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"We Are Legion": Primal Dreams And Screams In The Satanic Screen, Carrol L. Fry Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

Satan figures prominently in the Christian tradition as the ultimate Other, the enemy of our species, and he has been a central villain first in literature and now in horror films. Why viewers enjoy films that scare them is a conundrum of long standing. An explanation might come from the work of a new generation of Darwinists who have expanded on the master's findings to develop the field of evolutionary biology. Scholars in these fields believe that adaptation to the environment and survival of the fittest created not only physical forms for species but also behaviors that were adaptive for …