This essay is an attempt to recreate an earlier effort to explain how we have allowed demonology to obscure public discourse. The earlier essay has resisted all attempts to extract it from where it was saved. I just know this title will raise a fuss in this computer which will ask me which one is the real essay. I really liked the first one and I know I will not be able to resurrect all the points I thought told what I wanted to say and told it just right. I spent part of this morning trying to raise this subject from the place it was hiding when I should have been reading the Sunday papers.
People believe in demons the same way they believe sin exists in the world. The simplest example is the things we were told as kids. We have two choices in life and they are between good and bad. It was further explained that good was up in heaven and bad was down in hell. God was in heaven while the Devil was down below. As reminders of this, we kids had little angels sitting on our right shoulders and a little devil (demon) on our left shoulder. When-ever the opportunity occurred to do something to get us in trouble, the angel said, don’t but the demon said, “Go ahead”. We humans believe that sin exists and there is a struggle between good and bad for our souls. Our final destination for eternity is determined by the kind of life we lead – Good is better than bad but we are led astray. And then the true culprit occurs to us and we find a convenient someone else to blame or - the devil made me do it.
Thus we invented the SCAPEGOAT. Our ancestors perfected a method for exorcising sin. At the end of each year a person or. In his place, a goat was chosen as the sacrifice for the community’s sins. The goat was staked in the town square and all the people filed by, touching the animal and in that instant they believed their sins were transferred to the goat and then the animal was killed and the sin spilled on the earth saving the people FOM PAYING FOR THEIR SINS
It is easy to demonize an opponent or people who look or sound different. We do it all the time.