Where would the world be right now if religion never existed?

[Scoobes]

pizzahut451 said:

Scoobes said:

There's no maybe about it, she had psychological problems. Again, many roots and reasons can be attributed to her psychological problems, and demonic possession would feature as last on a very long list. Why is it so hard for you to accept demonic possesion is incredibly unlikely? For one thing you have to prove the existence of a "demonic or supernatural" entity, which in itself has never been done.

Why are you so quick to jump to ridiculous assumptions in the face of logic and reason? Surely logic and reason should be looked to before making assumptions and turning to the occult and unknown.

And what do you mean by visual evidence? There was NO evidence in this case, visual or otherwise. I haven't read any detailed reports of a psychological assesment, nothing audio, visual or chemical about the room she stayed in and obviously in that day and age they didn't have the ability to do brain scans.

Lastly, just because you say something is fact doesn't make it so. You need evidence to back up a claim, and nothing you've presented is evidence.

More evidance:

 

http://www.wackyowl.com/5-notable-examples-demonic-possession-exorcism/

 

Care to explain how people can change their voices, speak demonic langluages (that are proved to be real by priests), make people levitating vertically and horizontally, kill thier family for no reason, and sometimes, when priest speaks the prayers, the bizzare behavior strangely stops?

Dont worry, Im sure you'll come up with some psycho thing that explains how people can fly...

 

You seem to mix up the definition of evidence with conjecture and heresay. I'll try and cover each of your points before moving onto the article you posted:

1. Voices and languages: Its well known that people can change their voice or start to speak fluently in other languages after head injuries. You seem to underestimate the complexity of the human brain.

2. Levitation: There really was no evidence for this in the article. Just a few eye witness accounts in 1906 Africa where people are very superstitious even now. Did you not ask yourself about the validity of the witnesses? You can't put someone in jail based on a potentially unreliable witness, yet you're ready to believe in demonic possesion?

3. Killing family: This happens all the time. Why do you think its demonic possesion? Why aren't they just a socio-path or have pent up anger issues directed towards family members.

4. Priest stopping behaviour: Again, no evidence of demonic possesion, just the belief that exorcism will get rid of a "demon" is enough for some people to stop their strange behaviour and get them out of their trance or alternative states of consciousness. If you really want evidence then find a brain scan during an exorcism. The only time I've seen this done, the effect on the brain was the same as that of meditation or prayer. This is predominantly in response to case 5 in the article.

As for the article, don't you think it's odd that the weirdest stories are all from a long time ago? Like 100 years minimum when technology and our understanding of the brain was close to nil. Even in case 3, the boy was cured after 2 months of therapy on top of the "exorcisms". The concept of an exorcisms may work to help improve a patient, but that doesn't prove demonic possesion, simply that it helps a patients psychological well-being.

Finally, I really find that picture of Anneliese Michel very telling. How can you look at that pic and not think "anorexic"?

Seriously, I think you should read a quality Psychology text book, then look back at these cases and seperate the evidence from heresay.