Religious Conspiracies and Tours of Hell

Question from Jack:
Hey I’m Jack from Australia and for the past couple of years I’ve been hearing about the illuminati, people say that they are a devil worshiping secret society who plan to make a one world government, the type of one world govenrment that the book of revelation talks about, now my position on this is quite open, I’m not sure to believe it or not, it’s the same with my faith I’m not sure anymore what to believe
Anyway artists like beyonce, jay z and most recently cheryl cole have put backwards satanic messages in their songs, and as you can imagine the folk on YouTube have immediantly pointed the finger to the illuminati,
Now even more scarier in 2009 a girl in Colombia (I’ve forgotten her name) had a near death experience in which jesus took her on a tour of heaven and hell, in hell she saw michael Jackson and apparently he was in there because he sold his soul to the devil for fame and fortune, and that anyone who listen to his music will be trapped by Satan, she is said she saw 4 year old kids in there who were there for watching Pokemon! It sounds shady to me but none the less it has worried me and affected my life, I no longer listen to most artists and I live a life of caution, so what I want to know is what is the atheist view on this? Could it possibly be a plan to bring people back into church’s? I don’t know but I’m not fully sure about this one
Cheers jack

Answer by SmartLX:
The Illuminati were a real organisation formed in Bavaria (now part of Germany) in 1776 and forcibly disbanded and outlawed in 1785. That’s nine years in the whole of history where we can point to a single thing they actually did. Despite what’s in Angels & Demons, there hasn’t been a single confirmed act by anyone working on behalf of the Illuminati in hundreds of years. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but if they do they’re now so secret that they might as well not exist. As far as anyone knows, we have nothing to fear from them.

Just because something sounds like words when played backwards doesn’t mean it was meant to do that. Do you have any idea how difficult that is to do on purpose, and also how hard it is to keep from happening accidentally? A music buff who plays everything backwards is eventually going to hear some Satanic crap in three songs by dumb luck, even if no one’s trying to put it in.

Your afterlife day tripper girl is actually Ecuadorian. She’s among the first stories listed on this rather loud website. Every part of the website is geared towards convincing people that the afterlife is real and bringing them to the church, so regardless of whether her story is true, that’s definitely the plan. Of course nothing about the story can be tested, but they expect it’ll persuade people anyway, or at least scare believers into being even more devout. You really have no good reason to believe this girl’s “testimony”.