The Essence Of Faith & Belief.

But of course I mean really real. Your answer to the question how you can be so sure they aren't real was their saying ridiculous untrue things, but that isn't evidence that they aren't really real voices.Oh well, no need to drag this out I guess. I believe they are demons. I suppose you believe they are some kind of brain effect. I think they are demons doing their usual thing of misleading human beings. These crazy people are simply people who have accumulated (or perhaps inherited)_enough sins to allow the demons to operate in this way. We all have sins but not all of us have sinned to the point that demons are allowed to inhabit us and mislead us so directly.Laugh away. Mock away. Call me bonkers again. What fun.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

They are very real to the individual. To everyone else they're plainly a delusion. We KNOW that they are a brain effect. We use drugs to create the same effects. Yeh, well, it was common in mediaeval days to accuse the mentally ill of being possessed by devils. You're just out of your time. It's not funny, it's very sad. I'm ashamed that society can still be so backward and ignorant.

They can be quite real, meaning no delusion, but heard only within the head of the victim, not by anyone else.I'm sure drugs could sometimes draw demons. It's one danger of the use of drugs.gosh I guess those medieval people were onto something. Why do you assume it's progress to have given up an explanation that might have been/most likely was the correct one, based only on your own modernist prejudice? What we should be ashamed of is our modernist assumptions that have no basis in anything but the modernist prejudices.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

3rd time - they are real to the individual, to everyone else they are delusional. In what sense can someone saying they are Napoleon be real? Drugs alter brain state. Fact. Reproducible, proven fact. Nothing to do with demons - whatever they are. Because I've got an iPad and their beliefs have been proven wrong. Modern ideas about our reality are based on testable evidence, that's why we know what works and what doesn't. Without our 'modern assumptions you would probably have died of toothache at the age of three and you mother would have died in childbirth.

There is no necessary contradiction between modern medicine and the reality of demons. I understand how rationalism concocted the dichotomy but it was an error.

Do antibiotics cure demon possession too?

As a believer, the only time that I recall thinking that I heard a clear audible voice was about two weeks after I had gotten saved. (That's a story in itself, but I can share again) One other time I heard a chorus of "voices" that sounded like Alvin and the chipmunks.The very day I was touched at the altar, I had no desire to smoke weed again. Before that day, I would have been hard-pressed to stop even for a day. A couple of weeks later, I took down the vacuum flask that I used to preserve my "good stash" and saw one little bit left. I was tempted to finish it off, but I was also aware of a deep relationship with God as I understood Him. So out loud in a house by myself, I talked to Him. I said "But this isnt idolatry! Suddenly as clear as an audio recording, a voice said one word: "Choose!" I had no idea if it was Gods voice but at that moment I chose to get rid of that stash....forever.The podcast from Hidden Brain addresses this issue also. Let me find it on the transcript:

quote:

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VEDANTAM: The way to make an abstract, invisible entity real in your life was to do things with that entity that you would do with a spouse or a co-worker.

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LUHRMANN: But, I mean, what people would say is that you needed to get to know God the way you would get to know somebody when you went out for coffee with them. You became a friend of the person. You asked about their life; they asked about your life. You had a back-and-forth. You learn to know each other. You learn to trust each other. And that that's how you should get to know God.(...)I would ask people whether God was like an imaginary friend, and people would always correct me. People would say, oh, no, he's not imaginary. Then they'd talk about him as if he was kind of like an invisible being who walked by their side and who, you know, put his arm around their shoulders. People would tell me about sitting next to God on a park bench, and they were talking to him about their life, and they were asking him about his life. And people - they did that.

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Edited by Phat, : added detail

As a believer, I won't disagree with the possibility. There has been a lot of documentation within the churches about demons...but of course, if demons did exist, we would have to realize several things.
1) They have been around for thousands of years and if capable of learning how to be more and more diabolical, they would know human nature inside out. They would also know that modern-day humans rely more on logic, reason, and critical thinking than we do myths, legends, and a propensity to believe any and all supernatural storylines--be they leprechauns, Big Foot, Loch ness, or Aliens.As you know, I once heard a chorus of "voices" come from an oppressed friend. They clearly said "The Blood! The Blood! No No, NOT The Blood"! Tangle will stand on his assertion that religion is entirely a product of culture and that I would never hear voices from another religious belief. One Pastor I know told me that he once heard "tongues" from an African Tribe who worshipped demons...so in that context, he was referring to speaking in tongues as clearly NOT proof of God.One more thing. IF the supernatural is real, I theorize that it has malevolent intent and some degree of intelligence behind it. Were an Antichrist to someday show up, He likely would convince the secular scientists that he was from another planet rather than a character from Biblical mythos. They would likely believe that!Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Normally this is true. I studied Psychology for several years and I know all too well the theories of Confirmation Bias, Schizophrenia, and Multiple Personality Disorder...among others.As to my personal experience of hearing voices, the one time I heard an audible voice I was by myself, but the other time when I heard a chorus of voices there were two other friends with me who clearly heard the same thing. What theory would explain that?

You told us that you heard these voices after several days of evangelical study and you also tell us that you smoked a lot of weed. You've listened to the podcasts that explains how people 'hear' things with training and the pot is self-explanatory.

The demons are immortal, yes around for thousands of years at least. Not sure when they were created. Possibly long before God created the physical universe but there's no hint of how long before if so. But in any case they've had the last six thousand or so years to get familiar with Planet Earth and the human race. And I don't think it's just that they know how our views have changed over the centures, I think they can be "credited" with influencing the direction our thoughts have taken, particularly the ideas that convince people like Tangle that demons don't exist. That's been a very useful idea for them, so that they get to operate incognito as it were. They get to be UFOs for instance and nobody ever suspects them, they think it's all some kind of physical reality, or ETs or whatnot -- those who believe in such things anyway. They've got the human race bamboozled from many directions, crafty creatures they are.I never had the experience of seeing a demon-possessed person as you did but I have no doubt that is what you witnessed. [Correction: I had an apparition appear in my room one night of a "street person" who had threatened me that day as I passed him. He must have been possessed since his apparition appeared in my room and threatened to kill me. Not the same kind of experience you had of a Christian being possessed but still I'm sure this man was possessed and what I saw was the demon's impersonation in my room that night.]But I also heard a voice that spoke only to me, twice. Once when I was a new Christian and was praying, which is similar to the timing you mention when you heard a voice. The voice I heard said "She is praying to Jesus Christ." Quite audible. And I was alone but I'm sure it couldn't have been heard by anyone else anyway. And it sounded like the "little chipmunks" and made me laugh out loud. I wonder why it didn't try to be more convincing. Just a low-ranking demon?Another time I was praying and a voice gave the name of a person all the churches in town were praying for, she was such a well known Christian, and the word had gone through all the churches about how she had been diagnosed with cancer just before she was about to give birth to her fifth child, and nobody wants to see a mother taken away from her children. So we were all praying for her (she died anyway and it was a challenge to the faith of many) and I heard this voice like it was coming from the inside of a steel barrel, giving her name. It sounded so odd I nearly laughed out loud. Demons are smart but sometimes they give themselves away.I got the "gift of tongues" when I was in a charismatic church, but some time later I recognized that it wasn't from God and gave it up.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Except that this happened a year or so after i "got saved" and that I was under the influence of no mind-altering substance except arguably the groupthink itself. Still, we clearly did hear and experience something together. It was at my house and not at the church. To this day, were you to ask any of us what we experienced our stories would likely match.

But can we really conclude that its all in our imaginations? I am not convinced....

My memory of what you said was that you'd all had several days of evangelical stuff and were praying? Sure, it seems real. That's why you believe it. That's what delusions are.

What does the evidence show?