{"id":2503,"date":"2015-10-27T19:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T23:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=2503"},"modified":"2015-10-27T19:01:38","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T23:01:38","slug":"theology-related-quote-for-the-day-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=2503","title":{"rendered":"Theology-related quote for the day"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>Those great, fun, harmless, safe, nostalgic, exciting, slightly scary and completely un-demonic Halloweens of the past? <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">Gone, gone, gone with the evangelical hot air<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Does it bother me? You bet it does. It bothers me that <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">we fall for such lame, ridiculous manipulators<\/span> as the crowd that made all of those Halloweens past into satanic events.<\/p>\n<p>It bothers me that <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">any lie, exaggeration or fiction will find thousands of eager believers<\/span> to pass it along.<\/p>\n<p>It bothers me that the Biblical message about Satan would be co-opted by the fear-mongering and manipulation of the hucksters. (Read The Screwtape Letters for some real Satanism.)<\/p>\n<p>It bothers me that such a wonderful part of my childhood and of American life has been turned into an example of <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">evangelical paranoia and gullibility. We ruined something good<\/span>, and <SPAN style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #a8f2f5\">everyone knows it but us<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p align=\"right\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.internetmonk.com\/archive\/60545?utm_content=buffer12ffa&#038;utm_medium=social&#038;utm_source=twitter.com&#038;utm_campaign=buffer\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Spencer<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well said.  Religion is a device for exploitation of the insecure and\/or unintelligent by amoral predators, and it soils whatever it touches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Those great, fun, harmless, safe, nostalgic, exciting, slightly scary and completely un-demonic Halloweens of the past? Gone, gone, gone with the evangelical hot air. Does it bother me? You bet it does. It bothers me that we fall for such &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=2503\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2506,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2503\/revisions\/2506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}