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posted by mrpg on Thursday December 06 2018, @04:11AM   Printer-friendly
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/


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  • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday December 06 2018, @06:29PM (2 children)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Thursday December 06 2018, @06:29PM (#770766)

    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.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Friday December 07 2018, @04:57AM (1 child)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Friday December 07 2018, @04:57AM (#771035)

    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.

    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

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Friday December 07 2018, @12:15PM (#771114)

      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?