Exorcism of Emily Rose (Anneliese Michel) - Science VS Rel

[Rave]

Science VS Religion?

The biggest debate of all time. Me? Im usually the science/fact based guy. But after seeing Exorcism of Emily Rose (based on the true story of Anneliese Michel) I walked about questioning some of the things I believe in it (or dont). Well, dont get me wrong- Im not about to run to the nearest Church and pray. But its a very interesting topic.

The story here <---

Of course science says she wasnt possessed by a demonic force. She had epileptic psychosis, apparently. Well that would account for "seizures" and erratic behavior. But what accounts for the more mysterious happenings?

It all started when Anneliese was 16. She fell into a fit of seizures and convulsions. She was taken to the hospital and given medication. Did it help? No. She got worse, and then began to see demonic faces and hear voices speaking of hell. Science couldnt help there, could it? Well sure maybe she's crazy (seemingly at this point).

As she progresses she gets to the point of acting out on her family and other people. Acting more erratic than any mental patient I've ever read about. But still, science wins there. Still a crazy person.

But during the recorded exorcisms, the tapes clearly play her cursing and shouting in old languages that most people, especially a 16 year old, do not know. The big one that got me was Aramaic, the language of Christ (or however they view it). Its possible she learned it at school or whatever. But what about the four or five other languages she was using. Ancient Greek, Latin, and so on. Its interesting. Another thing along the same lines: she was emitting multiple voices at the same time. Humans DO have a second set of vocal cords, but we can't use them. Well...Tibetan Monks train themselves to, or so I've heard. But a 16 year old, German girl? Thats somewhat eerie.

But the most interesting aspects of her possession (Or whatever it was). When it comes to psychosis and schizofrenia, the patient does not know about the alternate personalities they have made up. To make it simple, crazy people do not know they are crazy. This was mentioned in the movie, but it is a known fact. According to the story of Anneliese Michel, she was well aware of her "possession" and the fits that she would go into. Thats the biggest thing that made me think. Its possible for a girl to learn all these languages or be crazy and see demonic faces. But to be aware of one's possession (or rather be aware of one's mental illness in terms of schizo or psychosis), thats a head scratcher

Of course there are all sorts of cases and statistics that make you wonder about science and religion. Well, even thought I am a science person, I still think the paranormal (opposed to religiously based demons) are quite possibly real. For instance, when it comes to the existance of llife on other planets. You are absolutely ignorant to say that life doesnt exist elsewhere. In our galaxy alone there are 1,000,000,000 stars. There are another 1,000,000,000 galaxies besides ours, just as large if not larger. Multiply that together that gives you 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in our universe. (Give or take a few lol). There is NO way we are alone But thats another argument for another thread on another day lol.


Science VS Religion.

Any thoughts?



BTW: I had typed up this a few minutes ago and it was 10x better...and then my power went out. So I typed it up again, and its lacking some of the points I had before. But you get the idea.

[Crys]

im an atheist. religion is foolish. i dont need to 'think' about such things cuz its pretty cut and dry. religion is a byproduct of mans early history, an attempt to 'deal.' thats all =D

[Skam]

Intresting topic.

There is always something you DONT know, either is it science or religion -that no human has a real answer for.

Im a person who belives more in science then in god. But I do belive not all science is true and not all religion is wrong.
Facts, well unless she was supervised 24/7 she might very well have learned certiain sentences here and there, bury it deep in the mind and while under psycosis she let it out. Information today is flowing to you from everywhere, books,internet,papers,magazines... What beats me most acctually is when this is supposed to have happened. (1968) Then information would be alot harder gaining. However, she was a regular to church, churches often have a library -she might have gotten it from there.

What also beats about when this happened is that mental illnesses wasnt fully as "accepted" as today, nor was it as much knowledge as today about it. It was probably easier to say she was posessed then to admit she was a lunatic. I would think, as she herself was convinced she was obsessed too.
I would also think, that this story might have been a story of a crazy girl, a little blown out of proportion because of the hysteria after "The Exorcist" film that came a few years before she died.

I myself as said, holds with science. I guess Im too cynical, cold (yep I heard that once ) and critic to belive fully in a higher force then nature.
I suppose because now you can make everything seem possible. The burning bush in the bible can be easily explained, also the way moses split the water etc.. Now you can say NA*7,3716/3,141245-o2*3,56 -(h2o)2 = whatever. And somehow numbers seems more trustworthy then words. But how do we REALLY know whats a fact and whats not? How do we really know those numbers we are feeded is a fact? We cannot.
All the time scientist go out and say "we were wrong earlier, we got it right now" We cant have full understanding for everything, its impossible.

[Rave]

Well I believe more into the paranormal than lets say religious weirdness. You dont have to have a good guy to have a bad guy. Maybe something paranormal happened to her, it doesnt have to be religious. Of course all I was saying is that science couldnt prove (or disprove) everything.

And btw, recently discovered in old texts- Moses was a militant, not a slave helper. He told the slaves to slaughter the families they worked for. Funny how the Roman Catholic Church decided to remove that from the Bible. So yes, religion is very iffy in some aspects. But they may still have points with other things.

[Skam]

Originally Posted by Rave

And btw, recently discovered in old texts- Moses was a militant, not a slave helper. He told the slaves to slaughter the families they worked for. Funny how the Roman Catholic Church decided to remove that from the Bible. So yes, religion is very iffy in some aspects. But they may still have points with other things.

Also they discovered that what have always been "offical" as the number of the beast 666 was in reality 616. *thinks of all the poor satanists that have tattooed 666*

[Numa]

Very interesting read.

Personally, i'm not a religious person. I don't get involved with religion because i think there are more problems caused by religion than what should be solved by it. Give me a time machine and that would dispel a lot of what went on it the past.
We would probably find that Aliens helped build the pyramids, or the Egyptians actually had a sense of humour and the Pyramids were actually large piles of Dino Poop that had hardened and they carved something out of it.
Thats just my sense of humour.

I would have to say I'm more of a Science type of person and there is more in the Universe that we don't understand being we are still relatively young out here in comparison to other galaxies/universes.

My thoughts are we are somehow locked into the Universe from both the past and the future and we are fed information through this link which is where i think peoples dreams and ambitions come from. Not to say we don't all think about these things, but I just believe the universe has an influence on those thoughts, especially when you consider how certain sciences have advanced much quicker than they possibly should have done, or we are just smarter than we really think.

The fact we still use less than 10% of our supposed brain power, gets me wondering. I think that is why i like all the Science Fiction stuff out there. It gets my mind thinking a lot more, than any religion ever would.

ANyway, just a few thoughts on the subject.

[MudKicker]

That movie looks AWESOME! Cant wait to see it!

[DarkFire]

Originally Posted by Prokhor Zakharov

Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has
always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save
us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of
evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest
of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore
he must exist.

-- Academician Prokhor Zakharov,
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

Crys said what needed to be said

[Redoaks]

Religion,

Being english and living in England, I was raced (by the schools) to be a christian. However the way they went about it was very wrong. To read the bible was a punishment, the idea being you would see the error of your ways within the text. Unfortuantly I saw the error of the texts since I was an intellaget kid and I was being punished for my older brothers actions.

The bible itself is very hypocriful in the way it deals with many things. The most quoted one is with...'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'...yet it also preaches forgiveness and 'thou shalt not kill'

The bible itself has been rewritten countless times to fit in with the changing attitudes of the people. In many cases the religious holidays differ from country to country. I can only speak for England with this, when christianity took over, it didn't really take over it just surplanted the exsisting religions. Many of its key dates where changed to ease the change. The example I can give....

Winter Solitice became Christmas...

The pagans during this time would disembowl an animal and hang its intestines and organs upon the trees as a sacrifice to nature, they believed this sacrifice would ensure the trees regained live and bloomed again in the spring. Ironicailly it would have helped them immensly as we all know dead bodies make good fertiliser.

Christianity came in and changed this to christmas, after many years the act of decorated a tree with tinsel and baubles replaced the sacrifice to nature.

This counts for all the soltices and equinoxs, however christianity failed to fully understand how they predicted these events and now many of them fall on the wrong dates in the calander. It was many years later that they figured out the purpose of stone hendge and how it used the angle of the sun in the sky to predict the time of year, this later became a feature in many churches.

However the main purpose of religion was to give a meaning and to control the masses. To excuse how a person mysteriously vanished in the night because he wasn't very nice. Science however steps in to explain how he disappeared and how it wasn't an act of God.

Science is just that, its the reasoning to dispell the myths and magic. The more science explains the harder tiem religion has defending its grounds. Science will explain the dawn of creation, and how dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years before man ever firstr stepped on it. If the religions where true words of God surely he would have told man about them. Instead the fossils and bones fueled stories of mythical beasts.

The stories of King Arthur pulling a sword out of a stone can easily be explained away with science, it was during the bronze age, and all weapons where cast from bronze, in order to make blades and tools, they would split a stone and create a cast for the metal, the stone would be strapped together and the bronze poured into it, this would send sparks flying all over and smiths where often refered to as magic mean who could make fire from stone. With the science the mystery is gone and so is the magic.

I haven't really attampted to argue either side of the debate, frankly I don't want too.

Religion still has its place, perhaps not with me but there are many people out there who need a little bit of hope, to have something no one can take away from them.

Science, we would still be splitting skulls with stones without it, it was said by Einstien

'I don't know with what weapons world war 3 will be fourght with, but I do know world war 4 will be fourght with sticks and stones'

So we still may well be back where we started because of it.


To sum it up...

To know how something works is to destroy the magic of what its doing. Without the magic we have no reason to learn, no reason to dream to imagine the impossible.

The only time anyone of us will know the definate answer as to whether there is a God or not is when it matters the very least, because you won't be here to tell anyone the answer.

Now hows that for an arguement thats argues nothing.



Edit:

God has not been proven not to exist, therefore
he must exist.

God says to prove he exists denouces faith and without faith he is nothing.

To touch onto the Disc World Series....

Things only exist because you believe in them, and because you believe in them they exist. Faith is one of the most powerful tools and a man who can manipulate faith will be the most powerful.

[Rave]

Probably the best quote you can use to argue is:

"If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around, does it make a sound?"

I never understood this when I was little, but it makes 100% sense now. If you can't prove something, it doesnt mean it doesnt exist. I have never seen an angel or a demon. But that doesn't mean they dont exist. And until I actually do see one with my own eyes, I can never have solid proof. This same thing would go for ghosts, aliens, and so on.

Of course, as I said, I am usually a man of science. But Im not denying possibilities of anything. I just accept science over religion or even the paranormal before anything.

A quote I personally liked from the movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, was from the Parrish priest. He told his defense attorney (when she was skeptical about any actual demons):

"Demons exist wether you believe in them or not."

That quote is what really made me think. Ignorance doesn't make thins true. I've realized that opposed to taking sides, it makes more sense to find the side that has the best justification and evidense concerning the current situation. If God or the devil himself opens up Hell upon Earth, and its raining fire and demons are sweeping through the streets, I cannot turn to science and say "Well, must just be some bad weather, huh?" Of course that is an extreme example. However if I had a friend who became "possessed" and they are speaking in languages I know they do not know, then science, again, couldn't help me. However if I get struck by lightning, well science tells me thats just the law of probability or whatever. God wasn't smiting me with lightning.

But of course if it comes to end of the world, and it turns out religion was right...I may have to make a quick prayer. Or else hop on the first science-made spaceship I come across and fly away. (If any of you watch The Simpsons... lol).

Unfortunately, I believe, there is no solid line. The line between religion and science can be easily bent or moved. Of course, it also depends on your religion or how devoted you are to a religion. I simply just believe there is a greater entity out there (Lootius, anyone? ) but I dont think he's ever controling our lives. I also dont think demons and angels are constantly fighting and using us as battlegrounds. We leave that to the ring in Twin Peaks!