posted:So what you're saying is that it's 100% luck, really. There's two kinds of luck, Vagina lottery luck, which is the 99%, and the 1% is like some kid from Podunk Delaware coming to Hollywood and becoming a huge star or some CS student coming up with a billion selling app in his dorm room.
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Sep 10, 2015 01:38
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