Oh yes, another fundie nutter. Stephen Phelan is the communications director for Human Life International, putatively “the largest international pro-life organization and missionary worldwide”, however they measured that. Of course, much of Phelan’s efforts go toward anti-abortion issues, but as Phelan sees it, demons, evil spirits and Satan are everywhere, and he caught our eye primarily for his criticisms of a pink version of the popular Ouija board game issued by Hasbro in 2010. As Phelan sees it, the game, designed for girls aged 8 and up, is no mere toy but a “dangerous spiritual game” that opens anyone, but particularly Christians, up to attacks on their soul. “There’s a spiritual reality to it and Hasbro is treating it as if it’s just a game,” said Phelan. “It’s not Monopoly. It really is a dangerous spiritual game and for [Hasbro] to treat it as just another game is quite dishonest.” As he points out, the Bible explicitly states “not to mess with spirits”.
What distinguished the game from, say, Harry Potter-themed merchandise, “is that the Ouija board is actually is a portal to talk to spirits and it’s hard to get people to understand that until they actually do it. I don’t pretend to know how it works, but it actually does.” Moreover, the pink version of the game is explicitly marketed to young girls who may want to partake in “something dangerous” during a late-night sleepover.
Diagnosis: Someone evidently has some problems distinguishing teen scream flicks from reality, and it is not girls aged 8 and up. Don’t let this guy watch Harry Potter on his own without a trusted adult nearby.
Mr. Phelan obviously has not done his homework on this one. It is quite clear from even a cursory examination of the toy in question that it is a one-way portal accessible from this dimension only and therefore cannot serve, as Phelan mistakenly believes, as a gateway that "will leave a person's soul vulnerable to attack." Indeed, scholars who have investigated the Hasbro Pink Ouija Board(TM), or so-called "Ouivulva," concur in regarding it as capable, when properly deployed, of functioning for the user merely as a portal back through his or her mother's vaginal canal and thereby into a "trans-metaphysical uterine environment" or "in utero parallel micro-universe" wherein the voyager returns to a primordial state of being (Being) that in many cases affords epiphanies and insights into the True Self (cf. "Past Life Regression Analysis," though the Ouivulva cannot take one beyond the moment of conception). Unfortunately, the use of the Ouivulva board does carry some risk of an ectopic un-pregnancy; in such cases the unfortunate metaphysical traveler will "go tubal," with little chance of returning to this mortal coil.
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