Why are religious people so messed up?

On the testimonies of at least some of those who claimed their abusers were neccessarily satanic. In many of the more lurid cases the details appear to be carried over from movies rather than genuine experience, where the iconography is instantly familiar. But don't take my word for it. Here for instance is the the description of supposed satanic ritual from a more credulous - and ultimately quite amusing - source Satanic Cult Awareness, Hirst and Marsh(1993) in which child abuse is a major concern. It is, supposedly,  "a training manual ... the result of compiling information from several years of occult investigations including volumes of written documentations from several investigators across the nation." It is also a report which purports to show the facts of satanism, still without any examples of successful convictions, naturally.



See also www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/walmart-selling-satanic-paraphernalia where there appears no doubt.

In other cases paraphernalia is what people make of it. In one case in Orkney the 'satanic black gown' confiscated by over-zealous investigators turned out to be something a teacher would wear in class.




Er ... perhaps because we are talking about supposed satanic child abuse, rather than just satanism? See how it works?




It is ironic that you find it easy to deny the existence of heart transplants, say, for which evidence can easily be found, while still supporting the idea of satanic child abuse - for which substantiation has been discovered lacking in almost every case that comes to court. Ah well.

The absence of any substantiation for the opposing view on your part is just as predicted in my last message. But since you are now resorting to telling me what I think, and moreover appear to have no knowledge of even some standard authorities, all the while providing none of your own, I will leave it there. For everyone else, one last link, to that of a more recent assessment of the scandal: Satanic Abuse, False Memories, Weird Beliefs and Moral Panics (Waterhouse, 2014) which has found quite wide dissemination and reputability:

So then; one last word to answer the usual non-sequiturs. It is not I who needs to distinguish between 'real' and 'pretend' satanists, since, duh, it is not I who claims for satanic abusers in the first place (indeed I made it clear that there might have been a few cases of nutters abusing children with satanic trappings, while the sad fact is that more children have likely been ill-treated by Christians through injurious 'exorcisms').  It for is the prosecuting authorities, who did indeed 'bother', often to the extent of ruining innocent people's lives by giving credence to false claims. The issue is, still, whether there have been proven examples of SCA brought before the courts ending in convictions, especially of a size and number reflecting the associated moral panic.

The answer as I have shown is ... NO - and you haven't evidenced otherwise, as usual. Which ultimately is all one needs to know.


QED.

   There is something very peculiar about the pandemic I think even you can understand.  The number of asymptomatic cases is incredibly large and the number of deaths is nevertheless incredibly high.  It's almost like there are two different diseases, covid-19 and a covid-18 that tests the same despite being entirely different.  That could be misleading otherwise intelligent people to disbelieve the reports.  I really don't see anyone throwing caution to the wind (no pun intended), especially religious people.  We are cautious in the light of reported deaths regardless how peculiar they are.  I suppose there could be a disease that kills some people and not others and I follow official guidelines.

   Don't forget that Democrats are famous for their utter stupidity.  Theirs is not "science," it is a belief in "science" they see on TV.  The topic of heart transplants returns here often because some people think I said there are no such things.  I never said that.  What I said is that I have never seen the evidence of one myself.  The hospital where my nephew the real doctor works does not perform heart transplants.  With any invasive procedure there are risks to be balanced against the possible benefits.  You can see that cutting out a working heart involves rather enormous risk.  I'm sure you're far more clever than you need to be to understand that much.


  

   Pictures of miracles -- no, pictures of "scientific" heart transplants -- yes, right?

   Have you tried playing the sitar?