Testimonies of Exorcism

From: Winston
To: ed.babinski
Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 7:02 AM
Subject: Link to my article debunking Christian fundamentalist arguments

Hi there,
I just put up my article debunking the main arguments of Christian fundamentalists. Here is the link. I was wondering if you could post it somewhere on your site. It was written to help newly ex-fundamentalists.

Debunking_Christian_Arguments.htm

Thanks,
Winston

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From: Ed Babinski
To: Winston
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 2:37 AM
Subject: I read your testimony, Winston, very interesting!

Hi Winston,

Thanks for writing edwardtbabinski.us

I enjoyed your personal testimony about leaving fundamentalism at your website.

...especially this part: "My mom... took me to see some Spiritualist healers and Taoist-like temples to try to get help for the mental illness I had for 2 years. Three Different spiritualists who didn't know each other told her that they could 'see' two souls inhabiting me for a past karmic crime I committed against them. She was instructed by the leaders of a Taoist-like temple to perform these strange exorcism rites, which involved putting leaflet spells above the bedroom I slept in and having me take baths in some hot herbal water tossed in with yellow spell leaflets.

It was all weird to me and my Christian world view taught that Satan was behind these kind of things. But I thought oh well, being a Christian never helped me through those 2 hellish years anyway, so why not give Satan a chance at helping me?"

Your testimony parallels that of another former fundie friend of mine, Will Bagley, who lives in Washington state. Will was "born again," but later read the great Catholic mystics, then the great Eastern mystics, and today studies Taoism, vegetarianism, meditation, mental and bodily healing, life extension, channeling, massage, etc. Will sends out a regular e-newsletter on those topics. You two should meet for coffee and tell me all about what you discussed! Will's photo and testimony about how he left fundamentalism can be found in a book I edited, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books, 1995). Though my book was published by that skeptical organization, it included testimonies of former fundamentalists who remained Christians, though more moderate and liberal, as well as the testimonies of two folks who left fundamentalism for Wicca and eastern mysticism, respectively. Only the final third of the book contains the testimonies of former fundamentalists who ecame agnostics and atheists. I thanked Prometheus for including such a broad range of former fundie testimonies.

Today there is a great website run by Steve Locks that features the testimonies of many former fundies, possibly the most well indexed and widest collection of such testimonies on the web. His site is simply named, "Leaving Christianity." Easy to remember, check it out by simply googling, "Leaving Christianity." It's number one.

Will and yourself also agree that the skeptics are too skeptical. Will is quite well read and also quite deeply into spiritual practices, and I am sure you two will find much to talk about, wish I was there to listen! Maybe send me a cassette tape of your conversation! And play a game of chess too! Why not some speed chess? (Will once won the championship of a large prestigious chess club in New Jersey, but hasn't played in years. Like Will, I was a top ranked high school chess player.)

Cheers!
Edward T. Babinski

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edwardtbabinski.us writes:
Did you hear the story on the news about a preacher who sat on an autistic boy's chest, the mother believed her son could be healed of the demon causing the illness...

Faith kills boy, 8.

An autistic eight-year-old boy has died during a prayer service held to supposedly cure him of the evil spirits blamed for causing his condition. "[We] didn't do nothing wrong," the pastor, David Hemphill, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper.

US boy dies during 'exorcism' An autistic eight-year-old boy has died during a prayer service held to supposedly cure him of the evil spirits blamed for causing his condition. Torrance Cantrell was wrapped in sheets and held by his hands and feet while members of the Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith in the city of Milwaukee prayed over him. This procedure had been taking place three times a week. However, on Friday those involved in the ceremony - including his mother - noticed the boy had stopped breathing. Paramedics were called to the scene but were unable to revive him. The brother of the church's pastor, Ray Hemphill, who was also present at the ceremony, was arrested shortly after the incident on suspicion of physically abusing a child, local police said. "[We] didn't do nothing wrong," the pastor, David Hemphill, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper. "We did what the Book of Matthew said... all we did is ask God to deliver him." 'Tormented' Autism causes children to have severe problems relating to, and communicating with, people around them. In interviews with local newspapers, neighbours of the Cantrell family alleged that Torrance hated being touched and said that having people restrain him would likely have caused him a great deal of stress. However, David Hemphill said that the boy had been wrapped in sheets and had his shoes removed in order to prevent him from being hurt. "We were asking God to take this spirit that was tormenting this little boy to death," Mr Hemphill said. "We were praying that hard, but not to kill." David Hemphill started the independent church in 1997. It has a small congregation of six families. Story from BBC NEWS. Published: 2003/08/25 14:41:23 GMT © BBC MMIII

A Belief in Near Death Experiences

From: Kathy G.
To: Ed Babinski
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 2:08 PM
Subject: Jesus

I wish there was something profound that I could say to make you change your mind about this man Jesus. I wish you could know him Like I do as a comforter, heavenly father, a friend that I can tell anything to, teacher, answerer of prayers.

You are missing so much without him in your life. My father is 91 years old and loves the Lord. I know that he will be gone before long and it gives me such great peace to know that he is Heaven bound. He always tells me, "the best is yet to come, and that's Heaven."

I truly believe he lived and died for me, and I am so humbled and grateful for that, all I want to do is tell others about his love for them.

I will be praying for you that someday your eyes will be opened and you too will know, as the Bible says, "the peace that passes all understanding."

Kathleen G.

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From: Ed Babinski
To: Kathy G.
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 4:03 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Jesus

Dear Kathleen,

I sincerely appreciate the love with which your email to me was filled.

Robert Ingersoll, America's "great agnostic," used to remark that there were sometimes hundreds of people outside his home praying for his salvation. He didn't mind he said, because it was like a boy holding a girl's hand, it didn't do either of them any harm, so long as the boy didn't squeeze the girl's hand too tightly.

I don't even feel any desire to disagree with you, or try to convince someone such as yourself of anything other than the joy you have found in your present beliefs, just as I wouldn't seek to convince anyone of any religion to leave it if they were wearing it fully, and practicing love as a result.

A mystical friend of mine who used to be a fundamentalist Christian once wrote in LEAVING THE FOLD that religion was like a cloak or clothes that you had to put on fully to see how they fit, and in the end after entering fully into love and also growing to recognize that love in others of other religions, and even in people of no religion, that cloak would grow lighter and lighter until you didn't even realize you were wearing it, but merely that you were a member of all faiths and non-faiths that practiced love.

Gandhi used to say that Christian missionaries shouldn't be trying to get people to leave their major religious faiths to become "Christians," but people should be trying to encourage each other to travel deeper into the heart of love that is found in all religious traditions and holy books. (See the book titled, ONENESS, a small volume, that mentions such verses in all the world's major religious traditions.)

So many faiths that wind and wind,
yet what the world needs most
is just the art of being kind.

Lastly, I am not an atheist, but think there may be something to Near Death Experiences.

Best, Ed

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From: Kathy G.
To: Ed Babinski
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 3:56 PM
Subject: Near Death Experience

Thank you for your answer to my e-mail. You mentioned near death experiences. A few years ago I worked in an office with ten men. One of these men was a 37 year old by the name of Gene Mose. Gene underwent surgery on his foot in November of that year and as a result he got a very bad staff infection that put him in the hospital for 6 weeks. By January they realized that he had developed a heart problem and they immediately did heart surgery to replace a bad valve. During the surgery his heart stopped three times.

When he came back to work he came to my office one day and said, "Kathy, I want to share something with you. I don't feel I can tell any of the guys my story because they will think I'm nuts, but I know you will believe me." He then told he how when his heart stopped, his spirit rose above his body and he watched the surgeons frantically trying to save him. He said, "Kath, I saw Linda (his wife) sitting in the waiting room, I saw people going up and down the halls, and heard everything that was being said and done to save me. But the best part was the complete feeling of peace and joy and love that surrounded me during that time. I could feel the presence of God all around me and I really didn't care to come back. Noone will ever convince me there isn't life after death." He said, Do you think I'm nuts, Kath?"

I told him of course not. He said, "everything was as real as my sitting here talking to you today, and when they got my heart started my spirit went down until it was back in my body again."
That was in January of that year, and in August he layed down on the couch one night and died. Only 37, but he was ready to meet the Father.

If I had one wish in this life it would be that every person in the world would know beyond a shadow of a doubt what lies beyond this life. I'm sure we'd all live differently.

Sincerely, Kathleen G.

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From: Ed Babinski
To: Kathy G.
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Near Death Experience

Thanks, I love hearing about such things. Who is your friend? He should contact Raymond Moody, the author of the bestseller, Life after Life, or Dannion Binkley, author of Saved by the Light (I think that was the title). They are not evangelical Christians, but they collect Near Death stories. Moody has an institute for such things up in North Carolina. Their studies revealled to them that one's religion didn't matter. You could be an evangelical Christian or something completely different, and still feel the love and the recognition that there was life after death. And yes, along with your friend I wish everybody got to experience that kind of happiness in the midst of suffering, pain and death, it would bring a lot of us closer together here on planet earth.

Or on the other hand, perhaps it would also make some of us ignore those who are suffering, since they knew they'd be going to a better place? Hmmm. A wise rabbi was once asked if there was any time in which it was best to think like an atheist, and he said "Yes, there is one time when it is appropriate to think like an atheist, in the giving of charity, since you must not imagine that God is going to right all wrongs and take care of the poor and suffering."

That being said, I still think that if everyone had such an experience as your friend, the planet would be a happier better place, with less fear and tension. Certainly if Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants both had it, along with Muslims and Christians and atheists and agnostics, then people could speak of their shared experience. On the other hand, some fundamentalist Christians and Muslims might still find ways to denounce each other's experience as "fake" or "phoney" or "of the devil." I know there are some fundamentalist Christians like Habermas who co-wrote a book on The Afterlife in which he argued that all of those positive loving and life-changing NDEs that non-evangelical Christians have are all a "delusion" and don't mean those people are going to avoid hell.

Best, Ed

Cynicism on Christianity/Calvinism

From: Ed Babinski
To: Erica
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 3:54 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Dear Ed

From: Erica F.
To: ed.babinski
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 1:09 PM
Subject: Dear Ed

Hi Ed! I'm Erica and I'm 16.

ED: Hi Erica, I'm Ed and I'm 47.

I ran across your site while looking for stuff on Alexander the Great. I would just like to know why you are so sarcastic and cynical about the Christian faith?

ED: Perhaps because your history classes and Sunday School classes simply glossed over the history of Christianity, especially the 16th century (Luther and Calvin's era), the Thirty Years War (European Catholics vs. Protestants, possibly a worse war than WWII in terms of the porportions of people killed and the time it took to recover from all the damage done. If they had modern day weapons it would have indeed been the worst war. Also that was the century during which the most witches were burnt in all of western history, thanks to Catholics and Protestants getting together to finally get the job done right. And by the way, Luther and Calvin exiled Catholics. Calvin even had a 13 year old girl beaten in public for simply saying she wanted to be a Catholic. It was a crmie to be caught with Rosary Beads in Calvin's Geneva. You had to make sure you burned them. In fact, it was a crime to miss church in Calvin's Geneva, could cost you a day's wage or worse, or finally, exile. In fact, at the height of Calvin's influence a young boy was beheaded for striking his parents, another child was hung by his armpits to show that he deserved death, because he called him mom a she-devil. And today there are still Christians advocating the execution of disobedient children your age, as well as stoning homosexuals. Go to the Chalcedon website and read the articles for yourself by modern day conservative Calvinists. I am cynical because great men of faith like Luther and Calvin, the founders of Protestantism, do not seem to have enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Luther got the rulers of Germany to exile anyone who didn't adhere to the Lutheran faith as he understood it and with his version of the sacraments. That meant they even killed noisy Anabaptists, and unitarians, and even kept out Calvinists from Germany! Calvin exiled everyone from Geneva who didn't agree with his view of predestination, and put noisy unitarians to flight to sought to have them executed. If you don't know history, then you don't understand the basis of cynicism in regard to religious faith. Religious toleration is the result of Christians fighting it out amongst themselves in such bloody sixteenth century wars that they realized it was impossible for any one group to impose its faith on all the rest, hence religious tolerance was born. As for arguments from the Bible on religious toleration, Luther and Calvin and Catholic sixteenth century theologians agreed that Jesus never laid down the laws for a society. And if a society were simply to follow Jesus' law of turning the other cheek and giving to all who ask, asking nothing in return, it would collapse as a society. Jesus was interested in the individual and how he might "save his soul." God revealled the rules for societies to Moses, rules that fully honor God, including the command to stone disobedient children, stone anyone who tried to lead you to worship "other gods," etc.

And, I noticed, you don't seem to come down on or downplay any other religion besides Christianity.

ED: I was brought up in Christianity, raised Catholic, then converted to Protestantism when I was 15 or 16 in high school, was very convinced and a devout believer until a few years after college, when I began reading more widely. All I know is Christianity. Would you rather I wrote about things I didn't know?

You make remarks about the Bible contradicting itself, about verses that say to stone people who do things that displease the Lord, and about the inconsistency of Christianity. But, can I ask you, what about the other relnigions out there that are not consistent? Why don't you say things about them? Take a look at Islam. Muslims are called to wage a holy war (jihad, the inner and external war between good and evil), but some groups take this to the extreme, such as the Lebanese group Hezbollah. How about New Age religions that teach you to trust your feelings? If truth is relative, and I must trust my feelings, then I could do whatever I wanted. I could go kill people, steal things, sell my body (none of which I have any interest in doing), whatever. But you couldn't say I was wrong, even if you didn't like what I was doing, because it's my truth and that was how I felt. So what about consistency then? I ask that you be consistent in degrading religions. If you are going to find a point of faultn with Christianity, please follow through and find the points of fault with other religions.

ED: The Secular Web has a section on non-Christian religions with articles critical of them, and evangelical Christian websites contina even more pages denouncing Islam and the Koran.

And, I must say, for being so negative, you have read an awful lot of scripture, even analyzing and dissecting it. How did you miss the Gospel and the hope it offers? It's as plain as day.

ED: It is to you, obviously. But there are many Christian historians and theologians you have not read. Continue to read, branch out your reading patterns, things do not become so "plain as day" after a while, what with moderate evangelicals who are so happy to no longer be fundamentalists, and liberals who were once moderates. And agnostics and atheists who were once liberal Christians. Moreover, there are tons of fundamentalist groups that can't get along with one another's interpretations of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Some groups can't even agree on which translation to use.

I do admit that there are Christians who skip the loving people and go right to the part about hell, fire, and brimstone. But you know what? Though they may be harsh, they tell the truth.

ED: Like you know the truth about God, the devil, the afterlife, all religion. You're 16. My uncertainties are the result of reading and thinking about more than you will probably ever encounter even by the time you are my age.

I just have one more thing to ask you, and then I will be done. I ask that when you go through the scripture and use it for whatever pnurpose you will use it for, please look at it in context and use it in context. That is how so many things get misinterpreted. Take a look at the big picture and what the message of the entire passage is.

ED: Please give me an example. And please read what Jews have to say about "Christian contexts" applied to their own scriptures. Visit www.jewsforjudaism.com

I appreciate the time you have taken to read this rather lengthy email. I pray that the Lord will take the scales from your eyes, soften your hard heart, and shed the light of His truth on you.

ED: And I pray that you continue to read more widely and slowly grow to recognize that my heart is about as "hard" as your head is presently "soft."

Sincerely and in Christ's love,

ED: What, no love from you? Just "in Christ?" Learn to love, Erica, for love's own sake. So many creeds that wind and wind, but all this sad world needs is the art of being kind.

Erica F.

Philippians 2:14-16, Matthew 6:33, Colossians 4:5, Jeremiah 29:11,13

"Live wisely among those who are not Christians, and make the most of every opportunity."

"Erica F." writes:

Dear Ed,

Thank you for responding. You made some really good points. Yes, at 16, I haven't totally learned much of what you have told me. Seeing as how I do enjoy learning, I will look into the various histories and view points you have presented.

You asked if I would rather you write about things you don't know. The answer is no. But I think it would be great if you looked into them, even if it's just to be familiar with them.

Thanks for you time again. God bless!

Love,

Erica F.

From: Ed Babinski
To: Erica F.
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 6:31 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Dear Ed

Dear Erica,

Thanks for writing back.

I have read about Islam. But Christianity is far more interesting to me, especially the way the movers and shakers of Christendom keep getting put on pedestals far above the rest of us, folks like the popes, or Augustine, Luther, Calvin. If you knew what I knew about them, and about the history of Christian doctrines and divisions, you'd think twice before blithely attributing it all to the work of the Holy Spirit leading men into all truth with the aid of a perfect holy book. The same goes for the history of ancient Israel, and even the questions raised in the Gospels by the story of Jesus. Jesus did not fulfill prophecies for instance. The Gospel authors were stretching the Old Testament to suit their needs. Read what the Jews have to say about this matter at www.jewsforjudaism.com

And also read Multitude of Prophetic Passages and Lowdown on God's Showdown

Best, Ed