Happy Halloween!

Now this shit is scary! What the hell?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_house
http://www.vimeo.com/clip:169081

Posted by Tom

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3 comments:

Owl said...

This is Fundamentalist Christianity. I believe it is a product of the Modern Era. And my guess is that 90% of these hell-house attendees are church folk trying to escape the "deviltry" of Halloween (originally a Christian holiday) and reinforce their cultural biases through fear.

I don't think they see it that way. They serve a fearsome image of God and therefore project it.

"Hell" is a can of worms, too (no pun intended). But these concepts of eternal punishment can basically be traced to Augustine and then were honed in Modernism by folks like Calvin and Arminius. There is a strong force building now within Christianity to get back to the original doctrines which characterize God as merciful and loving, not the Hannibal Lecter-God so many Christians are peddling. It's a strong Danteism that has become tacky and streamlined in many of these modern churches.

But, like you, it is a phenomenon I hope passes quickly, like bad gas.

November 1, 2007 at 2:49 PM
Cliff Martin said...

Much that passes off for Christianity is downright embarrassing. But I wonder ... what expressions of “evangelical” atheism embarrass my atheist friends?

November 1, 2007 at 9:05 PM
Tom said...

Great challenge, Cliff!

While I might even label myself as an evangelical atheist from the standpoint that I am promoting atheism and not supporting religion, I hope I do it with a tempered spirit. It's hard though. We all want convictions and to know that we are right, that we're not screwing up our lives.

It's not the atheistic hedonists that I am embarrassed about. The ones who do more damage than good are the ones who ridicule and demean others through their self-righteousness.

November 1, 2007 at 11:06 PM

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