GakuseiDon

What is the context that the writer is talking about, IYO?

I think I can understand the context, based on my position. My position is that when the author writes "demon", he means "demon". When he writes that "demons are made of air, and float around the clouds", then that is what he means. I can support this with other references to show it is consistent with how people thought back then. That seems to be supported by the context.

I'm very interested in how they thought in the first few centuries CE, and I've been trying to understand your comments in those terms. I don't see how an understanding of the philosophical discussions that have taken place in the 1600 odd years since then is required.

Elijah

What the writer is speaking about, why and from what perspective.


Do you realize that demon can mean natural force from a philosophical position? Your other references mean nothing until you understand the natural philosophies of the time. You are using only one way of understanding the words when there is an obvious other way.

Well, while our knowledge of the material world has grown over time we are still at the same basic spot in regards to our knowledge of the spiritual so the argument between Kant and Spinoza is going to be pretty similar to Plato and the Sophists, but with different terminology. They were just trying to explain the unseen natural forces in the world or laws; they weren't trying to put a superstitious religion forward. You need to understand the basic idealist philosophy before you can go back and look at ancient texts and see if they are trying to say something comparable IMO.

You have to be able to understand what they were saying in a modern light to understand them properly.

GakuseiDon

I mean, the context specifically in the work of Apuleius that I linked to, where he talked about demons.

No, I didn't know that. I knew that in some of the myths of the gods, the actions of the gods were supposed to refer to the actions of natural forces. But never for those demons who were viewed as floating around the air.

Do you have any evidence that references to demons were meant as references to natural forces (instead of entities) from a philosophical position?

Elijah

He’s trying to lay out platonic thought and rationalize some of the concepts of daemons out there.
Demon just became another divide later on. For Plato it was God-dominion-material world, later on they needed another divide to justify the particulars so it became God-gods-dominion-material world. And in that paper you can see how gods and demons mixes together and even gets thrown into minds of men (via the voice) and justifies calling them gods. The difference between gods and demons here is like the difference between universals and forms (maybe) or like I said to you earlier from the matrix analogy lines of code versus letters of code. Sometimes demons are seen more as memes then forces but you have to read the writers context because the word gets used for any spiritual entity and by spiritual I just mean non physical, not supernatural.
I think it’s common knowledge that demon comes from Plato’s concept of daemon and that he was a natural philosopher as well. What’s the difference between a force and an entity to an idealist?

spin

This all comes down to you, projecting your own desires onto the past. You have no evidence-based reason for thinking what you do, so it is conjecture. As I said earlier your position is fact-free, which you confirm when you say you are on a fact finding mission When I ask you what words mean you have already preprocessed them as "metaphorically speaking", but you are unable to show in the ancient literary context that your preprocessing is valid. A priori analysis says something about you, not about the validity of your argumentation.

If you listen you would be hearing the same refrain from most of your interlocutors: your theory shows no signs of connection with the ancient world. You have been incessantly asked for evidence and you have tried to shift the burden: how do others know that the relevant terms were not "metaphorically speaking" (without ever showing that a reading of the texts asks one to perceive the terms as anything other than what they denote).

You do not seem to be interested in the ancient texts we deal with here. When you say your definitions are coming from a metaphysical perspective, you do not attempt to show that such a perspective is relevant to those texts.

This statement is classic:

You tell me what it implies, I’m not going to speculate on how incorrectly the writer understood the events/world unless I have actual evidence.

It is a response to:

Why do you think from ancient sources the writers don't take the ideas on face value?

You have done nothing but speculate on how the ancient writers use terms in a non-literal way, yet now you can't use the texts to construct a theory as to why you think the writers don't take the ideas on face value.

As I said from the beginning my comments were on methodology and in this thread I didn't hold a position here on any deeper interpretation of texts: I wanted to know why those texts should be read the way you want, a way contrary to the apparent indications in the text. I haven't entered into the rightness of wrongness of your theory. That is not necessary until you start providing some evidence to make your conjecture in some way more tangible.


spin

andrewcriddle

Superstitious is a loaded pejorative word.
Both the cruder and the more sophisticated way are IMO misleading if taken too literally.
Early Christians (mostly) rejected crude anthropomorphic views about God, regarding God as a spiritual being rather than a material one.

This did not prevent them from being supernaturalists.

Andrew Criddle

Elijah

I’m all ears on if you have any way to organize the terminology so that this conversation is more productive. I’m obviously having a terrible time getting my points across.

I was trying superstitious out because faith healing and faith/mind over matter is being thrown into supernatural ideology. I’ll try a comic analogy; there is a difference between thinking mutants like the X-Men could be possible and thinking Dr. Strange could be or an alien like Superman is one thing but a god like Thor is another. There is a difference between bad science and believing in magical supernatural stuff and I’m not getting that point across so if you have some wording I could use that would be great.
Well I’ll just assume we’re close enough on the god concept and if you don’t mind a few question about what other supernatural stuff you think they believed in just so I can get an idea.

What is your understanding of unclean spirits, are they magical critters or something else?

In John 9:44 what concept of the devil do you think Jesus is referring to? Anthropomorphic intelligent supernatural entity or something else?

Is heaven the constant spiritual side of the universe or like a real dreamland for the dead?

Do you consider Christ more as the biological son of God or the physical manifestation of the philosophical concept of Logos?

Thanks

Elijah

John 8:44 sorry

andrewcriddle

Unclean spirits are regarded in the NT as malign disembodied intelligences. However, they are not a crudely magical concept, they made/make sense within a certain set of beliefs about the relation of mind and matter.

In John the devil is an evil spiritual intelligence. Whether or not a supernatural or anthropomorphic entity depends partly on what is meant by those terms.

Heaven is where God is.

I'm afraid both of your alternatives about Christ seem rather strange. Orthodox Christians would flatly reject both.

Andrew Criddle

Elijah

Do the spiritual intelligence" beings have brains and sensory organs to process information? Or are you referring to some other type of intelligence? Like spiritual intelligence as in meme?

Is heaven everywhere or is God in a specific place? Doesn't God transcend time and space?

I mentioned the pope quote on Logos already so I don't think I'm speaking of totally radical concepts here and unfortunately a lot of people do see Christ as the biological offspring of a genie in the sky no matter how they word it. In your own words, what's your understanding of the relationship between God and Jesus?