I agree with your opinion!!! There is definitely some force out there influencing people toward the evil.

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~Happiness is a large family~

I definetly believe that Satan is real and that he is roaming the Earth looking for anyone to devour. He is the man of deception and the Father of Lies.

I have to say that I agree with Calimari that evil is a part of human nature. Why? Because we are all sinners!

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Formerly known as Mrs12bfishin

I agree with Mari but I think its human nature to put a name on things it make it more understandable if that makes sense.

Yes there is evil in the world but I wonder sometimes that by calling it Satan or whatever name, it allows us to stand back and not take the human responsibiity for our actions.

All religion s have their demon gods Saan fits the bill for us Chrisitans but really IMVHO its the other side of our striving nature

Anne

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"When we know better we do better" Maya Angelou

The example used earlier re: the man who killed the amish children.

I believe in mental illness. People used to think that mental illness was due to possession by demons/devils. That was in the dark ages. I prefer to live in modern times & put the concept of real demons/ devils in the same realm as fairies and leprechauns - make believe stories meant to explain that which we did not understand 100's of years ago.

According to those who knew him best, the man whol killed the Amish children was not mentally ill. What if he was normal and came under the devil's influence? What about the guy who just killed the 20 day old baby girl after sexually assaulting her? If that is not evil and the work of the devil, what is?

Maybe we delude ourselves into thinking the devil doesn't exist- that humans just come up with these horrendous acts on their own. And if we don't believe in the enemy, then we aren't defending ourselves against him, which gives the devil even more of an advantage. Ultimately we all have to choose what we believe, and having to choose, I am going to put my faith in an all loving, all powerful savior: Jesus Christ. Choosing something else- my own logic or rational or just "nothing" or the power or the universe at large makes no sense to me. I'm sticking with a time proven winner. I need all the help I can get.


But here is something else to ponder: What about people like Carl Jung? He believed everyone has an "inner teacher" who can give us all the answers. If we don't know something, all we have to do is communicate with our inner teacher. Carl Jung was not considered to have a mental illness, but he truly believed there was something or someone inside of his body giving him answers to questions he could not otherwise answer. Could that other person have been a demon or an angel? Or was he crazy?

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I don't believe in miracles; I depend on them

If you had a dear friend who was suddenly depressed & confided to you that he was mad at God because his child died, and that he was considering taking a bunch of schoolkids hostage & killing them all, would you think he was mentally ill or that a demon had suddenly taken him over? I would bet mentally ill & get him to a doctor ASAP rather than to a church because I'd want to make sure the problem was treated so he wouldn't put himself or kids at risk. I would not call a priest or minister for prayer or excorcism because that is not treatment.

Just because people who "knew him best" didn't know he had problems doesn't mean he didn't. It just means he hid them well. I've seen plenty of mental illness in my family and, believe me, sometimes it comes on suddenly/out of nowwhere - it isn't until the person is is in treatment that you realize that they were suffering for quite a long time & you didn't notice until it reached a certain point. My niece's nervous breakdown at college seemed totally out of nowwhere, until going through her room we found strange drawings & paintings on the inside of her closet wall behind all her clothes. If we'd found that sooner, we might have known she was having difficulties sooner.

To be honest, if I had a close friend who was beginning to do and say strange things, I would seek both medical and spiritual help.

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I don't believe in miracles; I depend on them

To say that human nature is evil is to reverse cause & effect. Man (and Woman) wasn't created "evil" but rather was tempted by Satan himself and became evil by choice. Whether you're a Fundamentalist on creation or if you believe evolutionary theory, this story is an accurate representation of man being tempted - we can see it in our own lives even today.

We don't choose evil because we want to be evil; it's seductive and appealing and it usually brings a kind of satisfaction or pleasure, no matter how short-lived the reward. If it isn't God showing us this pleasure, then who is it? Our culture is increasingly a culture of death... but don't the evil things in the world (lust, greed, selfishness) seem so glamorous at the time we're confronted with them? That's Satan pulling the wool over our eyes.

Thru our baptism we're saved from this sin of leaning towards evil and death. We have the weapon of Christ to fight off this very real danger.

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Katie
Devoted wife to Michael the architect (12/29/01)
Catholic Mama to Lucas John (9/27/03) and Lilia Mae (12/8/04) and our new baby due next June!
I stay at home; we plan our family & birth naturally, co-sleep, breastfeed/extended-breastfeed, babywear (Daddy does too!), and will homeschool!

The devil, as an entity, is simply as Anne stated -- putting a name on something to make it as palpable and simplistic as necessary for the human psyche to absorb. Every culture with a "religion" has an evil side. A yin to a yang. A light to a dark.

Just as a magnet or an atom or an electrical circuit has a positive and a negative polarity, so does any other energy. We as human beings have the power to act for good or for evil, within varying degrees. A kid who whacks his brother in the back of the head with a pillow is being evil, but not horribly so. Merely mischievous. A kid who whacks his brother in the back of the head with a crowbar is being evil to a greater degree. This is indeed human nature and the psyche making a choice to act a certain way to achieve a certain goal or effect.

We have the choice to send positive or negative energy into the world. Those who work for good, or at least for a neutral balance in their world work in the light. Those who send out the negative perpetuate the dark side. Energy, we're taught in high school physics, is not able to be destroyed. It is omnipresent, in a sense. How one chooses to wield it is the difference.

However one chooses to follow… be it a christian path, a judaic path, an islamic, buddhist, wiccan, pagan, shinto or other… this is basic precept. But it all inevitably comes down to one continuous theory, encapsulating the timeless principles of human behavior.

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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H. L. Mencken