I haven’t eaten at Chipotle for years. Similarly, I haven’t had a Margarita in years, even though I think they’re tasty. So I’m not boycotting Chipotle, it’s just that I have no interest in what they offer. I want to be perfectly clear, though: it’s not because I think they’re satanic.
This is the time of year when born-again, fundamentalist Christians are straining to find reasons to hate (something they’re so good at), and their latest reason to shriek while they wait for the seasonal Starbucks cups to come out is Chipotle’s Hallowe’en advertising gimmick. They’re selling Margaritas with a Ouija board hook!
It’s demonic, you know.
The Chipotle controversy reflects a much larger cultural shift.
Tarot readings are increasingly presented as tools for self-discovery. Astrology promises insight into relationships and destiny. Psychic consultations offer supposed contact with deceased loved ones. Spirit guides are promoted in some wellness circles as sources of wisdom.
What previous generations of Christians recognized as occult practices are now frequently repackaged as empowerment, entertainment, or spiritual exploration.
And the marketing is inviting. There is nothing particularly frightening about colorful tarot cards, a fashionable psychic influencer, or a Ouija board appearing in a humorous commercial.
That is precisely why discernment is necessary.
Christians need not believe every Halloween decoration is demonic or that watching a fictional supernatural story constitutes occult participation. There is a meaningful distinction between portraying something and deliberately practicing it.
But when society treats divination, spirit communication, and supernatural guidance as recreational activities, Christians should recognize the danger.
The concern is not simply that people become comfortable with occult imagery. It’s that they may eventually become comfortable with the practices themselves.
Gosh. Atheists must be the godliest, purest, saintliest people on Earth, because we also don’t practice Tarot readings, astrology, or psychic consultations, and we think spirit guides are bunk. I’m not tempted by Chipotle or its Margaritas.
Besides, we have a Qdoba in the student union (no alcohol) and a good Mexican restaurant in town (with a bar and genuine Margaritas made on site.)
My beef with astrologers is that they spend all their time poring over books & tables (old style) or using an app (new style?), instead of GOING OUT AT NIGHT AND LOOKING AT THE SKY.
There’s a lot of beauty and awesome majesty to this Universe, if only one looks.
And every couple of years, Mars gets big and bright, which might foretell a war, because humans are just like that.
Astrology is still bunk, nonetheless.
@Snarki, #1
Not to mention that most of those charts and tables they’re referencing are woefully out of date any no longer make sense.
when society treats divination, spirit communication, and supernatural guidance as recreational activities, Christians should recognize the danger
Christians are against those things? Must be stop liking what I like
What about haruspicy and is there a vegetarian version?
I assume that “now” is a particularly unfortunate typo here…
It is that time of year again.
The fundie xian War on Halloween.
Fundie xians don’t have holidays, they have Wars on Holidays.
They have had some minor successes with their War on Halloween.
Halloween itself is as popular as ever and probably even more so.
It is one of my favorite holidays and after a long absence, I’ve started going to Halloween parties again. I’ve already picked out one for this year.
Our local public school kids aren’t so lucky.
The fundies made enough noise that the schools ended their Halloween parties and events, by claiming they are religious and Pagan. The school district said OK, and they also ended all the Xmas parties, claiming that Xmas is a religious xian holiday.
So now Halloween is a Harvest festival and Xmas is a Winter Holiday festival. They can have a decorated tree as long as it is a Holiday tree and not a Xmas tree.
There are a lot of problems with the fundie version of xianity.
When you take a step back and look at them, after all the hate, lies, and hypocrisy, they are also just very boring.
They haven’t had an original or worthwhile thought in centuries.
They have a point here, just not the one they think they have.
They should recognize that there is no danger.
Satan, demons, and evil spirits don’t exist and have nothing to do with astrology or Yoga anyway.
There are however, huge dangers with fundie xianity.
Child sexual abuse in fundie xian churches and households is very high and frequently covered up and tolerated.
They are frequently racists and the religion itself is more of a cover for white racist Fascism.
The three main sacraments of fundie xianity are hate, lies, and hypocrisy.
The War on Halloween is just a warm-up skirmish to get ready for the grander War on Christmas.
Neither war exists, except in the deluded minds of Christians.
@7 raven
Im unconvinced those groups, given power, would behave any better than most other religions.
You have to be fairly lucky in order for religous belifs not being a danger for one self, or others.
I prefer Qdoba to Chipotle, since Qdoba doesn’t charge extra for queso. YOU HAD ME AT CHEESE, QDOBA!
Chipotle does margaritas? I’ll have to check the menu at our local branch. We have burrito bowls now and again.
Christians need not believe every Halloween decoration is demonic or that watching a fictional supernatural story constitutes occult participation.
They may not need to, but the option always remains open.
My first experience with stuff like this was reading a letter to the editor in Rainbow magazine (the magazine for the TRS-80 Color Computer, back in the early-to-mid 1980s) where someone had apparently written in complaining about a previous program printed in the magazine that drew Tarot card images (didn’t even attempt to do divination, just drew the images) and saying that she had ripped the offending pages out of the magazine to keep her family safe. Even back then, I was like, ‘whut?’ (I grew up in a family with a fairly easy-going Canadian Anglican mother and a mostly-agnostic father; I’d never run into that level of religious delusion before, as it’s not as common in Canada.)
The local Chipotles definitely don’t serve margaritas, though they do serve Jarritos. But again, Canada. And Ontario specifically: getting a liquor licence is not a cheap or simple process, especially if you want to serve anything stronger than beer. (The rules aren’t quite so stringent in Quebec.)
@raven:
As Fred Clark over at Slacktivist has pointed out, one of the big problems that Evangelical churches have is they tend to teach an extremely brittle faith, with a long list of ‘the Bible is the Word of God, and it says…’ things. The result is that when kids get out into the real world and discover any of those things is wrong, it can shatter their entire faith. Why do you think their families hate education so much?
There are a couple of bad sides to that, of course. If someone makes it to adulthood without breaking they will generally have figured out ways to self-justify and will become completely unreachable. And even if someone breaks with their faith, that doesn’t mean they become a good person. They often just switch from being a self-important right-wing evangelist who hates women to a self-important right-wing atheist who hates women.
Comment # 1: Astrology.
I recommend the book “The Star of Betlehem” by wossname (an astronomer).
He systematically processes every attempted explanation and debunks them all, except the final one: the author of that Bible passage was inspired by Virgil’s The Aeneid, where Aeneas is led by a star – Venus – to the site of Rome.
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As for astrological explanations, we learn astrologers disagree with hiw to ibterpret things. Also, the biblical author confused babylonians (who used astroligy) with zoroastrian Persians (who do not).
Commwnt # 2
Did you say “Ouija Board”?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jmjLNDobZqM
The dude in Wellington boots is a reference to fascist & grifter Nigel Farage, the one who defended his site in parliament from Count Binface, the Alien.
I wonder what the fundies would make of this New Zealand pizza chain?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Pizza
Myself @ 14
The book is by Alan Adair. It is not a thick book, but it manages to dispel the notion that this part of the Christmas gospel is in any form based on truth.
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‘Souls’ are dependent on the physical neural substrate. They cannor survive death. I would be in favor of ‘uploading’ them, but the biological architecture of the brain simply does not make it possible to record the state of every neuron.
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(hint to future super-civilisations: redesign the brain so as it grows at the embryonic stage it incorporates the hardware necessary to recird the state of every neuron. That way, we do not need to develop messy, unreliable cryogenic technologies to resurrect and repair the dead)
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Question: does Merican English spell ‘civilisation’ with ‘z’ – I have seen every vsriant.
Since I am skeptical about all this, I asked if superstitions were real and my Magic 8 Ball said: ‘most likely’. So I asked it of crapitall christian terrorists will rule the world and it said: ‘signs point to yes’
I breathed a sigh of relief on my 47th birthday, because when I was 11 my Ouija board predicted I would go to Jackson prison when I was 46. It was fun, because it mysteriously produced coherent answers. Of course, the users push the window where they want it to go without realizing it.
@ 2. drksky : @Snarki, #1 Not to mention that most of those charts and tables they’re referencing are woefully out of date any no longer make sense.”
Also for whatever reason (cough, triskadecaphobia, cough) they never included the 13th Constellation Ophiuchus..
https://earthsky.org/constellations/ophiuchus-the-serpent-bearer-13th-constellation-zodiac/
A fact which occassionally gets rediscovered & noted by the media.
PS. I’m not superstitious – apparently that’s very bad luck!
Leave it to Christians to think up the stupidest reason for opposing psychics, diviners, and astrologers: “Our big sorcerer is enemies with your magic!”
Of course, any allegation of fraud put religious leaders under a microscope, so they have trouble making that case.
StevoR @20: “for whatever reason (cough, triskadecaphobia, cough) they never included the 13th Constellation Ophiuchus.”
Babylonians had a base 60 number system, 12 was a convenient factor. They also had a 12 month calendar.
Wikipedia – Ophiuchus, Zodiac
Wikipedia – Ophiuchus (astrology)
17 @birgerjohansson
In California I have only ever spelled civilization it with a ‘z’. Autocorrupt IME is doing some really weird things with orthography nowadays, so I am not surprised by any confusion by anyone.