02.17
Polish Catholics attended the 22nd Exorcists’ Congress (hehe) in Niepokalanow, near Warsaw. Poland has more than 100 professional exorcists.
When asked by journalists, the exorcists admitted that possession by the devil may look just like it is portrayed in scary movies. But the rites that the exorcists use to expel evil spirits are much less spectacular.
“Our role is mainly to say prayers and psalms,” Father Andrzej Grefkowicz told the press conference. Another priest, Aleksander Posacki, said that too many myths surround exorcisms, which in fact are based on fundamental church rules.
You read that right. They think it’ll look just like The Exorcist. I imagine that the Emily Rose movie was also entirely real.
During the conference, they also discussed demonology, saying it should be taken more seriously by both the general public and those in seminary. I wonder if there’s room in the Religious Studies budget for some classes–or would that be the Biology Department? Maybe it’s exobiology.
Here’s my favorite quote from the press release:
Another priest, Aleksander Posacki, said that too many myths surround exorcisms . . .
Well . . . yeah, dude.
Not that Poland is particularly relevant. Exorcism is alive and well in the US, in both Catholic and Protestant flavors.
Hooray! A non-Jon post! Ha ha.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Sorry @kleiner, but demons and devils would really have to exist for that quote to have any meaning in this case. Of course, if you have any special information, you know, evidence, proof, fine scientific arguments to support the claim of these supernatural beasties then please trot it out. Till then, you really shouldn’t abuse Shakespeare.
There are things that are not dreamt of in your scientific worldview, Phillip. That you insist on “scientific arguments” shows that you don’t take Shakespeare seriously on this point. Science is fine and good, but it is not a totalizing system of understanding everything. Hamlet is wisely attacking reductionism here.
I don’t have any scientific arguments for the existence of angels and demons. But anyone who believes that the Bible is the Word of God (I don’t have any scientific arguments for that either) will believe such things. At the end of the day, I don’t think scientific arguments are the only good reasons to believe things. And I think it is impossible to have a “perfectly rational” set of beliefs. Movements of faith are a basic part of the human condition. I am convicted by a certain revelatory story. I can’t prove it, but I don’t think it is thereby irrational. You don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to, but claiming it is simply irrational because it cannot be known by science strikes me as nothing more than reductionistic scientism – which itself a form of faith (can you scientifically prove that science is the only way of knowing things?).
Kleiner, you actually believe in demonic possession? Really? Do they cause headaches and unbalance your humors? Do you think this girl was actually possessed by demons?
Science is a way of knowing reality. If some phenomenon has an impact on physical reality, it is measurable and accessible by science. If demons routinely took over people’s bodies–if our universe really looked like that–we’d be able to measure the exact interface they were using to drive someone’s muscles and make them say and do things with their material bodies. Here’s an excerpt from another blog I read (he was talking about parapsycology and telekenesis and stuff, but the principle still applies):
“Let me shift gears and talk briefly about the Continuity Expression.
It’s a simple trick of geometry and physics that we learned about early as undergrads, at Caltech. You draw a box in space, perhaps containing some matter. To keep things interesting, let’s say that the material is in motion, a fluid or gas. Maybe a river. Or light flowing from the sun. First carefully measure what’s inside the box. Also, keep an accurate accounting of anything that crosses all of six faces of the box, entering or leaving through the boundary.
Assuming that nothing is created or destroyed, the resulting expression must balance. If a net outward flow is seen, the total amount of stuff remaining inside should decrease by exactly the amount that departed. It’s a simple, rather obvious concept that enables us to derive everything from gas dynamics to the transfer of photons in the solar interior. The Continuity Expression has been essential to developing an understanding of particle physics within the blazing targets of high-energy accelerators.
Now add in the notion of information in the formal sense, as both a thermodynamic and a mathematical property. Some physicists get all spooky about information, especially down at the level of the quantum. But on one thing they agree. It takes energy to convey information from one patch of space to another. And most of them feel that information must obey relativity — the speed of light limit. In fact, information is nearly always carried, across any appreciable distance, by some form of electromagnetic radiation.
Combine these two notions and you quickly see another reason why scientists have trouble with parapsychology. Telepathy and other psi phenomena appear to involve transfers of information from one person or place to another. One individual’s brain state gets partially transposed to another brain, far away. And so on. Neurons fire that might not otherwise have fired, as the recipient thinks some new thoughts that weren’t generated from within or by normal sensory input. Something entered the second brain to stimulate these changes.
But what entered? If we carefully eliminate all the mundane stimuli of radio, sound, light, smell… what’s left? Mystics claim unknown channels beyond the ken of science, but the Continuity Expression lets you check for unknown channels, indirectly! By measuring even minute changes within a given volume that cannot be explained in normal ways. It’s how X Rays and radioactivity were discovered.
You want openmindedness? Physicists have looked for other, unknown channels. They’ve looked hard, with the incentive of a Nobel for anyone who finds one! The Continuity Expression lets them trawl for clues either within the box or crossing the boundaries.
If it’s strong enough to affect neurons in a systematic way, don’t you think they would have found it by now?”
The above applies to demonic possession just as much as to telepathy. Of course there are things beyond the current knowledge of science. X-rays and radiation used to be among them. Dark matter was (mostly still is) another. We know black holes exist even though no light can escape them. Those paragraphs explain why. That there are things that are outside our current understanding doesn’t mean that demons are among those things.
I keep saying this: if “supernatural” phenomena exist (ghosts, demons, remote sensing), and had a measurable impact on the “natural”, they themselves would just be “natural”, because that would be how the universe is. In other words, once something is understood, it is no longer supernatural, practically by definition. If any of this existed and had an effect on anything, it would be accessible by the methods of science.
And sure, I can’t scientifically prove that science is “the only way” of knowing things, other than it simply is the best tool we’ve come up with. I’m honestly not sure you know how that tool works.
You accuse us of reductionist scientism, but you are simply having faith in faith. At least our worldview has produced the entire modern world, and tripled human lifespans. I’m sure you don’t accept that Tarot cards or patterns in chicken blood are a means of knowing the future, but maybe there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your Catholic philosophy.
The danger here, is that this belief in demons and exorcism is not always a harmless belief. Often, epilepsy, schizophrenia, tourettes, and many other recognized disorders are the cause for these “possessions,” and relying on an exorcism is delaying the treatment that is truly needed.
In the more extreme cases, not only does the exorcism fail to help, it is directly responsible for a death.
A quick google search will reveal a dozen recent deaths due to faith healing, deaths that could have been prevented with proper treatment.
To respond to Kleiner, who has no scientific arguments for the existence of demons; isn’t it significant that these cases of demon possession can all be explained scientifically? That is, I am not aware of a single case of demon possession, or other evidence of demons, that cannot be explained without relying on the supernatural.
I agree with Joe’s first paragraph here. I try to make that point in my longer post.
I don’t know if it is the case that every case of alleged possession can be explained scientifically. I’ll be honest, I’ve not looked into it that much. But what we are asking here is closely related to the question of miracles.
I have little doubt that many events called “miracles” in the past had natural explanations but we just didn’t have the science to manage it yet. Dr. Sherlock and I have been trying to get our hands on recent canonization documents – stuff from the last decade or so. In those cases, the Church brings in the best scientists they can to see if the alleged miracle (cure from cancer, etc) has a naturalist explanation. I’m sure they sometimes do. But I am open to the possibility that they sometimes don’t.
Yes, I believe in demons and angels. It is clearly biblical. I don’t want to make a judgment about this or that case of possession, though. I suspect at least some (if not most) exorcisms are wrong-headed. My wife has a phd in psychology and I have great respect for mental health sciences. I am pretty confident that any number of alleged possessions in the past have actually been cases where the person was simply mentally disturbed. The Church now has rigid protocols where thorough and double checked medical and mental health evaluations should be done on any alleged case of possession. But I don’t know that there is any guarantee that those protocols are always followed.
No I do not believe in Tarot cards or such things. I’ve not given such things much thought, but I don’t imagine it would be difficult to show that such things not only can’t be proven but that they contradict other claims of reason. This is one of the reasons I am not a Mormon. I think you can prove that Mormonism is false – that is, you can show that her faith claims are incompatible with what reason can discern as true. I do not think one can do the same with Catholic teachings.
I am not a scientist and I never claimed to be one. I think I know “how that tool works” though. My end is not to destroy science; I think it is a legitimate enterprise and we come to know real truths about the world through that mode of inquiry. But I am also prompt to point out the limits of science. I think science is the best tool for knowing some things – what Aristotle calls “efficient causes”. I actually think it is a horrible tool for knowing other things (what Aristotle calls formal and final causes).
Suppose some kind of extremely erratic behavior that defies ordinary explanation (someone speaking in ancient languages that they had no previous familiarity with). This behavior can be observed (and it would be useful and interesting to hook these people up to machines that could study brain patterns). It might be the case that there are perfectly natural explanations for the behavior. But I am open to the possibility that there sometimes aren’t (and not just that we don’t have a scientific explanation yet, but that no scientific explanation could be given). In the case of these unusual behaviors, we can be observe the effect but not always the cause. The question, of course, is ‘what is the cause?’. The first reasonable thing to do is a thorough medical and mental health evaluation. Is there a chemical imbalance in the brain or a diagnosable behavioral disorder, etc etc? Psychologists and psychiatrists are good at such things, and I trust their judgments. But I am not a materialist and I am not a behaviorist and I reject the reduction of psychology to neuropsychology. I suspect that it is almost always the cause that some natural cause is at work. But I am open to the possibility that there are non-material and extraordinary causes for said extremely erratic behavior.
I am honest about my faith. Reductionist scientism is not, it pretends it is not an act of faith but it is. I should say that I a DEEPLY skeptical of your claim that “our worldview has produced the entire modern world”. Wow, what a claim. I would submit that Aristotle and Aquinas did more to set the stage for the explosion of science than any modern reductionistic philosopher. And do you wan to credit science with other parts of the “the entire modern world” – including our art and morality and music and literature, etc etc etc? You might want to ease up on that claim a bit.
Kleiner,
One minute you make very precise arguments about morality and how it cannot be one way or another. But when it comes to determining truth and facts, you brush something aside very easily and disregard it offhandedly.
“But I am open to the possibility that there sometimes aren’t (and not just that we don’t have a scientific explanation yet, but that no scientific explanation could be given).” Here you just decide that you don’t like the scientific method, or disagree with it. You just say that science can’t provide an explanation. You have no evidence, no argument, no reason here. You just flat out disregard it. Even if science couldn’t show what is happening today (which I would bet it can), it doesn’t mean that in the future we will not have an answer. This seems like a God of the gaps type of argument. Because science can’t prove something today, you feel it acceptable to believe that it is supernatural and leave it at that.
You have been saying that you “reject” certain ideas or world views quite a bit throughout your comments. I don’t understand this thought process. It would be nice to just reject ideas I don’t agree with, regardless of the evidence for or against it. Maybe you’re not doing that, but it appears as if you are.
“I am not a scientist and I never claimed to be one. I think I know “how that tool works” though.” I have serious doubts that you do. If you do know how it works, then maybe you don’t fully grasp the far reaching consequences science has as a method. Or maybe you don’t understand the reason why science is the basis for defining truth.
To me, based on your comments, it seems that you are a “If I can think of it, then it can happen” type of person. I’d have to agree with James, it appears you are having faith in faith. Maybe you could provide some basis for your faith beyond that if just feels right to you?
I don’t have a rational argument for my faith. That is why it is faith. But the notion that atheists have top to bottom absolutely rational beliefs is simply not true. I have personal faith convictions. I think my faith has extraordinary explanatory power. And I think I could demonstrate through natural reason and natural theology some of my beliefs about man and God, but certainly not all of them. The Catholic tradition, though, tends to view faith and reason as complementary rather than as competitors. They are different modes of disclosure.
I am not setting aside science when I don’t like it. I am just suggesting the possibility that there might be things that science (given the limits of that mode of inquiry) cannot explain. Is this such an outlandish claim that it doesn’t even deserve to be considered? I’d venture to guess that several SHAFTers (any of them who are sympathetic with Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida) would all agree with me on this. Pointing out this possibility does not prove that x or y exists (angels, souls, etc). I’ve not pretended that it does. But it opens the door to other modes of thought that might disclose things that science cannot disclose. I am not trying to say anything more or less than that. Such a view is unfashionable for those that make science an idol, I understand that.
In my defense regarding my rejecting other positions: I try to be pretty good about providing arguments. On this blog I’ve provided arguments against relativism, I’ve glossed arguments against materialism, glossed arguments for God’s existence, etc etc. But I’m not perfect and I won’t pretend that any of those glosses are sufficient. But I’ve engaged in very little “look at how stupid it is that people believe x” activity. In fact, it is the views of religious people that frequently have been the subject of that unfair treatment. I have done more to present a positive vision and argument for my view of reality and human nature than have the hosts of this blog. At the risk of beating a dead horse – I’ve still not heard a single definition of humanism nor heard a coherent and non-relativistic moral vision.
General note: I am not interested in being “perfectly rational”. In fact, the desire to be so is not only vanity, it is an impossibility. Now I have a very high view of human reason (higher even than many atheists like Huenemann), and I don’t want to be committed to anything that is patently irrational. But I have convictions of faith. That faith, I think, should be understood in light of reason. But I don’t think reason, by herself, can fly high enough. To use Pope Benedict’s phrase, I think true faith completes true reason.
I understand that most SHAFTers reject this view. That is fine. But be wary of making scientific rationality an absolute idol.
The question that I would have for Ben and others is this: do you restrict yourself to only believing in things for which you have scientific evidence? Or are there other kinds of reasons that count as acceptable reasons for believing something? It strikes me as practically impossible to live by the former. What would that mean for basic human experiences like love and hope?
Speaking of love, it is the sort of thing for which there is never proof (Kierkegaard has a profound reflection on this point in Works of Love). But if this is so, then that means that not only do we all have non-scientific beliefs, but our beliefs about the highest and best things are held without scientific evidence.
Morality is another example – for all the bloviating about how I allegedly believe things “just because I can think them”, no one on this blog has provided a coherent explanation for why they believe the moral norms that they believe (and judge others for not believing).
If you do think there are other kinds of reasons for believing things (we might call them “reasons of the heart”), then you open the door to something new. Released from your reductionism, you won’t necessarily become a theist but you at least don’t exclude possibilities before seriously considering them and are at least in a position to explain the human condition in a way that has fidelity to our actual experience of it (which is frankly more Bach than it is Pinker).
I can play your game @kleiner. Science is no better than religion (he he) and I believe that the little invisible Unicorn of Creation that sits in an invisible heaven started all this, and looks after us. He has always been and always will be. And I believe that you can prove Christianity false, but can’t do the same with the principals of Unicornarianism. That’s just as silly as your statement. There are plenty of books and writings (historical and scientific) that take on the Christian religion and the Catholic version of it.
The problem @kleiner is that you are a believer, and you have faith in belief.
Me? I see science work. I can test it. We understand how to use it to learn more. There are things out there we don’t understand, but I’m willing to bet that science will get there first (and don’t see the need to make up fairy stories in the meantime). In fact, religion, including your Catholic sect of Christianity, hasn’t been in the race for a long time. As to faith in science, mine is base on the actual ability of science to do what it says it can do, and provide the proof to boot. As a system of knowing, science kicks religions butt.
Oh, I see. Gee, if I had known you could disprove Christianity in one tidy paragraph then I’d have never believed it. Thank you for enlightening me. Forward that on to the Vatican, I bet Pope Benedict hasn’t thought of this either.
Sorry, sarcasm is uncalled for and I immediately regret the post. I apologize, Phillip.
Here is a non-sarcastic response: FSM type arguments belie nothing more than a near total ignorance of natural theology. To people that make these arguments honestly think that brilliant thinkers like Pope Benedict would not have considered such obvious objections?
Dr. Kleiner, could you answer the following questions? I think you’ve touched on them before, but if I could see them in one place that’d be helpful.
1. What do you consider to be the main faith-claims of what you call “Reductionistic Scientism”?
2. Am I correct in interpreting that your trust in science doesn’t stem from faith-claims in science itself, but somehow stems from Christian/Catholic theology? How-so?
3. If we all have our faith claims, but two people can have conflicting faith claims, how do you weed out the good ones from the bad? Can you? Is it luck of the dice?
4. When you were an atheist, was your attitude towards faith similar to the attitudes expressed above? If so, how did it change to yours today?
5. What faith claims of Mormonism do you think are incompatible with reason?
Sorry if this is a lot to throw at you, you’ve already spent a lot of time lately (doing a good job) at being the loyal opposition.
Very briefly since I’ve been all over this blog (nothing like having a big pile of grading to make you want to do some philosophy online) but have to get to some other work. If you are a local student, I invite you to sit in on my Intro to Philosophy course (MWF 8:30-9:20 in WIDST 007). We’ll be covering Aristotle and Aquinas for the next month.
“1. What do you consider to be the main faith-claims of what you call “Reductionistic Scientism”?”
Two basic claims to what I’ve called “reductionistic scientism”, and the two naturally travel together. (i) Metaphysical materialism. (ii) Scientific inquiry is the only means of acquiring truth.
“2. Am I correct in interpreting that your trust in science doesn’t stem from faith-claims in science itself, but somehow stems from Christian/Catholic theology? How-so?”
I think science is only a reliable mode of inquiry if you believe that (a) the world is intelligible and (b) man is intelligent. Scientists never make arguments for either of those claims, nor should they. Science assumes these thing. It is the business of philosophy and philosophical theology to work these things out. My defense of (a) and (b) would essentially be theistic at the end of the day (though it need not be explicitly Christian). A considerable part of western philosophy has used metaphysical claims about God in this way. Painting in very broad strokes, if you don’t want to make that move I think you are left with basically two options. Either Humean skepticism (but when you give up God here you also have to forfeit science’s claim to knowledge). Or, in response to Hume’s skepticism, you could make a Kantian move (but Kantian idealism has its own whole host of problems, and frankly people are not exactly lining up out the door to be Kantians).
“3. If we all have our faith claims, but two people can have conflicting faith claims, how do you weed out the good ones from the bad? Can you? Is it luck of the dice?”
Good question: how do you distinguish between Mohammed and Joseph Smith, or even Jesus Christ and David Koresh? At the end of the day I don’t think there is any way to conclusively sort this out. But I think we can do something. So as far as vetting faith beliefs, I would propose a two-fold strategy. An initial “sniff test”. And if it passes that, see if the faith commits you to anything that contradicts reliable claims of natural reason. Truth cannot conflict with truth, so when it does you have a problem on your hands. Either the science or philosophical reasoning is bad, or the faith is misinterpreted or just plain false.
“4. When you were an atheist, was your attitude towards faith similar to the attitudes expressed above? If so, how did it change to yours today?”
When I was an atheist I was a snotty Nietzschean who thought theists were morons who might as well believe the moon was made of cheese. My conversion was first intellectual, reading Aristotle and Aquinas and thinking seriously about beauty disclosed to me that my worldview was not only impoverished but bankrupt. That made me a theists, but I only became religious after years of humbling prayer.
“5. What faith claims of Mormonism do you think are incompatible with reason?”
I would have a laundry list, and to defend this list I would need to make arguments and do some philosophical theology (I would trade off of the first 10 questions of Aquinas’ Summa). But here are a few claims that immediately com to mind that I would argue are incompatible with truths that can be known by natural reason: that there is more than one god, that god can change (and is hence temporal), that god is material, and that man and god are members of the same species.
On Monday (Feb 22) at 8:30am in WIDT 007 I will be covering a couple of Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God and will be tinkering with them a bit to try to demonstrate that Mormonism is false (that essential faith claims of Mormonism are incompatible with what natural reason can tell us about God). You and others who are interested are welcome to come. It is my Intro to Philosophy class, and I present these arguments to my students in order to live up to the Socratic example of philosophy – being a “gadfly”.
I can stand a little sarcasm. I’m a husband and father, so I’m used to it. As to the “brilliant thinkers like Pope Benedict”, I would throw in brilliant thinkers like Darwin or Einstein. Appeal to authority fails.
I wish it was that easy to “disprove Christianity”, but I’ll just go with showing that your arguments so far are no less convincing than FSM arguments. But then you also misunderstand what’s needed here. I no more need to disprove the existence of God, for instance, than I need to disprove the existence of Santa Clause. Your job is to provide proof, and I think we all agree you haven’t done that.
Do gods exist? Can’t say yes or no, but there being absolutely no evidence, and a track record of mans habit of creating them out of whole cloth (and the bits and pieces of older gods), as well as the failure of Christianity to stand up to serious examination (the Bible failing as history) leads me to say not likely. Approaching zero not likely.
As to this…”To use Pope Benedict’s phrase, I think true faith completes true reason.
I understand that most SHAFTers reject this view. That is fine. But be wary of making scientific rationality an absolute idol.”
You mistake us for “believers”. I don’t know too many atheists that treat science or scientific rationality as an “absolute idol.” In fact we know that human failings can create problems with science which is why we demand on peer review, and replication of experiments and independent observation. It’s why we can have great respect for someone like Darwin or Einstein, as well as their contributions to the world of science, and still see their failures even in their own sciences.
Of course, you have “true” faith. All we have is our best efforts at reason. Oh, and science. So while you folks are still talking about the best way to do exorcisms, science is actually doing something about the understanding the real roots of mental illness.
I would appeal, as I believe I have done in the past on this blog, to Aquinas’ arguments for the existence of God. I think at least 3 of them are extremely compelling, as is the entire metaphysical system.
To your second post, again I don’t see faith and reason as an either/or.
Relevant: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/guyana/7548280/14-year-old-dies-after-exorcism.html