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Author | Topic: Existence of Demons (and Angels) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: So, are you saying that the kidnapper wasn't actually a human being, but a demon?
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: No. Only the ones that take place in the natural world.
quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: ...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.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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 sleep2) Paralysis upon waking 3) Pressure on chest 4) Cannot speak 5) The feeling of an intruder, often malevolent 6) Intense feeling of dread These 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Yes, indeed you are.
quote: No, you aren't.
quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Well, then, as long as you understand that they are personal beliefs.
quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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, or 2) that I am possessed by a demon which is making me function as I normally do? Which explanation assumes the most unneeded factors?
quote: 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.
quote: How do you know if they aren't hallucinations?
quote: That's nice. What's your evidence that a "spirit realm" exists?
quote: 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, or 2) they are really seeing the walls melt, or angels, or demons, or shimmering bubbles everywhaere, or whatever people on acid see?
quote: Right. It was associated with sleep.
quote: Sometimes the presence is experienced as friendly, or at least not malevolent.
quote: 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"?
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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 PM This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-17-2005 02:11 PM
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Why are you very sure? "I just am" is not an answer.
quote: 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?
quote: 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.
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. quote: 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.
Which explanation assumes the most unneeded factors? quote: 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
Which is more parsimonious; 1) That I am not possessed by a demon and am functioning as I generally do, or 2) that I am possessed by a demon which is making me function as I normally do? Your point is that we cannot know the difference, right? Well, my example is logically the same as yours.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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?
quote: How do you know if they aren't hallucinations? quote: 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?
quote: 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?
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: Why should I care what this guy thinks? He was a literary critic, not a brain researcher.
quote: 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.
quote: 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?
quote: LOL! You have an incredible double standard. Any "evidence" which supports your belief, you accept, anything that doesn't, you discard.
quote: 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.
Did you wake up with bruises on your neck from the fingers "digging in"? quote: 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?
quote: Well, then I would say that you have a propensity to have these hallucinations in many different flavors. quote: 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?
quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: So, you think there are people who have "demon sense", or something?
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: OK, the mythology you share with others. The issue is the same.
quote: 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?
quote: And I am telling you that much of what you say is "nonphysical" actually is quite physical.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: 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
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
I would really like some kind of comment on these issues, Faith, from my previous message.
quote: 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? quote: LOL! You have an incredible double standard. Any "evidence" which supports your belief, you accept, anything that doesn't, you discard. quote: 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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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: 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.
quote: 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?
quote: 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?
quote: And yet, when we tinker with the brain, we have an effect upon psychological events. There is no escaping this reality, you know.
quote: 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.
quote: 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.
quote: As a researcher?
quote: You know I was talking about research psycholcogy, right? Like, scientists trying to figure out how the brain works.
quote: 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
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