You know, from a fiction/thought experiment perspective, this sounds pretty interesting. Although I suspect that it actually translates to “demons are total villain sues that can only be defeated by my snake oil, and I’ve got a lot of leeway in regards to continuity errors!”
* How can nonphysical beings interact with the physical? Probably not that differently from the way your own spiritual faculties can affect your body (e.g. psychosomatic and mental illness).
So demons are highly abstract entities that do not have any form of “spirit body”, and indeed are very much not constrained by location… yet they affect the physical way in a way that is comparable with the way our – very much body-bound - mind interacts with the other body systems??? Citing phenomena that so strongly verify materialism?
More from the article:
“But I Don’t believe in the spiritual!” Yes, you do.
All that’s really meant by “spiritual” is “non-material”. There is no such thing as a coherent and internally consistent materialism. That’s because pure materialism, followed to its logical conclusion, rules out the existence of reason–the spiritual faculty required to know about anything, including materialism. Materialist philosophies are therefore self-negating.
Deniers of spiritual realities may attempt to argue that reason, love, humor, etc. are epiphenomena of physical processes. But such arguments address the source of spiritual faculties; not their existence (in fact, their existence is presumed).
Whether or not brain chemistry causes thought is certainly an argument we can have, but unless you can show us a “thought particle” with measurable physical properties, we must conclude to the existence of a non-material dimension of reality that we all experience constantly.
Non sequitur. Seriously, you have just accepted, at least for the sake of argument, that the mind is a physical phenomenon… so where the hell do you get the idea of a psychic realm being necessary?
I just don’t get dualism. Never did. To me, it just is so very obvious that my consciousness is part of my body. I see what is before my short-sighted eyes. I smell with my nose. My tongue tastes the food I eat and feels my teeth and my oral cavity. My fingers feel as I tap them, run them across things, hold things. My feet feel the ground, the shoes and the stones that got in them. I feel pain and discomfort and physical pleasure…
Seriously, the idea that I am not my body, that I am actually an entity seperate from my physical self merely possessing it… It is just so contrary to my own intuition, my own experience existing, that I cannot help but wonder if many people are actually suffering from some degree of derealisation/depersonalisation.
