Existence of Demons (and Angels)

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Despite the fact that angels and demons are thought to conflict against one another, I think there may be situations where demons will appear in human form with nearby angels and protect you. When my mother was pregnant with my twin and I, she was afirm believer in angels (she still is.) Some kidnapper in Jamaica-Queens, NY decided to kidnap my mother and hold her hostage. She kept praying while huddled bound in the perpertrator's van, and angels appeared and stopped the man from driving. He let her go, and the case was printed in the newspaper. I'm only 12 years old, but I know what's true. And angels and demons really do exist.

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So, are you saying that the kidnapper wasn't actually a human being, but a demon?

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You cannot say with 100% certainty that such entities do not exist.

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No, we certainly cannot.However, we can say that up to the present, nobody, anywhere has ever been able to present anything that would constitute actual positive evidence in support of the existence of these entities.So, I have exactly the same amount of evidence for fairies and pixies as I do in demons and angels.

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Science is not the final arbitrator of every event in life.

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No.Only the ones that take place in the natural world.

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Humans are logical and emotional.

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Humans are exceedingly emotional.Humans are notlogical at all.Humans are, by nature, illogical and irrational.We have to be taught to be logical.

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And not only do I agree, but I might point out that there are more believers than a few freaked out whackos.

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Again, science is not the only arbitrator in all minds. To some, it is Gospel, however.

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More power to you.

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...and here we have a fine example of the logical fallacy of "Communal Reinforcement".Angeldust's beliefs are positively reinforced and encouraged by a fellow believer, Phatboy. Disbelief is also discouraged and science and rationality are discounted by Phatboy.Well done, Phat! Great example.

Maybe you could help.What newspaper was the story published in?What are some key names?Perhaps the year it happened?

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OK, but what's more parsimonious about the idea of hallucinations?

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Uh, we know that people hallucinate?We can induce hallucinations of all kinds through various means. We can even induce hallucinations while scanning people's brains to see which parts are active.People have reported similar sorts of hallucinations when they were caused by similar things. Not always identical, but quite similar.For example, a report of hypnogigic hallucination or generally has some similar features: A very good scientific page on sleep paralysis which includes the research you are asking for]1) They are associated with sleep
2) Paralysis upon waking
3) Pressure on chest
4) Cannot speak
5) The feeling of an intruder, often malevolent
6) Intense feeling of dreadThese feelings are common to people having these hallucinations.On the other hand, there is nothing parsimonious at all about "intelligent beings who put all their considerable malevolent genius into creating illusions to deceive the human race."

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It is true that I am positively reinforcing her beliefs.

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Yes, indeed you are.

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I suppose that I am not being a detached, logical and rational observer, am I?

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No, you aren't.

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I do not dismiss science and rationality except when every attempt is made to quench someones faith through use of same.

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Nobody is using science to quench anyone's faith.If knowledge must be avoided in order to keep someone's faith intact, then it's not a very good kind of faith, is it? One that promotes ignorance?

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OK Good point. I have been accused of ignoring facts and sticking with beliefs...which I occasionally do.

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It is all probably a lot less spectacular than I imagine, anyway.

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I DO hold fast to my beliefs, however. It will take more than human logic and wisdom to change my worldview.

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Well, then, as long as you understand that they are personal beliefs.

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*ponders what was said...* "Away from me Satan! Jesus, please bless Schraf and Faith and...*pause* even Rrhain!"

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You know, if you understand the reason why Rrhain presented you with that picture gallery, and you are still disturbed about it, you are just confirming his point.

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Well, you don't know for sure that those hallucinations aren't real experiences of spiritual beings, or even visions created by spiritual beings, you simply assume they are created by the person's mind.

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We can create them in people's minds on purpose.Why would that be possible if such hallucinations weren't creations of people's own minds?Yes, everything that happens could be caused by demons. In fact, I could actually be possessed by a demon right now, except that the demon doesn't want to be detected, so it maintains my behavior and thoughts to be exactly what would be normal for me to do.Which is more parsimonious;1) That I am not possessed by a demon and am functioning as I generally do, or2) that I am possessed by a demon which is making me function as I normally do?Which explanation assumes the most unneeded factors?

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That can't be proved by any test that I know of.

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No, it can't be proved, just like nothing in science can prove anything.However, you asked about parsimony, not 100% proof.Please stick with parsimony instead of changing the subject.

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Some MAY be merely hallucinations, some not.

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How do you know if they aren't hallucinations?

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Some tests may actually open a person to the spirit realm. I can certainly believe that possible.

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That's nice. What's your evidence that a "spirit realm" exists?

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Some hypnagogic states may be nothing but mental phenomena or they may in fact involve spirit influence. How cold you tell?

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You can't, that's the point.We can induce such states on purpose.We know that taking acid doesn't actually make the walls melt; the people under acid's influence are having a hallucination.So, which is more parsimonious:1) That people taking acid are having hallucinations because they are messing around with their brain chemistry, or2) they are really seeing the walls melt, or angels, or demons, or shimmering bubbles everywhaere, or whatever people on acid see?

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Well as I just posted to someone else here, I've had hypnagogic experiences and these I describe above were not hypnagogic. Even the one with the apparition didn't have these characteristics although it did occur when I wasn't yet fully asleep, in the hypnagogic pre-sleep state.

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Right. It was associated with sleep.

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There was no paralysis, there was no pressure on the chest, I had no feeling of inability to speak or anything else, this was not a "feeling of an intruder" it was an actual apparition I actually saw,

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Sometimes the presence is experienced as friendly, or at least not malevolent.

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and this was not just a feeling of dread without an object, it had a clear object. It was the same with the strangling experience -- no paralysis and none of the rest of it, simply the sensation of something gripping my throat, even a sensation of fingers digging in, but no paralysis, and no dread either, just the sudden fear of something real that had to be dealt with.

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Uh, I would consider a feeling of "sudden fear of something real that had to be dealt with" very similar to "dread".Also, you say you had this feeling of being choked. Did you sit up, struggle, try to remove the fingers from your neck with your own hands, or try to get away, or did you just lie there? If you just lay there, perhaps it was because you couldn't move?Did you wake up with bruises on your neck from the fingers "digging in"?

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I've had that "nameless dread" feeling and the paralysis of the hypnagogic state too but NONE of these experiences had that quality to them.

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Well, then I would say that you have a propensity to have these hallucinations in many different flavors.My husband had these kinds of experiences fairly frequently in his twenties, and some were frightening and some were fun.

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The times I heard voices I was awake and using my mind, not even half asleep, and none of those experiences listed were part of it.

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But you were in bed, right? It's pretty difficult to self judge one's stage of awakeness if you've been in bed for any length of time.

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I do think however that the twilight state is more open to such experiences. If we are spiritual beings, why wouldn't it make sense that some states would be more open to such influences than others? How could you possibly test to know for sure which was which -- a purely mental creation or something external?

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We can induce these hallucinations.You can't show us any spirits.Therefore, the most likely explanation is that they are a product of the brain and there is no need to invoke any kind of superstitious or magical explanations at all.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-17-2005 02:10 PMThis message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-17-2005 02:11 PM

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Santa is not considered by anyone ever to be real.

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I used to think that Santa was 100% real when I was 5 years old.I even tried to stay up late on Christmas Eve to hear the reindeer on the roof, but I always fell asleep.

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I am very sure that you cannot create anything in anybody's mind like what I'm describing.

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Why are you very sure?"I just am" is not an answer.

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You no doubt can elicit hallucinations that are products of the mind. But it is also possible that in the process of stimulating the brain you could cause the kind of state that makes a person receptive to spirit input and you'd have no way to know the difference.

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What spirits? Show me the spirits.Unless you can show me the spirits, you are just inventing a completely uneccessary fantastical, hocus-pocus scenario that fits into your mythology.I suppose that you also believe, as religious people did in the past, that people with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses are possessed by demons, right?

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Or you might, but since you wouldn't be open to such phenomena you wouldn't be prepared to recognize the difference.

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Well, show me the demons, angels, or any evidence whatsoever for this spirit world that only religious people say exists and I would be happy to accept that this may be what is happening.If you cannot show me any evidence, then you are just positing unsupported magical explanations where none are needed.

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I wouldn't suspect demon possession unless there were symptoms that suggested it, such as the rages of the mentally disturbed man I was talking about.

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But why wouldn't you expect it? How would you know the difference? Wasn't that your point?Also, are you really saying that you think that mental illness is really demonic posession?If so, then wow, you really do live in the Dark Ages in your mind. It must be terrifying to have the boogeyman lurking around every corner.

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There's no need to seek any explanation for normal behavior. It's the unusual experiences that are the subject of this thread that make demonic activity a reasonable explanation.

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You didn't answer my question, though.You are the one trying to say that, given that people do have hallucinations that are products of their minds, they could also have real experiences with demonic forces which are not products of their minds, and you say that we couldn't tell the difference.I gave an example of exactly the same scenario above, only with "normal" behavior, then asked Your point is that we cannot know the difference, right? Well, my example is logically the same as yours.

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I disagree. Science developed precisely because it was able to prove many things.That's what empirical observation, experimentation, replication and the test of falsification are all about.

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Nothing in science is ever "proven", like in the case of mathematics. You never get The Correct Answer in science. Nothing in science is uncorrectable. That's why we have falsifiability and tentativity as main tenets.As long as you mean "prove" as in "provisionally accept", we are on the same page.

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But it only applies reliably to physical events that are predictable, measurable, continuously observable in the present.

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Faith, it is simply not true that science only applies to "events that are continuously observable in the present", and it has been explained to you why it is not true many times over. It will not become true just because you wish it to be. It is, however, off topic for this thread so I will not attempt to explain it to you again here.

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When we get into spiritual things, mental things, unreplicable events and the like,

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Why do you think that "mental things" are unreplicable"?What do you think research psychologists do all day?Of course, since you cannot show me any evidence of "spirit things", we can hardly "repeat" an observation that we don't have in the first place, can we?

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Some MAY be merely hallucinations, some not.

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That's the question, isn't it? -- how COULD one know for sure.

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Well, then, since we have real evidence that people can, and do, have hallucinations that are products of their minds, and no evidence at all that any kind of spirit world exists, it is more parsimonious to conclude that people are having hallucinations that are products of their minds, right?

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I think there are cases where you couldn't.

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If there are such cases, then wouldn't it be more accurate to say "we don't know what is causing this" rather than making the huge leap to your particular magical notions of what it could be?

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Oh, many many accounts of such occurrences over the centuries. Jesus dealt with demons, and the people certainly knew they were demons when they brought their children to Him to cast them out. In fact there were Jewish exorcists of the time. The phenomena have been recognized everywhere until relatively recently.

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Yeah.Are you going to be drinking poison any time soon, Faith? The Bible says you should be able to do so without harm.After all, everything in the Bible is 100% true, right?Come on, this isn't evidence, it's stories.

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Up until recently I believe the parsimonious interpretation of certain kinds of phenomena would have been demonic activity rather than hallucinations because they were taken for granted. Now they are denied so hallucinations have become the parsimonious explanation.

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We have E V I D E N C E of people having hallucinations that come from their brains. We can induce them.We have no evidence for the boogeyman.

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(snip)...I remember I had to reread that sentence many times before I actually understood that he was saying that demons might be the explanation for some phenomena and that psychology is barking up the wrong tree. That's all he said. He said it in passing, in the middle of discussing some literary production or other, I don't remember what. Or actually, it may have been somebody else quoting him, too bad I can't remember better. Very very startling.

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Why should I care what this guy thinks? He was a literary critic, not a brain researcher.

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We prefer the psychological paradigm, that's all, but there's no way to show that it is REALLY "all there is to" some phenomena.

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Nobody is saying that we can ever know that is REALLY is all there is.However, you have not provided any evidence for a spirit world, only stories, and I do have good evidence that hallucinations can be caused only by people's brains.

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Yes, and I took acid a couple times and the walls melted and the lights exploded into crystalline patterns and I knew it was a hallucination. HOWEVER, SOME people took acid and believed that they had found "God" and a "higher consciousness." And that is a real possibility it seems to me, that drugs can connect a person to a spiritual reality that is ordinarily not experienced.

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Or a spiritual unreality, just like the unreality of the walls melting.Don't you see the incredible bias you have, Faith?When the walls are melting during an acid trip, you dismiss it as a chemically-induced hallucination, but when someone "finds God" during an acid trip, you automatically consider it to be "real".Why can't ALL of it be a chemically-induced hallucination, INCLUDING the spiritual feelings?

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Well the second idea is silly as NOBODY claims any of it is going on in the real physical world. But if someone described seeing an angel or demon under LSD I personally would consider the possibility of its being a real angel or demon, depending on the description given.

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LOL! You have an incredible double standard. Any "evidence" which supports your belief, you accept, anything that doesn't, you discard.

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I really do NOT believe, however, that one can hallucinate voices with such clarity or see apparitions with such clarity and they not be real.

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Why not?It is very well documented that people can have very real-seeming hallucinations, and in a much more awake state than you were.Schizophrenics have hallucinations that are extremely real, with very clear voices telling them things, and they can also have very vivid visual hallucinations.Similarly, I had a friend who was working for several days around the clock to finish a project. He had been awake almost constantly for several days. He was in the lab late at night, printing out pages from the computer that he then had to walk down the hall to retrieve from the printer room. Every time he walked down the hall, he was accompanied by a hallucination of a little girl.Also, people racing in the Iditarod dog sled race often report having similar hallucinations due to severe sleep deprivation and stress.

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No, although I have heard that such things do happen with demon spirits sometimes.

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So, in this case, even though you felt the fingers "digging in", you had no marks.Doesn't this seem odd, if you were really being strangled as hard as you said you were?

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I've had that "nameless dread" feeling and the paralysis of the hypnagogic state too but NONE of these experiences had that quality to them.

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Well I never did until I got involved in the occult. Kind of hard to avoid that connection. I was INTENSELY into oracles and psychic phenomena and the like.

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Well, there you go right there. Do you not see the connection? You were "intensely into" these ideas. You believed them and probably wanted to have such experiences. Your brain, your subconscious, obliged, especially in the fantasyland of dreams.I forget, how old did you say you were when you got into the occult and also when you began having these bedtime experiences?

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I can't show you something that is by its nature invisible, I can't make the invisible visible, therefore we must conclude that there are no invisible beings, right?

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I never said they didn't exist.I only said that there was no need to invoke them to explain many hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations.You wouldn't have to show me the "invisible beings", but you would have to show me evidence of their effect on the natural world if you want me to take you seriously.We have evidence for a mundane, organic source for this phenomena, and no evidence at all of a spirit world.I'm going to stick with the evidence, thanks.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-18-2005 08:07 AM

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Don't down someones openness to experience because you deny the experience.

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Do you think that people who regularly see things that other people can't see and hear voices that other people can't hear are generally 100% sane?

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Certainly they might be. The hard part is to convince the deaf that there really is sound.

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It is not beyond the realm of possibility that there are some who possess either senses we do not possess or have senses that are able to reacyt over a broader range than most of us.

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So, you think there are people who have "demon sense", or something?

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It isn't just *my* "mythology." The "gods and goddesses" list I posted above (#113?) is a pretty long one. The demonology lists aren't short, and their source isn't Christian.* * *

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OK, the mythology you share with others.The issue is the same.

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Yes, I do think some mental illnesses in some cases *may* have demonic involvement, especially the kind where the person hears voices.* * *

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Back before psychoactive drugs were developed and it was not fully understood that the brain was the source of behavior, the sanitoriums were filled with "possessed" people and the exorcisms didn't work.People with epilepsy sometimes hear voices. Are they possessed, too, or do they have a condition where their brain produces unsychronized waves of synaptic activity?So, if we give the person who hears voices some psychoactive medication, and they stop hearing the voices, did the medication scare the demons away, or did the medication correct something chemical in the brain?

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Nonphysical things can't be shown/proved.

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And I am telling you that much of what you say is "nonphysical" actually is quite physical.

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You either find people's reports credible or you don't.

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Or we give them psychoactive drugs and/or look for possible physical causes.You don't want there to be a physical cause, even though we have a good deal of evidence that points to a physical cause.

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You don't so that's that. * * * The idea of scientific testability began with physical observations. The same kind of verifiability does not go for psychology.

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Look, I am married to a research psychologist who deals with physical observations every day. You don't have any idea of what you are talking about, Faith. You are just spewing nonsense.

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But that's OK. You know everything. I know nothing. Have a good day.

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I obviously don't know everything.Why would I be asking so many questions if I thought I knew everything?Why won't you address my examples of lucid hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-18-2005 09:50 AM

I would really like some kind of comment on these issues, Faith, from my previous message.

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I wouldn't expect exorcisms to work in most cases. Why should a demon leave when he's happy there? Nothing you've said proves there isn't demon involvement,

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Nothing I've said proves that there isn't pixie involvement, or invisible pink unicorn involevement, or Isis involvement, or little green men involvement.The evidence for all of these things, plus demon involvement, is the same.

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but even in the cases that are purely psychological I don't see great strides in helping them -- SOME help, yes. But what do they do with such people now? Mostly drug them to calm them down, right?

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No, not right.They don't just give them sedatives, Faith. They give them medications that can help to correct the chemical imbalances in their brains that are causing the hallucinations.We can see on brain cans that schizophrenic's brain activity is very different from non-schizoid people. When we give them the correct drugs, their brain activity resembles non-schizophenic brain activity.For epileptics, it is possible to identify and then remove the part of the brain from which the seizures and hallucinations originate, which leads to a cure.Are you saying that the epileptics' demons lived in that part of their brains and were removed during surgery?

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The effectiveness of drugs does not prove anything about the source of the problem.

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It does show that the behavior is likely to have a physical basis, does it not?Remember, we aren't just dsedating people; we are treating their disorder directly, in the brain, with psychoactive drugs. what do you think "psychoactive" referrs to?

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It is true that even before I was a Christian I hated physical explanations for psychological events.

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And yet, when we tinker with the brain, we have an effect upon psychological events.There is no escaping this reality, you know.

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We are not automatons. We are not just a bundle of neurons. Our minds are not our brains.

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So, why then do our minds seem to be so affected by what happens to our brains?If someone has a stroke and is rendered unable to read, that means that they cannot read, no matter how much their "self", their "mind" wants to read.The mind is clearly produced by the brain.

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We are not Pavlov's dogs.

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Oh, yes, we pretty much are.Are you saying that you are immune to classical conditioning? That is clearly not true, we all are quite susceptible to it. In fact, we all benefit directly from it.Touch the fire, get burned.See fire, remember that it burns if you get too close.That's classical conditioning.

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I have had experience in the field of psychology myself.

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As a researcher?

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I know that drugs make a big difference for many people and I don't know any other solutions to those problems

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You know I was talking about research psycholcogy, right? Like, scientists trying to figure out how the brain works.

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but at the same time I object to the *philosophy* that goes with treating people with drugs or with behavioral techniques either.

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No, that's clinical psychology. Medicine.I'm talking about basic research.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-18-2005 11:43 AM