Religion IV: Deus vult!

[Seli]

Do you have the canto/verse number for the Paradiso quotation?

(I should probably read the linked polytheism article, I just browsed through the first few paragraphs.)

Through the miracles of google: paradiso canto XXXIII line 133 vv

[Sci-2]

Do you have the canto/verse number for the Paradiso quotation?

(I should probably read the linked polytheism article, I just browsed through the first few paragraphs.)

It's the last bit. I wouldn't worry too much about the polytheism article, I just found it interesting given most people with a spiritual inclination seem to believe there's one God all the different faiths are praying to.

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More Americans Speak in Tongues

What's behind the surge in this expression of spiritual experiences? Chaves says "there is a trend in American religion towards ... a certain kind of experience for people, away from just religious teachings—to make it more emotionally engaging, not just intellectually engaging."

Historically, this type of worship has been associated with evangelical Christianity, particularly Pentecostalism. As mainline Protestant denominations like Presbyterianism and Methodism continue to lose members, Chaves says, this evangelical style of worship has "diffused across the spectrum." Hand-waving and dancing and singing might be encouraged by ministers in a bid for better attendance—"congregations are kind of mimicking what they think is a successful worship style," he said. That perception may or may not actually be true, though: Even though Pentecostal-style churches make up a greater proportion of American congregations than they did ten years ago, "it’s a little bit of a myth that Pentecostal and evangelical churches are growing," he added.

More broadly, this finding seems to hint at a particular quality of one kind of contemporary American worship: It's direct, and personal, and visceral.

[Sci-2]

DMT, the Prophetic Experience, and the Hebrew Bible

The prophetic state is highly congruent phenomenologically with the DMT one. Those who experience prophecy also believe that what they perceive is as real or more real than the everyday world. In addition, prophecy is extremely interactive, one’s ego is well-maintained while relating to the contents of the newly revealed world. The goal of prophecy is an interactive relationship with God or God’s angels, rather than a unitive mystical one, totally identifying with a formless concept-free ego-less level of experience. I emphasize this polarity between the “mystical-unitive” and “interactive-relational” states throughout “DMT and the Soul of Prophecy.”

Using these and others tools I performed an exhaustive side-by-side comparison of the DMT and prophetic experiences. This occupies about half of the new book. While the phenomenological contents of both states is strikingly similar—their perceptual, cognitive, volitional, physical, and emotion characteristics—the information content tilts heavily in favor of the prophetic one. If one thinks about it, the information contained in the Hebrew Bible, the paradigmatic prophetic text, has influenced billions of people over thousands of years. Western civilization is essentially a civilization growing out of this text; for example, our economy, law, philosophy, theology, science, art, and ethics and morality. In the contemporary West, the psychedelic experience has primarily contributed to a particular aesthetic with, at least for now, much less impact relative to the prophetic state.

I think he's overstating the case to an extent here?

I then review medieval metaphysical mechanisms of prophecy and attempt to bridge them with the notion of endogenous DMT. The result is a new model of spiritual experience, what I call “theoneurology.” In it, I present a counterpoint to the popular “neurotheology.” Neurotheology is a bottom-up approach. The “spiritual experience” is what we call the brain’s response to any number of particular stimuli: prayer, meditation, fasting, or psychedelic drugs. The experience has adaptive value, making us healthier, smarter, and more socially viable. Theoneurology is a top-down model and suggests that God configured the brain in such a way as to be able to communicate with us information that we may or may not consider especially beneficial, at least over the short term. DMT may play a role in this communication process. This model suggests that God uses the brain to relate with us rather than that the brain creates the impression of such a relationship.

Jo498, the bold is kinda what you were saying earlier right?

I conclude the book by suggesting certain implications of the theoneurological model. Related research is taking place: the use of psilocybin to occasion spiritual experience. In addition, there is a growing popularity of syncretic ayahuasca—a DMT-containing sacrament—that refer to Hebrew Biblical stores, figures, and teachings. Thus, one who wishes to resonate more deeply with the biblical text might enter into a state of mind near to that from which the text originally emerged—the prophetic state. To the extent that DMT and other psychedelics occasion altered states of consciousness with “prophecy-like” features, one could consider the judicious use of these agents in this context. In a complementary manner, those who use psychedelic drugs for spiritual purposes may wish to consider the Hebrew Bible an interpretive tool for understanding and applying the information contained in their drug sessions.

Imagine if, a couple hundred years from now, Christianity is primarily associated with ayahuasca use...

An interesting discovery during this project was the Hebrew Bible’s notion of “false prophecy” and “false prophets.” These are extraordinarily relevant—and equally as subtle—issues involved in dealing with the “truth” or “goodness” of any experience we consider spiritual. Discriminating between false and true prophecy is difficult and because of this I raise the issue throughout my book. Its importance is basic to any attempt to understand and utilize either the psychedelic or prophetic state.

I can't imagine Strassman making any headway on this that isn't a retreat into some kind of bias. I recall him trying to explain God Yaweh commanding the genocide of the Canaanites and failing miserably.

[Wise Fool]

I was more in a sociological vein, completely ignoring the question of truth. Admittedly, I have a much harder time to wrap my mind around the possibility of polytheist god/esses or dryads and stuff than accept a more abstract monotheist/deist system (which has probably to do with how one grew up...)

There are of course, many possible explanations for the experience of communion with Odin or whatever; Fundie Xtians would say there is probably a demon behind such experiences. Materialists would say it is drugs or some weird brain state.

Which of course does not debunk anything at all, because IF we can experience gods/demons/whatever at all our brains have to be able to do it, so it is hardly mysterious that there are special brain states corresponding to these experiences. It is also moot that we can induce religious experience by direct electric brain stimulation. From the fact that we can induce e.g. visual hallucinations of everyday things it hardly follows that we should be skeptical about ALL of our everyday visual experiences. It is only because we already are quite sure there isn't anything "outside" the brain corresponding to visionary/religious/mystic experiences that we jump to the option that it is a drug-induced state of consciousness.

Back to sociology, here is a moving and rather disturbing article about traumatized children making up their own syncretist mythologies. Probably the analogy with "traumatized peoples" in catastrophic times is stretching it (this is line of argument of guys like Greer), but it is interesting nevertheless. (Not sure if I got the link from you or someone at this forum, but I think it was from Greer's place or the comments there.)

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1997-06-05/news/myths-over-miami/

Thanks for the article. Most interesting thing I've read in some time.

I think it has more to do with the origin and power of myth. It's never simply, as Gears might say, inane ramblings; it's something of a deeply personal and psychologically meaningful nature. What religion in general does is take this and structuralize it, make a system of belief about it - and while that may or may not continue on, what is often lost is that personal mythological nature. Thus, a lot of religious beliefs feels or seems completely empty to later generations - it has lost its meaning, emotionally or personally, and become only stories. Very much like how ASOIAF has a lot of meaning to me but my friends who I recommend the books to on that basis just don't get it - it's interesting, maybe, to them, but not personally meaningful because it doesn't for whatever reason relate to their life emotionally.

[Sci-2]

There is more stuff on such ideas on the Archdruid's (yes, he really is an Archdruid...) blog

"http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.de/

Have you seen his other blog, The Well of Gables?

Excellent stuff.

What do you do, in turn, when your habitual representations are out of step with the reality they’re intended to describe? It’s appealing to the vanity of the contemporary mind to suggest that you can just replace one set of habits with another in some conscious, reasonable way, but that rarely works in practice. You are as much a part of the universe as anything else real, and so you don’t experience yourself directly—you construct a representation of yourself, subject to all the usual caveats, and trying to tinker with that representation doesn’t necessarily have much effect on the underlying reality. (This representation of the self, by the way, is called the ego; we’ll be talking about it in more detail later on.)

What you need is some way to get in under the hood of the mind, and reshape the habits of thought and feeling that provide the framework onto which you assemble your representations of the world. You need tools that work with the deep nonrational structure of the mind on its own terms, which means among other things that those tools don’t have to make rational sense to do their job. It so happens that every human society on record has such tools, and most complex societies assemble those tools into a detailed system of thought and practice that serves, when its practitioners are allowed to do their job freely, to help individuals whose representations conflict with reality—and in at least some cases, to do the same thing to communities and whole societies.

In the modern industrial world, the name we give to our version of that system of thought and practice is “magic.” How that system works, what it has to offer, and what blind spots it reveals in our culture’s habitual representations of reality, will be the core theme of this blog.

[Sci-2]

"Jesus was a Rabbi, Siddartha a Prince. Both literate, educated men. Yet neither of them wrote anything down.

Why?

Because they were spellbreakers, not spellbinders."
-A.A. Attanasio

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To Take Place and Have a Place: On Religion, White Supremacy & the People’s Movement in Ferguson

....What power dynamics are at work when the protests in Ferguson are treated like the colorful explosion of the jack-in-the-box? What is at stake in viewing black resistance in such an episodic way? What cannot be seen when it is viewed this way? These questions are at the heart of the#BlackLivesMatter systematic call to action – a call issued in response to the ways in which black lives have been devalued and black suffering has been rendered illegible. In this tradition, I want to call us to a deeper appreciation for the movement being carried forward at Ferguson. To do so, we must commit ourselves to resurrecting events that have systematically been made to vanish from our consciousness. We need to appreciate the often-untold history of black poor people’s movements, as well as the long tradition of black critiques of the everyday rituals of white supremacy. We also need to account for the ways in which our notions of justice and liberation are inflected by religious language and sensibility. This takes us back not simply to the Civil Rights era, nor even to Jim Crow, but rather to the founding of the American republic. It is an uncomfortable history, but it is vital for us to tell it if we are to appreciate what it means to be living into the possibility of justice with the movement still-alive in Ferguson.

This touched on what I think is a divide on what counts as religion and religious thinking. I don't think we can escape that kind of thinking, at least not easily, nor do we always want to. After all I think all moral proscription has to possess a sense of religious sensibility to have efficacy.

Resurrection #1: The Religious Practice of White Supremacy

Generations of scholars and activists have helped to peel back the mythology that surrounds the founding of our nation, revealing the often-unstated raced (as well as gendered and classed) assumptions of American democracy. As historian Carroll Smith-Rosenberg argues, for the founding fathers to create a shared mythic heritage of liberty and justice for all, they had to first imagine themselves against an expanding group of “Others” – black people, indigenous people, women, the propertyless: “Difference perceived as dangerous, distained as polluting, demanding expulsion, formed a critical component of America’s new national identity.” The strength of this national imperative to purify the body politic comes from its rooting in our religious history and heritage. That may be a different way of thinking about religion than we are used to doing. By religion here, I am not talking about church services or even sacred texts. Rather, I am thinking about what holds communities together – the ritual acts they practice, as well as the moral obligations and myths they create in the process. Treating religion in this way enables us to ask questions about the relationship between what the founding fathers said (liberty) and did (violence). It also attunes us to the ways in which our national identity has been indelibly marked by this process of culture making in which the freedom of some necessitates the expulsion of Others.

The point of mythology is a strong one IMO. People have a tendency to mythologize the conflicts they find (or at least believe) they find themselves in. Seems like a lot of political talk can be translated into Chaoskampf, where concession of any kind ends up a mortal sin.

Manifest Destiny, the acceptability of Native American genocide vs. the evil of Nazism...all sorts of mythologizing one can dig into here.

Resurrection #2: The Black Prophetic Critique of White Supremacy

“You’re not God, you don’t get to decide when you get to take somebody from here.” These words were uttered by Lesley McSpadden immediately after her son, Michael Brown, was shot and killed; her cry quakes with the anguish of a mother who has just lost her child. In the intervening weeks, as further details about his murder have surfaced, theprophetic Christian tradition has provided many on the ground with further clarity and resolution. As youth pastor Nyle Fort explained: “We understand that Michael Brown was not only murdered by an individual officer but crucified at the hands of an entire white supremacist police force.”

Here, I want to draw our attention to yet another way of thinking about religion – as a mode of argumentation for naming injustice and for calling all who witness it to action. Such prophetic speech is critical to the long black radical tradition in the United States – from Frederick Douglass’ disassociation of slaveholding religion from the Christianity of Christ, to Ida B. Wells’ indictment of the religious underpinnings of Jim Crow terror, to Anthea Butler’scritique of the nightly prayers police in Ferguson recited before going out to harass and arrest protesters. Such prophetic speech also commands a response. Journalist Isabel Wilkersonwas not alone in calling out the troubling similarities between the lynching tree and the sight of Michael Smith’s murdered body left lying in the street for four hours in the hot August sun. Mamie Till Bradley answered this call in 1955 when she insisted upon an open-casket funeral after her son, Emmett Till, was lynched in Mississippi, because she “wanted the world to see what they did to my boy.” In this tradition, we might also recognize the prophetic cry of Ferguson residents, who took to the streets to slow down the news cycle and force the nation to collectively acknowledge and mourn Michael Brown’s murder.

I'm not sure I follow this one. I don't fully understand the tradition of prophetic speech here. I think it relates to the idea of a moral impetus that demands engagement, but I'd appreciate some more details.

To be clear, I'm also not that familiar with the idea of Blblical prophets in general. Hinduism has Rishis/Gurus, but it seems there's a chasm of difference between those and prophets.

Resurrection #3: The Long Tradition of Black Radicalism

Resurrection #4: The Rich History of Black Feminist Organizing

Both were commentary about history, and other than finding it inspirational and interesting not much for me to say.

On Living into the Possibility for Justice

“I’m not going anywhere until justice is served. This is my home now. I go home to shower, then back out. My daughter is currently with her father. My momma take care of that for me because she knows that this is real and this is bigger than us."

...What does it look like if we drill down and ask how the movement in Ferguson is being made in real time, with real bodies, through real interactions? Here, we find The Organization for Black Struggle, Missourians

Organized for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), The Lost Voicesand so many movement homes are on the ground in Ferguson; we find hundreds of people who journeyed in the Black Life Matters Ride to lend support and learn from residents’ practices of organized resistance; we find UPS workerswho could not bear delivering military armaments to the Missouri police; we find Palestinianswho tweeted ideas for how to deal with tear gas to the people of Ferguson; we find the womenwho set up spaces where the youth of Ferguson could come to scream, cry, and be held and heard… We know that we are not seeing as many of these moments as we could, because journalists have often preferred film bombed out buildings, not collective sandwich lines and medic stations. And we know that this occlusion is another side of the overt anti-black racism that led white Missourians to go door-to-door, computer-to-computer, collecting a reward for Darren Wilson and his family…

I think this last section helped me realize how different the perspective is from the outside looking in. I can see in some abstract way how this relates to mythology and religion, but that obviously denies me the deeper sense that perhaps lies beyond/outside academic terminology. It's the feeling of being part of something bigger, a momentous arc of Justice that preceded and outlives you but nonetheless requires your actions for its continuation.

[Sci-2]

Timothy Brennan on his book Secular Devotion: Afro-Latin Music and Imperial Jazz

The main argument of Secular Devotion, I suppose, will appear to some people as outrageous. I am saying that popular music in the Americas is popular in part because it is so heavily influenced by neo-African religious practices that attract listeners who want to escape monotheistic certitudes and the rhythms of the modern market. Not all popular music is black in inspiration, obviously, but a disproportionate amount of it is, even in genres like disco, ballroom and Broadway, where the African elements are far from obvious.

At any rate, the living presence of new world African religion in popular music is widely denied. It is thought to have died out in the musical passage from early devotional hymns to the nightclubs, speak-easies, and pop charts of later commercial fame. I spend a number of chapters looking at actual songs, styles, and locales to suggest this assumption is not true. One can even say that there is a scandalous fact underlying the largely negative images of Africa in today’s media: namely, that in the face of this wholesale dissing of the region, there is a massive African unconscious to everyday life and leisure. This is significant. The feel and sense of “Africa” becomes a kind of ethical destination – the place to flee all associations with an earlier and tainted colonial relationship. The listener embodies this unacceptable status, and freely takes it on...

[Sci-2]

Muslim Scholars To Islamic State: You Don't Understand Islam

WASHINGTON (RNS) More than 120 Muslim scholars from around the world joined an open letter to the “fighters and followers” of the Islamic State, denouncing them as un-Islamic by using the most Islamic of terms.

Relying heavily on the Quran, the 18-page letter released Wednesday (Sept. 24) picks apart the extremist ideology of the militants who have left a wake of brutal death and destruction in their bid to establish a transnational Islamic state in Iraq and Syria.

Even translated into English, the letter will still sound alien to most Americans, said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, who released it in Washington with 10 other American Muslim religious and civil rights leaders.

“The letter is written in Arabic. It is using heavy classical religious texts and classical religious scholars that ISIS has used to mobilize young people to join its forces,” said Awad, using one of the acronyms for the group. “This letter is not meant for a liberal audience.”

Even mainstream Muslims, he said, may find it difficult to understand.

[Sci-2]

Are the world’s religions ready for E.T.?

Asian religions would have the least difficulty in accepting the discovery of extraterrestrial life, Weintraub concluded. Some Hindu thinkers have speculated that humans may be reincarnated as aliens, and vice versa, while Buddhist cosmology includes thousands of inhabited worlds.

Weintraub quotes passages in the Qur’an that appear to support the idea that spiritual beings exist on other planets, but notes that these beings may not practice Islam as it is practiced on Earth. “Islam, like other faiths, has fundamentalist and conservative traditions. All Muslims, however, likely would agree that the prophetically revealed religion of Islam is a set of practices designed only for humans on earth,” Weintraub wrote.

Weintraub found very little in Judaic scriptures or rabbinical writings that bear on the question. The few Talmudic and Kabbalistic commentaries on the subject do assert that space is infinite and contains a potentially infinite number of worlds and that nothing can deny the existence of extraterrestrial life. At the same time, Jews don’t believe the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence would have much effect on them. He quotes a Jewish anthropologist and scholar who has addressed this issue and concluded that the relationship beween Jews and God would not be affected in the slightest by “the existence of other life forms, newly discovered scientific realities or pan-human behavioral changes.”

[Stubby]

Much would depend on the religious beliefs - if any - of the extra-terrestrials.

For example, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth if ET believes that its species was created in the image of the one true god.

[Gears of the Beast]

Hopefully they'd take pity on us primitive humans and send plenty of alien missionaries to convert us to the one true faith.

They might want to avoid the Middle East though...

[Sci-2]

I was thinking more about non-sentient life on other planets. It does seem fuck more with the Scriptural traditions which assume a special place for Earth. Though it'd be interesting if the aliens had their own religions, which would pretty much gut the literal value of our own faiths.

Though I'm sure people will say Jesus/Allah/whatever visited all worlds so everyone had a chance to be saved...

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At the UN, Conservative Christian Agenda Cloaked in Human Rights Language

When LGBT start getting murdered abroad, looks like some of the blame can go to reactionary American Christians.

In the spacious Room XXIII of the Palais des Nations, home of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, six pre-adolescent children were declaiming a text that sounded very human-rights-ish, with articles—one for each youth—on protecting, respecting, and establishing a number of things.

But if you had listened carefully, everything would have started to sound a bit off.

The text being read was in fact not the 1989 human rights treaty but instead “A Declaration on the Rights of Children and Their Families: A Call From the Children of the World.” The subject of the event was not as the protection of children as such but the “protection of the family,” and the non-governmental organization hosting it was called the UN Family Rights Caucus.

Discourse about the family is now the fulcrum of a major struggle over the human rights of sexual and gender minorities at the UN. In this struggle, American conservatives are claiming ground globally that they are losing locally in the national shift towards marriage equality.

[Gears of the Beast]

I doubt the UN will take that seriously, then again, this is the same UN that tried to impose anti-blasphemy laws on all member states. It's funny how so many conservatives are opposed to the UN (for good reason) yet there are these conservatives who are just authoritarian pieces of shit who are willing to do anything to desperately impose their pathetically outdated dogma onto everyone. It's a good thing the UN is inherently useless and ineffective otherwise we might have a real problem.

[Sci-2]

I doubt the UN will take that seriously, then again, this is the same UN that tried to impose anti-blasphemy laws on all member states. It's funny how so many conservatives are opposed to the UN (for good reason) yet there are these conservatives who are just authoritarian pieces of shit who are willing to do anything to desperately impose their pathetically outdated dogma onto everyone. It's a good thing the UN is inherently useless and ineffective otherwise we might have a real problem.

Yeah, the American Right is pretty callous about the damage their faith-based bigotry can cause abroad. There was this whole thing about them trying to get homophobes in other countries to target American businesses like Starbucks that are LGBT friendly. It apparently didn't occur to them that this might endanger the lives of people working in those chains.

John Oliver discusses some of the American influence in the specific case of Uganda on his show.

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

As two people who don't care much for religion, you sure do waste a lot of time talking about it. Was this a thread about religious discussion or religion bashing...? I can't tell anymore.

[Sci-2]

As two people who don't care much for religion, you sure do waste a lot of time talking about it. Was this a thread about religious discussion or religion bashing...? I can't tell anymore.

Uh, Gears and I have been arguing about theology across multiple iterations of this thread.

We just happen to have hit something we agree on.

[Gears of the Beast]

As two people who don't care much for religion, you sure do waste a lot of time talking about it. Was this a thread about religious discussion or religion bashing...? I can't tell anymore.

Why do you think those two things are mutually exclusive? Why can't discussion of religion include "bashing" (criticism) of religion? Or do you immediately need to preclude criticism because you don't like it. If there's something about the criticism which you disagree with then surely you can respond instead of just whining that religion is being criticised.

BTW there's a separate thread for discussing the Christian faith if that's what you're looking for.

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

Why do you think those two things are mutually exclusive? Why can't discussion of religion include "bashing" (criticism) of religion? Or do you immediately need to preclude criticism because you don't like it. If there's something about the criticism which you disagree with then surely you can respond instead of just whining that religion is being criticised.

BTW there's a separate thread for discussing the Christian faith if that's what you're looking for.

Was I whining? I thought I was asking a question. To me a discussion is just that, a discussion. When a bunch of atheists hijack the conversation it becomes bashing. Two separate things. When Sci says something like LGBT murders can be blamed on American Christians, that's just ignorant and irresponsible man. Please, tell me where in the New Testament it says that they should be murdered? If you don't believe in religion why would you want to discuss it anyway? Makes no sense... Maybe you guys should stick to taking about UFOs and what not

[Sci-2]

Was I whining? I thought I was asking a question. To me a discussion is just that, a discussion. When a bunch of atheists hijack the conversation it becomes bashing. Two separate things. When Sci says something like LGBT murders can be blamed on American Christians, that's just ignorant and irresponsible man. Please, tell me where in the New Testament it says that they should be murdered? If you don't believe in religion why would you want to discuss it anyway? Makes no sense... Maybe you guys should stick to taking about UFOs and what not

Look at the John Oliver link I posted above.

I'm not sure how you can say my exact statement "some of the blame can go to reactionary American Christians" is inaccurate unless you have refutation of the data provided.

Besides, if you go even a few posts back I posted an article about the Black Church tradition and how it applies to Ferguson. There's also an article on the Afrocentric traditions interwoven into Jazz and other musical styles up there, and one about DMT and the Judaic tradition.

Finally, I'm fundamentally agnostic because of the reasons+works I placed in this post, to which I'd add Tablottt's Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen? and the neuroscientist-philosopher Tallis' What Neuroscience Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves.

[Gears of the Beast]

Was I whining? I thought I was asking a question. To me a discussion is just that, a discussion. When a bunch of atheists hijack the conversation it becomes bashing. Two separate things. When Sci says something like LGBT murders can be blamed on American Christians, that's just ignorant and irresponsible man. Please, tell me where in the New Testament it says that they should be murdered? If you don't believe in religion why would you want to discuss it anyway? Makes no sense... Maybe you guys should stick to taking about UFOs and what not

How have atheists "hijacked" conversation? Are atheists not permitted to discuss (and as I've said, criticism can be part of a discussion) religion or have I done something specific to "hijack" this discussion? It's pretty laughable to say that Christians cannot be blamed for an action unless it is explicitly sanctioned in the New Testament (the fact that you even have to say New Testament instead of Bible is quite telling because of course the Bible is the sacred text of Christianity and it includes verses that endorse the killing of homosexuals). There are plenty of modern Christian positions that are not explicitly endorsed in the New Testament and conversely plenty of orders in the New Testament that curiously are not adhered to by the majority of Christians.