Are you a demon?

blü 2 said:

For a start, I have no reason to think demons are anything but imaginary. No real demons, no real possession.

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And neither do I - but what if I'm wrong! I've been wrong about plenty of things in the past, that's for sure

My answer would be that I can't, and I'd leave it at that

shunyadragon said:

Problem still applies, and by far all believers of the diverse conflicting religions of the world pray or ask God to be God-like, and not Demon-like, and they claim to get the answer they want. In this line of thinking people can believe anything they want, and still receive God's grace upon request and 'know' God..

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From experience, one can tell whether one is getting consistent answers from God to confirm whether He is the arbiter of your truths or whether the demon has taken over. If the demon has taken over, you suffer inconveniences in your life and feel desperate or even suicidal. If God has truly had a grip over your truths you live happily and at peace with yourself and with whatever you have in your life because you are a fully contended human being in satchitananda.

Shantanu said:

From experience, one can tell whether one is getting consistent answers from God to confirm whether He is the arbiter of your truths or whether the demon has taken over. If the demon has taken over, you suffer inconveniences in your life and feel desperate or even suicidal. If God has truly had a grip over your truths you live happily and at peace with yourself and with whatever you have in your life because you are a fully contended human being in satchitananda.

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The claim of 'personal experience' remains to personal, anecdotal, and subjective to be reliable. If anyone desires consistent answers one will get consistent answers.

shunyadragon said:

The claim of 'personal experience' remains to personal, anecdotal, and subjective to be reliable.

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The ultimate test of whether one's personal experience is reliable is to ask God by having an agreement with Him that one is seeking confirmation of ones truth by a display of a message of '7' (1.15,2.41, 3.04, 4.12, 5.02, 6.10, 7.00, 8.08, 9.25, 10.42, 11.32, 12.04, etc) when one approaches a digital clock in devotion that one uses to test for Him. This is scientific because surely if God exists in reality He will have to answer with the correct reply given that all 7.5 billion human replies would have been subjective. If that reply is not sufficient, there is no God by anyone's prophecies and God remains an imaginary concept.

Shantanu said:

The ultimate test of whether one's personal experience is reliable is to ask God by having an agreement with Him that one is seeking confirmation of ones truth by a display of a message of '7' (1.15,2.41, 3.04, 4.12, 5.02, 6.10, 7.00, 8.08, 9.25, 10.42, 11.32, 12.04, etc) when one approaches a digital clock in devotion that one uses to test for Him. This is scientific because surely if God exists in reality He will have to answer with the correct reply given that all 7.5 billion human replies would have been subjective. If that reply is not sufficient, there is no God by anyone's prophecies and God remains an imaginary concept.

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The bold is the logical conclusion based on the outcome of your argument, but, of course, I do not share this egocentric line of reasoning. It is to unreliable, and depends on fallible human logic.

Playing around with a digital clock gets you playing around with a digital clock.

shunyadragon said:

The bold is the logical conclusion based on the outcome of your argument, but, of course, I do not share this egocentric line of reasoning. It is to unreliable, and depends on fallible human logic.

Playing around with a digital clock gets you playing around with a digital clock.

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So your belief is that God does not answer individual questions like mine but relies upon its prophets sent to humanity from time to time to give humanity its messages like was done by Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Guru Nanak, Krishna (if he was a real human being) etc and all these form a pattern of prophecies that give the overall message of God as practiced by the Baha'i' faith?

Eddi said:

And neither do I - but what if I'm wrong! I've been wrong about plenty of things in the past, that's for sure

My answer would be that I can't, and I'd leave it at that

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Then we've simply enlarged the category of things with no known means of rebuttal ─ solipsism, for example, or Last Thursdayism, or that we're all elements in a Tron game or dreams in the brain of a superbeing, &c.

Eddi said:

Imagine, you never truly experienced the things you remember

They never really happened to you

Your conscious experience actually started only a couple of days ago

You are a sprit or demon, possessing someone, but you don’t know this, you think you are them as by possessing them you have access to the memories stored in their brain - and you have no prior memories of your own existence

You are a spirit or demon who has displaced the original occupant of your body

But you don’t know this; you think you are the person you’re occupying

Your memories and sense of self are therefore bogus

And the original occupant of the body you occupy is no longer in control of it but are under the delusion that they are – they have no idea you are in control!

They experience your thoughts as their thoughts, your deeds as their deeds

Truly, they are possessed

Question: How can you know you are not a demon who is possessing someone?

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We can all be possessed by our own inner demon which is an inner voice which forms as a compliment to our personalities' bias. Jung called this the shadow. Under certain circumstances where the shadow is overcharged by the ego's extra effort to suppress some inner psychic need and the ego "exhausts" itself, the shadow will come out. Also when a person gets drunk this can happen although the effect can be milder.

What you experience is a restriction in your consciousness, a sort of fight or flight like awareness. You say and do things that you wouldn't normally do. You feel intense but you may also feel your self-awareness is just along for the ride.

After this episode you gradually regain your control. You realize how unfortunate your behaviour was even as you struggle with a sense of righteousness.

This sort of possession should be treated as a need for an inner adjustment of personality. The uncontrolled impulse represents, at some level, an instinctual need which must be met in a timely way cooperatively with a person's ego still in control. The ego must negotiate and compromise where possible if it wants to remain in command.

Woberts said:

Demons don't exist, therefor it's impossible to be a demon.

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Have you not rad Philip Pulman's books?

Eddi said:

Question: How can you know you are not a demon who is possessing someone?

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You can't.
If it's possible for our memories to be entirely fabricated, then we can never know with absolute certainty that what we think of as our past actually happened to us.

Also, for anybody who takes issue with the use of "demon" for this thought experiment, you can replace it with "alien parasite" or something similar and the principle remains the same.

Woberts said:

Demons don't exist, therefor it's impossible to be a demon.

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blü 2 said:

For a start, I have no reason to think demons are anything but imaginary. No real demons, no real possession.

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Google "Maxwell's demon" for a famous 19th century problem bedeviling thermodynamics. I think it's been shown this demon cannot exist, either.


But Eddi's question is serious. I'm not sure you can answer it in the negative so easily. A definition for "demon possession" will have to be agreed on first. If we take this to be the influence of any outside intelligent agent on a person's mind which does not reach that person via his or her sense organs (meaning the person doesn't hear the agent talk, doesn't read something the agent wrote, doesn't see a video of the agent and so on), then excluding the possibility of demon possession will be hard to exclude.

For instance, we must rule out indirect influence. Most Americans are profoundly influenced by pioneering educator John E. Dewey even though he's long dead and they've never heard of him. But they attended public schools using some of his pedagogical theory to teach. At least Dewey was a man and not an invisible spirit, yet this example may illustrate some of the difficulties involved.

The only tool you have is Occam's Razor, and before applying it, you'll need to refine the definition to specify more precisely what's meant by a "demon." If successful at this program, then the negative answer will only be probative, as the Razor is not airtight. Science deliberately restricts the range of phenomena to be studied in order to avoid the kind of debate seen on this thread.

Eddi said:

I don't see how an entity would have to be more powerful than God in order to be able to possess someone

In the bible there are multiple instances of demonic possession, such as that person who had their possessing spirits driven out by Jesus Christ into a herd of swine

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All of the spirits possessing others were aware of who and what they were. I am having a hard time conceptualizing a spirit that has lost its sense of self to the degree you pose your original question. The only way I seem to make sense of it is to see two fractured souls occupying the same body, appearing in some degree like a split personality. Though, many heart transplant patients seem to become "possessed" by the original owner of the heart, the dead, and the dead are not aware (I don't think). "How can you know you are not a demon who is possessing someone?" Well, I suppose if you are not aware of who you are then there is nothing that can be thought about. It just is.

Eddi said:

Imagine, you never truly experienced the things you remember

They never really happened to you

Your conscious experience actually started only a couple of days ago

You are a sprit or demon, possessing someone, but you don’t know this, you think you are them as by possessing them you have access to the memories stored in their brain - and you have no prior memories of your own existence

You are a spirit or demon who has displaced the original occupant of your body

But you don’t know this; you think you are the person you’re occupying

Your memories and sense of self are therefore bogus

And the original occupant of the body you occupy is no longer in control of it but are under the delusion that they are – they have no idea you are in control!

They experience your thoughts as their thoughts, your deeds as their deeds

Truly, they are possessed

Question: How can you know you are not a demon who is possessing someone?

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I know because if I were a demon, why the hell would I want to possess this guy? Ugh, so lame.

Shantanu said:

So your belief is that God does not answer individual questions like mine but relies upon its prophets sent to humanity from time to time to give humanity its messages like was done by Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Guru Nanak, Krishna (if he was a real human being) etc and all these form a pattern of prophecies that give the overall message of God as practiced by the Baha'i' faith?

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No this is not my view, nor that of the Baha'i Faith, but to make egocentric claims that you personally 'know' God by speaking to God.

You apparently do not understand the Baha'i Faith and how it describes the relationship between God Creation and humanity. We know God and the nature of the Divine through the attributes of God in our physical existence, and the Scripture of the Revelation from God. The questions that are important are answered in the scripture. Demanding personal individual answers from God is egocentric unrealistic micromanagement. God does not micromanage.

shunyadragon said:

No this is not my view, nor that of the Baha'i Faith, but to make egocentric claims that you personally 'know' God by speaking to God.

You apparently do not understand the Baha'i Faith and how it describes the relationship between God Creation and humanity. We know God and the nature of the Divine through the attributes of God in our physical existence, and the Scripture of the Revelation from God. The questions that are important are answered in the scripture. Demanding personal individual answers from God is egocentric unrealistic micromanagement. God does not micromanage.

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So your scriptures say that God does not micromanage through individuals. We have to rely upon the scriptures of the prophet Bahaullah to understand God: is that because God is lazy?

Shantanu said:

So your scriptures say that God does not micromanage through individuals. We have to rely upon the scriptures of the prophet Baha'u'llah to understand God: is that because God is lazy?

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No, the questions are answered, but the egocentric individuals are lazy expect individual micromanagement for them personally, and refuse to follow the Divine prayers, guidance, spiritual principles, and spiritual laws in the scripture.

Since many hundreds of thousands of individuals claim diverse conflicting claims of such knowledge it is unreliable at the fallible personal level.

shunyadragon said:

No, the questions are answered, but the egocentric individuals are lazy expect individual micromanagement for them personally, and refuse to follow the Divine prayers, guidance, spiritual principles, and spiritual laws in the scripture.

Since many hundreds of thousands of individuals claim diverse conflicting claims of such knowledge it is unreliable at the fallible personal level.

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So we should not expect God to have any responsibilities towards us individually because He has already written these into your Baha'i' scriptures, in which case we can ask a Baha'i' on what God expects of us, am I right?

Shantanu said:

So we should not expect God to have any responsibilities towards us individually because He has already written these into your Baha'i' scriptures, in which case we can ask a Baha'i' on what God expects of us, am I right?

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No do not ask Baha'is, they are fallible humans like everyone else. God Created all of our physical existence and humanity. His responsibility to humanity is written in the scriptures over the millennia for everyone to read on a level they can understand..

shunyadragon said:

No do not ask Baha'is, they are fallible humans like everyone else. God Created all of our physical existence and humanity. His responsibility to humanity is written in the scriptures over the millennia for everyone to read on a level they can understand..

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Do these scriptures that you say exist say that humans need to pray to God for any kind of benefits to be bestowed on them by God or they will end up suffering either in this life or in an afterlife?

Eddi said:

Imagine, you never truly experienced the things you remember

They never really happened to you

Your conscious experience actually started only a couple of days ago

You are a sprit or demon, possessing someone, but you don’t know this, you think you are them as by possessing them you have access to the memories stored in their brain - and you have no prior memories of your own existence

You are a spirit or demon who has displaced the original occupant of your body

But you don’t know this; you think you are the person you’re occupying

Your memories and sense of self are therefore bogus

And the original occupant of the body you occupy is no longer in control of it but are under the delusion that they are – they have no idea you are in control!

They experience your thoughts as their thoughts, your deeds as their deeds

Truly, they are possessed

Question: How can you know you are not a demon who is possessing someone?

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I firmly believe that all gods, devils, angels and demons are archetypal structures embedded deeply within our unconscious mind. They are brought into our conscious mind through forms of Symbology.