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No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Bohandas]

If I remember correctly it showed a pretty significant advantage for those who were being prayed for though they themselves didn't necisarily know about being prayed for

I recall hearing that the difference made was within the margin of error. And negative.

[Frumple]

Mm? Re: Exorcism: Yeah, it's definitely a stateside thing, though I couldn't say which denominations practice it. It's fairly marginal, but... happens. Definitely happens. The practice... ends up killing a few people every year or so. Usually kids. Has been doing so for as long as I've been aware of it, so... decade and change, now. Not exactly a fan, personally, as one might imagine.

As usual, there's a wikipedia page.

[miauw62]

Although, I'd personally much prefer a Terry Pratchett like death where pretty much whatever you want/believe in happens. It seems to be a bit of both, given how a wizard chooses to reincarnate, but it seems influenced by what you believe and did in your life, too...

I like Pratchett's display of Death. An end, but more in the way of "having a good relaxing sleep" instead of "the end of all that is good".

[Helgoland]

The Catholic Church is one of the few churches that still trains exorcists - most other denominations get a Catholic priest if they believe an exorcism is in order.
Also, exorcisms are nowadays usually done after extensive psychological and psychiatric evaluation. Certainly not horror movie material.

[TD1]

Eh. Exorcism is something done in the old and new testaments. A Christian should believe in devils possessing a body as much as the Holy Spirit.

[Telgin]

Catholics definitely do still do the exorcism thing.  I have an Australian friend who is training to be a priest and he told me about some of it.  So far as I know protestants don't bother with it, at least not around here and not in the same formulaic way that Catholics approach it.  Around here it seems to mostly be a matter of identifying someone as being possessed then either waiting for God to take care of it or just praying for it to go away.  I've only heard stories and never seen it myself.

I'll also just toss in my 2 cents on prayer not meaning much in a deterministic universe, which I believe it is (religiously or not).  Of course, that's a multifaceted problem that there is really no acceptable solution to in the commonly depicted versions of Christianity.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Baptists, as far as I know, don't perform exorcisms. Just pray for things to go away and such.

[Orange Wizard]

We actually had a sermon on this the other day.

Long story short, demons are round and about, doing demony stuff, but not as much as in the Bible (power of Christ spreading through the world, yadda yadda yadda, also used this excuse for the lack of modern-day miracles). However, Christians should not fear demons because we are property/territory/whatever of the Holy Spirit and he ain't letting any devils near us.

...

As far as exorcisms are concerned, I have no idea. If we were left without doubt that someone was possessed by a demon, we'd probably just offer him a cup of tea and get him to come to church on Sunday. I dunno. We're not really trained for that kind of thing.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

We still believe that demons are out and about just that they don't afflict people unless they openly let them in *cough cough oiji board cough cough*
My thoughts are that poltergeists and such are just demons messing around trying to scare people

[Graknorke]

We still believe that demons are out and about just that they don't afflict people unless they openly let them in *cough cough oiji board cough cough*
My thoughts are that poltergeists and such are just demons messing around trying to scare people

I think ouija boards are pretty funny. Partly because my grandma has a huge phobia of them because one time one made a vague prediction that came sort of true to someone she tangentially knew a good amount of time in the future.
And the rest of it because they're pretty obviously not magical.

[Telgin]

Ouija boards are pretty strongly vilified here for their relationship to Satan and all things evil, and yes, I've heard of them being directly implicated in demonic possession.  I'm pretty sure my grandfather would have had 3 strokes immediately if I ever owned one.  But then he also thought that the only use for cards of any kind was gambling.  Made no difference if it was playing cards, Uno cards or Pokemon cards.  Same thing with dice.  Explaining pen and paper roleplaying games was not fun.

[TD1]

"So, grandad, you just rolled a crit! Highest in the game!"

Grandad: "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY NOW"

...On a more serious note, how does demonic possession correlate with free will?

[Graknorke]

Just to shut the ouija board thing down before we go off on a tangent for 3 pages, as the posters here are wont to do.
So really the only way they could be said to be demonic would be if the players are being possessed. In which case there's nothing special about the board at all, a demon could do the same by possessing someone holding a pen, or who isn't mute.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Well it's not that oijie boards are evil themselves but the main purpose is to talk to spirits/demons so that's why we consider them evil
Yes a demon could do the same to a person holding a pen but that person isn't openly welcoming them in (ok so they could but that's a whole other tangent)

[Telgin]

"So, grandad, you just rolled a crit! Highest in the game!"

Grandad: "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY NOW"

...On a more serious note, how does demonic possession correlate with free will?

I guess it depends on what aspect you're considering.  It could be said to suspend your free will, and at the same time you could probably argue that anything you did while possessed is still your fault if you subscribe to the idea that possessions only happen to evil people who let it happen.  If you don't believe that then the only reasonable conclusion would be that it's not your fault, but... well, Biblically there's plenty of precedent for people being punished for things that happened outside of their free will.  Pharaoh comes to mind.

I'm pretty strongly of the mind that free will is an illusion anyway, regardless of whether you're talking religiously or not.  That's probably been discussed somewhere in the thread already though, buried too deeply for me to locate it right now.