Question from Sneroul:
Ok this is gonna be a long post so brace yourself.
I live in South Africa Western cape. The Church here is quite conservative but that’s not the point. i have been indoctrinated but it never really had an effect. Well it did give me somewhat respect for the faith but that is about it. OK to make a long story short I went from liberal Christian to atheist to agnostic then to fundamental and then back to atheist and then agnostic. But I am gonna talk about the events in the last 6 months.
It happened like this: a friend of mine was a pastor who visited me. I was slightly bored so I decided to talk to him about random stuff. It eventually came to religion and I asked him why he decided his career path. And he converted me and I became born again, the feeling is hard to explain but I can’t say if its positive or negative. But that night I felt very strange, like I committed intellectual suicide. I brushed the feeling off… then the trouble started.
I began hearing voices in my head. Some of them good and some bad, it’s hard to explain but there did come out one good thing: one of the voices convinced me to leave a dangerous addiction. BUT I NEVER FELT ALONE. I made a big mistake to talk to some of the clergy and they said that there were demons in me. they decided to do an exorcism which did help at first but in the long term the voices came back worse than before. I started to feel fatigue and was tired and sweaty most of the time. So what happened next? Well I started to read about skeptics and atheism and the more I read the more I feel better, most of the voices are gone and only appear when I ask them. The clergy told me the reason for this is that the demons were successful in turning me away from God. I think they’re wrong so I came here and see if you can explain it.
Answer by SmartLX:
The simplest explanation for voices in your head (regardless of the mental state that is manifesting them so vividly…we’ll get to that) is that they are all you, expressing thoughts of which you are not fully conscious at first. The rational part of you would have been screaming for attention after you declared yourself “born again” in spite of all the issues with faith and religion which you learned about when you first became an atheist. If you had a dangerous addiction, that same rational voice would have been struggling against your compulsion to indulge it. It sounds as if you have externalised part of your own mind, to serve as a separate entity that you can talk to – both to work out difficult issues, and for company.
Some branches of the Church will instead jump straight to the conclusion that you have a case of demons, and propose (or impose) an exorcism. If you come to believe along with them that demons are responsible for your mental issues, an exorcism becomes a literal placebo, and you will feel better. Unfortunately, if the true cause is anything other than demons, the symptoms will return in time, and they may be worse for lack of proper treatment.
Hearing and conversing with inner voices is a known symptom of well-defined mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Between that and your mention of a bout of long-term fatigue, I can’t dismiss the possibility that you have a significant and perhaps serious medical issue. I advise you to see a doctor when possible, for a full check-up and for a referral to a psychiatrist. You will learn more about yourself and what you’re going through than you would from any pastor.
2 thoughts on “Demons AFTER an exorcism?”
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s/he did not tell us her/his age, sex and circumstances of life, but i have a feeling this is a fairly young male, having been intoxicated in her/his early age with religion, in the presence of her/his rational mind.
thus all her/his mental and possibly physical troubles.
i believe all these data, that we don’t know about the person, may be causative and/or help an expert to be able to see why all this is happening. (because of religion intoxicating rational minds).
i, as a hard atheist, don’t allow any religious issues, as are demons and other such. whatever may seem to a religious person as such entities, is of the troubled mind of the person that suffers the ‘demons’, usually caused by her/his life circumstances, seldom only her/his genes, and possibly both.
so, i agree with smartx’s advice for a psychiatrist, where the person will uncover her/his sex, age and life circumstances, the latter being of most importance, cos most of us pass through most human ages, in a body of one of the sexes, or some other form of either, but everyone’s life circumstances are unique, even of identical twins, and even of other multiple identical siblings. yes, that has happened, four identical sisters.
this is why i agree that a psychiatrist is the best possible solution for this person, for proper diagnosis and then help, and/or some medicines, but only after the diagnosis had been made by a professional trained and experienced in psychiatry, according to the age and sex of the patient.
i also agree with smartx that religion will not help, on the contrary, so i advise staying very far from any form of it, cos i have a strong feeling that all the trouble this person has had came from the fight of her/his rational mind against the irrationality of religion, in the presence of the hard to swallow fact that both science and religion have been unable to prove either way, god or not, with the most significant difference between the two, that until proven otherwise, until further notice, there is no god, on which stand is the science, of course, while religion tries to pass the burden of proof, which is on the side that makes a positive claim, onto science, i.e., to prove the non existence of whatever of the billions of billions of things that are claimed to not exist. cos they don’t.
like the claim that there are jbepajn80neblos.
try prove there is no such thing somewhere, anywhere.
impossible?
but, the solution of the ‘problem’ is obvious to any and every rational mind:
whoever claims that the jbepajn8oneblos exist is obliged to prove their claim. to prove there are jbepajn8oneblos.
i am waiting to read your proof of the existence of jbepajn8oneblos.
oh, while we are at it, please prove there is ‘god’.
scientific method only. (there is a wiki article about scientific method).
thanks.
What you describe sounds like a mental ailment. But you need to see a psychiatrist to figure out.
I have seen schizophrenia up close … and voices in the head (auditory hallucinations) are symptoms of it. Would request you to see a psychiatrist as religion can be of absolutely no use here.