UPDATE: Here's a report on successful surgery on the poor boy. Plus:
Police say the boy's stepfather, 30-year-old bricklayer Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, confessed to pushing supposedly ''blessed'' sewing needles deep into the child because his lover told him to while in trances.
The rituals were performed over a period of a month to try to keep the couple together, the stepfather told police. Authorities suspect the woman was trying to take revenge on the wife of her lover by having the man hurt her son.
Magalhaes told detectives the woman would enter into trances and give him commands to insert the needles, police inspector Helder Fernandes Santana said. The stepfather told police the rituals happened every few days for a full month, with him inserting several needles during each session....
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21 comments:
Surely this is America's fault.
Which says to me, after all these years - and with you teaching a course on Religion and the Constitution (and, yes, being a professor!) you have no comprehension of how beliefs work or affect our lives.
Honestly, Ann:
Do you think you're willingly blind-siding yourself on this or what?
That's what I can't figure out.
Usually I read the articles you link, Althouse.
Not this time.
Thanks for the warning label.
BTW, I was commenting on the line:
"It is hard to comprehend how people can be so evil."
I can - seen it, endured it, and still trying to survive it - to the laughter of many.
Yes, indeedie, I know it well,...
For some, other people are just so many wooden blocks to be moved around.
You can't be evil to wooden blocks.
The use of infant and adult sacrifice is a very old tradition pre-dating Christian Traditions. The belief for thousands of years all over this world has been that there is great supernatural power achieved from these sacrifices. When the atheists work so hard to drive out Christianity, they only make the world safe again to take back up these pre-Christian Traditions. Do a study of Hawian social order before the American Christian missionaries intervened with the truth. That was only 120 years ago. Taming Hawaian volcanos is a lot like taming the Sun's warming and cooling cycles. Both require tremendous human sacrifice offered to gods by special High Priests, when the truth is gone away.
I tend to think stuff like this has less to do with religion or beliefs and more to do with sadists just making shit up to carry out their cruelties.
Kind of like the people who came up with the idea that one needs to rape a virgin to cure HIV.
Was there every any real belief behind things like "Black Magic"? Somehow I doubt it. It was likely just constructed as a way to excuse and glorify violence.
Seems like a politician in America could do quite well running on a platform that included tougher sentencing for crimes against children. Maybe such a politician could also do well in Brazil.
Knox...How educated and science honoring was Germany when they became ruled by a entire political party that believed 100% in Black Magic and used it to make important decisions, only 75 years ago?
Ann said...
It is hard to comprehend how people can be so evil.
Unfortunately, it isn't. The banality of evil as a concept predates WWII. Conan Doyle recognized it in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
On a train ride, Watson comments how peaceful and gentle the pastoral life must be. Holmes demurs, observing that any of those isolated little farmsteads could contain as much evil as in London's East End.
As the saying goes, we hear of it more today because the world is more open to us.
Stupid assholes!!!
WV: fooke
Don't read about the Congo or Liberia. I did a lot of book research but ended up leaving the worst stuff out. I still have nightmares about that. That was just from reading about it.
There are a lot of people in this world who do not see reality empirically. Spirits are real, and sacrifice works. Magic is a normal part of life.
I read a very good book about Liberia and West African religion, I'll see if I can remember the title. The author really pounded home that people in Liberia see the real world as a shadow of the spiritual. What happens in the spirit world is more important.
This leads to a lot of bizarre atrocities and strange behavior that cannot be explained except in terms of religious belief.
Welcome to the Brazil Olympics.
Multiculti says "all beliefs are equal except for evil capitalism which must be destroyed".
Florida...The Olympics feel at home in a cult centered society since they are one too. The ancient Greeks were never Judeo-Christian Monotheists and their Olympus dedicated games were then and are now an offering to the ancient Greek gods.Not that there is anything wrong with that.
TG,
"When the atheists work so hard to drive out Christianity, they only make the world safe again to take back up these pre-Christian Traditions."
Now, now - that's only those so-called "atheists" like Sam Harris. On the other hand, backing up what you're saying, was the great indie movie, Songs From The Second Floor, about a world-wide financial collapse and how the people of Sweden ultimately handle it. It's a wild ride for a very-slow movie.
Knox,
"I tend to think stuff like this has less to do with religion or beliefs and more to do with sadists just making shit up to carry out their cruelties."
You'd be badly mistaken. People do believe in this stuff - a lot - as well as a whole lot of other things. Think of the James Arthur Ray sweatlodge story:
Doctors, nurses, lawyers - really high-earners who could afford to plop down $10,000 for a getaway weekend - who could be talked into accepting American Indian and Eastern beliefs, but not out of risking their own lives over them.
When you're that far gone - which becomes easy in this dangerous "you can believe what you want to believe" culture - risking someone else's life is nothing.
wv: "gustros" - Boutros Boutros Gali's brother.
I skip over articles that involve the mistreatment of children. They're too disturbing. A world where children have that kind of exposure to evil is not worth living in....In order to discourage illegal immigration, the Commanches used to torture the infants of settlers to death in front of their parents.
I skip over articles that involve the mistreatment of children. They're too disturbing.
I usually do the same. I really think that many crimes against children deserve the death penalty and even more deserve life in prison--the kind where you never get out, not this fluffy "oh this person's reformed now" parole business.
Crack ...Someone like you who has faced the occult and broken free to tell about it has a powerful message. Your message is to avoid the obvious bad thinking that captures minds. That is true, and after that coming to reality moment, then a person's mind needs protection from the next variant of occult thinking. A proven way to stay safe from these enemies is to fill ones mind with Christian teaching on these issues from the scriptures.
Speaking of belief and what people will do, remember all the noise about Obama's father being tied into the Mau Mau in Kenya, and the mistreatment of people by the Brits is one reason he treats the Brits the way he does?
Go look up the Mau Mau oathing ceremonies, the unexpurgated versions. These people believed, too.
Followed the link.
I guess I can say, "I've seen the needle(s) and the damage done."
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