Americans’ belief in God, the devil and other spiritual entities has fallen to a new low, according to a Gallup poll released on Thursday. Seventy-four percent of Americans said they believe in God…
How do leprechauns feel about it? What about Zeus? Santa? Have the magical pixies weighed in yet and shared their opinion regarding disbelief with you?
Likely because of social pressure. A lot of people either have judgemental family or would lose their friend and social groups if they didn’t go to church every week.
I think you’ll find that there is no difference between metaphorical demons and literal demons if you look close enough. Human beings are merely vehicles for memes.
I think you’ll find that there is no difference between metaphorical demons and literal demons if you look close enough. Human beings are merely vehicles for memes.
Creatures that do not exist are incapable of holding ideas in their minds and spreading them.
Demons aren’t physical creatures, they’re the ideas that prompt demonic behavior. They don’t die because they’re born of ignorance, hatred, and fear.
So, a metaphor for ideas that lead to ugly human behavior. Got it. XD
I also believe that we are the information we contain. The problem with referring to sociopathic memes that lead to bad behaviors as literal demons is that there are significant numbers of people who believe that there are literally physical monstrous evil creatures from hell that tempt people into bad behaviors, (as evidenced in the link.) Using the same language they do is likely to reinforce their absurd beliefs even though you mean something different.
I’m telling you there’s no difference. Ideas are more alive than man. Look at Kenneth Copeland, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis. They’re possessed with murderous ideas and they will destroy themselves and everyone around them before they’d seek forgiveness and absolution.
Have more longevity != more alive. See the definition of life here. Ideas/memes are not comprised of matter with biological processes.
Look at Kenneth Copeland, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis. They’re possessed with murderous ideas and they will destroy themselves and everyone around them before they’d seek forgiveness and absolution.
I agree that they all contain, spread, and celebrate many sociopathic ideas, but that does not life make. Memes are interesting in that they propagate in a similar way to biological organisms, like pathogens do, and can be studied in many similar ways, but that does not make them alive.
I think most of the confusion here has to do with your use of the term, "literally," which you are literally using incorrectly.
Ok, I can see you’re limited by your materialist mindset. I don’t need to convince you. I will only tell you that understanding that there are angelic and demonic ideas that can possess and control our lives allows you to develop a tactic to counter or utilize their effects. Everything that’s known about resisting and defeating demons is reflective of the necessary tactics one needs to resist and defeat demonic ideas. The Temptations of Christ are parables designed to teach the reader how to avoid the temptations of ignorance and malice. Everything known about invoking angels and Gods is reflective of what needs to be done to utilize those ideas in your life.
Well there’s a lot of things you don’t know, but that doesn’t stop you from acting like a dickhead. Religion is a function of authority. It’s a hierarchy enforced by violence. Spirituality has nothing to do with the ignorance of religion.
but that doesn’t stop you from acting like a dickhead.
You're the only person who used words like dickhead. You came on a rational group, spouted superstition and ignorance and even contradicting yourself, and then starting throwing insults like a child. You've added no value here.
You: I believe in God and Demons
Also You: I am not religious.
These are contradictory, so one of you is a casual and habitual liar. Why would people listen to a liar? A liar has nothing to teach anyone.
Ok, I can see you’re limited by your materialist mindset. I don’t need to convince you. I will only tell you that understanding that there are angelic and demonic ideas that can possess and control our lives allows you to develop a tactic to counter or utilize their effects. Everything that’s known about resisting and defeating demons is reflective of the necessary tactics one needs to resist and defeat demonic ideas. The Temptations of Christ are parables designed to teach the reader how to avoid the temptations of ignorance and malice. Everything known about invoking angels and Gods is reflective of what needs to be done to utilize those ideas in your life.
Hoo boy, sorry to discover you have a propensity for magical thinking. Yes, I am proudly a materialist, and my beliefs are founded in physical evidence. Since beliefs that are not founded in evidence are seldom dispelled by it I'm going to wish you a good day and stop wasting my time here.
When man invented machines, he began believing God was a machine. Now that man is creating computers, we believe the universe is a simulation. Invariably when people say there is no God, they’re completely unable to satisfactorily define God.
I’m loving this thread, thanks to all the contributors.
People are meme/idea factories, creating new ones or refining existing ones. I think that it’s difficult (impossible?) To find this in any other instance of nature or even in man made AI.
Some ideas are bad/demonic in that they stifle the creation or refinement of new/existing ideas.
Some are “angelic” in that they open new threads and avenues for thinking.
What’s a fictional God got to do with any of that?
God is just a word. The word points to an understanding. The universe as far as we can tell is infinite, expanding, subject to entropy and the laws of physics. What is it expanding into? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does it share features across immeasurable distances? Why did it start? What is time? What is conscious experience? All of these questions point to a higher order of organization than could be comprehended with infinite accumulated lifetimes of research. God is just shorthand for the fundament, the reason there’s something rather than nothing.
Matter isn’t the basis of our universe, it’s energy. We’re in the God-field. Information cannot be created or destroyed, only occulted and translated. Your entire life exists as a 4D worm traveling through a 5D minkowski space of probability. Your perspective is bound to a single point in 4 dimensions you know as the present. Your whole life and every possible choice you could make is nothing more than a series of coordinates in an infinite fractal field. You are simply a memory or an idea of God. You’re a dream. The eye of God is consciousness and the light that shines through this matrix creates a shadow play that you see as your material life. All those ancient stories you deny carried this information, but the translations are nonsense because you don’t have the perspective of a civilian from 4-6 thousand years ago.
The word points to a MISunderstanding. Fear of the world, nature, and the universe is where it originates. Drug-fueled pseudo-scientific woo woo doesn't change that it is an outdated concept.
Super hot takes, genuinely. I agree with a lot of what you’re saying but would point out two corrections
All those ancient stories you deny carried this information, but the translations are nonsense because you don’t have the perspective of a civilian from 4-6 thousand years ago.
It’s presumptive to assume that I don’t understand the stories from thousands of years ago. Knowledge evolves just like we do. We possess that same knowledge in a condensed and efficient format. Just as massive dinosaurs evolved in to chickens or whatever other analogy you like, a 15 minute story in the bible can be condensed in to “help others in need” or “don’t steal”
Is information lost in these condensations? Absolutely, evolution comes at a cost, chickens are missing some things that dinosaurs had. The great part about ideas though is that they can always be picked back up and reassessed. If there is some old story that contains a grain of wisdom that society has missed, by all means pick it up and share. But to address your specifically quoted piece, you would be directly contradicting yourself if you are saying that knowledge has been lost. It’s laid out and available for anyone to pick apart.
God is just shorthand for the fundament, the reason there’s something rather than nothing.
I think this misconception comes from our perspective on time. You and I were born so our consciousness began “somewhere” so it is easy to fall in to the trap that all things are conceived. While all actions have a cause and an effect, you can “see” the effect 10 seconds in the future, just as you could have seen the cause 10 seconds in the past. There doesn’t need to be a beginning of time, things always were. A rock floating through space at x speed in y direction can be predicted to be at another point days, years, infinity in to the future, just as it could be done in reverse.
Long way to say that there need be no fundament, just varying states of the universe. It always was and always will be.
The information is there, but it’s occulted by spectacle and authority. You can seek it out, but you also have to seek out the supporting context, weed out bad information, and fill in gaps. It’s important to realize that the maps are not the territory as well. You don’t need any of that historical information. Meditation can reveal these secrets because the mind is part of the holographic fractal of high order reality. I believe that the technological singularity will be the moment all gnosis is restored. Until that point in our future history, the theme of our civilization will be a balance between the community building of the awakened (woke) and the violence of ignorant authoritarians (not-sees).
I agree that there is no beginning or end. I was just suggesting otherwise because of the popular notion of the big bang. I don’t think of a fundament as the beginning, but rather the substrate.
Agree with you brother, I find the idea that the big bang was “the beginning” as being far too narrow minded. It wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last.
While I find value in what you’re saying, I’d encourage you to take the time to explain your positions. When you say
I understand not believing in God, but if you don’t believe in demons, you’re likely being victimized by one.
you must realize that you’re speaking to an audience that is familiar with christianity, the Exorcist movies, or played diablo 2 at some point. Not only does language matter, but context of the time does too, as you said. If no other word will suffice, you should take the time to better explain what you mean.
I say should because the world isn’t binary. There are people who want to hear your perspective but will absolutely dismiss you as a right-wing troll because of that one word - because there is only so much time in the day to dedicate to talking and thinking about things to risk wasting it on a one-liner with no further context.
If a person can’t get passed their own prejudices in order to reach understanding, I would rather leave them to their ignorance than waste time trying to drag them out of it.
You got a good enough idea: that humans embody the demonic ideas and essentially become the demon they act out while they act it out. I can agree with that but not in a literal sense, only figuratively/metaphorically.
Your inflexibility makes your illustration very fragile though. Insisting you mean literally in the dictionary sense will break your idea over from “ok, sure maybe” into “this fellow’s mind may not be fully functioning as it normally would”
I’m not here to call you names like conspiracy theorist, but you’re insisting in the same style as one, which is a major turn off.
That said, ideas live longer than man, that is easily seen. The fascism you’re talking about is just that, weird fascist leavings of some of the worst parts of our society that have been left alone to simmer for too long now. What do you think about that? It being political rather than it being demons?
All I can say is that before you judge my perspective, you should ask yourself if you’ve got the necessary theological and spiritual background to understand what you’re critiquing. I’m not talking about pop-religion. I’m referring to ancient concepts and frameworks for understanding reality that existed long before modern capitalist materialist concepts of the mind.
“My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.” ― John Dominic Crossan
Well, not gonna lie, I wasn’t expecting to be insulted. If you’re just going to question my intelligence when I try to engage in good faith with what you posted, you would have done better to have just not responded.
There’s a “mystical stuff that only I can understand so I won’t bother explaining” air that you have about your reasoning that is very representative of people who have nothing to back up what they’re trying to say. I’m calling you out as ignorant of what you’re saying now, partially because I’m annoyed at you, partially because I’m pretty certain you can not coherently put a narrative together that will make any sense.
That’s a direct challenge to you to tell your story and theories. If you don’t want to, that’s totally fine, you don’t have to, but don’t insult my intelligence when I’m trying to give you so many benefits of the doubt that you’ve done nothing to earn.
You’re the one who decided to take offense. If you’re so troubled by a quote then you’ll never survive on the internet. I didn’t say I wouldn’t explain, but I certainly don’t want to tiptoe around your sensitive feelings. If you get nothing from this exchange, it’s no skin off my back.
Oh, I see your reading style now, that is certainly not ideal…
I told you why I got annoyed with you: because you insulted my intelligence. Do you think the quote was the insulting part? It wasn’t, it was the “check yourself before you wreck yourself” you brought out in your first line.
Let’s try this again:
I think your ideas are wrong. I want you to show me how I’m wrong. You are engaging in an argument instead of showing me your ideas. This is not what I want nor what I am interested in.
I don’t care about this particular conversation, we can stop having it when/if you decide to start telling me why you believe these things.
Like damn, dude, can you not see I’m trying to get why you have the position you have?
So you’re annoying to me. Big fucking deal. Does it not mean anything that I’m still trying to engage with your ideas despite you constantly twisting away to say more inexplicably cryptic stuff? Stop engaging with this pointless internet argument and tell me something interesting, please!
I swear, the worst I have to offer is a “that’s interesting” and then I’ll be on my way.
You don’t have be embarrassed by your ignorance, but if you are then it’s your own doing. Don’t expect me to accept your ignorance as fact, or give it the same respect I would give a person who had done the research. Are we done? Cuz if we’re just gonna talk about how you’re big mad about your deficiencies I’ve lost interest.
Not quite yet, because you’ve still failed to give yourself a position.
You’re focusing too much on this argument.
You’ve yet to have a position which would kick off the conversation I tried and am still trying to have with you.
You have done pretty much nothing this argument but glom on to key words and completely ignore every request I’ve sent you to tell me anything worth anything, which does not bode well for your reading comprehension abilities, which is probably why you’re bored right now.
If you’re so bored, then change this into a conversation about what you believe. And not about me, I don’t give a shit about me, which you seem to be overly focused on, I’m talking about demons.
So I’ll ask you directly: what is your full position on demons? How do they work, how do they operate, what’s their motivation? Are they purely human generated? Are you unable to say because people will come after you? Is that why you keep twisting away and ignoring what I’m requesting from you?
Ohhh rip,I read this right after I responded lol oh well. Fun enough while it lasted. I do enjoy collecting different theories about how the spiritual world works, that one felt like it could be some feels logic which is why I kept wanting to dig at it.
There’s nothing wrong with being spiritual but I do think there’s something to uncover if you’re not able to articulate what you believe while professing to know how things supposedly work. I figured they were either completely full of it or had something waaaay different story-wise than most people.
Given that they were starting to connect demons to daemons, I’m thinking it was likely the second option.
Tldr; thanks for the heads up! It was fun while it lasted 😆
Actually, it’s like not believing in Love. If you don’t believe in Love you’ll never find it. You had to add “speed” to your argument to make it more ridiculous.
I accept you idea demons and the idea angels that let you know about them. Your lucky you got those but they won't help you with everything. You close your mind off and there are some hills youll never see.
Mmm nope. My response makes sense. Your circular logic is objectively fucking stupid. Sorry you were brainwashed, but the real world actually exists and is completely free from supernatural bullshit of any kind.
It’s really fucking funny that you can confidently say things like “if you don’t believe in LITERAL DEMONS that means you’re possessed by one!” while being aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Well look at yourself, taunting, insulting, mocking. Do you think you might have some hitchhikers in your psyche? What possessed you to go online and be an asshole today?
Well I clicked on an article that indicated we are (painfully slowly) advancing as a civilization, and there’s a fundie dipshit in the comments hollering about demons. I felt, and continue to feel, the desire to call out your ridiculous fantasy horseshit. You are confusing reality with a series of children’s tales from a thousand years ago.
And you are spouting mythology as if it had basis in fact. I would say the indoctrination into supernatural belief causes far more harm, and is far dumber, than tossing about some insults to an internet stranger.
You are talking about "demon" on an atheist magazine, what else did you expect? Why don't you rephrase for clarity? Because otherwise I see no discussion possible.
Belief in absurdity is still quite high but at least the trends are going in the right direction. I can't help but think support of the GOP and its christofascism, racism, misogyny, and hate is opening America's eyes to the irrational ugliness that can exist within absurd belief systems.
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