Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone! And to celebrate the holiday, I think I'll give you all a bit of a holiday scare. This article by Kimberly Daniels was originally posted on Pat Robertson's website, CBN. The article didn't stay on that site for very long before it was pulled. Now, while I love kooky religious intolerance as much as the next person, Ms. Daniels has gone to far in this slanderous attack on one of my favorite holidays. Not only does she call Halloween the devil's holy day, confuse paganism with satanism, but then she had this to say:

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

Oh, the horrors! Not the candy! I can live with the baby sacrifices and the orgies with demons, but leave my peanut butter cups alone. Wasn't the unfounded razor-blades-in-the-candy scare from the 80s bad enough? Now we have witches and warlocks running all the candy companies! Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, blogged about this story, which is where I first read about it, and had this to say:

Wow, it must be fun to live in an evidence-free world where you can simply assert whatever you want without proof or references or anything! Here, let me try: CBN is run by a TI 99-4a computer with buggy code that sometimes strings words together in patterns that almost make sense, if you squint and stand some distance away from them.

Hey, that was easy!

Isn't it fun to be scared on Halloween.