Do you believe in demonic possession?

I do not believe demons exist, thus I don’t believe in demonic possession (though I find the stories interesting and some of the scariest stories I know involve demons). I believe in the power of the mind, however. If a chemical like DMT is enough to cause a person to have a near-death experience and see visions of heaven, why then, couldn’t chemicals in the brain cause a person to believe they are possessed by a demon?

I believe it is possible. Why? I’ve read storries, I’ve seen video’s. It is quite a scary thing.

It’s hard to imagine it being possible, but I always leave a window of believability open toward such things. I’m not convinced that we, as a species, have as much of life figured out as we think we do.

Nope, what you saw was a movie, it’s our amazing imaginations gone wild…..you know, the same reason why we have sci-fi and fantasy. :)

No, absolutely not.

No. I do not believe Mother Nature has ‘demons’.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck who is to say it isn’t a duck?

It all depends on how you choose to explain the things going on around you.
If I believe in God then I must admit the other side, that demons exist.
If I believe in nature I can’t explain a lot of things thus demons couldn’t exist.
If I believe in science i can find a bunch of “bla bla” words and give an answer to what happened when someone was possessed.
If I believe in other things there are ways to answer this too.

I personally Believe in God so I believe possessions are true. But I do not believe in all the [ excuse me] Catholic crap about exorcism. Exorcism exists but not when you say a bunch of words with no sense and when you have no relation with God. In the Bible we have one example of people trying to cure someone and they end up doing harm to themselves because they weren’t fitted for it.

Acts 19 13–16
Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to pronounce the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.”
Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this
But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”
And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, mastered all of them, and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

Nope, but there are a lot of nutters out there who could quite easily give that impression………
You should see the film Mirrors with Kiefer Sutherland……..

Nope. I believe that some people truly believe they are possessed. I also believe those people are likely mentally ill.

Lol, no!

No but I would like to believe they exist. Would be awesome. And then maybe Sam and Dean from Supernatural could be real too!!! sigh

@Scooby that movie is probably the crappiest movie I ever sawwwww.

No, but I know some pretty devilish people.

Here is a possible explanation as to why some people might believe in it.

Demonic possession is not recognized as a psychiatric or medical diagnosis by either the DSM-IV or the ICD-10. There are many psychological ailments commonly misunderstood as demonic possession, particularly dissociative identity disorder. In cases of dissociative identity disorder in which the alter personality is questioned as to its identity, 29% are reported to identify themselves as demons,[16] but doctors see this as a mental disease called demonomania or demonopathy, a monomania in which the patient believes that he or she is possessed by one or more demons.[17] Source

No, I don’t believe there is any such thing as demons so therefore I also don’t believe in demonic posession. There is plenty of mental illness around though. I agree with @Pied_Pfeffer that most cases are probably dissociative identity disorder, with a generous helping of PTSD thrown in for good measure.

Yes I do. May I preamble a minute? Demonic oppression is something, I believe, many of us have to a certain degree, hidden away under a medical term. Acute neurosis, depression, aggression. Demons just are. And the only permission they need to try to mess with your mind and emotions is the opportunity. So it is possible to have a level of oppression. Would it freak you out to know that they can live inside you and you really aren’t aware, except in a vague way, when sometimes you react differently to some annoyance than your thoughts. In a church setting, I was delivered from demons eight years ago that after banging my head on the floor for awhile were commanded off me and left with piercing screams unlike anything human and they faded away off into the air leaving a long trail of gradually lessening shrillness. The difference I have felt since this occasion is described best as an inner quietude. For a couple days after this unexpected
event I felt a lot like a space cadet. It took awhile to get an equilibrium going. And I noticed my face was softer and my eyes were more tranquil.

Demon possession is much different than that, a whole new league where one is not only oppressed but taken over at will for evil. A few days ago there was a young girl writing about the murder of a friend at the hands of his own father. Normal people don’t do these things. Think upon the myriads of serial killers through history and I will just pull one out of the news from last year here in Canada. Colonel Russell Williams, the leader of the largest military base turned out to be, as the media put it: a monster. There was extensive coverage; two books that I know of have been published about him subsequently and the path was for him, as is for the overwhelming majority of mass murderers, a gradual escalation of consent to acts that grow in gravity and usually over a timeline. HIs case was so unique in that he did not start to act out until he was in his 40’s, or so it seems. There is much to read about him on the internet etc. When he was asked by the interrogators on the day they arrested him if he would have murdered again his response was “I was hoping not.” In other words, he no longer had control of himself. The overwhelming urge would come, he would have to act out at some level. All possession can only occur through consent. One has to scratch a dark itch and then more itches will come until it takes more and more to satisfy. I do wholeheartedly believe demonic possession is alive and well but to get to this place you have to unwittinglyr or not as Kris Kristofferson sings about in his lyrics: “Sell your soul to the devil.”

@smilingheart1 For a couple days after this unexpected event I felt a lot like a space cadet.

But now you feel normal?

Dr. Ruth you mean? Oh yeah!!

@FutureMemory, because I had always been the way I was, to me it WAS normal (for me) but I always just attributed it to the insecure environment in which I was raised. But there really was something neurotically tormenting me, I fully recognize now that it is gone and the quietude is a wonderful hallmark of how I have felt for the past 8 years. There has also been a major negative event that took place in 2007 that was not able to rock this inner calm and reset me to any old patterns of neurotic feelings. I only had the normal bereavement, grieving, sadness.

I believe that if a person believes strongly enough that they are possessed, they can do things which defy explanation.

Asking “science or religion? which is right?” is a bit misleading. It is not the case that all religions believe in demonic possession, and so science and religion need not conflict here in all cases. I did not believe in demonic possession when I was religious, and I do not believe in demonic possession now that I am irreligious.

@Hibernate It does not follow from believing in God that you must believe in demons. This is a false choice. You seem to be reasoning this way:

1) Everything has an opposite.
2) I, @Hibernate, believe in God.
3) Therefore, I must believe in the opposite of God.

For some reason, you then take the opposite of God to be demons (as opposed to Satan or some other non-divine entity). This decision is not explained, but we can leave that aside. Your first premise, after all, is suspicious enough.

What is the opposite of a fish? What is the opposite of a lightbulb? What reason do we have to believe that everything has not just a formal or conceptual opposite (which I could agree to given certain qualifications), but an actual or substantive thing which is that opposite?

You might deny, of course, that you are reasoning in the way I suppose above. But if that is the case, we would still need a reason why belief in God must bring belief in demons along with it. The latter does not necessarily follow from the other without the assumption of some further principle. The principle I have ascribed to you above is common and at least superficially plausible. It also is strongly suggested by what you have written. Should you have some other explanation for your position, however, I would be interested to see it.

I used to not believe in demonic possession, but then Michelle Bachman came along. Now I’m a Believer

Yes

Yes, I do

I believe it’s psychological. Even the “physical” evidence . . . the mind is a powerful thing, and our bodies are MUCH stronger and capable than most could ever know.

@SavoirFaire you start it wrong. Satan is not the opposite of God. He merely wanted to take God’s place. And while we’re here it only comes to how you choose to interpret what I said or view my statements only under some aspects not as a whole. And I was not talking about ALL religions I was talking only about Christianity.
And it all depends on what sort of religion you had. Or in what parts of that religion you wanted to believe. One does not need to believe in demons. They believe in you and the more one doesn’t want them to be true the more happy they are.

When one chooses to believe in the words of God he/she will find there enough things explaining the netherworld. Demons are the best deceivers.

@Hibernate I didn’t say you were talking about all religions. You’ll note that my response to you starts after my opening paragraph. The top part of my post was in response to the OP. That’s why your username doesn’t appear until lower down.

Nor did I say that Satan was the opposite of God. I asked for a reason why demons were the opposite of God as opposed to some other candidate that someone might think would make just as much sense. I notice that you still haven’t provided that. Instead, you have only given self-sealing rhetoric. Please give us something other than fallacies if you’d like your position to be taken seriously.

No. A lot of accounts can be related to stuff that science and sociology have explanations for today.
And even if they didn’t, no.

@SavoirFaire indeed no. But the syllogism you used later started with “everything has an opposite” and continued with “I” Hibernate should believe in an opposite of God.”
So what’s the catch there?

@Hibernate Like I’ve already said, the latter part is directed towards you. I presented one possible (and likely) interpretation of your reasoning and demonstrated what was wrong with it. I then requested that you provide an alternative reading if I had misinterpreted you. As you have thus far failed to do so, there is nothing new to work with at this time.

well there’s a trick which priests use to tell if the person is really possessed or just sick.
what they is that before the exorcism they put something in a bag and ask the person/demon to guess what it is.

If it really is a demon, he should have no problem guessing what it is .

What interpretation shall I give when you started from something which is not true and which I never said. There’s no point of discussing this. I cannot answer what you want and you do not want to hear what I have to say. It’s like looking for answers you don’t want to know.

@Hibernate If I started from something untrue, correct me. What is so difficult about that? Why do you complain and complain rather than fixing the problem (as I explicitly asked in my first response)? It looks to me like you don’t actually have an answer and just want to pretend otherwise. Please show me that I am incorrect.

You started from something I did not say. I did not use as a statement “everything has an opposite” thus God has an opposite. That’s where you went wrong. An opposite means something at least equally strong or close to it. God has no equal nor anything as an opposite.
How can I explain it more?
What was the question to which I don’t have an answer?

@Hibernate Right, you did not use the words “everything has an opposite.” I’ve already noted that I was interpreting your first post and that the interpretation might be mistaken. What you said, though, was “If I believe in God then I must admit the other side, that demons exist.” Explain to me what “I must admit the other side” means if demons are not the opposite to God and why you must admit they exist if you are not appealing to a principle along the lines of “everything has an opposite.”

Demons b y their nature do not want the same thing as God. You know the story .. Lucifer wanted to take God’s place so he started a rebellion and got kicked out of his “job”. Now all those angels who sticked with him became demons.
This doesn’t mean demons are not the same angels but with a corrupted mind.
This doesn’t mean Lucifer grew stronger in time.

Oh and I forgot to add that angels WERE CREATED. God allows them to exist so humans can choose the path they want to follow. God can turn them to dust with a lap of His fingers but He allows them for other purposes [some of which we might not understand/know for now].

There are two sides of everything. It all depends how you look at them. It’s not all about good versus evil it’s more about what you choose to do since demons only deceive us. They go there and possess some humans but they have no power over us.

That’s dogma, not an answer.

Since you are looking for a particular thing I don’t really know what to say.

I believe demons are real and so are angels of the light. I believe demons will try to confuse us on all matters of things between right and wrong. I believe angels of the light guide us and give messages to us from God.