A Summation With Comments
I feel almost like I've been getting a migraine from large portions of the content of this thread, over the last two pages.
Nonetheless, I can't but help add my own two cents into it.
Hi CatherineFearnley,
Let's start with some basic theology:
Yes and a million Christians can't be wrong either.
You
do realise that evoking a link between Christians and lemmings (little, furry, suicidal creatures who plunge to their deaths off cliffs, in mass numbers) kind of undermines the religion, don't you?
All religion has many doctrines and rules and regulations. But at the end of the day most religions do not contradict with each other because they all believe in ONE GOD, ONE CREATOR choose whatever you wish to call HIM.
"They all"? Wrong.
Do you pray to the god of Islam, i.e., Allah? If so, why not? It's all the same, yeah? Judaism, Christianity and Islam represent a triad of the main religions that are
monotheistic. While I will not vouch for this as fact, I would be under the impression that most other religions were
pantheistic. If they
all worship the
same god, then why do said religions contain
prohibitions against worshipping
other gods? ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me." ~ Exodus 20:3). What do you make of the god of Islam, who, by "divine revelation" bestowed a holy book on a prophet, which in turn denies the divinity and resurrection of Jesus? Same god?
The reason different religions exist, is because their cosmologies are incompatible (to various degrees), or not quite in sync, through choice of followers or in doctrine.
There's a reason you belong to the
specific branch of religion that you do.
...and also Spiritualists believe in the Creator/God which amounts to the same thing.
The same thing? Interesting. Then tell me what you make of the Biblical prohibitions
against Spiritualism?
Now, onto vampires:
I have not defined 'vampires' in any shape or form. I just don't believe in them one iota. To do so would go against my own Church. David has never used the word 'vampire' to describe the psychic entity. He may have said 'vampire-like' but that is really up to David to discuss. You have not provided evidence for fairies one way or another. Just an anecdote which may or may not be true. So why should Dvaid provide evidence of his beliefs. Come to think of it why should anyone either here or elsewhere provide evidence for their beliefs. Belief is upto the individual.
Firstly, glad you're so open-minded on the concept of choice-of-belief. However, your rabid anti-vampire stance contradicts it. You see, it seems that you are saying that "Hey, believe what you want...
as long as it's not this" And
vampire is the magic word that keeps on reappearing.
I wonder
why this is?
Now, according to the citations I have provided (which David
still hasn't explicity denied the veracity of), he
has used the word "vampire" on several occasions (even as late as 2005). Indeed, you are the Secretary of his Highgate
Vampire Society.
But, if you want a more specific, more
current interpretation of his view on vampires, then look no further than the following extract from his own website:
... it is true that I do not believe in vampires in their commercialised sense i.e. the sort of vampire that has stepped straight out of a Hammer film, sleeps in its coffin by day and goes around sucking people's blood by night and which can only be destroyed by being 'staked through the heart'. I have frequently said in the past that this sort of vampire is pure fiction. But this does not mean, however, there there do not exist psychic entities that take on vampire-like characteristics in that they remain 'earthbound' and posses the capability to attack unsuspecting victims, psychically leading some people to believe they have become 'possessed'. But this is an entirely different matter.
Indeed.