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.)
@ ^ John Watts : “My MAGA sister-in-law Linda has now disavowed Trump because she now believes he’s too divisive.””
It has taken her this long to realise that!? Oh ye-nn-existent gawds.. FFS.
raven @6
If I recall correctly in the Tanakh, God was firstly responsible for weal AND woe. Eventually woe separated out and was offloaded onto another character. That character was not initially in the Garden. That was a borrowing of an immortality stealing serpent in Gilgamesh. Christians later retrofitted the Garden myth with Satan the tempter, though aspects of Satan in the Tanakh were cooptable for such a role.
SteveoR @ 12
It’s a poll among Christians, not the general population.
PS.
Truth. Imagine if Kirk NOT the Star trek ficional Cap’n) had been a Muslim rather tjhan Xn hate preacher. Shits me so much that the news (here & elsewhere) keeps calling him an “influencer” or “äctivist” rather than the honest descrioption of him as a literal nazi hate preacher.
@ 16. woozy : Okay. Yeah. Eeven still.
This is the year 2025 right? Not 1595 or suchlike..
If Megan Kelly and the Kirk’s beliefs in demons, God, prayer, and suchlike, are accurate then we know that the Catholic priest they consulted completely screwed up the curse removal. I doubt that he accepts any responsibility for messing up though.
@ ^profpedant : News at 11 Satan beats priest.
Reality beats religion.
Dog bites man, water usually wet in liquid form. Majrity of bear species defecate in.. woodland.
@ ^profpedant : News at 11 Satan beats priest.
Reality beats religion.
Dog bites man, water usually wet in liquid form. Majrity of bear species defecate in.. woodland.
Let me say pfffft.
This gormless farrago is par for the course, these idiots will believe anything and can hold twenty contradictory worldviews at the same time in their airy, empty craniums.
Now the important bit is, will they succeed in FUBARing your country or not?
At this point I don’t know any more.
Are there “demons” abroad in this world?
To answer this question, one must first ask “what are the characteristics that would result in an entity being termed a ‘demon'”.
So: potentially immortal, amoral, not tied to a particular corporeal existence, created by initiates of arcane arts in private ceremonies using phrases of dead languages, acting through human thralls.
YES they exist, but we call them CORPORATIONS (check that list above, they all match).
No surprise that the GOP is all-in on demon-worship.
OT
This is the latest headline.
The US government is sending US soldiers to “war ravaged Portland” (it’s not) to stop a nonexistent siege by a nonexistent organization.
This won’t end well.
.1. Trump is senile, deep into age related cognitive impairment.
He is now acting out his delusions and fantasies in our reality.
.2. Trump, the GOP, and the christofascists really, seriously want to shoot and kill a lot of Americans in public and on TV, as soon as possible.
I don’t know, nothing looks like a free country like slaughtering citizens in the streets.
They want to manufacture a pretext so they can declare martial law.
I’ve said this several times before.
There is no doubt there is going to be blood in the streets. The only question is how much and is any of it going to be mine.
20/21 – ??? I was pointing out that if they take their beliefs seriously then ‘the priest screwed up’ is a logical possibility. They are inconsistent in how they do/do not treat their beliefs as an accurate understanding of reality.
Raven @24. Yup, I live in Portland, I know Portlanders, there will be hell to pay if troops are deployed here. Portlanders don’t take shit from nobody.
First, it sounds like those witches didn’t damn Kirk to eternal agony, they merely darned him to endless minor discomfort. Reminds me of “Fupke Among the Blessed.”
Second, if Mr. & Mrs. Kirk were actually “rattled” by news of that Etsy spell, then to that extent, the “magic” did indeed “work.”
Third, no, I don’t think it likely that the Kirks were aware of that spell before he got shot. If they were, they’d more likely have responded along the lines of “Hahahaha stupid witches and their false gods! We’ll just keep going and show ’em how much stronger we are!” (Which response might have been to a friend breathlessly telling them about it and freaking out about demons and shit.)
Fourth, the Kirks (allegedly) sought help to lift/break a spell of minor boo-boos and discomfort, and the very next day, BANG, an instant end to all boo-boos and discomfort. This is a classic case of “be careful what you wish/pray for.” I mean, if there’s more than one god, then we have no way to predict or control which god hears any given prayer. So while Bible-God may have just thought “grow up, you little wimps,” some other trickster, as mordred says, may have been like “Yeah, sure, happy to help!”
And finally, when Megyn Kelly says “Calling up the spirit world – in particular the devil’s spirit world,” she’s admitting that not all spirits are in “the devil’s spirit world.”
John Watts @13
I refuse to call him Charlie, he was not my friend. Charlie is too humanizing. He was a hatemonger and a bigot.
I prefer to call him Upchuck
If I were the priest, I would be getting transferred to less hazardous duty ASAP, say contacting headhunting tribes in New Guinea. Sooner or later, one of Kirk’s crackpot followers will get the idea that the priest, being an agent of the deep state, deliberately botched the job.
If i was God, I would not tolerate Satan, devils, or demons even for a minute. Nor original sin for a second. I would use my omnipotent power to change Satan and devils into good and helpful beings. Original sin destroys free will and causes unnecessary sin. Religions are all made up myths. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Mormons, Shintoism and on and on. We can tell Christianity is because their imaginary God can’t solve easy to solve problems. Such as occasionally appearing to mankind as found in Exodus 24 to let us know which religions are false. This God myth is a silly myth.
Disclaimer: I am a different Mike Schmitz
Spells and curses are bad, but prayers are good. They’re the same thing, and have the same outcome. Yet one is better than the other.
Interesting topical debouchment.
gijoel, it’s not the actual effect (imprecatory prayers are the same as curses), but the supernatural source.
One source is good, one source is bad.
(In D&D terms, it’s divine magic as opposed to arcane magic — clerics vs wizards)
These are the exact kinds of people who make fun of tribal spiritism.
You sort of have to remind yourself these are people who pray for Christ to return and separate the wheat from the chaff, burning the Sodomites in eternal fire.
:-|