Demons Killed Robin Williams?

The tragic suicide of actor and comedian Robin Williams was all over the news last week. It has since been released that Williams suffered from the early stages of Parkinson's Disease, a common symptom of which is severe, sometimes untreatable depression that probably led to his death. But truly shameless radio evangelist and self-promoter Joe Schimmel knows better than those doctors with all their sciencey nonsense! According to a recent column on Schimmel's website, the real explanation is obvious - Williams was killed by demons.

Robin Williams acknowledged that he had opened himself up to transformative demonic powers that aided him on stage. Without the aid of such demonic powers, it is likely that you would have never have heard of Robin Williams and many other famous celebrities. Williams also recognized that these powers had manifested a very evil influence on stage and that there could be a hefty price to pay for their assistance. Williams told James Kaplan of US Weekly:

“Yeah! Literally, it's like possession ‑ all of a sudden you're in, and because it's in front of a live audience, you just get this energy that just starts going…But there's also that thing ‑ it is possession. In the old days you'd be burned for it…But there is something empowering about it. I mean, it is a place where you are totally ‑ it is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where you really can become this other force. Maybe that's why I don't need to play evil characters [in movies], 'cause sometimes onstage you can cross that line and come back. Clubs are a weird kind of petri dish environment. I mean, that's where people can get as dark as they can in comedy ‑ in the name of comedy, be talking about outrageous stuff and somehow come out the other side. I mean, that's one place where you really want to push it” (Robin Williams, "Robin Williams,” by James Kaplan, US Weekly, January, 1999, p. 53).

Williams’ last statement quoted above answers the question as to why the demonic powers use entertainers. Their goal is to promote evil and darkness and increase mankind’s rebellion against God.

First off, it's clear that Schimmel couldn't recognize a metaphor if it came up and bit him, whereas most of us learned about them in fourth grade English. Is this the curse of being a Biblical literalist, that you lose your ability to comprehend basic literary conventions? Or is Schimmel a literalist because he never had that ability to begin with? It's like all he can see in the quoted paragraph are the words "possession," "energy," "evil," and "dark," which can only ever mean one thing - conjuring demons!

Then, more broadly, there's the ridiculous contention believed by many fundamentalists that all entertainers are occultists. Let me tell you, there are far fewer occultists than there are entertainers. People like me who write books on occultism only wish that we had anywhere near the numbers that the performing arts community does, because we would sell a lot more than we do in real life. Occultism is in fact a tiny niche market that hardly anyone culturally significant has much interest in.

Of course, that reality doesn't mesh with the fundamentalist narrative of being under assault at all times by unspeakably powerful evil forces that find their strict and intolerant beliefs threatening, rather than foolish like most of the rest of us do. It makes them feel important, and justifies their belief that despite belonging to the dominant religion in America they are nonetheless totally oppressed by metaphysical evil.