54 replies to this topic

[stevefork]

http://ph.news.yahoo...wpphu-container


This sounds like the catholic church is just upping the ante in proliferating fear and ignorance among the masses of disenchanted and downtroden. We are already a country that has been programmed by several centuries of superstitious nonsense by the spanish colonialist with their powerful tool of manipulating the people..the catholic church. If you read every anecdote on possession, you will realize that the pattern and manner by which these so called "possessed" had manifested their symptoms, almost all the time it follows popular culture in its depiction of what a possession should appear like. Possessions are not purely a Catholic- Christian phenomenon as other ancient cultures and even animistic-totemism forms of religions have reported similar phenomenon. However, the difference is the manner and form by which it manifest' in different religions; usually the symptoms would also follow their own cultural and popular belief on the subject. This points to a more psycho-physiological rather than supernatural phenomenon; more in a form of cultural based psychosis manifesting in such delusions. Advanced countries, or rather in countries with a higher number of highly educated people and with more financial prosperity, meaning less disinfranchised individuals, have very scant or altogether, no reports of such phenomenon, especially in countries that are overwhelmingly secular ( a lot of european countries, China, Japan).
The problem lies with religion, in this case the catholic church, because in countries where they are in great numbers, more of this phenomenon are reported (Philippines, Latin America, Africa). Majority of these countries too are poor and education is also a great factor - where the vast majority of the people does not have access to higher learning and most of these economies are also burdened by overpopulation. In this case, The Catholic church thrives in these conditions where misery and hopelessness is high. They may not be the reason for these problems but they do help flame the fire by proliferating medieval, theocratic and religious closed world-views, such as condeming population control and state initiatives for family planning, which consequently also aids in prevention of deadly sexualy transmitted disease. They would promote unscientific ideas and propagandas to an already superstitious people and uninformed individuals who are in the ordinary do not have the education or access to information to understand the difference.
Possessions and Exorcism is indeed their newly found tool in an effort to revitalize the church in an ever growing world with free access to information and ideas where religous practices that were once believed and patronized are slowly loosing ground because people are much more elightened and informed, even if they still hold a lot of cutlural based ideas and superstition that are anchronistic. This is the church' way of bringing back medieval and superstitious ideas to the modern world, and make us believe that morality is a monopoly of the church and individuals are incapable of doing whats right if they dont believe in their religion and bible stories. In short, if you dont believe in them and their practices and ways, you will burn in eternal damnation.
Unfortunately, real "Evil" ( evil is a purely religious concept that does not apply in the real world) or let me say, real "reprihensible principles and actions"(my real world synonym to evil), is veiled in our everyday life, culture, society and actions that all of we have accepted as acceptable, from within our rellgious beliefs, government, financial institutions, to how we treat people in society ( class system) to just about everything that cause human misery. In the end real 'evil"' is not supernatural in origin but rather purely human in nature, just like all the other utter nonsense we believe in, that the catholic church is just counting on us to believe so that they can continue profiting from human misery and idiocy.

[Star of the Sea]

That is not the full truth. The Catholic Church is usually approached for help after all avenues have been exhausted.

[keven3]

stevefork, on 14 April 2011 - 08:11 PM, said:

http://ph.news.yahoo...wpphu-container


This sounds like the catholic church is just upping the ante in proliferating fear and ignorance among the masses of disenchanted and downtroden. ...real "Evil" ( evil is a purely religious concept that does not apply in the real world) or let me say, real "reprihensible principles and actions"(my real world synonym to evil), is veiled in our everyday life, culture, society and actions that all of we have accepted as acceptable, from within our rellgious beliefs, government, financial institutions, to how we treat people in society ( class system) to just about everything that cause human misery. In the end real 'evil"' is not supernatural in origin but rather purely human in nature, just like all the other utter nonsense we believe in, that the catholic church is just counting on us to believe so that they can continue profiting from human misery and idiocy.

SteveFork,

I am sorry that you feel like the Catholic Church is doing what it shouldn't do. I am direct opposition to your thoughts on this article. I think it is fantastic that the Catholic Church is increasing their exorcism ministry around the globe. I have seen people, up close, who are truly possessed and not schizophrenic. Exorcism is a blessing to these people.

Keven

[ohio state buckeyes]

news.yahoo.com said:

MANILA (AFP) – A blood-curdling scream echoes through the Roman Catholic chapel in Manila as Father Jose Francisco Syquia says a prayer of exorcism over a Satanic cult member believed to be possessed by the devil.

"It's very painful," the woman cries in an unearthly voice, her body contorting in an attempt to break free from the tight grasp of Syquia's assistants.After a few minutes she falls silent, her limp body exhausted.

The case is among hundreds documented on video and kept by Syquia, who heads the Manila Archdiocese's Office of Exorcism -- the only one that exists in the Catholic nation of 94 million people.

Read more...

[stevefork]

keven3, on 14 April 2011 - 09:32 PM, said:

SteveFork,

I am sorry that you feel like the Catholic Church is doing what it shouldn't do. I am direct opposition to your thoughts on this article. I think it is fantastic that the Catholic Church is increasing their exorcism ministry around the globe. I have seen people, up close, who are truly possessed and not schizophrenic. Exorcism is a blessing to these people.

Keven

Keven,

I respect you point of view, however, let me explain my position further. More than ten years ago I have witnessed a so called "possession". I was with a group of friends in a hotel room when one of our friend suddenly felt bad and went into some kind of frenzy, screaming and wailing, the tone of her voice turned to a deep baritone. She started trashing the room. Mind you, we were not drinking or taking drugs. We were all in conversing when it happened. The thing was, the rest of our friends were actually born again christians and were very active in their practice. Everyone was shocked, immediately after, my christian friends pronounced that our friend was being possessed. This was also confirmed by our friend who was supposedly possessed by claiming that was an evil spirit in the room. They later called a pastor and started praying over our friend. Now, being the skeptic I was, i just stood by the side and observed the whole situation and everyone. At one point while they are praying, the pastor even declared that my presence was actually counter productive because i was an unbeliever and it was me who was the reason why she cannot be exorcised. Nevertheless i continued to observe. it took them several hours of praying until our friend began to calm down and fall asleep. The Pastor and our other friends declared their exorcism a success. Now, the thing was, my observation of our friend's so called possession, was that there was nothing extraordinary about her physical actions or manifestations except that of a complete psychotic meltdown of some level brought about by some stress she had been experiencing. However, days later, word spread around about her possession to other people, the pastor himself have been reveling about the incident in his church about the incident and somehow have painted a different depiction of the event. Our christian friends too who were there were telling stories how they can feel her body becoming extremely hot and that there were physical marking appearing on her body and that she was levitating and it was only their prayer that was stopping our friend from completely flying out of the room. Whoaa, in my mind, wait a second, I was present there and none of that happened; but somemhow all of them espoused these claims and truly believed it happened. So other people they told the story too also believed them and couldnt be convinced otherwise as if they were there and seen it with their own eyes. What was happening here I thought. Clearly, what happened is a combination of several factors that came into play that gave birth to these belief. What happened was that everyone was already preprogrammed to believe and they were not objective. The pastor who went there already made up his mind that it was a possession before there was even a clear diagnosis coming from a certified medical practitioner. The power of suggestion that filled that room was tremendous that believe me, even an unbeliever can feel awed by what was happening if they were not objective, rational and had knowledge on the subject of psychology, which i was. Dont get me wrong, it was weird being there, but it was in no way supernatural; i was just shocked that my friend was going though that. The image of my friend going through that was definitely disquieting but i saw nothing supernatural happen, nor did any of what they said afterwards happen in any shape or form. They all had some kind of group induced hysteria induced by the stressful situation coupled of course by the fact that they have already made up their mind beforehand what it was. They had somehow induced themselves to believe that these things had happened. It is common for a group of people who have gone through a traumatic event and come out of it with a diffrent memory of what really happened. Each person have a set of world view by which their mind form ideas and fill in the blanks to events and memories based on what they already believe in. This is a well known fact in psychology.

Whatever the church is doing here, it is really not helpfull. The only people they are helping is their institution. The people who are experiencing these so called Possessions should be under the care of medical professionals. Not that all medical professionals around the world have experience in this matter and type of psychosis, but nevertheless their psychosis should not be supported by these priest's who just want to proliferate more fear and belief in superstition that is clearly evident in these individuals. Please remember the witch hunts of the last couple of centuries in New England, Salem and the rest of the world that the catholic church has unleashed on us, according to reports, close to 9 million people were executed because of this. Science is continuous process, its cumulative and its a collective knowledge that is still growing, validated and sometimes rendered obsolete and debunked at the presence of more recent findings. When religious individuals start making the grand claim that science cannot explain everything and that everthing that cannot be explained must be supernatural in nature is a logical fallacy. A lot things and natural phenomenon in the past are not known or explained because people havent fully studied and explained them. Sometimes it takes only an individual to discover something that would change our understanding of what we previously do not fully understand, but it takes a speculative and  curious mind to find answers to questions that other people would just attribute to supernatural. Faith i say is nothing but laziness and ignorance combined. Indeed we have much to learn about our world and universe, but remember, 500 years ago traditional thinking told us that the world was flat, based on what biblical scholars interpretation of the bible. Majority of diseases were not known and have no cure or treatment and often certain diseases were attributed to the devil and people would just pray for them to be cured. Now, because of our collective knowledge and still continuing research, we conquered a lot of diseases and are at the pinnacle of creating new treatments for other diseases that are ravaging people all over the world. Just as all areas of science that we study, there is no such thing as supernatural; we may not have the answers to a lot of pressing questions now, but believe me, the future generations will find them.

[Mainpoint]

way back in the day I used to battle demons

[Sakari]

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The case is among hundreds documented on video and kept by Syquia  

Sure

Quote

"She would have levitated had she not been restrained,"

I would love to see this just once.

Quote

Demons could manifest themselves in many ways and could enter the human  soul through occult and New Age teachings that were becoming  increasingly popular in the general community, Syquia said.

If these are so popular, why can I not find any?

[KRS_One]

Steadfast religious official in one of the most steadfastly religious regions of the world does something to stand out.

Got it.

Tell me when a suburban teenager does something to stand out against other suburban teenagers.  We may be on to something.

[scheming_dreaming]

gentlemen place your bets

[Realm]

Nice video.  

[paul the walrus]

Wonder how much you have to donate in order to get this guy's help.

[paul the walrus]

"These demons are real. It's time that the people start awakening and converting to christ. The devil has his own race of human offsprings here on earth. This I have seen. On top of that I have seen angels who do evil deeds against God. Day of Judgement is neccesary NOW!! ofcourse these angels I speak about are in human form manifestation. They have many forms and abilities one of those being human. (Research: Serpent-seed Nephelims & Giants. They are out there by the millions hiding within the sectors of society, those who expose them are punished to the fullest extent and criticised as being crazy. "

Sorry your word that you have "seen them" is not enough for me to believe. If you have seen them and want to anyone else to believe that you have seen them, then why did you not try to somehow document their existence? Offer some proof besides your words, and maybe people would believe your claims. No offense but you sound a little crazy posting this and maybe you should be "criticised as crazy" for not trying to document these things you have claimed to seen!

[Rlyeh]

UmbrellaSquad, on 15 April 2011 - 11:05 AM, said:

These demons are real. It's time that the people start awakening and converting to christ. The devil has his own race of human offsprings here on earth. This I have seen. On top of that I have seen angels who do evil deeds against God.

Who else seen the leprechaun?

[Beckys_Mom]

keven3, on 14 April 2011 - 09:32 PM, said:

.. I have seen people, up close, who are truly possessed and not schizophrenic. Exorcism is a blessing to these people.

.

Are you in the medical profession? How do you know for sure they were not schizophrenic??

You cannot prove demons exist.. yet you can rule out a medical condition? How does that work again?

[:PsYKoTiC:BeHAvIoR:]

Mainpoint, on 15 April 2011 - 12:09 AM, said:

way back in the day I used to battle demons

Is that so?