Pastor Greg Locke, Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee.
"Autistic children are possessed by evil demons"
"Autistic children are possessed by evil demons"
Preacher of hate, Talibangelical Pastor Greg Locke of the Global Vision Bible Church in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, USA has turned his hate from face masks, social distancing, anti-COVID vaccines and people who didn't vote for Donald Trump, to autistic children.
Failing to find any mention of autism in the Bible, he has concluded that autistic children must be possessed by evil demons. There is no mention of cancer, diabetes, sickle-cell syndrome, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s dementia, viruses or bacteria in the Bible either, but Locke seems blissfully unaware that when he tells us the Bible disagrees with science, he is telling us the Bible is wrong. This is something we have known for hundreds of years of course, ever since the scientific method gave us the tool to discover the truth and we discovered the truth was very different to what the Bible said.
Locke may be motivated by his failure to gain the exposure his parasitic lifestyle needs to keep the money supply flowing. He has been banned by Twitter because of his messages of hate, incitement to violent insurrection and COVID disinformation campaigns that were costing the lives of those gullible enough to believe Pastor Locke rather than scientists on the subject of COVID-19 cause and prevention. Few things are better at gaining exposure in the social media, and the appreciation of fundamentalists looking for excuses to feel smugly self-righteous, than an outrageous and cruel slur against defenceless children, who, if truth be told, probably make them feel uncomfortable rather than compassionate, so Locke chose his latest victims with care, knowing his target marks well.
Like a true evangelical out to win converts to his cult, Locke has no hesitation about lying about the Bible to his willing dupes, either. Confident that few if any of them ever read it and will not be checking his claims, he tells them that on three occasions children suffering from epilepsy and 'anger issues' were cured by Jesus who drove the demons from them. There are no such accounts to be found anywhere in the Bible or anywhere else. He also tries to entertain his audience by mocking the compulsive hand-washing behaviour of a girl he says claimed to have OCD (something else caused by demonic possession, apparently).
The sad thing is there is a vast resource of uneducated fundamentalist Christians in the USA who believe the primitive nonsense that classifies all illness, especially mental illness, as demonic possession and will even cite Bible tales of Jesus casting out demons (Mark 3:11, Luke 4:41, James 2:19, etc). This barbaric thinking was behind the grotesque asylums from earlier times where mentally ill people were incarcerated and subjected to what can only be described as punishment designed to drive out the demons, because they had shown 'character weakness' or 'moral degeneracy' in allowing the demons in in the first place. In the grotesque, religion-inspired thinking of the time, such people deserved to be, and were, shut away from public view, often for life, in institutions that resembled prisons with staff who behaved more like prison warders than carers.
The same barbaric thinking also led to witch burnings and the burning at the stake of heretics.
Locke's ignorant barbarism, straight out of the fearful infancy of our species, his lack of compassion and cavalier disregard for the welfare of others, including his own followers, is an indication of what life would be like under an evangelical, Taliban-style theocracy like Locke and his fellow right-wing bigots crave and which they thought they were on the verge of achieving under Donald Trump.
My concern is when will Locke,and anybody like him have any and all platforms taken away,plus have him put away in an intitution for as long as is needed to keep his immoral corrosive malignant narcissism away from society to eliminate the deleterious effects on the vulnerable.
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