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To: koinonia; maryz
I only have one example (hence rare)...

Anecdotal. Psychosomatic conversion reactions (loss of vision, paralysis, even false pregnancy...) have been treated as "demonic" (possession) "diseases" throughout history. They are not demonic.

You would not be happy if you had an infection and the doctor told you it's caused by a "bug." Science ha isolated disease-causing organisms and knows quite a bit about them and can effectively present evidence of their existence.

The "demonic" approach to illness stops at the "bug" stage. It'sa still on a tribal level of medicine. There is as much evidence of that as there is that rumbling volcanoes rumble because the "god" inside the mountain is "angry" or "hungry" and needs sacrifice, preferably human.

Jesus healed a woman hemorraging--no mention of casting out demons, he healed Peter's mother in law--no mention of demons; and ten lepers and various paralytics and blind--no mention of demons, and the man with the withered hand--no mention of demons, etc.. Obviously there were sicknesses directly caused by demons in the Gospels and in those cases Jesus healed them by delivering them from their root cause, the devil

Jesus is also said to have believed mustard seed is the smallest seed, as well as treating demonic illnesses as something 'real.' The Bible says the world is standing on four pillars. Do you believe that too?

Lev 11:12 tells us that there are "fowl that creep." Duet. 14:7 says that hares chew their cud. Would God say something like that to Moses when we know it's not true?

The Bible also tells us that God could not find one innocent child worthy of saving in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Do you believe our enemies' children are just as guilty as their fathers, and should be destroyed along with them? The Bible seems to teach that on numerous occasions—God instructs his" people to kill men, women, and children ("dash them to pieces," and smash them against rocks, etc), and even their live stock, and being very graphic about it. It seems like God is either unable or unwilling to help people become better human beings.

Do you find "Christ" in Sodom and Gomorrah? The same Christ that says to love your enemies and those who hate you? The same Christ who says that the kingdom of God belongs to those who are like little children, yet God destroys all the children in them (it seems God sometimes teaches one thing and does another).

With all due respect, I think it is rather "retrograde" for the lack of a better word, to believe that the world sits on four pillars, that God doesn't know or doesn't want to tell the whole truth which is the smallest seed, and that illnesses are caused by "demons" which we cannot quote, identify and name, but treat anecdotal hearsay "evidence" as something creidble and verifable.

Try to hang your coat on that and see how long before it falls on the ground. That's how much "substance" such arguments have.

103 posted on 08/12/2008 11:33:07 AM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: kosta50; koinonia
Your arguments here would be more appropriately addressed to sola Scriptura Biblical literalists -- or more effectiively to the equally obtuse scientific literalists. They won't convince the former, but by all means, have at it! (BTW, my Lev 11:12 only says that fish are only kosher if they have fins and scales. Typo? If an arnevet is indeed a hare as we know them, the confusion is likely from the fact that hares groom themselves like cats and so are subject to fur balls, which are in fact regurgitated like a cud.)

Jesus is also said to have believed mustard seed is the smallest seed, as well as treating demonic illnesses as something 'real.' The Bible says the world is standing on four pillars. Do you believe that too?

It is only in grammar books that the superlative is always the "most." In modern English, other meanings are more common in colloquial speech: "Isn't he the cutest thing!" Granted, I don't know Aramaic, but in Hebrew the superlative is expressed by definite article + adjective, which of course also occurs in mention of any adjective describing a definite noun. Then there's poetic usage: There's a line in a modern Hebrew song (by a songwriter steeped in Biblical Hebrew) to the effect that "I am smaller than the smallest of your sons."

The pillars you'll have to give me a reference for -- I can't find it my concordance. But in the usage of a pre-scientific community, I don't think it's important.

Do you believe our enemies' children are just as guilty as their fathers, etc., etc.

The Bible tells a story -- IMO, a true story, but it has an actual plot, with real characters and change and development, as, for example, from assuming that worldly prosperity is a sure sign that God is pleased to the understanding that knowledge of God is the true treasure. God takes a barbaric tribe and gradually, over a couple of thousand years, brings them to where the Christian message is possible. He inspired the writers of Scripture, but He didn't make them into something they weren't, i.e., they were men of their time and their culture, with the physical and mental limitations common to the human condition. (Again, I recommend C.S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms.) Naturally, this view probably won't go down with the frothier Biblical literalists, who seem to think that each verse of Scripture is of equal value to every other verse; some agree with you that the Bible should be read on the level of a science textbook, only they think it's correct on that level.

as well as treating demonic illnesses as something 'real.'

Science deals only with immediate causes (material cause, as I said before); it says nothing about why there should be disease, deformity, etc. For this, you have to look to final, formal and efficient causes (to use the traditional vocabulary, inadequate as it might be), which science excludes from its purview.

112 posted on 08/12/2008 1:02:57 PM PDT by maryz
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