"Ish," yes. I have to admit I've had a hard time navigating this enormous thread, and haven't read all of it, including the evidence of demonic influence you're referring to. However, I predict in advance that 1) this evidence is based on words that a man wrote in an ancient book, and that 2) I will find this evidence dubious.
Two equally unlikely propositions should require equally strong evidence to be believed. Neither dragons nor demons exist, yet you assert that demons are real. Where, then, is the chain of entangled events leading from the state of the universe to the state of your mind? Honest truth-seeking is about dispassionately scrutinizing that chain, as an outsider would, and allowing others to scrutinize, evaluate, and verify it.
I was a Mormon missionary at 19. I used to give people copies of the Book of Mormon, testify of my conviction that it was true, and invite them to read it and pray about it. A few did (Most people in Iowa and Illinois aren't particularly vulnerable to Mormonism). A few of those people eventually (usually after meeting with us several times) came to feel as I did, that the book was true. I told those people that the feeling they felt was the Holy Spirit, manifesting the truth to them. And if that book is true, I told them, then Joseph Smith must have been a true prophet. And as a true prophet, the church that he established must be the Only True Church, according to Joseph's revelations and teachings. I would then invite them to be baptized (which was the most important metric in the mission), and to become a member of the LDS church. One of the church's teachings is that a person can become as God after death (omniscience and omnipotence included). Did the chain of reasoning leading from "I have a feeling that this book is true" justify the belief that "I can become like God"?
You are intelligent and capable of making good rhetorical arguments (from what I have read of your posts in the last week or two). I see you wielding Gendlin, for example, in support of your views. At some level, you're getting it. But the point of Gendlin is to encourage truth-seekers desiring to cast off comforting false beliefs. It works properly only if you are also willing to invoke Tarski:
Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
Upvoted for being a completely reasonable comment given that you haven't read through the entirety of a thread that's gotten totally monstrous.
However, I predict in advance that 1) this evidence is based on words that a man wrote in an ancient book,
Only partly right.
2) I will find this evidence dubious.
Of course you will. If I told you that God himself appeared to me personally and told me everything in the Bible was true, you'd find that dubious, too. Perhaps even more dubious.
Where, then, is the chain of entangled events leading from the state ... (read more)
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