Sleep Paralysis or Evil Spirits?


clbent04
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3 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

I've experienced episodes like this on-and-off throughout my life. They've always freaked me out somewhat, but it never occurred to me (until I started reading posts like this) to attribute them to "evil spirits". I dare say evil spirits do exist, but I tend to imagine them tempting people to crime, provoking anger, starting wars etc. .... not spooking out people in bed with silly tricks. But maybe that's just be the way my mind works.

It's more like getting good people to lose hope so they give up.

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10 hours ago, dahlia said:

See, this is where you lose me. Sleep paralysis. Look it up. It's not demons or spirits and unless you are schizophrenic, have a brain injury, Alzheimer's,  or something similar, it's not hallucinations. 

Why do people even ask questions like this? 

 

The answer to your question is in the thread.  I'd recommend reading it before playing the "I'm too smart to consider anyone else's point of view" card.

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On 1/10/2019 at 7:17 AM, clbent04 said:

And to think it all could’ve been prevented if we just finished building that wall around our house

I highly recommend you get on that. House walls are wonderful for keeping temperatures stable and precipitation outside.

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On 1/18/2019 at 8:53 PM, dahlia said:

See, this is where you lose me. Sleep paralysis. Look it up. It's not demons or spirits and unless you are schizophrenic, have a brain injury, Alzheimer's,  or something similar, it's not hallucinations. 

Why do people even ask questions like this? 

Have you ever experienced an episode of sleep paralysis accompanied by the sense of a demonic presence?

If not, I can understand why you’re skeptical. But just because it hasn’t happened to you doesn’t mean you have to remain a skeptic. And if it ever does happen to you to way it happened to me and many others, it will make you change what you think you know or at least seriously question it. 

The medical community writes off these encounters as hallucinations. Many others so readily accept that as the answer. 

But could it also be that for those brief moments where we are half asleep and half awake (where you know you’re awake you just haven’t opened your eyes yet or just barely came out of a dream) that you are able to have glimpses through the veil?

Think about it. Why do people often have ingenious ideas come to them shortly before falling asleep? We encourage ourselves to write down those ideas so we don’t forget.

Or have you ever tried remembering what you dreamed about shortly after waking up but have trouble doing so? For me, it can be difficult to remember, but if I lay back down in bed or slow down to prevent myself from fully waking up, I start to fall back to that half-asleep-half-awake state, and suddenly I can remember. It’s almost as if I’m able to access a part of my brain that was previously unaccessible.

If we do have glimpses through the veil during these moments, it also makes sense that this is when we would be most vulnerable to being attacked by demonic presences. 

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On 1/20/2019 at 2:30 PM, clbent04 said:

Have you ever experienced an episode of sleep paralysis accompanied by the sense of a demonic presence?

If not, I can understand why you’re skeptical. But just because it hasn’t happened to you doesn’t mean you have to remain a skeptic. And if it ever does happen to you to way it happened to me and many others, it will make you change what you think you know or at least seriously question it. 

The medical community writes off these encounters as hallucinations. Many others so readily accept that as the answer. 

But could it also be that for those brief moments where we are half asleep and half awake (where you know you’re awake you just haven’t opened your eyes yet or just barely came out of a dream) that you are able to have glimpses through the veil?

Think about it. Why do people often have ingenious ideas come to them shortly before falling asleep? We encourage ourselves to write down those ideas so we don’t forget.

Or have you ever tried remembering what you dreamed about shortly after waking up but have trouble doing so? For me, it can be difficult to remember, but if I lay back down in bed or slow down to prevent myself from fully waking up, I start to fall back to that half-asleep-half-awake state, and suddenly I can remember. It’s almost as if I’m able to access a part of my brain that was previously unaccessible.

If we do have glimpses through the veil during these moments, it also makes sense that this is when we would be most vulnerable to being attacked by demonic presences. 

I can see where you're coming from; I often wake up and think "what a strange dream, I wonder what it means!" I think about it on and off as I head to work, but  by midday realize I can no longer remember it. Sometimes the sense or feeling of it lingers, but the all details have gone.

I remember once dreaming that I had written a wonderful story. I couldn't believe anything so marvelous had come from me. But when I woke up and tried to remember it, all the characters and even what the story was about were gone. I've often wondered, did the story really exist? Or in the dream, did I just have the sensation that I had produced something wonderful?

On another occasion, years ago when I was trying to teach myself queuing theory (and getting very confused in the process) I woke up in the middle of the night and suddenly found that I understood it. And strangely enough that understanding did stay with me afterwards.

On the other hand though, what is a "sense of demonic presence"? Is it possible the sensation you interpret as "demonic presence", others (who had exactly the same experience) might take to be a mental or chemical aberration? Or like Duke Theseus says in "A Midsummer Night's Dream": 

Quote

 

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy.

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

 

I'm not saying you're wrong - only that "remaining a skeptic" might not always be a bad thing. (After all, as an LDS member you are yourself going to be "skeptical" of anyone who claims to have felt "The Spirit" from something like The Toronto Blessing.)

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Isn't it interesting the way we've been conditioned to try  to shoehorn absolutely every unusual experience into some kind of previously understood phenomenon, to the point of drawing conclusions with almost no evidence at all and calling it "being scientific?"  Let me break down why that's a problem.

Person A: "Man, I just experienced this [insert unusual,  potentially supernatural  phenomenon here]!"

Person B: "Well, it was just you experiencing a [dream/hallucination/swamp gas/previously-researched-phenomenon].  That's all."

Person A: "How can you know that?  You weren't there."

Person B: "Hey, I'm just being scientific."

 

No, Person B.  You are not being scientific.  Being scientific would have to mean that you:

  • Established a hypothesis
  • Designed some observations/experiments/tests to try and disprove the hypothesis
  • Carried out the research and recorded data
  • Analyzed and interpreted the data 
  • Drew a conclusion, which his itself subject to change if new evidence comes to light.

Person B skipped straight to the "drawing a conclusion" step, and if any new evidence DOES come to light, they will dismiss it or shoehorn it into their existing conclusion.

Now, does that mean that Person A is right?  Well no, not necessarily.  It isn't like Person A performed the scientific method either.  But Person A is still a more reliable source because they were a direct, firsthand witness to the phenomenon observed.  Their interpretation of the observed phenomenon is preferred, provided there's no strong reason to doubt the witness,  such as:

  • The witness is prone to hallucinations or some other mental disorder that may affect their reliability
  • The witness is known to be a dishonest person
  • There is some reason to believe their memory of the event is faulty.
  • Does the witness have a motive to mislead?

Now, it's true that a certain level of healthy skepticism is our defense against wild flights of fantasy becoming the accepted norm.  Obviously there ARE natural phenomena that can appear to be supernatural to some, and that needs to be factored in.  However, there's healthy skepticism and there's skepticism taken too far.  Ask yourself this:

Is the reported phenomenon consistent with what we already hold to be true?

If a person believes that evil spirits exist, then why would they so strongly doubt a report of seeing them?

Is the witness reliable, according to the above criteria?

If so, then it is irrational to doubt them, at least to the point of drawing a conclusion that conflicts with theirs.  

Is there an existing, known phenomenon that adequately explains the story AND doesn't conflict with any of the details of the account?

If someone describes something that exactly matches a well understood natural phenomenon, then it is likely to be that.  There's a caveat here:  That phenomenon must be well understood.  We often pretend that our understanding of things is greater than it actually is, especially when debating against a competing view on them.

If they're a reliable witness, and the reported phenomenon is consistent with what is already believed to be true, and there's no well understood phenomenon that fully matches the account and you draw a conclusion that overrides their own, then you're doing so in spite of the evidence, not because of it.  That's the opposite of science and reason.

So, to make a lengthy post even longer, let's apply this to @clbent04's account.  Here's how I process it:

  • I can't perform any experiments or observations on @clbent04 to try and disprove the hypothesis that he experienced an event with evil spirits.  So scientifically, we cannot draw any conclusions one way or the other.  (This, by the way, is why the scientific method falls short when it comes to paranormal phenomena of any type, at least with our current body of knowledge.)
  • Is the story consistent with what I hold to be true?  Well, I do know evil spirits exist, that's in Scripture.  Since I hold the Scriptures to be true, then I must accept that part of them.  I also have had personal experience with some of the phenomena he describes.  Further, his account is consistent with stories from other reliable witnesses of similar events, such as Joseph Smith, for one.
  • So is the witness reliable?  I don't know @clbent04 personally nor have we ever met, so my knowledge of him is minimal.  However, his posts are well written and rational.  There's nothing in them to raise any red flags about his mental capacity.  I don't know whether he's an honest person by any personal experience but I see no motive to lie or fabricate stories.  Benefit of the doubt there.  The event was very recent, so the memory of it hadn't had a lot of time to fade and distort through time.  So I conclude that the witness is reliable, though I cannot be certain of course.  The benefit of the doubt is the bulk of it here.
  • Does it match a known phenomenon?  Now this is the sticking point.  A few people have dismissed @clbent04's account as being a simple case of sleep paralysis on this basis, regardless of any of the above factors.  I'm not willing to do that, because our scientific understanding of Sleep Paralysis is NOT very good.  There's a lot we don't know about sleep, the brain, the state between slumber and wakefulness.  There are just a ton of gaps which makes Sleep Paralysis an unreliable alternative explanation, as I see it.  While @clbent04's account carries many of the criteria for what we know as Sleep Paralysis, we really don't know enough about it to really understand what that even means.

So for me personally, I'm inclined to accept @clbent04's account as accurate, and his conclusion as reliable, based on the approach I outlined above.  The evidence is admittedly weak, but then if we had strong evidence either way, there'd be nothing to debate about.

 

 

 

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On 1/22/2019 at 10:15 AM, unixknight said:
  •  our scientific understanding of Sleep Paralysis is NOT very good.  There's a lot we don't know about sleep, the brain, the state between slumber and wakefulness.  There are just a ton of gaps which makes Sleep Paralysis an unreliable alternative explanation, as I see it.  While @clbent04's account carries many of the criteria for what we know as Sleep Paralysis, we really don't know enough about it to really understand what that even means.

 

Uhmm... it's 2019, dude.  

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25 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Uhmm... it's 2019, dude.  

Lol. anastess2 sounds like Charles Duell. You're right anastess2. We've already figured out everything there is to figure out. It's 2019.

Charles H. Duell was the Commissioner of US patent office in 1899. Mr. Deull's most famous attributed utterance is that "everything that can be invented has been invented."

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44 minutes ago, clbent04 said:

Lol. anastess2 sounds like Charles Duell. You're right anastess2. We've already figured out everything there is to figure out. It's 2019.

Charles H. Duell was the Commissioner of US patent office in 1899. Mr. Deull's most famous attributed utterance is that "everything that can be invented has been invented."

Irrelevant.  I never made such a claim.

 

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2 minutes ago, unixknight said:

Well what was your point then, other than to remind us of what year it is?

our scientific understanding of Sleep Paralysis is NOT very good...  which makes Sleep Paralysis an unreliable alternative explanation.

That's a statement applicable to... oh, I don't know...1899.

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Just now, anatess2 said:

our scientific understanding of Sleep Paralysis is NOT very good...  which makes Sleep Paralysis an unreliable alternative explanation.

That's a statement applicable to... on, I don't know...1899.

OK, then.  Tell us. 

  • What causes sleep paralysis?
  • What measurements have been made on people's bodies while they are experiencing sleep paralysis?
  • What neurological processes are going on during sleep paralysis that are not going on during normal physiological conditions?
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13 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

OK, then.  Tell us. 

  • What causes sleep paralysis?
  • What measurements have been made on people's bodies while they are experiencing sleep paralysis?
  • What neurological processes are going on during sleep paralysis that are not going on during normal physiological conditions?

Sigh.

What causes Autism?

What measurements have been made on people's bodies while they experience autism?

What neurological processes are going in autists that are not going on with normal physiological conditions?

Autism is not a reliable alternative explanation to demonic possession - 1899, probably (yes I know the word autism didn't get used until 1911).

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3 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Sigh.

What causes Autism?

What measurements have been made on people's bodies while they experience autism?

What neurological processes are going in autists that are not going on with normal physiological conditions?

Autism is not a reliable alternative explanation to demonic possession - 1899, probably (yes I know the word autism didn't get used until 1911).

Thank you for agreeing that we don't know the answers to those questions.

Which confirms Unix's point that

On 1/22/2019 at 9:15 AM, unixknight said:

our scientific understanding of Sleep Paralysis is NOT very good.  There's a lot we don't know about sleep, the brain, the state between slumber and wakefulness. 

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3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Thank you for agreeing that we don't know the answers to those questions.

Which confirms Unix's point that

Hah hah... you're in rare form today.  You frame 3 questions and then conclude that because of those 3 questions, our scientific understanding is NOT very good.  By the way, those questions have answers.  But that's irrelevant to the claim that because YOU don't have a good enough understanding of sleep paralysis that it can't be used as an alternative explanation to demonic possession.

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1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

By the way, those questions have answers.

Which ones?  The Sleep Paralysis ones or the Autism ones?

1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

But that's irrelevant to the claim that because YOU don't have a good enough understanding of sleep paralysis that it can't be used as an alternative explanation to demonic possession.

And you know enough to dismiss the alternative?

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4 minutes ago, unixknight said:

Which ones?  The Sleep Paralysis ones or the Autism ones?

And you know enough to dismiss the alternative?

I know enough to know when I have sleep paralysis and when I'm demonic possessed.  Of course, you can insist that I'm just demonic possessed the whole time and I just blindly bow down to science.  After all, you can also say my IED is just another demonic possession.  Satan must really love me.

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Just now, anatess2 said:

I know enough to know when I have sleep paralysis and when I'm demonic possessed.  Of course, you can insist that I'm just demonic possessed the whole time and I just blindly bow down to science.

Why would I insist that?  Nobody here is qualified to argue with you over what you've experienced yourself.

So do you mean to say that your own personal, anecdotal experience is what drives you to make sweeping statements and judgements on what others have experienced, while at the same time claiming that our scientific understanding of the subject itself is 100% complete and reliable?

That's a remarkable argument.

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2 minutes ago, unixknight said:

Why would I insist that?  Nobody here is qualified to argue with you over what you've experienced yourself.

So do you mean to say that your own personal, anecdotal experience is what drives you to make sweeping statements and judgements on what others have experienced, while at the same time claiming that our scientific understanding of the subject itself is 100% complete and reliable?

That's a remarkable argument.

I know this is 5 pages long already... but I NEVER made sweeping statements and judgments.  YOU DID by claiming that sleep paralysis is not an alternative explanation.

And I NEVER claimed it is 100% complete.  But it is not so infantile as to be "not good enough" as you claimed.  Don't put words in my mouth.

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1 minute ago, unixknight said:

Why would I insist that?  Nobody here is qualified to argue with you over what you've experienced yourself.

So do you mean to say that your own personal, anecdotal experience is what drives you to make sweeping statements and judgements on what others have experienced, while at the same time claiming that our scientific understanding of the subject itself is 100% complete and reliable?

That's a remarkable argument.

@anatess2 As pointed out here, you have a very confusing way of arguing whatever point you're trying to make. The more I try to make sense of your responses, the more muddled everything becomes. You need to apply consistent reasoning in your arguments for anyone to be able to logically follow you.

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1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

I know this is 5 pages long already... but I NEVER made sweeping statements and judgments. 

1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

And I NEVER claimed it is 100% complete. 

Then what was the point behind your "it's 2019" comment? 

1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

YOU DID by claiming that sleep paralysis is not an alternative explanation.

I made no such claim.

1 minute ago, anatess2 said:

But it is not so infantile as to be "not good enough" as you claimed.  Don't put words in my mouth.

I don't know what you mean by this.

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10 minutes ago, clbent04 said:

@anatess2 As pointed out here, you have a very confusing way of arguing whatever point you're trying to make. The more I try to make sense of your responses, the more muddled everything becomes. You need to apply consistent reasoning in your arguments for anyone to be able to logically follow you.

My reasoning is very consistent. 

I have experienced Sleep Paralysis.  It runs in my family.  Your OP points to Sleep Paralysis as they are things I've experienced.  My initial understanding that you tried to exercise your Priesthood but did not have a voice so the demons did not go away was my reasoning for stating it is Sleep Paralysis.  You since corrected me on that stating that you did not exercise your Priesthood, you were simply trying to vocalize.  From that, I changed my position to state that, in that case, there is no way for us to know if it is Sleep Paralysis or demons in the room until it happens again and you try my suggestion of my, and my brothers' method of getting out of Sleep Paralysis.

Saying that Sleep Paralysis is not an alternative explanation to your experience because our understanding of Sleep Paralysis is not good is something that is not applicable to the state of medicine in 2019.

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4 minutes ago, unixknight said:

Then what was the point behind your "it's 2019" comment? 

I made no such claim.

I don't know what you mean by this.

I quoted your claim.  I even bothered to take out all other statements to focus on that specific claim that I'm addressing.  I'm not the one that made claims.  I simply called yours out.

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