Both Catholics and Unificationists believe in the devil and other evil spirits as Real Beings (see [[Exorcism]]).
Of course, this is in the context of a whole bunch of other non-atheistic beliefs; it's not as nutty as it sounds.
(Did I just say "non-atheistic"? I meant, "religious" ;-)
Ed Poor
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
Both Catholics and Unificationists believe in the devil and other evil spirits as Real Beings (see [[Exorcism]]).
Of course, this is in the context of a whole bunch of other non-atheistic beliefs; it's not as nutty as it sounds.
(Did I just say "non-atheistic"? I meant, "religious" ;-)
The concept of a religious atheist is perfectly sensible.
Subject to semantic variations about atheism, agnosticism, etc., I would consider myself somewhere in this camp. I nevertheless accept that when you remove the 99% (or perhaps more) who are delusional there remains 1% that deserves closer consideration. Unfortunately the 1% is very difficult to identify. Demonic possession represents only one attempt at explanation, but the persistence of that explanation and its former official supports may do no more than cloud the issue.
Ec
On Monday 26 January 2004 01:33 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
Both Catholics and Unificationists believe in the devil and other evil spirits as Real Beings (see [[Exorcism]]).
Of course, this is in the context of a whole bunch of other non-atheistic beliefs; it's not as nutty as it sounds.
Well, according to us scientismists, one should disbelieve claims made without being backed up by sufficient evidence. It is a question of what one considers "sufficient evidence". I don't consider the opinions (even when written down in "holy" texts) of a couple of ancient guys (yes, they were almost exclusively guys) all that convincing. What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, Catholic Encyclopedia articles are a bad starting point for "real" encyclopedia articles. ;-)
Best, Sascha Noyes
* Sascha Noyes sascha@pantropy.net [2004-01-26]:
... What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, Catholic Encyclopedia articles are a bad starting point for "real" encyclopedia articles. ;-)
After reading all this thread (and agreeing more or less on its spirit), I have to say that all these "CE is pathetic" is the same as as saying "I found a bug in Apache and several security issues, instead of fixing it I simply shall tell other web managers not to use Apache as a starting point to serve web pages". Is it reasonable? How many non-dogmatic non-doctrinal articles are there in the CE which contain real facts?
By the way, I have only read the CE twice -repeat twice- in my life, I am just trying to explain that your "concern" about its seriousness is quite quite unfair.
Cheers,
Pedro.