Since Andrez reminded me of the place, I just did a little cruise through FSTDT, as I do once in a while. It's unfortunately gotten a little strident since Winace passed away, and there's a tendency to pounce on the tiniest evidence of fundy-ness, but it still presents a smorgasbord of unintentionally funny religious (and occasionally atheist) comments.

Sometimes it's just alarming, though. When I argue or debate or discuss with religious persons here, I am generally confident that I'm interacting with rational people. But there are entire mega-ministries, apparently, in the US, devoted to promoting beliefs that are so divorced from reality that I suspect they are actually harming their members.

I'm particularly shocked by the so-called 'Deliverance Ministries', which seems to be a growing phenomenon, which has focussed on demons as the cause of anything bad that happens to people. These people run around dribbling 'consecrated' oil all over the place, 'anointing' their windows and doors, their posessions, the perimeters of their property and churches, themselves, and sometimes any unfortunate random person they think might be harbouring demons.

If their children misbehave, it's demons, if they have a bad dream, it's demons, if they don't get along with neighbours, it's demons. They often claim to see and hear demons.

At what point does a denomination slip into the realm of cults? At what point does faith become synonymous with delusion?