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Author Topic:   Who & what are the demons ?
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 118 of 349 (670918)
08-21-2012 4:56 AM
Reply to: Message 116 by ringo
08-20-2012 12:04 PM


Re: You Tube Demoncasting
Two separate and independent fundamentalist occurances.
There are sleep states that people go into. One such sleep state is where the subject is asleep but still aware of what's going on around them. However, in this state the subject is also disconnected, such that there is a general physical paralysis so that the subject does not act out the scenario that is unfolding within his dream state ... possibly kind of like when a sleeping dog yelps and twitches his legs and we say "he's dreaming of chasing rabbits".
First, my high school friend's mother. She was napping in such a state and, in her paralysis, she was convinced that demons were clutching at her and she was powerless to cry out to her daughter for help. She was convinced that it was demons!
Second was my brother-in-law. An electrical engineer, MS if I'm not mistaken. Christian fundamentalist of many years. He went through the same thing and was convinced that demons were clutching at him.
[voice="Homer Simpson"]Yeah, wha'cha gonna do?[/voice]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by ringo, posted 08-20-2012 12:04 PM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 119 of 349 (670919)
08-21-2012 5:08 AM
Reply to: Message 117 by Phat
08-21-2012 1:08 AM


Re: You Tube Demoncasting
And yet, given the subjects' presuppostional interpretations of what they had sensed, how could we be objective about their interpretations?
Did something happen? OK, maybe.
What happened? ... at this point, all hell breaks loose. The observers have made certain observations within the context of certain expectations. But were those observations indeed within that context? If not, then the interpretations need to change in order to take into account the new truth.
Is the reality what was previously thought? Or something different?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 117 by Phat, posted 08-21-2012 1:08 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 335 of 349 (885190)
03-27-2021 3:02 AM
Reply to: Message 324 by Phat
03-22-2021 1:11 PM


Re: Which Scenario Would You Prefer?
Hey, I agree! I dont want the antichrist to exist.
Nobody does, except for someone who wants to make it a self-fulfilled prophesy. Like Trump, or at least his enablers -- for fear of invoking Godwin, much of the evil done by Trump was actually done by those around him exploiting his power to be able to do their own evil (eg, Gollum's twin brother Stephen Miller), much as it's been argued that most Nazi evil was done by those around him doing what they thought he would want as well as to carve out their own personal empires within the regime.
A few weeks ago on Facebook I had an epiphany. Ed Babinski posted a fundamentalist Christian declaring that the Bible demands that Trump remain President. Yeah, the usual fundie nonsense, but then I realized what he actually meant. The AntiChrist is supposed to gain and keep political power. As the AntiChrist, Trump is not supposed to have lost re-election, since by doing so that proves the Bible wrong! No fundie can ever allow that to happen!
Of course, we could quibble whether Trump is the AntiChrist or the Beast. Putin certain has better chops for the AC job; Trump is just too much of an f*cking moron.
I dont want there to be demons nor do I want to have any or have to deal with them.
So why create them?
On the Far Right and in fundamentalism, we have the apocalyptic last days scenario.
My fundamentalist Christian training was from the Jesus Freaks circa 1970. Calvary Church of Costa Mesa (always located in neighboring Santa Ana, so they've been deniers of reality from the very start). Besides biblical literalism (a naïve form of which had turned me into an atheist half a decade earlier and now here's an entire church for whom it was an article of faith) they were obsessed with The End Times and with demons. Even the simplest natural phenomena (eg, sleep paralysis) they would blame on demons.
After I had constantly seen so much stupid nonsense about demons, why should I be expected to have any patience with your own stupid nonsense about demons? Like Dean Obeidallah commented the other day, after four years of incessant lying by Trump and his psychophants (a very apt Nance-ism) Obeidallah just no longer has any patience at all with any Republican lying. None whatsoever! And having tried to deal with incessant creationist lying since the late 1980's, I most certainly have absolutely no patience with that lying anymore.
As for End Times and what it used to mean:
Here's a corollary that was presented in a late-80's Christianity Today article on the Christian Reconstructionist movement (intent on replacing the US Constitution with an Old Testament theocracy), which has since been replaced with Dominion Theology and now with Christian nationalism. The article addressed the traditional fundamentalist view of involvement in politics: the Bible says the entire world is going to Hell in whichever kind of container you may choose * , so trying to save the world would be like polishing the brass on a sinking ship and hence "true Christians" would refuse to waste their time and energy getting involved in politics.
What changed that the fundie "Radical Religious Right" adopted a foreign theology? They were premillennialists, meaning that the Second Coming would happen before the 1000 years of Christ's rule on Earth. The Christian Reconstructionists were postmillennialists, meaning that their mission was to create the 1000 years of Christ's rule on Earth, at the end of which would be the Second Coming. So while retaining their premillennialist theology, they adopted the postmillennialist political strategy of seizing political power.

FOOTNOTE *:
I have always been a bit weak on popular culture, especially with popular music from late-early-70's rock to the present (I bailed out in favor of "classical" (which actually covers a lot more than just the classical era (circa Haydn to early Beethoven)) when the 50's Revival reared its ugly head signaling in my mind that rock was dying (I didn't like 50's rock the first time around and certainly not warmed over)). I keep remembering on German movie with Ruth Leuwerik, a tear-jerker (they were rated by how many boxes of tissues you needed to watch it). She played a teacher with very troubled students because they were into jazz (give you any appreciation for how simple things had been in the past?). One of her students dies. His friends want to play jazz at his funeral. The mortician absolutely refuses (at first -- sorry, I forget the rest of the movie, but they are finally able to play at his funeral). I do remember the mortician's statement, "Bei mir gibt's nach Brahms keine Musik mehr!" ("In my opinion, there has been no more music after Brahms!") Oh for the good old days when jazz music was the height of youth rebellion!
Some source(s) had come up with a long list of different ways to go to Hell, depending on your own particular mode of self-destruction. "In a bottle" for alcohol, "in a baggy" for drugs, "in a plastic bucket". I heard someone go through that list in the early 70's but cannot even begin to try to recreate it.

On the Left, and in current rational thought, we have an evidence based scenario regarding the conditions that will lead to global warming. As in the apocalyptic scenario, we see displacement of global populations, potential wars and rumors of wars, famine disease and cold love among many being quite possible.
We have always seen those "signs" for millennia! I even have a book about it, "The History of the End of the World". Those "signs of the end" put "the boy who called 'Wolf!'" to shame. Basically, your example is a meaningless prophesy looking for a fulfillment (pick one, any one).
IOW, why do we just shrug off your "signs of the End Times"? Because you've been yammering them literally for millennia! Early Christians would not even plant trees because the Christ would return before they could ever be able to bear any fruit (I tend to separate The Christ from the person of Jesus, the former have been mainly an invention of Saul of Tarsus). How did that work for them?
Similarly, that explains how the highly virulent Jesus Freak Movement (there was a time when you couldn't walk down the street without being accosted by an offensive proselytizer, which is one reason why fundies are still social pariahs) having settled down to being almost mainstream. To the Jesus Freaks circa 1970, the End was Nigh. But then when the End didn't happen, they fell in love and got married and had families and got mortgages and had careers, etc. IOW, they got a life. Oh, they undoubtedly still believed in the End, but they also moved on.
So bottom line of what you just said is, "So what?" You say that the sky is blue? Yeah, it is. So what?
If what [ringo] once said is right, demons are merely our own carnal nature and expressiveness coming out.
That sounds like a very reasonable and accurate description. And very descriptive of how you have invoked those "demons" in your own posts. Metaphors.
But metaphors are not real, nor are they real threats (except in Il Postino (1994) in which the girl's chaperone protested to the priest about the postman's use of poetry with the explicit complaint of "Metafore!"
Really? You take metaphors as being real? Really?
Watch Helena Botham Carter's second film, Lady Jane (1986) about Lady Jane Grey, "Queen for Nine Days", who succeeded Henry VIII's son, Edward VI, before Henry's first Spanish daughter, Mary Bloody Mary, took power and tried to return England to Catholicism with the Spanish Inquisition ("Nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition!"). In her self-defense in the movie, Lady Jane tried to argue against Catholic literalist interpretation of metaphor: "Jesus said, 'I am the Door'. Was he a literal door?" She was still executed. To quote from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "... because nobody likes a smart ass."
BTW, metaphors are not real. Nor are Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Powerful ideas, but still not literally real.
The question to ask at this point is ---
How strong will we as a species have to be to survive these times and challenges? Will we all cooperate and get past the challenge together or will we fight--and die?
According to Biblical prophesy, we will all die. So why do you even dare to pose that sacrilegious question? To propose that we could possibly overturn your god's will should be unthinkable to you, a supposed true Believer. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Oscar? Are you suggesting that we polish the brass on a sinking ship?
 
But then this brings us back to that perennial problem of self-fulfilled prophesies, doesn't it?
Do we submit to the defeatedist prophesies that we will ultimately fail and all die? So we all just lie down and die? And in doing so we fulfill those prophesies of Doom.
Or do we instead strive to succeed against all opposition? Even if the chances of success are very small, they do exist nonetheless. And even if we succeed only slightly, that would still be better than if we had done nothing to try to save ourselves.
The alternative would be to just lie down and die. Which is your position.
The answer to this will also be the answer to whether the demons won or not.
Demons have nothing to do with any of it.
But again to remind you, your position is for us to let the demons win.
Edited by dwise1, : Completing my thoughts (since I tend to think in German, that can take a rather long time)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 324 by Phat, posted 03-22-2021 1:11 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 338 by Phat, posted 03-27-2021 11:29 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
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