Basically what I'm saying is that you shouldn't be calling something a demonic possession without it undergoing scientific scrutiny to rule out all other possibilities. If you've done that, then believing it to be a demonic possession becomes a lot more acceptable, although I would still disagree (just because there's no scientific explination yet doesn't make it supernatural, etc).

I quite agree with this sentiment. Exorcism is as ridiculous as witchhunts were. I think you guys have watched a few too many movies.

In the Bible it says Jesus cast out demons.
I actually tend to think that if he did, it was more of correcting chemical imbalances and prescribing prozac and lithium cocktails.
He was a lisenced doctor, after all.

Either way, I apologize from my harshness Sarn, it wasn't even directed at you, but people in general.

Basically what I'm saying is that you shouldn't be calling something a demonic possession without it undergoing scientific scrutiny to rule out all other possibilities. If you've done that, then believing it to be a demonic possession becomes a lot more acceptable, although I would still disagree (just because there's no scientific explination yet doesn't make it supernatural, etc).

Well perhaps... I'm not against medical science. A lot of time though, medical science has failed where faith has succeeded. You can chalk it up to coincidence or some other (as yet unfound) explanation if you want. I choose to believe what I believe. *shrug*

Well perhaps... I'm not against medical science. A lot of time though, medical science has failed where faith has succeeded. You can chalk it up to coincidence or some other (as yet unfound) explanation if you want. I choose to believe what I believe. *shrug*

Uhh, actually, he was a carpenter. But I would agree that many things that are called "demon posessions" in the Bible are likely chemical imbalances or other mental disorders. They just didn't have the words or the understanding back then. I also believe that too many people will scream demon when there's a perfectly rational, medical explanation for what's happening. Regardless, I believe God has the power to heal either condition.
Apology accepted. Thanks.

Let's talk a bit about intellectual honesty.

When some black day in the future, your son gets hit by a car, you'll have to be consistent and deny all medical help. You'll have to get him magical rainbow faith healers. Then you'll be intellectually honest, which is awesome. Shame about your now dead kid though.

Uhh.. No. I'll get him medical attention *and* pray for him. There's nothing that says God can't work through doctors, and like I said earlier, I don't have anything against medical science. by the way, there's research that shows that people that are prayed for recover from illness faster, even if they don't know they're being prayed for. It's not a one or the other thing. You can do both. Sometimes God will pick one over the other.

You're right.. I'm just kinda busy right now..
here's a start:
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50874

For the past 30 years, Harvard scientist Herbert Benson, MD, has conducted his own studies on prayer. He focuses specifically on meditation, the Buddhist form of prayer, to understand how mind affects body. All forms of prayer, he says, evoke a relaxation response that quells stress, quiets the body, and promotes healing.

Prayer involves repetition -- of sounds, words -- and therein lies its healing effects, says Benson. "For Buddhists, prayer is meditation. For Catholics, it's the rosary. For Jews, it's called dovening. For Protestants, it's centering prayer. Every single religion has its own way of doing it."

Benson has documented on MRI brain scans the physical changes that take place in the body when someone meditates. When combined with recent research from the University of Pennsylvania, what emerges is a picture of complex brain activity:

As an individual goes deeper and deeper into concentration, intense activity begins taking place in the brain's parietal lobe circuits -- those that control a person's orientation in space and establish distinctions between self and the world. Benson has documented a "quietude" that then envelops the entire brain.

At the same time, frontal and temporal lobe circuits -- which track time and create self-awareness -- become disengaged. The mind-body connection dissolves, Benson says.

But prayer is more than just repetition and physiological responses, says Harold Koenig, MD, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at Duke and a colleague of Krucoff's.

Traditional religious beliefs have a variety of effects on personal health, says Koenig, senior author of the Handbook of Religion and Health, a new release that documents nearly 1,200 studies done on the effects of prayer on health.

These studies show that religious people tend to live healthier lives. "They're less likely to smoke, to drink, to drink and drive," he says. In fact, people who pray tend to get sick less often, as separate studies conducted at Duke, Dartmouth, and Yale universities show.

The goal of prayer therapy is to accomplish healing, yet "there are a lot of questions about what healing means," Krucoff tells WebMD. "At this level of this work, there are many philosophical debates that can emerge. The basic concept is this -- if you add prayer to standard, high-tech treatment -- if you motivate a spiritual force or energy, does it actually make people better, heal faster, get out of the hospital faster, make them need fewer pills, suffer less?"

Roy L. and 150 other patients took part in MANTRA's pilot study. All suffer from acute heart disease, and all needed emergency angioplasty.

The stress of the procedure -- because it is done on patients who are awake -- has its own negative effects on the body, Krucoff tells WebMD. "The heart beats faster, beats harder, blood vessels are constricted, blood is thicker and clots more easily. All that's bad." But if an intervention could mediate that stress, it would potentially be a pretty useful adjunct for people coming in for angioplasty, he says.

There's nothing that says God can't work through doctors

In a study involving 748 patients at eight centers slated for catheterizations, patients who, unbeknownst to them, were randomly assigned to be the subjects of multi-faith prayers before their procedures, fared no better than controls (un-prayed for) patients, reported Mitchell W. Krucoff, M.D. of the Duke Clinical Research Institute here and colleagues.

In addition to seeing no effect of prayer, they found that patients who were randomly assigned to receive music, imagery and touch therapy shortly before their scheduled procedures reported having lower stress going into the procedure. Yet they did no better than controls on measures of major cardiovascular events or hospital readmission, although treated patients have a lower risk of death at a six month follow-up.

The authors bent over backwards to be respectful of divergent beliefs and practices, and emphasized that the influence on health of so-called "noetic" interventions -- defined as therapies that don't involve the use of tangible drugs or devices -- deserves further scientific scrutiny.

Another study, published in the May 1999 issue of Social Science & Medicine, seemed to show that faith can actually make you worse. This study followed the progress of 250 patients after discharge from a London hospital. After reviewing outpatient records and polling the patients about their recovery, researchers found that patients with strong spiritual beliefs were more than twice as likely to be unimproved -- or worse -- after nine months. The authors concluded "that a stronger spiritual belief is an independent predictor of poor outcome.

But a 1998 study published in the journal Pediatrics showed that four out of five sick children who died after their parents put their trust in faith healing probably could have survived with medical treatment. In one case, a 2-year-old who choked to death on a bite of banana showed signs of life for nearly an hour while her parents phoned members of their religious circle to pray.

Byrd obviously believes that his study has succeeded where others have failed. But are the data obtained in his study--in which prayer was admittedly "not controlled for"--sufficient to suggest the existence of the omniscient, omnipotent Judeo-Christian God, and the efficacy of intercessory prayer on CCU patients? Or is it much more likely that what we have here is akin to the findings of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), in which scientists blinded by faith concluded, erroneously, that the shroud was authentic? In his report, Byrd notes that "How God acted in this situation is unknown." But I suspect it was with smoke and mirrors.

Well how very ****ing convenient. Should I be a doc in a few years, and I'll be able to 'get inside' just in time to save someone, it'll be because of countless hours of study behind my desk, and clinical observation and mental notes again and again and again, not because your god said 'hmmm I let that guy get hit by a car, but now I want to undo what I did and work my magic through an ardent atheist'.

I don't think you understand what he's saying. The Bible is very clear in saying God works through people. After all, that's the concept this thread started on...

Tenshu, God is beyond science.... He's beyond you, or me. You can't just sit down one day, do a science experiment and decide that God does or does not exist. It takes personal faith.

Well how very ****ing convenient. Should I be a doc in a few years, and I'll be able to 'get inside' just in time to save someone, it'll be because of countless hours of study behind my desk, and clinical observation and mental notes again and again and again, not because your god said 'hmmm I let that guy get hit by a car, but now I want to undo what I did and work my magic through an ardent atheist'.


Exactly right.

I think that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It probably has to do with the faith of the people involved, and the faith of the people praying. So doing a general study would be difficult, since everyone has a different level of faith in God.

If Doctor Tenshu saves someone, I think it would be the work of God, even if no one was praying.

This is an annoying way of conversing.

I don't even believe in God and you are annoying the hell out of me with this annoyingly annoying misrepresentation of religion. Which also annoys me sometimes.

So then no medical training whatsoever would be needed by anyone? That's a scary thought, cause I'd like my hours of sacrifice and despair to be significant somehow.

Why should I care? There's nothing less than factual in that post.

So if God is so beyond us, what makes you think that human definitions and words, and some book are the logical reasoning of such a fantastical creature that is above our comprehention? Basically, I think christians in general are simply naming or titling what they see with familiar names and ideas that they share with others. It's like christianity is an alternate dictionary, or something.

You say 'God,' I say 'Big Bang'
You say 'Demon,' I say 'Psycho'
You say 'Son of God,' I say 'A Good Person'

Really, we're all looking at the same things, your book just personifies the unknown.

You're assuming the big bang implies ANYTHING. Stop doing that.

Uhh.. No. I'll get him medical attention *and* pray for him. There's nothing that says God can't work through doctors, and like I said earlier, I don't have anything against medical science. by the way, there's research that shows that people that are prayed for recover from illness faster, even if they don't know they're being prayed for. It's not a one or the other thing. You can do both. Sometimes God will pick one over the other.

If you're absolutely confident he'll go to heaven, then why not just let him die? Heaven's probably a far better place than earth is, after all. It'd be doing him a service!