Posted by I saw this article, titled Satanic Art in Catholic Church Exposed, a few days ago at the Worldnutdaily and made a note to write about it. The article details a new documentary called Rape of the Soul that claims that throughout the history of the Church, artists have been subliminally encoding “satanic and occultic imagery” in their paintings. The WND article begins with their standard breathlessness:
Could the Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse crisis be tied to embedded Satanic and occultic imagery in its artwork – some of it hundreds of years old?
The film, which is being released by Silver Sword International, contends a major cause of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church could be due to prolonged exposure to sexual and satanic images being incorporated into the religious art…
Experts are featured in the film to offer detailed accounts of the subconscious programming effects of the sex and occult images on the human brain and how it promotes sex, Satanism and the occult. Religious education materials, songbooks, children’s story books, devotionals and the Sunday Missals all have been found to contain embedded imagery.
Not since the heyday of the “backward masking” on albums hysteria have we seen something quite this silly from the moonbats. You remember that one, don’t you? That’s the one where they tried to convince us that rock bands were subliminally recording messages backwards on their albums to get their fans to kill themselves. Because nothing boosts record sales like having half your fans off themselves before the follow-up album comes out.
Bartholemew has an excellent post on his blog examining the “experts” involved in the documentary , which include our old friend Judith Reisman. She is a past winner of the Robert O’Brien Trophy for her loony belief in “erototoxins”, hypothetical chemicals that are allegedly released when one views pornography that rot the brain, in the process “subverting the first amendment.” To call Reisman a nutcase would be an insult to nutcases.
“These images, unrecognized by the untrained eye, can be a ticking time-bomb to an individual who is unaware of their presence, especially someone who is already predisposed to deviant sexual behavior,” said Reisman.
And here I thought “the devil made me do it” was a stupid rationalization for one’s behavior. Apparently, he actually did make them do it. Another “expert” featured in the documentary is Wilson Bryan Key:
Dr. Wilson Bryan Key, an internationally recognized embedded imagery expert with over 30 years of expertise as both a former professor at the University of Western Ontario and a wealth of first-hand experiences as a former advertising executive. Key is a MENSA member and author of five books on the subject.
As Bartholomew accurately points out, there is an iron law at work here: anyone who feels the need to tell you that they’re a member of MENSA when listing their qualifications – a trait here shared by our other old pal, the endlessly ridiculous Vox Day – you can expect some serious manure is going to follow. He also links to this page by Craig Johns of the University of Iowa, who points out that Key has a penchant for seeing boogeymen pretty much everywhere:
He claims the one-word cue for lust is hidden in everything from liquor ads to Ritz crackers, the holes of which he says are arranged during baking to form several depictions of the letters S, E, X…Key claims that while carefully examining a Howard Johnson’s menu, he saw that a plate of clams pictured on the menu was actually the portrayal of a sexual orgy, which included various people and a donkey.
Okay, someone needs to stop taking acid and staring at the clouds. This is seriously funny stuff, and ridiculous enough that you just knew the Worldnutdaily would jump all over it and try to make money off it. Call it the PT Barnum business plan. When you’ve got thousands of credulous suckers lined up, you keep feeding them nonsense until their bank accounts are dry.
March 29, 2006
March 29, 2006
