Summary Of The Demon-Haunted World

In the article tittle “The Demon- Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” by Carl Sagan he discusses the topic about how Demons have been seen by different religions during a certain time period. Most of us grow up believing that God is good, and he is meant to protect us from Evil. However, during the ancient world demons were natural beings not supernatural. In fact, Socrates stated that some of his work was inspired by demonic beings, he was told by his teacher that God communicates with us through Demons, Plato, along with Socrates believed the same thing. Plato believed that God put Demons to watch over us and are in no way evil. Later in time Platonists believed that there were both good and bad Demons in the world. Aristotle stated that Demons were creators of people’s dreams, in Old English the word “nightmare” meant there was a Demon sitting on the sleeper’s chest.
The Founding Fathers of the Church concluded that the Pagan people where worshipers of Demons, creating a negative connotation to the religion. St. Augustine was certain that Demons had no morals or virtues and were eager to construct harm by posing as Angels. These Demon Angels would lead people to their own destruction. During this time there came to know the term “Incubi”. Incubi was an incident where woman, in occasions nuns, found themselves polluted as if they had commingled with a man. It was understood that Demons would have sexual intercourse with woman while they were asleep. The obsession of Demons grew when the Pope Innocent VIII declared that both sexes were having intercourse with Evil Angels, however woman were persecuted more. The Founding Fathers of the Church believed in Demons and announced that our own wills become our Demons and that is what is attacking