I decided to watch Ex-Machina (2015) to blow off some steam, but I started taking notes when this line made me sit up and take notice: "If you've created a conscious machine it's not the history of man... that's the history of Gods." This isn't just a sci-fi thriller, this is an attack on God, by making the obvious connection between creating AI and creating conscious human beings. The movie begs for a theological interpretation, so here it ...
Crossbones TV Series: Pirates and the Devil Continued

In the PhD Thesis I'll finish one day, I make the connection between the rise of pirates, libertarianism and democracy with sacrilege and devil worship - not "real" devil worship of course, simply people who openly rebelled against the idea of God and aligned themselves openly with the politics of Satan. So I've been pleased to watch the sudden increase in pirate fascination... which I thought was running dry after the Pirates of the Caribbean movies ...
Odd Thomas, Christian fiction and Devil Worshippers

I'm watching the movie version of Odd Thomas, directed by Stephen Sommers, based on the novel by Dean Koontz. Pretty exciting. Ghosts and demons, psychics and seers, Bodachs... evil spirits drawn to death and mayhem. But who are the mass-murdering evil-doers? Why, devil worshipers, of course. They have a tattoo that reads "POD" - Prince of Darkness. Neat. They kill lots and lots of people because they believe in Satan, and Satan is evil, and without God's righteous moral ...
Satan is Good, God is Bad: our shifting moral compass and why atheists are throwing the Devil under the bus

I went to Skepticon 5 expecting a group of heretics that would get a kick out of my inversed reading of Milton's Paradise Lost, which claims that Satan is the hero of the story (which was actually the mainstream reading before it became the "mistaken reading", and is now coming into vogue again by top Milton scholars). I was surprised to find that Satan makes atheists uncomfortable. Atheists already have a huge image/perception problem, with the ...
The Devil Inside (2012): the Truth about demonic possession, exorcism and Satanism

Any good Christian has to believe in demonic possession. After all, Jesus was always casting out demons. If the Bible and Christianity is true, then Jesus couldn't have mistakenly viewed mental illness using the common superstition of possession. He would have known better. So they're real. That basis has been the support for dozens of demonic possession/exorcism movies, which mostly make good entertainment because, demonically possessed people look really freaking scary. They are great horror flicks. But ...
Iraq militia stone youths to death for Satanistic “emo” style

Wearing skulls and dressing in black will get you killed - at least in Iraq, where dozens of teenagers have been stoned recently for wearing black and channeling Emo. "Emo" is a Western subculture that follows the revival of gothic and horror trends in society and literature, and also parallels closely the attraction to vampirism, witchcraft and magic. Skulls and crossbones have become super cool symbols in international pop culture; even hello kitty is on board. As ...
The Lie of Satanism: Why Satanists Don’t Exist but Everyone is Afraid of them Anyway

This post is prompted by TWO Yahoo articles concerning Satanism posted within one week of each other. The first, titled "Women Slash Teen 300 Times During Satanic Sex Ritual" (source) is about two Milwaukee roommates accused of slashing and stabbing a teenager 300 times in an apparent satanic sex ritual that lasted for two days. Actually the girls had some books on necromancy and dark magic - which is NOT Satanism. The confusion is that for anybody ...
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