Maimonides and his Demons

1. The Rambam's knowledge of the world was generally inferior to that of Chazal.
2. Like rationalists generally, the Rambam claimed to be open to evidence but in fact used his awesome reasoning powers to insulate his prejudices from evidence.
3. The evidence for the existence of demons comes from our experience of demonic possession and exorcism, both within and outside of the Jewish community, from ancient times down to the present day.
4. The claim that there is some connection between belief in demons and avoda zara is a claim made by contemporary scholars and pseudoscholars, most of them themselves scoffers at the tradition. There is no psak that forbids belief in demons or the practice of exorcism.