The Devil Made Me Do It!

Suppose you were to receive a message along the following lines:

There are two groups of invisible extraterrestrials among us and they are at war with each other. The good guys are from Kazanga IV. Sometime in the indefinite future, they will generously reward anyone who takes their side now. And they’ll horribly punish those who don’t. The bad guys are from Moracia.* The reason you are unaware of these extraterrestrials’ presence is because the evil Moracians have used a mind ray on you making you oblivious to both them and their enemies. It is this mind ray which is making you claim there are no extraterrestrials on earth. The good Kazangans have the antidote to the mind ray, and as they want you on their side, they will give it to you once you treat them with proper respect and beg for it.

Would you give any credence to this tale? Or would you just regard it as bad science fiction?

Yet I regularly get messages from people that are equivalent to the weak tale above, and they expect me to be miraculously convinced. There’s no logical difference between the story of Kazangans and Moracians among us, and what Anthony Patterson has to say in commenting on Meditation 7.

“The Devil has succeeded completely in tricking your under-utilised and misguided minds into thinking that you are in some sort of safe zone. For your own sakes, for the love of God, pray that He will help you to escape this trap into which you have fallen.”

What Devil? What God? Where is the evidence either of these entities exist?

Suppose that I am somehow being tricked by Anthony Patterson’s Devil into blindness to the existence of both God and the Devil. What does it say about Anthony’s God that he would provide eternal torment to those who have been tricked?

After all, by Anthony’s own tortured logic, my disbelief is not my fault. The Devil made me do it.

(For more of Anthony Patterson’s reasons for us to believe, see Talk Back 41)

Note:

* Planet names Kazanga IV and Moracia have been borrowed Robert Sheckley’s short story “Pilgrimage to Earth”.