Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

[turzovka]

Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

Personally, I like a lot of the social functions and appeasement of our need for fellowship, hivishness and tribalism offered by religious institutions.



So I do not want to kill all religions but just encourage them to be more moral, tolerant and give equality to women and gays.

Having said the above, People and recent trends to read scriptures literally have cause many to forget that religions were invented as theatre and myth and were never meant to be read or taken literally. They were designed to seek God, not to find one.

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch Listen PBS

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

As you can see from the following, religions and temples have always been about entertainment and fellowship.



If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God instead of idol worshiping false Gods, perhaps jihadists and other fundamental believers might chill and get along the way they have at some points in our past history.

Religions are fairy tales for adults. If this is a truth, we should encourage Christianity and Islam as well as all other religions to grow up and return to their better past of seeking God instead of idol worshiping Yahweh and Allah. Both of them are mythical and manmade Gods.

To just leave Christians and Muslim idol worshipers to continue as is means that we may never rid ourselves of their institutionalized homophobia and misogyny. The kind and moral thing to do is to try to correct our immoral religious friends to recognize their myths as fairy tales for adults. Do you agree?

Regards
DL

I watched the better part of a number of episodes of Bill Moyer’s “The Power of Myth” on PBS a number of years ago. I think his philosopher guest was a guy named Campbell? It had to be the most unenlightened, boring, useless vainglorious dialogue ever aired on national TV.

And now you seem to be some kind of bi-product of that mindset. You can call it all fairy tales if you wish and take upon this fruitless mission of trying to convince the world that there is no God and no life after death so just accept your miserable existence as it is. But until you can explain away supernatural manifestations, you are playing the fool, imo.

And there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of them.

 

[Abishai100]

Imagination Icing

The two imaginarium pictures below are rather different, indicating two very different angles on spiritualism and/or euphoria/fantasy/imagination.

Free will implies that we have the right to create models of perception for contemplation, so even if religions are scientifically unverifiable, they do please the sensibilities of private happiness.

I think a nice 'compromise' film that satisfies both nihilists/atheists and sentimentalists/theists is Mary Harron's "American Psycho" (2000).




American Psycho (Film)

 

[Disir]

Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

Personally, I like a lot of the social functions and appeasement of our need for fellowship, hivishness and tribalism offered by religious institutions.



So I do not want to kill all religions but just encourage them to be more moral, tolerant and give equality to women and gays.

Having said the above, People and recent trends to read scriptures literally have cause many to forget that religions were invented as theatre and myth and were never meant to be read or taken literally. They were designed to seek God, not to find one.

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch Listen PBS

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

As you can see from the following, religions and temples have always been about entertainment and fellowship.



If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God instead of idol worshiping false Gods, perhaps jihadists and other fundamental believers might chill and get along the way they have at some points in our past history.

Religions are fairy tales for adults. If this is a truth, we should encourage Christianity and Islam as well as all other religions to grow up and return to their better past of seeking God instead of idol worshiping Yahweh and Allah. Both of them are mythical and manmade Gods.

To just leave Christians and Muslim idol worshipers to continue as is means that we may never rid ourselves of their institutionalized homophobia and misogyny. The kind and moral thing to do is to try to correct our immoral religious friends to recognize their myths as fairy tales for adults. Do you agree?

Regards
DL

Yes, if they cross the line into the public sphere.

That said, if you are dealing with people experiencing a deeply painful loss or facing their own mortality, is it necessary to destroy whatever comfort they receive from those fairy tales?

 

[sealybobo]

And you come to this conclusion with a lack of evidence. How wise is that? To assume a God created the universe without any facts or evidence verifying this this not even a theory. God is just a hypothesis. Do you get that? And what's the purpose? The universe is 14 billion years old and has less than 10 billion years to go. Everything dies including you. No soul moves on afterward

The evidence I have comes from thirty years of attending spiritualist churches. In the first two years I came to believe that mediums were mostly doing what they said they were doing, and talking to the spirits of the dead.
After that I studied the teachings of several trance mediums and got an over view of the mystery's of life.
I came to believe there is a God who is a vast formless mind and he is the source of creation. We are a small part of the godhead, and we are sent out on a long journey of self realization over many incarnations. We reincarnate of many different planets in the course of our evolution, until reaching a state of grace, or enlightenment. After which we continue to grow as immortal beings in higher realms.

What evidence do you have? You listened to to the rantings of a bunch of spiritualists.

Tell me some of the evidence you gathered for example, that reincarnation is real.

My personal evidence of survival of my relatives was from dozens of messages I received from them over the years, from different mediums in different churches. The most evidential message I received was from a brother who died in the war as a baby. Until I received a message from him I did not even know he existed. The medium even told me his name, and I had never seen this medium before as she was visiting the church from out of town. I went home after the meeting and asked my mother if she had a baby that died in the war and she said yes. But my mother was not a spiritualist and she had never been to the church. She was shocked when I told her I had a message from her son who had grown up in the spirit world.
In any case I had many other messages from my grandparents telling me things that the mediums could not have known.
As for reincarnation I have no proof of it but it is what the spirits teach.

It is very apparent that God does not want us fooling around this type of thing. Mediums and people who "channel" are most often frauds. In 1 Samuel 28:12, the medium actually seemed surprised that she was able to "call Samuel up". Bible scholars have interpreted this to mean that she had never actually done it before. (1)
The amount of "personal" information that can be located about a person is truly amazing. With the advent of the Internet, more information then ever before, can be summoned up at the click of a mouse. This can give a medium the appearance of "communing with the dead".
In cases where mediums and people who channel, actually know information that no one else but the dead person could know, keep in mind that they are most likely involved with very evil spiritual beings. In simpler terms, a demon; Satan’s fallen angels.
Even though demons have become less apparent and have to hide better from our "enlightened" minds, they still exist and will do everything they can to confuse, corrupt and mislead people.

So its very possible that it was a devil who read your mind and told you something only you and your dead love one would know. OR they used the internet. Or whatever other tricks they use. Did you pre register to go see this person?

Bottom line is, we laugh at people who believe mediums.

I do not believe in the devil, because for one thing I used to be able to feel psychic energy myself and I could tell if it was a good or evil presence. I once walked into a Franciscan monastery in Italy and it almost blew my socks off there was so much positive energy there. My nervous system was like a psychic barometer and I could feel the psychic atmosphere in old churches. I could also feel the negative energy in the streets of London and I used to go into old churches for respite, and as soon as I walked in the door I could feel a psychic warmth. But it only worked in old churches, as new buildings have not had time for the energy to build up.
As for mediums using the internet to get information about you, it did not exist at the time I was a regular church goer. I went to church regularly from the late sixties, and I have not been to a church now for some years.

I guess I could choose to believe you but I won't. Nothing against you of course. You seem sincere. That's just not enough for anyone to take you seriously. Anyone serious anyways.

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience [2].
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics ormagnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia orpsychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes [2] can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   
   
   

 

[Dajjal]

^ I don't expect you to believe me but I believe in my own experiences. I realize they are no evidence to anyone else, but I cannot dismiss the psychic evidence I have received in a lifetime of truth seeking.

 

[Dajjal]

Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church.
I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I had a lot of spiritual healing and this eventually cured me, after which I stopped all medication and studied electronics. I discovered there are 21 minor chakras as well as the main 7 and I found I could channel energy through them to cure myself of disturbing feelings.
Obviously psychiatrists did not believe me about my account of these matters and I in turn have little regard for their opinions. I recognise I have the predisposition to schizophrenic experiences, but my interpretation of them is I was negatively psychic and open to the spirit world without being able to control it. I eventually learned from mediums how to close my aura and channel positive energy through the chakras in the palms of my hands thus overcoming the condition.
If mediums lost control of their experiences and went to psychiatrist for help they too would be diagnosed schizophrenic.

 

[GreatestIam]

Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

Personally, I like a lot of the social functions and appeasement of our need for fellowship, hivishness and tribalism offered by religious institutions.



So I do not want to kill all religions but just encourage them to be more moral, tolerant and give equality to women and gays.

Having said the above, People and recent trends to read scriptures literally have cause many to forget that religions were invented as theatre and myth and were never meant to be read or taken literally. They were designed to seek God, not to find one.

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch Listen PBS

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

As you can see from the following, religions and temples have always been about entertainment and fellowship.



If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God instead of idol worshiping false Gods, perhaps jihadists and other fundamental believers might chill and get along the way they have at some points in our past history.

Religions are fairy tales for adults. If this is a truth, we should encourage Christianity and Islam as well as all other religions to grow up and return to their better past of seeking God instead of idol worshiping Yahweh and Allah. Both of them are mythical and manmade Gods.

To just leave Christians and Muslim idol worshipers to continue as is means that we may never rid ourselves of their institutionalized homophobia and misogyny. The kind and moral thing to do is to try to correct our immoral religious friends to recognize their myths as fairy tales for adults. Do you agree?

Regards
DL

How true or real is religion if it has to change? You like the benefits that come from a lie? Like Santa.

I'll go with science.

And what about the negatives? I heard in Minnesota we have a large Somalian poor Muslim population and many of their youth are joining Isis. Religion plays a role.

So a lie is a lie is a lie. Knowledge is better than belief based on ignorance.

Funny thing is when debating whether or not there is a God no atheists will accept any evidence or so called evidence from any organized religion because they are all based on a lie that God visited and told them things

There are a lot more negatives than that.

Regards
DL

 

[GreatestIam]

What you want is a man made religion and that is not how it's intended.

All religions are man made

Indeed.

This is obvious when we break down the morals all the revealed religions try to sell.

Regards
DL

 

[GreatestIam]

^ I don't expect you to believe me but I believe in my own experiences. I realize they are no evidence to anyone else, but I cannot dismiss the psychic evidence I have received in a lifetime of truth seeking.

Yes you can unless you have a witness or something tangible for yourself.

Regards
DL

 

[Campbell]

And you come to this conclusion with a lack of evidence. How wise is that? To assume a God created the universe without any facts or evidence verifying this this not even a theory. God is just a hypothesis. Do you get that? And what's the purpose? The universe is 14 billion years old and has less than 10 billion years to go. Everything dies including you. No soul moves on afterward

The evidence I have comes from thirty years of attending spiritualist churches. In the first two years I came to believe that mediums were mostly doing what they said they were doing, and talking to the spirits of the dead.
After that I studied the teachings of several trance mediums and got an over view of the mystery's of life.
I came to believe there is a God who is a vast formless mind and he is the source of creation. We are a small part of the godhead, and we are sent out on a long journey of self realization over many incarnations. We reincarnate of many different planets in the course of our evolution, until reaching a state of grace, or enlightenment. After which we continue to grow as immortal beings in higher realms.

What evidence do you have? You listened to to the rantings of a bunch of spiritualists.

Tell me some of the evidence you gathered for example, that reincarnation is real.

My personal evidence of survival of my relatives was from dozens of messages I received from them over the years, from different mediums in different churches. The most evidential message I received was from a brother who died in the war as a baby. Until I received a message from him I did not even know he existed. The medium even told me his name, and I had never seen this medium before as she was visiting the church from out of town. I went home after the meeting and asked my mother if she had a baby that died in the war and she said yes. But my mother was not a spiritualist and she had never been to the church. She was shocked when I told her I had a message from her son who had grown up in the spirit world.
In any case I had many other messages from my grandparents telling me things that the mediums could not have known.
As for reincarnation I have no proof of it but it is what the spirits teach.

Just curious.....do you use that stuff in the stock market? I've always wondered why prophets, mediums, psychics, fortune tellers etc. aren't rich. Better yet prophesy up a good number for the lottery. All that stuff should be relegated to carnivals and side shows. Anybody who believes it ain't got the good gumption of a chicken.

It is bad karma to use occult powers for worldly gain. However I was given five winning lottery numbers from the spirit world by telepathy in 1998. At the time I was broke and could not afford a decent computer so the spirit world gave me a five number win to buy one. But they have never given me any more numbers because as I say it would be bad karma to cheat the lottery for a big win in this way. By the way the fact they could give me five winning numbers days in advance of the draw show the spirit world can see in to the future.

I sense a strong need for you to adjust your aluminum cap...you actually should trade it for a stainless steel sombrero!

 

[Dajjal]

I sense a strong need for you to adjust your aluminum cap...you actually should trade it for a stainless steel sombrero!

The odds against getting a five number win on the lottery are 55000 to 1 against. But I was told I would win by a female voice one hour before the draw. I had heard that voice earlier in the week when I picked the numbers, and the voice said " help is coming from and unexpected source" I had never heard that voice before and I have never heard it since. The only time I heard it say I would win was when I did win, and I do the lottery every week.
The odds are 55000 to one against winning so what are the odds that I would hear a voice tell me I would win on the only occasion that I did win. The odds must be astronomical. Logic dictates its more likely there was a discarnate spirit who spoke to me and helped me to win money for a computer.
Of course since you do not believe in spirits you will have to conclude it was a coincidence. Or some other explanation. But with my experience of spiritualism it is clear to me that on this one occasion the spirit world bent the rules and allowed me to win the money because they wanted me to have a computer.
They have got their moneys worth because I have spent ten years on the Internet, preaching spiritualism and criticizing the Quran to undermine Islamic fanatics.

 

[hobelim]

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church. I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I

I suppose a person suffering from schizophrenia would find it easier to believe a church telling them that they have some special 'etheric' body that needed to be aligned than they would be to accept a psychiatrist telling them that they have a mental illness.

Either way you were out of whack. I'm glad that you are better now.

I once knew a girl who has a psychotic break with reality because saw those garfield cats they used to have in car windows several times a week and was certain the mafia was sending her messages that they were going to kill her cat.

She didn't believe that she had a thought disorder either....

 

[OZman]

Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church.
I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I had a lot of spiritual healing and this eventually cured me, after which I stopped all medication and studied electronics. I discovered there are 21 minor chakras as well as the main 7 and I found I could channel energy through them to cure myself of disturbing feelings.
Obviously psychiatrists did not believe me about my account of these matters and I in turn have little regard for their opinions. I recognise I have the predisposition to schizophrenic experiences, but my interpretation of them is I was negatively psychic and open to the spirit world without being able to control it. I eventually learned from mediums how to close my aura and channel positive energy through the chakras in the palms of my hands thus overcoming the condition.
If mediums lost control of their experiences and went to psychiatrist for help they too would be diagnosed schizophrenic.

"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift." - Socrates

 

[Campbell]

Schizophrenics really don't do a lot of harm unless you think pulling a fire alarm at 2:00AM is cause for eviction. This same person did the same thing in two other apartment complexes before the authorities finally put him in an asylum for treatment. As far as I know the nut is still there.

 

[hobelim]

Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church.
I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I had a lot of spiritual healing and this eventually cured me, after which I stopped all medication and studied electronics. I discovered there are 21 minor chakras as well as the main 7 and I found I could channel energy through them to cure myself of disturbing feelings.
Obviously psychiatrists did not believe me about my account of these matters and I in turn have little regard for their opinions. I recognise I have the predisposition to schizophrenic experiences, but my interpretation of them is I was negatively psychic and open to the spirit world without being able to control it. I eventually learned from mediums how to close my aura and channel positive energy through the chakras in the palms of my hands thus overcoming the condition.
If mediums lost control of their experiences and went to psychiatrist for help they too would be diagnosed schizophrenic.

"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift." - Socrates

"Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other (he searches for the contrary of saved), damned.

"Saved from what?"

"We are all born mad. Some remain so."

- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

 

[Campbell]

Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church.
I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I had a lot of spiritual healing and this eventually cured me, after which I stopped all medication and studied electronics. I discovered there are 21 minor chakras as well as the main 7 and I found I could channel energy through them to cure myself of disturbing feelings.
Obviously psychiatrists did not believe me about my account of these matters and I in turn have little regard for their opinions. I recognise I have the predisposition to schizophrenic experiences, but my interpretation of them is I was negatively psychic and open to the spirit world without being able to control it. I eventually learned from mediums how to close my aura and channel positive energy through the chakras in the palms of my hands thus overcoming the condition.
If mediums lost control of their experiences and went to psychiatrist for help they too would be diagnosed schizophrenic.

"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift." - Socrates

"Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other (he searches for the contrary of saved), damned.

"Saved from what?"

"We are all born mad. Some remain so."

- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

I've always been fascinated by a collection of cold, hard facts:
Nobody asks to be born
Nobody has anything to say about when or where they'll be born
Nobody has anything to say about who their parents will be
Nobody has anything to say about what their appearance will be
Nobody has anything to say about whether or not they'll be crippled
Nobody has anything to say about whether they will have an IQ of 70 or 170
What makes anybody think they're any different than other mammals?
There are presently over 5400 known mammalian species.
Screw Ancient Gods. They're all the same...made up by men. have you ever noticed that god and Jesus and the holy ghost are all males?

The Jesus story had to be impressive so they told that his Mama was a virgin...LMAO!!!

Pure, Major, Bullshit!!!

 

[Dajjal]

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church. I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I

I suppose a person suffering from schizophrenia would find it easier to believe a church telling them that they have some special 'etheric' body that needed to be aligned than they would be to accept a psychiatrist telling them that they have a mental illness.

Either way you were out of whack. I'm glad that you are better now.

I once knew a girl who has a psychotic break with reality because saw those garfield cats they used to have in car windows several times a week and was certain the mafia was sending her messages that they were going to kill her cat.

She didn't believe that she had a thought disorder either....

I said I had feelings of fire flowing through my chakras, and I also had feelings like cobwebs floating over my skin. Then I saw a diagram of the chakras in a book called 'alternative London' and I recognised them as the places where I felt the fire flowing. It took quite a few visits to mediums to get the explanation that my etheric body was loose, as that is not common knowledge even among psychics. I then studied theosophical books on the subtle bodies and began to be able to control my chakras by willpower.

I hope that one day psychiatrists will discover these things for themselves, and then they may really be able to help people instead of just drugging them.

 

[sealybobo]

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church. I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I

I suppose a person suffering from schizophrenia would find it easier to believe a church telling them that they have some special 'etheric' body that needed to be aligned than they would be to accept a psychiatrist telling them that they have a mental illness.

Either way you were out of whack. I'm glad that you are better now.

I once knew a girl who has a psychotic break with reality because saw those garfield cats they used to have in car windows several times a week and was certain the mafia was sending her messages that they were going to kill her cat.

She didn't believe that she had a thought disorder either....

1. I feel a personal relationship with god OR I experienced god.
   Argument from personal experience
   
   A result of our naturally evolved neurology, made hypersensitive to purpose (an ‘unseen actor’) because of the large social groups humans have and the way the brain associates pattern with intent.
   
   Humans have evolved a variety of cognitive shortcuts to deal with the mass of information provided by our senses. In particular, we tend to filter sensory input according to a set of expectations built on prior beliefs and past experiences, impart meaning to ambiguous input even when there is no real meaning behind it and infer causal relationships where none exist.
   
   Personal revelation cannot be independently verified. So-called ‘revelations’ never include information a recipient could not have known beforehand, such as the time and location of a rare event or answers to any number of unsolved problems in science. They are usually emotional or perceptual in content and therefore unremarkable among the many cognitive processes brains exhibit, including dreams and hallucinations. These experiences may even be artificially induced by narcotics ormagnetic fields. Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.
   
   Spiritual and religious experiences are not only inconsistent among individuals but are variably attributed to different gods, aliens, spirits, rituals, hallucinations, meditation etc. The fact that medical conditions and other natural processes can induce these experiences is evidence they are produced by our brain.
   
   See also: NPR Your brain on god?, Hardwired for religion?, Searching for God in the Brain, The Economist, BBC Doco, PBS Doco and Dawkins on the topic, Deconversion: Personal Relationship (a must watch), TED – How it feels to have a stroke (a must watch) and TED – Ramachandran on your mind.
   
   Papers: Religion and Hippocampal Atrophy.
   
   “You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
   
   
   
   
   

 

[Dajjal]

My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

To bring back the opening post I would say the following about Daniel Dennett. He said "mind is brain" in his pretentious book 'consciousness explained'. I consider that to be an utterly banal, simplistic statement.
I have just acquired two books by Roger Penrose, who I am sure is at least Dennet's intellectual equal. But Penrose says modern physics has not got enough information, or a sufficient theory to explain consciousness.
Because for one thing ,as he puts it, some aspects of consciousness are non computational. For this reason he thinks computers will not become self aware any time soon.
I have just started reading Penrose 'the Emperors new mind' and will follow it with 'shadows of the mind'
I daresay I will have more to say on the subject as I progress with reading the books. In the meantime I intend to tweet Dennett and tell him he is a dunce, and he should read Penrose books.

Edit: I done did it, I tweeted Dennett and said the following.
Your statement 'mind is brain' is simplistic and banal. I suggest you read books on the mind by Roger Penrose

 

[September]

Extreme cases may be diagnosed as a form of schizophrenia or psychosis.

To make it easy for you to dismiss me I can tell you that I was diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1969. After two years of heavy medication I was told I would have to stay on drugs for life. I promptly walked out of the clinic.
I then embarked on a search for other explanations for my experiences and started going to a spiritualist church.
I had a feeling like fire flowing through several places in my body and after some time studying the subject I was told that my etheric body was loose and my chakras were consequently miss aligned. I had a lot of spiritual healing and this eventually cured me, after which I stopped all medication and studied electronics. I discovered there are 21 minor chakras as well as the main 7 and I found I could channel energy through them to cure myself of disturbing feelings.
Obviously psychiatrists did not believe me about my account of these matters and I in turn have little regard for their opinions. I recognise I have the predisposition to schizophrenic experiences, but my interpretation of them is I was negatively psychic and open to the spirit world without being able to control it. I eventually learned from mediums how to close my aura and channel positive energy through the chakras in the palms of my hands thus overcoming the condition.
If mediums lost control of their experiences and went to psychiatrist for help they too would be diagnosed schizophrenic.

"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift." - Socrates

"Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other (he searches for the contrary of saved), damned.

"Saved from what?"

"We are all born mad. Some remain so."

- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

I've always been fascinated by a collection of cold, hard facts:
Nobody asks to be born
Nobody has anything to say about when or where they'll be born
Nobody has anything to say about who their parents will be
Nobody has anything to say about what their appearance will be
Nobody has anything to say about whether or not they'll be crippled
Nobody has anything to say about whether they will have an IQ of 70 or 170
What makes anybody think they're any different than other mammals?
There are presently over 5400 known mammalian species.
Screw Ancient Gods. They're all the same...made up by men. have you ever noticed that god and Jesus and the holy ghost are all males?

The Jesus story had to be impressive so they told that his Mama was a virgin...LMAO!!!

Pure, Major, Bullshit!!!

-We have a lot to say about what our appearance will be. Diet, exercise, etc...
-We have a lot to say about what our IQ will be. Education, ambition, etc...

Also, have you ever really considered the potential usefulness of exploring the divine archetypes of various gods and goddesses without actually believing in their physical existence? Rather, their psychological existence as energy patterns within the current of the human collective subconscious...?

​