Why did God let people think demons cause epilepsy?

[Cyberman]

"We all pulled our swords from our hips and began running this demon through with all my strength and everything I had. I would say it took atleast half an hour or more. We were all spent but the battle was won."

Freud just came.

[RobbyPants]

So why did God allow verses like that to end up in the Bible without clarifying that a) it's not always demons (or the result of sin, a related belief about some illnesses that people get from the Bible) and b) if you must exorcise a demon, don't hurt the person. He knew toddlers would be getting tortured to death as a result of the miracles as they are described in the New Testament, right? 

It almost seems like Almighty God knows just as much about the world he created as the people who wrote the various books of the Bible, 2,000 to 2,700 years ago.

[Minimalist]

and I know most Christians would say that's because demon possession is a real phenomenon.

Which tells you just about all you need to know on the subject of the intelligence of xtians.

[Razzle]

I've already noted that the cases of casting out of demons occurred within a few years. It's easy to conclude that other causes are far more common.

It's easy for YOU to conclude that, only because you've been raised in your particular culture. Why exactly would anyone born before the scientific revolution have supposed that "demons were only cast out for a few years"? It doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible. People had already been casting out demons in other religions for years before that, so they knew that wasn't true, and there's nothing in there that says "OK, Jesus did it, the apostles did it, but from now on it's going to be rare that people with these symptoms have demons. Starting from now, everyone stop assuming that." 

Huh? Are you saying that scientists delayed research into certain disorders because they believed that those things were caused by demon possession? I find that hard to believe.

Not modern scientists, but their ancient and medieval equivalents. People who would otherwise have experimented with medicine until they found things that seemed to help, as they successfully did with pain relief strategies. This would have been possible before we knew much about the brain. Romans with mental illnesses used to bathe in and drink water that we now know contained lithium salts. If it wasn't for superstition, e.g. the Romans attributed it to the god of that particular spring, then clues like that would have been studied far more frequently and extensively than they were. They could have isolated the lithium salts, optimised the dose, and taken the product all over the known world. Polytheistic cultures, despite their own beliefs, did show more interest in experimenting with herbs, such as the one that Aspirin is based on, than their Christian counterparts, because in Christian cultures people became afraid of being accused of witchcraft.

Your argument seems to merely be that people are sloppy readers. The Bible can be difficult to understand in parts and requires careful consideration. As Peter says:

2 Peter 3
15 and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, 16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.

Personally I don't blame the text when people miss parts of it and go beyond it in other parts. That's user error.

Do you really think it would be too much effort for God, knowing exactly how people would interpret those words, to add a very clear, explicit, unambiguous and hard-to-miss warning? Do you really think there's nothing he could have said to have minimise the damage from the tendency to attribute so many ills, both medical and environmental, life to demons and witchcraft?

[Drich]

A question for Christians.

Exorcism of demons is mentioned in several Bible verses, and I know most Christians would say that's because demon possession is a real phenomenon. However, most Christians in developed nations no longer attribute all manner of diseases, especially neurological diseases like epilepsy and psychotic illnesses, to demons in the vast majority of cases. So presumably, most of you believe that most sufferers of such conditions who are having torturous and sometimes deadly exorcisms performed on them in Africa, by people pointing to Jesus' healing of demon-possessed people who were symptomatically indistinguishable from epileptics, are not possessed and should see doctors instead.

...Just because you can physically describe a process or an illness, does not remove the process or the tool from the demonic tool box.

So why did God allow verses like that to end up in the Bible without clarifying that a) it's not always demons (or the result of sin, a related belief about some illnesses that people get from the Bible)

What in the bible makes you think that it says all 'mental disorders' are the result of demons? I simple only ever points out cases where demons had possessed someone. And, again who is to say they could not use a mental disorder as a tool of that specific possession?

and b) if you must exorcise a demon, don't hurt the person. He knew toddlers would be getting tortured to death as a result of the miracles as they are described in the New Testament, right? 

Like before, what in the bible makes you assume that physical harm is apart of a proper excorsism? The examples in the bible are of a single command from Jesus or an apstole for the demon to leave.