Television for Paedophiles, Deadheads, and Baptism for Idiots

While I was writing Saturn's Influence - Them Crafty Rugrats yesterday, I found a rather queer article on a website for Landover Baptist Church. The article is titled 'Rugrats: Television For Pedophiles'. I was thinking how extremist it was, laughable, just typical of some of these religious fanatics, so I thought I'd write a short post to make light of it. I had my title decided upon - 'Television for Paedophiles, Deadheads, and Baptism for Idiots', a sweeping generalisation - and had begun writing when I decided to check their homepage. Gift shop. Thongs. More precisely, a "What would Jesus do?" thong. Book Burning Club. Prayer Squad. And my personal favourite, Sin Patrol. Haha. It was around then that I realised it's not a real institution at all, it's a fictional church based in a fictional town. Satirical humour, which I'm a fan of (along with surrealism), and I fell for it! But that's because it's so representative of Christian fundamentalism and the religious right-wing, especially when you isolate an article from the rest of the website, it is very believable. And yet actual religious values can seem so archaic, so repellent, so unbelievable. Amazing really.

If it had been a genuine article, then I would have been making a point on how these organisations tend to use tactics to instil fear and divert attention away from their own sordid practices. Because while I'm aware of the perverse undertones that are bubbling beneath the mainstream, it doesn't justify the outrageous claims that these kinds of religious extremists come out with. In fact it seeks to ruin what truth there is behind it all. Extremists like this are frightened of their own humanness, feelings and impulses, so they point to faults everywhere but within themselves, if it means they don't have to face their own demons. In that respect, Satanism appears to have a better handle when it teaches that we must first give in to our carnal desires and indulge if we are to learn and evolve. Only it's not as simple as that, there are so many other factors at play, and on a base level it would just lead to overindulgence, there'd be no moderation. Things are bad enough as they are, the last thing we need is for civilisation to revert back to a lesser state, though that looks to be on the cards. Societal collapse is surely to be the last of our worries, it might even be the answer to all our problems.

If it had been a genuine article, then I would have been making a point on how these organisations tend to use tactics to instil fear and divert attention away from their own sordid practices. But it wasn't, so I'm not.