Here's one for you....demon possession!

[Dob Bole]

Love the new forums BTW...since we've been on a religious left tangent lately, I thought I would share this article that's on Salon today. I was a little skeptical, but it's a good read.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/01/18/peck/index.html

[smirkymonkey]

1. Well, that explains the current administration.

[LiberalEsto]

2. Where can we get a bottle of holy water?

I'd love to try sprinkling them surreptitiously to see if they dissolve into hissing piles of ectoplasm.

[struggle4progress]

7. I think it's a very good way to describe the current administration. eom

[Alisa]

3. I remember 'People of the Lie'

I found it very engrossing and a topic rarely approached - the nature of evil. I will read this book.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. I don't believe in demon possession, but I know why people would

When I was in graduate school, I knew someone who had psychotic breaks occasionally and was hospitalized for them a couple of times in the four years that I knew her. When she talked about these episodes, it was as if she were talking about someone other than herself, describing horrible hallucinations not as if they were an experience lived but the observations of a third party.

[DulceDecorum]

6. I knew a few people like that

and Risperdal cleared that problem right up.

Something somewhere is allergic to it.

[Dookus]

5. Interestingly

he says "As for creationism vs. evolution, creationism is ridiculous if you're going to say that everything was created in six days and that it happened 7,000 years ago. On the other side of the coin, it is quite astonishing that in Genesis I the sequence of creation is exactly the sequence in which creation evolved; I see no conflict there."

So he believes grasses existed before the sun, and whales existed before the land animals. He's either scientifically illiterately, biblically illiterate, or a little bit of both.

[mojaverose]

8. Personal Responsibility, Anyone?

Isn't it interesting that Fundamentalists, the original "Personal Responsibility" people, are so quick to blame their shortcomings and failures on a mythical entity?

I think that's why they made him up.

BTW: Illness is tragic; mental illness maybe more so. Prayer, sometimes combined with a good psychiatrist and medication, will beat that ole debbil every time.
But I don't think that's what they're talking about. I think they're caught in a bind: their own, very human, desires, and a belief that God told them "No". This is crazy-making.
Instead of coming to terms with their humanness, and changing their view of God from a Judge into a Loving Parent, they try to change Society so they won't be tempted. After all, if everybody else wasn't out there having sex and sinning, it would be easier for them to be good.
They also get all judgemental on other people who, in their view, are Worse. That way they can feel good by comparison, and comfort themselves that God will treat them more gently than those Others.
And, when all their efforts fail, they can blame everything on that mythical entity, so they don't have to feel guilty.
It's sad, really, and, if they weren't so obnoxious, one could feel sorry for them and try to help.