It was until she summoned up evil spirits.

I've seen shit you wouldn't believe, man. But you'll have to use your wildest imagination because I don't want to talk about it.

One correction, the only people with hubris are the people of faith pretending to know something because of their feelings and ability to accept things in a non-skeptical manner.
Saying "i don't believe your reports of paranormal activity because I've seen no evidence of them" is not hubris.
ETA::Seriously, what is more arrogant, people who say "well, I don't claim to know anything with certainty, but given what I know about apparent reality from scientific ivestigations, I don't believe your claims have any substantive basis, just anecdotal eyewitness statements and hearsay eyewitness statements" or people who say "I know these things about the universe with certainty because of my interpretation of a book, my opinions about a religion, and my feelings."
ETA2::Lets take a step back from the religious angle, and look at the same reasoning applied to a different topic: GMOs.
Lets say a hippie comes up to you and starts telling you how bad GMOs are, that his cousin was so sick, and then he stopped eating GMOs and he got better, thus, GMO's are terrible and causing all sorts of heath problems in the world, everything from seizures, to hallucinations, to autism. Then he tells you about how some famous people throughout history have claimed to notice the same problems.
Are you required to accept his claims at face value to avoid being arrogant? No, certainty not.  The hippie is making a claim, a claim that when actually investigated, is found to be unsubstantiated by any objective evidence, just hearsay and anecdotes. It is not, therefore, arrogant to tell the next hippie that comes along "oh, actually, yeah, I don't think all the things you are saying are entirely accurate and I don't believe your claims".
This is what is happening when people talk about demons, and ghosts, and bigfoot and any number of other things that people claim to "know" are real despite any clear objective evidence for their existence.
The bottom line is, people believe all sorts of unsubstantiated things, and only rigidly
applying skepticism to all claims across the board can help you in
weeding out the BS from the truth. No one is perfect at this (as we all
have our cases where we aren't as skeptical as we should be), however,
the more consistently people do this, the more their world view is
likely to line up with apparent reality.
 
I say this as a person who grew up in a house that believed in ghosts, bigfoot, alien piloted UFOs, lake monsters, mothmen, dowsing, and any number of "paranormal" things.  I've lived both sides of this discussion, and I do recall the sadness I felt when I encountered someone with a healthy level of skepticism who was knowledgeable enough to point out that my belief in these things lacked any substantive basis, and that my 'evidence' for them was ambiguous at best, and more often than not, totally unverifiable.
 

Yep. Now people are going to be compelled, against their will to work in their gardens.



 

Dude, you don't understand the celestial cred of deities.

Gods made up a really long fucking time ago are far more legit than those made up more recently.

I didn't catch your meaning, but that's very true.  Hey, maybe the priests were made into molesters by demons?

Old school? REALLY? Dude, I was playing when it was called Chainmail. And was miniatures-based.

You'll have to call ICE for spiritual deportations, but nobody will show up. Ghostly mariachi music will blare from empty streets. On the plus side, armageddon will have some fantastic taco shops.

 
holy shit,  I missed that thread thanks for the link

 
How do you know?  


Let's say demons actually do exist, if you do any reading on the occult, its pretty fucking hard to summon a demon.  


I don't believe any of it, but if you're are going to believe in it, at least be consistent in what malarkey you're going to believe in.

 
That would make an epic drawing  for XCR's thread.  

 
Dude, you're not stupid by any stretch, and you know it.   So why let people on the internet get to ya?


in fact there is an entire book written about very smart people believing some truly weird things.

 
those kind of demons I believe in.


Demons are the darker side of human nature, that we all have and fight against.   Some men lose that fight.

 
Got my first kiss, saw my first tit, and had my dick rubbed for the first time due to a Ouija board.  Good times.

And if any of it were true, it could be done in a laboratory under scientific conditions and documented, peer reviewed, the experiment repeated to get the same result and the hypothesis verified and there would be a whole new branch of science called "demonic theory" and the creationists/intelligent design/magic elves people would be vindicated. But there's always some handy explanation provided why such an endeavor would never work under such rigid scruitiny.

 
And demons were made up to explain mental illness.....

I said old school, not grandpa school.  



 

Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

 

the one where the lights go out made my LOL




 


"oh shit! oh shit! yo yo!  charlie don't be a dick!"






 

 
ROFLMAO

I don't think that believing in those things means someone is dumb. I think that believing in those things is a nonsensical belief. I also think that people who think they have "lucky" socks, "systems" to beat slot machines, and "strategies" to make millions selling vitamins also have nonsensical beliefs. I have a tendency to threaten electronic devices with physical violence when they misbehave because I kind of think that it helps. Total nonsense (at least with new tech-old stuff, a "technical tap" did work a lot of the time), but I still believe it a little.*


*not sure if Zaphod will see this as I can't see any of his posts unless they're quoted, so I'm assuming I'm on his ignore list. Still felt that his comment warranted a serious reply.

 
no that means you ignored him


check your ignore list, it happens by accident for me as well

Of all the shit for them to waste their time on.

This is quite alarming given there was only one semi-documented occurrence of this demonic possession and multiple movies made based on this one event, which raked in big bucks.  At least today they could have videoed  everything.



 

Growing up how I did, I don't make the mistake of saying people believing in those things are stupid, because by in large, they aren't.
I just think that if they do believe in them they don't apply rigid skeptical examination to that particular topic, which they may or may not do very well for a dozen other topics.
Again, they may be smart people. Being smart has nothing to do with whether or not you apply a certain methodology when presented with fantastic claims or a weird personal experience.
For example, in college I experienced sleep paralysis. I have no doubt in my mind that had one of my relatives experienced it they would have said that it was the ghost that they believe haunted our house (as only a budding skeptic, that thought actually crossed my mind).  Not because they are dumb, but because they think ghosts are real, thus weird things they experience are caused by ghosts, which is just further proof that they are real.  They don't take a step back and say "why do I believe in ghosts in the first place" as a skeptical person would.



In fact, had my friend not sent me a link about sleep paralysis after relating her the story, I might have eventually thought it was ghost related (especially with false memories that time can provide), and stopped being a skeptic!
 

I suppose it depends how you quantify "smart"

personally I assign a much greater weight to "ability to extract knowledge from experience" over "total knowledge accrued"

so by my metric, they aren't doing so hot

Charlie doesn't really sound Mexican to me.  Sure it's not this guy?

I might spend it all

That first time a girl reaches behind herself and unhooks her bra for you, it's like a door opens to a whole new world.  Which may be appropriate, considering you were using an Ouija board.

And that's why we shoot him in the face.

Nope. Not on my ignore list. It's like he got eaten by the matrix. [/thread derailment]

But that's the difference between rational, logical thought and the thought process that gets the knee-jerk response of "that's stupid." The response of "that's stupid" is an unfortunately blunt distillation of "what caused you to come to that particular conclusion to that set of circumstances despite a total lack of tangible, repeatable evidence?" It's like the meme with that jackhole with the crazy hair from the stupid ancient aliens show-"Is it possible that it's aliens? Absolutely!" Even though there's not a lick of fucking evidence to support such a bugnuts supposition. It could just as likely be unicorns. Or sentient coproliths.

The thing that makes my head hurt is that people just stop looking for rational explanations and instead invent some supernatural explanation. Ouija Board-ideomotor effect? No, it's ghoulies from the ethereal plane! Fuck Occam's razor! It's silliness

Do demons take siestas?