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To: maryz; koinonia
I think you're "loading the deck" here, assuming without argument that material causality is the only kind, omitting reference to final, formal, efficient causes

I think you have it backwards. I am simply expresisng doubt at an extraordinary claim—"demonic" causes of illnesses—and I am simply asking for evidence to such an extraordinary claim.

You are turning the tables and supposing my doubt is baseless, as if acceptance of a "demonic" cause of illnesses is something deserving of a serious consideration!

In order for that to happen, one must provde more than someone's word for such a claim to be deserving of a consideration.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. If I state that there are pink unicorns on Jupiter, you'd be perfectly justified in demanding credible evidence to that effect and I would have no leg to stand on by accusing your doubt as being unjustified.

If one of these days scientists discover "life" on Mars, the world will demand proof, and justifiably so. Wen someone claims there can be illnesses caused by demons, it is justified to ask which demons and what illnesses are involved here.

I am waiting, patiently...

88 posted on 08/11/2008 3:40:39 PM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: kosta50
The claim is only "extraordinary" in a modern, "scientific" worldview. You exclude demons because, well, just because! Science has not demonstrated their existence (nor attempted to AFAIK, but I couldn't swear to it). From your other posts, I don't think this denial out of hand of the supernatural is thoroughgoing.

I admit that, in many ways, my personal prejudice is against the prevailing modern view, at least always remembering that, if two people (or cultures, or schools of thought, or ages, etc.) disagree, it may be that one is right and one is wrong, it may be that both are wrong, and it may be that both are right in some degree, but they're not talking about the same thing, "under the same aspect," as the philosophers say! ;-)

I have to go for tonight -- more tomorrow, maybe, if God should live and be well!

89 posted on 08/11/2008 4:01:43 PM PDT by maryz
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