What Demonic Possession Is Like from a Vatican-Trained Exorcist
insider.com
insider.com
I won't delve too deeply into this but to say...
Thousands a year is pretty hard to believe already. That's (at minimum) 2,000/yr: or 36k in 18 years. Or...5.5 per day (7days wk) or 7-8/day (5 days/wk). Seems physically impossible.
He's seeing 2-3 floaters a year or about 36-54 floaters in his life, so far. He's also seeing physical manifestations (snake's tongue, etc).
The Vatican clearly does not allow recordings (I remember reading this somewhere a few years back) and, to me, it's because nothing physical (manifestations, floating) is actually happening. Occam's razor: Information clamp-down (Vatican not allowing recordings, outside verification) *usually* only happens for a reason - it hurts a brand.
The Vatican say their numbers are growing. Many 3rd-party newspapers say different. As an atheist, I won't source this.
I'll just say that nothing about the exorcist's claims, his numbers, the lack of transparency... feels right. Nothing. Too many dark patterns.
Yeah i definitely wanna see the floaty part. If it happens 3 times a year with this guy in the same room, i wanna see 'floaters'
like if someone just asked a random machine learning researcher to 'make a video showing how AI works' it would probably be just as difficult for them
Further to that, the act of testing or observation isn't itself without its effects.
Let’s say this is an actual real phenomenon for sake of the discussion. Demonic possession and successful exorcisms would underscore the reality of the faith. The exorcist has a duty to the mission that they are given—the have a job to do recording viral video may not be part of the job description. The Catholic Church may not want evidence of this supernatural moment recorded or being supernatural, perhaps it can’t be for some reason. Maybe just the disclosure of it is enough by a priest to motivate some folks who would be motivated by such a thing to join the faith.
If it’s not real, well that last sentence above serves the same purpose, doesn’t it?
And besides…would you trust any video, audio, or photographic evidence of anything in 2023? I know I wouldn’t. It would be picked apart, ridiculed, and drive more people away from the faith than drive to it.
The retort is that we can't expect evidence as "exists" in some other fictional story.
/me shakes head slowly
Realistically this conversation is a science vs. religion argument that will end up in a stalemate somewhere around Tarski's Undefinability Theorem.
We disagree on the nature of the ground of being.
having cynically posted this link, i'd like to post another in the opposite direction from the tibetan buddhist tradition
https://alearningaday.blog/2020/01/23/milarepa-and-the-demon...
and one from the theravada buddhist tradition
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.1.10.piy...
Demons are also ultimately suffering sentient beings, who think their actions will bring them some sort of satisfaction, happiness.
If I’m not mistaken, in the Christian religion, no. They are sentient beings who are cast out of heaven and are in permanent desperation because of it (so far we agree). But as far as I know it’s out of spite and jealousy they want to bring as many people as they can with them; they most definitely know it won’t bring them happiness.
Also calling them sentient is probably misleading as they are angelic entities and they cannot change ever. They made a decision when they were created (follow God or not), and that’s that. So sentient yes, but most definitely not Human-like.
As I recall the Biblical narrative, they were convinced to turn against God when Lucifer led his rebellion against Heaven, because he and a third of the other angels refused to humble themselves before the newly created humans. The premise of angels as being unchangeable in their nature is a modern fantasy stereotype - in Biblical canon at least, they are clearly presented as capable of free will and decision making.
Obviously this doesn't entirely make sense within the framework of original sin - angels shouldn't be capable of turning against God, since that capacity is by definition sinful, and no sinful being can stand in the presence of God, but clearly angels do. Mythology rarely if ever includes what we would consider "coherent worldbuilding" from a modern literary point of view - that isn't its purpose, and what we have is an attempt to correlate the remnants of thousands of years of oral tradition and folkore with all of the myriad strangeness that entails.
I’m struck by this example, because it gives me the idea this priest’s main job is to look for evidence of something that doesn’t exist. Arguably, like SETI research.
…
I’m thinking about this drug addict I met once on a day labor job. He was describing to me how he faked different mental illnesses to get better drugs. I’m guessing there was something underlying, and he’s working from there. The previous guy is looking for a reason underlying his condition. The latter guy is developing his conditions.
It seems like this exorcist job would deal with people on a spectrum of strong religious beliefs—people with rare conditions grasping for answers, people who convince themselves and maybe manifest the symptoms consciously or unconsciously, and people who are truly mentally lost, and I would add, lost in the man-made fiction.
If the church exists for any positive purpose, it’s to help people who are suffering. In the latter type, only a trained exorcist trained in faith and in ‘evil’ distortions of church doctrine could help. Like a specialist software/hardware debugger.
His job is to help alleviate suffering because he has this knowledge of weird, and to protect the church. Like a spiritual fire fighter.