Do you believe that demons exist?

[gmc]

It's a convenient invention of the early church. Anyone that disagrees with doctrine must be demon possessed. If you can't find a god reason to condemn someone without trial then invent an evil one and take away the necessity to be just.

[theia]

Originally Posted by gmc

It's a convenient invention of the early church. Anyone that disagrees with doctrine must be demon possessed. If you can't find a god reason to condemn someone without trial then invent an evil one and take away the necessity to be just.

I like that

[Hope6]

As a Christian person i believe in the goodness of God and Jesus and all the angels in heaven and in doing so i also believe in the opposite of that, which would be evil, the devil and demons!

[Kathy Ellen]

[quote=Ted;822237]Kathy

Theia LOL

An excellent question. I suppose there are many and varied answers. However,
I will give you my vOne of the problems with our modern view is that we have become attuned to scientism as the only way to know things. This is a fallacy. There are many ways in which we learn and know; science, personal experience, intuition, the experience of others, observation, art and "faith" though I do prefer the term "trust".

There are things in this world which science makes no attempt to answer such as questions about why i.e. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? What have I just experienced? These are things that are not open to science or logic. Some try to tell me what I've experienced but I find that a joke. No one can know what I've experienced but myself.

I have had experiences of the divine. Intuition tells me some of the things that I know. A good term is the experiential reality of the divine. This was the easter experience. It was profound but beyond human language and conceptualization abilities thus the stories are midrash which makes a great deal of use of metaphor. Yes, Jesus was crucified and died. Whatever the Easter experience was it was so profound as to be in reality beyond our understanding. However, it did have a very long term and wide ranging impact on the whole of human history.

Doubt? Of course doubt always crops up. That is part of life. On balance, however, I always return to what I believe and have experienced.

Could I be wrong? Sure I could. I am a human being. In a general sense I don't think that I am but when it comes to speaking of the divine as humans we have no other language than metaphor. We can experience the activities of the divine but we can never, with our mere human language ever grasp the real essence of the divine.

Hi Ted Good to see you.

Thank you so much for your post, but it honestly didn't help. I don't discuss politics and religion in the FG because I am ill equippted to discuss issues that I'm not truly versed on or sometimes have no interest in. But, I do feel comfortable discussing this in Theia's thread.

I would like for someone to give me some sort of proof that there is a God and an afterlife in Heaven or Hell. It's often nice to say that our many universes are so wonderful that they had to be created by a supreme being, but where is there proof except for quotations from a holy book that was written by people.

[AussiePam]

We got here somehow, Kathy. That's where I keep coming back to. And the idea that something can come of its own doing, from nothing, is, I think, harder to accept than that there was a First Cause/Primum Mobile/Creator. From there, it gets tricky. When you start to talk about what kind of First Cause/Creator/God.

For me, the first step doesn't need proof. I know I'm here. I exist. I got here somehow. Nothing from Nothing. So something started all this. Big Bang?? Fine. But Big Bang from what?

I don't know if I believe in the devil or demons. But I do believe that evil exists.

[Hope6]

Originally Posted by AussiePam

We got here somehow, Kathy. That's where I keep coming back to. And the idea that something can come of its own doing, from nothing, is, I think, harder to accept than that there was a First Cause/Primum Mobile/Creator. From there, it gets tricky. When you start to talk about what kind of First Cause/Creator/God.

For me, the first step doesn't need proof. I know I'm here. I exist. I got here somehow. Nothing from Nothing. So something started all this. Big Bang?? Fine. But Big Bang from what?

I don't know if I believe in the devil or demons. But I do believe that evil exists.

i know what you mean, scientists say this all began with the Big Bang, but i believe there was a Creator behind that Big Bang, all of this could not have just happened by accident!
and you're right , there is quite a bit of evil in the world!

[Carolly]

Originally Posted by Galbally

Yes, there are demons in the world, they are called people, and there is plenty of evidence of the evil that men do, without recourse to the supernatural in my opinion. Though having said that I have always found that Catholic doctrine of their being an independent thing called "evil" in the world with an existence of its own quite a powerful one, though whether its true or not is another story.

How very very true Galbally.