Aprilshowers Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I'm not sure If I am allowed to post a link but a christian friend of mine posted a link with the above caption on facebook. I then asked her if she believe in demons and she said yes. She said that if God exists then so does the devil. I'm in a kind of place at the moment where I don't know what to believe in. LOL. Anyway I also know a lot of people who believe in God but not the devil. Is that kind of hypocritical? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midniterider Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Lots of people talk about Jesus, God, the Devil, etc etc.... never have seen or had a conversation with any of them.The only existence any of these beings seems to have is inside someone's imagination. Why do people have to speak on behalf of these beings? Why don't they speak for themselves? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Aprilshowers, this is what I found when I used your title for a Google search: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547224/EXCLUSIVE-A-portal-hell-Police-chief-priest-examined-possessed-children-haunted-Indiana-home-official-reports-saying-no-hoax.html. I watched the video. What comes across to me very strongly is the woman's fear and the very many references to prayer. She believes these things (ghosts, spirits, whatever) are real and she is terribly scared of them. I think this combination of fear and belief in invisible beings can cause all the things she described--coughing, running nose, seeing big black monsters flying across the room, etc. According to the description of the article and video, I expected to see photographs of the black monster but I didn't. All they showed was a woman talking in her home, first in her kitchen and then in her basement. At one point, the woman picked up a small Nativity Scene (possibly made of plastic). I got the impression she believed that's what flew across the room and was the big black monster her daughter saw. I didn't understand it. The Nativity Scene was just a little object a bit larger than the human hand. She picked it up from a pile of stuff on the floor against the wall. I understand her daughters started seeing things when they first moved into this house a few years ago. It makes sense to me that people would feel scared and upset after a big move into a strange new house. What needs to be done is clean the place and fill it with familiar things that belong to the family so that it feels friendly. Put lights in dark corners. Open windows to let in fresh air. For people who believe in ghosts, would open windows and a good cleaning also let the ghosts out, maybe, and purify the place? I feel sorry for people living with so much fear and superstition. I suggest that instead of praying so much, this woman and her daughters get busy cleaning and airing the place, tidying it up, painting it bright colours. That Nativity Scene should probably be sitting on a shelf somewhere, not hiding in a pile of laundry or whatever. If they did have the window open and the wind did blow it off a shelf and into that pile, then I can see that it appeared like a black monster. But it's still just a harmless little plastic object. (If it was light enough to blow across the room it had to be made of light plastic but I'm just making up this part). Does this answer your questions, Aprilshowers? I really had thought they would make it more difficult to figure out whether or not the big black monsters were real. You know, like in horror shows, especially the old black and white silent movies that depended on visuals. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RaLeah Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Paranoia can make you jump at every creak your house makes and jump away from every shadow. I'm sorry for people who are so jumpy and fearful that they are seeing things that aren't there, but that is what's happening. When one person in the family acts fearful and jumpy, others start catching on and being fearful, watchful and vigilant too. It's contagious. But it's not real. Our imaginations can project all sorts of frightful images onto the most benign things and turn them into something terrifying. That's awful, but that's all it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator TheRedneckProfessor Posted January 29, 2014 Super Moderator Share Posted January 29, 2014 I know as a kid, my mom was constantly anointing out house with oil to ward of demons. Funny thing is, our home life was the same whether there was oil on all the doorposts or not. I think the oil would have been better spent on some of the door hinges. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I looked some more at the article. It seems this family moved out and someone else lives there now. They haven't met any spooks and are fine. To me, all of this proves that it really was paranoia. And yes, ReLeah, I agree that it is contagious. I think the oil would have been better spent on some of the door hinges. That made me laugh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 I'm not sure If I am allowed to post a link but a christian friend of mine posted a link with the above caption on facebook. I then asked her if she believe in demons and she said yes. She said that if God exists then so does the devil. I'm in a kind of place at the moment where I don't know what to believe in. LOL. Anyway I also know a lot of people who believe in God but not the devil. Is that kind of hypocritical? Maybe we're not addressing your real question here. I personally was raised to believe that God, Satan, and angels exist, and that all of them are in the spiritual world. That makes them supernatural, above the natural as in "super" + "nature." That agrees with everything Christians tell me these days. When I say I find no evidence for God, etc., they say things like "The natural mind cannot understand it." So it's like they're saying God is above nature or the natural. CONCLUSION: God et al is supernatural. I'm not into the kind of philosophy that claims everything needs an opposite, like if there is God there necessarily has to be devil. I don't understand that kind of philosophy. I searched for evidence of the supernatural realm and found none. If there is no supernatural, then there is no God, no Satan/devil, no angels, no heaven, no hell, etc. Then again, all I've got to work with is my natural mind. I'm sure you expected that when you came onto a site of Ex-Christians. In this world, on the internet and off, there are very many Christians of all stripes, colours, languages, and nationalities, if you want a Christian answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aprilshowers Posted January 29, 2014 Author Share Posted January 29, 2014 Thanks peeps. I must say I was thinking that there is probably some type of mental illness involved. I have an anxiety disorder myself and years ago when I was still religious had huge fears about devils and demons etc but a good therapist who was a sensible atheist LOL managed to talk me out of it. It is hard not to believe in certain things when they have been droned into your head for years but with the help of good advice sense usually does prevail. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. S. Martin Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 Mental illness isn't contagious but paranoia or fear is. It seemed like the whole family had it. Possibly someone in the family suffered from excessive anxiety to start it off. I disagree with those who say religion per se is a mental illness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aprilshowers Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 Thanks for the insight. I know mental illness is not contagious but can cause a sort of mass hysteria caused by extreme fear and gullability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seeker001 Posted February 1, 2014 Share Posted February 1, 2014 The only demons that exist are the ones that we carry with us within ourselves. The mind is the most powerful tool for both good and bad, and when the mind starts to turn against you bad shit happens. A mind that has been taken over by raw fear and uncertainty. While ghosts may or may not exist, but it is believable that a home can be overtaken by negative energy creating a toxic atmosphere combined with the power of imagination as the mind tries to find a way to justify the negativity. The devil is but an abstract concept of evil that people use to scapegoat instead of taking responsibility to better one's environment. I don't understand how it is hypocritical to believe in god and yet not in the devil. I don't believe a grand evil exists there is only the uncaring forces of the universe. If humanity wants to survive we must stand on our two legs instead of waiting for god and blaming all our problems on the devil. Although, I think there is more to the story than what is presented. It is fishy how the cops, doctor, and social worker have come to believe in the haunting. On the other hand the new family hasn't had any farther issues which puts doubt on it being a genuine haunting. I don't know what to think, leaning more towards my skeptical side though considering how easy it is to fool the human mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rerics Posted February 2, 2014 Share Posted February 2, 2014 A related story--When I was about 10 years old, I was over at a friend's house when he was building a model airlplane. He had the glue out, and I could faintly smell the odor. Not knowing anything at the time about the dangers of glue-sniffing, I grabbed the tube of glue and took a whiff of it for the sake of curiosity. My friend mentioned the dangers, and it kind of spooked me. I worried about it until I got home, where I became obsessed with it, to the point where I really believed I was under the effects of acute poisoning from the glue. The anxiety was so strong that I felt I was on the verge of convulsions, dizziness, brain paralysis, you name it. I got over it pretty quickly, but it is still a vivid memory. It also remains for me a strong reminder of the susceptibility of otherwise normal intelligent people to fall victim to this sort of silliness and others like it such as the alleged Gary Ind. haunting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stealth44 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Creepy stuff, good job debunking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RipVanWinkle Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Aprilshowers: This is my take on deciding what is true and what is not true when it comes to phenomena which can not be proved or disproved by science: If there are people who have made and are making a fortune out of belief by others I do not believe it. Nobody has ever proved the existence of demons, angels, god or any other supernatural beings but a lot of people make big money because Millions do believe it. People who believe that these things have been proven are deceiving themselves. People who know with certainty that their religion is absolutely true are deceiving themselves. Don't believe me? Check it out. bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApostateAwoken Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 The human mind is extraordinary and can perceive things when they're not actually there. Take the monsters every child sees in his room - actually pieces of clothing or the like. Hearing your name called when nobody called it, or other phantom sounds. People hallucinating under drugs. Placebo effects; ex. expecting to see something and then seeing it. Watching a horror movie and feeling primitively terrified at something you know doesn't exist afterwards. The human mind can conjure things where there are none. Also, remember that nobody believes that their beliefs aren't true, because if they did they wouldn't believe it. Conviction does not make a person accurate - if anything, it screws up their perspective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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