Weirwille deceived by lying spirits? The Devil? Superstition? Peeeee-pul. Look at yourselves. We were all in a cult and have we learned nothing? Its ALL superstition, guys. No devils. No spirits. No supernatural. If anything looks like magic, its magician tricks. Nothing more. You can all finally get rid of your fears because there are no bogeymen out to get you. And no angels to help you out either for that matter.
If anyone had told you these things while you were in TWI you wouldn't have listened. You're probably not listening now. But without a shadow of a doubt its all a lie.... Life is good. You can be free of religion and all its fears. Just saying..
sudo
Freedom From Religion Foundation:http://ffrf.org/
Your solution is certainly appealing, sudo, but it does have one shortcoming, it doesn't take into account the evidence available. It doesn't explain Jacques Vallee's findings, it doesn't explain the experiences with which excathedra opened this thread, and it doesn't explain the personal experiences that many other people, including myself, can attest to. Are the religious explanations (and there are many different ones) adequate? I don't necessarily think so, either ancient or modern. Are psychological explanations adequate? Can such experiences be safely attributed to schizophrenic or schizo-affective episodes? I've had long and moderately intimate acquaintance with friends, some of whom have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and others with schizo-affective disorder. I myself have been diagnosed with bipolar mood disorder and am familiar with how the balances of my neurotransmitters can influence my perceptions. There are some pieces to the puzzle to be found there, but no comprehensive solution that I know of.
Have religious people down through the millennia committed atrocities that should bring shame on our whole species? Yes, indeed! But I think the atrocities of 20th century athiests demonstrate the ability to commit atrocities is a feature of being human, not necessarily of being religious.
I, for one, welcome the perspective your viewpoint adds to the converstion, even though I don't particularly agree with it.
If anyone had told you these things while you were in TWI you wouldn't have listened.
Actually I would have listened quite openly while I was in TWI and before and now.. I grew up having an Aunt that devoted her life to being a witch, and not just a basic Wiccan groupy. No instead, she enjoyed for a time to terrorize our family she married into because we were Christians, and well, she hated that and didn't want her "new" husband to change his mind. lol.. I was glad the day she moved overseas, never to hear from her again. But the things that took place, yeah, it certainly wasn't the magic tricks you normally see. From her personal visits with threats that weren't just verbal, or fleshly physical either. More like lightning bolts inside the house, the whole mutations with a multitude of faces when you looked at her eyes. Yeah, she was a scary person. Never actually did any physical harm, just threats.
Try being awoken at night with the sound of your niece screaming and hollering about our aunt. Yet, the niece isn't there. Her voice is. She isn't. Cause naturally it's 1am and she should be asleep many miles away at her parents. So you call her parents, and they check on her, only to have them find her in a corner looking scared and mouthing stuff, but with no sound on their side.. The phone helped clear up what was being said.. And those were some of the mundane stuff..
When my own mother trembles to her very core everytime she thinks of this woman or of devilish spirits in general even to this day. It wasn't just something "I" misunderstood.. Our family had to deal with it. With God's help! And it was real.
The New Testament never uses the phrase "devil spirit", which I assume would be pneuma diabolou. The writers of the NT used daimon - "demon", daimonion - "little demon", and daimonizomai - "to be demonized".
What were demons in the cultures of the time? Most of the ancients viewed the cosmos, which was itself supposed to be a unitary, intelligent being, as inhabited by three types of subsidiary intelligent beings: humans who were earth elementals, demons who were air elementals, and gods who were fire elementals. Human beings inhabited the surface of the earth, demons inhabited the realm of air which extended from the surface of the earth to the orbit of the moon, and gods inhabited the realm of fire which extended from the orbit of the moon to the orbit of the fixed stars. Beyond the orbit of the fixed stars was nothing but the void. Celestial objects such as the sun, moon, planets and stars were regarded as actually BEING gods.
The word "demon" probably originally meant something like "a distributor of fate". Demons were seen as intermediaries between the gods and human beings. Since demons were air elementals, they were invisible. You can see human beings, who are made of visible earth, and gods who are made of visible fire, but air is invisible.
Ordinary people lived in terror of demons. The effete, elite philosophers looked down their noses at ordinary peoples' attitudes. Since demons were "superior" to human beings, it was obviously impossible for demons to be or do evil. If you thought demons could be or do evil, then you must be one of those ignorant yokels. The philosophers had a word to describe those backward fools, deisidaimon, or "demon-fearing". Deisidaimon occurs one time in the NT, at Acts 17:22 where it is translated "superstitious". When Paul told the Greeks they were "too superstitious", he was doing an intellectual Three Stooges' finger-poke into the eyes of the Epicureans and Stoics who were there (Acts 17:18). Paul was implying that they were ignorant yokels!
One of the reasons ordinary people flocked to Christ in Christianity's earliest days was because the influence and activities of the Holy Spirit that had first been poured out on the day of Pentecost demonstrated that the ruler of the power of the air had been condemned, and his minions had been rendered katargeo, or "idled down". In the face of Holy Spirit, evil spirits lost whatever real power they may have had.
One of the Roman charges against Christians was that they were superstitious or demon-fearing. The Romans thought this, not because Christians were afraid of demons... they were the only ordinary people who WEREN'T... but because Christians taught that demons can be and do evil.
There's more to this topic, but that's all I've got the energy to post right now.
The Greek word used for "casting out" evil spirits is ekballo from ek, "out of" and ballo, "I throw". The Blue Letter Bible has this, among other things, to say about ekballo:
"1) to cast out, drive out, to send out
a) with notion of violence
2) to cast out
b) a thing: excrement from the belly into the sink"
Apparently "casting out" an evil spirit is somewhat akin to taking a good, healthy poop!
Not quite as glamorous as most televangelists would have us believe!
I'm sure you've been scared spitless over perceived phenomenon but let me assure you.. its all tricks. I've seen magicians do things that looked IMPOSSIBLE or counteracted the very laws of nature. They were all tricks. The supernatural has been seriously studied and debunked every time. Its all tricks, guys. You're still being fooled after all these years plain and simple. No use really debating this, that I can see. Someone says they saw ghosts or spooky stuff and that's that, eh? BTW.. the Muslims have their own web sites and swear they get miracle cures just like the Christians. Sheesh guys... I think down deep you know there ain't no ghosts or angels. Didja' know that there are still rural Irish that believe in leprechauns? I'm not making that up. Swear they get glimpses of them, too and don't try to tell them they don't exist either. People like to believe in these things because it helps explain things that they don't understand.... or fear. Have fun guys!!
Ever see one of these TV shows that deal with the supernatural? There they are, renovating an old house, when suddenly, upon tearing down an old brick wall, a ghost is "released" from its imprisonment. Now, I gotta wonder, if even Casper, a mere cartoon ghost, could go back and forth through brick walls whenever he wanted, how did this hapless specimen manage to get himself hopelessly trapped in a wall?
Something else, too. If I was a ghost and could go anywhere I choose, why would I elect to live in Aunt Minnie's cedar closet, along with her moldy corsets and foul smelling hose?
Ever see one of these TV shows that deal with the supernatural? There they are, renovating an old house, when suddenly, upon tearing down an old brick wall, a ghost is "released" from its imprisonment.
WOOHOO! I just received confirmation from my Greek prof (he IS a real doctor, you know)! Ekballo, the Greek word used in the New Testament for "casting out" evil spirits, is the same Greek word used for "casting out" manure!
"Pardon me for a moment, I need to go to the restroom and cast out an evil spirit!" :P
T, you and I know each other from "way" back when, so I think you will appreciate this, especially in the context of your last post.
About the time I started really questioning twi (about 3-4 years before I actually left) I started having recurring dreams about a house I used to live in when I was a kid. only it wasn't really any house I had ever lived in when I really stopped and thought about it. It was a huge house, bigger on the inside than on the outside... With sprawling gardens and huge rooms with spiral staircases and stained glass windows - it went on and on. And then I would end up in an old dusty room filled with books. And I would start to get scared... And then the demons would come out of the books and I would wake up terrified. I had this dream almost every night. I tried telling myself to take control of the dream and just not go in the house - that didn't work. I'd end up getting into the house any time I opened a door in a dream.
Since leaving twi, I still have house dreams, but they are happy now. And the books aren't scary anymore.
The house was me, the real me, before I got in the Way, begore my mom even attended her first felllowship. Where I was when I was a child. And the books? All the stuff I had hidden away to make myself a twi-bot.
Now I dream a lot about travelling... Lots of good changes. I'm not scared of being who I am anymore. And it is good.. My demons weren't evil, it was just me the whole time, trying desperately to get free.
the house was bigger on the inside than outside? sounds like you lived in a Tardis, hehe
ive never been able to agree with your strategies on all this, sudo. you seem to avoid the majority of data and gobs of direct experience. not likely to perform a wide range of injunctions to test the theories you reject. yada yada. but i do respect your right to kvetch and crusade about a thing in hypertext. you obviously feel its important. good luck.
regarding the "soul"...it may be that there need not be some sort of psychological or biological pathology or imbalance to start noticing the countless voices within each of us. it seems more like a natural outcome of the human experience. already happening in each of us. i would go as far as to suggest that the first century "tongues" experience may have involved practices of accessing this inner "burning bush" via voice dialogue as a form of healing art during a revolutionary reawakening of jewish healing arts.
also, dreaming is a nightly baptism in the psyche. and dreaming practices make us accident prone to wake up more in the dream and interact more effectively with the contents of the dream. some say that dreams are not real. if not, than what is it? some say that dreams are not important. if not, than why does the body keep doing it? subjective sciences. i dare ya.
regarding haunted houses and the afterlife and such...its too late for me not to remain an enchanted agnostic about it. i dont hold it against those who deny the existence or validity of this ongoing occurance wide range of exotic phenomenon such as this. but i can suggest that one is more than just kvetching, you may do well "put to your money where there mouth is" and actively go there...seek it...do it.
The Greek word used for "casting out" evil spirits is ekballo from ek, "out of" and ballo, "I throw". The Blue Letter Bible has this, among other things, to say about ekballo:
"1) to cast out, drive out, to send out
a) with notion of violence
2) to cast out
b) a thing: excrement from the belly into the sink"
Apparently "casting out" an evil spirit is somewhat akin to taking a good, healthy poop!
Not quite as glamorous as most televangelists would have us believe!
Love,
Steve
yep, abundant honor to that which we think is less honorable.
like how a valuable way to see the health of a thing is to look at the waste.
and how it can be said that the seat and root of all spiritual practice is the arse. :B)
one of my favorite ways to describe things like psychological shadow-work and dream-work is "processing crap"
i post this as an avid composter and fan of all things alchemical.
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geisha779
What a really smart observation. The scriptures don't say a great deal about Satan......they say enough to make us aware and really no more than that. We are to be aware, not to be ignorant of his way
Steve Lortz
Your solution is certainly appealing, sudo, but it does have one shortcoming, it doesn't take into account the evidence available. It doesn't explain Jacques Vallee's findings, it doesn't explain the experiences with which excathedra opened this thread, and it doesn't explain the personal experiences that many other people, including myself, can attest to. Are the religious explanations (and there are many different ones) adequate? I don't necessarily think so, either ancient or modern. Are psychological explanations adequate? Can such experiences be safely attributed to schizophrenic or schizo-affective episodes? I've had long and moderately intimate acquaintance with friends, some of whom have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and others with schizo-affective disorder. I myself have been diagnosed with bipolar mood disorder and am familiar with how the balances of my neurotransmitters can influence my perceptions. There are some pieces to the puzzle to be found there, but no comprehensive solution that I know of.
Have religious people down through the millennia committed atrocities that should bring shame on our whole species? Yes, indeed! But I think the atrocities of 20th century athiests demonstrate the ability to commit atrocities is a feature of being human, not necessarily of being religious.
I, for one, welcome the perspective your viewpoint adds to the converstion, even though I don't particularly agree with it.
Love,
Steve
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Ham
evil spirits. UFO's..various strange encounters..
other weird stuff..
sometimes the best I can say is "they saw something.."
I didn't see it.. maybe they did. I've had the same experience in reverse more than once, so to speak..
you can describe it, try to explain it.. but often it is only beautiful in the eye of the beholder..
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TrustAndObey
Actually I would have listened quite openly while I was in TWI and before and now.. I grew up having an Aunt that devoted her life to being a witch, and not just a basic Wiccan groupy. No instead, she enjoyed for a time to terrorize our family she married into because we were Christians, and well, she hated that and didn't want her "new" husband to change his mind. lol.. I was glad the day she moved overseas, never to hear from her again. But the things that took place, yeah, it certainly wasn't the magic tricks you normally see. From her personal visits with threats that weren't just verbal, or fleshly physical either. More like lightning bolts inside the house, the whole mutations with a multitude of faces when you looked at her eyes. Yeah, she was a scary person. Never actually did any physical harm, just threats.
Try being awoken at night with the sound of your niece screaming and hollering about our aunt. Yet, the niece isn't there. Her voice is. She isn't. Cause naturally it's 1am and she should be asleep many miles away at her parents. So you call her parents, and they check on her, only to have them find her in a corner looking scared and mouthing stuff, but with no sound on their side.. The phone helped clear up what was being said.. And those were some of the mundane stuff..
When my own mother trembles to her very core everytime she thinks of this woman or of devilish spirits in general even to this day. It wasn't just something "I" misunderstood.. Our family had to deal with it. With God's help! And it was real.
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Steve Lortz
Evil spirits in the New Testament:
The New Testament never uses the phrase "devil spirit", which I assume would be pneuma diabolou. The writers of the NT used daimon - "demon", daimonion - "little demon", and daimonizomai - "to be demonized".
What were demons in the cultures of the time? Most of the ancients viewed the cosmos, which was itself supposed to be a unitary, intelligent being, as inhabited by three types of subsidiary intelligent beings: humans who were earth elementals, demons who were air elementals, and gods who were fire elementals. Human beings inhabited the surface of the earth, demons inhabited the realm of air which extended from the surface of the earth to the orbit of the moon, and gods inhabited the realm of fire which extended from the orbit of the moon to the orbit of the fixed stars. Beyond the orbit of the fixed stars was nothing but the void. Celestial objects such as the sun, moon, planets and stars were regarded as actually BEING gods.
The word "demon" probably originally meant something like "a distributor of fate". Demons were seen as intermediaries between the gods and human beings. Since demons were air elementals, they were invisible. You can see human beings, who are made of visible earth, and gods who are made of visible fire, but air is invisible.
Ordinary people lived in terror of demons. The effete, elite philosophers looked down their noses at ordinary peoples' attitudes. Since demons were "superior" to human beings, it was obviously impossible for demons to be or do evil. If you thought demons could be or do evil, then you must be one of those ignorant yokels. The philosophers had a word to describe those backward fools, deisidaimon, or "demon-fearing". Deisidaimon occurs one time in the NT, at Acts 17:22 where it is translated "superstitious". When Paul told the Greeks they were "too superstitious", he was doing an intellectual Three Stooges' finger-poke into the eyes of the Epicureans and Stoics who were there (Acts 17:18). Paul was implying that they were ignorant yokels!
One of the reasons ordinary people flocked to Christ in Christianity's earliest days was because the influence and activities of the Holy Spirit that had first been poured out on the day of Pentecost demonstrated that the ruler of the power of the air had been condemned, and his minions had been rendered katargeo, or "idled down". In the face of Holy Spirit, evil spirits lost whatever real power they may have had.
One of the Roman charges against Christians was that they were superstitious or demon-fearing. The Romans thought this, not because Christians were afraid of demons... they were the only ordinary people who WEREN'T... but because Christians taught that demons can be and do evil.
There's more to this topic, but that's all I've got the energy to post right now.
Love,
Steve
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Steve Lortz
An interesting aside that I just noticed:
The Greek word used for "casting out" evil spirits is ekballo from ek, "out of" and ballo, "I throw". The Blue Letter Bible has this, among other things, to say about ekballo:
"1) to cast out, drive out, to send out
a) with notion of violence
2) to cast out
b) a thing: excrement from the belly into the sink"
Apparently "casting out" an evil spirit is somewhat akin to taking a good, healthy poop!
Not quite as glamorous as most televangelists would have us believe!
Love,
Steve
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Sudo
Steve and Trust and Obey,
I'm sure you've been scared spitless over perceived phenomenon but let me assure you.. its all tricks. I've seen magicians do things that looked IMPOSSIBLE or counteracted the very laws of nature. They were all tricks. The supernatural has been seriously studied and debunked every time. Its all tricks, guys. You're still being fooled after all these years plain and simple. No use really debating this, that I can see. Someone says they saw ghosts or spooky stuff and that's that, eh? BTW.. the Muslims have their own web sites and swear they get miracle cures just like the Christians. Sheesh guys... I think down deep you know there ain't no ghosts or angels. Didja' know that there are still rural Irish that believe in leprechauns? I'm not making that up. Swear they get glimpses of them, too and don't try to tell them they don't exist either. People like to believe in these things because it helps explain things that they don't understand.... or fear. Have fun guys!!
sudo
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waysider
Ever see one of these TV shows that deal with the supernatural? There they are, renovating an old house, when suddenly, upon tearing down an old brick wall, a ghost is "released" from its imprisonment. Now, I gotta wonder, if even Casper, a mere cartoon ghost, could go back and forth through brick walls whenever he wanted, how did this hapless specimen manage to get himself hopelessly trapped in a wall?
Something else, too. If I was a ghost and could go anywhere I choose, why would I elect to live in Aunt Minnie's cedar closet, along with her moldy corsets and foul smelling hose?
Just a thought.
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OldSkool
You mean The Amityville Horror was fake?
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waysider
Nah, that one was real.
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OldSkool
WHEW! I always thought George Lutz was a great man of God.
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Steve Lortz
WOOHOO! I just received confirmation from my Greek prof (he IS a real doctor, you know)! Ekballo, the Greek word used in the New Testament for "casting out" evil spirits, is the same Greek word used for "casting out" manure!
"Pardon me for a moment, I need to go to the restroom and cast out an evil spirit!" :P
Who sez God don't have no sense of humor?
Love,
Steve
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excathedra
trust/obey i'm sorry for all you had to go through
sudo, i enormously disagree with you, but good to see you
i guess god has a sense of humor -- i'm not feeling it right now -- because i'm going through so much shhhhh
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Thomas Loy Bumgarner
the house was bigger on the inside than outside? sounds like you lived in a Tardis, hehe
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sirguessalot
ive never been able to agree with your strategies on all this, sudo. you seem to avoid the majority of data and gobs of direct experience. not likely to perform a wide range of injunctions to test the theories you reject. yada yada. but i do respect your right to kvetch and crusade about a thing in hypertext. you obviously feel its important. good luck.
regarding the "soul"...it may be that there need not be some sort of psychological or biological pathology or imbalance to start noticing the countless voices within each of us. it seems more like a natural outcome of the human experience. already happening in each of us. i would go as far as to suggest that the first century "tongues" experience may have involved practices of accessing this inner "burning bush" via voice dialogue as a form of healing art during a revolutionary reawakening of jewish healing arts.
also, dreaming is a nightly baptism in the psyche. and dreaming practices make us accident prone to wake up more in the dream and interact more effectively with the contents of the dream. some say that dreams are not real. if not, than what is it? some say that dreams are not important. if not, than why does the body keep doing it? subjective sciences. i dare ya.
regarding haunted houses and the afterlife and such...its too late for me not to remain an enchanted agnostic about it. i dont hold it against those who deny the existence or validity of this ongoing occurance wide range of exotic phenomenon such as this. but i can suggest that one is more than just kvetching, you may do well "put to your money where there mouth is" and actively go there...seek it...do it.
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sirguessalot
yep, abundant honor to that which we think is less honorable.
like how a valuable way to see the health of a thing is to look at the waste.
and how it can be said that the seat and root of all spiritual practice is the arse. :B)
one of my favorite ways to describe things like psychological shadow-work and dream-work is "processing crap"
i post this as an avid composter and fan of all things alchemical.
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