Ah but you know there is a pretty solid and continuous record of occurences that were once ascribed to supernatural causes that have been neatly explained by and fitted into the scientific structure. So the odd are overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that what is now not explained by science someday will be.
The history of the growth of scientific knowledge doesn’t give much hope to supernaturalists provided they pay attention to it.
Simply by definition, all that happens in nature is “natural” and that pretty much rules out supernatural in my opinion.
I believe that the supernatural lives on only because many people are unwilling or maybe unable to simply wait until a natural explanations comes along.
So it is. Nevertheless, this world and this country are, unfortunately, full of Christians – and how can any Christian deny the reality of demonic possession or the power of exorcism? Jesus was an exorcist. As a healer, he seems to have diagnosed most complaints as cases of possession, to be treated by laying on hands and driving out the demons. If there’s no such thing as possession, then Jesus was either a superstitious fool or completely insane; and you can’t expect Christians to accept either possibility.
No, Lord Ashtar. The word “nature” encompasses all that is. Nothing that truly exists is supernatural; it is part of nature. If God exists, God is a natural phenomenon just like you and me – and, in principle, He could be studied scientifically, if only He were willing to hold still under a microscope (theoscope, whatever).
Of course it is not logically necessary. Most observable forms of energy (light, heat, etc.) do not display any form of sentience, but blindly follow mechanistic and deterministic physical laws. The only thing in all the universe that has, as yet, been observed to display any sentience is the human being (and, arguably, some other animals). A living organism is not simple energy or matter, it is a highly organized arrangement of matter. “Sentient energy” would have to be similarly organized, in some way that allows it to hold its necessary shape or form without including any matter in its makeup – and we have not yet observed any stable arrangements of energy which fit that description.
And thus spake Jesus, “No really… I’m serious guys… There are these tiny invisible beings that are killing this poor guy. Take this mold and give it too him. Well, first you have to pasturize it and…”
Peter sayeth, “I’m thinking you are losing the crowd Big Guy. Just chalk it up to demons and hopefully people in 2000 years will figure it was just a metaphor.”
If we accept that Jesus was the Son of God as per mainstream American Christianity, then perhaps Jesus realized that by saying demons, he was relating to the culture and the crowd he was dealing with.
Prayer and faith is great, but pull your car’s parking break up when parking on an incline. We have brains for a God given purpose, to use them. If Jesus spoke of bacteria, viruses, anti-biotics and vaccines, the crowd might have lost the message he was trying to convey.
If you’re going to grant god like knowledge to Jesus then you might as well grant the existence of demons. In for a penny, in for a pound.
I will say that I don’t think it’s necessary to say that Jesus was a “fool” in the context of his culture. He was no doctor or scientist and he was just responding to certain victims (whether psychosomatic or otherwise) with the accepted ritual practices of his culture. The point was attempting to reach out and show compassion and spiritual healing. I think the legitimacy of the motives (and possibly some pschosomatic success) can be recognized even if the premises can now be seen as silly and unsophisticated.
Just a minute guys. Weren’t all of the stories of miracle healing written years after the supposed events by people who weren’t even witnesses and only after Paul had started the “Son of God” ball rolling?
Yes, but “healings” and “exorcisms” were real enough as religious rituals in that time and place. Jesus wasn’t the only one who did it. “Healing” someone didn’t mean to physically cure them, it was just a spiritual healing.
Some times ago, all priests were bestowed various minor orders (like deacon) before being ordained. Amongst them the order of exorcist. But it has been supressed.
In case of demonic possession, the bishop can choose a priest (any of them can do) to proceed with the exorcism. However, at least here in France (and I’ve no reason to believe it’s different in other countries, since the church is fairly centralized), in practice, there are very few catholic exorcists in activity. It seems to me there is one or perhaps two of them in the whole country, to take care of 60 millions of potentially possessed souls.
Besides, I don’t think their name are kept secret, since I read the interview of one of them some years ago. My memory is blurry, but IIRC, though the guy did believe that the devils and demons were actually acting in the world (using the usual mantra : “the best trick of the devil is to let you believe he doesn’t exist”) and that demonic possession could be for real, it seems to me that he stated he never procedeed to an actual real exorcism (or perhaps only one, not sure anymore) in his whole career, because he never was confronted with a genuine case (or parhaps only one, once again). He would also work occasionnally with psychiatrists. However, he felt that he has an useful role re the people who believed they were possessed, and would, if not exorcise them, do various things like praying along with them for relief, etc… I believe he stated also that though they weren’t possessed, people he had to take care of usually weren’t mentally ill, either.
Why on earth would someone even try to look at such a thing from a scientific viewpoint? It’s almost as though — and I know this isn’t true of you, but might be true of a lesser mind — you think that science is some sort of uber-epistemology by which all things may be examined. Some things are best examined other ways. You examine a charge of civil rights violation using law. You examine the solution of an equation using deduction. You examine a spirit using morality.
Rational analysis, yes. But science is certainly not the only rational analysis. Here in this debate, for example, you are not using science, but reason, to make your point. You are offering no falsifiable test for demons and have in fact conceded that one is not feasible. Scientists, grounded in the philosophy of their discipline, understand the implications of this:
“Why is the revealed truth of such transcendent [religious] experiences in any way ‘inferior’ to the more mundane truths that we scientists dabble in? Indeed, if you are ever tempted to jump to this conclusion, just bear in mind that one could use exactly the same evidence — the involvement of the temporal lobes in religion — to argue for, rather than against, the existence of God.” — VS Ramachandran, MD, PhD, Phantoms in the Brain, “God and the Limbic System”
