An Atheistic Bible Study Of The Gospels Jesus And The Unclean Spirit

@bagarad the Gospels themselves post-date Jesus's life by 60-100 years. The writers no more met him than I did. How could you tell the demons you saw were not something with a more human explanation?

@arthurchappell I did not see it. I felt it. Have you ever read The Lord of the Rings? Tolkien did a great job of describing what it feels like to be in the presence of pure evil. I don't like to talk about it, since it was quite scary. When confronted with real demonic activity, you know it. You are perfectly free to believe what you want to, and I shall do the same. The room was full of the presence of this "thing" which had seen a weakness in my armor exposed by an encounter with a human (my nextdoor neighbor at the time) who believed in VooDoo. He had called me to his apartment under what I now believe to be false pretenses -- wanting me to tutor his daughter in English. I had never met him before. Once I got to his apartment he wanted to introduce me to his spiritual teacher -- a photo of a man in a turban. I told him I was a Christian and he tried to talk me out of it and talk about channeling and projecting oneself in an astro body, and related new-age or occult topics. He wanted to teach me all about it. I had once dabbled in the occult but gave it up when I became a Christian. For me it was a matter of curiosity more than real belief, but I had obviously held on to some of the fascination and that made me a target. My mother had unwittingly put me under occult influence when I had Scarlet Fever as a young child. One of her friends who was deep into the occult laid hands on me and prayed, but not in the name of Jesus. If you are an atheist, I realize this is all silly to you and you probably don't believe in spirits of any kind -- angels or demons. For you that spiritual world probably doesn't exist. For me it does. It explains a lot of what's going on in the world. This evening on TV I saw that the one who made the film The Exorcist is now making a documentary where he shows a real exorcism he filmed. I can't remember his name. I don't pay much attention to movies. He said that he showed that film to mental health professionals and neurosurgeons and they had no explanation for what they saw in the film. It fit no mental illness they knew. You might want to look it up if you are really interested in finding out whether demons are real or not. You can't fake demon possession. It's a lot more than just acting crazy. I will not see the documentary, since I would not be able to handle it and it would not be good for my own mental health. I have to stay very far away from anything demonic or occult.

@bagarad I certainly don't think you are being silly. I would never make fun of your heartfelt beliefs and having been in alternative religions in my past I have a different perspective on these things than many. Exorcisms can be acted or faked - the documentary you mention (presumably made by William Friedkin) was I assume made to show similarities to events in the fictional movie. What you describe is mostly feelings and sensory experiences. The skepticism comes in with how those feeling are interpreted and defined. The very feeling of having lots of people around you telling you that they are praying to Jesus while laying hands on you is extremely powerful psychologically so when the fever broke you attributed it to Jesus rather than your body and any actual medications beating the illness.

@JAWwriting I have read that - great book

@xander6464 Rome's Next Best Pope, a show whose time has come

@arthurchappell I think it's way overdue. Everything now is a contest or war or battle---Singing, acting, dancing, cooking, metalworking, everything has it's own competition show today, except for religion and we need to change that. We don't have the budget and connections to do it on TV but we can do the next best thing by putting it up here on MyLot.

@arthurchappell I like that one a lot.