There’s nothing to drive out but the humanity. VJack has a sad story to tell.
If you think it’s just an isolated story and that exorcisms are an odd little superstitious relic that only wackos on the fringe fuss over, Nick Matzke brought this odd account from JP Moreland to my attention:
Recently, a hairdresser was arrested for performing cosmetic surgery on several “patients.” When this happens, the results are usually disastrous. Do fraudulent “surgeries” mean there are no legitimate cosmetic surgeries? Of course not.
Recently, a man and woman were caught trying to exorcise a demon from a little child in Arizona. The police found the three covered in blood inside a barricaded bedroom. The man died upon arrest. Do fraudulent, ignorant “exorcisms” imply that demons aren’t real and all exorcisms are bogus? You do the math.
A vast literature supports the reality of demons…
And if that isn’t enough for you, here’s an article recounting various demonic events at Biola. It’s a real eye-opener: these people are nuts.
Note that J.P. Moreland is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. People, don’t send your children to Biola. It’s like shipping them off to some empty wasteland and asking them to get educated by random goat-herders.
That’s the saddest thing I’ve read in a long time.
That is a sad story indeed.
Actually, the saddest part of that story is that the parents accepted him afterwards — their actions “worked” for them and their prejudices were reinforced. Who knows how many exorcisms have happened since.
It’s a tragic tale, indeed.
Whew. I have stories like that. Many of them. None happened to me, directly, but to many I’ve known.
And people wonder why I dropped becoming a preacher and became an atheist…
Our noble and honorable Armed Forces turned a human being into a hate-filled shell? Say it’s not so!
Please! That fellow could have been screwed up regardless of his exorcism and extreme Christian parents. Perhaps his atheism stemmed from a rebellious nature, only later he will discover god and provide another atheist conversion story a la Francis Collins.
His problems probably stem from having strife in the family, and not explicitly due to that exorcism.
idontbuyit:
As described the “exorcism” was a traumatic experience. His subsequent symptoms are consistent with those commonly experienced by people, especially young people, in and following traumatic situations. His family subjected him to that traumatic experience for no other reason than their idiotic religious prejudices. Ergo, it is highly likely that their idiotic religious prejudices are responsible for the trauma-induced pathologies he is manifesting now.
If you’re going to reject PZ’s conclusion, then please provide a substantive and evidentially supported challenge to the above argument. Your argument above, which boils down to “it’s possible that the above relationships are just coincidence,” is trivially true but fails to qualify. After all, in the same sense it’s possible that gravity doesn’t exist, and objects just happen to move, for reasons unrelated to attraction by mass, in a fashion that creates the illusion of mass-driven attraction between objects, but would anyone take that claim seriously given the present state of the evidence?
Our noble and honorable Armed Forces turned a human being into a hate-filled shell? Say it’s not so!
yeah, I kept thinking:
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Creationism in a nutshell.
Perhaps his atheism stemmed from a rebellious nature, only later he will discover god and provide another atheist conversion story a la Francis Collins.
ah, you mean that tissue paper thin veil over lies and deceit?
Francis Collins is seriously fubar. go take a gander at how he changes his conversion story from one originally based on the pain the death of a family member caused (about 2 years ago), to one where he says a stroll in the wilderness turned him on to god (what he says in his recent book).
the man is literally full of shit, the net result of which is the diarrhea he could no longer hold back and which became his “moral law” argument.
I will never understand why a kid like this didn’t have his parents arrested the morning after the exorcism. Physical abuse actually is child abuse and these people should have ended up in jail for being so sick.
…but we’re not here to talk about poor Francis Collins, yet another soldier of science fallen to the mindfuck that is religion, we’re here to talk about Jack’s buddy.
I rather think belief in demons and exorcism is more prevalent here in the US, than many might think. I saw shades of that type of thought process even in upper middle class Southern California growing up, so it has to be absolutely rampant in more evangelical areas.
Don’t blame the poor parenting skills, or even an inherited disease like bipolar syndrome, blame the demons for the kid’s behavior.
What’s really funny, is that if you recall the Exorcist (the movie), the mother spent all kinds of time taking her kid to medical doctors and psychiatrists to actually try and diagnose if there was a real illness of some kind, and did the exorcism thing as the very last, desperate resort.
something tells me Tony’s parents didn’t exactly hold off on exorcism as the last resort option.
Normally I like to laugh at the religiotards but that is not funny. :(
I will never understand why a kid like this didn’t have his parents arrested the morning after the exorcism
it very rarely happens that those subject to abuse by family members end up reporting it as a crime.
all sorts of reasons for that, including guilt, shame, and thinking there is little point in doing so anyway (most who are in abusive relationships feel there is no way out, no place to go).
In fact, wasn’t there a thread with a video of wife being abused by her husband on this very blog a couple weeks back?
there were some excellent discussions about what holds the abused to the abuser in that thread, IIRC.
Azkyroth,
No doubt that the exorcism was traumatic. However, it’s coupled with overbearing parents cutting him off from the world, destroying his possessions, and tossing him out of the house, and him enlisting with the Marines.
I would agree that the parents belief in idiocy was the root cause of their tension, but not to their son’s problems. This story could have been between atheist parents having a devout Muslim child, or (to put it absurdly) Buddhist parents having a Satanic child. Or it could be about drug abuse. No doubt I am not an expert on mental health, but it seems to me the the religiosity of the parents (which no doubt fueled the tensions in this case) is tangential to the story.
You have to find police willing to take your complaint seriously, nicole. How many of them will interfere in some crazy’s people’s religious practices, especially if they weren’t harmful (in grossly obvious ways) and they’re over now?
to put it absurdly
that you did.
but it seems to me the the religiosity of the parents (which no doubt fueled the tensions in this case) is tangential to the story.
on the contrary, it was part and parcel as to how they decided to “deal” with their son’s “rebellious behavior”.
there are all sorts of ways to deal with family issues of communication. I don’t recall ever seeing the invitation of a group of peers for an “exorcism intervention” ever being listed as a positive model to emulate.
must have come from their religious background, which told them rebellious children must indeed be possessed.
the exorcism was likely the final straw in a long line of abuses heaped on the kid because he didn’t care for the parent’s religion and tried to rebel against it.
but, I’m curious as to what you think your point is?
It makes me very sad and very angry (I guess I AM an angry atheist…huh…) that this story doesn’t schock me.
Yes, shock usually only has on “c” in it. You get it.
And I thought I really detested religion before now……
Let’s all try not to demonize (no pun intended) our armed forces over one story, m’kay? Not every Marine is a mindless, trained killer despite what some of you hope is true. For every young man or woman twisted by life in the military, there are hundreds or thousands more who’s lives are turned in a positive direction by the experience, my life included.
People who say it is ridiculous to make any comparison between the civil rights movement and those who speak out in favor of atheism should read this story. Also those who are outraged at the comparison of religious indoctination to child abuse.
If demons aren’t real, how do you explain THIS, eh?
True. Some are obedient trained killers.
When children learn to devalue others, they can devalue anyone. Including their parents.
The Star Trek series often came up short on science, but on occasion, they got some things right.
So did Mr. Hitchens, for that matter: Religion poisons everything.
My mother-in-law believes in demons. She seems pretty sane otherwise.
My favorite paragraph:
When casting out demons, Lewis cautions Christians not to devolve to a magical worldview, where they think that repeating a certain formula or using a religious symbol will make the demons leave. The only authority demons will respond to is the authority of Jesus Christ, he said.
Nope, wouldn’t want to devolve to a magical worldview!
[snort]
Not every Marine is a mindless, trained killer despite what some of you hope is true.
that’s an odd comment, but I’ll let it slide in favor of having you tell us all that the US armed forces don’t essentially force an atmosphere of religious cultism within their ranks.
oh yes, do try and tell us that ain’t so. point out the atheist commanders in Iraq for me, would ya?
Oh my gosh, Biola U. is in MY state.
No, no, no! Make it go away!
I remember when I was a college kid and a Christian, and I fell in with a slightly fundie crowd, nothing fringe or radical about them, but they all believed in demons and in their ability to “cast them out” by various invocations. It was just like a game. One time I was going to Bible study with one of my friends in his old college-kid van, and the van started to make a weird noise. Demons, he said, and we started to pray. We pulled up to a red light and the noise went away, but a dog in the next car over started to bark. PROOF that the demons had left the van and entered the dog and were inarticulately protesting their eviction, he said. No kidding. Even then I thought it was one part nursery peek-a-boo and one part witchcraft, but I was a little innocent girl and I didn’t want to offend my friends.
Yes, these people are insane.
Here’s a handy list of demons. In addition to listing every non-Christian religion (Buddhism), any Christian belief that doesn’t match up with theirs (Catholicism), most normal human behaviour (shyness), common medical conditions (arthritis), all mental illness (schizonphrenia), the usual suspects (rock and roll, jazz, D&D), random things (candles), and anything to do with thinking (skepticism), it also lists “Fear of Demons”.
Yes, irony is dead.
nothing fringe or radical about them, but they all believed in demons and in their ability to “cast them out” by various invocations.
that’s a rather sad commentary on the state of rational thought in America, actually.
We must learn not to judge claims by their relative normality. Normality is irrelevant!
What the hell is Biola University? Sounds like “payola” to me.
I was told during my more “spiritual” days (I was young, and needed the money), once during a meeting with the Wildcats For Christ (University of Arizona’s local christian brigade) that an article I wrote for the school paper revealed I had in me “a demon of cynicism.”
This was but one of the many catalysts aiding me in many journey to atheism.
“. People, don’t send your children to Biola. It’s like shipping them off to some empty wasteland and asking them to get educated by random goat-herders”.
PZ, you shouldn’t malign professional groups like that. I have known a few enlightened goat-herders in my time, none of whom, incidentally, believed in spirits. What you have at Biola seems like a bunch of madrassa instructors whose intellectual lives are stuck somwhere in the 14th century. Then again, as student testimonial seems to indicate, you get your professors to pray personally for your job placement upon graduation. Now do you so that fore YOUR students ? Didn’t think so.
but I’ll let it slide in favor of having you tell us all that the US armed forces don’t essentially force an atmosphere of religious cultism within their ranks.
The US armed forces apparently do, but that doesn’t mean that everyone in uniform is happy about it.
Oh, and Caledonian, nice stereotyping there…thanks…that was productive.
“A vast literature supports the reality…”
Vast literature!?! Is that all it takes nowadays to support reality?
No, but for the truly enlightened ones PZ has contributed to the structure of their very bodies. He did after all pay for the pizza.
Josh:
I’m sorry, perhaps you have access to information I do not. Are there Marines that aren’t given training in lethal force, thus failing to qualify for the label ‘trained killer’?
The label ‘obedient’ pretty much necessarily applies, I think you will agree.
I know plenty of folks who believe in actual angels and demons. It strikes me as weird – why imagine invisible monsters roaming the world doing evil things when people seem to be fairly good at doing evil things all on their own? It seems unnecessarily complicated to me.
Of course, I also seem to know an extraordinary number of people who believe in ESP, UFOs, and government conspiracies too. I think meeting people at gaming conventions is skewing my viewpoint of humanity…
Biola is in Southern California (La Mirada). All you need to know about it is that the name is an acronym for Bible Institute of Los Angeles. With that information you can reliably predict the position of 90% of the students and staff on any issue.
There is vast literature to support the claim that into every generation, a Slayer is born; one girl in all the world, to find the vampires where they gather, and to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers.
Biola – isn’t that a brain-eating virus?
Caledonian,
As a former Marine I think I understand your point about the “obedient trained killers”. Yes, we are all trained to kill, and yes discipline is very important, but at best your comment was very poorly put. It does come across as stereotyping, of assuming all Marines are just mindless killing machines. I would ask you to spend a little more time thinking about the limits and definition of obedience, and also to the importance of what it is sworn to.
As a Marine (or as any other member of the armed forces for that matter) you don’t swear to do whatever the hell your commander in chief or general or etc wants you to do. You swear to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States. Something I believe most of us atheists would consider a pretty good thing. I sure wish our current occupant would fulfill his promise to do that. My dog tags still proclaim “no religious preference”. Wish I had had the balls to put down atheist, but I just didn’t back then.
Actually, an outbreak of demonic possession would explain a lot about the current Administration….
That explains why my car broke last winter. A demon got frozen into the idle air intake, causing the engine to rev at a frequency of roughly 1 Hz whenever the car was idling. Once the weather warmed up, the demon escaped from the air intake and drained all the energy from the battery. Oh, and after leaving my car behind, the demon went to all the auto-parts stores in the Greater Boston area and stole the 100-amp bent-male PAL fuses with 3/16″ contacts.
Now I know what I need to do. I need to burst into the Autozones in both Somerville and Brighton waving a crucifix and screaming, “Get the behind me, automotive Satan!”
I also need to get the oil changed.
Is it really so unbelievable that a student would have heard a story about an embarrassing event in a teacher’s past? So unbelievable that it must be attributed to supernatural knowledge?
With regards to kids filing police reports against thier parents:
My wife was for all intents and purposes raped by a doctor when she was 14. Forcibly held down and examined….simply because she was having cramps, and her parents (being the psychotic fuckwits that they (still) are) would not believe that she wasn’t either doing drugs, or pregnant.
Turns out she was just having unusually bad cramps from early ovulation and the “Dr.” confirmed that she was indeed still a virgin.
In any other situation like that, being physically held down and forcibly penetrated in any way, what happened would be a crime. But because it was her parents and in theory, a professional, no one was ever held accountable or punished in any way.
hell, as far as I know, to this day, they think nothing ever happened.
What good would it have done to report it? The hospital staff wouldn’t take her word over her parents, why would the police take her word over her parents and the hospital?
Caledonian,
I’m not a Marine, but being Army Spec. Ops., I’ll basically just defer to Dahan’s comment, because it pretty much exactly summarizes what I would have written had I responded before he did. Yeah, we’re killers in the broad sense, but obedience is a word we leave for the Christians–as Dahan explained: discipline and obedience are very different things.
Kseniya: Especially if you consider fanfic!
Caledonian: Coming from a country that used to have mandatory military service for all males (and still have, in theory at least), I guess my view of the armed forces are a bit different. Most of us back when I did my stint were pretty normal and longing to get it over with and getting on with our lives.
But of course we had our fair share of overbearing jerks that were only all too eager to internalize the worst traits of our instructors as well.
recently an interdisciplinary congress in Austria invited and excorcist and a “gay-healer”…so I guess that makes it a valid scientific theory now!
Needless to say dozens of speakers cancelled
I would be happy to “do the math,” Mr. Moreland (I refuse to use the honourific “Dr.”) if you would kindly provide me with some numbers. Not just any numbers you decide to make up, mind you… I need something scientifically verifiable.
I have never been part of the armed services, but I personally don’t appreciate the disparaging they are getting here. Here is why:
1) you WANT trained killers in the military. You WANT them to be better trained than anyone else, so they can be more successful with fewer casualties. The better trained, the fewer needed. I would take and happily pay for a small number of expensive Batmen over a huge number of cannon fodder.
2) you WANT military to be obedient. You do not want lower ranks thinking skeptically about the decisions of upper ranks while in battle. You WANT them to jump when a commander (sorry i am not familiar with the names of the positions in rank order) says jump. You don’t want them to put down their gun and start questioning the commander on a decision to go forward or retreat. You must assume that the leaders got their positions by being better (which is of course not always the case, I’m thinking of McClellan in the civil war).
3) you WANT some sort of cohesion in the military. Something to fight for. Its true, as atheists we want to to be for America and real freedom and not Jebesus. But the cohesion is what is important. Something that provide unity beyond mere acquaintanceship. Only relatively recently in our history has religion become this diverse. Using God as a cohesive force within the military has been pretty effective so far.
We just have to work to make the country and military have a more pure goal. Christianity, or any religion, is not true freedom. But we dont want it to turn into a fight for nationalist supremacy either (i.e. think stalin). The goal has to be real freedom. That freedom, sadly for us, will have to include the right to practice a religion, otherwise we are simply defeating our own goals.
replacing religious commanders in the military with atheists is just as wrong as replacing atheist commanders with religious ones.
The work must start in school. The critical thinkers must naturally spread from there.
Hey, stop that. You’re stirring up my repressed memories of the horrible years I lived with a mormon foster family. Aside from the physical abuse (yes, church bishops DO get so drunk that they beat their wives and then go after their foster children). The old lady used to tell stories of how the HUMANISTS were possessed by demons and you could tell by their eyes. She would imitate the look that she thought was demonic, sort of bug-eyed and vapid, what’s the new term? Her mouth pursed like a cat’s butt? She went on and on about how you could see them in newspapers, which politicians were possessed. She would corner returned missionaries that had served their brainwashed 2 years in 3rd world countries. Peasants had the best demon stories and several mormon missionaries had performed exorcisms. She pumped them for all the gory details, the more fantastic, the better. Sick old woman.
From these stories and from watching PTL, she put it together that HUMANISTS were going to take over the world. They had a plan to use lasers to make a rainbow and anyone who believed in rainbows was going to follow the anti-christ. Their secret signs were rainbows and unicorns.
In high school, I had no idea what a Humanist even was. Clearly, an old lady who should know better, had no idea either. I had a friend quit school and join the military. She gave me a rainbow candle and a porcelain unicorn to remember her by. Oh yes, the old bat freaked out and hard. I was doing heavy penance for weeks.
And just for the record, this crazy family aside, yes, absolutely, the mormons are a cult.
My turn to defer to Josh with regard to the comments of techskeptic. While I appreciate the support, in general, of those who are and have served, I believe you are still confusing the terms “obedience” and “discipline”. Order is more important than cohesion. We’re treading into very technical areas of military command here, but I’m not the one who brought this topic up. And yes, the terms DO matter. When you’ve got a 50 cal trained in on a group, terms like “target” become VERY important. I’ll leave with that comment, I’ve got a class to teach in an hour and Im having problems with my files. Talk to ya all later.
Do fraudulent “surgeries” mean there are no legitimate cosmetic surgeries? Of course not… Do fraudulent, ignorant “exorcisms” imply that demons aren’t real and all exorcisms are bogus?
Technically, no. But that’s not such a great parallel, really.
Here’s a much, much better one: do “spirit doctoring” sessions in which the ‘surgeon’ is caught red-handed on camera palming chicken innards imply that all spirit doctoring is bogus?
And actually, yes, they do ‘imply’ that. They just don’t quite clinch it on their own, not technically. The guys caught on camera are part of the larger context, which is also that (a) the claims of the spirit doctors are generally violently at odds with everything else we know about effective medical practice, and (b) ya don’t get a lot of decent, case reports on the New England Journal of Medicine showing spirit doctors deftly handling appendectomies.
Similarily, the whole underpinning of ‘exorcisms’ is rather obviously a surviving vestige of an increasingly discredited worldview. We’ve gotten past using angels, demons and desert djinns to explain the weather. There are still a few folk who figure they can get away with using them to explain certain states of abnormal psychology. Whatever, guys. Nice that the ‘pros’ the big churches like aren’t as regularly mistaking garden-variety schizophrenia for horned demons, nowadays. That’s progress. But maybe you should think a bit about what that trend tells about the long term viability of your fanciful little notions about magical invisible evil spirits explaining people acting oddly.
Really, that’s about as much as I say like saying to such nuts. From where I stand, there is a level of looniness at which there is almost no point in saying anything beyond pointing and laughing. Folk who buy exorcisms, for me, are a few notches past that point, now.
So Biola teaches a Defense of the Dark Arts class?
Caledonian,
There is no denying the ultimate job of the military is to kill people and destroy things – when I tell that to people, even some military, they get incensed but that’s the reality of it. However, military personnel are not blindly obedient. In fact, the military places a great deal of emphasis and training on making sure people understand what a lawful order is, avoiding war crimes and appropriate use of force.
Ichthyic,
There are military commanders who are atheists – not many, but we’re there. I’m an Air Force Major and my dog tags say atheist. The president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, an Army Sergeant Major, is currently in Iraq along with other atheists.
Yeah, we’re killers in the broad sense, but obedience is a word we leave for the Christians…
Yeah, right.
March! Fire! Attack!
No obedience involved there.
#58-
So Biola teaches a Defense of the Dark Arts class?
Excellent!!! :-D
I think Biola has an admissions policy favorable to those students home-schooled in the fundamentalist Christian manner (that last bit might be over-generalization, but I’m thinking of parents who don’t want their kids exposed to evolutionary biology, calculus, physics, nonChristian-centered history, and other secular humanist abominations).
Interesting to read that Biola is an acronym for Bible Institute of Los Angeles; explains a lot about the attitudes of various Biola alumni and students I’ve encountered in cyber-space.
A vast literature supports the existence of Vulcans, dragons, and other strange and unusual flora and fauna, but even a literature major (*waves*) is going to look for corroborating evidence from historical sources (as opposed to literary sources) before suggesting that such things actually exist.
Doing a degree in literature was the best training I ever got for my work as a historian. You spend a lot of time looking at primary source documents, and damn if you don’t learn how to sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of what you can infer from where.
All religious texts have the same problem, what people in the lit’ry biz call an “unreliable narrator”…
Oh common, George. Crawled under a lot of machine-gun fire, have you? March! Fire! Attack! is about as accurate a characterization of modern combat as ‘fish turned into monkeys’ is an accurate characterization of modern evolutionary biology. If a creationist had come into this forum and made a statement that far off base regarding evolution, probably ten people would have already jumped up and down and called him or her an ignorant liar.
Chant taught during US Army bayonet training.
“WHAT MAKES THE GRASS GROW?”
“THE BLOOD DRILL SERGEANT…THE BLOOD!”
—–
“WHAT DOES HAJJI WANT?”
“TO KILL US DRILL SERGEANT!”
“AND WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?”
“KILL ALL THE HAJJI FIRST DRILL SERGEANT!”
Basic training Fort Jackson 2006…
The wealthy Christian homeowner reported poltergeist phenomena that began when his father moved in.
Uhh, yyeaaaaah…
Exorcisms are quite common in death cult circles. You’d think they want to go back to the dark ages or something. Oh wait, they do.
“According to Larson, there are so many people now seeing exorcisms, he actually has a waiting list.”
All this would be merely amusing except that the demon theory of mental illness leads to untreated patients who have miserable lives and sometimes go on to kill themselves or others. Buncha superstitious nonsense.
I never said (nor implied) that it doesn’t take some indoctrination to make people crawl under that machine-gun fire. And yep, privates are basically mobile sandbags…sorry…war isn’t fun… But if you think we don’t spend a good amount of time in the NCO schools and especially in SOF getting specialists and young sergeants to unlearn much of what was done to them in basic training and to actually think, then I’m not really sure what to do except roll my eyes.
Wait, wait…I see an analogy here. Isn’t that one of the weakest forms of argument, especially because it’s easy to slip in a false analogy and still be convincing? Oh, my – that *is* a false analogy! Imagine that; a religious wingnut slipping in a false analogy to “prove” what he already believes…
BIOLA used to be called Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Then it became a “University” and they changed the name.
Biola University…..why does my mind always say “Ebola” instead?
The demonically-possessed have rights too and should never be exorcised without a full explanation of the procedure, disclosure of the risks and signed consent. The FDA does not authorize exorcism on minor children due to the risks. Moreover most insurance programs consider it an experimental procedure and will not pay. Compounding the problem is the lack of clinicians trained in these methods and desperate patients’ frequent resort to so-called “back alley” practitioners. Clearly, greater regulation and monitoring is called for.
Dahan wrote, “My dog tags still proclaim “no religious preference”.”
Heh. Went I joined the Air Force back in 1985, I tried ‘Agnostic’ first, and the gal taking the information didn’t recognize the term. So I tried ‘Atheist’, and got a blank look like she didn’t believe me. She gave me ‘No Pref’.
I don’t really know if there was a policy of no atheists on the dog tags or if I just ran up against an interviewer who wouldn’t type it down, but I never pressed the issue. It wasn’t important enough to me to worry about.
During Air Force basic training (and IMHO, Boy Scout summer camp was tougher) it was bandied about that those people who didn’t go to church on Sunday mornings would have to work like dogs cleaning the dormatories. I called their bluff and the two of us who didn’t attend church read magazines while everyone else was away.
Oh, and both in basic training and at NCO school, it was drilled into us that unquestioning obediance was not a good thing. Which is why I still remember the service as the place where the best communication about strategies and objectives occured. To ensure obediance, everyone doing the work needed to have a clear understanding of the objectives, including the why, where, and how. Something I have yet to see in the corporate world.
tourettist: And what of the wishes of the demons themselves?
What logical fallacy were they commiting in your citation? Non-Sequitur?
I don’t know if you’ve seen John Safran vs. God, but it’s a show where an Australian comedian tries on religions like dirty underwear. In one he gets an excorcism from some fundies and it’s probably just the psychological bullying tactics but it “works”. He froths, he screams, holy water hurts him and as the ritual goes on he needs to be held back and tears at peoples clothes screaming blasphemy. It looked like SO MUCH FUN!
I want to try one. I tried to find the guy who performed it but he charges about a year of my rent for a weekend retreat.
I have no idea whether he was playing it up or not.
(Tried to find a youtube clip. no luck.)
Flex,
Yeah, they gave us shit for not attending church in basic, too. I even went once…I didn’t go again. Scrubbing toilets was better.
“You do the math.”
Moreland’s “math” is apparently the fallacy
There exists an X such that F(X) => For all X, F(X).
“A vast literature supports the reality of demons…”
A vast literature supports the reality of morons like Moreland.
“if you think we don’t spend a good amount of time in the NCO schools and especially in SOF getting specialists and young sergeants to unlearn much of what was done to them in basic training and to actually think, then I’m not really sure what to do except roll my eyes”
How ironic. People who actually think can do better.
“If a creationist had come into this forum and made a statement that far off base regarding evolution, probably ten people would have already jumped up and down and called him or her an ignorant liar.”
Yet another false analogy. But I know that not all servicemen are as shoddy thinkers as you are.
This reminded me of a story I heard today. I had to look it up, and yes… there is an article on-line.
A Michigan court case is being reviewed. abouta sexual predator pastor of Evangel Christian Church, and his daughter.
The daughter, as it turns out, was not only raped by her father, but Satan Himself.
“Michigan’s high court has agreed to hear the case because a key piece of testimony, about the devil, was not allowed. According to court records, the woman indicated she “had been raped by a demon” and sexually assaulted by Satan himself, who she claimed was living in her attic at the time of the exorcism.”
Living in the attic?
No way, man… Satan ain’t living in anyone’s attic. He has his own loft, downtown.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/14264375/detail.html
Ex-military here. I will illustrate, with my example, the difference between what we were taught in the classroom with what happens in the real world:
Abu Garade. Mai Lai. Azizi.
And I could go on and on and on… I could lecture. I could talk about how war makes animals out of men. I could rant and rave about these things.
Instead, I’m just calling bullshit. If a soldier objects to illegal orders he’s on the short bus to Leavenworth. If he reports it, his report is buried and his career destroyed and he’s possibly fragged as a “traitor” or just put on point until a sniper or tripwire gets him.
We all knew that when I was in the service. I doubt it’s any different now.
I looked at the “about” heading on Biola U’s website. They are rather specific in their requirement that students and staff believe that a god made humans out of “non living material”, and any other theory of origins is inaccurate.
Can’t you see that creationism leads to the pagan polytheism of the lesser gods called angels.
That story makes me almost physically ill.
I can only think that Tony is perhaps lucky in one regard — if he had been born 400 years earlier they would have lovingly burned him at the stake after he acquiesced and told them what they wanted to hear.
PZ, I don’t think you’re being fair to random goat-herders. Most of those guys actually know something about their trade, and goats at least aren’t imaginary.
-jcr
Moses re: #80,
Kinda like this?
Lt. Col. Paul Ware recommended that Sgt. Frank Wuterich face trial for lesser charges of negligent homicide.
“When a Marine fails to exercise due care in a combat environment resulting in the death of innocents, the charge of negligent homicide, not murder, is the appropriate offense,” he said in a statement.
Ok, fair enough, but ya gotta admit, maybe the innocent negligent homicide victim’s next of kin, just might see things a little differently?
I mean,they know, that we nice Americans didn’t invade Iraq for their, oil and that we did it to depose the tyrant Sadam and allow the Iraqi people to taste the full benefits of Democracy and the rule of American law.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, and to build a 600 million dollar embassy in Baghdad to keep our diplomats safe from the ungrateful Iraqis. Oh, stick a yellow ribbon on your SUV…Peak Oil is coming I can guarantee.
As for Sgt.Frank,maybe after he pays his debt to humanity he can get a job with those nice folks at the Blackwater company.
There is no denying the ultimate job of the military is to kill people and destroy things
Not so for the Coast Guard.
And yes, it is part of the military.
well one of the ideas that finally broke the hold of the christian religion had over me was this idea of a demon, a satin. I mean here you have a “being” who is not god but is immortal, did not have the power over life and death (catholic) whose “sin” was pride he could not accept that jesus was god and main power was that of a lier.
If “he” was the greatest lier just how in hell was I supposed to tell what was the lie? would not the biggest lie be I am god? it does not make any sense at all. there is no way to make out which story is true just faith?
I am not eight any more I have zero faith.
the fundies do not acknowledge the history of there religion
the positive spirit god the negative spirit devil in the middle east & Persia. heaven or hell ?
so why not blame some unseen spirit for the bad stuff, torture will drive it out and a lot of other stuff too.
I would pay to god for the stupidity to end but that don’t make sense so I am just a witness mostly.
some times it is more than I can stand.
I’m going to have to dig up the letter J.P. Moreland wrote me in response to my critique of his book _Immortality_ that he co-authored with Gary Habermas. I seem to recall some craziness therein. My response to his letter, which gives some of its flavor, can be found at the end of my book critique.
“Tony”‘s parents and every adult who participated should be executed for what they have done to that guy. Nothing else will do. My guess is he’ll go back and do it one day himself, because the State won’t have the balls. If that happened and I were on the jury, I would vote for acquittal.
The ONLY circumstance under which I could defend exorcism (and that with a non-contact rite, not with the holding down and shaking and beating and breaking shit) is when a person previously known to be religious has a proven psychotic break with the psychosis involving demonic possession, and the psychiatrists are already involved. I think it could be defended as being beneficial to the patient in these circumstances.
Moses, you state
“If a soldier objects to illegal orders he’s on the short bus to Leavenworth. If he reports it, his report is buried and his career destroyed and he’s possibly fragged as a “traitor” or just put on point until a sniper or tripwire gets him.
We all knew that when I was in the service. I doubt it’s any different now.”
Now let me start by stating that I’ve never been called a “pie in the sky” sort of guy by anyone who knows me. So, yeah, I agree with you on some points. Sure, it’s a tough situation your in if you’re given an illegal order. Yes, by refusing it you could be jeopardizing your career. Sure, your not going to make many friends by doing so. The rest though, sounds more like Viet Nam era crap. Not sure when you served, but if that’s your reference it doesn’t have much relation to today’s military. The UCMJ is still around and the JAG’s do what they do.
As far as Abu Garade, Mai Lai, Azizi, etc. Yes. Really awful things happen in war. People commit terrible crimes. Thankfully, that’s not the norm though. I could list off a dozen times the police have abused prisoners, etc too. Let’s keep perspective.
The folks that committed those atrocities are an embarrassment to the uniforms they wore, and worse. That old “just following orders” shit went out at Nuremberg.
I hate war, I’m a member of Veterans for Peace, but I also don’t like it when the military gets lumped together and viewed as mindless killers, which, by the way is where this all started, a post that seemed to come close to saying that.
Fishbone McGonigle, not trying to be snarky here. As someone who spends a lot of time out on the ocean I hold the members of the US Coast Guard in the highest regard, Homeland Security,(remember Katrina in New Orleans) not so much. So is the US Coast Guard one and the same as Homeland Security now?
Say it ain’t so.
that first story is too familiar.
at what point can we accept as a society that certain religion are basically just child abuse?
My favorite part of the Biola article:
A perfectly reasonable reaction, I would say.
Well, Rey Fox, that is the question the discarnate community would have us ask. What with all this anti-horror legislation, it appears demons – excuse me I mean the discarnate – have been classified “enemy spiritual combatants” with no rights whatsoever. While not denying the threat, I’m unconvinced of the necessity of extreme measures. To me a common law approach placing priority on the rights of the original (natal) inhabitant of the body would seem prudent. Currently this position is seen as not proactive enough and is out of favor with neo-corp politicians and the religious lobby, who continue to sway public opinion. And we can readily see the result – rampant demonization of demons.
Ichthyic said:
I think your analysis is a bit harsh. Is it the case that Collins is being dishonest and/or inconsistent? I don’t think it needs to be.
Paradigm shifts in one’s thinking are often caused by multiple factors, and not simply one thing. Then as the individual reflects on the experience, they gain more insight into what was going on in their minds at the time. Hence, they can find they held a mistaken or incomplete view of the experience. And, it’s possible the individual ‘invents’ reasons for the shift which were not real, but does so without attempting to be dishonest.
Thanks for the link, PZ. Now I know where all those hits are coming from!
I haven’t thought about Tony in years, and now I can’t get his story out of my head. I’m glad others found it moving as well.
In #77, Truth Machine snipped my comment #66 to: if you think we don’t spend a good amount of time in the NCO schools and especially in SOF getting specialists and young sergeants to unlearn much of what was done to them in basic training and to actually think, then I’m not really sure what to do except roll my eyes
and then wrote: How ironic. People who actually think can do better.
Given your rather tepid sentence construction, I suspect you’re a bit closer to sarcasm than irony. That being said, however, your second statement does basically reflect the part of #66 reposted above. I was replying to Jay Hovah’s comment #63, where he implied that what goes on in basic training is representative of all Army combat education, which isn’t accurate.
It’s important to note, however, that I was only referring to grades E-4 and above in #66. I don’t have a particular problem with what we do to kids in basic training, given that they are being trained for war. I think E-2s and E-3s should do more following than questioning when they’re down range. The distinction is important and I think I clearly implied this in the part of comment #66 that got snipped.
MGarelick: People who think they are under demonic attack sound just like people who think they are under CIA mind control attack.
In #78 Truth Machine snipped my comment #62 to: If a creationist had come into this forum and made a statement that far off base regarding evolution, probably ten people would have already jumped up and down and called him or her an ignorant liar.
and then very kindly wrote: Yet another false analogy. But I know that not all servicemen are as shoddy thinkers as you are.
First, if I recall correctly, false analogy presumes there is such a thing as a true or perfect one. All analogies are imperfect. Some are better than others, but none are seamless. I’m pretty sure false analogy is an inaccurate term.
Second, I don’t think the statement you cite is that weak. Ok, ten people jumping up and down and calling our fictional creationist a liar was an exaggeration for effect to be sure, but it certainly falls within the range of variation I see in these comments for such grammatical flourishes. You’re really going to try and argue that the statement describes an unrealistic event? I’m sorry, but if a creationist came in here and wrote something as far off base about the process of evolution as CalGeorge’s comment #59 was about the process of soldiers receiving and executing orders in combat (see below), it’s likely someone would accuse him of lying (thus my use of the word probably). In the “Wells Lies Again” thread, Jim recently made some seriously inaccurate statements regarding evolution. However, as off base as he was about the realities of data and how things work, nothing Jim wrote about evolution failed to grasp the process as dramatically as George’s comment misrepresented what happens on the ground in modern battle. Nevertheless, on the morning 13 September 2007, someone with the handle of truth machine made 21 posts to Jim that fall well within my definition of ‘jumping up and down.’ This person directly implied that Jim is a liar in at least 5 of those posts and calling him stupid in more. The commenter also called Jim a dishonest asshole and a fucking ignorant arrogant asshole, among other things. This is but a single example, but even alone offers some compelling evidence to support my prediction…at least in my shoddy thinking mind. I use it because I followed that thread closely and I don’t think any of Jim’s statements were quite as far off as:
CalGeorge’s March! Fire! Attack! No obedience involved there. There might be a hell of a lot of obedience there, but it’s irrelevant since those three commands in a string describe a fantasy event. He was offering it as support that soldiers obey without question and I called him on it because that particular statement is ridiculous.
March in and of itself is not a command that can be followed. It is the execution portion of a command, but in order to make it a directive a subordinate can do something with, it needs to be prefaced with directional information, such as forward, by the left flank, or file from the left, column left. Moreover, in 2007, March is a very limited combat command. Blocks of soldiers are not told to march into an engagement, turn and face the enemy, drop to a knee, and fire in unison. The Redcoats tend to be on our side these days. Mechanized infantry squads or armor columns might be moved about on the battlefield using such commands (and I have seen this happen), but these kinds of directives are not going to be issued to a dismounted grunt often, if ever. And again, without directional information attached to it, the command march is meaningless anyway, no matter in what context it is given.
Fire is a command that might be given during an ambush or assault by a team or squad leader in a dismounted operation, but it’s actually uncommon in small unit situations. In my experience, contact is never initiated by someone yelling fire. Indeed, I cannot recall a single instance where that has occurred…lots of cease fire sure, but not fire. Rather, contact is usually initiated by someone walking or driving into a kill zone whereby action results from a silent decision on the part of the person doing the initial shooting (or blowing a claymore or something)…or by the enemy engaging first (what usually happens). Artillery batteries or armor commanders might use the command fire to engage a target, but in both of these situations, the command march will probably not accompany it. It’s something the flyboys do, but I’m pretty sure CalGeorge’s use of march reduced this to a conversation regarding ground combat.
Attack is not, to my knowledge, a command we use. I’ve never given this command nor has anyone ever issued it to me, as an action directive. I’ve never seen an assault initiated this way (indeed, most of the time we’re doing it at night and the assault element begins the “attack” silently). Attack is most certainly a word we use in various different ways, but from post #62 I interpreted CalGeorge as meaning it in the same sense I presumed he meant march or fire.
So, in modern combat, march and fire are commands with limited applicability and I’m skeptical, based on my knowledge, that attack is a command at all. So, taking these three terms and stringing them together as though they are commands coming from an officer type or something is a poor and inaccurate characterization of what happens on the battlefield. And it’s one that does nothing to weaken the assertion that not all soldiers down range are unthinking automatons who obey orders without question. So yes, I maintain that if a creationist came in here and made a similarly off-base statement regarding how evolution works, there is a very good chance he or she would be accused by some of lying. Say I’m being trivial if you like, but I wouldn’t let a creationist get off with a similar statement and I try hard to be consistent. Why you homed in on that particular statement I don’t know, but I hope your attempt at being slick gave you a warm fuzzy.
Well put Josh.
Actually, one could probably learn a lot from goat herders – along with a great deal of superstition.
Aha! So the CIA is responsible for those alleged demon possession cases too. ;-)