The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [77]
Apparently, there is a pervasive police gullibility problem on this matter. Here are some excerpts from FBI expert Lanning’s analysis of ‘Satanic, Occult and Ritualistic Crime’, based on bitter experience, and published in the October 1989 issue of the professional journal, The Police Chief:
Almost any discussion of satanism and witchcraft is interpreted in the light of the religious beliefs of those in the audience. Faith, not logic and reason, governs the religious beliefs of most people. As a result, some normally sceptical law enforcement officers accept the information disseminated at these conferences without critically evaluating it or questioning the sources... For some people satanism is any religious belief system other than their own.
Lanning then offers a long list of belief systems he has personally heard described as satanism at such conferences. It includes Roman Catholicism, the Orthodox Churches, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, rock and roll music, channelling, astrology and New Age beliefs in general. Is there not a hint here about how witch hunts and pogroms get started? He continues:
Within the personal religious belief system of a law enforcement officer, Christianity may be good and satanism evil. Under the Constitution, however, both are neutral. This is an important, but difficult, concept for many law enforcement officers to accept. They are paid to uphold the penal code, not the Ten Commandments... The fact is that far more crime and child abuse has been committed by zealots in the name of God, Jesus and Mohammed than has ever been committed in the name of Satan. Many people don’t like that statement, but few can argue with it.
Many of those alleging satanic abuse describe grotesque orgiastic rituals in which infants are murdered and eaten. Such claims have been made about reviled groups by their detractors throughout European history, including the Cataline conspirators in Rome, the Passover ‘blood libel’ against the Jews, and the Knights Templar as they were being dismantled in fourteenth-century France. Ironically, reports of cannibalistic infanticide and incestuous orgies were among the particulars used by Roman authorities to persecute the early Christians. After all, Jesus himself is quoted as saying (John vi, 53) ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you’. Although the next line makes it clear Jesus is talking about eating his own flesh and drinking his own blood, unsympathetic critics might have misunderstood the Greek ‘Son of man’ to mean ‘child’ or ‘infant’. Tertullian and other early Church fathers defended themselves against these grotesque accusations as best they could.
Today, the lack of corresponding numbers of lost infants and young children in police files is explained by the claim that all over the world babies are being bred for this purpose, surely reminiscent of abductee claims that alien/human breeding experiments are rampant. Also similar to the alien abduction paradigm, satanic cult abuse is said to pass down from generation to generation in certain families. To the best of my knowledge, as in the alien abductien paradigm, no physical evidence has ever been offered in a court of law to support such claims. Their emotional power, though, is evident. The mere possibility that such things are going on rouses us mammals to action. When we give credence to satanic ritual, we also raise the social status of those who warn us of the supposed danger.
Consider these five cases: (1) Myra Obasi, a Louisiana school-teacher, was - she and her sisters believed after consultation with a hoodoo practitioner - possessed by demons. Her nephew’s nightmares were part of the evidence. So they left for Dallas, abandoned their five children, and the sisters then gouged out Ms Obasi’s eyes. At the trial, she defended her sisters. They were trying to help her, she said. But hoodoo