PZ Myers. 2005 Dec 29. Ask an exorcist!. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/ask_an_exorcist/>. Accessed 2006 Feb 13.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Thursday, December 29, 2005

Ask an exorcist!

The religious are nuts. I've just read an interview with an exorcist that is full of details and rules and strange interpretations. This is nothing but modern day witch-doctorin', superstition and ignorance codified into bizarre behaviors. Catholicism has this weird polytheistic cult thing lurking under the fancy robes and overwrought architecture.

They're based primarily on the Bible, according to which God created all beings: mankind as well as the pure spirits, in other words the angels and demons.

…and lares and penates. Let's bring back the little gods!

You may be wondering how you can tell if you are possessed. It seems all you need to have done is see The Exorcist to be fully qualified to recognize the symptoms.

Are there objective criteria that can be used to determine if a person has been possessed by a demon?

The new ordinance on exorcism summarises the criteria for the event of possession very well. The clearest for me as a priest is the deep aversion to holy objects such as the cross, the rosary or the sign of the cross. Also an aversion to the word God - when it is spoken, such people get very nervous. Less significant indications are the supernatural capabilities that these people can suddenly develop. They can speak foreign languages that they've never learned. They can levitate; they can float, they can overcome gravity. Sometimes they become inexplicably strong and violent. But it's not that easy to diagnose cases of possession. I usually suggest that people see a neurologist or a psychiatrist before I get involved in their case. If I am advised by these experts that they can't help, then I can begin a spiritual treatment. As a rule, I would say that of ten people who request an exorcism, one is truly possessed.

I wonder how often this happens…the priest advises a consult with a neurologist. The neurologist examines the patient; he is floating in mid-air, croaking in Latin. Then the neurologist calmly says, "I can't help him."

While priests don't seem too surprised at levitating people, I think a doctor or scientist would be much more excited, and would be calling up the local university to get more people and equipment to study the phenomenon. It would be a sensation. We'd see photos and movies and all kinds of records of the event.

It hasn't happened. I suspect that if you are the kind of gullible priest who goes in for exorcisms, seeing a mentally ill person bouncing on a bed and babbling nonsense syllables would qualify as a demonic possession.

At the end, the priest says to the demon, "Go away! Disappear!" The demon usually answers, "No, I don't want to." It rebels and revolts. Sometimes it says "You have no power over me. You are nothing to me." But after a while, its resistance weakens. This usually happens after the invocation of the Holy Mother, she's very important for that. No demon ever dares to insult her during an exorcism. Never.

Does he have more respect for Mary than for God himself?

Apparently. Otherwise no holds are barred, and everyone is insulted: the priests, everyone present, the bishops, the Pope, even Jesus Christ. But never the Virgin Mary. It's an enigma.

Uh-oh. I've insulted priests and bishops and popes and Jesus, but I don't think I've ever said a cruel word about the Virgin Mary…yet. I'm going to have to think of something mean to say, before some kook priest decides my lack of interest in one of their demigods is a sign of diabolical intent.

(via Black Arts Diary)

Posted by PZ Myers on 12/29 at 10:04 AM
Godlessness • Weirdness • 0 Trackbacks • Other weblogs • Permalink
  1. .
    Yes the religious are nuts. I just wish I was the kind of person who could take advantage of them in order to stuff my bank account.
    But I guess you have to be a religious leader to do that sort of thing.

    And still an avowed atheist could never be elected President in the asylum that exists outside my skull.
    .
    #: Posted by Weakly World News  on  12/29  at  09:16 AM
  2. Glimpse the future

    Science & Theology News is running an January 2, 2006 article by Bill "Vise Strategy" Dembski

    William Dembski says the Dover verdict is not ID's Waterloo, but merely one battle in a long culture war
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  09:25 AM
  3. And catholics wonder why they're constantly accused by fundamentalist Protestants of worshipping Mary.

    I'm going to have to think of something mean to say,

    A virgin in Nazareth? Not bloody likely.

    -The Rev. Schmitt.
    #: Posted by The Rev. Schmitt.  on  12/29  at  09:25 AM
  4. William Dembski says the Dover verdict is not ID's Waterloo, but merely one battle in a long culture war.

    Okay Bill, take your pick then: ...Crécy, Agincourt, Poitiers, Trafalgar...
    .
    #: Posted by Weakly World News  on  12/29  at  09:31 AM
  5. One would think that an exorcist would be embarrassed to bring up neurology, considering the field has produced scads and scads of evidence for a biological basis of consciousness. Doesn't that sort of stand in direct conflict with the premise of this guy's livelihood?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  09:52 AM
  6. Any psychiastrists in the house? Would an exorcism be an effective treatment for a mentally ill person who subscribes to the same belief system and believes s/he is possessed?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  09:53 AM
  7. They're *more* persuaded by people becoming "extremely nervous" around references to God than by levitation?
    I was raised Catholic, and as far as I could ever tell we were supposed to be nervous about God. After all, he knew what you were doing and would mete out punishment accordingly, and had whole sets of rules that often didn't make a lot of sense.

    Sounds like they're more worried about atheists than anyone else, actually.
    And, honestly, ten percent? They can't possibly think the rate of possession, even assuming it exists, is that high, can they?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  09:59 AM
  8. "They can speak foreign languages that they've never learned."

    Dammit. I can scarcely speak the ones I have learned! Does that mean I'm unpossessed?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:00 AM
  9. Personally, I'm a lot less worried by Catholic exorcisms -- which at least have a strict set of rules and guidelines that must be followed -- than I am by the freelance ones done in storefront churches. Those are the ones where the "possessed" are likely to end up dead at the end from overzealous exorcism.

    I guess I'm the only one here who remembers the spinal tap scene in The Exorcist. I hate needles.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:10 AM
  10. If exorcism is supported by the catholisism, then they are indeed nuts.

    And the assortment of gods and demigods and realms are confusing. Let's see, it's supposed to be three gods, isn't it: the God, the Son of God, the Spirit?! Demigods such as the Mother of Son of God, the Devil, angels, demons. Realms such as Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Hades, Gehenna, Limbo and many more; I don't know if Dante's and islamisisms levels apply for catholisism as well. The mishmash seems like an infinitheism instead of a polyheism.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:12 AM
  11. I have a very basic math question about demons. Presumably the ones who fell way back at the beginning are all there are, right? I mean, God wouldn't make any NEW demons, I can't imagine. So did there used to be, like, millions of demons per person back in Adam's day, and now they have to job-share? Wouldn't the human race get better and better as the demon-to-human ratio improved in our favor? But I don't see any evidence of that. Perhaps the whole demon thing is just a way of avoiding responsibility and treating others cruelly with impugnity. But surely religion wouldn't support those sorts of motives. Would it?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:13 AM
  12. Makes me wonder if possession is a secondary, iatrogenic illness. Kind of like multiple personality disorder. MPD crops up in clusters, with the same clinician seeing dozens of patients. The alleged base rate is so low that this should be impossible, so many contend that MPD is iatrogenic.

    If exorcists see lots of possessions, it may be the same exact disorder in religious guise.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:18 AM
  13. EVinson, find me a demon...maybe my Chinese and French will improve. But if it's a language I've never studied, I'd like to have Italian, please.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:19 AM
  14. Greg Peterson said: "So did there used to be, like, millions of demons per person back in Adam's day, and now they have to job-share?"

    This is basically the foundation myth of Scientology:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:20 AM
  15. Goodness, it all reads like a discussion between comic-book nerda about whether the Hulk could beat Superman.

    No demon would dare insult Wonder Woman!

    I went to a Catholic high school and I do recall that there was a fair bit of skepticism about exorcisms among the laity. The nuns tended to be more superstitious, and I'm not entirely sure about the priests. Surely there must be priests who can still distance themselves enough from the superstition to think with some objectivity about this. One would hope some of them can recognize that the sort of people prone to "possession" and stigmata are the highly suggestible type, prone to fantasy.

    The essence of Christianity is, or ought to be, service to fellow man. Those that aren't given over to Christian Scientist thinking, rejecting all modern medicine, should see the value in seeking conventional medical treatments, and not automagically jump to the "DEMONS DONE IT" conclusion. I'm sure God, if he existed, wouldn't be offended by the objective examination of all possibilities in order to best help our fellow man.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:21 AM
  16. no nym, would exorcism have any therapeutic value as a placebo?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:21 AM
  17. "Also an aversion to the word God – when it is spoken, such people get very nervous."

    Yeah, well I get nervous when the Word Of God is spoken too, but generally because after the sermon someone wants to hand me a Watchtower and steal thirty minutes of my life assaulting me with idiotic jibberish.

    Or it could be demonic possesion.

    Either way.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:24 AM
  18. There's a whole cottage industry within the Catholic Church of priests doing excorcisms, selling holy water, using rosaries as if they were talismans, officially validating "miracles" and the like, that many of us never glimpse (I was raised Protestant). However, looking back I remember the many things that the people around me said, and still say, that amount to magical incantations, as it were, since they shunned religious images and objects. And of course, in the Protestant universe (particularly in the Christian Science and Jehovah's Witness substrata) there is a cottage industry of books and "study guides," for long evenings spent debating Scripture at the kitchen table. (I don't have to tell you what a party that is.) There's a weird polytheistic cult thing going on in evangelical Protestantism, too--even mere humans, like the insufferable Hal Lindsey, become akin to gods for some people. I think it's all nuts.
    #: Posted by Kristine Harley  on  12/29  at  10:31 AM
  19. Yeah minimalist,

    I also grew up going to Catholic Schools (Jesuit)and I find it pretty hard to believe that any one of the priests or monks who taught me would buy into any of this. They could accept a lot of other strange metaphysical beliefs but the notion of actual supernatural occurrences in our physical dimension in the modern day and age tended to prod their skepticism more than their piety.

    Oh and the Hulk could absolutely beat Superman. He is the strongest their is.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:32 AM
  20. "...before some kook priest decides my lack of interest in one of their demigods is a sign of diabolical intent."

    You probably get nervous or at least annoyed around holy objects and references to god too. I can't tell if you can levitate or speak foreign languages without studying them from your web site...Perhaps it's time for an emperical test. Begone: Mary wants you to geddoudahere...Nope, the web page didn't disappear. I guess you're not demonically possessed after all.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:33 AM
  21. As a former Catholic, I can say that my personal experience has been that the portions of the Catholic population that give significant credence to things like possession, talismans, etc. are often those whose regional cultures already had some sort of belief in a pantheistic or animistic world, or had some sort of native rituals which incorpoated the ideas of spirits, possessions, etc.

    (This is merely observation and anecdote I know. Coming from what can be oxymoronically termed a "WASP Catholic" background, I never encountered much of this side of the dogma.)
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:39 AM
  22. Allright, not to go all Catholic here, but really - the Catholic Church is based on tradition - lots and lots of tradition. Its the fundamental criticism that most of the mainstream Protestant Churches have against the Catholic Church - that they put tradition on equal footing with the Bible, instead of putting the Bible first.

    Catholic exorcism has been around for a long, long time. Its not going to go away just because modern medicine has come up with explanations for many of the things that would have once been called "possession". I'm just glad that they modernized the practice so that neurologists and psychiatrists have to be consulted first, before any kind of supernatural explanation is looked at - that probably culls most of the "possessions" right away.

    And for all of the jokes about people levitating over the bed - when the neurologist says "I can't help" and the psychiatrist says "I can't help", its much more mundane. Its simply the types of things that we have no explanation for yet or no way to measure. And if a priest saying some magic words and making magic hand gestures above the patient makes the patient feel better, by all means go ahead and do it if there's nothing the doctors can do to help.

    Like Mnemosyne says, I'm much more worried about the non-Catholic exorcists who do this without the structure forcing them to make people check every known rational cause first before resorting to "possession" as the explanation. Its not just overzealous exorcisms that are a danger, either. People with severe mental illness who think they're "healed" by the exorcism may go on and hurt themselves or someone else later. At least the Catholic structure requires that the "possessed victim" see someone with medical knowledge before resorting to the supernatural.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:40 AM
  23. I've ever said a cruel word about the Virgin Mary � yet. I'm going to have to think of something mean to say …


    Well, you'll have to try awfully hard to outdo this year's South Park Christmas epsiode "Bleeding Mary," in which the Virgin is seen "bleeding out her ass." This clip shows a priest getting an ample faceful of Her Blessed Flow.

    Maybe this is really what Eucharist wine transubstantiates into.

    She's supposed to be a Virgin—why should the Catholics be upset if Mary's trolling for vampires?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  11:16 AM
  24. I was at a science and religion conference organised by a noted Catholic writer on these matters (John Cornwell) with various of the usual suspects -- Dan Dennett, I think, John Searle, Mary Midgley, Nicholas Lash, then the head of the Catholc theological Associationof Great Britain, and an ordained Anglican priest named Bill Clocksin who works in the computer sciencedepartment of the unversity. Speaker after speaker -- including Lash -- got up and testified to the dependence of consciousness on the body. "When you're dead, you're dead" they said. But, afterwards, and outside the building, I was talking to one of the Anglican priest -- I think, though it was a decade ago, that this was Fraser Watts, who is a psychologist -- and I asked him what he'd do, inth elight of his beliefs, if a parishioner asked to be exorcised. He replied that of course he'd perform the service, if he thought it would help. Helping people was much more important than being right.

    I don't think there is any question that, phenomenologically, some people are helped by this, and should be. As several people have said, the practices of the Catholic (and Anglican) Churches are most unlikely to do any real harm. The ones that are wicked are the crazy pentecostalists.
    #: Posted by Andrew Brown  on  12/29  at  11:18 AM
  25. Hilarious!

    �Pope Benedict XVI goes to investigate. He, too, is sprayed with blood when he walks behind the statue. A reporter says, �The pope investigated further and determined that the statue was not bleeding out its ass, but its vagina.� To which the pope replies: �A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle. Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time.�


    And get this! The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties is pressuring a Catholic Viacom director to prevent the release of this episode on DVD! How very 16th century, in the 21st century.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  11:40 AM
  26. The movie "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" was a fairly interesting exploration of supernatural versus natural explanations for the behavior and death of a young woman (based losely on some stuff that actually happened in Germany), although the deck was stacked in favor of supernatural explanations (some stupid 3 a.m. BS, with watches stopping at that time and crap). But where the movie just lost my interest was when the Virgin Mary showed up to offer Emily a choice (I won't be a spoiler by saying more). Maybe it's because I'm a Protestant Atheist rather than a Catholic Atheist, but I just find Mary showing up in cases like that to be so ridiculous that I can't even buy it as fiction any more. I like a good supernatural fantasy. Mary just ruins it.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  11:44 AM
  27. The best part of that South Park was when the Pope said it wasn't a miracle, the statue was bleeding out of her vagina which is nothing unusual, women bleed out their vaginas all the time. Of course, this was determined after the statued hosed the pope with blood. It was awesome.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  12:06 PM
  28. WANTED: Demon, for possession

    Fluency in Thai required. Levitation optional. Aversion to Christian symbols ok. Some travel. Must work well with Buddhists.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  12:13 PM
  29. Does he have more respect for Mary than for God himself?

    Well, ask yourself: where did the expression "Jesus Murphy" come from?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  12:42 PM
  30. memphis: LOL
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  12:54 PM
  31. There was NO indication of skepticism, of even the mildest kind, among the priests and nuns who taught me.

    We were assured that possession was real, though rare, and were taught the outlines of the procedure in case of need, sort of like a spiritual CPR certificate.

    It is still hard, looking back 44 years, to sort out the mindset of these people, who seemed in most other respects normal.

    And what my classmates made of it, I cannot say. But I still remember the exact day I realized that the only difference betweeen Catholics and raving lunatics was that the Catholics didn't rave so much.

    The nun who taught religion was telling the tale of some holy Italian priest/saint who, as a mark of favor from God, used to levitate when he consecrated the host at mass.

    I asked whether this was literally true or just a symbolic story.

    All true, the nun said.

    My father spent a great deal of money he did not have in order to get my head filled with such nonsense, so I cannot agree that Catholic belief in exorcism is harmless.

    Since then, though, I have watched numerous evangelical exorcisms, and they are scarier than the Catholic approach. They rave.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  01:12 PM
  32. The possessions one reads about all seem so unambitious. I mean, if I had demonic powers and the will to use them I'd probably want to take over a small country at least.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  01:33 PM
  33. "no nym, would exorcism have any therapeutic value as a placebo?"

    'Placebo' is not an explanation; it is an utterly mysterious phenomenon.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  02:22 PM
  34. Carl Jung posited that the "Holy Trinity" foundation of Catholicism was missing its 4th Part, i.e. the feminine aspect (Jung considered the number "4" as indicating completion or wholeness, whereas odd numbers represented "incompletion" and usually a masculine limitation). Again, consider the foundational thinking of Christianity: in the Trinity you've got the Father, the Son and The Holy Ghost--no mention of the feminine. At least with the Mithraic-influenced Jesus myth you have the Mother in the story. Our inherited religious culture, i.e. Middle Eastern monotheism, has sublimated the feminine to the point where men kill themselves rather than face their shameful (read non-masculine) desires.
    No demon ever dares to insult her during an exorcism. Never.

    That is powerful magic, indeed. If looked at as some quaint and addled mumbo-jumbo it will perhaps come back at you, to be swatted away again and again at a heavier and heavier price. Religion is not ex nihilo nor is it at its core measurable: when the Buddha gave a lesson and held up a lotus flower he wasn't shoving down dogma, he was saying life is something that cannot be entirely measured with scopes and lenses and computers. You either get it or you don't.

    If you look at religion, really look at it, and seek to understand its functions, you can begin to better deal with much of its absurdities, but if you don't understand on a social, cultural and (gasp) metaphorical level you merely swat at these bizarre fantastical assertions and they will doggedly continue to come back. Why not create a new religion, which says something like "It is, we are, wow that!"

    Jung went on to write that the unconscious wants to both divide and unite, which plays hell with anyone who faces an interior psychological problem. "I want to create, I want to destroy" is the push-pull of the human psyche, and supposed demonic possessions are always manifested as a negative force. No one ever goes to a Priest and says 'my awful child has been helpful lately: could you perform an exorcism?'

    I still think that until science finds something more than space between the sub-atomic particles, a space defined by those same ever-dancing particles that make up the universe, it cannot claim an omniscient nor unencumbered and completely objective point of view, because we are not impermeable constructs, but rather we are both everything and nothing, matter and space. Science isn't a thing, it's a process, and so is all of life, which we're told is a noun but is really a verb.

    Last add: Joseph Campbell wrote (paraphrased) that 'the bible should be read as poetry [much of it bad poetry, at that] but people read it as prose.' Don't fall for the same trap that the biblical literalists are caught in, for that leads to violence, fear and dissolution, and what's the fun in that? No one really needs the bible or the torah or the koran: just contemplate something, anything, and you have participated in the mystery of consciousness observing the manifested universe. Isn't that something?

    (And yes, I grant that some will write "I don't need that garbage." Well, in terms of the collective unconscious and metaphors: our cultural "landfills" are seeping out, so overflowing with garbage that if we don't deal with religion, if we don't understand it, it could destroy us all, and no amount of "tsk-tsking" will help)

    +++
    #: Posted by MJS  on  12/29  at  02:41 PM

  35. #55620: Gav — 12/29 at 01:33 PM
    The possessions one reads about all seem so unambitious. I mean, if I had demonic powers and the will to use them I'd probably want to take over a small country at least.

    Why settle for a small country? Odds are you could find a large, powerful country with a leader whose own mind was so weak that he couldn't put up a decent defense to your possession.

    Of course, I would check first if there was another demon already living in there.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  02:50 PM
  36. What I want to know is, do they put the demons in pigs anymore? Or is that an outdated practice, sort of a "Jesus Bloopers" kind of thing?
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  03:36 PM
  37. "Otherwise no holds are barred, and everyone is insulted: the priests, everyone present, the bishops, the Pope, even Jesus Christ. But never the Virgin Mary."

    Everyone knows the surest way to really piss a guy off is to insult his mother.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  04:25 PM
  38. MJ, they probably stopped putting the demons in pigs when people shrugged off all those dietary prohibitions and started eating pork tenderloin, so now I guess they just send them off into the ether--although sometimes I wonder about Alan Keyes as a possible repository.
    #: Posted by Kristine Harley  on  12/29  at  05:17 PM
  39. William Dembski says the Dover verdict is not ID's Waterloo, but merely one battle in a long culture war

    Nice that he's being a bit more honest about the fact that ID has nothing to do with science...
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  05:41 PM
  40. "Wouldn't the human race get better and better as the demon-to-human ratio improved in our favor?"

    Have you read the Spawn comics? The devil may trick poor wretches (those that ended up in hell) to be new recruits.

    But I am sure each religion has its answer to that. If they have no mechanism to generate more evil as humankind expand, they will sooner or later run out of a job.

    Re Hulk vs Superman, I think Superman has potential for the greatest strength. Superman gets continually power from our sun (most EM wavelengths) while Hulk got his once from a gamma source. At least they did last time I read them; it may have changed.

    OTOH, Hulk gets unboundedly mad while Superdupe is sooo nice. So yes, Hulk will kick superbutt each time they meet.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  06:12 PM
  41. Ah, hello Andrew. Well, of course I'd think any educated person these days, even a catholic theologian, would believe consciousness absolutely dependent on the physical. But of course, that's not something educated catholics have only just recently started believing. I am no schoolman and may be remembering this wrong, but I'm pretty sure that no less (and no less modern) a catholic theologian than Aquinas himself believed our consciousness in the world-to-come would only be 'natural' after the last trump blew and the bodies of the dead were resurrected. (He did think the 'souls' of the dead were already conscious, pending the resurrection; but that this could happen only by the direct, and frankly rather flash and dubiously tasteful, intervention of the almighty.)

    You once wrote (in your Darwin Wars book?) that most religions are in fact quite rigourously rational, it's just that the premises they start from are so often bizarre. Aquinas on the consciousness of the dead is, I think, a fine illustration of this phenomenon.
    #: Posted by Mrs Tilton  on  12/29  at  06:52 PM
  42. OTOH, Hulk gets unboundedly mad while Superdupe is sooo nice.

    Superman? Nice? I thought everyone had seen the evidence that Superman is a dick.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  07:23 PM
  43. There seems to be a trend here of lapsed Catholics hanging around with us atheists ....

    I was raised Methodist, so didnt have far to go to be a formal atheist..
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  08:26 PM
  44. PZ: "I'm going to have to think of something mean to say, before some kook priest decides my lack of interest in one of their demigods is a sign of diabolical intent."

    Oh, come on. You're obviously possessed by a demon in the form of a squid.

    I'm enjoying being diagnosed as mad by some of the always-rational, evidence based atheists here. Only some, mind.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  08:45 PM
  45. "Oh, come on. You're obviously possessed by a demon in the form of a squid."

    Where does one go to be possessed by a demonic squid? I am prepared to help it get over its fear of Mary so it can hurl imprecations freely.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  09:23 PM
  46. 'that most religions are in fact quite rigourously rational'

    I think one could quite easily disagree and disprove this very idea.
    #: Posted by  on  12/29  at  10:16 PM
  47. GH,

    you'll need to hash that out with Andrew Brown, then. But I don't think you've understood what (I think) he meant, which is not that 'most religions make sense'.
    #: Posted by Mrs Tilton  on  12/30  at  03:42 AM
  48. I was a Catholic charismatic when I was a teen. I've since outgrown that nonsense. I'm probably the only person here who has had the pleasure of having had an exorcism performed on herself.

    I was a very moody teenager who was not easy to get along with. As usual, anything bad was blamed on evil forces. My mother - another member of the congregation - somehow arranged an impromptu exorcism for me. It was the weirdest thing I had ever experienced. I was lying on the ground and a bunch of charismatics performed "laying of the hands" on me. I behaved myself read quick to put a stop to it.

    I'm convinced that people who believe in exorcisms show the "possessed" how to act. They believe in demons and in exorcizing them, and they relay that belief and all the things that are supposed to happen to the "possessed" person. Plus, movies have a lot of influence. I think that the exorcists and the "possessed" feed off of each other. When the exorcism is successful, everybody is happy. It's a weird way of bonding with other fundies.
    #: Posted by The Countess  on  12/30  at  07:54 AM
  49. So...did you levitate? Vomit pea soup? Spin your head around? If just being a moody teenager suggests you were possessed, then every teenager is inhabited by a demon.


    My non-devout parents treated my teenage mood swings as symptoms of constipation, and would make me drink lots of prune juice. I'm not sure which behavior was more benign—I learned to hate prune juice.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  12/30  at  08:02 AM
  50. Yes, but did you learn not to have (or at least, not to display) mood swings?
    #: Posted by Mrs Tilton  on  12/30  at  08:15 AM
  51. No. The thing is, I've always been a rather mellow fellow, and my teenage years weren't particularly tempestuous. I was just the oldest, so any change in behavior was met with alarm. I think my parents learned from some of my younger siblings that their concern was unwarranted (and even there, I don't think my brothers and sisters were particularly troublesome in adolescence. I've seen much worse.)
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  12/30  at  08:27 AM
  52. gracchus asked whether exorcism could be used as a kind of placebo treatment.

    I would say that this would not be helpful, and would almost certainly be unethical. Multiple personality disorder may be *caused* by hypnoquakery, where an incompetent but credulous shrink convinces their equally if not more credulous patient that they are not one, but many people.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_personality_disorder#Controversy

    If the disorder is iatrogenic (and the concurrence of cases among the same quack is strong evidence that it is), then it is an illness inflicted by the doctor on his patient: the treatment creates a new disease.

    Exorcism, to the extent it mimics this scenario, would be similarly unethical.

    A person who believes they are possessed may or may not qualify as psychotic, and the currently available treatments for pshycosis suck, but exorcism could not be taken by any reasonable, educated person as a useful treatment or palliative. Where are the phase 1 trials, for example?

    Anyone who practices this, is, in my opinion, practicing medicine without a license. Anyone practicing it with a license should be stipped of said license.
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  09:35 AM
  53. No Nym, interesting, thanks for responding.
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  09:44 AM
  54. So, remember how there used to be a time when nobody in America had heard of Christ?

    What happened when, say, a Chinook person was possessed by the Devil? I mean, the shaman sure wasn't going to invoke the virgin Marry to drive the demon out.

    Did Native Americans just stay possessed forever?
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  09:46 AM
  55. >Did Native Americans just stay possessed forever?

    Given the great number of languages in the Americas, the possessed folks mostly quickly found a niche as convenient translators.

    Plus the levitation came in handy too.
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  10:00 AM
  56. A person who believes they are possessed may or may not qualify as psychotic, and the currently available treatments for pshycosis suck, but exorcism could not be taken by any reasonable, educated person as a useful treatment or palliative.

    Because psychiatry and psychology are still somewhat art rather than science, I have to disagree with you that an exorcism could never be useful. I can see a circumstance where the person is so convinced that s/he is possessed that having a priest mumble a few Latin words over them and dab their foreheads with oil could "make the demon go away" and make the patient more amenable to psychiatric treatment for the delusions. Simply discounting their beliefs and medicating them could well do more harm than good.
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  12:02 PM
  57. Mnemosyne,
    I obviously need a lot more cultural education, and that link was very informative! Guess some sunspots eventually rubbed of onto Superman. I still thinks he is will succumb to Hulk though.

    I also note useful chapters on Weird science (like ID, if it were science) and that Everything's Better With Monkeys. I can't wait till they release the essential chapter on Squids Make Us Happier!
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  12:12 PM
  58. Christopher, yes, exactly.

    But you don't have to go back 500 years.

    Calvary Chapel, which advertises itself as the fastest growing cult in America, holds exactly that belief about Buddhists now.

    Variations on your question come up frequently on Calvary Chapel's 'To Every Man an Answer' call-in program. You can probably find a radio station in your area that carries it. Calvary Satellite Network. They're everywhere.
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  12:18 PM
  59. I was a very moody teenager who was not easy to get along with. As usual, anything bad was blamed on evil forces.


    Had a friend that was into drugs, drinking and depressed.. His mother, who was Wiccan, tried to do their version of an exorcism. Now, to be clear, they think more psychologically and believe that such demons are merely off shoots of our own psychology, which we are afraid to deal with. In effect, when you confront it, it fights back, because on some level your attacking part of your own perceptions. It knows everything you know and can use everything, up to and including the false fear of death, to prevent confrontation. Or so I have read on the subject. Problems is this kids mother made two mistakes, at least, she tried it with him when he was on drugs, so his perceptions where not stable and second, she did it when he wasn't ready for it. The later is supposed to be a *huge* no-no, since it only makes the problem worse. It scared him badly. So badly that he is now some sort of born again idiot, who is convinced his mother is in league with Satan and tried to kill him. It think he eventually got over the idea of her intentionally trying to hurt him, but never the false association with evil he invented to explain his fear of it.

    In reality, it was clear to me that he had drastically over reacted to something he wasn't ready for and instead substituted one source of false comfort, drugs and alcohol, for religion, which unfortunately is *far* more effective at producing false conforts. The irony is, in a general sense what his mother attempted was psychologically correct, just conducted with a complete lack of timing or understanding of what she was really trying to do.
    #: Posted by Kagehi  on  12/30  at  12:28 PM
  60. Calvary Chapel, which advertises itself as the fastest growing cult in America, holds exactly that belief about Buddhists now.


    You do realize that this was a log time ago *before* there where computers or other measuring devices right? I mean, I give them *some* credit for not attaching themselves to something completely irrational, but this is one thing the bugs the hell out of me about mysticism:

    Scientist, "Well, we think we can prove x."
    Mystic, "But they couldn't do that 500 years ago!"
    Scientist, "Well, we think we can *prove* x!"
    Mystic, "But they couldn't do that 500 years ago!!!"
    Scientist, SMACK!!!

    I don't really care what someone undeniably couldn't examine, test, observe or analyze in some ancient time when the only thing they had to *make* such measurements where their own faulty perceptions, a ball of string and *maybe* a pendulum. You can't think your way to a correct understanding something for which you have "zero" referents. And while inventing false referents allows you to think about a thing, it does so at the expense of potentially being dragged farther and farther from real understanding, unless you remember from the onset that its an arbitrary and possibly completely incorrect referent. Religions, I would argue, tend to be nothing but arbitrary and incorrect referents, which no one remembers where simply a convenience, instead of verified facts, interspersed with enough real, but not well understood historical referents to not just muddy the waters, but turn them to quick sand.
    #: Posted by Kagehi  on  12/30  at  01:03 PM
  61. I think you misunderstood me, and I am certainly not understanding you.

    I'm not denying the validity of Christopher's remark about 'Chinooks.' I'm just saying I can throw a spitball out my window and hit people who say they believe that ALL Buddhists TODAY are under the control of demons NOW.
    #: Posted by  on  12/30  at  03:58 PM
  62. Something mean to say about Mary... well, I won't say it, I'll just provide a link.

    http://www.tshirthell.com/store/product.php?productid=429
    #: Posted by  on  12/31  at  10:25 AM
  63. You are so going to burn in hell.

    I love the expression on Mary's face, though -- it's perfect.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  12/31  at  11:24 AM
  64. "The religious are nuts."

    P.Z., is it at all possible that you might be generalizing just a wee, teeny, tad? All religions, all traditions, all degrees of sophistication, all scientists who believe in any form of religion, just all "religious," are all "nuts"? The Dalai Lama, Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, Theravada Buddhism, Unitarianism, Jainism, Ethical Culture, Zen Buddhism, all the same? Belief in the supernatural or not is irrelevant, Deist or non-Deist, Theistic or not, all the same? All just "nuts."

    Presumably you have a peer-reviewed study to cite? And might I suggest you read up at least this?

    I know what you think of people ignorant of evolution and biology who mouth off about what they're ignorant of, and rightfully so, as you know I emphatically believe. I know you're an extremely smart guy. I'm sure we agree that wise people do not mouth off on what they're ignorant of, simply out of passion, until they've made deep and careful study of the subject. Right? We find truth through study, and testing, not through prejudice, I expect we both believe, yes?
    #: Posted by Gary Farber  on  01/01  at  05:07 AM
  65. P.Z., is it at all possible that you might be generalizing just a wee, teeny, tad? All religions, all traditions, all degrees of sophistication, all scientists who believe in any form of religion, just all "religious," are all "nuts"?


    Here is the fundimental issue. If you heard someone claim today that they where firm believers in Zues, what would your reaction likely be? Yep, probably that they are a bit nuts. Perhaps it would be a bit more accurate to say that all religious people share a similarly nutty idea, for which the only evidence they have is wishful thinking, some self contradictory holy texts and a persistent refusal to see any evidence that suggests they are wrong. This doesn't mean they are so completely insane (in most cases) that they need a padded room, it does mean that within a narrow slice of reality they act more like Adrian Monk, or Forest Gump, than they resemble someone who *isn't* prone to that kind of thinking. Its "nuts" as in, "You have to be crazy to do that.", not nuts as in, "They need to lock you up and put you on medication."

    And you seem ironically to be implying that people here know nothing about religion, so can't say anything about it. But I can guarrentee you that probably 90% of the people here *became* atheists precisely because they did study religion, far more completely than those that still follow it, have testing the validity of many claims made by people that believe in it and only developed what ever prejudices they have now as a result of such steps. Your making an assumption about PZ and everyone else's reason for thinking its nonsense, without having facts, then trying to claim we are the ones making wild accusations. That's just brilliant...

    And if you had read much hear, you would realize that most of us have far fewer problems with Buddhism (at least the versions that don't try to make him a god), Unitarians and others that don't try to force the universe to conform to some bizzare delusion, instead of seeking to understand it. We still think they are wrong, but not completely nuts. But yes, as a rule, we have seen no evidence of the supernatural and thousands of instances of *every* claim for what constitutes the supernatural debunked and disproven. That doesn't leave a lot of room for the universal religious idea that spirits might be hiding in my underwear drawer and causing to open, instead of simply having too much in the drawer, or anything else that some clown might insists is caused by spirits, gods, demons, psychokenesis or what ever other invisible and undetectible entity they come up with. Religion is a 4 year old's view of an imaginary friend, which their 60 year old parent insists is actually real because someone wrote a book about it. Childish and irrational definitely, but only fundamentalists and evangelicals manage to exagerate it into full blown insanity. They *are* completely nuts, everyone else just harbors odd ideas that most would give up if their wasn't a massive emotional investment in keeping them.
    #: Posted by Kagehi  on  01/01  at  12:31 PM
  66. Yep, most religious are nuts -- not in a clinical sense, but in the sense of believing in utterly goofy ideas.

    This Catholic priest babbling about the nature of demons, though, ought to be certifiable.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/01  at  12:46 PM
  67. "Yep, most religious are nuts -- not in a clinical sense, but in the sense of believing in utterly goofy ideas."

    What's goofy about each of the religions I cited, precisely, P.Z.? Given that none of them have any supernatural elements whatever. So which are the goofy bits? (And, while, on the one hand, I'd like you to actually look into them a little to give your answer, I will have made my point if you can't cite specifics without looking them up, just as if someone attempting to refute evolutionary biology had to look up terminology to understand your rebutal; my point, again, is that it is not necessarily the wisest thing to make declarations on subjects one is assuredly most non-expert in. You don't have to know anything about Christianity to refute fundamentalist Christian attacks on science [although it helps to be able to tell non-fundamentalist Christians, the overwhelming majority, from the nutbars], but to speak to generalities about All Religion Everywhere Period, yes, you do have to have some reasonably detailed expertise; goodness knows I claim no such expertise. Christianity=/ "religion."

    Note to Kagehi: I'm an atheist. Never been otherwise for a moment. And I've been coming here since about the time P.Z. started in summer of 2003, and was blogging rather a bit before he was (I just passed my fourth anniversary on December 30th). But thanks for the condescending lecture.

    "...at least the versions that don't try to make him a god...."

    It would be a more convincing demonstration of your assertion that you are not ignorant of the topic if you used the proper terminology. (No fair looking it up on Google or in a book, first; I mean, actually knowing.) Similar to someone trying to assert that they darn too do know enough about evolution to debate it who referred, say, to "the giant ancient lizards," but couldn't tell you the difference between Mesozoic and Cambrian, although s/he did know there was an important difference.

    If you don't know what "Theravada" is, and can't tell without looking it up, which philosophy it holds compared to Mahayana, that's fine. No reason you should if you're not interested. But it's not useful to speak on the subject if you're not familiar with it. Similarly if you can't speak to what Reconstructionist Judaism is (hint: no supernatural being involved), or Ethical Culture (ditto).

    I'll certainly grant the obvious, incidentally, which is that Jainism, and Buddhism, for instance, (as is traditional Judaism, naturally) of course are full of pre-scientific notions, and that the language is, in scientific terms, mumbo-jumboish. But what people get out of them isn't an attempt to understand the universe in scientific terms, and there's no attempt that I'm aware of to offer what they have to say as substitutes for, or in competition with, our understanding of the physical universe. What they offer instead are guides to ethics, and how to deal with each other, and other life, as well as approaches to beauty and other such abstract, a-scientific aspects of life and consciousness. That they come packaged in pre-scientific language simply is because, of course, they've been around far longer than our invention of the scientific method.

    And for anyone to not give a damn about this cool and fine; no reason anybody necessarily should. But to say they have nothing to offer is to not have actually looked very closely at such religions, or to simply kneejerk declare all religions the same homogenous belief-system, which, again, is entirely ignorant. One jolly well can't denounce religions for holding a belief in a supernatural being when they, you know, don't.

    In any case, you can have the last word here, Kagehi. I shouldn't have said what I said as a comment, but sent it in e-mail to P.Z. instead, as I have no interest in public debate here on this.
    #: Posted by Gary Farber  on  01/01  at  10:29 PM
  68. "This Catholic priest babbling about the nature of demons, though, ought to be certifiable."

    Oh, I'm sure. I don't need to spend a second wondering about that sort of thing.
    #: Posted by Gary Farber  on  01/01  at  10:30 PM
  69. One last point I should have made: one of the things that these religions, and other strains of religious thought including ones with supernaturality, offer is simply art and poetry and metaphor.

    Those are of value. Great value. Tremendous value. They have nothing whatever to do with science, and are in no way in competition with science, and not understanding this, and generalizing that it is all of no worth, is not understanding the point.

    No one would claim Emily Dickenson brought us insight into the physical universe, but who would claim she was therefore "nuts," because her descriptions weren't falsifiable, and that therefore she was of no worth (or, worse, interfered with scientific understanding of the universe)?

    Well, someone who doesn't "get" poetry, of course, but that doesn't make poetry, and art, and their power of inspiration to move us of no worth. It would be a sad and literal person (far more than even myself, who is about as literal-minded as they come most of the time) who can not find value in the power of metaphor, in the power of art, and in the understanding of poetry.

    Although C. P. Snow would have a word or two about it.
    #: Posted by Gary Farber  on  01/01  at  10:40 PM
  70. Hmm... I can't see the 3rd page of comments via "last page" or numbered links. All I get is a blank P50. So this is a test to see if adding another post (from P25) makes any difference to its visibility. Unfortunately, I already know doing that won't automatically take me to the last page under normal circumstances.
    #: Posted by  on  01/02  at  04:01 AM
  71. Well that exercise certainly seemed to exorcise the page eating demon all right ...

    Does that mean I get to start my own religion now, have lots of followers and rake in the money?
    #: Posted by  on  01/02  at  04:06 AM
  72. Ok. I admit, I didn't look that close at this list, "The Dalai Lama, Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, Theravada Buddhism, Unitarianism, Jainism, Ethical Culture, Zen Buddhism", and many I don't know much about. But, I do know some things about the Dalai Lama, and he *does* have some nutty ideas, even of he is generally reasonable otherwise. So do Buddhists, such as meditation, which they give a significance to that recent studies indicate are not what they claim it is. And to be clear, I did mention that the ones I could identify where not completely nuts and I didn't put them in the same category, but rather agree with PZ's assessment, that they may be generally sane, but have some crazy ideas. Sorry for the confusion, I didn't realize everything on that list was outside the loony tunes category. If you hadn't nitpicked about my not knowing the exact definition of them, you could have simply pointed that out and taken the rest of my statements at face value. Having a hissy fit over the mistake is silly.

    And to be clear. Mere falsifiability isn't necessarilly the best criteria. Rather if it distracts from investigation of things that provide functional information I do have a problem with. The difference between reading a poem and saying, "That is a great insight into how we currently think.", and, "Because someone wrote that and it seems insightful, it must be the unmitigated truth of what took place.", is the difference between useful and useless **in the scientific sense**. Poems are not science, I don't expect them to convey mathimatical formula or profound information of genetic engineering. This doesn't make it useless in the sense your trying to exagerate our statements to include, just useless, unless they do contain scientific information, in trying to build an airplane or cure a disease. And as language and belief changes, they may not even keep the usefulness they had *when* original created. How many people today would have a clue what Tamborine Man actually means without it being explained to them? What about a legend from thousands of years ago, without the context of what the objects and creatures in it represented? Some tend to be relatively universal to human experience, others require that you understand the intended context, which doesn't exist anymore in common culture. Are they useful by themselves?

    When talking about if something is useful or rational in context of science, we don't mean things that make you feel good, or which 50 years from now you grand kids are going to hear and go, "Huh?? What's that for?" We are talking about things that *today* scientists look at and go, "Huh?? What's that supposed help me do?" Don't conflagate the issue Farber by claiming we mean everything that isn't published by the National Academy of Sciences or has a picture of a double helix on it. It's not the general irrelevancies that even we indulge in that we are talking about. Its the complete irrelevencies that derail investigation and undermine rational discussion that is the problem. The stuff you're claiming we paint with the same brush don't generally do either.
    #: Posted by Kagehi  on  01/02  at  12:30 PM
  73. Apparently, we are all agreed that this particular Catholic priest is crazy.

    On what grounds do we give the rest of them a pass?

    What this priest says is just the established doctrine of the Church, maintained for centuries. Just because other priests do not say much about it in public, how are we to conclude that they are sane?

    They swore an oath on all this stuff, you know, at ordination.

    As for Gary, his selective list proves nothing about religion except that minor sects don't get to flex their muscles so much. It would be more relevant to provide an example of one of these so-called peaceful sects that, when it did hold civil power, did not use it to kill people in the name of its abstract (and, to any sane person, nonsensical) theories.

    Even the Quakers fielded an army when they had the chance, although that's something they don't want you to know.
    #: Posted by  on  01/02  at  02:43 PM
  74. The Dalai Lama, Reform Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, Theravada Buddhism, Unitarianism, Jainism, Ethical Culture, Zen Buddhism, all the same?


    Let's assume I know absolutely nothing about them (actually, I do know a bit about most of them). I'll ask a simple question: what makes them different? That's where you'll find the silliness, where they try to make metaphysical distinctions from one another.

    A trickier question: if there are common emphases on rational interpretations of the world, what makes them different from agnosticism/atheism, and what makes them religions at all? UU "churches" are often little more than social clubs for unbelievers, for instance -- I wouldn't say their ideas are silly, but I also find it hard to assign them to the category of "religion".


    One last point I should have made: one of the things that these religions, and other strains of religious thought including ones with supernaturality, offer is simply art and poetry and metaphor.


    I hear that argument a lot. It doesn't impress me. Art and poetry and metaphor, the whole idea of beauty, are human concepts -- they have nothing to do with religion, unless, perhaps, you are trying to claim that atheists lack art and beauty (and I don't think you are). What that really is is an attempt, endorsed by the religious, to appropriate beauty by religion rather than human talent and imagination. I rather resent that, actually, and think it is one of the more wicked arguments for religion around.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  01/02  at  03:21 PM
  75. We already know what would happen if a 'benign' religion got power: it would abuse it. Uh oh Buddhism!

    -The Rev. Schmitt.
    #: Posted by The Rev. Schmitt.  on  01/02  at  05:18 PM