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Religion IV: Deus vult!


Ser Scot A Ellison

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GotB,

No. The "engagement spectrum" is the distinction that you're trying to apply, pizza would be a separate distinction applied to atheists, not in relation to your proposed "engagement spectrum". The point is you can apply these arbitrary distinctions but the atheism is not the independent variable, it's the individual's personal preference. Which is why I'd prefer "antitheist", because it does not imply a difference to the person's actual atheism.

But the "Engagement Spectrum" is not an arbitrary distinction. We are talking about the differece between Atheists who aggresively engage with Theists (or moderate Atheists) in an effort to win them to their point of view. Your Pizza example is arbitrary.

[sci, thanks for the subtitle suggestion]

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Great, you think it's not arbitrary, I think it is. The point still stands regardless. If you think atheism is the independent variable then you're wrong, if you don't then I'd prefer if you used a meaningful distinction like antitheist instead of drivel like "evangelical atheist".



We're spending way too much time on this largely semantic disagreement. I'll be happy to address anything pertaining to religion that isn't a waste of time.


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Come on Ser Scott, you could've put in a creative subtitle. "God Wills It" would suffice. Or, if you're feeling blasphemous, "No gods, no masters."

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The Psychedelic Cult That Thrived For Nearly 2000 Years

The Eleusinian Mysteries are a set of traditions that have been practiced for 2000 years. The popular pseudo-religion invited all, accepting slaves, women, and men, regardless of financial standing and background.

The origin of the group centers on a conflict between Greek gods, with the goddess of agriculture Demeter plunging the world into famine in order to save her daughter Persephone. Let's take a look at the background, the rituals, and a possible explanation for the popularity and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries, as well as a place where you can see a modern day recreation of their ceremonies.

Help me board historians - I thought it was still contentious whether or not the Eleusinian Mysteries used psychoactive drugs, and that the best circumstantial evidence is criticism of a man who partook of the Mystery in his own house away from the cult?

The other possible issue is the consistency of the imparted message - that there was a life beyond death and this life was something to look forward to. For example DMT, from what I've read of Strassman's lab trials in Spirit Molecule, don't produce that kind of consistent message. Similar issue with LSD trials - you might have some consistencies but nothing to make you confident Paradise awaits beyond the veil*.

OTOH, there the various shamanic traditions in South America that utilize ayahuasca, and the Bwiti of Africa use ibogaine. If there was no way to induce a largely consistent initiation I'm not sure these traditions would've survived or even come to be at all.

*From Plato's Phaedrus:

There was a time when, with the rest of the happy band, they saw beauty shining in brightness --- We philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we saw the beatific vision and were initiated into a Mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we saw shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell..."

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No one has greater historical knowledge of the Greek Mysteries...Galactus? Thea?



Buelher?



Sadness.



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Godless yet good: There's something in religious tradition that helps people be ethical. But it isn't actually their belief in God





Americans don’t trust atheists and say they would not vote for a presidential candidate who did not believe in God. ‘Religion’ and ‘theology’ are still frequently cited in the American media as if they were the sole aspects of human existence responsible for matters of value. ‘We need science to tell us the way things are; we need religion to tell us the way things ought to be,’ as people around here like to say. I have spent my career studying the way things ‘ought to be’, outside of the scaffolding of any faith or religious tradition. No wonder I find such sentiments rather frustrating.



More than that, I find them perplexing. Perhaps it seems natural for a person who was brought up in a religious tradition to place their personal moral views in a framework of faith. But I’m skeptical whether religion can provide genuine knowledge of any sort — and I can’t help noticing the level of disagreement and difference that still exists, sometimes violently, between believers of different faiths. Given this, I find it dubious that we can, let alone must, go to religion if we want knowledge about how to live. The fact that ethical commitments, in some people’s lives, find a natural place in the context of religion does not imply that such commitments can only be grounded and motivated in religion, nor that a universe can only contain morality if it also contains God.


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On Gnosticism and the X-men:

It is Gnosticism's conception of the self that is most interesting and radical: Gnosticism makes a distinction between the soul (in Greek the psyche) and the spirit (the pneuma). The psyche is primarily what we traditionally associate with the mental self, most exhaustively treated by Freud in his psychoanalysis: appetites and passions certainly, but also our love and our tastes, and much - perhaps all - of our personality. Emerson, an implicit Gnostic, referred to this as the "adhesive self."[4]

Christianity, implicitly or explicitly, conceives of the body as a prison for the soul; Gnosticism conceives of BOTH the body and the soul (again, the personality, appetites and desires) as a prison for the spirit, the Gnostic spark, the part of God. (Freud's "bodily ego" admits the connection of body and psyche, though not as a prison for something else).

Emerson's Gnosticism is evident in his remarks about his son. He laments that grief (which occurs at the level of the psyche) cannot get him closer to "real nature"; for a Gnostic everything but the pneuma is unreal, including to a large extent other people. Bloom associates the spark with Genius;[5] it is probably best to think of it as the self that is beyond all categories, catalogues of traits, and definitions. Because Saint Paul defeated the Gnostics in the battle to control the destiny of the church (in much the same way Plato defeated the Sophists in the battle to control the destiny of philosophy), contemporary culture has nothing like this distinction, which is why it is so anti-intuitive.

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Excerpts from Franco Ferrucci's Life of God: An Autobiography, which suggests a more symbiotic relationship between Divine & mortal:

"Father and son of my very own self, the fire of intelligence that circulates through the cosmos and pours into humankind in order to attain the form of thought and words. Through his mind flashed the image of divine incarnation, the God who becomes man in order to be helped rather than to help."

"When I heard that he was dying, I went to visit him on a mountain in Tuscany to which he had retired. Before he expired he thanked me for everything - for the sun, the strong and beautiful fire, the plants, the animals, the clear and chaste water. He even thanked me for his death; and before he subsided into it, we embraced, and I kissed the palms of his hands, whose skin had become so fragile that it cracked beneath the pressure of my lips, and a bit of blood mingled with my tears...Francesco helped me to cast off the dream in which I was immersed. From the moment I met him I stopped being mad, as though my jester had set me free, taking the madness unto himself as a joyful penance."

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