(05-15-2024, 09:36 PM)Schmoe Wrote: So the evil ones, by worshipping or summoning demons or Satan, are acknowledging the Christian/Jewish faith in a way, since Satan was a biblical construct?
I dunno. Every culture has their "evil spirits" or "bad spirits", and that's usually how I refer to them, to avoid culturalizing them and isolating them to a single culture, because they are apparently world-wide, not just isolated to Christians.
So, just because a Christian accuses someone of consorting with demons does not necessarily make it so - the accused may see the situation in an entirely different light, and be of an entirely different culture.
An analogous situation would be if, for example, a Muslim started railing about "Shaitan" and "Djinn", and accusing Christians of consorting with such because they do not worship Allah. Those are Islamic evil spirits, and a Christian ought properly to have nothing to do with them, since they are not Christian concepts.
I don't believe in "demons", because I'm not Greek, nor am I in Greece. As far as I can tell, demons are Greek evil spirits that were conscripted into Catholicism by the Latins. They are someone else's "evil spirits", not mine. The evil spirits around here are "motshi-moneto". They are the evil spirits of this land.
I'm not worried about "djinn" around here, either. Just because some Muslim might call them that doesn't make it so. They have an entirely different character from Islamic desert "demons".
ETA: It comes to mind, however, that it may not matter whether I believe in demons or not if they believe in me... and I happen to at some point tread their stompin' grounds...
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