Commentary On Mark Crooks’s Essay, “On The Psychology Of Demon Possession: The Occult Personality” -- By: John Warwick Montgomery

Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 16:2 (Sep 2019)
Article: Commentary On Mark Crooks’s Essay, “On The Psychology Of Demon Possession: The Occult Personality”
Author: John Warwick Montgomery


Commentary On Mark Crooks’s Essay, “On The Psychology Of Demon Possession: The Occult Personality”

John Warwick Montgomery

University of Bedfordshire

© 2018 The Institute of Mind and Behavior, Inc.
The Journal of Mind and Behavior
Autumn 2018, Volume 39, Number 4
Pages 385–388
ISSN 0271–0137

The present short commentary on Crooks’s essay focuses on Crooks’s methodological distinction between proper empirical, scientific method and the so-called “religion of science.” It argues that only when this distinction is maintained can one avoid a metaphysical positivism that makes impossible any scholarly evaluation of occult phenomena.

Correspondence concerning this commentary should be addressed to M. le professeur John Warwick Montgomery, 2 rue de Rome, 67000 Strasbourg, France. Email: [email protected]

I am neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist, but, on the basis of my books Principalities and Powers: The World of the Occult and Demon Possession, cited by Mark Crooks in his article under discussion, I have been asked to provide a brief comment concerning it. As a philosopher and professor of law, my remarks will necessarily focus on epistemology and standards of evidence, especially as applied to occult and allegedly supernatural phenomena.

In my view, the most important single contribution of Crooks’s article lies in his preference for factual evidence over metaphysical opinion. He rightly holds that — at least since the eighteenth-century so-called Enlightenment — naturalistic worldviews have become a new orthodoxy. To admit anything beyond the naturalistically “normal” identifies one as a naïve obscurantist, deserving of ostracism from the scientific community. To accept any explanations beyond the naturalistic is a mark of political incorrectness and the kiss of academic death.

Crooks, on the other hand, understands the vital distinction between scientific method — relying on empirical, factual evidence no matter the consequences — and what has been termed “the religion of science”: the metaphysical commitment to naturalistic explanations, even when the evidence does not offer sufficient support for them. Crooks is a serious empiricist. If the data require, or even favor, non-naturalistic explanations of occult phenomena, he prefers to go with the evidence rather than forcing the data to fit a preconceived naturalistic universe.

Examples abound throughout the Crooks essay. His critiques of McNamara’s “positive possession” and the views of Davies, of Randi, and of Carl Sagan are particularly telling. Let me reinforce the Sagan analysis by material from my most recent work, Defending ...

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