Joseph Laycock > Quotes

“While the romantics rejected the Enlightenment’s exaltation of reason, many theologians accepted it and sought to frame the Bible as a set of empirical data.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“In an interview given at Gen Con in 2007, Gygax explained that he had been reluctant to talk about his identity as a Christian during the era of the panic: “I was afraid it would give Christianity a bad name because I did D&D.”4”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“Biblow suggested that rich fantasy lives prepare children to think about different options for dealing with frustration and allow them to consider the possible consequences of these options.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“You said in your heart “I will ascend to heaven I will raise my throne above the stars of God I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds I will make myself like the Most High.”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“How can a philosophy that celebrates individuality and rebellion against "arbitrary authority" not only form a collective identity but also organize for effective social action?”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“More importantly, one could make the opposite argument to Leithart and Grant--that if good is guaranteed to win, then goodness becomes merely a means to an end rather than an end unto itself.”
― Joseph Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“Finally, Greaves argues that an inherent principle in LaVey’s writing is that Satanists should follow the best available evidence. Therefore, if modern Satanists have better scientific evidence about the function of altruism, by LaVey’s own reasoning, their philosophy should adapt accordingly.74”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“I’m all for a police state; no messing around. There should be an armed guard on every street corner. The Israelis have the right idea: school bus drivers and MacDonald’s managers carrying Uzis.”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“Both creators of Dungeons & Dragons were devout Christians.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“Someone in a state of flow is happy because he or she is interested in the task itself rather than an end result.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“Finally, by inhabiting another world we are able to look back at our own from a new perspective. This too is a function that fantasy role-playing games share with religion. While the truth claims of religious worldviews generally cannot be proven empirically, they exert an observable influence on the way that people order their world.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“The creators of D&D were themselves Christian, and groups such as the Christian Gamers’ Guild contain pastors among their ranks.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“Concerns that an organizational structure has become "unsatanic" demonstrate what Jesper Petersen calls the "Satanic Procrustean Bed" of individuality versus the collective. How can a philosophy that celebrates individuality and rebellion against "arbitrary authority" not only form a collective identity but also organize for effective social action?”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“We are narrative creatures, and stories render the world apprehensible. Narrative tells us about the world we live in and our place within it.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“The claim that a particular set of beliefs about a particular God has so much historical importance that the government must erect monuments to impress the significance of these beliefs on the public certainly seems like a government establishment of religion.”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“Like the Society for Creative Anachronism, The Ballad of the White Horse depicted “the Middle Ages as they should have been.” Chesterton’s ballad made a lasting impression on Robert E. Howard, who praised it in letters to his friend Clyde Smith.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“the Randazza controversy as a “purity spiral.”47 Sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning define a purity spiral as a phenomenon in which members of ideological and religious movements “strive to outdo one another in displays of zealotry, condemning and expelling members of their own movement for smaller and smaller deviations from its core virtues. . . . The result is an ever-increasing demand for moral purity, and ever-greater effort to meet the standards of the group.”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“Let us instead look at contemporary Satanism for what it really is: a brutal religion of elitism and social Darwinism that seeks to re-establish the reign of the able over the idiotic, of swift justice over injustice, and for a wholesale rejection of egalitarianism as a myth that has crippled the advancement of the human species for the last two thousand years.”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“feel I have to comment on the comic relief of these flabby old men who fashion themselves the master race. They may not be fine physical specimens, but they’re not fine intellectual specimens either. Nor were they able to rally a good counter rally. But I’m sure your mommies thought you were handsome little boys.”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“An example of this is an urban legend told in some gaming circles about a gazebo.”
― Joseph P Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds

“Discourse about religion and it’s distinction from adjacent concepts such as philosophy, cult, or troll is always an exercise in power.”
― Joseph Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“The Satanic Temple . . . was as much the cause of a schism within Modern Satanism as it was the result of one. —Lucien Greaves”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion

“One June 5, Brian Lynch, a Catholic priest from Belle Plaine, gave a five-minute address to the City Council urging them to reject TST’s monument. Lynch argued the monument was illegal because it constituted an “offense against decency.” Furthermore, he speculated that the monument would attract Satanists, making Belle Plaine, “a place for theistic Satanic ritual activities that victimize our children.” Lynch testified that Satanic ritual is “known” to include sex with children. Since the monument was in a public park, Satanists could use it to “groom” children for abuse. After his address, Lynch led some thirty of his parishioners from the City Council to church to pray the monument not be installed.”
― Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion