Please read what I wrote carefully. What is not under debate is that the mainstream scholarly consensus is that “the gospel writers believed in, and taught, the reality of demons, as commonly understood in mainstream “orthodox” theology”.
We are not debating here whether or not that is the scholarly consensus. No one here is contesting that this is not the scholarly consensus, least of all me. Obviously I am contesting that consensus, but I am not denying that it exists.
So what we are debating is whether or not that consensus is correct. I stand with the minority of scholarship which says it is not correct, or that it is at the very least uncertain.