 Hey everybody, today we're debating whether or not there is a demonic and we're starting right now with Justice's opening statement as he is taking the affirmative that there are demons. Thanks so much for being with us Justice, the floor is all yours. Greetings everyone, again thank you James, thank you Mark for being here, glad to talk about this. The motivation for me to join this debate was a debate that I listened to several weeks ago, maybe a month ago on a similar topic about ghosts and I felt that the position of the supernatural and spiritual, albeit the evil and malevolent supernatural and spiritual wasn't properly represented and I wanted to give a chance for my side of the debate to get a better viewing. If we look into history, into the history of mankind we see that throughout all peoples, all nations and all religions, there is a commonality of belief structures. There are three things that almost all religions, all nations, all ethnos have in common. First of all is the belief in the divine. Not all peoples believe in a monotheistic religion or some are polytheistic, some are monotheistic. However, the belief in the divine in some kind of a structured hierarchy of deities is a common belief among all peoples everywhere. The second thing that's commonly held among all peoples everywhere up until just the most recent modern age is the belief in the malevolent divine or we can call it the demonic. So gins, demons, ghosts, spirits, hauntings, these things are as common in the literature and the belief systems and structures of people throughout the world as the belief in the divine. The second thing that is also common among all peoples is the belief in the fallen state of man, that mankind is in some kind of predicament due to some kind of first sin or some kind of falling away from the divine and that in this state humans are beset by the demonic. I put this into my intro, I just wanted to end it to put this out there as the first evidence for the demonic. The people who are on the skeptic side of both the debate on the divine, on gods in general or on the demonic as we're debating tonight will often say well that's not evidence, that's an argument from history and I will have to admit that technically it is an argument from antiquity, it is an argument from history. However, if you find that something is so absolutely universal throughout history, it needs to be addressed more specifically than just hand waving it away, as a logical fallacy. This is something that is universal. Even among nations and ethnic groups that do not have a specific religious belief in or specific position on the higher level gods like Shintoism, you still have a belief in the demonic. So in some ways the demonic is a larger set of people have held those beliefs throughout history and even into today than even believe in God. So that is my first bit of evidence is the the universality of the beliefs throughout history and throughout most of the world today in the human population again. Truth is not a democracy but still it's something that has to be has to be dealt with. The second thing I'd like to say is when we're talking about evidence of the demonic or evidence of the spiritual realm in general, we have to pay attention to the to the terminology. We are talking about the supernatural and people like my honored opponent will ask us for physical evidence of the supernatural. The word supernatural literally means above the physical or outside of the natural order. And so they say we want we want evidence of this thing that is specifically denoted as not having a physical nature and give us evidence like show us films or show us you know I don't know readings on radiation or or magnetic readings or whatever and it's like no the very terminology is that it's supernatural. What is the thing that can interact with the supernatural? In my belief system in this belief system that I operate out of which is a Christian worldview man human beings are the device which interact with the supernatural. We have a body a soul and a spirit and we are engineered by our creator to have that interaction with the supernatural. And so when you have a universal belief among these devices quote unquote humans who interact with the supernatural that there is a supernatural to me that says this is again it's kind of reiteration of the first evidential point but it is it is important. So the third thing what is the evidence that I'm going to present tonight and hopefully we'll do that a little bit more in the Q&A session is my own experience. So if I'm right away saying you know I'm not so much interested in films and pictures and and all that however I'm not I'm not saying that they don't exist sure they might but my evidence that I have is based on my own experience as a missionary of 20 years who's worked in underprivileged areas where the belief in the demonic the belief in the supernatural is rampant among people who aren't even you know believers in the higher order deities I have I've had a practice of delivering people helping people get rid of demonic influences in their lives specifically hauntings in their houses I specialize in cleaning haunted houses from people and I also am a pastor of the local church I have three small churches that I pastor and people outside of my church who don't even go to Sunday services or not part of our community will come to me on a regular basis and asked me to clean their house because their relatives or their their their ancestors the people their grandfather or grandmother have been involved in black magic often or they've been involved in behaviors that that did predispose them towards possession or towards haunting and they asked for help in getting rid of these entities and when you go into a room or into a house where people have been suffering plagued by demonic influences for years and you do what's needed needs to be done to get rid of those influences and then people come back and thank you and they're they're relieved because the influences have left even in situations where for instance the children are of the household are reporting that they're seeing entities that they're feeling fears that they're hearing sounds that doors are opening and closing that dishes are being broken so forth and so on and then you do the cleaning procedure you exercise of the word you the word strangely get rid of the demon get rid of the haunting out of the house without the children around i always do this when the children are out playing i'm not interested in trying to site them out or anything they've already been through enough and you just go with the parents and you do the the exorcism you do the cleaning and then the parents will say it it stopped the the children are not having night horrors anymore they're completely free from this for me this is the kind of evidence that says yes this is actually something that is and it's more than psychosomatic because we're not even giving the children a placebo they they are the ones who are reporting the the influences and they're the ones who are being freed from it without even knowing that something was done so i don't know how much how many minutes i have left there james so a lot of people will ask me you know if demons exist or if there is demonic world why don't they interact like just every day why don't we see them all the time and the reason for that is that there are different levels of demonic powers the scripture tells us that there are demonic powers that reign in the air that are over nations over cities over countries and they they work through lies they work through trying to get people to believe in their their power so we can call this ideological possession or the power of the air which is the way the bible talks about it and this is something that i think is is real but the the fundamental point here is that satan along with his cohorts of demonic legions work through lies he is the father of lies and he works through lies scripture also tells us that we are submitted to him whom we submit ourselves to we're enslaved to him who we enslave ourselves to and so demonic powers take control over people possessing homes possessing bodies through this process of self enslavement people have to give themselves over to demonic powers to be able to be subjected by them and the whole point of hauntings the whole point of binding people into fear is to get them to to give more power to the demonic powers than they had previously one of the reasons that i want to come on here is to to tell people or to let people know that the demonic powers are real but there is a way out and the way out is to find the lord and to seek his power because his power is somewhere than the demonic power i've seen that in my life in my life and in my work which we can get into a little bit more in the q and a session but if you are in a situation where you find yourself bound by something that feels greater than you that has that has that you have come under its power and if you are the kind of person who has who has experienced a demonic oppression you know what i'm talking about know that there is a way out and that way out is the person of jesus christ who gives us the power to overcome all demonic oppression so with that i'll end my opening statement and we will kick over to james back to you you got it thank you very much for that opening indeed and well let you know folks if it's your first time here at modern day debate we are a neutral channel hosting debates on science religion and politics we hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you are from if you haven't yet don't forget to hit that subscribe button as we have many more juicy debates coming up for example at the bottom right of your screen alex stein and hunter abalone collide later this month you don't want to miss it so do hit that subscribe button and with that we're going to kick it over to mark reed thanks so much for being with us mark the floor is all yours thank you so much james and i'll just share my screen here mate so um just let me know when i'm ready to go uh my name's mark reed and i'm debating the negative of evidence for the demonic i want to thank modern day debate and the james the moderator as well as my interlocutor justice of course i want to thank the audience for spending their time to join us here to debate this topic now i'll be arguing that the belief in the demonic it's not just and what i believe is that religion is making a fear to sell you the cure to this fear that they're making but it's also highly dangerous and i will be going through why that is so in my presentation here so i'll just first go through the burden of proof it's squarely on the shoulders playing there is evidence for the demonic needless to say not one shred of credible evidence has been put forward to confirm any kind of demonic spirit or malevolent being that we can examine today what we do get is anecdotes people screaming no supernatural events and stories that are in past long-term regard to how it's gathered or the methodology in which it's gathered a methodology of the study of how the evidence in fact about a subject has been gathered and how reliable that method is if it's replicated by somebody else so we will be examining justice's methodology today and find out exactly how reliable that is now the origins of demons go back to the paleolithic era and is encompassed by anything that was strange or or horrific it stems from the greek word daemon denoting spirit or divine power appearing in Plato describing the divine inspiration of Socrates as a daemon concept due to a christian tradition the greek daemon was replaced by demons and associated with evil things although this concept was actually taken from egyptian and mesopotamian mythology some eastern religions like hinduism did had a concept of evil spirits called ashura and raksasha who are formerly gods and conflated with western demons although they were human like and were a vastly different concept from our concept interestingly there are religions like buddhism that has no concept of demons although the followers did have some superstitions about spirits now these are a few of the things that have been blamed on throughout history to daemons in the past first of the idea or daemons cause illness or disease is demonstrably false it's no wonder that somebody in the ancient time not knowing about germs or bacteria blamed invisible daemons for their illnesses and troubles however we now know that health has nothing to do with spirits or remnants and that wounds that infect or disease transmitted isn't the work of any spirit many people believe in daemons when suffering from sleep paralysis but we now know this is a form of nightmare that leads the sufferer awake and we're beginning to understand why it occurs and how to address it um i just want to point out that people did believe that nocturnal emission or ejaculation in the sleep were actually succubus um that that used to you know sort of seduce men in their sleep kind of thing and this is the kind of thinking that we're getting into here um now so one of the things i want to touch on this this is really important it's the tendency for mental illness to be blamed on daemons and evil spirits in christianity and other religions i'm not picking on them specifically this leads to a serious underreporting in mental illnesses and those illnesses are described to supernatural events rather than the psychological trauma they should be um christians suffering from mental health issues can feel stigmatized and have a tendency to blame their mental health issues on daemons or or a lack of spiritual fortitude um the idea that one can be possessed by daemons is not helpful for these addressing these effects of trauma and can be very detrimental to the person that holds these beliefs and a worst-case scenario can cause deadly harm to loved ones and the community and i'll be showing some examples of that um this has actually been documented the flip side to believing good things can be comforting and that's been documented believing in heaven can be comforting um it can produce good feelings is the evil things in a religion can be terrifying and distressing for the believer although there is no reason to believe in daemons this belief is the single highest negative predictor for mental health in young adults the single highest so not only does the promoting of daemon spirits ghosts and goblins hinder people from scientifically based mental health treatment it can actually contribute to mental health problems this kind of unnecessary fear that religion instills into people is one of the most irresponsible actions that religion has ever done it is pervasive and insidious with absolutely no reason to propagate as we understand mental health why it occurs and it doesn't involve any supernatural entities of any sort um just as an aside i do want to employ anybody that's having mental health issues or loved ones with mental health issues whether you be christian muslim hindi or atheist see medical professionals and mental health experts rather blaming supernatural and other worldly entities um and i i do really believe that um so i'll go through a series of explanations that people have given to the daemon possession this is the usual suspect schizophrenia it's chronic brain disorder affects less than one percent of the u.s population when it's active these symptoms can be delusions hallucinations um basically the the hallucinations experience they're usually significant to the sufferer um and and are based upon environmental stimuli that thus a person that believes in demons will often have this as a feature of their hallucinations and as you notice that it does have internal audible voices like people are talking to them or commanding them to do things um this this is a very very comprehensive symptom of this mental health issue um a dissociative sort of now this was referred to as multiple personality in the past it has been updated we understand a lot more of it some of these identities can be rude aggressive rarely violent however the prevalence of violence is the same as the general population so it is possible um it doesn't necessarily take people with this sort of will be aggressive however the change of personality can be disturbing to people that don't understand this sort of and it's really important to understand what is happening with these people rather than blaming a supernatural entity um the daemon's unable spirits of all we're so being blamed for epilepsy i'm going to go to the bible where it marked 20 nine 20 i apologize uh but and they brought on to him and when he saw him straight away the spirit tar him and he fell on the ground and wallowed foaming um is a quite decent description of an epileptic fit um the treatment in this passage is also suggested in mark 9 29 and he said unto him this kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting this can lead to catastrophic circumstances when a person is suffering from an illness and prohibited nutrition i'll examine some cases in the next section to show you and to give a warning um this this content can be disturbing these are real cases with real people and some of it is distressing and the details include some people that have died due to these superstitions this is analyst michael uh michelle i'm sorry a german woman um she underwent 67 catholic exorcism rites in the year before her death she was diagnosed with epileptic psychosis um she had a history of psychiatric treatment that proved ineffective uh her family was confused against she was possessed by a daemon and she was highly religious she attended mass twice a week um at university um her classmates described her as withdrawn and very religious um on july 1st 1976 she died in a home um the cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration resulting from almost a year um in in a state of near starvation while these these rites were performed on her um she had uh uh broken knees from doing genuflections or kneeling and prayer praying um doctors testified that michelle was not possessed stating that the manifestants of demonic possession were a psychological effect with her strict religious upbringing as well as her epilepsy while the bishop that that approved this exorcism said he wasn't aware of their their health condition when he approved it and declined to testify in court um the priest performing this exorcism were convicted of negligent homicide um this is my second case the 200 daemon's house um the gary police where this was done observed multiple religious shrines and bibles throughout the home letoia aemons the mother has high level of superstition and psychologists concluded the children were acting deceptively and in accordance with their mother's beliefs um for example a psychologist that evaluated the youngest son reported he had tendency to act possessed whenever he was challenged or redirected or when he was asked questions that he didn't wish to answer she went on to observe the boys in both coherent and logical except when they were talking about demons then his stories became bizarre fragmented and logical and saying they changed stories every time they related them as a consequence children services removed the children from the home um they said that they needed the mother needed to employ alternate forms of discipline not related to religion or demonic possession um meanwhile no fewer than four exorcisms were performed on her by a priest although not on the children that were the ones possessed strangely enough um it was concluded by the dss and psychologists that these supernatural phenomena that was reserved were performed by the children themselves um the psychologists conclude the mother encouraged this behavior and there was no demons it's interesting to note that nobody ever had problems with the house before or after and as soon as she got her kids back the problems mysteriously cleared up this is the one that really gets me and why i am here at this debate Ali her family members performed a ceremony to liberate her of evil spirits police said that the girl's uncle and mother Claudia Hernandez they were charged with child abuse leading to her death now the church pastor renae huazo that was the grandfather of this three-year-old and they he told the police that the daughter was possessed because she would wake up and scream or cry periodically now keep that in mind that's all they had to say that she was possessed they brought her to the church they were joined by the grandfather to perform an exorcism the mother strangled the child multiple times to the point at where Ali was unconscious she stuck her hands down her throat and continued this course of conduct for almost a full day i think of the most awful travesty of this horrible case is that huazo the pastor and grandfather of the girl says he feels a lot of pain at the death of his grandchild but he does not believe that exorcism caused her death he still blames the demons this is indicative the delusion some of these people who believe in this superstition petal they killed this three-year-old girl and to this day they think they did the right thing because they think demons are real um and and this was with this was the case that really made me take this debate and and they were very disturbing they were clear cases of religious believers mistaking mental health problems or just normal behavior as demonic influence or evil happenings the last one was tragic it was horrible and it happened last year 2021 a three-year-old died it is 2022 and it is time to drop these superstitions beliefs and move into a society that treats these social problems with solutions that work on science and understanding of the human mind not based on magic and and and quackery i i don't generally speak ill of people's beliefs for no reason but these beliefs are dangerous if you want a better world you'll find it with science and learning and understanding not myth and magic and and i really employ you again if you are suffering from um dark thoughts and and and problems see a professional thank you you gotta thank you very much for that opening as well mark and we are going to jump into open dialogue folks so want to say we really do appreciate having you here no matter what walk of life you are from thrilled to have you with us and want to let you know as well we're going to do a somewhat short debate tonight in particular i'd say about average but just slightly shorter than average so if you haven't any questions be sure to get them in quickly as we're going to wrap up probably within about an hour so thank you very much gentlemen the floor is all yours thank you james um i finished you want to go first justice thanks james i wanted to yeah that'd be great started with the leg um i uh wanted to jump in here real quick and and address two points actually address a point and also uh ask mark the question the point that i wanted to address is that the scripture the scripture uh from the christian worldview again delineates between epilepsy and um demon possession uh in at least two different situations one of them is in matthew four where the the list of symptoms that is given that jesus heals from includes both epilepsy and separately demon possession the christian tradition even back as far as the early first century recognized the physiological nature of epilepsy as as desperate or different from demon possession so the fact that you have people who conflate those things and have done harm by conflating those things is not evidence against uh demons or against their existence it's evidence of people practicing bad demonology and that's the same thing that i could say if i went through a litany of uh problems with modern medicine like here look at this botch surgery here look at this done misapplied medicine uh that's not evidence of the fact that medicine doesn't work of course medicine works it's great uh we should all have some medicine every once in a while you know the scripture admonishes us to do that the second thing that i'd like to ask is again like the first thing do you believe that hypercountry is a thing i'm sure you will say yes that like obviously people who believe they're sick get sick and so the fact that some people who have an over over obsessive uh attitude or relationship with the demonic might have depression or be more predisposed towards even just simple psychological problems outside of the demonic is also not surprising and it's definitely not evidence against mark brought up a whole bunch of um of tragedies and and abuses that are involved in this arena and i would mostly agree with him yes but that doesn't mean that the demonic does not exist abuses of a practice or another legitimate science does not negate that science taken for yep take take uh for instance the um bombing of heresy monogasaki it's a terrible misuse of atomic theory uh it does not disprove atomic theory right so um yeah and and okay so but there's a scripture the way you say that i differentiate between epilepsy and demonic possession but the problem is that it doesn't provide any other reasonable conclusions either does it differentiate between uh demonic possession and schizophrenia does it differentiate between demonic possession and dissociative identity disorder the the whole idea that well if it's not epilepsy it's got to be demonic possession is a terrible methodology for finding out what something actually is um and you sort of said well hypochondria is a thing absolutely it's a thing absolutely but the problem here is that you're saying well it does not mean there are not demons it does not mean that there are either that's the problem um i do want to touch on a few things so you're sort of using wool demons don't sort of have have any sort of evidence in the physical world but but you're sort of suggesting that demons can have an impact on people in the physical world we should be able to track down the causes of that and when our sciences track down the cause we come back with mental health not demons and ghosts and gremlins um i'm really sorry but um you're sort of saying your your your belief system humans have a body soul and spirit i agree with the body part i don't see the soul and spirit and we've never been able to track down a soul or spirit so what happens is you have these events it's almost like demons of the gaps when you you haven't you know you don't know what a a a a ailment is you can say demons and that's a terrible way to evaluate what is actually causing a problem um first of all no nobody who is who is well versed in the practice or is has actual experience with dealing with the demonic say that if i see x phenomena i i jump right to demons and again you're bringing up horrific examples of abuses people who are abusing um the belief structure and doing terrible things and i will i will fully agree with you it's like if i were again we're going through a litany of doctors who should be disbarred for or whatever the word is in english delicensed for practicing quack medicine right yes of course sure so when you are dealing with a possession you go through the known the known things that could possibly be causing the thing you don't jump to demons nobody who is a serious practitioner who is someone who's not um how to say who's not a quack uh is going to jump right away to uh to to demons and as we understand more and more about the physical world sure uh just like any set of explanations you know it we could say Newtonian physics of the gaps until you get to Einsteinian physics because any previous explanation will always encompass more things than the next explanation because the next explanation by definition has a higher resolution so yes did people before science ascribe more things to demons and gods than should have been ascribed sure but does that mean that it is absolutely something that that doesn't exist absolutely not and again uh the reasons for this is you have legitimate situations where nothing else can explain or does explain um the phenomena and so then you go back to and especially if you're if you're saying um i believe that this is a demonic situation it has all the markers of demonic situation you apply what's necessary to be applied in that situation and the situation is resolved that to me is a methodology of saying look there are certain things that definitely have these influences have i gone to situations where i've said you know what um the problem is is not demons the problem is is you're watching you're watching horror movies at night your kids are scared like sure have i had situations where i said you need to be looking for methane leaks or you need to be looking for high uh o2 too much higher levels of o2 that shouldn't be around that's absolutely happened um so you look for those things exclude those things and when those things have been excluded when you've gone down the list um what's what's left over is often the demonic and then if you apply again the necessary the necessary solution and you get a result isn't science the scientific method isn't it have to do with uh predictive power like if you can do something that predicts a particular result uh it seems to me that that is evidence in and of itself and again uh the demonic is the spiritual so do i expect demons to come out and leave footprints no of course not they're they're interacting with um the spiritual part of man you say there's no evidence for the soul for the spirit that's true because they would be supernatural like you see the phenomenal phenomenologically uh not empirically well that that's a problem because science does rule out things like spectral evidence it does rule out supernatural upfront because it is so problematic the the problem is that you've already acknowledged that hypochondria is a thing and so are psychosomatic symptoms that people who believe in demons may have exhibit the symptoms of being possessed in fact in the dsm5 there is a condition called possession um uh possession syndrome where they believe that they are possessed when they are in fact not so and i do want to point out that you do not have any credit credentials in mental health or neuroscience to eliminate these problems you are simply going on what you know and that's all that you are doing um what what we try to stray away from in science is basically making a um or getting a just a lay person to look at these things and say yep i know what's going on here because you you have not had the training to deal with these people who are suffering from these these issues you have not that there has been many times in the past where people have been absolutely sure of demons and later on psychologists have said yes now i recognize that that condition we're aware of that condition now and there is no reason to think there is no reason to think that these conditions that these people are suffering from is not possession um um syndrome or just another mental health condition of what you are not aware you these people believe that these demons can possess them and when times get tough and i showed you where the studies from psychology have analyzed christians and said hey yeah they believe that these problems are caused by demons because that's what they know and so you're selling them a cure for a disease that does not exist the point about hypochondria is that you can have diseases that don't exist and that's that's true and i'm a will fully admit that that's why any any person who is dealing with the demonic and i do not um i do not do exorcisms of people in general largely because that's not my not in some of my profile i do haunting cleanings that's mostly what i've done in my in my career so the the title of exorcist is a little strange like i'm not not so much i haven't gotten up there yet but um the the what people who do who have uh who do practice and do help in that area in modern times will stay absolutely we suggest that people go and get evaluated by psychologists um again you're bringing up abuse cases cases that show abuse and we say you know the first thing that a person should do is confess have confession if the confession doesn't doesn't help them by by getting their their their conscious clean of anything that's in the past and and so forth and so on then yeah you go to a psychologist absolutely you're you say you're not a trained psychologist yep you got me on that one i'm not a trained psychologist so that's why we eliminate those things that's why we say yeah go to a trained psychologist go find help in the in the world in the world of science first there's what's we call the Reese Howells principle Reese Howells is a well-known prayer and intercessor a prophet in the early 20th century he predicted the world war two before it happened many years before it happened in specifics like the invasion of russia and so forth and so on it's a very interesting book and and he had a principle of he wouldn't even pray for anyone's healing until they had exhausted all potential medical and scientific routes and actually gets a lot actually gets a lot of in the in the prayer and healing communities kind of catches a lot of flag for that for like it's not biblical you know you should go to god first and and i kind of agree with Reese i say you know what we've been given a command by scripture to dominate nature first and foremost that's the first to command that we've been given to to reproduce and then also to dominate nature and that's part of it you know finding out about our own nature about our psychology about the world around us and so yeah have germs been ascribed to demons in the past sure have different psychological disorders been ascribed to demons in the past yes have those as attributions had tragic consequences yes and that's terrible that's unfortunate and those abuses should be corrected but again that does not mean that when you have a legitimate demonic situation like haunting that is that is legitimate and you go and you do what needs to be done to relieve these people of their suffering and they are relieved that is i think a net positive right well i mean so testable predictions are what we use in science to rule it out and the whole basis is falsifiability so you use things like controls and things like that no studies have have brought up anything demonic or or or like if you can point me in the way of a controlled experiment that points out the demonic or even secondhand knowledge about the demonic because you basically said that there is no they they they don't have an impact on the physical world but they kind of do because there is a indirect impact on things if they didn't have an impact on the physical world they wouldn't be able to do anything now i i i applaud you for sending them to psychologists and things first but that doesn't mean that your next step is to just call it a demon and and exercise it or or even even suggest that that is the case i wonder and and perhaps you could answer this in a second i wonder how many people who are atheists or skeptics or people that don't believe in demons come to you and say hey we've got a supernatural event we need you to clear up i would bet none and i and i don't think that is because the demons only prey on people who believe in them i will i will happen to bet that that is because they are the ones that do believe that things can be caused by demons they are vulnerable because they believe this stuff and and what i want to put to you is what methodology are you using to confirm these are demons and how can we replicate that methodology and this is important because this is what we do in science how can we replicate that methodology so everybody including these people who you're saying are doing the wrong thing can use that methodology to accurately and and precisely confirm when it is a demon and when it is a neurological disorder with problems because this is still happening this this last case happened last year so something is broken here what is your methodology all right so the the the question that you're putting to me is tell me how to do science on something that you say from the onset is not science it's like me saying tell me how to do religion on the thing that you call science which you say specifically is not science like for instance let me ask you a question who is the god of science the the pope of science right now the the great the great pontiff of science you know who gives you the sacred host of science every saturday or is it friday um you know where where is your science Sabbaths held and you say wait just as this is insanity you're you're asking me to defend science in a religious framework and i'm saying the exact same thing mark this is insanity you're asking me to go from one magisterium to the other and defend religion or defend the area of the of the of the supernatural in a scientific arena and i'm saying i'm not really interested in doing that simply because again we're talking about the supernatural um it's by definition beyond the natural as far as my methodology is again as i said before i deal my particular personal experience my personal practice with helping people get rid of hauntings is mostly with house demons and not doesn't have to do with actual exorcisms i had a very very bad experience as a uh exorcism training it sounds terrible uh as a but when i was in when i was young i was actually been translating for someone who was claiming that they were an exorcist the things that i saw there told me that that i needed to to be very careful with with the demonic world because it's very real very powerful and um and and then and needs to be needs to be shredded lightly with um so i deal mostly with house demons and my methodology is i will ask you know there's a there's a laundry list of questions that you ask about what is being happened um we have a co2 meter you have a methane meter you look for you know is there a gas leak in the area um when was do you have uh natural gas coming in is there a gas leak is there a o2 levels are too high you look for those things first that's the thing that you do first uh second thing is that you ask about um uh certain not circumstantial evidence but things that will predispose people towards hauntings i have your relatives or relatives that you know of who've lived in this house um done black magic or had been involved in the occult and more often than not that will happen and oftentimes you said like you would like to know what percentage of people that i've helped are atheists and frankly russia is a largely atheist country um despite what a lot of the misconceptions of the outside world is and the majority of people that i've helped would actually claim nor no formal beliefs in god or the supernatural um and that's part of the the horror and the problems that they have they said you know grandma did witchcraft we don't believe in it it's it's it's just superstition it's not real but we have this thing that is terrorizing us and we need help and so this is yes absolutely lots of people who who have come to us are atheists lots of people who do not did not believe in the supernatural or in demons before they had this phenomenological experience which convinced them that there was something out there um so it is not always psychosomatic it's not always about people who just want to believe or who believe from childhood um but on the other hand it's it's about people and again it has a lot to do with the uh with the beliefs of the community um again because demonic powers gain power from the the beliefs that we give them so there is there is that that is true it does look a little bit like psychosmetics but um it's actually not and uh so yeah that's that's the situation okay so um you you asked me to tell you how uh science could could do religion basically yeah if i basically make the god of spinoza my god i believe in it no matter what it says i make einstein the prophet whatever he says cannot be disputed um with the sabbath is held every uh the festival of einstein every first day of every month this would be the religious adherence to traditions and um and and great figures that that would make it a religion but that's not what we do in science you're sort of saying methodology isn't something that you do because it's it's all science no you do methodology every day there's a methodology to crossing the road if you just go well there's there's i haven't sent some trucks for for a while i'm just going to cross the road that's a terrible methodology for getting across the road if you look left look right listen for any traffic and then cross the road that is a way better methodology for gathering evidence of any any vehicles on the road you don't seem to understand that methodology is applicable in every single day with almost almost everything we come up with for knowledge or or belief it is how you obtain the data about your world and and it's absolutely applicable outside of science there is nothing intrinsic to science about a methodology um you say saying that hey these things look like psychosomatic problems um they they they you know uh but they're not psychosomatic problems and i'm asking how do you differentiate between that how do you what methodology do you use for separating psychosomatic problems mental health issues um superstitious beliefs because even if this person is an atheist they will probably still have some superstitions and you convince them it's demons and then you say well i can get rid of these demons for you now i've got no doubt that that may work on some people but is it ethical to do that is it ethical all right um this is the uh so we've gone from give me a scientific proof to give me a methodology to give me your ethical defense so we'll go we'll go through that first thing i never said that i don't believe in methodology that i don't have a methodology in fact i actually gave you a brief reader's digest version of a methodology like so to say that i don't believe in methodologies is ridiculous on its face since i just gave you a methodology what i said is that there are two different magisterians there's science and there's religion that science has to do with the physical world religion has to do with the divine with the spiritual world or the demonic you know non-spirit the the the the malevolent spiritual world and these are these are different spheres with different sets of methodologies that do not that are hermetically sealed from each other they don't um they don't go back and forth and so what i'm saying is of course it would be absurd for you to treat science like religion and you demonstrated that with your little thing about you know it would be absurd and it is also absurd to treat religion um with science like to try to dissect it scientifically uh because they are they're they're dealing with different questions they're dealing with different spheres science is the result of the scientific method which is a delineated five-step process that gives you certain conclusions that have predictive power in the physical realm religion is an entirely different kind of knowledge so again to keep saying well you know you you you don't believe in methodology i absolutely believe in methodology just not scientific methodology as applies to religion for instance i believe in hermeneutics i believe in exegesis i believe in you know some degree exorcism like and it is the methodology but it's not a scientific methodology as applied to spiritual things as far as the ethics of doing the majority of the people that come to me for help are not members of my church as i already said that and i do nothing to convince them that they are demon possessed in fact i do my due diligence to show what natural phenomena could potentially uh how to say answer their need like and if they are convinced that oh wait a second this is you know we had a gas leak uh oh wait a second you know maybe we should get our sleeping patterns which is a huge one with people who are having night horrors is they're just they're just sleep deprived they're not getting enough sleep before the debate talked we're talking about some issues that some people are having with sleep and that is a huge part of what i do is just getting people back on a decent sleep pattern to get these things under control um but then when you've excluded those things when you've gone down the list of the most common things that are uh potentially what could it could explain things uh physically then you go down the laundry list of what things might explain this otherwise and then if you find those those that evidence or those things that predispose people towards demonic possession their houses for instance which is what i deal with um then yeah then you deal with it and when having done those steps dealing with the possession and it liberates people from the oppression people who are atheists people who don't believe or didn't believe previously in hauntings then is it is it ethical to do good or to do evil i mean if what you've done has given people peace and has given them um has freed them from uh from an oppression that they've been suffering under is that not ethical if you're not violating any other ethical principles in the in the completion of it again i'm not trying to convince people that they have demonic possession i'm saying that if people have gone down the laundry list of things that could explain what they're going through and they're still suffering that i want them to know that there is um a potential explanation and there's and there's relief and i think that is ultimately um ethical okay so what you've said conflicts from what you said earlier because you sort of said that hey these are people that don't believe in demons but you you don't try and convince them you actually have to convince them it's not demons that you do the opposite of what i suggested so you've basically said well they don't believe in demons until they come to me and then say well no i have tried to convince them it's not demons so that's a clear contradiction in what you've said so they're obviously coming to you with a higher belief in demons now running through the whole thing of common let me jump in yeah just work no no i won't i'll finish my points thank you um we're running through the list of common things and then uncommon things and then you go to what else what if it's something that is incredibly rare and and say a neurological disorder or or it is how do you address the idea of of possession syndrome the the the psychological um distorted thought that you are possessed or your house is possessed or these things have spirits in it because that is in the dsm five and we know that is a dissociative disorder i can't remember the exact dissociative disorder but it is a dissociative disorder that has been classified in the dsm five so these people come thinking that there are demons because you try to convince them otherwise um that they're already in a vulnerable state where they're ready to believe this and like so if they're their grandma did witchcraft as you'd said or i don't even know what that is but if they did something that they perceive as dark and evil they may be primed in that superstition already this this isn't rocket science we understand how the human mind works and why superstitions take root in people we understand this but what you haven't done is provide a single shred of reliable evidence for for any of this you have simply made claims that what you see is not psychosomatic it is not mental illness while coming from place that it is in no way trained to make that distinction what i'm saying is go to somebody who has training and experience in exactly this mental health problems um um these kind of problems i mean i don't think you've even given an account for what what supernatural things that you have seen i'll give you a chance to respond justice a short and pithy one if you can and then i do want to go into we do this new feature in which we ask the audience we poll them and ask which topic they especially want to hear you guys discuss and that's usually about two minutes for each of those topics that we run by you but first justice i'll give you a chance to respond to mark yeah earlier on there i was trying to interject mark not so much as to interrupt as much as to just uh kind of delineate the points so that we could deal with each thing as it comes out but the first thing that you said was that that you that you contradict yourself in the sense that people who didn't believe in demons and they come to you and you try to and and that kind of thing and what i'm what i'm saying is again is you have people uh quite a few people in my experience who have who have run into phenomena that they have become to believe are uh supernatural are demonic these people having had before the appearance of the phenomenon not believed in in the supernatural they were either agnostic or atheistic then they come to me and i say well let's make sure that this is not uh just a physical phenomenon let's go down this list so i'm the one who's actually uh helping them go down and and and say take a deep breath you know there are things that could happen just physiologically and and doing that so i am not saying oh you know what well demons you know i'm the one who's my first step is to say let's look at the thing we know could possibly be be answering this this problem you know so and then after that yeah if if i believe if i have a belief uh that these these things are oppressive towards people that people can become subject to them then of course i'm going to look at that as a potential you say you do nothing but i've already said that i do things i send people for instance if people are exhibiting what they believe are they're in their relatives or whatever uh evidence of demon possession the first thing i'm going to do is send them to a psychologist psychiatrist to be evaluated to get help professional help to the extent that is possible again referring to the Reese Howell's method which is get as much help as you can in the in the civil quote unquote scientific world as until that has exhausted itself at which point then you yeah if there if the scientific world has no answers then we go above and beyond that so i'm not a trained psychologist i'm not a trained psychiatrist um yep go for it some of these topics actually have to do with that in particular whether or not there are some cases in which it can't be explained by psychiatry but before we get to those the number one voted topic with 60 out of the four options on the poll was is there any video or photo evidence of demons now i know just as you said that they're not material so it makes sense you're saying that like you wouldn't have any direct video or photo evidence but is there a way in which you could have a video and photo evidence in which it's indirect in other words for example if it looked like wow it looked like somebody's on camera and all of a sudden we just see like a a red mark appear on their face in the shape of a hand and we clearly saw nothing touch their face and the video editing was just too hard to pull this off you might say is like is that direct evidence any thoughts on this is there any way in which there can be or is there any video or photo evidence you found compelling we'll start with you justice and then we'll give mark a chance to respond as well thank you yeah um again i i i start out with this is that the evidence for the demonic is going to come from what's science called anecdotal evidence from first first hand sources because the human being is the device that is meant to connect with the spiritual realm so that would make sense that that's where we get the evidence from it from having said that yes demons do interact with the physical world to a degree although they're not physical they have some ability to interact with the physical world and they may leave physical evidence so i don't exclude video or sound evidence that is possible um but i it's it's highly mostly what you will have is if you have a haunted house for instance where the the the the demon who's doing the haunting is another 60 seconds audible evidence which is the most kind of a lightning a lightning jump into yep real quick um sure sorry i'm hard with the planning world so yeah the audible evidence which is the most common you will often have where recording devices are placed in the home and you and you actually hear those sounds so that is that is a kind of evidence that happens so stick that in your pipe and smoke it mark all right we'll give you a chance to respond mark what do you think well anecdotal evidence and eyewitness account is notoriously unreliable and anecdotal evidence is some of the worst evidence you can present in court physical evidence is way better obviously he's saying well there won't be physical evidence to a certain degree but if it interacts in the physical world there will be physical evidence of some kind that we can sort of point to um i mean even the catholic church they said oh we witnessed levitation and their idea of levitation is simply somebody bowing their their their back bowing their back so they're basically on their heels and their head this is not levitation this is not supernatural happenings all of their supernatural happenings are explained by real world phenomenon that we're aware of the the schizophrenia dissociative identity disorder um other other um neurological disorders and mental health disorders when you watch these videos it explains it perfectly and psychologists and psychiatrists have said as much there is no reason to go to ghouls and goblins for these these things that they say oh that's supernatural no they're not they're perfectly perfectly natural it's just that they don't have an explanation so they insert demons as the cause there is no reason to do that there's no evidence for demons there's no good evidence for ghosts it doesn't exist we need to snap out of this mindset we'll jump to this next topic and folks want to say we're gonna have the q and a in just a few minutes so if you happen to have any questions fire them in soon as we're gonna wrap up in about 30 minutes actually probably slightly less than 30 minutes so fair those questions in quick if you have any and with that this next subtopic that the audience voted second most you could say desired topic was could ghosts pose as demons so i think it's kind of an epistemic challenge in terms of granting there's some sort of supernatural malevolent or perhaps prankster any sort of personal entity that's incorporeal could it actually be that these are actually ghosts you know dead spirits of people that are pretending to be demonic justice yeah again i come in at it from a biblical worldview so for me scripture is the source it seems to me that scripture does not completely exclude the potential possibility of ghosts that there is a possibility that they would but it seems they would be extremely rare in the biblical world worldview most likely it's demons posing as ghosts and not the other way around you got it this one oh that's what mark i want to give you a chance to be one respond to that even if you're oh that's okay i mean i i don't think ghosts are real either i i think that that or all of that we don't have enough evidence to believe in ghosts or demons that there's there's nobody presenting any anything that would be more conclusive than say the evidence for bigfoot there's no people coming with any solid evidence whatsoever so i i i don't believe in either and i don't really see why anybody should every time we get to actually investigating these things we find explanations for them it's not good enough in in today's society that we run out of explanations and just insert the supernatural i'm sorry it's just not good enough you got it this one interesting so granting this i think there's maybe a way out in which you know a skeptic could say say that even if it was the case but granting this they want to know justice have you ever seen a possessed person with super strength because i think the argument is that if you did this hypothetical then it might be evidence of something supernatural like if a little girl like picks up her bed overhead that something off is happening but we'll give you a chance justice then we'll give you a chance mark yeah the uh my first experience with with an exorcism of a person actually had that where it was a very small slight framed person who had supernatural strength and it was very much like the story from the bible in the book of acts where the seven sons of syphilis come and were trying to exercise a man who then said you know peter i know paul i know but who are you and beat them thoroughly and chase them out of the house and that was more or less what happened to me and my little group of of people when i was young and interpreting for these people they claimed to have power that they did not have and it goes back to mark's point about prayer and fasting to to be involved in the spiritual world and to have strength to exercise these spirits one needs to have spiritual strength and that comes from knowing the divine having a relationship with god and having prayer and fasting so this is uh that was something that happened in my life it was extremely it was one of the most scary situations in my life when you saw a small young person completely wasting a whole group of people and um throwing around the room like a rag doll and that was uh extremely um formative i guess in my life you got it well quick kick it over to mark as well yeah thank you james um so a lot of these these anecdotes they come back um not lining up with with multiple stories um the house that i showed the 200 daemon's house that came back with um the mother saying that the boy showed supernatural strength in kicking somebody and he flew across the room the police actually reported something different than the boy kicked somebody and they fell and stumbled but it wasn't anything um super strength like now i'm not claiming that the drenland can't give you a massive amount of strength or you know increase the amount of strength that you have but nobody's ever shown any actual evidence of these supernatural strength powers in that same case in that that house um they reported that the boy um ran up a wall and and in actual fact what was reported by the authorities was that he just put his he was being held by somebody he put his feet on the wall ran a bit and then flipped over that's nothing that can't be done by a pretty agile young man um it's not that these stories come out um and its human nature to make the fish you caught bigger to to exaggerate what has happened and that happens a lot it's careful you have to be careful with anecdotal evidence because whoever's telling it will have a preconceived belief of what has happened that's why we rely on empirical evidence instead of anecdotes it's because this does happen you got it and this last one let's do it short and sweet and then go to go to the q and a this one is is there evidence of any possessed people with clairvoyance in other words they know something that they should not have known for example if someone becomes a possessed and they start speaking a language that they never knew like lat especially an ancient language like latin or something like that have you ever seen this justice i've never seen uh demon possessed people demonstrate uh language that they have not possessed um i've not seen that personally i've heard that it happens but not not that i've seen or any other type of clairvoyance so maybe you know you walked in the room and the possessed person said justice and let's say you'd never met them before and there's no like reasonable way even no plausible even remotely plausible way that they would know your wife's name and they said how is your wife so and so and you know her birthday is on this date anything like that anything in which they would they seem to know something whereas like wait how how could you have known that but i've seen uh again that kind of like uh on the on the benevolent side of things words of knowledge people who knew things that were impossible have been known um from a from a you know in a prophetic sense not a demon possessed presence gotcha but that the demons do give people periodically the ability yeah sure that's scriptural you got it and mark we'll give you a chance if you want to respond yeah so this this claim's been made by by a few people especially the talking in latin that that sort of um uh analyse Mitchell the the german woman that i showed i believe her um they they sort of said she was talking in latin when she wouldn't have known the language um it was sort of found by the court that she was actually repeating the latin said to her back so again with with this anecdotal evidence you have to be really careful that somebody isn't taking what they want from the situation um these these people that were performing the the exorcism they they believe that so fervently that they kind of ignored um these signs that pointed to not to what i say normal mental health issues but just mental health issues um she was simply repeating the latin back but where what the price got out of that was that she suddenly knew latin which is demonstrably false you got it and with that we are going to jump into the q and a so i want to say things very much for all of your questions folks we're going to try to speed through these we've got about 20 minutes big j says hello james thanks big j for your super chat and utavara utavara one says walker do you have any success in curse removal yes curse removal is something that we've done uh quite a bit um it goes along with house cleaning and uh one of the curses that i helped remove was an impotency curse um that the guy who broke up with his girlfriend was given which is kind of hilarious but in any case um yes that is a have had experience with that and have had success you got it this one again from psych whore says how can you possibly determine real demon hauntings from false ones are you prepared to believe everyone who says they've seen a demon why or why not absolutely not prepared to believe everyone who says they've seen a demon or that they have a haunting that's why you have a checklist you go down things that could possibly explain the haunting um so as to not waste your time or get into the more than necessary um so yeah absolutely you you don't believe everything but when you see a situation where again this is why i referred to uh to children who do not know that a cleaning has happened and then the the horror is gone um so the parents ask for help um and then the children are report that they have no longer have any any night horrors um so again you're looking at a cause and effect relationship and and not just that you know um something other than that you got it this one coming in from totally not a demon says to justin i think they mean justice so they say our demons only sub subjugated by the christian god how do you know that we i mean the demons are not just playing along namely okay so they're saying it's kind of like that epistemic challenge earlier could it be the case that demons are actually not under the subjugation of god and that they actually could overpower god but they're just playing you could say almost like playing dead they're playing weak yeah this uh that challenge was actually given to christ uh in his earthly ministry that you uh cast out demons by the power of the lord of demons by bale's above and he says that if bale's above is divided against himself that his kingdom um does not say it but if i cast out demons by the power of god by the finger of god the kingdom of heaven is upon you and so the idea of you know faking yep go for it no go ahead sorry i didn't mean to cut you off no no just the idea that the demons will be faking like oh you know we're gonna fake to that that god is uh the the ministers of god and god himself was powerful to uh chase us out what is that gate like you're just proving that your enemy is you know more powerful than you are what's the point here you got it and thank you very much for this one coming in from quantia states says if i donate a hundred dollars in exchange for james's soul would that be proof that i am demonic no it'd be proof that you were um feeble minded oh this one bubblegum gun says mark what medical condition explains levitation well as i said levitation like the actual leaving of the ground has not actually been observed in the catholic church when they do exorcisms and they describe levitation it is simply the bowing of the back the heels and the head are still on the floor so you've got to be careful when you use the word levitation because that has a different connotation in catholic exorcisms than actually floating and leaving the floor which has never been observed so yeah i think i think um um we can safely say that a person can bow bow their back and and leave their back from the floor i can do that you can probably do that um certainly a person under an extreme amount of stress and duress could do that you got it and i want to focus i gotta say this i have to say it i'm so excited as a quick side note we are so close to booking the final debate for debate con it's going to be our in-person conference on saturday november 19th we're going to squeeze all of the debates into one day it's going to be amazing and we are so close the last one because i'm like oh i want to announce it so bad i could taste it it's going to be huge you guys i've got to tell you there's there going to be some on this card of debates that you're going to be like oh my gosh for real is that really happening but want to say thanks very much for your question bubblegum gun says we've got that one sunflower says mark the 2022 Nobel prize was just awarded to physicists who proved quote the universe is not locally real unquote yet here you are applying rigid dry skepticism to the supernatural why not be more open-minded well i think having an open mind is is great until your brain falls out like there's there's a million things you could insert into these demon shaped gaps and sort of say hey that's the reason for them you you could insert alien rays coming down from the universe you could insert magic gremlins that live on Pluto doing it there's a million things you could you could just basically subscribe to these events why are we suddenly going well let's drop science in order to open our minds to the magic gremlins sunflower it's it's not that i have a closed mind to it but before i actually consider it a plausible explanation you have got to provide some evidence of that plausibility some reliable evidence and and so far all we've got is anecdotes and and religious beliefs i'm i'm really sorry but that isn't good enough for me and i don't know why it's good enough for anybody you got it and someone said in the live chat poker man says where is the debate conference it is thanks for mentioning that i forgot to mention it's in plain oh texas so if you are anywhere near dallas if you're in houston austin i can say one of our guests is driving up from austin like hint hint but it's going to be amazing it's going to be in dallas and we're going to jump into the next question this one coming in from do appreciate it quani upstate says should a possessed person be found not guilty of murder if the demon controlled them and made them kill people justice i think that the situation with it with demons demon possessed people killing people is again that's very would be a very rare case um but the person it's it's a little it would be a little bit like vehicular manslaughter under the influence of alcohol demons do not possess people without being invited and so there might be mitigating circumstances if you could actually demonstrate in a court of law which again the whole supernatural natural problem would is here because the court of law is meant to to cease out in natural phenomena uh and evidence but if you were to show maybe there would be mitigating circumstances just like for people who have uh psychological situations psychological elements but i wouldn't the person cannot be completely exonerated under a demonic possession because um they are to some degree uh responsible for having invited that demon uh to possess them this one coming in from do i just add something to that james would you mind just really quick really busy um so so demons made me do it has not been a viable defense in law forever um ever since sale on rich trials where they eliminated spectral evidence the problem is there is no way to investigate whether this demon is actually real or not and that is the problem you cannot entertain it regardless of whether the person invited it in or or what have you it's just something that we have no evidence for so it's not even considered we'll give you a super short pity response if you want one justice otherwise we're going to the next one um i say that in general you know the natural supernatural dichotomy i have mostly grew with mark you know but again i would never use the demon defense this one coming in from do appreciate your question thunder storms as if science and atheism don't believe in anything why do they have funerals and ceremonies it feels hypocritical and like they are lying yeah good question um so i'll first stress the first part it's not like we don't believe in anything um atheists and and agnostics and people believe in things i believe in lots of things the only thing that that an atheist has to do is not believe in a god to be an atheist that's only one thing i believe in in loving people i believe in um a strong judicial system there's a ton of things i believe it probably the same things as you um the reason why we have funerals is because of the people that are left behind it's for us not the dead person um you you honor their memory and you go through a grieving process and and we understand grief and how it affects us it's important to um have these uh farewells to our loved ones it's a part of that that process in which we we let them go and and let their memories go um there's nothing supernatural about that there's nothing uh religious about that it is simply a we have a lot of ceremonies we have graduation ceremonies we have we have ceremonies marking an achievement they're important to us so it's it's not for the person that's died stress this one from bug master says i thought that hauntings were done by ghosts not demons i think they're saying justice they heard you say that you deal with hauntings sometimes yeah the difference between uh hauntings and haunting that's done by ghosts or haunting that's done by a demon has to do with what you believe the entity to be not the phenomena the phenomena would be the same what you believe in the entity would be different chris g says when you reference sleep horrors are you meaning night terrors like the parasomnia justice yes you got it but i think they're saying that like doesn't that mean that there is uh or oh okay sir are you maybe saying that like that sleep there are some phenomena there there are some phenomena that can be explained by people having what's called you know uh sleep sleep horrors or night terrors and where a person goes into a state of a nightmare but they're not fully asleep they're they're actually in a wakeful state god and that can be exceedingly uh distressing but it is a natural phenomena this one from karma's reels says mark which objective laws do you rely on for observing scientific claims how can you account for them being objective versus subjective what's the origin of these objective truths in the universe okay so um basically the laws of nature are objective they will continue to be so um if you're sort of getting to where does rationality come from and sort of burning down the chessboard by saying hey you can't demonstrate rationality well yeah you've got to make some presuppositions about your own mind and and and the laws of logic that lead to rationality but having said that um the the laws of nature that we observe after that are objectively so if if a rock tumbles off of a mountain that's objective to where it will go it's not my subjective opinion um and that's the whole point um we can make models about this behavior um and the the result will be objectively so it doesn't matter which mind is is viewing it it will be the outcome of physics um so i'm i'm not sure what you're getting at unless you're trying to basically um question reason all together and if that's the case then why did you bother reasoning that question to ask me you've got it this one coming in from the over giver says is it possible for other religions to cast or cleanse out demons justice this is break up there a little bit uh they said is it possible for other religions or people of other religious faiths to cast out demons as well you know that is a interesting interesting uh topic there is it seems to be that lower level demons uh like hauntings and lower level uh possessions uh not high level possessions but lower level possessions that that there is a hierarchy of demonic entities that they're varying in strength and varying in ability to stay attached to the body which they wish to possess being that a house or a or a person um and that those lower level demons actually can be pushed out by um what you can call the spiritual strength of the practitioner regardless of their uh particular religion and again this is non-scriptural but it is seems to do what is demonstrated phenomenal phenomenologically you got it this one coming in from do appreciate your question franco true hello says what type of evidence would it take to convince you that demons or ghosts aren't likely real love your content moderated debate thanks for your kind words franco give you chance justice evidence that demons aren't real for me it's again i i have evidence that shows that demonstrates to me with my own life and in my practice that they are real um and it would have you'd have to go down the laundry list of um those i don't know all of those two dozen or more uh exorcisms that i've done or cleanings that i've done um and show that each one of those was completely physiological like and since i do my due diligence and actually do exclude most of the things i it seems to me like you're you're asking me to do what evidence that you could provide me to tell me that my experience was not what it is and that's a little bit that's a high bar bubble gum guns as mark stop running and debate me one on one on modern day debate one of your well you'd have to get a topic bubbles but um yeah if you want to come on modern day debate and take me on on the debate i will debate you but um yeah okay sure sure maybe we can have one over yeah sure i'll take on bubbles it's just bubbles come on chris g says the quote the human being is the device that is meant to connect with the spiritual realm unquote saying this is what you said justice and then says why not the quote unquote upside down like that tv show prove it i am not aware of the uh the cultural reference uh stranger things they have yeah they have sort of like a mirror mirror world to um our real world that's sort of um dark and emo and edgy kind of thing i guess is how i'd describe it mr monster says is it possible that angels and demons are and ghosts are just perceived to be these things when they're actually aliens that's that is a possibility i mean i think that the opposite is most likely the truth like that demons uh the demonic are what we are seeing when we're seeing alien encounters again because the alien encounters is not something new it's a that's the kind of thing has been observed for millennia the perceived what you're seeing changes so it goes from chariots to flying machines um but the phenomena seems very uh has a lot of continuity through history you gotta say something briefly to that yeah sure i that's that's something that you can sort of there's a million things you could put in there instead of aliens as well you know if we're making stuff up let's go hold wild and say they're extra dimensional aliens from another dimension with you know magical powers you could anything you could put literally anything in there so yeah i sorry james go ahead no that's alright and this one coming in from do appreciate your question aliyusha says good grief mark eyewitness accounts are now quote unquote anecdotal evidence read peter fru chins account of living with the in inuit that's all they say well yeah i mean eyewitness accounts are the definition of anecdotal evidence um what yeah so so um and that that's not to say that eyewitnesses accounts aren't evidence they're just not very strong evidence look the police they know that eyewitness accounts aren't that reliable and in fact when they do lineups it is it is remarkable how often people get the details wrong or or when they're describing a crime how often they get the details wrong it our perceptions aren't that reliable when they when we retell them back and i'm not dismissing it as oh well we can't rely on anybody anybody's anecdotal evidence all i'm saying is it's just not that strong in comparison with something like forensic evidence dna evidence for instance is incredibly strong if you place dna evidence at a crime scene they've been there if someone says hey i saw a guy and i think it was that guy sorry not that strong i'm really sorry you're gonna have to deal with that this one from buck master says i'm just real quick i'd like to jump in on that real quick if you could the the problem is with this with yeah the problem with the skeptic position that oh i need a little evidence isn't evidence excludes anything that might only have eyewitness evidence as being that the only evidence might be eyewitness and it seems to me somewhat you know precious that they would exclude that at the voice of two and three witnesses that that's the idea that the reason why you have collaborative eyewitness evidence if three five ten twenty people are are all establishing the same fact then maybe it has a higher chance of being correct than not like if everyone throughout the entire history of the human race said that they encountered these things maybe it has this one from the then not but master i could i have the final word because that question was already yeah um so and i didn't say anecdotal evidence isn't evidence i said it was evidence just not strong evidence um you said two or three witnesses great i can find two or three witnesses for bigfoot i can find two or three witnesses for aliens i can find a ton of people that believe in aliens um and you say the entire um history of mankind um eyewitness these things no they didn't they are you you have already acknowledged that they eyewitnessed a whole lot of mental health problems a whole lot of illness a whole lot of other things and what you claim to be this thing so let's get that straight this one from bug master says i'm so confused do anti-demonic procedures also work on ghosts what about aliens or the fae isn't it important to figure out the correct species of foe before invoking the cleansing ritual the um the situation with ghosts and aliens as opposed to demons and ghosts and aliens whatever is again it's your framework that you're working out of in interpreting the phenomena you see a phenomenon in a house like um people being hearing noises that's a very common one pure hearing uh or doors opening closing it's a very common one you got it um lashes being unlocked is a common one and you know you can ascribe that to ghosts you can ascribe that to aliens i ascribe it to demons and when i do um and then proceed with the proper procedure then you know the people are relieved of the of the oppression and so again um it has predictive power you got it thank you very much for this question coming in from aliusha strikes again says mark i love you but your objections in the face of evidence on this issue are purely dogmatic and then said important to remember quote unquote demons or contact with spiritual forces is a well documented worldwide historical phenomenon um uh so is aliens that's a well documented historical phenomenon as well so is bigfoot um it's it's not dogmatic it's simply having a skepticism about things that are not demonstrably true um i mean just as mentioned flipping latches and doing this kind of stuff wouldn't that be direct evidence or indirect evidence of these things happening but no one is coming with any actual documented and investigated things like this it's just hey these things happened in our house and we're just going to say them there should be some way to see if you set up a camera next to these latches whether they are flipping by themselves right right but it's never done why isn't it ever done why does nobody capture these things it's because all they're relying on is anecdotes and that isn't good enough as i said there's throughout history people have believed in throughout history people have believed in all kinds of things i've got a actually i do have to wrap us up because i actually do have to run i do want to give mark the last word on that one too just because it was originally addressed for him but i want to say my dear friends both of our guests are linked in the description so if you're like wait i want to hear just a little bit more you certainly can by clicking on those links down below we do appreciate our guests they're linked right now if you're watching live or watching afterwards you can click on those links including if you are listening via the podcast as all of our modern day debates end up on the modern day podcast as well available on fine podcast apps everywhere you don't want to miss it i'm not able to do a post credits scene tonight so i do want to say folks just a quick summary we appreciate our guests so a huge thank you to justice and to mark it's been a true pleasure to have you guys here tonight thank you james thank you james and thanks justice for coming and debating this i really appreciate it thanks mark alley ocean snuck in a last question this is the last one we can do they said mark we have not had documented accounts of bigfoot and aliens for thousands of years yeah but it doesn't really matter um the the fact that people were a lot more religious in the past so they naturally would have inserted the explanations of demons rather than aliens which became more popular in the current century doesn't lead anything to its credibility i'm sorry you got it with that do check out our guest links we do appreciate them and folks if you haven't yet hit that subscribe button as we have many more juicy debates to come you don't want to miss them and keep your eyes peeled we're going to be announcing any day now we're going to be announcing the debates for our huge in-person conference in dallas texas it's gonna be amazing so keep an eye out for that as well and we'll be posting it shortly one last thank you justice and mark it's been a true pleasure to have you thank you