If there is one thing about religion that really drives me crazy it is when religious people act out their beliefs in ways that harm children. If adults want to handle snakes and otherwise kill themselves out of faith, that’s one thing. But leave children out of it.
We all know of children suffering and dying because the religious beliefs of parents stop them from giving medical care. But here is an even more infuriating story of people actually killing their children in the course of performing an exorcism.
A Maryland mother and another woman charged with murdering two of the mother’s small children believed they were performing an exorcism at the time of the killing, police said on Saturday.
The two children, Norell Harris, 1, and Zyana Harris, 2, suffered multiple stab wounds at a townhouse in Germantown, Maryland, Montgomery County Police said in a statement. Their siblings, ages 5 and 8, were injured and hospitalized, police said.
At the court hearing, more details were released.
Members of ExouSia Ministries, a small Christian congregation which worships at a Germantown elementary school, Avery and Sanford told investigators they’d recently created a side-car clan they called the Demon Assassins. The four-member group maintained a rank and order, with Avery positioned as “commander” and Sanford, “sergeant.”
According to comments made in court, Avery and Sanford had scheduled an in-home exorcism Thursday evening for a group member named Troy. Only problem, Troy never arrived for his appointment. Then around 5 a.m. Friday, both women reportedly became convinced a demonic spirit had invaded the soul’s of all four children, turning their young eyes dark black.
“It began with an attempt to break the neck of the youngest child, it proceeded into strangulation and ultimately graduated into stabbing,” McCarthy said.
Despite deeply penetrating stab wounds, three of the four children weren’t covered in blood when officers arrived, but instead wrapped in wet blankets.
“The women, after the attack, showered together to wash the blood off themselves, cleaned-up the crime scene and then prepared the children to see God,” McCarthy added. “It was to be an everlasting life in heaven.”
It is this aspect of religion that really angers me. Mainstream and moderate religious people may point to all the benefits religion supposedly provides but there is no question that it is also the breeding ground for bizarre ideas about the supernatural that can be positively dangerous.
Many theodicists would argue that the two dead children have been selected by God and plucked up into Heaven to fulfill their part in the divine plan that God has for all of us. I hope the two surviving children have better luck in fulfilling their part of God’s plan, perhaps in a foster home selected by the state. Whatever course they take it couldn’t be any worse than staying under the influence of this stupidly deadly cult.
So these people were poking holes in children so the demons would leak out. That makes perfect sense.
Maybe Mano should stop performing exorcisms?
Makes me wonder where the father was and why there was no mention of the father in the article?
If you’re going to generalize from this incident to a broad sweeping statement about all religions, is it reasonable for me to speculate from this incident that the absence of the father in families is a breeding ground for bizarre ideas about parenting (for instance that fathers are unimportant, that single parenting is good, reasonable or natural and just another lifestyle choice, and that single parenting doesn’t hurt and endanger children) that can be positively dangerous?
Or we could speculate that Supernatural is to blame. Except there aren’t hundreds of places I can go in an average size city to get my bloodthirsty desire to kill demons with magic knives validated.
There is that.
Yeah, he must be generalizing from just this incident ’cause nothing like this has ever happened before.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc and correlation is not causation.
Also what has happened before? Terrible violence in single parent homes. As I asked does the broad sweeping generalization of one defend the broad sweeping generalization of the other?
I know I don’t need to tell you folks that, I mean, you are the skeptics.
Those apply how, exactly? Nobody is just assuming that religion is to blame. This is a case of injury and death directly due to religion. The same was true in the thousand plus cases I offered you. These people were harmed and killed by religion. The same is true in “faith healing” deaths by neglect. Simple and direct cause and effect. Nobody, not even the victim’s lawyers dispute the connection.. nobody except you, the troll.
If you can provide a reasonable explanation for doing so, then probably yes.
If you are just going to pull something out of your ass and claim that it whatever appeared in your hand has equal weight with everything else by virtue of its mere existence, then probably no.