Hm. I understand the point you're making Cofty but might his visceral reaction, as you put it, also tell you more about how certain Heathen feels about his beliefs, based on his own personal experience?
Who has experienced a REAL demonic incident?
by Monsieur 418 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Johanna0426
Bye the Way... I've found this phrase to be a very strong and sometimes effective subliminal.
John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
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Jeffro
heathen:
People will not share their stories if others constantly treat them as mentally ill .
You're endorsing exactly the opposite of what should actually happen. People should drop the fear of ackowledging the possibility of a mental illness, for which in many cases they can receive treatment. (And 'mental illness' is not the only medical cause of these 'experiences' anyway. Stress, fatigue, reaction to prescription medication, dehydration, sleep paralysis, tumor, and many other conditions also explain various 'demonic' stories.)
What kind of person wants to keep a medical condition undiagnosed just so others can hear some spooky stories?!?!
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Witness My Fury
I tend to come across as abrupt because it takes too bloody long for me to type stuff out so i tend to go for the shortest way of saying it.
Why would you want a thread about demonic experiences anyway, thats just like sitting around a campfire and telling scary stories?
I can tell you mine if you like, but you wont like the punchline because the punchline goes like this: ....
I was wrong, I was mistaken, I didnt learn sufficient critical thinking skills until recently, so i allowed insufficinet facts and an active imagination as well as indocrination to fear the unknown to influence my choice of possible causes. As a result I carried around for 30+ years the fact that I had seen an inverted broom come thru the wall ghost like and exit thru the closed bedroom door and then within a minute or so a cuboard speak to me by calling my name and ask me why i was crying.
But some of you it seems want to believe that THAT is what happened and will look for any possible reason to believe it was supernatural and unexplainable. All my life until I was 40 from when it happened age 6 I have believed that that is exactly what is was, ... But not any longer.
Try reading up on all the different types of sleep phases / dream phases as well as the many sleep disorders, you will quickly see that many of the "supernatural" events people discribe are well covered by them. I had an aha moment on reading about them and realised my own experience was as a result of exactly that.
Oh and the cuboard speaking to me? Yeah that was my 16 year old brother asking me why i was crying thru the closed bedroom door, then quietly walking off when i didnt reply.
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still thinking
I have a a couple of questions for those that BELIEVE in demon possession if I may.
How do you tell the difference between demon possession and mental illness?
And if you can't tell the difference, does that mean that ALL people diagnosed with mental illness are demon possessed?
I know that I would have sworn my experience REALLY happened, I did for over 20 years. I even told people about it and didn't care if they thought I was nuts. It was real to me. But...sleep paralysis explains it perfectly. Should I still believe that it was demons? Or take the more logical explanation that it was sleep paralysis. Which has been well researched?
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heathen
Good grief you people have no qualifications and merely use the very limited knowledge that you read from some lame magazine probably . if people want to discuss eperiences then I'm willing to read them , if you suffer from sleep apnea then fine you don't have demons then . If people don't like the thread then go onto another , I mean what kind of comment is that ? We will only be telling ghost stories ...jeez that's what the thread was supposed to be about , nobody comes to you quacks for advice , get over yourself already.
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still thinking
if you suffer from sleep apnea then fine you don't have demons then
I don't suffer from sleep apnea.
So I take it you can't tell the difference between demon possession and mental illness. But you take issue with people who say that it probably isn't demon possession and may have a more simple explanation.
No need to get titchy...just because you can't answer that, but I have to admit, I got a bit titchy with people for suggesting that my long held belief may not have been what I thought it was. Turns out they were right. But I have to admit, it did annoy me at the time. It WAS a long held belief based on what I thought I had experienced.
I only experienced sleep paralysis once in my life. It wasn't an on going problem for me. It's not something I would want to experience again either. Although I know some people do experience it on a regular basis.
I can only associate mine with previous drug use, it's the only explanation I have. Not on that day either...weeks before. They were hallucinogenic drugs. So that is why I pointed that out about those two women on the motorway. Effects can be delayed. If I had been blood tested. There wouldn't have been anything in my system either.
I AM discussing my experiences...this happened to me.
Not all sleep paralysis is caused by drug use. In fact most isn't from what I can gather. But mine was too big a coincidence to discount it. I never did those drugs again...and I never had sleep paralysis again.
And yes, there are varying degrees of mental illness. It is nothing to be ashamed of. And it IS a possible explanation for some of these experiences. Whether you like that idea or not.
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Jeffro
If people don't like the thread then go onto another
The entire point of the thread is assessing whether there is any legitimacy to supposed claims of 'demonic experiences'. Of course it feels much more novel/glamorous/exciting for a person to say, "I had an experience with demons/ghosts/whatever," than to say, "I had a health problem." The fact is, there is zero evidence that any experience of anyone ever can definitely be attributed to demons/ghosts/gods/fairies/leprechauns/angels/etc. On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence for many other things to explain such experiences.
The whole concept of the possibility of 'mental illness' being an 'insult' is itself ridiculous. Is it also an 'insult' for a doctor to tell someone they have cancer? Unlike ghouls, spectres and goblins, mental illnesses (as just one of many medical explanations for supposed 'supernatural' experiences) do exist.
That 'ghost' talking to you could be symptomatic of a brain tumor. Or you might have just been fatiguted. If you have an experience you can't explain, talk to your doctor!!
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Witness My Fury
Heathens response sums up what I said, he WANTS to believe in it and finds those who dont to be annoying. I DID believe in it and now I know it was because of a lack of knowledge that I did. It is odd that we who no longer believe in it are seen as not having an open mind.
The brain is the most complex thing known to man, all of your senses combine there to create your reality, it can be fooled and it can fool itself.
I firmly believed my experience had happened (same as others do or did like Still Thinking) and throughout my life have told others (all JWs) and NONE of them challenged me over it. Strange how most JWs DONT immediately look for more plausible explanations. The only challenge I got was at the time when I told my mother and she poo pooed it and said i was mistaken, but I KNEW what I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, so I held onto my belief from then until I'd read enough stuff and educated myself differently about it. (actually it was due to researching TTAT that all this happened as I was looking stuff up about demons and Id heard of sleep paraylsis and was listening to some peoples experiences of it and how horrific it sounded on a radio program about it and started making the link, the very blindingly obvious link as it turned out that most of it all happens INSIDE the persons brain.
Rant away all you like, but until you bother to open your eyes you will remain in the dark and very likely remain afraid of it.
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GromitSK
From my reading of it, the point of the thread was to discuss experiences. Not submit to amateur analysis.
There is a difference between exploring whether an experience is 'a demonic attack' and asserting that the person reporting it has some kind of mental illness, some other disorder, is lying or gullible surely? This is particularly the case when one doesn't know the person reporting their experience.
When considering any out-of-the-ordinary experience, it is perhaps prudent not to jump to conclusions either way but to discuss what the possibilities are and narrow down the cause. This can only be done by questioning. Of course many assume that a spirit-related cause is not possible and that narrows the possibilities down, for them. Some assume the only cause is spirit-related which is clearly not reasonable in many cases. Not everyone has the same view of the world and many of us have experiences which others would find it impossible to accept without personal direct experience ourselves.
Mental illness still has a stigma in the mind of many. It is clearly going to annoy or insult people if the immediate reaction to their report is to suggest it must be some kind of mental illness or other impairment. Though this may be the cause in a particular case, getting a person to see that requires some tact.
Still Thinking asked how one could tell the difference between a demonic attack and some kind of mental disorder or illness. To my mind this is the crux of the matter. To jump to a conclusion either way, particularly about a stranger is likely to provoke an unconstructive reaction.