The discussion made me think of a novel I read between college and grad school. Somewhere around the middle of the novel the heroes encounter the Devil, and a conversation ensues (paraphrasing from memory):
Hero 1: “If you are real, then God is real!”
The Devil: “That is a non-sequitur – the fact of my existence indicates nothing more than my existence”.
Hero 2: “Then God doesn’t exist?”
Devil: “That is also a non-sequitur – my existence and God’s are not linked”.
Hero 1: “But . . . weren’t you one of His angels?”
Devil: “That’s the common story”.
Hero 2: “So if God is real, and He did in fact make you, then His and your existence are linked”.
Devil: “My statement was epistemological, not ontological. Logically, if I and He both exist, I may just as well have created Him.”
The discussion continues for a while after that, but this is the portion relevant to your comment (or ChatGTP’s).
So God has been conducting biological warfare against us? And gave us an immune system to oppose the pathogens he himself created? Maybe he enjoys this warfare.
We probably used to do exorcisms since the Anglican church is pretty old. There may be exceptions, but for the most part we don’t do exorcisms. And don’t call me “lady.”
You make a good atheist. God created the natural world, its laws etc. what you are trying to do is say God didn’t make iron because it formed in the cores of dying stars. The correct answer is that is how God made iron. The same for viruses. What else is there to say?
Psalm 29 is one of the texts that show the clear influence of Canaanite mythology and Baal worship.
So my question is this: If the Canaanites were so evil and their religion so corrupting that God ordered a genocide that included newborns, pregnant women, the elderly and the disabled (except for a prostitute that provided useful intel), why use anything from Canaanite religion in Scripture? e.g. Baal, the Canaanite storm deity, was called the rider of the clouds and then Yahweh got that title. There are lots of examples like this. Why were biblical writers studying Canaanite religion at all? Can you see the problem?
There is no problem. They didn’t have to study Canaanite religion, it was all around them, not just because they didn’t wipe out or drive out all the Canaanites but because Baal was a god in far more than just Canaanite pantheons; Baal worship extended all through what is now Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, plus into Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They would have taken Canaanite slaves who also would have known the Baal stories.
So they did what was done in theological “combat” back then, taking appellations of another tribe’s gods and claiming them – or in the case of YHWH-Elohim, reclaiming them – for their own deities (meanwhile up in Greece and surrounds a different approach was emerging, that of treating every city’s, and later every culture’s, corresponding gods as just aspects of a single god, a process that continued right up into the Roman Republic).
Thus just as in Genesis 1 the writer used the framework of the Egyptian creation story and made it about Yahweh, so too later Hebrews took frameworks (and titles) from the culture they were surrounded by and did the same thing. And they did it because of the reason there was no need to study Canaanite religion; it was alive enough and well enough to tempt Israelites to ‘defect’, and this was a way to counter it – the ultimate goal being to eliminate Baal worship so no one would remember that “Rider on the Clouds” was ever a title for anyone but YHWH-Elohim.
Wow – I spent some grad school time at the source! ( And I see some of my old professors in the opening acknowledgments). Makes the world feel smaller.
Loved this line:
“But truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s better for you.”
I’ve got to remember that one.
Ah, a great Lewis quote:
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
I would slightly disagree, though: devils regard the “unhealthy interest” as a form of worship because it acknowledges their power and that of their master in evil.
I read with interest the portions where he argues that ghosts are actually demons masquerading as someone’s dead family member or friend, especially the point that coming back from the dead is impossible. That got me to thinking about the family stories of ghosts and I realized that in every instance the individual had just died – none claimed to be “back”, but at least one stated he needed to be on his way and so had little time.
Loved a comment cited from someone afflicted/deceived by a demon: " “So it can knock something off a bookcase– big deal! My Siamese cat does that all the time.”
Serious long read; I’m about halfway through and taking a break!
I disagree. That the spirits of some dead can hang around for a while, and be seen by some living humans is, IMO, possible but harassing the living is the most, I think possible. Darrell McCulley’s assertion is remarkably modern Jewish: Dybbuk.
The Dead who have visited me come to me in my dreams only, and not to harm or scare me.
And I know three kids who have seen the spirits of the dead:
Two of my wife’s biological nephews saw in their early youth. a couple going in and out of their closet. A couple of years later, their parents “remodeled” their closet and discovered a wedding photograph from the 1930’s +/-. The boys identified them as the couple who used to go in and out of their closet.
Our neighbor’s young autistic son and his mother were at her father’s house next door, not long after my mother-in-law’s death. The mother came out of the house and joined her father and son under the Jacaranda tree in the back yard. The son told his mom that “the old lady next door” had come and told him to tell his grandfather that she was sorry for her part in the ancient feud that she and he had had over his yard and flower bed watering, which typically flooded my mother-in-law’s plants on her side of the fence.
And my mother-in-law told the story of an unknown old man who had appeared and tried to get her to go into a room in her house and dig a hole in a wall. She refused and told him to go away.
Year’s later, she put the family hog in the room, to keep it from wandering away. And hog went and rooted a hole in the wall one day. When my mother-in-law discovered the hole in the wall, cleaned up the mess the hog made, and stuck her hand in the hole, when she saw a box, which removed. In the box were several gold coins, which she sold.
That’s kind of what I went on to say. The way he worded things it left open the possibility that some spirits do not go straight to Sheol (do not pass GO, do not collect 200 dinars), and that fits all the instances I know of.
My mental image of a dybbuk is like a rider on a horse, as opposed to possession which is like a squatter in a house. Never knew there was a play!
But there is no claim they are occurring without a cause. Of course they have a cause. It is only that their result is not completely determined by the preceding physical conditions. And they are not completely random either. The operation of natural law requires that the results happen according to specific probability distributions. Otherwise the laws of nature would be different than they are.
In modern creative works we have found very good reasons for incorporating random number generators, So it is only natural to think God might do the same but better. Randomness not only creates interesting and beautiful results but as part of a search or AI algorithm it can be used to search for effective solutions to difficult problems. Why not incorporate such methods in your creations to give them the ability to handle difficulties they might encounter? Why stick to the narrow limits of primitive creative efforts known in ancient texts? Why cater to the limited understanding of control freaks so obsessed with power they have to micromanage everything?
So… the point is that Christians have good reason think God has incorporated randomness into His creation.
Making ancient texts an excuse for forcing your own limited understanding on reality looks like bad theology to me.
No not really. No matter how bad another religion may be, if the God of the Israelites is the real creator, source, or accomplisher of something they say their deity has done then why would you not say so?
I would greatly disagree. I would say they are not equal errors at all. In fact I would say the first is very much a minor error compared to the latter and it is far far far better to disbelieve their existence. It is always better to take responsibility for things yourself when you can and enough to simply accept it when you cannot. I don’t see how attributing things you cannot take responsibility for to demons helps much of anything at all. We can pray for God’s guidance and help regardless.
I don’t use an “ancient text. That is a caricature and unhelpful. I am utilizing what I feel the “inspired word of God” intends to and does teach about God.
Ignoring what Scripture teaches and forcing your own limited understanding on God, who is outside space, time and ultimate human comprehension, based on how you understand the current state of science based on a fruitful but limited methodological naturalism—looks like bad theology to me.
We have Revelation in Jesus Christ and in our Sacred Scriptures. What I feel they intend to teach is of much greater importance to me than what you or any obscure modern Christian thinks quantum uncertainty means.
