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 Gitzbitah wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Do you believe in witchcraft Orlanth?

As a witch, I can tell you that Wiccan beliefs don't really have this kind of involuntary possession.

Without a belief in hell or heaven, demons are right out- although we do recognize spirits aplenty, of the benevolent and pernicious variety. But those that would take over a human host that didn't invite them in is not a belief we hold.

I also am quite curious to hear Orlanths answer. His beliefs are fervent, and curiouser and curiouser.

Inviting them in is another thing to think about.

What about Faustian pacts? Are we to believe that people can get superpowers or improve their position in the world by forming pacts with these demons and/or the actual devil, if not even the super devil?

 BigWaaagh wrote:
It's ridiculous to see this thread devolve into a shouting match between members of different view points when it comes to faith.

Though I am part of said devolving, I think that - if nothing else - it's important to realise that the existence of daemons and daemonic possession almost surely relies on faith and belief (i.e. relies on Christianity or Islam) before you can consider it a possibility and thus make sense of it.

That being said, I was hoping we could have ended the religion side and come to a conclusion about the psychiatrist in question, but alas: This is Dakka. < Insert 300 Movie Meme >

 BigWaaagh wrote:
The point of debate is to produce an argument that renders response impossible.

The point of a debate is to reach a rational, logical, and agreed-upon solution/conclusion. Rending any response impossible is not the point of a debate.

 IllumiNini wrote:


Even so, that still leaves a large number of articles (which, as I said, can be obtained by a quick Google search) that seem to discredit the fulfillment of this prophecy using logical deduction. Care to address those (or at least their existence)?

Took a look at those. 'Debunks' range from an anti-semitic site that posts flat up denials because anti-semitism, and those who assume that the claim is that 1948 is the beginning of the End Times, and quite rightly critique that, while not understanding that isn't the point being made. Not found any sites that try to discredit by 'logical deduction'. Care to post a link to one.

It is nevertheless still a simple matter of totally up the days on the Jewish religious calendar between the trigger events. So long as nobody has miscounted, and they checked there isnt anything to debunk.

 IllumiNini wrote:

I'm sorry, but I don't see it. Based on my Google searches, it seems like two dots are being connected out of convenience rather than because they should actually be connected.

To a limited extent this is true, after the event the two/three dots (trigger events and the foundation of Israel) are connected, but its mainly a case of adding it all up afterwards and seeing that it connects. To the day. And over a course of over two and a half millenia. Try to find anything comperable anywhere.
But its hardly a 'convenience', the events were related and the timeline specific.

 IllumiNini wrote:

I honestly don't know what for because I haven't given it any thought in the better part of a decade, but think about it from a purely logical stand-point (and by that I mean try to ignore the conviction your faith allows): How am I (as an agnostic) supposed to believe that Jesus fed a whole bunch of people with a less than adequate amount of food? From a purely logical standpoint, that's impossible - no two ways about it; so how could it be anything but a metaphorical story or a lesson in something?

Perhaps, and I do agree with cautioning people over Biblical literalism. There has not to my knowledge been a repetition of this miracle anywhere, Wheres resurrections and miraculous healings have been reported, is an ongoing gift. Deliverance certainly comes into that category.

 IllumiNini wrote:

But whether or not Jesus is God as an actual fact that can be verified by the non-believing public is not being brought into question in this thread. The idea of daemons and daemonic possession is.

The existence of the demonic is a core Biblical principle, from inception to today. The Lords Prayer includes the line 'deliver us from the evil' with evil in this context meaning the demonic.
It is not a fringe belief but a core tenet of the churches and always has been. It cant be separated out of Christianity, or the rest of the Judaic religions.

The line is "deliver us from evil", not "the evil".

There is no consensus as to whether the evil referred to is just general evil or the devil.

 Orlanth wrote:

The existence of the demonic is a core Biblical principle, from inception to today. The Lords Prayer includes the line 'deliver us from the evil' with evil in this context meaning the demonic.
It is not a fringe belief but a core tenet of the churches and always has been. It cant be separated out of Christianity, or the rest of the Judaic religions.

Many Catholic theologians have opined negatively on the existence of Hell as anything else than a human state of things. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Pope Pius X, Pope John Paul II (1999), the Catholic Faith handbook for Youth (2007), just to name a few.

The idea of Hell as home of the demonic, or of demons at all, is completely out of place with (at least) modern Catholicism. The only remaining attribute of Hell in Catholic catechism is that it is an eternal separation from God's love, compounded by the fact that it's unilateral : God still loves the damned, but by his own choice, the damned made himself unable to love God.

 r_squared wrote:
Apart from the fascinating back and forth about evidence, the real world tragedies endured by this "belief" are having horrific consequences for real people and children the world over.

The Roman Catholics et al dont cut kids limbs off and float the torsos down the Thames to cure them or deal with the problem.
The beliefs not comparable.

 r_squared wrote:

Torture, mutilations and death are frequent results endured by innocent and vulnerable people by those acting on their "faith".

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/mar/01/accusations-witchcraft-pattern-child-abuse

https://www.google.com.cy/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/6416/1/RR750.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwix8vLWq77OAhUKvRoKHbLwBHgQFggeMAI&usg=AFQjCNHkBOWQAjaU2jtyzVZuQp08F4BpIg

This is false flagged. The links above are entirely related to more brutal African animist practices which are not abandoned when adopting another religion and are in separation to it. The Guardian doesnt make it easy as it doesnt care about misleading images and statistics; but even they blamed the crimes on 'African religions'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17255470

Here the killing highlighted from the Guardian article are defined as 'witchcraft' related in court. As in African witchcraft not Wiccan, and certainly not Christian.

 r_squared wrote:

I'd like to hear your justifications for the continuation of this barbaric and primitive belief system.

Come on. How on earth do you pin this on deliverance ministries and Catholic exorcists.
Why do you assume I would try to justify it?

 r_squared wrote:

Real people are dying horrible deaths, and you are stubbornly refusing to relinquish the idea that somehow this absurd idea is anything other than fantasy.

Yes real people are dying horrible deaths.
Do i blame my detractors on this thread because religious people are suffering in Chinese gulags? These crimes are done in the name of secular advancement, and bringing a post religious age. But I don't claim that you approve or share common ground.

You need to be careful before you accuse any or every Christian who believes in deliverance ministry of being party to these cruelties.
It is comparable to, and as despicable and ignorant as, trying to label every Moslem a supporter of ISIS.

 r_squared wrote:

and you are stubbornly refusing to relinquish the idea that somehow this absurd idea is anything other than fantasy.

It isn't stubborn to persist in being a consistent witness to what I myself have experienced: the power of the living God.
Deliverance ministry is no fantasy, and its harmless, because it consists entirely of prayer and its mainstream church work. It is quite commonplace.
Possession itself is very rare, only seen one case in over thirty years and even that was not a full on possession. Even so the Biblical solution is prayer, not beatings or dismemberings!

 Orlanth wrote:

It is not a fringe belief but a core tenet of the churches and always has been. It cant be separated out of Christianity, or the rest of the Judaic religions.

No its not. Not even remotely. On either count. Prior to the Crusading era, Christians had few if any beliefs about Demons or the Devil. A lot of beliefs now held as "definitive" by many Christians don't originate in the Bible at all or even from the Church, but from fiction works of the late Renaissance and early Enlightenment (Dante, Milton, and Marlowe are major contributors). The idea that the Devil is an actual person as opposed to a metaphor for "personal sin resulting from the fall of man" (as defined by Augustine of Hippo in his theodicy) is actually face lifted into Christianity from Islam. Christians picked it up during the Crusading Era, and became widely popularized by Calvinism and the Counter Reformation. Virtually all early Christians rejected the idea of demons or the Devil as the source of human evil because they inherited a huge chunk of Greek philosophy on the "problem of evil" and like Greek scholars largely resolved the problem by attributing evil to the abuse of free will, not some mean spirit whispering bad thoughts into your ear.

Judaism (at least Rabbinic Judaism, which modern Judaic traditions almost completely descend from) contains few if any beliefs about Demons. Ancient Judaic practices codified demons in a manner completely different from anything discussed in this thread.

Islam is the Abrahamic faith that contains the most about Demons and the Devil (barring a few wacky mixes of Abrahamic traditions with Zorastrianism... Though depending on how you work the whole thing out the Abrahamic tradition is an off shoot of Zorastrianism).

Well, in all seriousness, I can say that I've seen some weird assed gak over there years that suggest to me, but do not prove, the existence of evil independent of man.

That said, I will say that I have never seen a case of 'demonic possession' that I could not find another explanation for. I can't say it's impossible, only that I have never seen it.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
The line is "deliver us from evil", not "the evil".

The Lords Prayer in Matthew 9 was originally written in Greek not English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_6:13

 LordofHats wrote:
No its not. Not even remotely. On either count. Prior to the Crusading era, Christians had few if any beliefs about Demons or the Devil.

There are passages in the New Testament that appear to deal directly with daemonic possession (Mark 5:2, Jesus performs an exorcism). The "evil spirits" calling themselves Legion, even beg Jesus not to banish them, and to let them possess a heard of pigs instead. That doesn't sound "metaphorical", it sounds like exactly the same literal interpretation of daemonic possession that is popular today, and it's taken directly from the New Testament. That would seem to be at odds with your assertion that Christian belief in Daemons doesn't originate from the Bible.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

It is not a fringe belief but a core tenet of the churches and always has been. It cant be separated out of Christianity, or the rest of the Judaic religions.

No its not. Not even remotely. On either count. Prior to the Crusading era, Christians had few if any beliefs about Demons or the Devil. A lot of beliefs now held as "definitive" by many Christians don't originate in the Bible at all or even from the Church, but from fiction works of the late Renaissance and early Enlightenment (Dante, Milton, and Marlowe are major contributors).

What! We have surviving manuscript Bibles predating the renaissance that have the same content as today, and the New Testament has clear reference to demons.

 LordofHats wrote:

The idea that the Devil is an actual person as opposed to a metaphor for "personal sin resulting from the fall of man" (as defined by Augustine of Hippo in his theodicy) is actually face lifted into Christianity from Islam.

Strange that the Devil is also mentioned in the book of Job, the earliest written part of the Old Testament, and is referenced in the Pentateuch.

 LordofHats wrote:

Christians picked it up during the Crusading Era, and became widely popularized by Calvinism and the Counter Reformation. Virtually all early Christians rejected the idea of demons or the Devil as the source of human evil because they inherited a huge chunk of Greek philosophy on the "problem of evil" and like Greek scholars largely resolved the problem by attributing evil to the abuse of free will, not some mean spirit whispering bad thoughts into your ear.

Demonology and sources of evil are not necessarily the same. Deliverence theology doesn't anywhere include and ideology that a demon must be the source of any or all sin.

 LordofHats wrote:

Judaism (at least Rabbinic Judaism, which modern Judaic traditions almost completely descend from) contains few if any beliefs about Demons. Ancient Judaic practices codified demons in a manner completely different from anything discussed in this thread.

This doesn't correspond to the plain open text of the Old Testament.

 Smacks wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
No its not. Not even remotely. On either count. Prior to the Crusading era, Christians had few if any beliefs about Demons or the Devil.

There are passages in the New Testament that appear to deal directly with daemonic possession (Mark 5:2, Jesus performs an exorcism). The "evil spirits" calling themselves Legion, even beg Jesus not to banish them, and to let them possess a heard of pigs instead. That doesn't sound "metaphorical", it sounds like exactly the same literal interpretation of daemonic possession that is popular today, and it's taken directly from the New Testament. That would seem to be at odds with your assertion that Christian beliefs in Daemons doesn't originate from the Bible.

I said beliefs about demons, not in demons. Demons have always been a feature of Middle Eastern religious traditions, but what we now call Demons has little relation to that tradition. The word Demon comes from Daemon, which is Greek and in Greek culture Daemons were neither inherently evil nor inherently good. In the ancient Middle East, these spirits had a lot of names. Judaism called them Shedim (this word only appears twice in the Babylonian/Jerusalem Tanakh to give context for how nonexistent these spirits fit in the religious tradition Christianity came out of). These spirits were not fallen angels, or out to get you, they weren't even necessarily "evil" hence why Matthew specified them as evil spirits.

The metaphor was the Devil. Augustine of Hippo in writing his Theodicy (a fancy word for a Christain examination of the Problem of Evil), considered "the Devil" as spoken of in Biblical texts a metaphor for original sin. He did not believe that the character we now think of as the Devil (aka Lucifer, or the Satan) was a literal person. He did not believe that demons or a non-existent anti-God he didn't believe in could tempt man to sin, though he did attribute specifically natural disasters to fallen angels.


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 Orlanth wrote:
What! We have surviving manuscript Bibles predating the renaissance that have the same content as today, and the New Testament has clear reference to demons.

It makes clear reference to things we now interpret as demons. There's a difference.

Strange that the Devil is also mentioned in the book of Job, the earliest written part of the Old Testament, and is referenced in the Pentateuch.

No a figure called Satan is mentioned in the Book of Job. Except this guy is walking around Heaven and taking marching orders from God, which doesn't sound like the guy we think of when thinking of the Devil. Satan is a word meaning accuser. A common theme of Jewish faith in ancient times was that God would test the faithful to see how strong their faith in him was (alternatively, that faithful men and women would pray to be tested). Satan is sent by God to make Job suffer to test Jobs faith, and this character was recognized as such by Christians for a long time. The Satan of Job was just an angel with a job to do (test the faithful).

The Great Satan (which isn't just a word Iran calls America), is an actual figure from the Islamic tradition, and identified with the Serpent who tempted Eve. Christians picked up on these element of Islam during the Crusading period, and transferred it over into Christianity over a period of time to build up the modern Christian depiction of "The Devil."

Demonology and sources of evil are not necessarily the same. Deliverence theology doesn't anywhere include and ideology that a demon must be the source of any or all sin.

I'm talking about what ancient Christians believed.

This doesn't correspond to the plain open text of the Old Testament.

As stated above, the Jewish word for "demon" only appears twice in the Old Testament.

 LordofHats wrote:


I said beliefs about demons, not in demons. Demons have always been a feature of Middle Eastern religious traditions, but what we now call Demons has little relation to that tradition. The word Demon comes from Daemon, which is Greek and in Greek culture Daemons were neither inherently evil nor inherently good. In the ancient Middle East, these spirits had a lot of names. Judaism called them Shedim (this word only appears twice in the Babylonian/Jerusalem Tanakh to give context for how nonexistent these spirits fit in the religious tradition Christianity came out of). These spirits were not fallen angels, or out to get you, they weren't even necessarily "evil" hence why Matthew specified them as evil spirits.

In Judaism the impartation of the Holy Spirit was very rare, certain kings certain prophets. Since Pentecost the Holy Spirit is commonplace. The theology is identical but has been taken up to a different stage.
Judaism does mention evil spirits but doesn't dwell on the topic because there was nothing practical to be said.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
What! We have surviving manuscript Bibles predating the renaissance that have the same content as today, and the New Testament has clear reference to demons.

It makes clear reference to things we now interpret as demons. There's a difference.

No, we dont now interpret themas demons because of renssance heology, they were the exact same Biblical references to demons back before the renaissance, th Bible has not changed, and some copies dating back into the medieval era and even some pre-medieval documents still exist.

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/

 LordofHats wrote:

Strange that the Devil is also mentioned in the book of Job, the earliest written part of the Old Testament, and is referenced in the Pentateuch.

No a figure called Satan is mentioned in the Book of Job.

They are one and the same.

Job 1:6-8
6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

The (chief) fallen angel is described in Ezekiel 28:12–18

Luke 10:18-19
18 And He [Jesus] said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

Revelation 12:9
9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

 LordofHats wrote:

I'm talking about what ancient Christians believed.

Ancient Christians believed in the charismata and their closest counterpart is the modern charismatic church.
The Book of Acts is clear about the nature of the churches beliefs and practices, and thy certainly beleived in deliverance, in the devil/Satan.

 LordofHats wrote:

This doesn't correspond to the plain open text of the Old Testament.

As stated above, the Jewish word for "demon" only appears twice in the Old Testament.

It need not do more than that. Evidently it is Biblical.

 Smacks wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
No its not. Not even remotely. On either count. Prior to the Crusading era, Christians had few if any beliefs about Demons or the Devil.

There are passages in the New Testament that appear to deal directly with daemonic possession (Mark 5:2, Jesus performs an exorcism). The "evil spirits" calling themselves Legion, even beg Jesus not to banish them, and to let them possess a heard of pigs instead. That doesn't sound "metaphorical", it sounds like exactly the same literal interpretation of daemonic possession that is popular today, and it's taken directly from the New Testament. That would seem to be at odds with your assertion that Christian belief in Daemons doesn't originate from the Bible.

Go read the Catholic Catechism on www.vatican.va. Mark 5:2 explains the relationship between the sick and God. The term "sick" or "sickness" is mentionned 60 times on this article, and "demons" only once, and only as a quote of the original text.


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 A Town Called Malus wrote:
The line is "deliver us from evil", not "the evil".

There is no consensus as to whether the evil referred to is just general evil or the devil.

τοῦ πονηροῦ translates directly to "the evil one".

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
Go read the Catholic Catechism on www.vatican.va. Mark 5:2 explains the relationship between the sick and God. The term "sick" or "sickness" is mentionned 60 times on this article, and "demons" only once, and only as a quote of the original text.

A link to the specific article you want me to read would be helpful. I had a look at vatican.va for texts pertaining to the exorcism at Gerasene but the Catechism appears to be organised by themed ideas rather than passage.

In any case, I'm not usually impressed by "interpretations", generally viewing them as clumsy revisionism. The passage plainly denotes a man who is possessed by daemons, living inside him, then the daemons exit and go "into" pigs. Even if you want to interpret it metaphorically, you can't pretend that other people would never interpret this literally as being about daemonic possession, and thereby claim the idea isn't in the Bible, because it plainly is.

Incidentally, while I was browsing the Catechism index entry for Demons, I cam across a reference to the "evil" in the lord's prayer, this is what it says...

vatican.va wrote:2851 In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who "throws himself across" God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.

 Smacks wrote:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
Go read the Catholic Catechism on www.vatican.va. Mark 5:2 explains the relationship between the sick and God. The term "sick" or "sickness" is mentionned 60 times on this article, and "demons" only once, and only as a quote of the original text.

A link to the specific article you want me to read would be helpful. I had a look at vatican.va for texts pertaining to the exorcism at Gerasene but the Catechism appears to be organised by themed ideas rather than passage.

This would resume it pretty damn well : http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4K.HTM

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4K.HTM wrote:Illness in human life

1500 Illness and suffering have always been among the gravest problems confronted in human life. In illness, man experiences his powerlessness, his limitations, and his finitude. Every illness can make us glimpse death.

1501 Illness can lead to anguish, self-absorption, sometimes even despair and revolt against God. It can also make a person more mature, helping him discern in his life what is not essential so that he can turn toward that which is. Very often illness provokes a search for God and a return to him.

The sick person before God

1502 The man of the Old Testament lives his sickness in the presence of God. It is before God that he laments his illness, and it is of God, Master of life and death, that he implores healing.98 Illness becomes a way to conversion; God's forgiveness initiates the healing.99 It is the experience of Israel that illness is mysteriously linked to sin and evil, and that faithfulness to God according to his law restores life: "For I am the Lord, your healer."100 The prophet intuits that suffering can also have a redemptive meaning for the sins of others.101 Finally Isaiah announces that God will usher in a time for Zion when he will pardon every offense and heal every illness.102

Christ the physician

1503 Christ's compassion toward the sick and his many healings of every kind of infirmity are a resplendent sign that "God has visited his people"103 and that the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Jesus has the power not only to heal, but also to forgive sins;104 he has come to heal the whole man, soul and body; he is the physician the sick have need of.105 His compassion toward all who suffer goes so far that he identifies himself with them: "I was sick and you visited me."106 His preferential love for the sick has not ceased through the centuries to draw the very special attention of Christians toward all those who suffer in body and soul. It is the source of tireless efforts to comfort them.

1504 Often Jesus asks the sick to believe.107 He makes use of signs to heal: spittle and the laying on of hands,108 mud and washing.109 The sick try to touch him, "for power came forth from him and healed them all."110 and so in the sacraments Christ continues to "touch" us in order to heal us.

1505 Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases."111 But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the "sin of the world,"112 of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.

"Heal the sick . . ."

1506 Christ invites his disciples to follow him by taking up their cross in their turn.113 By following him they acquire a new outlook on illness and the sick. Jesus associates them with his own life of poverty and service. He makes them share in his ministry of compassion and healing: "So they went out and preached that men should repent. and they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them."114

1507 The risen Lord renews this mission ("In my name . . . they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover."115) and confirms it through the signs that the Church performs by invoking his name.116 These signs demonstrate in a special way that Jesus is truly "God who saves."117

1508 The Holy Spirit gives to some a special charism of healing118 so as to make manifest the power of the grace of the risen Lord. But even the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses. Thus St. Paul must learn from the Lord that "my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness," and that the sufferings to be endured can mean that "in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his Body, that is, the Church."119

1509 "Heal the sick!"120 The Church has received this charge from the Lord and strives to carry it out by taking care of the sick as well as by accompanying them with her prayer of intercession. She believes in the life-giving presence of Christ, the physician of souls and bodies. This presence is particularly active through the sacraments, and in an altogether special way through the Eucharist, the bread that gives eternal life and that St. Paul suggests is connected with bodily health.

 Smacks wrote:
In any case, I'm not usually impressed by "interpretations", generally viewing them as clumsy revisionism.

Then you necessarily exclude Catholicism from a discussion that concerns Christianity as a whole. That seems right to you?

 Smacks wrote:
Incidentally, while I was browsing the Catechism index entry for Demons, I cam across a reference to the "evil" in the lord's prayer, this is what it says...

vatican.va wrote:2851 In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who "throws himself across" God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.

That's correct, and obviously many Catholics still believe that Satan is an individual. About half of Americans do, if I'm not mistaken. Still, it doesn't reflect anything of modern Catholicism. Hell, demons and Satan are cultural baggages that makes great fiction material, not the subject of serious exegesis. Also, "view-source:" indicates that the webpage is from 2003, predating Jean-Paul II's public discussion on the nature of hell and evil. The Vatican being pretty much the paragon of monolythic, cumbersome institutions, you can expect they won't update the online catechism for at least another century.

 IllumiNini wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:
It's ridiculous to see this thread devolve into a shouting match between members of different view points when it comes to faith.

Though I am part of said devolving, I think that - if nothing else - it's important to realise that the existence of daemons and daemonic possession almost surely relies on faith and belief (i.e. relies on Christianity or Islam) before you can consider it a possibility and thus make sense of it.

That being said, I was hoping we could have ended the religion side and come to a conclusion about the psychiatrist in question, but alas: This is Dakka. < Insert 300 Movie Meme >

 BigWaaagh wrote:
The point of debate is to produce an argument that renders response impossible.

The point of a debate is to reach a rational, logical, and agreed-upon solution/conclusion. Rending any response impossible is not the point of a debate.

I think you have discussion confused with debate. There is absolutely no mandate for reaching anything agreed upon in a debate. By presenting a point that is uncontestable, i.e. rending response impossible, the debate is won. Hence my comment on the futility of applying said discipline to a faith based subject.

 Orlanth wrote:
You mean its rubbish because its rubbish. You posted no reasons.

Going to resort to outright lying, I see. I've posted reasons why your so-called evidence is garbage, you've just chosen to ignore them for some reason. But I'll post them again, just to be clear. All of your evidence falls into one of four categories:

1) Using confirmation bias to turn anecdotes into "data". You post an anecdote or two about random cases where "god healed someone", but you can't come up with any examples of divine healing happening in controlled tests (the standard for proof of effectiveness of any other claim in the medical profession). It's pretty obvious that what you (and your fellow believers) are doing is taking the few "successes" (misdiagnosed patients, lucky outliers, etc) out of all the countless people who are prayed for and calling it proof of god, while ignoring all the cases where "god" did absolutely nothing and whatever cancer/disease/etc the person had reached its typical conclusion. IOW, you're doing the medical equivalent of looking at a plane crash where 99 of the 100 people on the plane were killed and citing the lone survivor as proof of god.

2) Testimony from people that consists of nothing more than "I believe in god". As I pointed out with the cheating spouse analogy the mere fact that belief in something was good for a person does not mean that the belief is true. So all of your examples of people saying "god changed my life" are proof that a lot of people believe in god's ability to change lives, they aren't proof that those people are correct in their beliefs.

3) Vague statements about "I felt god's presence". How do we know that the person is correct about encountering a divine being? How do we know that this being, if it exists at all, is the Christian God and not another god (or even Satan trying to trick believers)? Like the testimony about changing lives this is very strong proof that people believe in a personal relationship with god, it isn't evidence that they are correct.

4) Fringe theories of history that are not taken seriously by mainstream historians. Sorry, but all of that stuff about bible prophecies and alternate timelines is just garbage. The experts in the field have already thrown it out and only a few religious groups believe it is at all credible.

So, there's some reasons. Whether or not I specifically listed one of your pieces of "evidence" it all falls into one of those categories.

Homeopathy is not a good parallel to religion in general.

No, of course it isn't, but that isn't the point. The point is about standards of evidence. When people provide anecdotes about homeopathy "working" we dismiss them as garbage and expect successes in controlled trials (where homeopathy inevitably fails) before considering it valid. But when your religion provides anecdotes about prayer "working" to heal people you consider it true by default instead of applying the same standard of proof that homeopathy has to face. Your so-called evidence would be garbage if it were presented as proof for anything other than a religion that you already believe in.

You don't understand why China is a good example of your error.

No, I simply reject the fact that China has anything to do with what I'm talking about. Ending a religion by government force and religion naturally fading away as people stop believing are two entirely different things. And, like it or not, religion is declining right now. The only question is whether this decline will stop at some point as the true faithful refuse to abandon their religions, or if it will continue on until believers are a small minority at most.

The trouble with wikipedia is that it a collage of data. Read the next line.

"By contrast, other Egyptologists recognise the value of Rohl's work in challenging the bases of the Egyptian chronological framework."

IOW, the standard "wikipedia neutrality policy" disclaimer that is typical in articles about fringe theories. "Some people believe", etc. When you actually search for anything on this theory you find virtually nothing from mainstream historical sources. Page after page of search results are all explicitly Christian churches and religious groups.

Actually atheists have been trying to say that a lot.

Please stop making blatant straw man arguments. "Some atheists" may say that the bible contains literally nothing that is true, but there are stupid people in pretty much any group. The majority of atheists with even a token knowledge of the methods of history will tell you that the bible is a valid historical source, just like any work of fiction. You can't trust the information in a work of fiction to necessarily be true, but background information in a story is often based on real events and even an entirely fictional work will still tell you quite a bit about the culture that wrote it.

They say that too. Which is why I can point out and say that Biblical prophecy promise the return of Israel, i.e. the religious stuff, not the David was King history stuff. this was accomplished with the rebuilding of Jerusalem, but the nation did not return, add in the sevenfold curse to the remain time and you come to a certain exact date in 1948....

Could you provide some examples of mainstream historians accepting and commenting on the "prophecy" of Israel being founded in 1948? Because, based on a quick search, all of the claims seem to come from fringe Christian "end times" groups.

So wait, does Orlanth believe in witchcraft or not?

 Orlanth wrote:
they were the exact same Biblical references to demons back before the renaissance

I didn't say that (I was talking about the development of the idea of the Devil). Demons were conceptually very different prior to the late early modern period. Middle Ages Europe has a very... Convoluted is what I'll call it, relationship with magic. Demons fit into some practices that were kind of vogue in this time period and were neither evil nor good. They were just earth bound spirits you could conjure and get to do menial tasks for you. I'm thinking of getting one to do my taxes for me, but just paying H&R block to do it is probably cheaper (the occult fad of the later 16th and 17th century gave us the Lesser Key of Solomon, a sort of throw back to this interpretation of Demons).

Christian beliefs in demons have shifted a number of times over the nearly 2000 year history of the faith, from not believing in them at all, to thinking they don't matter, etc etc etc. Sometimes all at the same time, because any general statement about one of the world's largest faiths is going to be really general.

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/

And? The Bible is a very vague thing and that's never really changed no matter how old it is.

They are one and the same.

No where in the Bible is this stated. It's presumed because Satan as a specific figure rather than as a title, concept (it also is translated as "adversary"), or metaphor. Further, why would Ancient Jews who didn't believe in a devil write a book including him? Hasidic Jews, who didn't exist prior to the 18th century, are the only ones I know of who recognize such a figure (and it's not Satan, but some dude called Baal something or other because for some reason the Abrahamic traditions really likes dumbing down the Mesopotamian concept of Baal(s)).

The (chief) fallen angel is described in Ezekiel 28:12–18

Where does Ezekiel 28:12-18 say that? The verse is identified as being about the King of Tyre (presumably Ethobaal III who ruled the city in Ezekiel's time, at least according to Josephus), and is easily interpreted as metaphorical given the great wealth of the city of Tyre at the time period and the primary conflict of the Book of Ezekiel.

Luke 10:18-19
18 And He [Jesus] said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

Sounds metaphorical, given that Jesus would hardly be watching in the present tense something that would supposedly have happened eons before he was here.

Revelation 12:9
9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

This would actually support Augustine of Hippo's interpretation of the Devil/Satan being a metaphor for Original Sin, which is probably why he advocated it in the first place

Wow. It's almost like this whole thing is open to interpretation

Ancient Christians believed in the charismata and their closest counterpart is the modern charismatic church.

Sounds like Pentacostal propaganda to me

The Book of Acts is clear about the nature of the churches beliefs and practices, and thy certainly beleived in deliverance, in the devil/Satan.

So you say, but I've read Acts (well I've read pretty much everything except for Psalms because ancient Jewish poetry just doesn't have much ring in English) and the words devil and Satan don't appear in it. In fact in the New Testament the word Devil 35 times, and four of those times refer to humans (one of the uses even being Peter the Apostle, in a clearly metaphorical use of the word in the context of Satan its "adversary" interpretation*). Outside of the Gospels, the devil is only used once in the Epistle of Jude. Satan is only used in the Gospels and Revelation (in a contexts that are easily seen as metaphorical and in a manner inconsistent with the word being a proper identifier). Revelations use of the name is open enough and with the connection to the serpent) that it's not hard to see why the concept of Satan as a specific figure of great evil would easily translate into Christianity from Islam later down the road.

The New Testament definitely uses the words, but never in a context that is clearly identifiable as a proper figure as plain text. Many of the uses are back references to sections of the Old Testament that are more accurately described as sins rather than evil spirits (or a specific evil spirit). The earliest Christians were Jews after all, and they would have easily recognized the references for what they are and this would have been the context early Christians would understand it.

*I have no idea if this is something the word could literally be intended to mean, or if it is an interpretation derived from the use of "Satan" in such context in the Book of Peter.

It need not do more than that. Evidently it is Biblical.

A word that only appears twice, is clearly not one of significant importance, and certainly not one from which all the lore of demons now believed in could possibly derive. We could sit here and write entire books about all the beliefs that exist about Demons and the Devil, yet the references to them are incredibly sparing, very vague, and generally devoid of actually clarification without resorting to extra Biblical sources (they're even contradictory at times). It really shouldn't be that odd that at points in time, there were Christians who didn't believe in a specific Devil figure, or Satan. Several of the biggest Church father's didn't such as St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, and some did believe in a literal figure like St. Justin the Martyr* (and even then, modern conceptions of Satan have far more to do with Paradise Lost than Biblical traditions).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
τοῦ πονηροῦ translates directly to "the evil one".

It only directly translates to "evil." The reason it is often translated to "evil one" is because the word ponéros can be used as a masculine form (contextually "his evil"), and is often used as such contextually elsewhere in the New Testament, leading to the later singular translation at times being favored due to weight of usage. Alternatively however, within the whole of existing Koine Greek works, the use of ponéros as a masculine form is incredibly rare, which has been used to justify alternate translations of the verse to just be read as "evil." EDIT: The general "deliver us from evil" is probably more recognized in the English speaking world simply because of the prolific King James Bible so I wouldn't be surprised if most people are more familiar with that version. EDIT EDIT: oh, and of course the Gospel of Luke has an alternate version of the Prayer which doesn't reference the evil bit.

You can probably guess that which version a given translation supports, generally corresponds to how seriously the translators take Satan (proper noun) as a figure of Biblical texts

 Peregrine wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
You mean its rubbish because its rubbish. You posted no reasons.

Going to resort to outright lying, I see. I've posted reasons why your so-called evidence is garbage, you've just chosen to ignore them for some reason. But I'll post them again, just to be clear. All of your evidence falls into one of four categories:

Before I challenge your four assumptions I will ask you to not cross the line and accuse me of lying.

 Peregrine wrote:

1) Using confirmation bias to turn anecdotes into "data".

On correction those were not anecdotes, because a large number of original sources are mulltiply sourced, this doesn't make them anecdotes. And there are plural of those.

Caveat:
In this alone I do owe the thread a retraction because I can only blame myself for using a colloquial definition of anecdote rather than a dictionary one.
I was taking anecdotal to mean, 'testimony based' overlooking that you mean anecdotal to mean 'baseless testimony' and there are many testimonies that are far from baseless.
Anecdote has different cultural meanings, to me an anecdote is an interesting but true tale, which may be dramatised as needed, but must remain basically factual, normally recounted around the table after, table tall stories are not proper anecdotes, and are frowned upon.
However dictionary definitions take priority.

 Peregrine wrote:

2) Testimony from people that consists of nothing more than "I believe in god". As I pointed out with the cheating spouse analogy the mere fact that belief in something was good for a person does not mean that the belief is true. So all of your examples of people saying "god changed my life" are proof that a lot of people believe in god's ability to change lives, they aren't proof that those people are correct in their beliefs.

Irrelevant. So long as lives are changed and there is corroboration of that, which a community can provide by knowing the person over time, then there is no reason to consider the cause to be baseless. However that is exactly what you do, you make definitive statement to say that the testimonies are 'bullgak', when results can be quantified. Furthermore you claim this is the case for all of them.

 Peregrine wrote:

3) Vague statements about "I felt god's presence".

That doesn't cover the activities themselves but is accompaniment to them. Testimony doesn't rely on that alone.
In fact it would be un-Biblical:

2 Corinthians 13:1
"Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."

Someone can say they have a feeling that God is trying to do something or say something, and yes it can and often is vague.
However no action is takes without multiple independent sourcing.
The churches don't want baseless testimony any more than you do, both to root out charlatans, and to discard honest error.

Baseless testimony will sneak in through dishonest ministries. Yes sadly they exist. But it doesn't account for all the testimonies, and the dodgy churches tend to get exposed quickly enough.

 Peregrine wrote:

4) Fringe theories of history that are not taken seriously by mainstream historians. Sorry, but all of that stuff about bible prophecies and alternate timelines is just garbage. The experts in the field have already thrown it out and only a few religious groups believe it is at all credible.

We will cover this in more detail below.

 Peregrine wrote:

So, there's some reasons. Whether or not I specifically listed one of your pieces of "evidence" it all falls into one of those categories.

And not a single example to back up your assumptions. Not even an example of one. Let alone a concrete reasoning to deal with all of them.

'All testimonies are spurious/anecdotal', or 'confirmation bias'. You handwave away! How about people who woke up in morgues after being pronounced dead and having claim to have seen Jesus and been returned. People being healed of yet incurable diseases.

 Peregrine wrote:

Your so-called evidence would be garbage if it were presented as proof for anything other than a religion that you already believe in.

Find me any, even just one event that was predicted to the day centres ahead of its time by any secular means. We cant even do medium term weather predictions because chaos maths gets in the way.
Yet the restoration of Israel more than just stops a butterfly effect.

 Peregrine wrote:

No, I simply reject the fact that China has anything to do with what I'm talking about. Ending a religion by government force and religion naturally fading away as people stop believing are two entirely different things. And, like it or not, religion is declining right now. The only question is whether this decline will stop at some point as the true faithful refuse to abandon their religions, or if it will continue on until believers are a small minority at most.

Religion is both declining and growing at the same time, some faith groups are losing members, others are gaining them quickly. Also religion can balloon quickly under certain circumstances. Persecution being just one of them.



With regards to Rohl's work.

 Peregrine wrote:

Page after page of search results are all explicitly Christian churches and religious groups.

Thank you for the evidence of how far off the mark you are. So they are 'all explicitly religious sources'. All of them? Right. Let's see.

1. How about David Rohl!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rohl
Rohl is a professional Egyptologist, He excavated at Kadesh in Syria for the London Institute of Archaeology during the 1990s, and was Co-Field Director of the Eastern Desert Survey in Egypt.
He is also listed as agnostic.


2. How about a previously given example.

Also there are plenty of Egyptologists which support the New Chronology.
http://www.newchronology.org

Earlier in the thread I included a link in direct reply to you.

If you bother to click the link, as no doubt you have already done so because you have claimed to have looked through page after page of search results, and this site is on the front page of most searches.

Lots of Drs and Professors on the contributor list, no pastors listed, though I do not claim that theologians aren't contributors somewhere. All the professors could indeed to fringe church members, but that is yet to be proven, and frankly I have better things to do that to google search each of the names and see if they attend a fringe religious group. Besides, haven't you already done that, assuming you actually DONE a check to confirm all the sources were 'explicitly religious', or did you just handwave and assume, I strongly suspect the latter.

3.ff
Linked websites from newchronology.org.

While researching the site when I linked it to you I explored some of those links, incuding this one: http://www.egyptology-uk.com.
It looked like a regular Egyptology site, with no religious content at all that I could find, excepting educational material about Egyptian religion. There is admittedly a lot of that, but lets not split hairs here. Its not a cult of Ra website.

I will stop there. It was already highly indicative that you handwave, and make blanket baseless denial statements. It's nice to find definitive proof of such.
We can put that one to bed now.

 Peregrine wrote:

Actually atheists have been trying to say that a lot.

Please stop making blatant straw man arguments. "Some atheists" may say that the bible contains literally nothing that is true, but there are stupid people in pretty much any group.

Actually it was a major attack point by a lot of atheist groups in the recent past. Christopher Hitchens, one of the best and brightest atheist apologists, tried this tactic a number of times, though he was smart enough to report such comments as third hand evidence. In fairness he might of believed it.
It is more fringe now because the argument was not tenable, archeological evidence supports Biblical history very well.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/hallq/2012/07/why-atheists-dont-think-the-bibl-is-historically-reliable/

Some still try.
So you see, no strawman.

 Peregrine wrote:

Could you provide some examples of mainstream historians accepting and commenting on the "prophecy" of Israel being founded in 1948? Because, based on a quick search, all of the claims seem to come from fringe Christian "end times" groups.

No. But because it isn't of interest to historians. Nobody needs to use Biblical numerology to verify the founding of the state of Israel. We had modern media in 1948.
We can work in reverse and confirm historically though that the 1948 date is accurate and verify which day, count back the required number of days and come back to the trigger events or the first return to rebuild Jerusalem and the exile of Jerusalem, precisely and without even a days error back two and a half millenia ago.

While 'End Times' groups take most interest in the numerology, eschatology is still also mainstream theology, and while there are a lot of Youtubers trying to work out who the anti-christ is etc, and come up with a new name every year they are not the source of the numerological revelation here, just people who want to use the data.
Biblical numerology is taken seriously as a theological study. The fringe groups wouldn't as a rule know how to work out Biblical numerology, its is normally sourced by respected theologians a large percentage of them senior rabbis.

You should also note that Biblical prophesy is primarily a pointer to God, not a call for action. These rabbis aren't Farseers. This particularly spectacular and unique prophesy was worked out to have been fulfilled on a prophetic timeline long after 1948, IIRC in the 70's and is a sign to trust in God aka "Look how I kept My promise."



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
So wait, does Orlanth believe in witchcraft or not?

Depends what you mean by witchcraft, it is a very broad catchall, sometimes meaning any spiritual activity outside of a major religion.

In general terms I have not witnessed any, but I dont rule it out.

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
In any case, I'm not usually impressed by "interpretations", generally viewing them as clumsy revisionism.

Then you necessarily exclude Catholicism from a discussion that concerns Christianity as a whole. That seems right to you?

There is obviously a lot of middle-ground between being "unimpressed" by something, and "excluding" it outright. Of course I would not exclude Catholicism, but neither do I view its interpretations as the gospel truth. I see it for what it is. I don't believe that the Catholic Church has any "supernatural" insight into the meaning of the scripture. They have a lot of theologians and experts, but they also have a very obvious agenda.

The Catholic church is in the middle of a metamorphosis, it is not the same as the organisation it was even one generation ago, and you would have to look back centuries for as large a shift.

A lot of Catholic doctrine is rather opaque, for the first time since the middle ages. This comes from having rigid doctrine and now what appears to be diametric shifts to some doctrines, which are therefore likely to be as rigid in the opposite direction and potential changes in others.

All this might well be for the best, but it no longer makes it easy to claim what Catholicism stands for, beyond the core Christian theology that it shares with the other major denominations.

 Orlanth wrote:

'All testimonies are spurious/anecdotal', or 'confirmation bias'. You handwave away! How about people who woke up in morgues after being pronounced dead and having claim to have seen Jesus and been returned. People being healed of yet incurable diseases.

I think this is the crux of where the disagreement comes from.

You're seeing things that you have no immediate explanation for, and assuming that God must have been responsible.

An atheist sees things they have no immediate explanation for, and wants proof of cause before concluding what happened.



Not understanding why something happened doesn't mean that magic caused it. Without some sort of proof that a supernatural being was involved, an atheist is going to consider that a doctor made a mistake before assuming that God brought someone back from the dead.

People lie, Orlanth... it sucks, but it does happen. People even lie about miraculous encounters with God.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/heaven.asp

In his defence, he did hold to his faith- but there isn't any mention of him returning the money of the many people he fooled.

And sometimes, truly miraculous events have bizarre medical explanations.

http://www.vikingrune.com/2009/03/true-viking-grit/

There's no way that his fat density could have been tested even 400 years ago, and so this would have been a documented, verifiable miracle, because no science of the time could explain it. When we stop looking for an explanation, religion becomes an incredibly dangerous weakness.

Our world is a perplexing and often contradictory one. We should use all the tools available to us from the material world before we lay blame on the spiritual realm.

 LordofHats wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kovnik Obama wrote:
τοῦ πονηροῦ translates directly to "the evil one".

It only directly translates to "evil." The reason it is often translated to "evil one" is because the word ponéros can be used as a masculine form (contextually "his evil"), and is often used as such contextually elsewhere in the New Testament, leading to the later singular translation at times being favored due to weight of usage. Alternatively however, within the whole of existing Koine Greek works, the use of ponéros as a masculine form is incredibly rare, which has been used to justify alternate translations of the verse to just be read as "evil." EDIT: The general "deliver us from evil" is probably more recognized in the English speaking world simply because of the prolific King James Bible so I wouldn't be surprised if most people are more familiar with that version. EDIT EDIT: oh, and of course the Gospel of Luke has an alternate version of the Prayer which doesn't reference the evil bit.

You can probably guess that which version a given translation supports, generally corresponds to how seriously the translators take Satan (proper noun) as a figure of Biblical texts

τοῦ πονηροῦ is in the definitive articular form. That's what τοῦ means. "The".

 insaniak wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

'All testimonies are spurious/anecdotal', or 'confirmation bias'. You handwave away! How about people who woke up in morgues after being pronounced dead and having claim to have seen Jesus and been returned. People being healed of yet incurable diseases.

I think this is the crux of where the disagreement comes from.

You're seeing things that you have no immediate explanation for, and assuming that God must have been responsible.

An atheist sees things they have no immediate explanation for, and wants proof of cause before concluding what happened.

Come back to me when someone wakes up in the morgue and says they were healed by Neitzche.

 insaniak wrote:

Not understanding why something happened doesn't mean that magic caused it. Without some sort of proof that a supernatural being was involved, an atheist is going to consider that a doctor made a mistake before assuming that God brought someone back from the dead.

The clue is in the NDE testimony. So there is a logic to it. You are free to disbeleive in it as you will not be presented with proof as you cant read minds.
Not all NDE's are Christian, I will grant you that also.

 Orlanth wrote:
Come back to me when someone wakes up in the morgue and says they were healed by Neitzche.

They won't, because that is not what atheism is.

An atheist who suffers an NDE will, well, realise it is an NDE.

τοῦ πονηροῦ is in the definitive articular form. That's what τοῦ means. "The".

το means "the" (along with a bunch of other words that are roughly equivalent to the English "the"). τοῦ is a neutral gendered variation used as a pointer to call attention to the object noun ημας (hemas) which is "us/we." The article is not about the adjective πονηροῦ. EDIT: Why you generally don't see older translations of the Greek (in Latin and Aramaic) translate the "the" at all. That's only become common again recently because this is a field where people will demand that we completely redefine syntax because "that's not what I think the Bible says" and for no other reason.

 Orlanth wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:

'All testimonies are spurious/anecdotal', or 'confirmation bias'. You handwave away! How about people who woke up in morgues after being pronounced dead and having claim to have seen Jesus and been returned. People being healed of yet incurable diseases.

I think this is the crux of where the disagreement comes from.

You're seeing things that you have no immediate explanation for, and assuming that God must have been responsible.

An atheist sees things they have no immediate explanation for, and wants proof of cause before concluding what happened.

Come back to me when someone wakes up in the morgue and says they were healed by Neitzche.

 insaniak wrote:

Not understanding why something happened doesn't mean that magic caused it. Without some sort of proof that a supernatural being was involved, an atheist is going to consider that a doctor made a mistake before assuming that God brought someone back from the dead.

The clue is in the NDE testimony. So there is a logic to it. You are free to disbeleive in it as you will not be presented with proof as you cant read minds.
Not all NDE's are Christian, I will grant you that also.

How often do people get resurrected these days?

Have I missed something? I think that would be front page news.