Thank you for that link, John -- that's the sort of reference (finally) that breaks what would otherwise be an endless cycle of requests for clarification from skeptics followed by statements of faith that only clarify things for the faithful.
I followed the reference given in the WorldNetDaily story to the article in the New Oxford Review by Dr. Richard Gallagher. I haven't yet made the full commitment of a $29 subscription fee to the latter organization (I'm not sure I have the proper level of "hunger for the red meat of Catholicism" touted on the NOR homepage), so I have not read the entire Gallagher article.
But the first few paragraphs were displayed free of charge, and within that portion, Gallagher provides a good explanation for why the non-believers and skeptics here a EvC tend to express so much frustration when you give them statements of faith (and bible quotations) in response to requests for clarification:
Richard Gallagher writes:
... For clergy, or indeed anyone involved in the spiritual or psychological care of others, it is equally critical, however, to recognize the many and infinitely more common "counterfeits" (i.e., false assignations) of demonic influence or attack as well.
This need for caution and precision is especially important at a time when untrained laymen or, worse, public ministries may unfortunately mislead or even exploit the faithful in this area. One has only to turn on a television to witness obvious abuses -- for instance, televangelists' dunning their audience for cash as they conduct exhibitionist ceremonies before large assemblies of the overly credulous. ...
Presumably, the evidence presented in the remainder of the article will pose serious challenges for any rational explanation based solely on natural causes as we understand them so far (AbE: assuming that there is available verification for the events described). It is important and useful to all of us, faithful and skeptic alike, to get a clear picture of things that do not yet fit our current scientific understanding of ourselves and our world. It may be that this will push science to discover a natural cause (and a natural treatment), or it may be that various practices based on religion will remain in use because they appear to help where science cannot.
The point is that, when someone asks "What is a demon?", and you want to respond about the reality of such an entity, quoting from the bible alone can only provide part of the answer. Until you get down to here-and-now specifics, the term is wide open for multiple interpretations, and one man's demon can be another man's saint, because the two men are willing to interpret things differently.
Say all you want about how clear and and adequate the content of the bible is for you in your own personal system of belief -- indeed, say all you want about how certain you are that your particular system of belief is shared by all true Christians, and even about how many people there are who fit that description -- it remains purely subjective, having no intrinsic value or validity for other people, unless/until other people either have some shared observable basis for understanding your belief, or else share some internal/subjective experience that is somehow consistent with your own.
And in the latter case, I would submit that you yourself would still have no real basis for confirming that you and these others really have the same beliefs. You might be using the many of the same statements to express your respective beliefs, but without a shared observable basis for comparison, how can you tell whether you have the same understanding of those statements?
{AbE:} One more point, expanding on that last paragraph: when you profess your own personal belief in and relationship with God, this does not, by itself, establish any proof that others have the same belief or relationship. But if you relate your personal beliefs to specific behaviors/opinions with respect to things in the world around you, such that others can tell whether their behaviors/opinions on those things match or differ, then you have a basis for saying whether your beliefs are shared by others, or to what extent they are not shared.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : Added final paragraph.
Edited by Otto Tellick, : (added parenthetical remark, as noted above)
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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