viktor said:

Spacerific said:

Quote:

There are people who naturally "get it" and those who don't. If you don't naturally "get it" you might need a religion to fill that gap.

---

Well I don't get it so naturally either, I too needed a "religion" type of thing to start getting it. Except it was happening with psychedelics, boobs, psytrance parties and such, or Ayahuasca session in the Santo Daime church

---

To my mind those are all natural ways of "getting it", as opposed to deliberately becoming infected with a Middle Eastern thought virus, which is highly unnatural.

I maintain that I've never met a spiritual religious person. In fact, this appears to be a contradiction in terms.

---

Spacerific said:

I agree with the above, in that what one does is often in order to balance some personal needs. We all need both quiet and noise, both structure and chaos, at different times of the week/year/life.

I'm all for that. Sometimes go to party and festival it all out in the open, other times head for the hills and solitude. I agree with ANYTHING that delivers, that really balances things out properly.

What I find it extremely curious is when people need silence and they go and look into buzzing electronics. When they need an all out party and they have only some feeble replacement for it. When they need to break the fuck down and cry on the floor because of the weight of the nervous tension inside, they need proper catharsis, and they have some feeble "sit here talk about your troubles" with a nice therapist or priest, all sanitized and very, VERY low amplitude, minimal risk, minimal real emotion. They don't exit the place after the fact all nice and clear, sweaty, tears let out, finally breathing free, muscles sore from the strain but finally having let go, they exit it still pretty guilty, neither here nor there, unsure whether anything was solved or not, very strange place to keep returning to. Very unfulfilling habit IMO.

I'm not talking about Christianity necessarily, I'm extending this to all religions of the book, where people put IMO rather little in (show up, do some hand signs in the air, sprinkle some water drink some wine eat some bread, mumble some text, look down feel guilty for a while). All low risk, low effort activities that to me just seem as crappy placebo, can't deliver properly even in theory.

Like really? Eat this cookie, it is my blood? Dip your fingers in this water and make like it's not tap water, because that dude over there in the fancy pajamas made hand signs and said poetry over it

I'd support it, really, I've seen plenty of sports that I don't practice but I see how they relax and deliver. So why they're not my cup of tea, I see muscles and reflexes being actually trained from them, I see perception improved in some way, team coordination if they're team based, that's all well and good. With most church rituals stemming from these religions of the book, I just can't get myself to stop laughing about the ridicule of it all, based on how little they do for the people involved. The feebleness of it all.

Oh and also, the delusional wording used in some of them. Church marriage ritual between non-monogamous primates, expecting 100% of them to be faithful "til death do us part" because they put on some fancy clothes, ate fancy cake and danced a bit more on a certain day. What's that actual number like, 50-60% or so? Probably less, if we had full disclosure of all flings and one night stands and various accidents during ovulation time? Somebody fucked up the numbers on that one right there, the wording of the ritual is flat out delusional about the actual sexual behavior of the species it's applied to

Hey maybe that's why I have this natural tendency toward fucking with it, unleashing primal attraction on teenage girls wearing Christian crosses around their necks, as well as fucking with people's marriages, if I see the real emotions are no longer there. I just can't stand the fake nature of it all, keeping vows and crap that one's heart isn't truly into. Nature has a way of attracting people, of keeping them together without contracts and threats, of making them silent at one time and party animals at others, and I find religions of the book constantly try to regulate and force things that are best left alone to come in their own good time.

---

Quote:

ling habit IMO.

I'm not talking about Christianity necessarily, I'm extending this to all religions of the book, where people put IMO rather little in (show up, do some hand signs in the air, sprinkle some water drink some wine eat some bread, mumble some text, look down feel guilty for a while). All low risk, low effort activities that to me just seem as crappy placebo, can't deliver properly even in theory.

---

ShiVersblood said:

Happened to me at a Christian church before. On a summer trip.

---

Quote:

It's so friggin easy to sit on the sideline and laugh at religion, you think you are the first person to consider yourself above it?

---

I'm not laughing at all religion, just at the placebo ones

You know, those that take symbolic psychoactive substances (water, wine, bread) and employ superficial rituals (show up at church, sit on chair, listen to dude talking) to enter pretty much symbolic trance and mystical states (read: doze off). I take a step back and compare that to taking peyote in a religious context, or shrooms or Ayahuasca, or even coca leaves like the Kogi people, or if one lacks psychoactive compounds, I look at things like the Sun Dance or the all night medicine dance of the Kung bushmen. Compare this level of trance-inducing activity to sitting on a chair and listening to some dude, and you'll see what issues I have with today's churches.

The feebleness of it all simply offends me. Any tripper here will gladly show up to any Sunday mass, or to Jerusalem or to any other alleged "holy" place, because we know them to be ineffective. They'll have exactly zero effect on our world view, zero threat level to our paradigm. On the flip side you find that most Christians are very averse to the idea of doing the stuff mentioned above, because they instinctively know that the psychoactive stuff WILL deliver, you can't just go through the motions, it will actually shake world views and remove veils. Rather than another Sunday at church listening to comfy mumbling, one would have to actually face some stuff and risk finding what they're truly made of on the inside. 

So this duplicity, of doing so very little, and then paying lip service to their book and method like it's the best and strongest, I think it just flies in the face of all common sense.

A few posts above you've mentioned Orthodox Christianity as being worth looking into. Well back in art school I happened to have most of my classes one floor below where the priests-in-training had theirs. So we had plenty of chances to meet and have convos about stuff. I can honestly say that those were some of the most obtuse, close minded and flat out ignorant individuals that I've met around those parts in a long long time. In a few years they'll graduate and get their pajamas and hats and they'll be full on priests, and they too will get the job of mumbling from the books on Sunday, for the old ladies. How, pray tell, is that supposed to do anything for me? How is that endless chewing of text, by mediocre people with minimal life experience and zero psychedelic experience, supposed to be of any use to me whatsoever?

Quote:

Why is it again that you think you're so wiser than me and why should your opinion matter even the slightest little bit?

---

Well for one thing I know plain tap water when I see it and I know empty mumbling when I hear it

ShiVersblood said:

I think it was because they say it's against the bibles teachings. They are support to murder them though hey try to confer them if possible.

---