Demons of the Modern World

By Stefan Isaksson

Demons of the Modern World
Malcolm McGrath
Prometheus Books
323 pages
ISBN: 1573929352

It’s not a very difficult thing to imagine what the response to a book such as Demons of the Modern World will be like. If you’re a skeptic demanding scientific answers to everything in this world – then you’ll probably love it, but if you’re more of a spiritual nature with the attitude that there are things in this world (and beyond) that science cannot reach – then you’ll hate it from the very first page to the last. Or at least the sections demystifying the mysterious. And those sections come in abundance, so things don’t look very good for the spiritual reader.

Not to wonder, though, since Malcolm McGrath, a political philosopher at Oxford University, is 100% focused on the fact that there is NOTHING that can be called paranormal, magical, or occult. EVERYTHING can be explained using the tools of science, and magic and religion and more are nothing but delusions that were only acceptable before the Western world and its science was able to reject everything related to the paranormal.

Still, people refuse to stop believing. And why is that? McGrath offers an interesting theory. In short, he explains how people, who all have gone through a childhood, all experience a period in their lives when demons, ghosts, and other supernatural beings and phenomena are very real. This period is later replaced, with he aid of education and experience, with a notion that whatever bogeymen one believed in as a child simply do not exist in the real world. But, and on this he focuses throughout the book, since one HAS believed in the supernatural, the memories remain, and since the memories remain, sometimes – for instance during stress or demanding situations – one cannot help but to unconsciously suspect, and fear, that the demons from one’s childhood perhaps are not illusions at all.

By using this theory (and in this review the theory is, obviously, extremely shortened), McGrath explains, among other things, man’s fascination with horror movies, the tragic witch hunts that caused the death of tens of thousands, different “satanic panics” that have hit America over the years, and even the contemporary notion of evil extraterrestrials that regularly abduct people and subject them to painful medical procedures.

We all live in an era when science “should” have replaced faith and illusions, but as we all know, that’s not the case. And even though McGrath fails to fully explain why people believe what they believe, and not believe in what they not believe in, his theory still manages to be very fascinating and definitely worth considering. I mean, even the most devoted of skeptics has perhaps sometime wondered what would happen “if…”, and McGrath demonstrates that that’s simply part of being human.

Demons of the Modern World is a rare thing: it’s a hardcore skeptic’s book, yet at the same time it has lots of empathy and understanding, and that alone makes it worth buying. And it doesn’t get worse when one considers that it’s both well-written and fascinating, too.

Buy it. It’ll give you something to think about. In a positive sense.