Hey Atheists, the Exorcist was based on truth. So was the Amityville Horror and countless others. Now the...

Question

...common theme was that someone who professed faith and God went to battle with some serious darkness and evil, and all hell broke loose. So what do you say to contradict these well documented facts of the existence of God and His adversary evil?

Answer 1

Someone went insane. Big surprise.

Answer 2

There is no such thing as "demonic possession." These days, we call that Paranoid Schizophrenia. You give me someone who is supposedly "possessed," and I'll admit him to a psychiatric facility, where he'll get some Thorazine, Zyprexa, and some intensive psychotherapy, and I guarantee within a month he'll no longer be "possessed."
And as for the so-called "Amityville Horror:" I had an opportunity to talk to the medical examiner from that incident (it happened in New York state, and that particular doctor, a pathologist, had moved to Ohio back in the mid-1980s). He told me that it was a fairly conventional multiple murder, and there were no "supernatural" aspects, other than the murderer was probably psychotic and heard voices he interpreted as being from God or the devil. It was impossible to say, because the murderer was dead, too. Some hack writer, who knew what kind of books sold well, took the story, expounded on it, and turned it into a large crock of commercially viable horsesh*t.
Just because a book was written by a supposed Christian doesn't make it factual. Usually digging a little deeper reveals the real facts. Christians can be just as cynical as anyone else; possibly more so, because they know how gullible some Christians can be when to comes to demons and the devil, and any book that says there are demons among us will sell like holy hotcakes.
The moral: Don't believe everything you read, even if it's a best seller.

Answer 3

Yes, the Catholic Church claims to have the market cornered on "exorcisms" but the truth is that they STOLE so many ideas from already present concepts for exorcisms that shamans, and other rites conducted to thrash out "evil" spirits and they joyfully called the posessions "demonic" and "satanic" to nail the proverbial coffin of argument shut. Bottom line... possession DOES exist. Satanic/demonic? NO. Satan's a myth, but Buddhist teachings and Shamanic understanding is that there are minds, spirits, demi-god realms and god realms where all are just as mentally delusional as any other sentient being stuck in samsaric existence who try to toy with humanity in various ways. No big mystery and it's certainly not proof of the Catholic Church's superiority... this stuff happened, and exorcisms (of a sort) existed LONG BEFORE monotheism did. (all caps emphasis only, not shouting)

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Answer 4

Read Cuneo's "American Exorcism". The exorcist was a book, not an actual event. As one reviewer points out, the sociologists who wrote this book is clear that "the problems of those seeking exorcisms are 'fully explainable in social, cultural, medical, and psychological terms.'" He also shows that exorcisms have increased as the knowledge of exorcism in popular media has increased. Sounds like the church is, once again, creating it's own market.

Answer 5

The Amityville was not proven to be Demonic. There was a lot of INVESTIGATION done after the story came out .....yet nothing strange happened during any of the investigations that took place as the story stated.

Answer 6

Amityville was a hoax. And, outside movies, I've not once seen someone's head spinning around.

Answer 7

Those are horror movies, not 'well documented facts'. People accused of being posessed usually suffer from mental disorders or are faking it - no one has ever been shown NOT to be one of these. Please provide journal articles to back up your claim. From peer-reviewed sources.

Answer 8

Well-documented? Where? Can you provide a link to this documentation?

Answer 9

it was based on,key word BASED. It doesn't mean that it was actually true, it just means it could posssibly be true.