"Spirits" "Demonic"

[Dominicana_1965]

What do you guys say to Theists that claim that they have witnessed demons in church, when the pastro releases them.
And people that claim they feel and see spirits.

Personally i have never witnessed neither of the two, just wondering how do we combat these statements?

[Guerrilla22]

I believe them 100% it's hard not to take the word of people who come to their conclusions by totally disregarding science.

[Fawkes]

Don't bother trying to refute those statements because anyone who believes that is a total idiot.

[razboz]

How do you convince a madman his hallucinations are not real?by carefully explaining which bits are reality and which bits are not. Sometimes these sick people cannot deal with this and must be given medication and sent to institutions in order to help them not hurt others and themselves. Its all very sad. People who knowingly encourage this kind of delusional behavior ought to be sent to prison.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

I don't think people who say they "feel" spirits are necessarily sick. Belief is a very strong force and many people, particularly those who are going through hard times such as losing a loved one, cannot cope on their own and rely on "God" to help them (in reality it is obviously their belief that helps them through rather than any actual God). As such these people can often feel very close to some kind of supernatural entity, or perhaps jump to conclusions regarding otherwise explainable "phenomena", such as odd sounds or optical illusions. Many others who claim to have witnessed the manifestation of spirits are probably on some kind of drug (including alcohol), they may be sleep deprived, or perhaps they are just very devoutly religious, gullible and stupid. Not necessarily psychotic. I think it's awfully irresponsible to jump to conclusions and start labelling everyone who has witnessed such things as utter wackjobs who deserve to be locked up.

[Eleutherios]

I would ask them to take some photographs next time. And I would bet them a good deal of money that their demons wouldn't show up in the photos any more than the hallucinations I see when I'm tripping would show up in my photos.

[jaycee]

This idea that anyone who experiences 'religioius' exstatic experiences is somehow insane is a strange idea. To simply say that all 'mystical' experiences are just maddness is a typically bourgeois view and fails to realise the fact that these experinces have happened to all peoples over the entire planet for all of human history and have been respected and cherished by most forms of society. They clearly have deep meaning to them, while they don't mean that spirits definately exist they at least point to the truth behind them. the constantly recurring themes of such experinces are a feeling of 'oneness' of leaving the atomized ego and feeling the energy of all living things as well as a feeling of timelessness. It has been proved scientifically (by Einstein, among others) that the 'mechanistic' world view of classical physics was mistaken and that all matter (and everything in general) is in fact made of an undefinable energy. It has also been proven that time does not exist in the way we percieve it.

shamans and other mystics throughout history have all attempted to delve into 'other realms' (of the mind, i.e the unconcsious) and bring back the truths they find, while this has until now been understood in 'mythical' terms it does not mean there is no truth to it.

[Cryotank Screams]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 03:46 pm
What do you guys say to Theists that claim that they have witnessed demons in church, when the pastro releases them.
And people that claim they feel and see spirits.

Personally i have never witnessed neither of the two, just wondering how do we combat these statements?
One of my hobbies is ghost hunting, visiting haunted places, and other spooky stuff, so I generally know what these people are trying to say.

You don't even have to be a theist to believe in this bullshitry, I've known agnostics and even some soft Atheists, of claiming to see ghosts, or feel a ghostly presence and such, what the people are feeling is a fear brought on by their own imagination about a place, I mean say house 3456, on X street has been vacant and condemned for years, and everyone says it's haunted, and list a whole barrage of urban myths about the place, so naturally given this the average person upon going into a place like this would be scared, because they feel there is something supernatural about this house, and with this fear, when they see odd shadows, or lights, or feel an odd out of place draft, their mind won't interpret that as it usually would in the day, no, because of their fear combined inability to determine what is going on in their surroundings due to natural disorientation, their mind will interpret this as ghosts, goblins, witches, and all that nonsense.

Sprits in a church service is even easier to explain than usual haunting, it's merely just people's mind getting so hyped, and pumped during the service, combined with their own fears, and superstitions, and trust of their loving snake oil salesmen (pastor, father, minister), of course they would feel spirits, and all that other bullshit.

As for supernatural experinces with skeptics like agnostics and soft Atheists, they saw something natural that due to fear, disorientation, and such, their mind can't put into a reasonable meaning what just happned so they rely on their imagination, and say ghosts did it.

The main drive for supernatural experiences is fear, an overactive imagination, and psychological misinterpretation.

[colonelguppy]

they have an agenda or are delusional.

[Eleutherios]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 05:22 pm
This idea that anyone who experiences 'religioius' exstatic experiences is somehow insane is a strange idea. To simply say that all 'mystical' experiences are just maddness is a typically bourgeois view and fails to realise the fact that these experinces have happened to all peoples over the entire planet for all of human history and have been respected and cherished by most forms of society.
"Typically bourgeois"? Really? I had no idea the bourgeoisie has a collective class interest in declaring mystical experiences as symptoms of insanity. Explain that one to me.

They clearly have deep meaning to them, while they don't mean that spirits definately exist they at least point to the truth behind them.
No, not really. Just because something has a deep meaning to somebody doesn't mean there's any "truth" behind the idea. Nazism has had a deep meaning to a lot of people too. And how can spirits not definitely exist but there still be some truth to the idea behind spirits anyways? Either spirits exist, or they don't.

the constantly recurring themes of such experinces are a feeling of 'oneness' of leaving the atomized ego and feeling the energy of all living things as well as a feeling of timelessness.
And the fact that people have had such feelings is proof of what? Feelings do not prove anything. Facts do. Any revolutionary ought to know that huge masses of people can have very strong beliefs in very false ideas.

It has been proved scientifically (by Einstein, among others) that the 'mechanistic' world view of classical physics was mistaken and that all matter (and everything in general) is in fact made of an undefinable energy.
Bullshit. If you actually knew anything about Einstein, you'd know he was one of the physicists who was most convinced that the world works in an orderly, mechanistic way. That was the whole idea behind his theories of relativity and his (mistaken) opposition to quantum mechanics. He refused to accept quantum mechanics for the simple reason that it introduced a degree of randomness into the universe, and thus made it so that there are events which in principle can never be predicted.

It has also been proven that time does not exist in the way we percieve it.
So? That doesn't mean that time doesn't exist, or that we can somehow "transcend" time. It just means that if you accelerate to speeds which you or I will never achieve, time will slow down for you because the speed of light has to remain constant for all observers. What does that have to do with spirits?

shamans and other mystics throughout history have all attempted to delve into 'other realms' (of the mind, i.e the unconcsious) and bring back the truths they find, while this has until now been understood in 'mythical' terms it does not mean there is no truth to it.
No, it does not, but the complete lack of any kind of evidence at all implies that it is extremely unlikely that there is any truth to it. If I am going to accept an extraordinary proposition like "spirits exist" or "Bigfoot exists", I'm going to have to have some real evidence, not just anectodal evidence. And as far as that goes, I see a lot more objective evidence for Bigfoot than for spirits. At least there are plenty of photographs and movies of alleged Bigfoot sightings that we can analyze.

[Question everything]

(I'm going to say he but I mean he/she) here the the 2 most likely possiblities, he had too much of "a good thing" (if you get what I'm saying), he wanted to feel important so he made it all up... a

[Janus]

There are a variety of reasons and factors for this: extreme religiosity/hype to mental instability.