Angels and Demons in Religion

Many traditions also speak of invisible entities that can help men to fight the demons. Angels exist in many religions and has been for a long time. 

Many people believed in the existence of spiritual beings intermediate between God and man, and many religions have addressed their worship. In a way, one could say that belief in these spiritual beings is part of the common heritage of much of humanity. To explain certain phenomena which he does not discover the causes, the human mind is naturally inclined to assume the existence of invisible beings acting in a mysterious way. And depending on the nature of effects, these spiritual beings are considered good or bad.

St. Michael slaying Satan by Raphael
© Musée du Louvre

These speculations are confirmed by positive revelations in Judaism (Old Testament), in Christianity (New Testament) and Islam (Koran).
The Old Testament calls the angels "messengers." And indeed, these spiritual beings, who are with God a sort of court, are his messengers to fill various positions near the men of information or protection or punishment of the wicked. It is often said that the belief in angels was common among Jews during the Exile (sixth century BC), in contact with the Babylonian religion. And yet, from Genesis, the angels are mentioned in many stories: Sara appearance at Lot, Hagar, to Abraham, Jacob, etc..
However, from Exile, the angels are playing an increasingly large.

Next to them, other spiritual beings, demons, trying to hurt men, especially by pushing them to evil. The serpent of Genesis seems a symbol of such a demonic being.
The evil angels, whose leader is the devil, or Satan, are responsible for the temptation of Jesus and Judas' betrayal, they are also trying the disciples and they sow tares among the wheat, they are condemned to eternal fire (Matthew xxv, 41).
In different terms ("demons" or evil spirits "), the New Testament refers to evil spirits responsible for various diseases, especially of nervous diseases. While modern science attributes the diseases to natural causes, the fact remains that their attribution to cause a demonic confirms the belief accepted by Jesus and his disciples to the existence and in the many evil spirits , eager to fight God and to persecute men. Also the essential prayer of Christians, the "Our Father", is there a special request to ask God to keep us away from the "perverse".

The Nightmare (1781) after Henry Fuseli

Following the Old and New Testament, and perhaps under their influence, the Qur'an speaks often of the angels, and professes a doctrine similar to that of Judaism and Christianity.This doctrine is even considered one of the most important: "A good man is one who believes in Allah and the Last Day, the angels, the scripture and the prophets" (Qur'an, II, 172). Instead, an "infidel" is defined as "one who is an enemy of Allah, His Angels, His apostles, to Gabriel, Michel" (II, 92). Similarly, the existence of the devil no doubt, because he tempted Adam and continues to deceive and seduce men. The Devil, like it or not, is part of our heritage, our history. Its implications in human affairs have caused so much ink and blood all over the world, it would be absurd to deny its influence in the lives of people.

Throughout the ages, terror, famine, disease helps the humble serpent of the Garden of Eden has become a gigantic dragon, a new Proteus always ready to change the picture, especially as his best trick is to pretend does not exist. On this point, theologians, authors of the Grimoires and Enchiridions bring, besides a formal denial.

Galileo, a Catholic visionary scientist

Galileo, a Catholic visionary scientist


The drama of Galileo was not a battle of science against faith.
Galileo was the opposite of an atheist, and even an agnostic. It was a believing Catholic. He had an intelligent faith, and even prophetic.
Alain Noël May 21, 2009



Galileo, a Catholic visionary scientist

Galileo said that the scripture announced what was to say the twenty-first century scholars.

With a significant lead over his time, Galileo was evident that all the texts of the Bible should not be read in the same way. As for the relationship between science and Scripture, he planned according to the maxim of Cesare Baronius: "The Holy Spirit, the Bible teaches us how we're going to heaven, not how the heavens go.

Science and faith according to Galileo

There is in Galilee, the founder of modern physics, the philosophical intuitions take over the Church at Vatican II. But there is no connection between the ideas of Galileo and those that Angels & Demons attributed to the scientist, and his heirs (the replacement of faith by science, or dissolution of the divine in the scientist) ...

What Galileo actually said on this subject is quite something else he stated explicitly that the two truths of faith and science can never contradict each other, "Holy Scripture and the nature of the Word also doing Divine, the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit, the second as a very faithful executor of the orders of God. " [...]


Vatican II is not expressed otherwise. This sentence is of John Paul II, in his speech of November 10, 1979 at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. An academy, said he, "to which Galileo was somehow associated with the institution through which preceded the former which includes prominent scholars today."
We will recognize the allusion to the Lincei of the seventeenth century ...

If Galileo's Dialogue (1632) is a "war machine", to quote Alexander Koyré, this "war" is not against religion but against the shackles of cultural and scholastic philosophy. Straitjacket which Galileo and Lynx wanted to free themselves (as scientists) - and they wanted to free the Church (as a force for the future).
Do not fall into the anachronism!

The main pitfall to avoid, when studying the Galileo affair, is an anachronism, that is to say the case out of its context.
 It is not an attack on the Church against science, but a difficult maneuver European policy disguised as theological trial.

"Until there is no clear evidence of the truth of the Copernican system, it would impose unreasonable to suggest to our contemporaries," said Cardinal Bellarmine.

"Unreasonable", nothing more ... But that's what Galileo had set out to do, and the most radiant.
The Copernican system, in fact, was not proven in practice (and would not be anytime soon). Was it necessary to revolutionize the spirits to a hypothesis, whereas we already s'étripait for reasons of principle to the four corners of Europe? No, thought Bellarmine.

Was it wrong to ask Galileo called "hypothesis" this hypothesis ...? No more. And no modern scientist would do harm to the cardinal on this seventeenth century.

 Do not commit the anachronism of saying Galileo was right. We now know, but nobody in the seventeenth century could not be certain, and 2000 years of human thought (not including joint appearances) played against his theory.

At the same time, Kepler, which is the true founder of astronomy, attracted also by the hypothesis of Copernicus, was not worried so far, p ecause he has to stick to the strict scientific rigor awaiting experimental evidence.