I could use the illustration here of someone who practices witchcraft. They use the power of the demons to get things done, to cast spells on people, to become famous etc. So, they believe that the demons have power. But, the demons were angels created by God who rebelled against His authority and chose to follow Satan. He is infinitely more powerful than they are, so much so that He created the entire universe and everything else that exists. So, His power is far greater than that of any demon, as He preceded them, He existed before they did.
How does preceding someone, and existing before they did, equate to having greater power? My grandfather preceded me and existed before I did, but that doesn’t mean he could beat me in a fistfight today.
How are you defining witchcraft? I’ve only ever known one practicioner who believed in the devil, let alone worshipped him or “demons”.
Whoa, the Beetlejuice thing worked! Hallelujah! It’s a miracle!
To answer your original question: the above is a terrible way to convince someone (that doesn’t already believe in God) that She really exists.
Where does that come from? There isn’t any peep in the Bible about such things having happened.
Please do. None of what you said has anything to do with any witch I’ve ever known–and I’ve known a lot.
Tell you what. I’ll use the illustration of someone who practices witchcraft: myself.
When I was younger, I was pagan, in the realm somewhere between modern druidism and modern Wicca and some choose-your-own flavor. Demons weren’t part of my practice, and YHWH definitely wasn’t, except that I pronounced the name YaHuWaHu and giggled. But candles, and Artemis, and Angus Og, and El Ahrairah, were absolutely part of my practice.
Yeah, El Ahrairah, name pronounced with the same rhythm as “Never Say Die,” the rabbit trickster deity from Watership Down. Right there alongside the others.
I struggled for awhile with the question of “belief,” because, like, did I really believe that there was a Mt. Olympus on which Artemis lives, and that she’s actually active, and that when I light a candle and perform a ritual she’s paying attention?
I decided that I wasn’t suspending my disbelief. When I was doing ritual, I was pocketing disbelief. I was setting the whole idea of belief or disbelief aside, because it’s not what was important. The idea of persuading anyone that my work was meaningful would have sounded absurd, because I didn’t make such judgments myself.
So you are talking about a specific Christian sect’s god only, correct?
I think it’s the one from the Lucifer series.
Or the Prophecy movies with Christopher Walken
I’ve never understood that part about angels “rebelling” against God. Aren’t angels, by definition, supposed to be perfect beings whose wills are always in unison with God’s will?We can postulate that God gave humans free will for some ineffable reason, thus explaining why we have the capacity to do evil. But if angels had free will, they’d just be humans with superpowers.
Moreover, how is it possible to “rebel” against God? Theoretically, God allows humans to do evil because it’s part of the free will package, not because He’s incapable of stopping us from doing so. But if God wanted to dispose of rebellious angels, He could certainly do so. Once again we seem to reach the conclusion that God doesn’t expect angels to behave any more morally than humans do, which seems incompatible with any reasonable definition of “angel”.
The whole God/Satan dichotomy seems more like a premise for a Marvel comic than like actual monotheistic theology.
Nitpick: Lucifer was from DC Comics, not Marvel.
This is where a “good” evangelizer is going to respond by saying he’s not talking about a religion or sect, he’s talking about a relationship with God.
The Apocrypha include the book of Enoch which is all about rebelious angels Watchers or Grigori. As I’ve said elsewhere on the Dope, we get Satan only in the book of Job. There is no sign it’s a proper noun. Prosecuting angel would fit just as well.
Human or angel, if they were created by an omniscient, omnipotent being then their every actions and thought was chosen by God before they ever existed. It doesn’t need to make sense, they are just acting out a play scripted by God for his own reasons, with as much independent agency as two hand puppets attacking each other.
Well, yes, you could use that illustration. But it might be better to use an illustration that actually, y’know, illustrates. I have no earthly clue what point you’re trying to convey, here.
But Pratchett’s point was also that they’re essential.
Let me try coming at this from what may or may not be another direction:
It is true that humans, as individuals and as a species, are part of a universe hugely larger than ourselves.
It is also true that everything in this universe is connected to everything else. In most cases the connections are so attenuated as to have no practical effect on our lives; in many other cases they’re so complex that it’s difficult for us to understand them and sometimes we’re wrong about what we do think we understand; but nevertheless they’re real.
Some people understand this on a purely rational level.
Some people don’t understand it at all.
Some people, whether or not they understand it on a rational level, understand it on some other level, in some other mode, with some other part of the mind. For these people, it comes across as a sense of direct connection that is no more “rational” than the way someone who loves cats feels when they hug a cat. It’s certainly caused by physical nerve impulses within physical brains; and the language-using part of the brain, which loves to do such things, can and does make up “reasons” for the feeling. But that’s not the part of the brain that it’s coming from.
Not everyone has this experience, either in the momentary ecstatic form or as a continuous sort of background sense. And people who don’t have it often don’t have any comprehension of it.
Not everybody who has this type of understanding turns it into religion; and not everybody who turns it into religion turns it into the type of religion that starts telling people who they’re allowed to have sex with. And a lot of the people who do follow that sort of religion don’t have the understanding at all, but only the shell of rules which human religions seem to build up – I was about to go off into a long digression about why I think that is, complete with another Pratchett quote, but better not.
Well, you could. But that’s not going to convince me of anything; because for one, I don’t think anybody practicing witchcraft is calling on the actual power of any actual demons because I don’t think the demons exist (and if you mean Wiccans I’m pretty sure that’s not even what they think they’re doing or are trying to do); for another, I think the story about the angels rebelling against God is just a story made up by humans that has nothing to do with anything that happened in the factual universe; and for a third, I don’t see how precedence in time would have anything to do with power. Do you mean that you believe that your god created demons using only part of the god’s power, and that therefore the god would have to be more powerful than the demons? That would make logical sense; but your audience first has to believe that that god exists, that the demons exist, and that that god created them. You can’t prove any part of that by an argument that relies on already believing that.
Also if you can get the demon to help you but not God, then their relative power is unimportant. China is much more powerful than Bob next door, but China isn’t going to cross the ocean just to help me move furniture or whatever.
Your lack of faith in China is sickening. . .
I think it’s a version of the ontological argument. But one that requires you to believe in demons. Whatever it’s flaws, the original didn’t do that.