(11-30-2025, 11:41 PM)Bootless Wrote: 2,000 pigs? Seriously?
The Gospel of Mark – the earliest of the Gospels – was written no earlier than 66AD. So, whatever else it may be, it is not an eyewitness account.
Quote:Mark uses a variety of sources, including conflict stories (Mark 2:1–3:6), apocalyptic discourse (4:1–35), and collections of sayings, although not the sayings gospel known as the Gospel of Thomas, and probably not the hypothesized Q source used by Matthew and Luke. (Wikipedia)
There has been a lot of confusion, too, in translating these texts. The ‘two thousand’ in that parenthesis could easily be referring to the number of people who were following Jesus around, not to the devils.
A Roman legion, by the way, was at least three thousand troops, so even if there were two thousand hogs there should have been quite a few loose imps still floating about... unless, of course, they were still sharing victims and some of the pigs had more than one devil in them.
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While I’m here, allow me to respond to the following, even though it isn’t addressed to me.
(11-29-2025, 06:43 PM)DontTreadOnMe Wrote: So, you do not believe in Demons? Devils? Evil Forces? Absolute Evil?
Certainly not. I pity the folk who do. They are possessed by the demon of superstition.
There is no such thing as absolute evil, because good and evil exist only in relation to human beings, and of us nothing can be stated absolutely. Evil is simply indulgence of the desire to profit by causing loss to another, to take what is not one’s own, or to perform some cruel and destructive action for the sake of pleasure. Evil arises from the perversion of a legitimate instinct; it is in no sense an independently existing thing.
Even God cannot be good or evil in any absolute sense – as anyone looking around them without the blinkers of superstition or Pavlovian conditioning will realise if they give it a moment’s thought.
Belief in devils and possession exists mainly among Christians of the kind who prefer to judge and condemn the sins and misfortunes of others rather than look to their own spiritual health. These are people who deny the evil within their own hearts and project it on to some external being – either another person or group of persons, or an imaginary being they call the Devil.
But this kind of psychological projection is not confined to Christians. Forms of exorcism exist in most religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, and in various folk belief systems also. Some exorcism rituals, like the Roman Catholic one, seek to force or terrify the evil spirit into leaving its host by invoking a higher power (not always benevolent; in some cultures, it is common to invoke the name of a more powerful devil to drive a petty one out). It is also common to propitiate the possessing spirit with flattery and bribes, or persuade it to accept a different sacrifice – usually a chicken or some other animal. Such negotiations often form part of the rite, with the alleged demon speaking through the mouth of the possessed. I find it very interesting that Jesus’s most famous exorcism is of this hostage-negotiation type, rather than the usual coercive technique used by modern-day Christian exorcists.
Do exorcisms work? As a form of palliative psychotherapy, they probably do. I’ve watched Christian and non-Christian exorcisms. Both seem to bring some kind of temporary relief to the sufferer, but none of them seem to remain efficacious for very long. The underlying mental illness or unbearable life-condition that so manifests itself hasn’t gone anywhere, and after the euphoria of being taken seriously and being the focus of community attention has evaporated... time for another episode of ‘possession’.