On a note related to the previous entry about David Klinghoffer, a question by Lee Shelton IV on his blog The Contemporary Calvinist asks:
If only the natural world exists, then how did belief in the supernatural evolve?I've already given my answer. Won't you please take a moment to give yours?
The Discovery Institute has been for some years now a leading Disenlightenment think-tank. We could point to some rather strange stuff that emanates from its phlogiston-strewn halls well beyond its advocacy of Neo-Creationism. Nonetheless, it's left to David Klinghoffer to thoroughly explain what's at the core of this bizarre institution's ideology, which he does in an opinion piece appearing in today's Los Angeles Times:
Ghosts, aliens and usIn a nutshell (the best way to summarize the assertions of nuts, after all), Klingoffer's argument is that belief in UFOs and bigfoot are erroneous (don't tell Michael Medved!), but they arise because of an absence of the preaching of traditional forms of supernaturalism in religious institutions, and this belief, in turn, is evidence for the existence of the supernatural. This, in turn, indicates that materialism — or, more accurately, naturalism — is incorrect. Where to begin in this chain of fallacies?
By David Klinghoffer
When my wife and I had our twin baby boys circumcised in our home last year, the Hasidic rabbi who performed the bris left us with a surprising parting gift: an amulet for protection against demons... When I queried the rabbi about this... he gracefully dodged, referring me to unspecified kabbalistic secrets...
It was a reminder that, as much as we think of our age as cynical and literally disenchanted, supernatural belief has hardly been erased. In fact, it may be on the rise. A CBS poll in October reported that 48% of Americans believe in ghosts (and 22% claim to have seen one). Among those younger than 45, 54% believe, as opposed to 41% over that age. Belief in other forms of paranormal and occult phenomena is on the rise too: In the 1980s, 25% of Americans accepted the idea of alien abductions, for instance, but 40% say they do now, according to Newsweek...
...Sure, I'm skeptical about crop circles, conspiracy theories and cryptozoology. However, I'm also sympathetic to the late conservative philosopher and ghost-story writer Russell Kirk, who valued the paranormal for its suggestion that reality consists of more than mundane material processes. I get the persistent sense that something profound is affirmed by the eerie accounts...
Another possibility is that the human need to believe in the unseen world itself points to, while not proving, the reality of hidden dimensions. It could be that materialism -- the philosophical assumption that reality is nothing but physical stuff -- is a prejudice rather than a fact. Perhaps an unseen reality does exist, revealed in flashes that can be confusing or misleading, to which we sometimes give flaky designations. Like "Bigfoot."
Religions used to confidently navigate this twilight realm. Some faiths still do, quietly...
...As for the rabbi who presided over our twins' bris, the evangelistic branch of Judaism to which he belongs, Chabad, stands out as bucking the trend elsewhere in Judaism toward a pallid rationalism.
The same trend is mirrored in other faiths, especially the shrinking mainline Protestant denominations. It may be that such pallidness helps explain why Americans turn to florid paranormal beliefs, as opposed to traditional supernatural ideas...
Religious leaders representing respectable faiths, intimidated by secular prejudice, may wish to take note as they scan the empty pews. The human hunger for a vigorous, unapologetic interface with the unknown can't be entirely repressed...
Give me your ignorant, your superstitious,The irony that someone who would himself engage in an archaic ritual in which the genitals of eight day old boys are cut up to mark a covenant with a deity, followed by hanging a magical talisman whose origins he does not know and is incurious enough not to bother investigating, arguing that naturalism is "bias" because it doesn't leave room for ghosts and demons, is rich and thick, indeed. That he accepts the "graceful dodge" of a holy man at its word and then denounces empiricism is laughable. This is the very stuff from which Dark Ages have always been made, no different from the taboos regarding treading in the shadows of ancient Egyptian priests or burning incense for the pleasure of the lares and manes. This is the very meat of the Disenlightenment served upon a darkly glittering platter of intellectual misdirection and garnished lovingly with something scraped from the bottom of a boot that has just come in from the cow pasture. For someone like Klinghoffer, the world can never be demon-haunted enough. Why else hang talismans warding off Lilith around one's home?
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe nonsense,
The innumerate refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the credulous, mistaken to me,
I lift my lump beside the night-dark tent flap!
There's been yet another exorcism-related death in the US. This time it's in Henderson, Texas where a couple of 18 year old parents beat their 13 month old child to death with a hammer and possibly several other blunt instruments in an attempt to "drive the demons out." Oh, and they bit her at least 20 times, too.
Couple Bit Child More Than 20 Times in Fatal ExorcismMilam also has a previous criminal record of assault on a child and domestic violence.
by Kenneth Dean
They claim they were trying to drive the demons out of the 13-month-old, but law enforcement officers say the bottom line is a Rusk County couple bludgeoned the little girl to death with a hammer and other objects and bit her more than 20 times in the most grotesque murder the seasoned officers can remember.
Blaine Keith Milam, 19 and Jesseca Bain Carson, 18, both of Henderson, remain jailed on $2 million bonds each. They are charged with capital murder for the Tuesday morning death of Carson's daughter Amora Bain Carson...
"They had multiple stories they went through before they told us they had beaten the child to death," he said. "It is their version of the truth."
Humber said the couple then told deputies the child was possessed and they were trying to rid her of demons.
An arrest affidavit states Milam performed an exorcism of the demons possessing their child. The affidavit continues to state after Milam killed the child with Carson looking on the couple "drove to Henderson to pawn some items to pay for an exorcism."
Officials said Milam and Carson told detectives they decided to hire a priest after the exorcism went badly...
A new vocabulary word for non-African readers today: kindoki. That word embodies the belief now prevalent in many parts of Subsaharan Africa that children are demon-possessed witches. It's a pernicious idea being spread by Pentecostal Christian preachers that is resulting in a crisis for African children who, when accused of kindoki, find themselves abandoned by their families and sent to religious camps to be exorcised. The practices associated with this are horrible and a direct consequence of a religious fervor stoked by the preachers for their own benefit at the expense of children and families in countries like Congo, Angola and Nigeria.
Persecuting the African childHere in the US, of course, we've already seen one political candidate who almost certainly buys into kindoki and stood on stage with an African religious figure, Thomas Muthee, to get his protection against it:
by Olusegun Fakoya, Nigerian Tribune
Africa abounds with various forms of child abuses, arising mostly from prevalent poverty and ignorance. This notwithstanding, the paramount role of the child in the African setting has never been in question. However, the traditional African belief and attitude to children has been successfully fractured by those who have deliberately perverted traditional belief and infused it with a distorted dose of Christianity...
...In the Congo Republic, a surprising number of children are accused of being witches, and thereafter, beaten, abused or abandoned. Child advocates estimate that thousands of children living in the streets of Kinshasa, Congo's capital, have been accused of witchcraft and cast out by their families, often as a rationale for not having to feed or care for them. There are over 50,000 homeless children on the streets of that lawless city...
...a shockingly high proportion of these children are on the streets because of the mushrooming influence of the new revivalist churches who have comfortably carved a commercial niche for themselves in the business of "child kindoki"... In 2006, Congo's Social Affairs minister, Bernard Ndjunga, estimated that as much as 50,000 children might just be illegally detained by churches specialising in the removal of kindoki...
...Congolese pastors invaded Angola, bringing with them the message of kindoki and further destabilization of an already fractured society. In 2006, it was officially estimated that one northern Angolan town had over 400 abandoned and abused children stigmatised as witches... it was easy for the notion of child witches or kindoki to gain a firm foothold in Angola as in many other African nations, as one of the key African beliefs is that of the potency of witchcraft. It is commonly believed that witches can communicate with the world of the dead or other such supernatural plane, and usurp or "eat" the life force of others, bringing their victims misfortune, illness and death. Adult witches are said to bewitch children by giving them food and then using them to achieve their nefarious goals by bringing misfortunes to their families, causing illness, bad luck and death. In retaliation, gory tales abound of the atrocities committed against children in the fight back against child witches. Two cases were particularly significant. A mother blinded her 14-year- old daughter with bleach in an attempt to rid her of evil visions, while a father injected battery acid into his 12-year- old son's stomach because he feared the boy was a wizard...
One of the notable propagators of kindoki in Congo DR is Prophet Onokoko who as at 1999, had over 230 children on his book, all accused of witchcraft. He employed what he termed "vomit up the devil system" to exorcise children of kindoki. This is the regurgitation of strange objects after these kids have been forcefully made to drink bizarre concoctions. There are other sects involved in these unwholesome practices in Congo, chief amongst which is the Combat Spirituel Church with its headquarters in Kinshasa and numerous branches all over the country and outside, United Kingdom inclusive [NOTE: this same church does have a US branch in North Carolina] ...
...the current situation in Akwa Ibom State and other parts of the Niger Delta remains a shame. For as long as it is allowed to continue, it remains a stigma on Nigeria. For as long as it flourishes without restraint, for so long will it remain a blur on the conscience of the Christian Association of Nigeria and all those who at daggers drawn in defence of the impeccability of modern-day Pentecostalism. For as long as this unchecked instances of child abuse reign in Nigeria, for so long will men and women of good will and clear conscience the world over, continue to confront the problems created by a nation that has allowed its territory to become a nightmare for innocent children...
...The United Kingdom abounds with Nigerian-oriented churches practising the Nigerian version of Pentecostalism with its prejudices and notable flaws. This is said with reference to the unwholesome impact of non-Nigerian sects like that of Pastor Gilbert Deya and so many others from the African continent. In essence, Britain remains like a microcosm of Africa with our blemishes and impurities fully represented. The practice of kindoki is strongly rooted in the Congolese communities in the United Kingdom. Cases abound where parents have attributed ill luck in the UK to kindoki in their children. Often times, such children have been returned to the Congo for exorcism, some not to be seen again...
Governments of the world need to come together in action and in deeds to tackle the menace posed by the phenomenon of kindoki or child witches. Africa as a continent can only become further impoverished by the sustenance of this retrogressive practice. In this age and time, what Africa needs is not the concept of child witches but technological advancement, economic, social and political emancipation. Africa needs enlightenment and not the concept of child witches...
...Maxwell, pastor of The Theatre Church, The Sword of the Spirit Christian Church Ministries, a Bible-based ministry, performs what is known in charismatic Christianity as deliverance ministry, in which people are not possessed, but feel they are oppressed, controlled or influenced by evil spirits or forces...
...In more than 40 years of ministry, Maxwell said he has cast evil spirits out of more than 250 people, and many more still seek his help...
Deliverance and exorcisms have seemingly increased during the past 30 years due to the growth of cults, satanic masses and the worship of and interest in witchcraft, said the Rev. John Wassell, a priest for the Archdiocese of Newark. "The lessening of Christian culture and the interest in other spiritual cultures have increased these problems," Wassell said. In the Catholic Church, deliverance ministries are also offered. "The church does everything to rule out possible psychological problems," the priest noted...— Source: Dealing with Demons, The Montclair (New Jersey) Times, Nov. 13, 2008
Kindoki is kindoki is kindoki, and whether we call the reaction to it exorcism or deliverance ministry makes no difference. That there still exist institutions that teach true-believers that evil spirits are real, that they somehow take control of and manipulate real people, and that only supernatural means can combat them is the point. It's tempting to look at what's happening in Africa and say to ourselves something about those backwards people way over on the other side of the world, but what then do we say about people like Sarah Palin and Elbert Maxwell and John Wassell, not to mention the millions upon millions of Americans who believe in this stuff?
A Swedish purveyor of online and telephone witchy-woo has opportunities available for 20 witches/psychics/professional storytellers!
Häxriket i Norden, based in Åhus in southern Sweden, is currently seeking to place five witches each in four separate locations around the country, the Skånska Dagbladet newspaper reports.Those are some high experience standards to meet! Runes, tarot and crystals, along with exorcism? Considering that an average human being weighs around 150 pounds, that seems like an awful lot of credulous nonsense to cram into such a small space.
According to the company's advertisement on a listing maintained by Sweden's Public Employment Agency (Arbetsförmedlingen), qualified candidates should be well-versed in "contact with the other side, runes, tarots, crystals, herbs, rituals, exorcism, meditation, personal coaching, and more".— Source
The job also requires having a fixed telephone line and an internet connection, as most of Häxriket's services are delivered online or over the phone at a cost of 19.90 kronor ($2.45) per minute.Exorcism over the Internet! "The power of spam compels you! The power of spam compels you!" How many emails for penis-enlarging pills and fake Rolex watches can one demon take?
The sudden wave of new hires comes following an internal shake up at the company in which a number of Häxriket's former witches were let go for violating the telemarketing ethics code put in place by the Etiska Rådet för Betalteletjänster ('Trade Ethical Council for Telemarketing') – ERB...See, you have to be an honest liar to work as a phone witch, and if you get caught lying dishonestly, a "top witch" will turn you into an unemployed psychic. Poof.
"We've really cleaned house," said Qinna Blomgren, who refers to herself as the "top witch" and is partial owner of Häxriket, to the newspaper.
Blomgren is quick to dismiss critics who question the legitimacy of Häxriket's operations.Well, there's an intelligent analogy, no?
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If I like cinnamon buns with cardamom, it doesn't mean that I can claim it's the only correct path," she said.
I shouldn't be astounded at the profound depths of superstition into which great chunks of America has sunk anymore. Really, nothing should surprise me when it comes to the extremes of irrationality that grips far too many people anymore. Nonetheless, it does. It truly does. Even as some of the world comes to better understand the world as it is, to peer deep into the heart of matter and prize out the basic mechanisms by which it works, other parts of it retreat further and further into the dark dungeon of ignorance and fear and bar the door behind them.
It is thus that we find that there are people walking among us who are utterly terrified of the supernatural implications of the last presidential election. Apparently, it's the boogeyman who will be moving into the White House in January. Hellfire is going to rain down upon the planet because of this. The world is ending.
The number one question being asked: Is Barack Obama the antichrist? I've received dozens of emails pointing out the odd fact that the day after the election, the daily pick-three lottery number in Obama's home state of Illinois was "6-6-6..."Ummm, yeah. See pp. 51-59 of John Allen Paulos' Irreligion about that first paragraph. On November 5, as on every day, there are several numbers drawn in the Illinois lottery, and the fact is that the Evening Pick 3 number was 666. By the same token, the Midday Pick 3 was 779 and the Evening Pick 4 was 7779. What to make of that set of two numbers numbers? The odds that the combination 7-7-9 would be picked twice in the same day is far smaller than the odds off 6-6-6 being drawn once, so it would seem to me that on purely probabilistic terms the first combination would be far more significant than the latter, but this is a classic case of confirmation bias. 6-6-6 has a special significance to some people, whereas 7-7-9 doesn't, so they notice one number while ignoring the other. It's also worth noting that 6-6-6 was also drawn as the winning number for the Midday Pick 3 of the Illinois lottery on 10/23/08, the Evening Pick 4 (as 0-6-6-6) on 7/5/08 (the day after Independence Day! Clearly, America is Satanic!), the Evening Pick 3 on 3/22/08 the first day of Spring!), and the Evening Pick 3 on 1/16/08, and nobody made a big deal about these other four instances of the same number being drawn on these other days in the very same lottery. Why is that? Simple: on those days, it was simply a random number, just as it was the fifth time it was picked in 2008 on November 5.
I don't see anything shocking in last week's election. I do believe strongly that a dark demonic cloud has swept over the land, but this is how we should expect the end times to play out. And, I foresee more negative events to come. The only thing that worries me is the Christians who fail to see the danger that comes from prophecy being fulfilled in our day.
I believe we are entering a time when Christians really need to set their priorities. Your last chance to do something for the kingdom of God may be sooner than you realize...— Todd Strandberg, "Fasten Your Seatbelts"
I have never been one for making "political" commentary, and I'll admit I haven't deeply explored the issues, but watching from the sideline, I am seeing some connections between our new president, and our old prophecies. Seems like people have been looking for the Antichrist for years, and each generation has never been disappointed to find one, even several! Maybe we have moved past that now to something even more ominous - the beast...Who could possibly refute the argument that people being overwhelmingly concerned about economics during a period of economic stress and voting accordingly is evidence that the person they voted for is Satan? I mean, aside from anyone who wasn't already of the opinion that the person elected was some supernatural force of evil. That economic collapse itself might usher in a period of terrible hardships across the nation and around the globe isn't important. What's important is that anyone who doesn't agree with Nicodemus' priorities, based in turn on his religious ideology, just helped but Beelzebub in power. Shame on you, worrying about the possibility of your kids not being able to get a higher education, about not having money on which to survive after retirement, about being able to keep your family fed and sheltered. All of that's just a distraction! Your family doesn't need such things, because Jesus is signing unemployment checks.
I have heard of Christians who voted for him for economic reasons. They believe he will save the economy. If economics is the most important thing, then our focus is in the wrong place. We cannot serve both God and money. Incidentally, there is only one other reference that I know of in the Bible regarding the number 666, and it is regarding Solomon's gold. If the mark of the beast has to do with our love of gold instead of our love of God, then maybe this is the time when the man of lawlessness has been revealed. Just maybe.— Nicodemus, "Obama Is Not The Antichrist...But Maybe Something Worse"
One thing that has amazed me is how Barack Obama is not only considered to be a president-elect of the United States, but also president OF THE WORLD...The fact that the election of Obama is celebrated by a world that has worried over the last eight years of the Bush Doctrine of preemptive warfare against any nation we think might be some kind of threat at some point in the future is a sign of the apocalypse, you see. That Obama is charismatic, that he might have (shudder to think!) a global view, that he's not bellicose and threatening, that the world might breathe a collective sigh of relief... these are signs of an evil nature. Normally, of course, the United States elects uncharismatic presidents who are lazy and anti-intellectual, who view the outside world as a threat, whose finger trembles perennially just above the metaphorical big red button. The election of someone not like this, someone that the rest of humanity thinks might actually be a shift away from a dangerous America, is evidence that he might be the Antichrist.
The Economist reported that Mr. Obama "quickly scooped support from readers in China, India and most of Europe, as well as from the United States itself. Mr. Obama won the backing of an overwhelming share of voters in 56 countries — including the likes of Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Indonesia and South Korea — claiming the support of 90 percent (or more) of those who voted."
The world map was almost a monochromatic blue expressing strong support for Obama, including in the Philippines. The only exceptions were Iraq, Algeria, Cuba and Congo in favoring Sen. John McCain. The general result of this Global Electoral College poll may look lopsided, but it is not unexpected. Opinion polls including one carried by the BBC also revealed that Mr. Obama is the world's overwhelming choice.
How about that? This is significant considering that the Antichrist will also have support of most of the world when he begins his reign. I cannot think of a time in history when an American president was viewed as an "overwhelming choice of the world."
Another fascinating feature about the antichrist is his charismatic personality that leaves people awe struck...— Rich Wilbur, "Is Barack Obama The Antichrist?"
...Remember, the identity of the antichrist is not for us to know, but for the world to know. He will offer himself up to the world...Hmmm... then again, Rich Wilbur is saying that Obama "fills the bill." Wilbur doesn't know that Obama is the Antichrist, but he clearly could be, and Wilbur spends a good deal of time in this piece providing evidence that he is before leaving himself an out at the very end of his supernaturally paranoid screed just in case, you know, it turns out that he isn't.
In the mean time, we will continue to watch and pray and make associations of what the bible says about the antichrist to Obama or anyone else who fits the bill.
I think I safely speak for almost all Americans when I say that I'm keeping my fingers crossed not only for New Orleans but for every city and town along the US Gulf Coast as the evacuations begin and predictions of a terrible Hurricane Gustav tearing a track of fury roll in. While I don't hold to the culture and politics prevalent in the places most likely to be affected by this storm, I don't want to see people being killed or losing their homes, either.
Still, even while relatively sane people are hoping for the best and perhaps making donations to relief efforts ahead of time, we can also take good old American pride in a degree of intellectual degeneracy that also gives us a contingent of whackaloons who believe that they're doing something positive... by doing Voodoo rituals. There's just nothing like slaughtering a few chickens and splashing oils and powders about to change the path of a hurricane that binds within itself more physical energy than a few hundred nuclear weapons.
Because I threw a few barbs at Christian nitwits this morning, I thought it only fair to sharpen up the lampoon harpoon. A couple of weeks ago, rightwing Christian types were suggesting that people pray to their favorite invisible being for rain to fall during Obama's acceptance speech in Colorado. Today we get a wizard from Flushing, NY telling voodoo afficianados how to pray to his favorite invisible being for a hurricane not to hit their houses. In terms of the mentality behind these things, is there really any difference?
One can sense that the Harry Potter wannabe almost knows that this is ineffectual, inane occult gibberish when he starts out by giving himself a ready excuse for why lighting candles and slathering oils across the floor isn't going to accomplish anything; he's absolutely right insofar as stating that hurricanes can't be controlled, least of all by religious rituals. This doesn't stop him from going on to tell readers how to be protected from a hurricane by praying and sprinkling and supplicating and generally carrying on as if anything other than preparedness and sheer chance makes the difference between who escapes unscathed and who takes it on the chin.This is a ritual I just posted to Tristatevodou and American Voodoo Forum in response to an anonymous correspondent who was concerned about Hurricane Gustav and Hannah.
To calm a hurrricane is impossible: Gustav and Hannah will land where they will. Even the lwa can only work "as God wills." You can certainly pray to God, Jesus, the Saints, Angels, Mysteries and Lwa that Gustav cause as little damage as possible. But in the end storms are as inevitable as any other force of nature.
In my experience, Haitian Vodouisants generally spend little time trying to protect the world from harm and a great deal of time protecting their family and loved ones. Instead of holding a Danto ceremony to empower battered women and abused children, a Houngan or Mambo would call her to protect a battered niece or a bruised child from the daycare center. Danto (and most of the lwa) don't have a lot of time for generalities: when they interact with humans, they are eminently concerned with practical and daily affair. Abstractions don't rile them up: real people and their real sufferings are what catch their attention.
You might petition Agwe so that you and yours make it through the storm with as little damage as possible. If there are specific places you would like to see spared, or specific people/groups whom you hope make it through Gustav and Hannah relatively unscathed, you can ask Agwe to protect them. Write out their names, along with their addresses. Be as detailed as possible in your request: the clearer the better. For example:
"Save our family home, located at 123 Anytown Lane in Stormside, Mississippi. Protect our dogs Fido and Spot; look after our cat Fluffy and please make sure our basement doesn't flood again. Please also watch over the Jackson family, our cousins, who live in Beachfront, Texas and our spiritual father Houngan Claude Debussy and all the members of our house, Société la Pluie et la Vent in and around Jeremie, Haiti. Look after my aunt and uncle, Janet and Carl Palmer, who live in Floodplain, Alabama: Uncle Carl is still recovering from surgery and it will be very difficult for him to evacuate. Watch over all my friends along the coast... "There's no need to put these in any particular order or edit the list for spelling mistakes and such. Agwe understands that this is an emergency and you have to get this list together as quickly as possible. Write from your heart, and don't feel guilty because you are more concerned about your loved ones than strangers. This is a natural response: humans and spirits both play favorites. If you have any pictures or artifacts connected with these people, you can put them on a white cloth along with your other Agwe items and your list. If you don't have any Agwe items, you can draw his veve. You will also need a white or crystal bowl full of salt water to which you have added a little Lotion Pompeia or rose water.
Light a white candle (you want the highest and most peaceful face of Agwe for this) and sprinkle some Lotion Pompeia or Rose Water on the floor. Ask Legba to open the door so Agwe can come through. Now sprinkle a little more Lotion Pompeia on the floor and ask Agwe to come and visit you. Feel the *Imamou* coming as you smell the perfume; hear his horn calling above the roar of the oncoming storm. Although the waves are very high and the seas rough it keeps moving forward across the swelling waters; its sails billow but do not tear in the high winds. It is Agwe's flagship and no storm can sink it. Agwe stands on the deck, wearing a naval commander's coat. His face is impassive and his green eyes unblinking as the rain drives against him. This storm does not trouble him: he has seen many that were greater.
Petition Agwe for help. Ask that Gustav and Hannah expend their energies at sea, or make landfall in a place where they will do little damage. But if that is not possible, ask Agwe to look after those you love. Read your list to him. When you are finished spend a few minutes in reverent silence, then place the list in the bowl of salt water. In doing so you are entrusting them to Agwe's keeping. Thank him for taking his time to listen to you. Leave the candle burning as an offering to Agwe: when the storm has passed, thank him appropriately for his help...— Source
The 93rd edition of the Skeptics' Circle is live at City of Skeptics. This time around, the Circle magically morphs into the form of a tarot reading... not just any tarot card reading, mind you, but "A Mystical Reading with Master Woo."
In keeping with the woofulness, we should be aware that this is a very, very special edition, a fact that I can reveal because of my own former delvings into the world of woo over many years. You see, the number 93 is of primal importance to the followers of Aleister Crowley, a master of the mystical powers of woo who founded his own religion, known by adherents as Thelema. One aspect of the religion is the importance of a kind of numerology derived from Kabbalistic gemmatria. Gemmatria proposes connections between the meanings of words based their numerical value. In Hebrew, letters have numerical values, and words with letters that add to the same sum are thought to do so because of a mystical connection between them. The Greek word "thelema," which means "will," adds to 93, the same as the total of the letters in the word "agape," meaning love. This led Woo Master Crowley to formulate what he and subsequent Thelemites consider the central tenet of the Thelemic faith, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will." This is essentially a mathematical formula expressing the same mystical unity that is promulgated in eastern mysticism. "Love under will" can be seen as a simple division equation:
Love under will = thelema/agape = 93/93 = 1
And what does it all mean? Well, nothing, or at least nothing more than any mystico-religious formula from the Christian mystery of the trinity to the Wiccan threefold law.
Today, the wooings and doings of Crowley are carried on by the church/order that he founded, the Ordo Templi Orientis or OTO. According to the USA Grand Lodge:
Although officially founded at the beginning of the 20th century e.v., O.T.O. represents a surfacing and confluence of the divergent streams of esoteric wisdom and knowledge which were originally divided and driven underground by political and religious intolerance during the dark ages. It draws from the traditions of the Freemasonic, Rosicrucian and Illuminist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, the crusading Knights Templars of the middle ages and early Christian Gnosticism and the Pagan Mystery Schools. Its symbolism contains a reunification of the hidden traditions of the East and the West, and its resolution of these traditions has enabled it to recognize the true value of Aleister Crowley's revelation of The Book of the Law.The Book of the Law is, of itself, worth reading for some rather grandiose claims and bizarre statements. It forms a foundation for much woo that came after and is particularly fun to read after the consumption of large quantities of "wines that foam." It is particularly opposed to rational inquiry and critical analysis or, as the Book itself puts it:— Source
27. There is great danger in me; for who doth not understand these runes shall make a great miss. He shall fall down into the pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of Reason.Love is the law, love under woo!
28. Now a curse upon Because and his kin!
29. May Because be accursèd for ever!— The Book of the Law, II: 27-29
A story in the Madison, WI Isthmus recounts the case of Madeline Neumann, a child unfortunate enough to have been born to a couple of very, very stupid and deluded parents who refused to get her medical treatment as she died a slow and excruciating death from an easily treated condition. They instead decided to go with witchcraft, seeking to invoke supernatural spooks and fairy tales to heal her. 40 out of 50 US states have laws that allow parents to do this because it protects the faith that they then proceed to inflict upon the innocent.
Death by prayer
by Erik Gunn
...In the days, perhaps weeks, before their daughter died of diabetic ketoacidosis — an illness authorities contend could have been readily treated — Dale and Leilani Neumann refused to seek medical care. They did so despite the girl's worsening condition and despite the urging of family members and friends. Instead, they insisted her body was a battleground in a spiritual war between Jesus Christ and the forces of Hell. Only by resisting worldly medicine, they believed, could she be saved...
Wisconsin law, like that of as many as 40 other states, carries an explicit exemption from prosecution for child abuse or neglect for parents who forgo medical treatment for their children on religious grounds and instead seek "treatment...through prayer..."
The Neumanns were readers of and occasional contributors to a website called Unleavened Bread Ministries (www.unleavenedbreadministries.org). The banner across its top proclaims, "Warning: These are America's Last Days."
Unleavened Bread Ministries is operated by David Eells, a self-appointed preacher in Pensacola, Fla. It's filled with predictions of impending apocalypse and assertions that people can be healed of illness through faith and prayer. One page features 63 separate testimonials to miraculous cures ranging from cancer and birth defects to hay fever and "uneven tire wear" on a car..."
Det. Sgt. Dennis Halkoski asked if the family ever thought about taking their daughter to the doctor. "No," Leilani replied. "We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her." When her husband suggested getting medical care, "I said, the Lord's going to heal her, and we continued to pray."
A search of the Neumann home that evening showed the couple had sought emergency help — just not from a doctor. The day before the girl died, Dale Neumann had emailed David Eells' website seeking the preacher's direct number: "We need agreement in prayer over our youngest daughter, who is very weak and pale at the moment with hardly any strength," the message pleaded.
The reply, though not from Eells, was in the form of a prayer, which read in part: "We thank You Father for giving Dale and Leilani the faith to hold fast to the confession of their hope that it waver not, for it is Your will Father that Kara was already healed, I Peter 2:24. We add faith to Dale's and Leilani's and command Kara to be healed. We command that spirit of infirmity to loose Kara now, leave her body, leave her home, and go back from where it came and stay there...."
So these primitivists murmured to an ancient Near Eastern sky-god who — surprise, surprise — didn't show up, and their kid died. She died over the course of days, perhaps weeks. She died slowly, terribly and unnecessarily. It would have been kinder of the oh-so-pious Neumanns if they had simply put a pillow over her face and had done with it. They could have prayed for DA LAWD to obviate Madeline's need for oxygen as she struggled and thrashed beneath the weight of this self-created test of their faith. The outcome would have been exactly the same....In 1998, Swan and University of California-San Diego pediatrician Seth Asser published an article in the medical journal Pediatrics based on their review of 172 deaths of children between 1975 and 1995 whose parents had withheld medical care on religious grounds. They concluded that 140 of those children — 80% — would have had a 90% chance of survival had they received conventional medical care; another 18 would have had a 50% survival rate.I think part of Farkas' statement must have been left out of the article. It should read in full, "We deplore the abuse and neglect of children under any circumstances in which it has not been given sanction by a bunch of bizarre mumbo-jumbo propounded by people like me."
"They died of very simple things," says Swan. "Lots of diabetes deaths. Lots of infectious diseases that are readily treated with antibiotics."
And in virtually every state, prosecutors were prevented from bringing neglect charges, because the parents had relied on spiritual healing. Swan traces those laws to a mid-1970s federal mandate, which she says was lobbied for by the Christian Science Church and Christian Scientists...
...only a handful of states have repealed or narrowed the exemptions. Wisconsin has not. State statute 948.03(6) still says a person is not guilty of failing to protect children from harm "solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method for healing...in lieu of medical or surgical treatment."
This statute drew some attention in 2003, when a 4-year-old autistic child, Terrence Cottrell, was crushed to death in Milwaukee during an attempted exorcism by a self-taught preacher...
..."It is time for that law to be repealed," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. "The law is a green light for parents to think they don't have any responsibility to society [regarding how] they treat their children. The state should be stepping in here to do everything it can to discourage faith healing in place of medical care."
Any such attempt, however, will face opposition from the Christian Science Church, which is among the most established religious groups that promote the use of prayer to treat physical ailments.
"We deplore the abuse and neglect of children under any circumstances," says Farkas, the church's Wisconsin lobbyist. He says Christian Scientists "don't claim that all cases of religious objections to medical care should be free from legal limitations." And it would be "willing to work with legislators" on any efforts to redraft the law.
But the church would not want the law changed in a way that would expose its members to prosecution for practicing spiritual healing.
"The Christian Science Church has documented 125 years of healings that have occurred through prayer" since it was founded in 1879, says Farkas. "Spiritual healing through prayer definitely has a place in society..."
If it is, why shouldn't it be perfectly legal to drive through the streets of a large city shooting prostitutes if one's religious belief is that prostitution violates the will of Jehovah? Why shouldn't Fred Phelps be allowed to blow up gay bars? After all, he and his incestuous little tribe firmly believe that "God hates fags." Shall we as a society excuse murder in cases wherein the perpetrator deeply and sincerely believes in his mission from God?Indeed, the state of Massachusetts, which repealed its own exemption law, is now considering reinstating a narrower form. Boston lawyer Stephen Lyons, who helped defend Christian Scientists convicted — and later acquitted — of homicide in the death of their child 13 years ago, says the new bill would let parents charged in such cases cite belief in spiritual healing as a defense.First off, HELL NO. This is the first I've heard of Massachusetts considering allowing even a few instances of death-by-Jesus to children and I doubt that it will pass. Lyons statement is a bunch of ridiculous gibberish. Who cares what the parents are experiencing? Do we make a special exemption under the law for this? "The one thing that gets lost here is that the crackhead who shot the clerk in the course of the robbery really believed that the clerk would rise from the dead in a few hours" isn't admissible, is it?
Lyons equates families who act on their beliefs about spiritual healing with a long line of pioneers seeking religious liberty. He contends that cases like the one he handled and the one involving the Neumanns are often distorted in a swirl of publicity and prejudice.
"Ketoacidosis is something that kills children in hospitals every day," he says. "But we never second-guess the doctors because we assume that they do their best. But the parents of children who died of these illnesses never get the benefit of the same assumption. What gets lost is what they were seeing, what they were experiencing. No one seems to want to find out about the reasonableness of their conduct....
Following up the case of Laura Schubert, the former Texas woman who was subjected to an involuntary exorcism by a fundamentalist church, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reports that the Schubert family is going to attempt a hearing before the Supreme Court:
Family resolves to take fight over exorcism to Supreme CourtToo bad her father wasn't agnostic before a bunch of superstitious yahoos forcibly attempted to drive boogeymen out of his daughter's body. Lawsuit or not, this kind of lunacy never has to happen to anyone. Laura Schubert's own recounting of how events unfolded goes into more detail about just how superstitious and how irrational the members of this church became than did the article linked here last month:
By MAX B. BAKER
...The 1996 episode left her physically and emotionally scarred, and "this stuff is still hard to talk about," Pearson told the Star-Telegram after the Texas Supreme Court dismissed her lawsuit against the church June 27. The majority said the courts can't get involved in a religious debate over church doctrine...
After the exorcism, she dropped out of high school her senior year, began to cut herself as many as 100 times over several years, and refused to leave the house. Pearson slit her wrists with a box cutter.
Her father, a former missionary and minister, became an agnostic.
But Pearson and her parents, Tom and Judy Schubert, say they are willing to go to the U.S. Supreme Court in their fight against a church they once loved.
As the parents see it, Pleasant Glade members abused their daughter in the same way a husband or a boyfriend abuses a wife or a girlfriend — and all under the guise of serving the Lord...
I don't fully understand why she went back to the church, although the fact that her parents had initially left her in that organization's care and that she had been brought up to believe in this stuff to begin with might have a good deal to do with it....Pearson and her brother, Joseph, had been left with their older sister, Amy, while their parents went on a fundraising trip in Indiana. She was going to hang out with the church youth group and work at her part-time job. On June 7, a Friday, Pearson went to the church to help the youth group prepare for a garage sale. At about midnight, one of the teens rushed in saying he had seen a demon in the darkened sanctuary.
Rod Linzay, the youth pastor, urged everyone to anoint the sanctuary with holy oil. They rapped on pews. They prayed. They propped a cross against the doors to keep demons out or drive them out. They were up until early morning.
"I had been around [the church] all of my life, but I had not experienced anything of this sort. . . . After being up all of those hours and involved in all of that, it was easy to believe what was going on was real," she said.
Exhausted, Pearson went home and then to work but was unable to sleep that night. By the time she returned to the church on Sunday evening, she had been up for 72 hours.
It was then that people believed demons had possessed her and the first exorcism was performed. Pearson said she collapsed on the floor out of exhaustion. During the trial, doctors suggested she was hypoglycemic. She clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, made guttural sounds, cried and yelled.
"I was moving my head back and forth, and I hear people saying things are wrong with me and the youth pastor's wife saying it was the demons," Pearson said. They held her down, but after the thrashing stopped, Pearson was allowed to get up after saying the name Jesus.
On Wednesday, Pearson returned to the church. After hearing a sermon about "putting on the whole armor of God to fight off the devil," Pearson said she went off to a corner, curled into a fetal position and prayed.
When another youth asked to pray for her, Pearson refused. Eventually, she was held spread-eagle on the floor. She fought those holding her and asked to be let go. They said "it was the devil talking," Pearson said.
McCutchen then entered the room. He tried to calm Pearson and told her to "just say the word Jesus." Eventually, he called Pearson's parents, who came and took their "dazed" daughter home. Later they saw the bruises and carpet burns. Soon she began having nightmares about hands and faces coming out of her bedroom walls to grab her...
[Laura's father, Tom] Schubert has lost his faith, while his wife and daughter continue to believe.Good morning and welcome to rationality, Tom Schubert. I hope the rest of your family — and the rest of mankind — catch up with you very, very soon.
"I do not hold the religious views I once held," Schubert said. "I don't know what is out there. I don't think what is out there is what I thought was there in the past. . . . I don't believe in demons and such. . . . I doubt that God exists."
Since Catholics have recently been admonishing PZ Myers that he doesn't spend enough time lampooning the silliness of beliefs other than their own, I felt like I should be "fair and balanced" today myself. Why spend all of my time jabbing a finger in the eye of crazy Christian fundamentalists when there's fun to be had with those who wave athames in darkened cemeteries, too?
From Lebanon, Indiana comes the tale of Wiccan spell-caster Katherine Gunther who, in her attempt to invoke the Goddess to thank her for recent good luck — in a cemetery, since the dead are the luckiest people of all, apparently — managed to ram a three foot sword through her foot. And you thought all those tripedal rabbits whose missing appendages dangle from keychains had it bad!
Woman accidentally stabs herself in cemetery ritualThere are a lot of things about this that strike me as intensely silly. The first, and not the least, is the notion that some supernatural entity is on one's side and so takes time away from her busy schedule in order to bend probability in one's favor. What is "luck" in the first place but a confirmation bias that comes into being after the fact of some outcome?
By Robert Annis
A Boone County woman accidentally stabbed herself in the foot with a 36-inch sword used in a Wiccan ceremony in a Lebanon cemetery, police said.
According to a Lebanon Police Department news release, Katherine Gunther, 36, was performing a Wiccan "ceremony of thanks" in Oak Hill Cemetery around 12:15 a.m. Saturday when she ran the blade through her left foot. She said in an interview Monday that she'd had a run of good luck recently and wanted to give thanks with the rite.
Gunther said she was aiming to put a sword in the ground when it accidentally hit her foot.
"It wasn't the first time I performed the ritual, but it was the first time I put a sword through my foot," she said...
Sometimes, it's hard to say anything more than "woah." Maybe not this time, though.
A Floridian rationalist blogger — who asked me to remind readers if I decided to write about this that not all residents of Florida are wacky; consider it done! — sent me a link to the following. It's an entry written for the occult community on LiveJournal by another Floridian writing under the user ID meb21. She's gotten her hands on a magical book and is commanding angels to appear in her living room.
Using Konstantinos' book _Summoning Spirits_I have added the links to some of the ritual magic-related jargon in the above; I don't expect that most people who visit Hyphoid Logic would be familiar with the terms.
...Yesterday I decided to try one of the invocations in Konstantinos' book _Summoning Spirits_. After looking through the list of all the entities to invoke, I decided upon the angel Sandalphon...
My altar space is in a corner of my apartment. My main altar is set up on the North wall (I like my altars to face North; it just feels right to me). For the invocation, I set up a small table in the center of the space as a mini-altar, and set up the implements in the appropriate direction.
I did Opening by Watchtower, LBRP and BRH, then sat down behind the altar with the sigil of Sandalphon. My scrying mirror was on a shelf on the East wall, positioned so that when I was seated I could see it. The only light in the room was a floor lamp about five feet to my right (in the South) and I made sure that its' reflection didn't reflect in the mirror.
Per Konstantinos' instructions, I stared at the sigil for several minutes and repeated Sandalphon's name to establish a psychic link. Then, you're supposed to stare at the scrying mirror and allow your vision to open up and deliver the command to appear...
...I can see the outlines of auras and energy fields, etc., but their colors and shapes are communicated to me verbally in my mind...
...I kept seeing shapes and shadows in the mirror, perhaps with outlines of wings (that was my impression). I gave the command to appear again, a little more forcefully. And then I heard a voice in my head say, "Well, there's no need to be rude."
Hm. OK. So I asked the voice, "Who are you?"
"I am the master of Malkuth," it said. "I lived on earth as Elijah."
So at this point I believe I've contacted Sandalphon...
I start asking him some questions but I don't really get any earth-shattering answers about my spiritual path, more along the lines of "you're doing ok, keep going the way you're going".
One thing that was interesting: both my cats were in the living room while I was doing all this, and they were perfectly calm. I've heard that animals can detect spirits more readily, and neither of my cats were freaking out or acting any differently than they normally do.
While I was doing this, I noticed at one point that my mind started, er, drifting to thoughts and fantasies about sex...
There's a hilarious threadstorm happening over on PZ Myers' Pharyngula at the moment. The backstory here is that a college kid in Florida (why is it always Florida or Texas?) went to a Catholic church, was given communion, and walked out with the wafer instead of swallowing it (PZ has linked to the full story here). The response by fanatic elements led by notorious malodorous blowhard Bill Donohue (a man with a clear food fixation; remember his reaction over a chocolate Jesus art installation sometime ago?), who has appointed himself the Holy Defender since he knows deep down that the deity he claims to worship is utterly incapable of defending itself (hence his prior attacks on Kathy Griffin).
The response against the college kid was bad enough. It is after all, nothing but a cracker, albeit one over which a religiously sanctioned magician has mumbled an incantation that changes it, in the minds of those who believe in such things, into a sliver of flesh sliced from the corpus of an unfortunate Judean whom they think is a deity stuffed into a mansuit. No, the response I'm talking about is the one that has been directed at PZ Myers for having the gall to state the obvious — that the kid committed no crime and does not deserve to have his life made miserable by a bunch of pathetic religious wannabes who have so little faith in the competence of their allegedly omnipotent friend in the sky that they believe that they have to defend him and to make threats on his behalf. What sort of religion is it that teaches that its adherents are responsible for the well-being of their deity rather than the other way around, anyhow? If you want to be responsible for something that will demand your time and loyalty in return, adopt a child or rescue a puppy from your local shelter. Who needs a god who is neither powerful enough or observant enough to stop some kid from stealing his cookies?
Of course, these are fanatics, and fanatics are, by definition, not reasonable people. Thus, Myers' support for the cracker-snatcher in question has been met by even more death threats. His suggestion, his statements that he doesn't feel that there's any merit to transubstantive woo has been met, according to Myers, with
...39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy... Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims...Myers is absolutely correct in his estimation of the importance of communion wafers outside of their ritual context. They are just crackers. In fact, this is one of the very things that led to the Protestants splitting from Catholicism centuries ago; they don't believe in transubstantiation. A cracker is a cracker is a cracker, no matter how many Latin syllables are solemnly pronounced over it, no matter how many times the sign of the cross is made. This is no doubt part of the reason why Catholics and Protestants engaged in mutual persecutions and wars that really only ended a few years ago, when interfaith violence ceased in Northern Ireland.— Source
For a student to disrupt Mass by taking the Body of Christ hostage—regardless of the alleged nature of his grievance—is beyond hate speech.Did you catch that little slip-up? A student took the body of Christ hostage. A mere adolescent was so much more powerful than Donohue's deity that he could hold Christ to ransom, and it is up to Bill Donohue to see that justice is done for the kidnapping of Jesus.... because Jesus couldn't escape from this mere student all by himself, and Jesus' father was powerless to do anything about the situation.
As if on cue, a story has appeared on the WPTV (West Palm Beach, Florida) website about an exorcist working in Florida. His name is Tom Euteneuer, he's a priest, and apparently he's having a five-year episode of "brief psychotic disorder" that has led him to a strong belief in the literal reality of demons.
Interview with an ExorcistWhy, then, was Sergio Aguiar's belief in demons a possible symptom of a mental disorder when we have here someone attaining a degree of celebrity for believing exactly the same thing? Why is it a delusion when a supermarket clerk believes it but a matter of spirituality when it's sanctioned by a church? If the devil and demons and exorcisms are real, then there is no way to preclude the possibility that Aguiar was correct in thinking that his child was possessed even if one disagrees with how he acted upon that knowledge. The only argument against this would be one from authority; the pope and/or Euteneuer are qualified to believe in demonic possession because of their office, Aguiar wasn't. That's pure fallacy, but as there's no empirical evidence for the existence of demons (how tall are they? How much do they weigh?), there's no other basis upon which one can argue this point.
Reported by: Eric Glasser
...Father Tom Euteneuer says he has faced the devil. That he is real. And that he is among us.
"The manifestation of demons can be very frightening, but you never have to be afraid of the devil because we always have the power of Christ to deal with him."
Father Tom, a member of the Palm Beach Diocese, a man raised in Boca Raton and priest who still calls South Florida home, says he has been performing exorcisms for the past five years...
...Pope Benedict XVI has announced his intention to drastically expand the use of exorcism in a way the world has not seen in centuries.Translation: there may be witches hiding under your bed! Welcome back to the 13th century, kids. Lots of things have "always been there" that are wrong, even terrible. Human sacrifice is certainly a time-honored tradition, so much so that the Vatican promulgates an abstracted form of it as core doctrine. The Aryan Heresy, which maintained that Christ was purely divine was suppressed by the early church precisely because doctrine requires the sacrifice of a human being. Transubstantiation is a continuation of this principle; that blood and flesh is from a human being, too. For sane people living in the modern world, though, human sacrifice is an abhorrent thought. The appeal to tradition is also fallacious. Just because it's old doesn't mean that it's right. Exorcism isn't right because it's old; it's wrong because it comes from a rejection of what's known about the world and the substitution of a superstition that asserts the reality of malicious spiritual beings.
"The Pope isn't inventing anything new," says Father Tom. "And he's not actually bringing anything out and dusting it off. It's always been there. Maybe less practiced than it could be - or should be - but right now he sees that there's a greater need for it..."
Pope Benedict's plan to expand the ancient ritual also has its critics who worry that many people suffering with mental illnesses may be mis-diagnosed. To that end, a spokesman at the vatican's university says a ten-week course would be offered for priests who want to learn how to conduct exorcisms.Wow, a ten-week course that includes a few classes on psychology! How modern and scientific and advanced. Priests must be the smartest people in the world; they can learn enough about psychology in a ten-week course that includes psychology classes to make the decision to reject mental illness as a cause for erratic behavior and subject someone to magical ritual instead of medical treatment. Some people have to spend years in concentrated effort to be considered qualified to diagnose mental illness, but not these black-cassocked geniuses. Ten weeks is all it takes!
The classes would include sessions on rites, how to talk to the devil, and how, they say, to recognize the 'tricks' he uses.
Students would also attend psychology classes to help them distinguish between what the church calls genuine cases of possession and psychiatric disorders such as Tourrettes Syndrome, Bipolarism and schizophrenia.
"Actually, we're in a better position than in all of history to discern and determine what is spiritual and what's not spiritual," says Father Tom.Based on what, exactly? What empirical evidence exists that demons exist, that they can hop into someone's body and take over their nervous systems? Enteneuer's statement implies that something other than spectral evidence exists for any of this. Even if we take for granted that demons exist, for them to be able to take over someone's behavior necessitates that they change that person's neurology somehow. We could certainly measure such changes. For that matter, if a demon is hanging around in someone's body then that person should weigh more before an exorcism than they do afterward. It should be no great difficulty to determine the average weight of a demon and to quantify the neurochemistry of possession. Has anyone seen the literature published on these studies, or is ol' Father Tom simply blowing smoke into dark places here?
Pope Benedict XVI, say those closest to him, believes believes the devil's influence has grown in recent years through rock music, children's literature, even the internet...It's a good thing that Papa Benny hasn't found out yet about pistachio ice cream or I'd be out of business! Instead of reason, what do we get from Der Pope? "OH NOES! Kurt Kobain putted hiz demons in teh intertubes!" If this statement had been delivered by a disheveled woman with a dozen cats in her apartment, we'd be suggesting a course of anti-psychotic drug treatment. The fact that men in dresses and funny hats say it is enough for a scarily large number of people to believe in it, too. We're right bak to "rock 'n roll is the devil's music" again.
"When a society doesn't believe in demons, it therefore doesn't believe in exorcism. So, it's really only people of faith who will understand this for what it is..."No, people of faith believe in it without understanding it. That's why it requires faith. Understanding is knowledge, not faith. In fact, it is only people of knowledge who understand exorcism for what it is — a relic of a time before the dawn of reason and natural explanations for natural phenomena. People of faith are simply the ones most likely to swallow uncritically the assertions of a spiritualist who scares them with tales of the boogeyman.
