Furthermore, if the novels of Susan Howatch have any veracity in them, and I think they do, then we all have the capacity to be evil in us. Focusing on the devil is simply another way to project that capacity onto someone outside of ourselves. I think this is what all fundamentalist religions do with regards to non believers, they project their own capacity for evil onto those who don't share their beliefs.
On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 3:17 PM, "authfri...@yahoo.com" <authfri...@yahoo.com> wrote: Very un-Christian of them. Nobody is irredeemable, according to Christian doctrine. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com> wrote: Pure evil. Satan. >From the article: "How can we measure people's belief in pure evil (BPE) and >what consequences does such a belief have on our responses to wrong-doers? According to this research, one of the central features of BPE is evil's perceived immutability. Evil people are born evil they cannot change. Two judgments follow from this perspective: 1) evil people cannot be rehabilitated, and 2) the eradication of evil requires only the eradication of all the evil people. Following this logic, the researchers tested the hypothesis that there would be a relationship between BPE and the desire to aggress towards and punish wrong-doers." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychological-power-satan
