From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-07-19T06:07:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Religion (was: god 0.1.0 released)

On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 05:55:51AM +0900, Hal Fulton wrote:
> Marc Heiler wrote:
> > 
> > SPS: btw "daemons" is not the same as "demons" 
> 
> What do you mean? How is the spelling significant?

The term "daemon" is primarily a variant of "daimon", which is (in the
words of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) an
"inferior deity", or an "attendant spirit; a genius".  Meanwhile, a
"demon" is (in the same dictionary) an "evil supernatural being; a
devil".  There's some vagueness in the delineation, however, because of
the fact that the term "demon" grew out of the early Christian tradition
of turning good things in "competing" religions into terms for bad things
in Christian religions.  Just as Baal, a term that essentially meant
"lord", and Ba'al, which referred to the lord of heaven, was in Christian
tradition turned into the name of a duke of Hell, so too did "daimon" get
turned into "demon", and become synonymous with "devil", in Christian
terms.

I refer of course to the cultural history of these terms, and in this
case suggest no value judgments about the various involved religious
philosophies themselves.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
They always say that when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade. 
I always wonder -- isn't the lemonade going to suck if life doesn't give
you any sugar?