What would you say to a friend who claims to have experienced demons?

by InterestedOne 48 Replies latest jw friends

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  InterestedOne

  Chariklo - I'm glad you said that about trotting out stock answers. She kept adding questions to the conversation like "do you think there are a lot of problems these days?" "Is there a logical reason why someone like Hitler would come to power?" "Do you think there will ever be a solution to the world's problems?" It was like a tape player. She even said things from the district convention that she just attended like, "do you think humans will ruin the earth?" I was internally freaked out by the random interjections of these questions but I tried not to lose my patience.

  I do find it interesting that she claims to have had supernatural experiences like streetlamps dimming as they drove by and music turning on by itself. I don't know what to make of her story. I asked her if there have been any rigorous scientific studies that confirm this kind of thing. She said she didn't know but figured there must be some. I said I would be curious if there are any peer reviewed scientific journals that have published any evidence of the kind of phenomena she experienced.
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  Black Sheep

  Black Sheep - Do you mean to say your wife burned her house down?

  No.

  Her Bible Study did.

  I found out from her neighbour.

  My Missus said bugger all when I brought up too.

  No denial .... nothing ... no comment
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  InterestedOne

  Another question Chariklo - Do you mean she might have actually rehearsed what she was going to say to me? It kind of seemed like she was trying to force the conversation into talk of "hope for the future," etc. Do JW's actually rehearse before they have heavy conversations like this? Something odd did happen where she originally was going to attend the mid-week meeting tomorrow night, but all of a sudden -had- to go to the meeting before we had our conversation. Could there be a connection between her having to go to the meeting and our conversation? I can't imagine what that connection would be though.
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  cantleave

  Paranormal events, by the very fact are are "super-natural" not subject to scientific or rational explanation.

  Many aspects of the paranormal are closely related to the underlying principles of religions, although the sphere of paranormal phenomena lacks the organizational, hierarchical structure of an established religion, cult or sect. Like all religions, the domain of the paranormal involves a faith-based belief-system instead of the fact-based knowledge-system that is the essential prerequisite of science.

  Faith is necessary in order to accept as fact a statement already proven false by science. A religious person, or a believer in paranormal events, requires faith to support his position. Science has no need for faith. Science produces predictable results by reliance on verifiable facts and objective evidence. The Supernatural produces unverifiable, unreliable, unrepeatable, inconsistent, contradictory mirages.

  Another arena of human irrationally, often referred to as pseudo-science, pretends to be part of the world of science but actually lacks all elements of logical, scientific determinants. Science and pseudo-science are diametrically opposed to each other. Pseudo science is easier to create and understand than real science. Pseudo-science deals with appearances whereas real science deals with repeatable and objectively observable facts.

  Similar to religious persons who try to justify their irrational ideology, people who espouse pseudo-science often advance a rather spurious argument. They try to argue that, although they may not be able to prove the validity of their claims, neither can science disprove their claims. This argument conveniently disregards a basic axiom of logic: The burden of proof is always on the claimant. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof......
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  InterestedOne

  cantleave - What do you think the appropriate response is to someone who had the kinds of physical experiences my friend had? I guess you could just call them "unexplained," but what do you do when a person has an experience of a "demon" telling them it will follow them through electricity and then various unexplained electrical phenomena start happening? My friend draws the connection between the demon's promise and the physical phenomena. Then she uses this experience as supporting the possibility that the demon stories in the Bible could also be true.
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  The Finger

  a believer in paranormal events, requires faith to support his position.

  It wasn't faith when we had doors and window that opened and closed on their own. Lights that were switched on by themselves. Apparitions that were seen in our house by myself and my father. He told me what he had seen not knowing that I had seen it myself at an earlier time. I saw the front door and surrounding wall disappear and reappear.
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  cantleave

  IF someone really did experience a paranormal event, and could prove beyond reasonable doubt that they did (that would be interesting!), then the natural laws of the universe would be challenged. That’s a big if!!!!

  Significantly, this has not happened (or even been convincingly faked) in centuries of investigations and claimed sightings.

  Science uses models to explain what is observed. Those models are always being challenged and modified, as our awareness of the world around us and even the universe increases.
  
  Image if a football at the next worldcup finals were to suddenly fall upwards and get stuck in mid air, the theory of gravity would be challenged and science would have a lot of catching up to do. That does not mean it’s at all likely to actually happen.

  Since science is permanently in the business of correcting itself when new information and evidence come to light, it’s probably quite likely that phenomena will be observed which at first do not seem natural, but will ultimately be furnished with a natural explanation which is then confirmed by experiment.
  
  James Randi (who has set the $1,000,000 dollar challenge) has a word to describe such phenomena: perinormal rather than paranormal. Peri, as in “periphery”, implies that such things are right on the edges of human knowledge waiting to be discovered. When he was running his Million Dollar Challenge to test self-proclaimed psychics, it was his faint hope that a candidate would pass the test and demonstrate a real perinormal ability, and that the discovery of its mechanism would be well worth the prize money.
  
  For the moment, however, there are no unambiguously demonstrated perinormal phenomena to consider, let alone genuinely paranormal. So we wait, and we investigate claims. The burden of proof is on those making the claims. Responses to unsubstantiated claims are necessarily vague, since an unsubstantiated claim tends to be devoid of useful, verifiable details. That doesn’t make the responses weak relative to the claims, it simply makes them appropriate.
  
  One other point I should make is that if religious people are making claims of ghosts in order to support their religions, it’s worth asking them and yourself whether what they describe actually links exclusively to one religion. Otherwise they may in fact be describing events which, if true, suggest that they’re worshipping the wrong god or gods.
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  wobble

  "I know it happened, you cannot prove it didn't" is often the cry of such people.

  Yes, in a strictly scientific sense we cannot disprove your claim, because you have given us no firm evidence to examine and get our teeth in to.

  You claim it is true because of what you "know",

  but we can disprove your claim from what we know.

  The largest body of sound reason and evidence wins.

  To anyone hearing voices, or regularly undergoing paranormal experiences, I would say get your condition investigated by medical experts, it could endanger you.
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  The Finger

  Cantleave,

  One day you may experience the paranormal. It won't be science that you will be concerned about.