Are Demons Real?

With all the crazy stories about witches in the past as well as their depiction in children’s fantasy, together with the Hollywood portrayals of the demonic as common fare for the horror junkies, it might seem that we have already solved the question of demons and demonic possession. Add to these contributions of popular culture the extensive psychiatric work showing how people with schizophrenia or various personality disorders could be and probably once were confused for demonically injured people, and it could appear that the demonic is myth. Then, too, we also probably feel that human evil is quite adequately explained by human choice. Why go looking for a spiritual boogie man to explain it? And finally, let’s just admit the potent demotivator here: we really don’t like the idea that we are not at the top of the food chain. The notion that we face powerful and invisible spiritual enemies is unsettling. However, none of these arguments addresses the question of whether demons are real. They either assume they are unreal or hope desperately that they are fiction. Wishful thinking does not confer unreality on things, so the only way we are really going to know how to answer this question is to go and look for ourselves.