Comments on: The Devil Didn’t Do It

By: Spork

Spork — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:54:10 +0000

You’ve only got a few days left before that episode is yanked.

By: grazatt

grazatt — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:20:45 +0000

I bet a lot of kids would think being able to call up the Devil was pretty cool!

By: Agersomnia

Agersomnia — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:03:09 +0000

I know of somebody who actually did as this story, but with God, at a very early age…

And nothing happened. Fortunately.

And so, he went atheist.

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:51:59 +0000

I heard that show also, and thought it was incredible. What guilt these poor people must have to live with – through no real fault of their own. Sad.

“This stuff is only real as long as it’s not taken really seriously.”

Exactly. This is why even theists who believe in the power of prayer and miracles and supernatural healing still insist on going to the best doctors and getting into the top hospitals. There’s a weird dichotomy between believing deeply in something like religion but not taking it totally, completely seriously when it comes to real life.

It’s really odd and goes along with the tricky ability that believers develop to hold contradictory thoughts in separate parts of their brains.

By: rae

rae — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:35:22 +0000

this was a very powerful story. I heard it Sunday morning.
I remember feeling possessed because I was playing with a kitten we just got when I was nine. I threw the Kitten higher than I knew I should have and when it landed on the floor it had a seizure and died. I thought I killed it. It turns out at that exact moment it choked on a hair ball. I was raised catholic and everything bad that ever happened was God punishing me.

By: BrianM

BrianM — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:22:19 +0000

Interesting that the coincidence of the terrible thunderstorm and his challenge caused him to eventually lose his faith. My first guess would have been that it would have confirmed it, instead, through attributing the deaths to Satan.

Thanks for sharing this. Funny how minds work, huh?

By: Ron in Houston

Ron in Houston — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:01:05 +0000

When I look back, it was things like the devil and demons that really started my loss of religious belief. I probably never believed in the devil or in evil spirits, but when people started trying to convince me they were real, I just knew that religious belief was insane.

By: Friendly Atheist » What Do You Think About All the Time?

Friendly Atheist » What Do You Think About All the Time? — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:30 +0000

[...] of This American Life, the episode I referred to earlier discussed death and how people had to live with the fact that they (accidentally or otherwise) [...]

By: BeanFlower

BeanFlower — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:07:57 +0000

That’s terrible… I’m glad he had the strength to not let that event ruin his entire life.

By: Norm

Norm — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:00:04 +0000

I listened to that show earlier today and was reminded of an article that was in the St. Paul paper last Monday about a program called Camp Noah. It is run by a Lutheran group and ostensibly teaches coping skills to kids who have been through natural disasters, but it does so using the Noah story while trying to simultaneously portray the god in that story as merciful.
Here is the original article: http://www.twincities.com/ci_9873131
Here is the letter I wrote in response (entitled “Nature and Noah”):
http://www.twincities.com/opinion/ci_9913755

I haven’t seen any hate mail in reply yet, but you never know.