From: rotflol2@hotmail.com   
      
   On 2025-04-07, x  wrote:   
   > On 4/7/25 13:24, oldernow wrote:   
   >> In Christian nomenclature, a sinner isn't a person that   
   >> does bad things.   
   >>   
   >> It's a person, period - where personhood implies a   
   >> separation equipped with a will free to act apart from   
   >> all not-person person is seemingly separate from.   
   >>   
   >> And pride is simply the conceit that such is so.   
   >>   
   >> And suffering is ongoing attachment said delusion,   
   >> which plays out as an ongoing war between the illusory   
   >> free-willed being and ineffable reality.   
   >>   
   >> It's a mental illness, clear and simple.   
   >>   
   >> For all mental is illness inasmuch as it requires a person   
   >> to possess it.   
   >   
   > So are 'minds' capable of being 'possessed' by 'angels',   
   > 'spirits', 'daemons', or 'demons'?   
   >   
   > Are 'lesser gods' in 'polytheist' religions the same as   
   > 'angels' in some Abrahamic religions or is that totally   
   > different?   
   >   
   > Are the 'memes' of Dawkins the same as 'angels' or   
   > 'spirits' for various religions?   
   >   
   > If several exorcists were to try to 'expel the demon   
   > of atheism' from Dawkins could he fight back with   
   > a 'vast barrage of memes', and would that be pretty much   
   > the same thing?   
   >   
   > Who can really know, who can understand?   
   >   
   >   
      
   I think minds can be possessed, in some way or another.  If not   
   necessarily by demonic spirits, but by ideas, or thought processes which   
   can take over and short circuit other parts of the brain.  Possession is   
   an apt description, and I'm sure many of us have seen people who do   
   appear to have been overcome by "something else" from time to time.   
      
   Whether they are or are not literall demons, I don't think makes a huge   
   practical difference.  That person is detached from themselves, and   
   operating to something external (a cult, a political idea, hedonism),   
   which much be purged (exorcised).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)