Ax-Wielding Father Vanquishes the Devil, Who is His Son

i’m sure mental illness played a large role in his actions. but gosh, talk about religion not helping the situation. so sad for the child.

Do we *know* the man is a Christian or even has a religious belief at all? We can somewhat assume this, but the article doesn’t definitively say so. I’m sure the story is developing and we may find out later.

Sounds like he may have been on drugs.

I don’t think this counts. This must be schizophrenia, and for some reason, schizophrenics attribute the voices to some supernatural being. He needs to die anyway.

I’m not sure this article belongs on this site. This man obviously was mentally ill – just because his delusions took on “religious” iconography, doesn’t mean religion played any part in his illness; had he never heard of demons, it’s likely his paranoia would have just taken on another form. If this story is supposed to somehow further discredit religion, then this article certainly doesn’t belong here.

had he never heard of demons, it’s likely his paranoia would have just taken on another form

You don’t know that and even if it did, perhaps that form wouldn’t manifest itself into swinging an ax at his son because he though he had a demon in him. People not swinging axes at their kids is a better thing than people swinging axes at their kids 100% of the time.

If only he’d read his bible, this could have been averted. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy_21:18-21&version=KJV (assuming the elders of the city aren’t as delusional as this guy)

Religion is a form of mental illness. Oh, I’m sorry, there’s a religious exemption at the end of the definition of “Delusion”.

I’ll grant you that last point… However, I have to disagree with your first. Do axes have some special religious significance? I still fail to see how religion is at fault in this tragic story.

With a supreme court judge who has seen the devil [ or devils depending on whether he is monodevilistic or polydevilistic] , I believe this guy has a favorable case, if he can take it all the way to the SC.

Cheers and Happy New Year to all !

It’s not necessarily religion…just belief in the irrational in general. A proper dose of skepticism could have helped here. I have no idea where he got the idea that demons are real but I can almost certainly tell you that he didn’t surround himself around a lot of people that challenged his idea that demons are real.

Religious fervor is similar enough (or the same as) to clinical delusion that it can mask symptoms? Ya, I think I’d buy that. Had a relative where at least other family members dismissed what to many of us were clear signs of mental illness. They just chalked it up to her Love of Jesus.

As a society, we accept the insanity of religious belief as normal and acceptable, something to be promoted. If this man saw a demon possessing his son, bent on eating him, why shouldn’t he kill his son? Most people in my country believe in an all powerful deity. If that deity appears and tells somebody to kill, as they believe he has done in the past, why shouldn’t they do it? The might and justice of this deity (as stated by their belief system) is more potent than that of the state. The state can’t give eternal life, the state can’t give eternal punishment. Nobody can tell me why it’s reasonable for someone who truly believes in this nonsense NOT to kill (or whatever). The “reasonable” theists can’t explain why I shouldn’t take this man’s claim that his son was possessed by a demon as legitimate, without compromising their own expectation of respect. Seeing demons is “true for him” isnt it? Isn’t it just “another way of knowing”?

Please explain.

Skepticism implies rationality, this guy was obviously not rational. Religion my be a form of metal illness (debatable) but it is clearly not this form of metal illness.

I think we need to keep a close eye on “Dr” Chaps Gordon Klingenshmidt! That guy sees demons everywhere!

Assuming that this action was the product of mental illness (which seems likely, but isn’t certain), I think it simply demonstrates that a certain kind of violent psychosis manifests itself with the sufferer experiencing hallucinations that are rooted in their culture. If an atheist had this affliction, it might be man-eating aliens. People from other cultural backgrounds would experience different bogeymen.

We all have “demons” built into our psyches. Religion only provides one source. Illness many bring them to the forefront.

I don’t think this man’s religion was directly at fault- maybe not at all. My question is whether he attended church, with a pastor and community that enabled his latent mental illness, or if this came from somewhere else entirely.

de·lu·sion
noun di-ˈlü-zhən, dē-
: a belief that is not true : a false idea
: a false idea or belief that is caused by mental illness

I don’t think you have the right word.

So what’s the difference between delusion and wrong?

Whether you believe it.

While I believe that 1+1=3 I am both wrong and deluded. When I believe that 1+1=2 I am both not-wrong and not-deluded. I fail to see the distinction.

Believing in demonic possession very likely comes from religion but how do you know that this guy has a mental disease? Christianity for one promotes the idea that child blood sacrifice is virtuous. How do you know that this guy just doesn’t really believe it? Is it crazier to think a demon lives inside your kid than to think a cracker turns into the flesh of a 2000 year old zombie? Do you just assume that Catholics have a mental disease?

Necessary but not sufficient for what? The common usage of the word?

Yes it is. Those are delusions too. Unfalsifiability isn’t a loophole for delusion.

Asserting something as true that isn’t demonstrated as true makes you wrong.

That’s an example, but not a requirement. The wrongness being demonstrated makes it more apparent/severe.

But Merriam-Webster put it succinctly. It’s believing something that’s wrong.

We just seem to be starting with usages of the word that are at different ends of the spectrum. Frankly, that’s what I care about – whether someone’s beliefs are correct.

Religion my be a form of metal illness (debatable) but it is clearly not this form of metal illness.

Someone’s been listening to too much Quiet Riot.

As a Christian, and someone who deals with anxiety and depression, I wouldn’t think his religion would have enabled this mental illness (assuming he has a mental illness) unless he was attending an ultra-conservative church or was a scientologist … or something. I wasn’t completely discouraged from taking medication when I began experiencing anxiety but I knew my church’s IFB stance on it and was ashamed that I was taking it.

I completely agree that everyone has a form of “demon” – the word demon can be associated with and mean many different things.

Ehhh, a lot of people use the word “demon” to mean several different things, and the use of the word tends to pop up a lot of places. Maybe he read a fictional book with a description of a “demon” in it, and during his psychosis hallucinated the demon into being (of course this would be a hallucination, not a reality).

I don’t know that we can just assume the man believes in demons … in the sense of what Christianity defines demons.

One way might be to put it is that delusion is “persisting in error”. The problem is we do not have access to perfectly reliably knowledge. Knowledge is a web of belief and justification where the strengths of belief and degrees of justification vary quite widely over the entire domain. Persisting in what the sources one has access to declare an error is not the same thing, necessarily, as persisting in error. Sometimes everyone, and all accumulated knowledge, is simply wrong, and the error persisted because the social structure that gatekeeps the knowledge did not handle the particular type of error in an effective manner.

A person can rationally believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong; indeed, asserting such is the only time that knowledge is expanded. Sometimes your teacher, and your friend, and the answer key to your textbook, and Wikipedia are all wrong. Is it smart to bet on? Perhaps not. Most people who challenge settled knowledge turn out to be actually wrong; we might call such people deluded. A few who do so revolutionize our world; were they deluded before they were validated?

The missing element is the attachment to the being rightness that separates the deluded from the merely eccentric. Everyone has eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of belief; delusion requires a derangement in how one reacts to challenges to those beliefs, when a person becomes insensitive to the viewpoints of others in asserting the belief, heedless of the material consequences in acting upon it, sure beyond all possible appeal that it is correct.

Without the religious aspect, would his paranoia have taken another form? We can’t be sure that it would have; the emotional trauma of his beliefs may have been the very thing that pushed him over the edge. Which is why I believe this post does belong on this blog.

Religion gives the conduit, the justifications. If you’re taught that demons are real, your brain starts malfunctioning and you’ll act as if they are. You never get taught that ghosts/demons/other bullshit is real, and you have a lot higher chance of recognizing your own issues and dealing with them better.

I don’t think religion created his demons, but I think it gave it a form he wanted to attack. Magical thought runs deep.

That’s what I meant, sorry if that didn’t come across well. That’s why I used my own personal example of suffering from dep/anx in my past ultra-fundy baptist church and their stance on treating mental illness.

Anyway, I’m curious of the same.

Citation provided

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/014466599162683/abstract

Then religion IS a delusion, as the truth of no-god is indisputable when one looks at the evidence.

More like he needed to be on drugs.

Maybe we can at least all agree that

Saying he’s been “the best mayor this city has ever had,” Toronto’s Rob Ford on Thursday filed the paperwork to seek re-election in October.

Rob Ford is delusional.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/02/259114714/as-promised-toronto-mayor-rob-ford-files-for-re-election

Yes, the problem with your statement is there are people who see “demons” who have not been exposed to religion, or who are atheists. You need to be careful about causation and correlation. I fully understand your point…but again, it would only take one individual missing the religion exposure suffering “demons”, and your base statement because questionable.

IFB stands for “independent fundamental baptist”; if you can imagine it, IFB churches are more conservative than most southern baptist churches (google “Frank Garlock” or Bob Jones University).

Anyway, the IFB position on mental illness is that no one needs medication, you just need God.

I thought I’d add this comment, as a person who has had hallucinations but who is an atheist. Your hallucinations take on whatever forms that seem to fit whatever you happen to think about.

If the guy was mentally ill, then skepticism or rationality on his part is going to do nothing about hallucinations of demons, or anything else. The whole problem is the person’s brain isn’t working.

Now, if you are delusional and your delusions take on forms that other people believe in (demons, conspiracy theories) and you surround yourself with these people, it’ll probably make it worse, but even ordinary things can become delusion-triggering if you’re mentally ill and delusional.

You’re a little off the mark. You see, it’s obvious that this guy wasn’t a REAL Christian. A REAL Christian would have prayed the demon out of the child. Only a crazy person would use an axe to exorcise a demon instead of the Holy Scripture.

Since this is America, and roughly 70% of the population identify themselves as “Christian,” it is a safe assumption that he gained his irrational belief in “demons” from the “Holy” bible.

In addition, and I know this is only anecdotal, but a girl I know is also a schizophrenic. She is completely aware that she is, and has been on meds for it, but even when she is off of her meds (she had some issues where she had to be taken off of them for a while, not sure why) and during that time she’d stay with family or with friends (including myself). And she’d see things, and hear things, and she’d be able to rationalize what was real and what wasn’t for the most part, except one time when I walked into the room and she had been talking to my wife even though she was at work at the time.

I know she is an atheist, not sure of her upbringing though, and she’s a fairly rational person. I’d think that she’d really need to be to be able to figure out which of her senses were working normally and which were being messed with.

Uh, last I checked, Judaism contained a quite rich demonology. It’s not by any means a central or required tenet of Judaism like it is in Christianity, but even sources like the Babylonian Talmud describe demons and “demon princes” and suchlike, and they proliferate in Jewish folklore. Apocalyptic and mystery sects were kinda obsessed with wayward angels (Nephilim, etc.), prefiguring the Christian conception of demons as fallen angels.

Very devout Catholics. Almost certainly. The leadership encourages it.

You cannot claim to know what a REAL christian would do, as there are so many examples of fuckstains like this piece of shit doing exactly the same thing. Heard of parents drowning children because they thought they were devils? Yep, I have. Plenty of ‘REAL christians’ kill all the time. Maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the fact that irrational thought leads to moronic action like this.

I think Jason is just doing a little No True Scotsman schtick.

And don’t forget the father who killed his daughter as an offering to Yahweh. No last minute save there.

This Evil Dad is interestingly freaky, although I can hardly imagine the Pope, nor even the most twisted Fundie preacher encouraging him to kill and eat his own son. Conversely, I doubt that he really needed a pre-fabricated bogey-man in order to justify his actions, being so mentally FUBAR as he is – crazy people truly invent their own world, rules, gods, and devils! I don’t say this in defense of Christians (hardly), who really are evil when they control society, but they very interestingly don’t have to be crazy to be so evil! The cruel torture and burnings at the stake of the Spanish Inquisition, and the American witch trials which resulted in the hanging deaths of teenage girls were all carried out by people who were perfectly sane – and this is what makes the social influence of Christians such a menace!

My opinion is unqualified, but you may want to read Sam Harris’s “The Moral Landscape” and interpret for yourself what he has to say on the societal warping of religion.

Then they aren’t ‘true’ christians. The bible condones the death penalty for children that talk back. Deuteronomy 21:18-21
Stoning is probably more painful that a quick chop with an axe but either one gets the job done as required by the christians’ bible.

Yes many of them have religious delusions. My point was that he did it because he was crazy, not because he was religious. Crap like this happens everyday…maybe not axe murders…but crap.

I suspect this is because religious people will get all offended *unless there is that exemption.* Kind of how beating kids is child abuse, unless somehow you do it for religious reasons, or if I want to refuse to disclose info to the IRS I’m a criminal, unless I’m a religion, or if I have a *personal individual* moral objection to something I can go get screwed in many cases but the law will bend over backwards for *sincerely held religious belief.* It’s hegemony in action.