Comment on Stereotypical religious nutjobs in the 80s and 90s were all "The end is nigh!" Now that science supports them, they're all "Everything is A-OK!"

• Underwaterbob@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  My favorite part of the satanic panic was when sometime in the eighties, our local preacher dropped by our house (we were not church goers) and saw a mangled, black candle on our kitchen table. We’d had a power outage recently, and Internet-less, kid-me loved to heat up paper clips over the flames and use them to etch the wax. Totally innocent of any dastardly doings aside from slightly mischievous me. He left in a bit of a hurry and sent along some hilarious VHS tapes decrying the evils of this and that. Particularly Dungeons and Dragons. Which was how I discovered Dungeons and Dragons and how awesome it is.

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  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s hilarious! I remember people saying that D&D led to kids stealing stoplights, and wondering how on earth that had anything to do with satan. I also remember Frank Peretti books (This Present Darkness), and Screwtape Letters.

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    • TheMechanic@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I did spend some of my childhood stealing traffic lights and street signs. It wasn’t Satan that made me do it, it was the boy scouts.

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      • Bizarroland@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        If that's the worst thing that happened to you because of the boy scouts you got off pretty lucky

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• Got_Bent@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I can’t quite remember, but there’s always been this little vague memory in the back of my mind that I was taught to consider Carl Sagan as evil.

  Oh seventies crazy religious upbringing. What nonsense won’t you spew?

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  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Same. When I finally read The Demon Haunted World 20 years after it came out I was so angry at my Focus On the Family “Carl Sagan is a passive satanist” parents for telling me not to read it when it came out.

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    • someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What’s the TLDR?

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      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Before science and modern democracy the world was a terrible place, slowly the enlightenment spread and consumed the darkness, but we are on track to putting the flame out.

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      • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It’s basically about using critical thinking, skepticism, and scientific methods to help make life decisions and not be taken in by false ideas. The full title is “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”

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