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from the the-power-of-god-compels-you-to-read-it dept.
The conviction that demons exist—and that they exist to harass, derange, and smite human beings—stretches back as far as religion itself. In ancient Mesopotamia, Babylonian priests performed exorcisms by casting wax figurines of demons into a fire. The Hindu Vedas, thought to have been written between 1500 and 500 b.c., refer to supernatural beings—known as asuras, but largely understood today as demons—that challenge the gods and sabotage human affairs. For the ancient Greeks, too, demonlike creatures lurked on the shadowy fringes of the human world.
But far from being confined to a past of Demiurges and evil eyes, belief in demonic possession is widespread in the United States today. Polls conducted in recent decades by Gallup and the data firm YouGov suggest that roughly half of Americans believe demonic possession is real. The percentage who believe in the devil is even higher, and in fact has been growing: Gallup polls show that the number rose from 55 percent in 1990 to 70 percent in 2007.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/catholic-exorcisms-on-the-rise/573943/
(Score: 5, Informative) by SomeGuy on Thursday December 06 2018, @01:36PM (16 children)
Obligatory reminder to all the religitards out there: There is no such thing as god. It is just a story someone made up a long time ago so they could gain power and boink children. There is also no such thing as an afterlife, and there are no supernatural demons, ghosts, angels, or whatever.
You should be ashamed for believing such childish nonsense.
Not sure exactly how influential television still is these days, but I have seen a dramatic rise in TV shows the last 10 years or so that use the supernatural as regular plot devices. Also many standard OTA channels have added vaguely religious themed sub channels. It is to a point now that has passed absurd. Sure, sometimes that can make for a good story, but with enough of this stuff spewed out, people forget supernatural stuff IS NOT REAL!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Thursday December 06 2018, @02:20PM (6 children)
And the creatures in the simulation shouted "EUREKA! we did it! we found THE RULES! Every single particle of our world is ruled by those rules! inescapable! and guess what? we found no traces of any superior being in these rules. Nada. Everything there is, particles, states, and rules from one state to another. THERE IS NO GOD!"
And the programmer sighed, "Fuck, I even showed myself in the sim, I proved I was the admin, yet they won't believe unless a hack is done under their nose. They regressed to materialism instead". And switched off the machine.
Fact is, god cannot be proven.
The devil, instead is pretty easy to prove. Evil is basically a myopic view that put personal gain above all else. Evil is quick to form a system where a group increases his personal gain. Calling that system the devil is as straightforward as calling the bunch of cells and co-resident bacteria a "parent poster".
Fact is, "religion is fear of death" is baseless propaganda. In fact it's quite idiotic to say the reason why a guy tries to contact a hostile tribe until they kill him is a fear of death.
Fact is, "religion is a way to rule other people" is baseless propaganda. For example a Christian integralist cannot obey a master different from God as embodied by the Christ, so not even a Pope can have complete power over him. Even religions born as a political movement with earthly aims (Islam) have problem managing their own soldiers because ethics get in the way.
Relax, Nobody can make you believe. So you don't need to be more illogical than theists. So avoid it kthxbye.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday December 06 2018, @03:45PM
That line is the bestest.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday December 06 2018, @04:41PM (4 children)
Thank you captain pedantic pants. Where would we all be without you? (Oh, now you have to tell us exactly and precisely in excruciating detail.)
If you don't like my saying that there absolutely isn't one, then please inform all the religitards out there that they can't say there absolutely is one.
You have never met my mother or experienced the amount of pain she can inflict. It is not possible to be more illogical than her.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @05:46PM (2 children)
SN is probably not the best forum for working out your issues with your mother. Now run along! Shoo!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @09:26PM (1 child)
So, tell me, how does not the best forum for working out your issues with your mother, make you feel?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 12 2018, @06:00PM
This Elizascalated quickly.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday December 08 2018, @03:56PM
> It is not possible to be more illogical than her.
if she is a mother in law she is par for the course.
The problem was not your comment. The problem is that nowadays atheism is based on slogans repeated as mantras which reminds me of other kind of organizations. Go to reddit homepage, see atheist headline with the usual rationalizations, oh look, thread is locked. And they get upset when they get told they are a religion.
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @05:21PM (5 children)
Just because you can't see it means it doesn't exist, right. How open-minded of you. And you make it your personal duty to offend anyone who has different views, is more open-minded or entertains the idea that all that exists is not known to them.
You could be a khazar jew. Jews pray to their god, Satan and ridicule other religions so others will lose their faith and become slaves to the evil, evil jew.
Non-jews should keep an open mind and, of course, there is scientific evidence that other energy beings exist on this and other planets. Some people see them and can communicate with them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @05:51PM (4 children)
There is?!? Has any of this been presented in a peer-reviewed journal?
Really? What do these "other energy beings" have to say? Somebody who can communicate with these other beings should act as some sort of mediator between us and them. I bet someone could make a lot of easy money that way!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday December 06 2018, @06:46PM (1 child)
Turns out energy beings give really shitty stock advice, limiting their usefulness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @10:10PM
Agreed. And yet...and yet...people will pay oodles of money to have an audience with Ramtha [wikipedia.org], for example. So someone is making easy money off
some suckersthis stuff.(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @09:30PM
"Has any of this been presented in a peer-reviewed journal?"
These "peer-reviewed" "journals" are infiltrated by khazar jewish vermin, therefore will not let anyone expose them. This is why they control media and continue to buy/threaten/infiltrate independent media. The rat-faced jewish vermin cannot let themselves be exposed. The jewish vermin will not play fair.
"I bet someone could make a lot of easy money that way!"
That form of communication/control of other beings is used to commit great evil. Money is too small a thing. When you can control the minds of people, you do not need money.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday December 07 2018, @11:21PM
They're too busy playing Brockian Ultra Cricket to bother talking to us.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday December 06 2018, @06:29PM (2 children)
I don't think the connection to television is relevant, save for those ridiculous fantasy shows on TV like Jerry Falwell and Joel Osteen and so forth.
I'm an atheist, and I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed and Smallville and The Good Place and so forth. I know other atheists that watch lots of fantasy too.
I posted elsewhere as anonymous coward that I think the real problem is just the modern disinformation age. Several generations back news traveled slowly, so if you were exposed to any strange ideas you had weeks or months to think things over. If you were inclined to be irrational then the pace of new information was irrelevant. But if you were inclined to be rational you had plenty of time to think things through. Today you can see five dozen contradictory things before breakfast, and the great majority of it is presented in an inflammatory format because outrage brings more viral shares and advertising revenue. Irrational people are still irrational, and I think after a while too many of the rational people become numb and give up examining evidence in favor of being like the irrational ones and just believing whatever the hell they want.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Friday December 07 2018, @04:57AM (1 child)
That slightly misses the point. Nobody sits down and changes their major beliefs just from watching a few TV shows, much in the same way nobody instantly runs out and buys a product because they see an advertisement.
It is about impressions and probability on a larger scale. Someone who suddenly has to chose a product with no time to think is statistically more likely to choose the one they have heard advertising about. On a small scale one purchase does not matter, but on a lager scale it can put an underdog competing company out of business.
My own observation is that as some of these ideas, such has demons, get thrown around more, they sort of slowly increase traction in the population at large. The effect is that in aggregate it is harder to present or have opposing ideas. An existing atheist will not change their mind, but down the road someone trying to find their own way may find that the threshold of opposing religious/supernatural ideas is just a bit too high and give up.
Also, I don't think anyone watched Buffy for any of the supernatural stuff :D
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday December 07 2018, @12:15PM
That makes sense, thanks for making the point more clearly now. I naively interpreted your top level comment to think you meant that people watching a show like Touched By An Angel were suddenly going to start believing angels exist and work however they're depicted in the show.
I don't agree with insulting people who have religious beliefs. If you insult someone for their position, even if they're wildly wrong, I think it strengthens their resolve and closes their mind further. It makes us feel better to mock them, of course. But it doesn't help. And remember that the religious fanatic that won't actually listen to a single thing you say isn't really important. The important bit is to catch observers on the sidelines with a more open mind and convince them.
...having said all that, I am open to the possibility I'm wrong. If I can isolate the idea someone is Christian (or Muslim or whatever) and just discuss it with the person, then politeness is probably the right approach. But in the overwhelming majority of cases someone who is religious is also advocating against abortion rights, equal treatment of GLBTQ+, etc... so we're not just disagreeing on their fantasies about the creation of the universe, we're also in disagreement because they support immoral political positions. If I was engaged in a debate with someone who said it should be legal to steal money from a few people per year for fun, I wouldn't be polite about it. So why should religious people get special treatment for advocating something worse?