Sunday, July 04, 2004

Philosophy: that the soul not the body is demonic

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I would like to offer a sort of proof that the part of the human being that is in league with the devil is the soul and not the body. But first, since few people even believe in the devil today, I have to explain why his "existence" is important even to cool intellectuals -- in other words, why we need him to explain what is wrong with us.

If you say that the entity the devil doesn't exist -- as a separate entity (with horns and tail, etc) I would agree but describe him in a different way. The devil is pure intentionality, he isn't an entity at all on his own. He is like a virus that can only exist in a state of invading a host. The host that the devil invades is the human will. Outside the human will he is nothing. Inside it (in control of it) he is devastating and can send millions of people to a gas chamber. So he doesn't exist on his own but he does exist in tandem with the person he invades. And the reason he is important is that we need to offload at least some of our wrong behavior to something external to us, but the "environment" (an abusive upbringing) or "genetics" are not good enough. Environment and genetics lack intentionality so can't be used to explain evil, which is intentional to the heart.

In order to explain evil we need a force or figure who contains intentionality. This is what the devil supplies for our theories. He continues not to exist in himself but all too vividly in our hearts all the same.

So, now given the existence or quasi-existence of this vile figure, the devil, as an explanation of things we do that we can't explain or justify and that just aren't part of us, I would go on to emphasize that the devil is pure intention and is in league with the soul. The body would have nothing to do with him and is busy warding off physical viruses, not the spiritual kind.

So the body is the devil's victim, not his ally. The one who is infected with evil is not the body but the soul.

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