Demonic Possession

Demonic possession doesnt exist, Its just a medievil explanation of numerous mental disorders. The only reason exorcisms really work is the placebo effect. The "possessed" believes that it will work and thus health condition improves.

A diagnosis of demonic possession dates from a time when a common-or-garden headache was often cured by trepanning (Making a hole in the skull to expose the brain to the air).

While I think there is a level of reality beyond what we understand, I think many cases of 'possession' can be routinely understood by modern medicine.

And thanks to Naked Snak3 for saving me the trouble of rebutting that old myth.

Yoshi, another thought on priests being able to cast them out... notice that priests of multiple religions have that ability, however their claim of how that works indicates no priests of other religions should have that ability. Thus we have some possible conclusions...

• "demonic possessions" are the result of normal psychological/psychosomatic/physiological events, and the targets are being cured because of the placebo effect.
  
• Demonic possessions are removable by a normal human ability, which the priests tap in their semi-meditative state during prayer.
  
• Demonic possessions are removable by the placebo effect.
  
• The creator of the universe is far less dogmatic than the priests would have us believe.

...

I have seen a number of people who have been alleged to be possessed by demons, and one alleged possession of the holy spirit. For most of them, I saw nothing that was outside possible effects of psychological disorders, or for physical effects, outside what you might see in biofeedback or placebo research.

The "possession of the holy spirit" had the person "speaking in tongues", which was a lot of human voice sounds that no one around could understand. I didn't see any structure to them though... it seemed a bunch of sounds jumbled together.

One "demonic possession" also spoke a language that no one present understood (except names, which were English or Japanese as appropriate), and when asked to repeat it, said it in understandable although somewhat grammatically odd English. This one did have detectable structure in the speech... including intonation that in English would imply the end of a question that was in fact a question in the spoken English version.
I wish I had a sound recorder with me at the time... it would be interesting to send it to linguistics expert.

The one that I have trouble explaining though is a pair of events several years apart. The first event allegedly involved a demon, however the events easily fall within mass hysteria, and the alleged name given to it tends to support that (one person claimed it's name, however I recognize that name as coming from Tolkien's works).
Years later, another person known to me was supposedly possessed... and gave me specific knowledge of the event. Only 4 people were at the first event, and he knew none of them except me. There were also no chains of friends I could find, and no word of the original event has come back to me from any other source, much less any source he might know.
Now the problem with non-scientific inquiries like that are that I haven't accounted for all the possibilities. There could have been a chain of communication between him and one of the other 3 that I was unaware of. Parts of the event stick out in my mind, but I haven't questioned the others present about it, so it could be memory error, with his answers close enough to trigger my mind's agreement, adding the current answer to a memory fragment. It could have been telepathy. I would tend to discount guesswork (too unlikely) or cold reading (no misses, everything was either answered correctly or he refused to answer at all).

So I'm open to the possibility that it exists, however I think most events are much more natural and common phenomena. It also appears to me that we have more cases of real psychological/psychosomatic/physiological problems being treated as demonic possession and causing harm than we have of unexplainable cases, so I would also be inclined to treat unknown cases as psychological/psychosomatic/physiological first to help ensure the safety of the victim (unless we can test curing it with the placebo effect without risking harm to the victim).

this really should be in the paranormal forum.

Actually I for one appreciate it when stuff gets flagged, it just makes it easier for us to redirect things appropriately and/or brings our attention to stuff. Even if it's not necessarily needed it makes sure we're able to do our jobs appropriately.

But yes, try this forum.

It's always nice to see the things with no basis in fact get moved to the paranormal forum.

There is no such thing as demonic possession, it is what mental conditions used to be called.

actually we use less than 1% of our brain according to our school's logbook but then again I never trust them