Ah So Lao, Recoverer, Vajra, Dave, Patrick, and others -
Great thread so far.
Ah so - I agree with you that it is required of us to be unpleasant at times to be loving. Jesus told the religious leaders of his day that that they were whitewashed tombs, and made parables against them, and drove people out of the temple, and got angry, and so on, while a lot of Christians think that to follow Jesus means to put on a mask and be sugary sweet (and insincere) to others all of the time. I think that to follow Jesus, one actually must be very disagreeable at times - confronting, warning, and even rebuking for their sake or the sake of others. I agree with you that evil is not eternal (there are evil actions, and probably some mostly evil beings), but I do think evil is real, and (I don't mean this in an offensive way), I don't think you have answers that satisfy justice that can be given to victims of evil. In other words, telling a rape victim that someone was just expressing a shadow side and that the victim and perpetrator are one, and that they will all meld together eventually like a drop of water falling into an ocean seems to be... lacking justice that compassion should demand. Or someone who is suffering from a terrible genetic disease - there just seems to be a meaninglessness to the dealing of evil in your world view that has no fairness. Happy thoughts don't deal with justice issues. Where is the fairness of life to one of the 3000 people who die a day to totally preventable malaria? Should someone hold their hand and tell them their suffering is an illusion? That their ongoing, excruciating agony is a non reality?
Recoverer - as for your latest post(s) first, I totally agree with you that I think Bob Larson is a charlatan (I've read one of his books and am familiar with him a bit). I think that way because I used to hypnotize my friends in middle school and one of the things I came away from those experiences with is a very, very deep respect for the power of suggestion onthe human mind. I also have watched a report on Larson before where he comes under some pretty harsh scrutiny for his luxurious living. It is cool that you do this spiritual work like what was given in your examples (what do you do for a living exactly btw that allows you to do this)? Lastly I think that Zoroastrianism influenced early Christianity; at times it almost seems as if God is struggling with an evil counterpart in the way things are portrayed in mainstream Christianity. But Christianity is really a monotheistic religion, and Satan can more correctly be portrayed as an archetype for a spirit / person that is an advesary to God, but not necessarily an equal to him. I accept a real Satan as a singular being because of the temptation accounts in the bible but don't think that it matters all of that much whether Satan is one being or an archetype - our biggest opponents are ourselves and our own selfish tendencies. That is what must be overcome. Blaming a demon or whatever for our own problems is not productive. Having said that, I do think that demons objectively exist. I have a better book example in my response to Dave.
Vajra - I feel like you are a very nice person with a good heart, and so please try to not take my disagreements with you personally, but I have a couple pretty fundamental disagreements with your thinking
Quote: What I tried to suggest above and have said before is pretty much what you quote of M. Scott Peck - that if mind/the cosmos is ultimately unity then if there is evil then there has to be good too. This i think is what Ah So is saying too - it's of the nature of this dualistic world and cosmos that there are opposites in everything.
Maybe my Peck example was a bad example for what I was trying to convey. Peck was a skeptic before he ran into possessing beings of supernatural evil, which convinced him that supernatural evil was possible. Which also convinced him that supernatural good was also possible, although I don't think he would have said that good is dependent on evil or vice versa. I don't think that good and evil are dependent on another or that you need a contrast to know what is happening. There is no reason for the dependency other than it being a nice idea. I would say thought that for the possibility of good to exist, the possibility of evil must exist as well, because free will entails the chance to make positive or negative choices. One could have a bunch of pleasant experiences all in a row without needing to have a painful one. Yes a painful experience will bring the pleasant experiences into sharper contrast but that doesn't mean that the pleasant experiences are dependent on the painful one. One doesn't need to be raped to be able to have a succession of positive sexual experiences that are a good thing. Evil exists because people make evil choices.
Quote: n the words of the Buddhist Heart Sutra which expresses this higher view there is no distinction between good and evil
I've read the Lotus Sutra, and taken classes in Buddhism, and there are things about Buddhism that I like, but honestly this non duality type of thinking is alogical (and goes against my personality, I'll admit). I don't think that one can argue against nondistinction; if someone's goal is to not think logically and see no distinctions then there is not much to say other than one's views. Again, I am not trying to be offensive when I write this - you seem like a very nice person. But I also realize (correct me if I'm wrong) that one of Buddhism's goals is to get people to derail their logical thinking and begin thinking beyond dualities, and to embrace contradictions or something. And to say that there is no distinction between good and evil is just utterly ridiculous to me. Again, from my earlier example, that is to tell Pakistani lawyers that there really is no difference for them to be repeatedly beaten and imprisoned, or to live their life in peace. To give a response like this is absurd, ridiculous, meaningless, and terribly unhelpful to a world that is suffering and needs relief. Again, I apologize for the harsh language, but I still feel that it is true. If it was you or I who was being beaten, we would acknowledge there is a difference between being beaten and not. Or would you really say being beaten and imprisoned is the same as living in peace and leisure???
Dave -
You definitely have great experiences to write about with helping people deal with difficult spirits, which is very cool. But just because you haven't run into a demon, does that mean they don't exist? I haven't run into a polar bear, but that doesn't mean I will say they don't exist. Most people who believe in this type of thing will make a distinction between an evil spirit being a person who is in the afterlife who was formerly alive, and a demonic spirit being an evil spirit that never was a human (not alien, just disembodied in a physical sense).
A better book example that talks about the reality of evil is Malichi Martin's Hostage to the Devil - a great book. It gives a well written account of (I believe) 5 case studies of people who were actually possessed by demons and the attempt to excorcise them.
Patrick -
I looked up the verse, and in the New International Version it's translated as 'I bring prosperity and bring disaster'. Which is also a disturbing verse. The answer is a bit messy, but reality is like that sometimes. First of all the bible is not inerrant. This may not be what God intended the prophet to write. Secondly, the Old Testament involves a lot of tribal reasoning for a tribal time. In other words, most of what the people of Isreal at that time were looking for and interpreting events through was a much more tribal, pre scientific age of fear and unknown causes for death and disease that influenced their thinking and religion. God was working with these people and may have just simply worked with what he had to work with. If I talk to my freshmen students the same way I talk to my Physics students, they would get lost. I need to talk to the level of my students. This may be similar to what was happening with Old Testament, tribal, pre scientific peoples and God.
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