If you're going to call my argument fallacious, don't you respectfully need to show me my fallacy? Your accusatory second sentence feels derogatory to me. It feels like you're talking down to me.
ViaCrucis seems to believe that folks could discern between truly demon possessed and non possessed psychotics? Do you also believe this? I worked as an orderly in a psych hospital for 10 years and I sure can't tell the difference. To believe that folks weren't bringing ALL their psychotic relatives to Jesus just strains credulity. Even today, many families face large burdens caring for psychotic relatives. How much more burdensome were the unmedicated psychotics of that time on families? Families would certainly have rejoiced and presented their psychotic loved ones to Jesus as demon possessed? Wouldn't they?
Did you do my math? Mathematically, under your guys' model, the number of demon possessed would have been extraordinarily small, Use whatever numbers you like and I'm pretty sure you'll still come up with an extraordinarily small number of truly demon possessed. In a walking culture, how could, over and over again, 'many' truly demon possessed have been presented to Jesus?
Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is usually the best. And certainly the absolute simplest explanation is that the demon possessed in Matt and Mark are the psychotic folk of today.
Peace, Ian
Firstly, I am not accusing you or personally criticizing you in any way as that would itself be a fallacious argumentum ad hominem and it would be mean-spirited. My criticism was solely directed at the argument you presented.
And the reason why I classified it as a non-sequitur fallacy and also to some extent as a fallacy of composition is as follows:
It is a non-sequitur because while it is true that our Lord and the Apostles had a reputation for exorcising many demons, it does not logically follow that there were more demons to be exorcised, nor does it mean that there were fewer. There are priests today in the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and other denominations who have exorcised many demons, and some Roman Catholic priests are well known as exorcists having seen hundreds of cases. Some Pentecostal/Charismatic clergy claim to have exorcised even larger numbers.
We simply do not have data to assess the relative rate of demonic posession because the New Testament does not explictly say that there were more demons or indeed fewer demons than at other times. Since the New Testament doesn’t comment on the amount of demons to be exorcised, we just have no idea.
Now, the fallacy of composition is partially applicable to your argument, in this manner: just as it would be a fallacy of composition to say that because old train cars from the 19th century have steel wheels, the cars were made mostly of steel, when in fact, as anyone who has visited a railway museum can attest, old train cars from the 19th century were in fact made mostly of wood. Likewise, we cannot comment on the number demons relative to the total composition of the past simply because some were demonaic, although conversely, we also cannot comment on the number of demons active at present, because we simply do not know exactly how many fallen angels there are.*
Thus in summary in conveying to you that the argument you presented contained logical errors, I was not seeking to in any way disparage you or criticize you personally, but rather to assist you. I myself sometimes make fallacious arguments, and if you think you see a fallacy in one of my posts, I would be personally grateful if you were to inform me of it so I can scrutinize the logic in question.
I agree with the Anglican view that Christian doctrine should be derived from Scripture, guided by Tradition, interpreted using Reason. The importance of logic in exegesis I believe is underscored by the word for our Lord the Incarnate Word Jesus Christ in Greek: the divine Logos.
*We do know that God regulates them so as to limit the harm they can cause us, and even in their rebellion against God they are still subject to His rule, with the ability of the devil and the fallen angels limited (specifically, the devil is referred to as “the prince of power of the air” and Patristic testimony indicates that demons inhabit the aerial realm, and for this reason some Eastern Orthodox monastic traditions discourage monks from looking at the sky, because monks frequently come under demonic attack, see
The Arena by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov.
