Remember when Megyn Kelly was deeply offended at the suggestion that Santa Claus wasn’t white? It’s an imaginary figure, yet she insisted he was white.
Now she’s doing it again. Jezebel commissioned Etsy to put a curse on Charlie Kirk, which is already silly (you know, curses don’t work, right?)
I want to make it clear, I’m not calling on dark forces to cause him harm. I just want him to wake up every morning with an inexplicable zit. I want his podcast microphone to malfunction every time he hits record. I want his blue blazers to suddenly all be one size too small. I want one of his socks to always be sliding down his foot. I want his thumb to grow too big to tweet. To ruin his day with the collective feminist power of the Etsy coven would be my life’s greatest joy.
It’s silly, it’s stupid, it’s a joke. But then Kirk was shot, and the gullible reared back, aghast, certain that this was confirmation that curses actually work. No, it’s not. This is confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias, or congeniality bias) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs.
All it tells us is that the person promoting the idea has a prior belief in the power of curses, and is presenting a random fact as evidence for that belief.
So what does Megyn Kelly believe?
First of all, Christians are opposed to casting spells or contacting the spirit world – not only because they believe there is only one God, but because they acknowledge the existence of the devil and evil spirits. Fr. Mike Schmitz actually talked about this when he joined me back in episode 399.
He basically explained how you are playing with fire with this stuff. There actually are demons in this world. Calling up the spirit world – in particular the devil’s spirit world – can have real-world consequences. It is not something to mess with. This is very dangerous. It is not a game. It is literally evil.
Demons aren’t real. Neither is Santa Claus. It is literally goofy, but Kelly believes in them. But then she goes on to undermine her own beliefs.
Second, and this is what I want the people at Jezebel to know, Erika and Charlie Kirk heard about these curses, and it really rattled Erika in particular. She knew Christian teaching on this subject. She loved Charlie absolutely. She was scared when she heard of the curses Jezebel had culled up. So much so that she and Charlie contacted a friend – who I believe she said was a Catholic priest – and asked him to pray with them and over Charlie… the night before he was murdered.
She eventually worked it through, and so did Charlie, that, as she told me, “weapons will form but not prosper,” that “satan and those witches have no power.” Of course, God’s will is the one that matters, and his blessing over Charlie was real and palpable. All you had to do was spend time with him to know that.
OK, if I took this at all seriously, the Kirks brought in a priest to officially negate a curse to give him a zit, and instead Charlie got shot in the neck. Following Kelly’s logic, does that mean that the Catholic church is less powerful than a coven of Etsy witches? Is this confirmation that Etsy curses are real and powerful?
As usual, these weird fantasies vanish in a puff of contradictions. Megyn Kelly doesn’t care, though, all she wants to do is rationalize hating the people she disagrees with. They’re evil, don’t you know. It also gives her an opportunity to engage in melodramatic theatrics.
Going back to the Greeks, before the Christians elevated a mostly minor adversarial character in the Tanakh (except maybe Job) into a rough counterpart of Angra Mainyu and placed him as ruler over a burning garbage pit outside Jerusalem, daemon is a perfectly good term.
We have eudaimonism, say what you will about that unidimensional philosophy. BSD has its mundane software daemons. I guess psychologically it translates to a subroutine, but to be possessed would mean coming under the spell of an idee fixe or maybe an addiction. I’m getting the latter from an episode of Mr Robot. I’m rather fond of daemons as a mundane concept.
If witches had real supernatural powers, the USA would look a lot different.
Trump would have long ago been struck by a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky.
Elon Musk would be a 200 lb green frog, living in a large pond with the world’s most expensive mansion designed for amphibians.
Stephen Miller would still have his fangs and be drinking fresh human blood. He is after all, a demon on surface duty already and immune to spells.
None of this has happened and this is the proof that spells and witchcraft don’t actually work.
She is lying. She is a shameless grifter. There is no way in hell Charlie and his wife were actually scared of the Jezebel “curse”. She is just doing a performance for this stupid audience. It is all for the money.
PZ Myers already covered this but it needs repeating.
.1. If the fundie xian god is so powerful, why did Charlie Kirk get killed anyway?
God 0 Reality 1
.2. The fundies always say, “god is in charge and everything happens for a reason.”
Then when one of their own get killed, like Charlie Kirk, all of a sudden they forget that.
Then it is all the fault of witches, demons, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Atheists, and uppity women.
At best their belief system is incoherent and more likely, they don’t actually believe it all that much.
Well, that certainly ensured he wouldn’t get any more zits! So, surely a triumph for that priest and his God.
Actually, belief in Satan (the devil) and hell among US xians isn’t all that high.
It is around 50% of them.
Which makes sense.
If god is all powerful, why is his friend Satan, running around being the devil anyway?
It is even in the bible.
Satan doesn’t rule in hell. He isn’t even in hell. His throne was in Pergamum, Turkey, which is now in Berlin, Germany.
Satan was last seen living in Los Angeles where he had a TV show.
Epicurus had it summed up before Satan was even born.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then why is there evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus
“OK, if I took this at all seriously, the Kirks brought in a priest to officially negate a curse to give him a zit, and instead Charlie got shot in the neck.”
You know, that sounds like his prayers reached a trickster god you really shouldn’t have asked for a favour…
Quite the monkey-paw priest, indeed.
There you have it folks, straight from Megyn Kelly’s mouth: Christians don’t pray.
The power of prayer. Somebody puts a zit curse on Charlie Kirk and along comes a Catholic priest and turns the zit into a bullet in the neck.
Just as Charlie K tried to ride on the chatter about Taylor Swift’s engagement, Megyn K surfs on the publicity of his murder.
The media feeds happily on all of it, like fleas chowing down on each others’ excrement.
@6. raven : Actually, belief in Satan (the devil) and hell among US xians isn’t all that high. ..(snip).. It is around 50% of them.”.
Um, Yikes!
That does seem very high to me. Far too much so. WTF?!
This plays into something happening in my extended family. My MAGA sister-in-law Linda has now disavowed Trump because she now believes he’s too divisive. This after voting for him twice, attending his rallies and donating money. For the past 8 years, she’s been a pariah to the rest of us, her very liberal relatives. We either avoided talking to her about politics or we avoided being in her presence (my strategy.) Now that she’s gotten over Trump (yeah, we’ll see) her newest belief is that the Devil exists. He’s a real thing to her. All the evil in the world is caused by Lucifer. Which leads me to ask, is the Devil responsible for Trump? Did the Devil lead Linda astray? Did the Devil cause Charles Kirk’s murder? (I refuse to call him Charlie, he was not my friend. Charlie is too humanizing. He was a hatemonger and a bigot.)