SREDNI VASHTAR

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things---such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and drawn-out dulness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. De Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him ``for his good'' was a duty which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked out---an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of things, as opposed to the Woman's religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great lengths in the contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen. These festivals were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On one occasion, when Mrs. De Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar was personally responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. De Ropp was the ground plan on which he based and detested all respectability.

After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. ``It is not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers,'' she promptly decided, and at breakfast one morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing: there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm, for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it ``gave trouble,'' a deadly offence in the middle-class feminine eye.

``I thought you liked toast,'' she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.

``Sometimes,'' said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had been wont to chant his praises, tonight be asked a boon.

``Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.''

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking back a sob as he looked at that other empty comer, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up: ``Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.''

Mrs. De Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further journey of inspection.

``What are you keeping in that locked hutch?'' she asked. ``I believe it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all cleared away.''

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then be imagined her opening the door of the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience. And Conradin fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer, but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the hymn of his threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes, but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once again the pæan of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.

``Tea is ready,'' said the sour-faced maid; ``where is the mistress?'' ``She went down to the shed some time ago,'' said Conradin. And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it, Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door. The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull, the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

``Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for the life of me!'' exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.

Good observation! Damn that wizard Copernicus and his mystical garbage.

>> ^deathcow:

You can tell quite clearly from this video that that hula-hoop is the exact center of the universe and everything else moves around it.

>> ^bareboards2:

philosophy
I love this talk. I find that some atheists can be just as dogmatic and invasive in imposing their point of view as any evangelical. This guy has it nailed.


There were some interesting ideas, but mostly I wasn't impressed.

He opens by talking about the "kind of atheist that likes christmas carols". So, for example, Richard Dawkins?

He then talks about how we can use the "tools of religion" to make our lives better. He's essentially talking about 2 things, community and indoctrination.

Community, I think we can all agree happens easily without religion. Just look at this site. For a more real world example, last years earthquake in my home town saw groups of people coming together to dig out liquefaction from each others houses.

Indoctrination, on the other hand, I can live without.

As for the sense of mysticism or wonder, again that's not an issue I worry about. On this site alone there are hundreds of videos that talk about a secular sense of wonder about the universe (pretty much anything with Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Brian Cox). At a more local level, that "sense of belonging to something bigger" comes back to community for me. Whether that's a group of friends, a city trying to rebuild itself, or even in the larger sense that we all inhabit the same rock flying through space.

So you're saying that if it wasn't for religion humans would find some other aspect of human nature to exploit? Not really profound, but it really does make sense. For example, religion is being used as a means to deny gays the same rights the rest of us have. However, when it comes down to it, some people just feel that homosexuality is icky. And you know what? As ignorant as that is, it's just as natural for somebody to be repulsed by certain sexual behaviors as it is to be attracted to some sexual behaviors. As long as people disagree there will be conflict. The problem with religion, though—as our friend Tim Minchin says—it teaches us to externalize blame. What I mean is, religion paints a very binary portrait of the world—of what's right and wrong. It doesn't teach relativity or tolerance. I think it's ok to assume that if we eliminate religion, the basis for that ignorance will lose power. Furthermore, if somebody doesn't agree with something that's ok. And since there is no god, therefore no word of god, our differences are merely individual preference.>> ^peggedbea:

I want to believe that this is the point chris hedge's is attempting to make:
whenever i listen to or read anything from sam harris i feel like he's trying to blame religion for all the evil. but i don't feel like he's naming it correctly. there's a more basic manipulation taking place. religion is simply the chosen mechanism. religion is a tool for social control. faith is a rather benign human characteristic. people WANT to have faith in something. and religion manipulates that desire to control X population. it's not the faith in something mystic and silly that fucks up the world, it's the emotional manipulation employed. but in alternate universe B, maybe the mechanism for social control looks completely different. and there are more than one mechanism for social control happening in this universe. class and race and sex are the most obvious. in harris's effort to vilify one single mechanism, instead of the underlying attribute (you could call it greed?), it often feels like he's creating another kind of tribalism. us vs. them. smart atheists vs. stupid evil religious people. i feel very divisive when i listen to him and his ilk. i'd rather not dislike religious people. i'd rather focus all my bad feelings on the men who manipulate basest desires to control the masses for financial gain. i'd rather hear more about who they are and how to stop them then about how insane religious people are going to destroy all of creation.

I want to believe that this is the point chris hedge's is attempting to make:

whenever i listen to or read anything from sam harris i feel like he's trying to blame religion for all the evil. but i don't feel like he's naming it correctly. there's a more basic manipulation taking place. religion is simply the chosen mechanism. religion is a tool for social control. faith is a rather benign human characteristic. people WANT to have faith in something. and religion manipulates that desire to control X population. it's not the faith in something mystic and silly that fucks up the world, it's the emotional manipulation employed. but in alternate universe B, maybe the mechanism for social control looks completely different. and there are more than one mechanism for social control happening in this universe. class and race and sex are the most obvious. in harris's effort to vilify one single mechanism, instead of the underlying attribute (you could call it greed?), it often feels like he's creating another kind of tribalism. us vs. them. smart atheists vs. stupid evil religious people. i feel very divisive when i listen to him and his ilk. i'd rather not dislike religious people. i'd rather focus all my bad feelings on the men who manipulate basest desires to control the masses for financial gain. i'd rather hear more about who they are and how to stop them then about how insane religious people are going to destroy all of creation.

@shinyblurry

Finally getting around to this older comment of yours.

M: The first reason is that it's very common among holders of all sorts of mystical beliefs to have gained the belief following such an experience, and to have attributed the belief to whichever mystical force is closest at hand, in your case, Jesus.

SB: Even then I had no religion or belief system. From there, I explored many of the worlds belief systems and philosophies, religions and traditions, for many years, before being led to Christianity. To note, at the time, out of all the religions, I considered Christianity to be one of the least plausible. Again, because it had been uniquely confirmed to me, there was no way to deny it. The evidence was as plain as my reflection in the mirror.

By "closest at hand", I didn't mean that you grabbed it right away. While you did spend years coming to Jesus, it's no coincidence that you did, IMO. You say that among religions, you were particularly prejudiced against Christianity for it's implausibility. This doesn't surprise since it was the one you were most familiar with, and so the one you had seen the most problems with, until you investigated the other ones, and found them even worse. As you have noted several times yourself, growing up in the West, you were also strongly prejudiced towards Christianity, since a large part of our cultural ethos and moral code stems directly from it, even for us atheists. So, if you were going to discover that one religion was the true one, it would almost certainly be a strain of Christianity as it's the one that fits your own culture's moral code the best. If you'd chosen Voodoo instead, then your careful search of religions would be something worth pointing to as evidence.

[God] is the only source of truth, and anyone in contact with Him has access to that truth. The second and lesser power is that of Satan. He is the source of all lies, and anyone in contact with him is deluded and in bondage. Satan is the ruler of the world system, and in general, the people who are enslaved to him are not aware of it. He can only really enslave someone who is ignorant of the truth.

These definitions, especially the ones about Satan are really self-serving. You declare that you have the truth, and part of that truth is that anyone who disagrees with you is possessed by the devil, which of course your dissenters will deny. But you can counter that easily because your religion has also defined satanic possession as something you don't notice. Tight as a drum, and these definitions from nowhere but the religion's own book.

I think it's a natural thought to have, that your life might be something like the Truman show, and everyone else is in on the conspiracy. A belief like that puts you in the very center of the Universe, and from there you could weave together any story you could imagine.

Actually, it was a very different feeling from that. I didn't feel I was the target of any conspiracy. I had stumbled into one --my group of friends-- but I was ignorant of the conspiracy before I had my experience. After I had it, I realized that they were all part of something bigger than me that I could never understand, and that I was actually in their way, that my presence in their group was really cramping their style a lot, slowing things down, forcing them to get things done surreptitiously. I realized they weren't going to directly remove me for now, but I didn't know how long their patience would last. So I removed myself, and hoped they'd leave me alone. In hindsight, they were horrible friends to begin with, so it was no loss for me. Losing those friends was a very good move for me.

The thing is, what I know now is, that everyone who falls into these traps has a little help. That you don't just fall into the abyss, you get pushed in. Satan fuels these types of experiences supernaturally. He can cause people to give you responses or engage you in dialogues which confirm the lies that he has planted and therefore reap a harvert of delusion. He will even give you these kinds of experience in order to debunk them later with the ultimate goal of getting you to doubt the real thing:

Again, you're claiming you are right, and everything untrue comes from Satan, and if I have any logical reason to doubt your story, you can give yourself permission to ignore my logic by saying it is from Satan and that's why it has the power to show the Truth is wrong. So, any Christian who believes a logical argument that conflicts with the dogma is, by definition, being fooled by Satan, and has a duty to doubt their own mind. Even better than the last one for mind control. It does away utterly with reliance on any faculty of the mind, except when their use results in dogmatic thoughts. Genius. Serious props to whoever came up with that. That's smart.

I admit some things I believe may seem counter-intuitive to you, but as you have admitted, our intuitions about what is correct are not always reliable. Quantum physics is a good example of this truth.

I have no problem with counter-intuitive things. I love them. That's why I'm do drawn to quantum physics. I really try hard to wrap my mind around how some of those things can be so, but I really can't. I trust it's so only because experimental evidence bears it out. The only claims of anybody's that I have problems with are A) highly improbable ones only where following such a belief will somehow result in an undesirable outcome; and B) internally self-contradicting or otherwise demonstrably impossible ones.

Like, if you say you believe God exists, I say fine. If you say you know God exists, I say prove it's not your imagination. If you say evolution is wrong, ordinarily I wouldn't care what you believe, except that if you're on school board and decide to replace it with Creationism or Intelligent Design in the science curriculum, then I have to object because that causes harm to children who are going to think that they are real science, and on equal footing with/compatible with/superior to evolution.

It seems to me that you're still very much interpreting reality through your experience. You make the leap that since you were able to fool yourself to such an extent, and that your experience had the character of the supernatural, that everyone who has a supernatural experience is undergoing a similar process. Yet, this is a classic example of confirmation bias. How do you know that you're still not seeing things according to an unconscious paradigm you haven't yet questioned?

You may be right. I may be right. I think it's more likely that I'm right, but that's neither here nor there. How do you know you're not seeing things that aren't there? My experience proves the human mind is capable of doing so and sustaining it. The bible could have been written by several such people. Maybe in that time and place, people who ranted about strange unconnected things were considered to be prophets, and once plugged into the God story, they went to town. I'm not saying it's true, just a possible theory.

As far as truth, it is by nature, exclusive. There is no true for me, or true for you. Someone is right and someone is wrong. This world was either created with intention, or it manifested itself out of sheer happenstance. There either is a God or there isn't.

Excellent to hear. I agree with everything here and might refer back to this several times when I get to your other comment about the nature of God.

You believe you were just deceiving yourself. What I am telling you is that you had supernatural help, and that you're still in it.

If I was "in it" and deceiving myself then, I was in something and deceiving myself before. My beliefs about all supernatural things remain unchanged by my experience, that's to say, I still don't believe they exist.

First, you can rule out all the gods who make no creation claims. Two, you can rule out the creation claims that contradict the basic evidence.

First, not claiming to have created anything doesn't mean he didn't do it, or that he did [edit] claim it and the records were lost. Two, hold the phone -- this rules out Christianity. Genesis states the world was created in six days a few thousand years ago, or something. You can argue that this is metaphorical (why?), but surely you can't say that world being flat, or the sun rotating around the Earth is a metaphor. These are things God would know and have no reason to misrepresent. Since it's God's word, everyone would just believe it. And why not? It makes just as much sense that the Earth is round and revolves around its axis.

I thought about weighting the probabilities for each religion, but discarded it as unwieldy and unnecessary. There are so many mutually exclusive strains even within a single religion that we are still left with tons of them to choose from.

Your evidence about what the most influential/largest religion is is valid (in the "indication" sense of "evidence") for Christianity's being true, and for it being the only reasonable candidate for being true, but is not conclusive. My counterarguments are several:

1. If having the largest relative numbers is evidence of the probable truth of something, then even larger numbers is stronger evidence that it's probably not true. Around 2 billion people are Christian, so around 5 billion are not. By this method, while it's most probable Christianity is right, it's more probable that none of the religions is right. [On re-reading the preceding argument and the context you made the claim, it is a stupid see-saw argument, so I'm taking it back.] Consider also there are tens of thousands of different strains of Christianity with conflicting ideas of the correct way to interpret the Bible and conduct ourselves. Can gays marry? Can women serve mass? Can priests marry? Can non-virgins marry? And so on. Only one of these sects can be right, and again, probably none of them are.

2. The method itself doesn't take into account why the religion has spread. The answer isn't in how true it is, but in the genius of the edicts it contains. For example, it says that Christians are obliged to go convert other people, and doing so will save their eternal souls from damnation. Anyone who is a Christian is therefore compelled to contribute to this uniquely Christian process. I can't count the number of times I've been invited to attend church or talk about God with a missionary. That's why Christianity is all over the world, whereas no other religion has that spread. Also, there are all sorts of compelling reasons for people to adopt Christianity. One is that Christians bring free hospitals and schools. This gives non-truth-based incentives to join. The sum of this argument is that Christianity has the best marketing, so would be expected to have the largest numbers. The better question is why Islam still has half the % of converts that Christianity does, even though it has no marketing system at all, and really a very poor public image internationally.

3. This kinda follows from #1, but I want to make it explicit, as this, IMHO, is one of the strongest arguments I've ever come up with. I've never presented it nor seen it presented to a believer, so I'm keen for your reaction. It goes something like this: If God is perfect, then everything he does must be perfect. If the bible is his word, then it should be instantly apparent to anybody with language faculties that it's all absolutely true, what it means, and how to extrapolate further truths from it. But that's not what happens. Christians argue and fight over the correct interpretation of the bible, and others argue with Christians over whether it's God's word at all based on the many, many things that appear inconsistent to non-Christians. In this regard, it's obvious that it's not perfect, and therefore not the word of God. If it's not the word of God, then the whole religion based on it is bunk.

I agree to some extent about psychological motivations but reject the premise as a whole that people need religion to live in a scary Universe. Most atheists aren't aware of the vast intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christianity, or how self-critical it can be. Even Paul said that if Jesus is not resurrected that we are all fools. We're not just a bunch of ignoramouses who drank the kool-aid and are waiting for the UFO to arrive.

I didn't say people needed it. I said having a religion in a scary universe with other people with needs and desires that conflict with your own makes life a lot easier and more comfortable. Religion, in general, is probably the greatest social organizing force ever conceived of, and that's why religions are so attractive and conservatively followed in places with less beneficial social organization (i.e., places without democracy), and lower critical thinking skills (i.e. places with relatively poor education).

In contrast, in times and places where people on a large scale are well off and have a tradition of critical thinking, the benefits of having a religion as the system of governance are less apparent, and the flaws in this system come out. It becomes more common for such nations to question the authority of the church, and so separate religion from governance. The West has done so, and is leading the world. Turkey is the only officially secular Muslim nation in the world and has clearly put itself in a field apart from the rest, all because it unburdened itself of religious governance when an imposed basic social organization structure was no longer required.

It's funny but science functions in the same way for atheists as you say a god does for theists.

You're right, and you may not know how right you are. Modern scientific investigation, as away of life, comes almost entirely from the Christian tradition. It once was in the culture of Christianity to investigate and try to understand the universe in every detail. The thought was that understanding the universe better was to approach understanding of God's true nature -- a logical conclusion since it was accepted that God created the universe, and understanding the nature of something is to reveal the nature of its creator (and due to our natural curiosity, learning things makes us feel better). The sciences had several branches. Natural science was the branch dealing with the non-transcendent aspects of the universe. The transcendent ones were left to theologists and philosophers, who were also considered scientists, as they had to rigorously and logically prove things as well, but without objective evidence. This was fine, and everyone thought knowledge of the world was advancing as it should until natural science, by its own procedures, started discovering natural facts that seemed inconsistent with the Bible.

That's when people who wanted truth had to decide what their truth consisted of: either God and canon, or observable objective facts. Natural science was cleaved off from the church and took the name "science" with it. Since then, religion and science have both done their part giving people the comfort of knowledge. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is immutable and all-encompassing prefer religion. People who find the most comfort in knowledge that is verifiable and useful prefer science.

In my comments above, I was responding to your question, "Did you miss
me?" until the last part where I think I only addressed your arguments
about the video, and not very well. To be clear, I don't feel like I
was attacking your character rather than your arguments. I was
commenting on the way I perceive your arguments to often be illogical,
inconsistent, unprovable, or even demonstrably false. That's my
opinion of your arguments, not your character. As I said initially, I
like you, and think you're probably a really nice person of good
character, and I'd probably enjoy having a beer with you. If you mean
the bit about your psychotic break, that's because that's what I think
happened to you based on what you've told me about your conversion,
and I think it's affecting your judgement and perception, honestly and
sincerely. Put in my shoes (as you once were), you wouldn't accept
your own story at face value either, so I don't know why you expect
anyone else to.

I'm not offended by what you said, and after having read through this post, I have a much better idea of why you said the things you did. The reason I took issue is because I am frequently mischaracterized on the sift, and this seemed to be more of that. And no, I don't expect you to believe my story at face value. I wouldn't have believed me either, but neither would I totally dismiss it out of hand.

You're conflating at least two groups of people in your "90%", namely
people who claim religious faith (whether sincere or not, and to
whatever degree of devotion), and those who have actually had numinous
experiences.

I realize that not everyone who believes in God has had a spiritual experience, and I can see I failed to make a distinction in my reply.

When I say that you can't come to any other conclusion
because of your mental condition, I'm only referring to you and other
people who have actually had a serious numinous experience like yours,
which is an underwhelming minority of religious people, nothing like
90%.

My entire life is a numinous experience, and no, I wouldn't say the majority of religious people have had an experience like mine. I would say though that a large majority of them have had some kind of spiritual experience and many non-believers too. I have spoken to more than a few who will eventually admit to me that they have seen evidence of the supernatural, but suppress it because they don't like the implications.

This minority, and anybody else who claims to have seen ghosts,
or communicated with daemons, or been abducted by aliens, or been
levitated, or seen other locations in time/space, or communicated with
the dead, I view with equal scepticism. The first reason is that it's
very common among holders of all sorts of mystical beliefs to have
gained the belief following such an experience, and to have attributed
the belief to whichever mystical force is closest at hand, in your
case, Jesus.

In my case, that isn't true. I had no belief in God, nor was I looking for one when I found out that there is a higher power working in this world. Even after I was opened to the spiritual reality, I didn't immediately leap to a belief in God. There just came a point where I could no longer plausibly deny His existence, and that's when I started to believe. Even then I had no religion or belief system. From there, I explored many of the worlds belief systems and philosophies, religions and traditions, for many years, before being led to Christianity. To note, at the time, out of all the religions, I considered Christianity to be one of the least plausible. Again, because it had been uniquely confirmed to me, there was no way to deny it. The evidence was as plain as my reflection in the mirror.

The second is that there's no real reason to choose one
mystical explanation for the experience over another explanation, and
until there is, it's smartest to reserve judgement, and assume for the
moment that they're all wrong, as only one of them, maximum, could
possibly be right, no matter how fervently held they are.

Well you're correct that only one could be the truth, it doesn't mean that no one else is having a genuine experience. The solution to this puzzle is very simple. There are two powers in the supernatural realm. The first and greater power is from God. He is the only source of truth, and anyone in contact with Him has access to that truth. The second and lesser power is that of Satan. He is the source of all lies, and anyone in contact with him is deluded and in bondage. Satan is the ruler of the world system, and in general, the people who are enslaved to him are not aware of it. He can only really enslave someone who is ignorant of the truth. This is the default condition we're all born into, but God has put the truth out there, as a beacon for anyone who hungers for it, for anyone who is not satisified with lies. He is constantly giving people opportunities to accept that truth, but unless they do, they will choose to believe the lie and thus remain in bondage.

Just like 1+1 has an unlimited number of wrong answers, Satan has an unlimited number of lies about the truth. He also has a supernatural power that can reinforce these lies. So, in general, the people who are reporting supernatural experiences from the various religions are largely telling the truth. The only question is, are they from God or from Satan?

That was nearly twenty years ago, and I'm still not yet at the point where I can laugh
at how silly it was, and have just become comfortable enough to talk
openly about it.

Thanks for sharing that with me. I think it's a natural thought to have, that your life might be something like the Truman show, and everyone else is in on the conspiracy. A belief like that puts you in the very center of the Universe, and from there you could weave together any story you could imagine. I had an ex-girlfriend with bi-polar disorder who used to do this. She would start making connections between things which had no plausible connection, and pretty soon she was staring some kind of hideous reality square in the face, and living in absolute terror. To her it was absolutely real and everything that happened, perceived as it was through these filters, served to reinforce them.

So I understand the princple. I have had thoughts like this myself, and I had to stop myself from engaging them. For instance, I once had the idea that a very powerful and very malevolent entity might exist somewhere in the Universe that could potentially pick up on my thoughts, and if I ever drew his attention to me by thinking about him he would kill me (or worse). After living in fear of this for a little while, I decided that my best option was to doubt it was true and stop thinking about it, because that's what was going to get me killed in the first place.

The thing is, what I know now is, that everyone who falls into these traps has a little help. That you don't just fall into the abyss, you get pushed in. Satan fuels these types of experiences supernaturally. He can cause people to give you responses or engage you in dialogues which confirm the lies that he has planted and therefore reap a harvert of delusion. He will even give you these kinds of experience in order to debunk them later with the ultimate goal of getting you to doubt the real thing:

2 Corinthians 4:4

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

The "truth" that I received was unquestionably true, impossible to
consider denying since to me it was so obviously true, and
agonizingly, mindbendingly horrible. Depending on how you look at it,
this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If the "truth" that I saw
had been fulfilling, hopeful and beautiful like yours was, and not
horrible, dark, pessimistic and paranoid as it was, I would have had
far less motivation for questioning it, and may have just gone along
with it forever, especially if holding that view improved my life in
certain ways.

It seems to me that you think I am not very self-critical about what I believe. I suppose you have to believe that since you think Christianity is nonsense, but why not assume for a minute that my standard for the truth is not inferior to yours and let me try to explain:

I am not naturally inclined to believe anything in particular for any particular reason. I don't make choices about what I believe based on how those beliefs make me feel, or what kinds of rewards I might receive. To become convinced that something is true, there must be exquisite evidence which justifies that belief, and it must fit seamlessly into a logical framework with no contradiction. I admit some things I believe may seem counter-intuitive to you, but as you have admitted, our intuitions about what is correct are not always reliable. Quantum physics is a good example of this truth.

What I believe isn't about me. I only care about what is true and what is real; if the truth is that I am nothing more than an insignifcant fly speck that will die forever in a cold and indifferent Universe, then I wouldn't try to hide from it, I would in fact embrace it. It was in fact my original position before all this began, and I was okay with it. Was I happy that I had to die one day? Not as such, but it didn't really bother me. I accepted it as fact and knew it was out of my control. The only reason I changed my mind is because I encountered evidence good enough to convince me otherwise.

Everybody who has a break like this comes to a slightly different
conclusion as to its meaning. Mine was a very, very dark conclusion,
which is vastly different from yours, but similar to many other
people's, though probably not exactly the same as anybody else's, just
like yours probably isn't. Like Double Rainbow Guy was probably
experiencing a similar break right at that moment, and concluded
neither that Jesus was the saviour, nor that the world was evil, nor
that he himself was the new messiah.

It seems to me that you're still very much interpreting reality through your experience. You make the leap that since you were able to fool yourself to such an extent, and that your experience had the character of the supernatural, that everyone who has a supernatural experience is undergoing a similar process. Yet, this is a classic example of confirmation bias. How do you know that you're still not seeing things according to an unconscious paradigm you haven't yet questioned?

So I don't like the word "crazy" because of its negative connotations,
and wouldn't have appreciated it being flung at me during that time
nor now (and if I've ever used it about you, it was probably when I
thought you were a real troll, Poe's Law being what it is, and
definitely before I knew about your numinous experience). That said, I
have no issue pointing out to people that I don't believe they are
applying critical thought to their assertions, and that they don't
seem capable of doing so because of a story in their head that is so
powerful it renders contradictory input trivial. I've been there. I
get it. And if the story in your mind from your experience is the
truth, then so is mine, and so are millions of other people's, but
they can't all be the truth, and probably none are.

I think calling someone crazy is an easy way for skeptics to dismiss testimony that doesn't agree with their preconceived ideas. I also don't reject contradictory input. I investigate it to see if there is any conflict, and if there truly is, I will change my point of view. As far as truth, it is by nature, exclusive. There is no true for me, or true for you. Someone is right and someone is wrong. This world was either created with intention, or it manifested itself out of sheer happenstance. There either is a God or there isn't.

If nothing else, please take from this story that I'm not looking down
on you for having a mental injury. I'm identifying with you, and that
seems more important to me than debating the merits of any argument

Again, this is what you presume. You're not really identifying with me, you are putting me in a box you constructed and telling me you were once in that box and know what it is like to live in there. As I said earlier, you're still interpreting the world through your experience and making the world conform to your conclusions about it. What I think is that you threw the baby out with the bathwater, and missed the whole point. You believe you were just deceiving yourself. What I am telling you is that you had supernatural help, and that you're still in it.

People who cleave to a religion despite never having had any numinous
experiences are just following what everyone else is doing without
questioning it because they were raised to do so from birth. I don't
deride these people for it because it's natural for humans to accept
whatever they see being done all around them as normal. That's how we
socialise and learn. It is not evidence that what they're doing is
"correct" any more than shaking hands is the "correct" way to greet
people, and bowing is "incorrect". Children in Muslim environments
tend to grow up Muslim. Children of the Amazonian Pirahã tribe
believe their fellow villagers sometimes are spirits who are visiting
them with messages from other realms. Children of atheists tend to
grow up atheist. Children raised around racists tend to grow up
racist. Victims of childhood abuse tend to believe they are worthless
pieces of shit, deserving abuse. All this indicates that people tend
to believe what they're brought up to believe, not that what people
believe en masse is true.

I agree to a point, but I think the amount of people who believe without any supernatural evidence is much lower than you think. I have rarely met any Christians who haven't had a supernatural experience, and aren't constantly aware of the prescence of God.

This raises the question of why so many people believe in god/s/mystic
beings/supernatural events in the first place, and why it is such a
universal human trait. It's a good question. One answer is that there
is some kind of non-physical "force" we can't detect (yet) except in
numinous experiences, during which it somehow has an effect on our
physical bodies and causes us to know and wonder about its existence.
That's totally possible, even scientifically, and I'm open to it. The
problem is that there are thousands and thousands of systems of belief
which all claim to be the true one, the one that best or most
authoritatively explains the phenomenon of numinous experience. Worse
is that there's virtually nothing to choose between them in terms of
which one seems the best. They all have lore and deities, explanations
for natural phenomena, numinous experience, extremely fervent
adherents, and internal references and contradictions in number and
greatness in rough proportion to the number and greatness of the
claims they make about the universe.

Again, it's pretty easy to explain. There is one truth, and the rest are lies. Just as 1+1 only has one correct answer and infinite wrong answers. There is one truth because there is a God who created it, and many lies because there is a devil that created them. One a supernatural force of good, the other of evil.

So, please don't call me arrogant for saying that your strain of faith, among a long list of mutually
exclusive strains stretching back through human history is probably
not correct, nor any of the others, probably. There's a 1 in n chance
that any of them is correct, where n is the number of mutually
exclusive faith systems that have ever existed. From the point of view
of someone with no specific belief about any particular faith system,
deciding on one seems a fool's errand. Especially when you consider
the other possible answer.

There are many other ways to evaluate the probabilities here. First, you can rule out all the gods who make no creation claims. Two, you can rule out the creation claims that contradict the basic evidence. Right there, you have ruled out almost all of them. There are many ways to look at it. We both agree if any of the religions are true, only one of them could be. Whichever religion it was, we could expect that if it came from a powerful God, it would be the one that has had the most impact on our history. That's clearly Christianity, hands down. We could also expect Jesus, if He is God, to be the most famous and most influential person who has ever lived. Clearly, He is. We could also expect that religion to be the largest in terms of numbers. Again, that is Christianity. So based on those three factors, Christianity is the logical choice. There are many probabilities to consider.

Another answer to the good question about why so many people believe
in gods, etc. -and my best guess- is that it is part of human nature
to fear and mistrust the unknown, and be endlessly curious about it
too. Anything we don't know presents a threat, so we have to go and
examine it. If we can't examine it, then our imaginations are left to
wander unconstrained. This is quite taxing, and we yearn for answers.
It can also lead to dissent among communities. One very simple way to
solve both problems is to assert a god or a pantheon of gods who
control all things. For example, storm clouds are dark and scary and
change shape of their own will and look heavy, yet are way high up in
the sky, and they can send rain and lightning down and make some of
the loudest noises you've ever heard. Someone without any climatology
knowledge might be very scared by these things, and unable to
investigate or explain them. But if they were told they're controlled
by a god named Zeus who can be appeased by building a white marble
temple and killing goats there (or whatever they did), then it's much
more comforting, so much so, that people feel an incredible sense of
relief from the burden of having to know and understand everything.
From that point on, no matter what mysterious natural phenomenon
presents itself, they have merely to ascribe it to some god, and the
matter is solved. So the short answer is that mental and social peace
is the reason I believe so many people believe in gods. And again,
numbers of people believing similar things is no evidence that some
kind of god is real, just that believing in supernatural beings makes
humans feel good. Whether you believe in anything or not, that last
part is an objective fact that we both agree on, I think.

I agree to some extent about psychological motivations but reject the premise as a whole that people need religion to live in a scary Universe. Most atheists aren't aware of the vast intellectual and philosophical traditions of Christianity, or how self-critical it can be. Even Paul said that if Jesus is not resurrected that we are all fools. We're not just a bunch of ignoramouses who drank the kool-aid and are waiting for the UFO to arrive.

This also does not apply to me. When I first became aware that God existed I was very afraid of Him. According to your analysis I should have rejected this belief immediately and embraced my agnosticism because it was more pleasant. But I couldn't reject it just like I couldn't call the day night. I believed what i did because of evidence, and not personal preferences. I was also a man of science, and wasn't worried about how complex the Universe was. I thought science would eventually explain all of its mechanisms, so it didn't bother me that I didn't understand it. It's funny but science functions in the same way for atheists as you say a god does for theists.

Another part of the attraction to faith, I believe, is that many
people also have a hard time taking responsibility for their own
actions, and would prefer some parental guidance, but from perfect
parents, not their own. Belief that there is a father-like god
watching everything you do and communicating with you and telling you
what to do if you'll only listen is also a great relief from the
burden of being responsible yourself for all the important decisions
you make. Most people, I believe, know what the right thing to do is,
but don't always want to do it because it doesn't always meet what
they consider their best interests or motivations. So instead, they
invoke God (which I think is an impartial metaphysical moral version
of yourself), and know what God would think is the right thing to do,
and they do that, believing that it wasn't their conscious choice, but
God directing them

I won't speak for other religions but this isn't how it works for Christianity. You have more responsibility when you believe in God, not less. You are accountable to God for every idle word that you speak, and morally, you have to watch your thoughts and not just your actions. I'll quote Gilbert K Chesterton:

"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried"

You apparently have no idea what it takes to live up to example Christ set for us. If you think it is just a bunch of empty platitudes then you are being pretty disingenuous here..have you ever tried loving your enemy, blessing those who curse you, going 2 miles with someone when they demand one, giving your jacket to someone who steals the shirt off your back? Could you forgive your worst enemy? Could you love the person who wronged you the most? And that is just the easy stuff.

As someone who did believe in God as a child, I can do it any time,
and often do when I have to really think about the right path in a
difficult situation. The difference is I don't believe I'm receiving
wisdom from another being anymore; I believe I'm putting my ego out of
the way and accessing my true "moral" self. This theory accounts for
the different interpretations of faith systems, since different people
even within the exact same strain of faith seem to have different
ideas of moral actions.

Ahh, so you do come to God for help after all, but you give yourself the credit for His help. That's what ego is, my friend. Man as his own god. Yet, there is no explanation for objective moral values without God. Atheists borrow them from Christianity, which is Frank Tureks point. You have to sit in Gods lap to slap His face.

There is also more agreement on basic moral values than disagreement, and this is because we all have a God given conscience which tells us right from wrong. God said He would write His laws on our hearts, which is why we have values which are nigh universal in human civilization.

Why did you abandon your faith in God, if I may ask?

Your arguments, in general
As to your inconsistencies, at least once on the Sift you claimed that
other people have the wrong faith. You appealed to reason and logic to
conclude that Muslims have it wrong by pointing out inconsistencies in
their faith. I can't remember the details, but you probably know what
I'm talking about. You can imagine how a devout Muslim might react to
your logical arguments. Well, you react the same way when presented
with equivalent logical arguments about your own faith. Again, I
haven't searched up any examples, but I will, if you like, or I can
point out some logical contradictions that I come up with. I'd also
appreciate it, as a gesture of good faith (ha ha), if you'd agree to
renounce the theology of your strain of Christianity if I can come up
with even one thing we both agree is a clear, undeniable logical
contradiction from it.

I'm not perfect, I am sure you could find something stupid that I've said and hang me with it. Let's just go from here. As far as other religions, I have explained my views about the deception in this world. This is a good verse:

1 Corinthians 2:14

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned."

As far as muslims, well I think their religion is just obviously inconsistant. They believe Jesus is a prophet, and that the New Testament is a holy book. As a prophet, Jesus would only speak the direct truth of God. Yet, they believe nothing that He said. I don't know how they deal with that, but I think most muslims just haven't read the New Testament.
So you raised the issue of my ego. I can see why you did, and
hopefully you see from the above why I consider that a
misinterpretation of my position. But while we're here, I openly claim
to know nothing for absolute truth. I hold that the nature of the
universe is probably not knowable, that all I can do is look at what
evidence is before me and decide how it all fits best together, reject
claims that don't make sense, follow ones that seem to bear out, and
plod on as well as my time- and capacity-limited mind and body allow.
I make no absolute metaphysical claims, nor do I think my knowledge is
that much superior or inferior to anybody's. I think you and I are
equal human beings, neither of us more special as humans in any way.

We have similar viewpoints here. I believe we're both equal, and I am no better than you are. I don't deserve my salvation anymore than you would deserve yourself. I don't deserve it at all, that is the point. I do not believe that I am in any way special. I wouldn't know up from down if God didn't let me know. So, whatever gifts I have came from Him and I can't take credit. When I was agnostic, I reasoned much the same way you do. Now that I know the truth is tangible, and can be grasped, I believe the Universe can be knowable, but only through the one who made it possible.

In contrast, if I'm not mistaken, you claim to have direct personal
communication with the single creator and director of the entire
universe; to know his nature, his will, and the "truth"; that he
specially chose you unsolicited to receive this intimate contact
rather than me; and that you will live forever by His side in heaven
in the afterlife. You also believe that if I humble myself to your
god, of whom you are a chosen favourite, he will tell me the "truth",
and if I don't, your god will send me to suffer eternally. Between the
two of us, in terms of faith, it's not me who's puffing himself up.
Seriously, go back and read this paragraph if you don't know what I'm
saying.
What I believe is thus:

That we, as human beings, are born into a fallen world and with a sin nature. That we are sinners by birth, by choice, and by conduct. Because of sin, humanity is spiritually separated from God. But God had a plan:

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God humiliated Himself by taking on a human body, so that He could live a perfect life as one of us and pay off our sin debt. He was tried as a criminal, beaten and tortured, and nailed to a cross for our sake, even though He Himself had done nothing wrong. He took all of our sins upon Himself, past present and future, and nailed them to that cross along with Him. He made a way for humanity to be reconciled back to the Father, and to have eternal life, and the Father proved this by raising Him from the dead. He ascended to the right hand of the Father and to this day mediates for all who call upon His name.

When you make Jesus Lord of your life, you receive a new spirit. You become a new creation, justified before God and adopted into the family of God as a son. All Christians receive the Holy Spirit, and this is the reason I have a personal relationship with God. Gods Spirit dwells within me, and He is always guiding me towards a holy and sanctified life. He is the guaranteer of the promises, and the proof that everything Jesus said is true.

Religious people claim to "know" that they're right, that their God
exists, that their experiences prove it, that believers in any other
faith are wrong, and believers in no faith are also wrong. Believers
in no faith, however, are ready to believe whatever presents itself as
likely to be true, including the existence of gods, or whatever. Just
because claims from your particular faith don't stand up to critical
thinking doesn't make non-believers arrogant or deluded.

This isn't about being right, to me. I am just doing what God told me to do. It's not like I figured all of this out on my own. God led me to the truth, and that's the only reason I know what it is. I have nothing at all to prove to you, nor do I lord it over anyone. I love God, and I am grateful to Him for what He has done for me. I naturally want to share that, and to obey His will, but I don't need to prove anything. I just want to tell you that God loves you, and He is there for you, and if you asked Him for the truth He would show it to you.

Jesus
I'm sure if I sincerely and humbly gave myself up and prayed to my
conception of Jesus, I would feel God moving in me. Sure. But the same
holds for every single religion on Earth. If it didn't, the religions
wouldn't succeed. They all have roughly the same effect. I could
worship Allah, or the Roman Pantheon, or Kim Jong Il, and as long as
it was done sincerely and humbly, it would work. I know this, so I
wouldn't trust the feeling was anything but me deluding myself, no
matter how strong it was.

This is the mistake many people, even believers make. It isn't about a feeling. Trust me, when God is around you would have more chance of ignoring a comet that was plunging into the atmosphere about to destroy the Earth than you would the presence of Almighty God. What you have ruled out is that God would directly reveal Himself to you. What I can tell you is that He is bigger than your imagination of Him, so don't think you have Him figured out, because it is impossible for our finite minds to comprehend His greatness.

This video
I wrote down your comments on a piece of paper so I could refer to
them as I watch the video carefully through. I intend to do so, and
I'm game to talk about all the issues you brought up point by point.
Just not now. This is possibly the longest comment ever written on the
sift, and I'm tired of typing for now. And I'm definitely busy
tomorrow. Tuesday looks good. Hope you're not pissed.

Good deal..I look forward to exploring the issue more in depth. Take your time and I'll watch for your reply.

I won't be offended if you don't answer all of this in one sitting.

I decided not to risk it.

ps, is it just me or is the VS editor messed up?
>> ^messenger:
@shinyblurry
There's some meat on this bone.>I won't be offended if you don't answer all of this in one sitting. <IMG class=smiley src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/wink.gif">

@shinyblurry

There's some meat on this bone. I think we can make some progress here, you and I.

Clearing the air
In my comments above, I was responding to your question, "Did you miss me?" until the last part where I think I only addressed your arguments about the video, and not very well. To be clear, I don't feel like I was attacking your character rather than your arguments. I was commenting on the way I perceive your arguments to often be illogical, inconsistent, unprovable, or even demonstrably false. That's my opinion of your arguments, not your character. As I said initially, I like you, and think you're probably a really nice person of good character, and I'd probably enjoy having a beer with you. If you mean the bit about your psychotic break, that's because that's what I think happened to you based on what you've told me about your conversion, and I think it's affecting your judgement and perception, honestly and sincerely. Put in my shoes (as you once were), you wouldn't accept your own story at face value either, so I don't know why you expect anyone else to.

Before getting to the video, I also need to challenge one stat you presented, present my experience, describe basis of my opinions about spiritual faith systems at large. I think they mostly flow nicely together, so heregoes.

"90%"
You're conflating at least two groups of people in your "90%", namely people who claim religious faith (whether sincere or not, and to whatever degree of devotion), and those who have actually had numinous experiences. When I say that you can't come to any other conclusion because of your mental condition, I'm only referring to you and other people who have actually had a serious numinous experience like yours, which is an underwhelming minority of religious people, nothing like 90%. This minority, and anybody else who claims to have seen ghosts, or communicated with daemons, or been abducted by aliens, or been levitated, or seen other locations in time/space, or communicated with the dead, I view with equal scepticism. The first reason is that it's very common among holders of all sorts of mystical beliefs to have gained the belief following such an experience, and to have attributed the belief to whichever mystical force is closest at hand, in your case, Jesus. The second is that there's no real reason to choose one mystical explanation for the experience over another explanation, and until there is, it's smartest to reserve judgement, and assume for the moment that they're all wrong, as only one of them, maximum, could possibly be right, no matter how fervently held they are.

My psychological break
And I'm not speaking from a position of complete ignorance here. I had a psychological break myself, one which led me to believe that most people were evil, out to get me, part of a massive conspiracy of some sort that I soon realized was so complex I'd never be able to unravel it. Initially, any real-world inconsistency with my first version of the story I'd invented I was able to fit into it by adding more detail. This too was done unconsciously, faster than I could think. As this story that I was unconsciously weaving in my own head got more and more complicated, more and more sinister, I realized it was too much for my weak mind to solve, and since things were that clandestine, I'd never be allowed to know all of it anyway, so why bother. Instead, I gave up trying, gave up thinking about it, and removed myself from situations that would trigger those thoughts. It was probably a year later that I started to consider it might all be in my head. Believe me, I thought long and hard about that, hoping it was true. I didn't know for sure, of course, but I could live my life as if it weren't true, and face whatever the consequences of it was. Not long after, to my great relief, I determined it much more likely that the whole story was in my head, and had no bearing in real life whatsoever. I still suffered from the effects of it for a year or so, but I got better at reminding myself that it probably wasn't true, and in fact there was no sense in living as if it were. That was nearly twenty years ago, and I'm still not yet at the point where I can laugh at how silly it was, and have just become comfortable enough to talk openly about it.

The "truth" that I received was unquestionably true, impossible to consider denying since to me it was so obviously true, and agonizingly, mindbendingly horrible. Depending on how you look at it, this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If the "truth" that I saw had been fulfilling, hopeful and beautiful like yours was, and not horrible, dark, pessimistic and paranoid as it was, I would have had far less motivation for questioning it, and may have just gone along with it forever, especially if holding that view improved my life in certain ways.

Everybody who has a break like this comes to a slightly different conclusion as to its meaning. Mine was a very, very dark conclusion, which is vastly different from yours, but similar to many other people's, though probably not exactly the same as anybody else's, just like yours probably isn't. Like Double Rainbow Guy was probably experiencing a similar break right at that moment, and concluded neither that Jesus was the saviour, nor that the world was evil, nor that he himself was the new messiah.

So I don't like the word "crazy" because of its negative connotations, and wouldn't have appreciated it being flung at me during that time nor now (and if I've ever used it about you, it was probably when I thought you were a real troll, Poe's Law being what it is, and definitely before I knew about your numinous experience). That said, I have no issue pointing out to people that I don't believe they are applying critical thought to their assertions, and that they don't seem capable of doing so because of a story in their head that is so powerful it renders contradictory input trivial. I've been there. I get it. And if the story in your mind from your experience is the truth, then so is mine, and so are millions of other people's, but they can't all be the truth, and probably none are.

If nothing else, please take from this story that I'm not looking down on you for having a mental injury. I'm identifying with you, and that seems more important to me than debating the merits of any argument.

Back to "90%"
People who cleave to a religion despite never having had any numinous experiences are just following what everyone else is doing without questioning it because they were raised to do so from birth. I don't deride these people for it because it's natural for humans to accept whatever they see being done all around them as normal. That's how we socialise and learn. It is not evidence that what they're doing is "correct" any more than shaking hands is the "correct" way to greet people, and bowing is "incorrect". Children in Muslim environments tend to grow up Muslim. Children of the Amazonian Pirahã tribe believe their fellow villagers sometimes are spirits who are visiting them with messages from other realms. Children of atheists tend to grow up atheist. Children raised around racists tend to grow up racist. Victims of childhood abuse tend to believe they are worthless pieces of shit, deserving abuse. All this indicates that people tend to believe what they're brought up to believe, not that what people believe en masse is true.

An emergent question with (at least) two answers
This raises the question of why so many people believe in god/s/mystic beings/supernatural events in the first place, and why it is such a universal human trait. It's a good question. One answer is that there is some kind of non-physical "force" we can't detect (yet) except in numinous experiences, during which it somehow has an effect on our physical bodies and causes us to know and wonder about its existence. That's totally possible, even scientifically, and I'm open to it. The problem is that there are thousands and thousands of systems of belief which all claim to be the true one, the one that best or most authoritatively explains the phenomenon of numinous experience. Worse is that there's virtually nothing to choose between them in terms of which one seems the best. They all have lore and deities, explanations for natural phenomena, numinous experience, extremely fervent adherents, and internal references and contradictions in number and greatness in rough proportion to the number and greatness of the claims they make about the universe. So, please don't call me arrogant for saying that your strain of faith, among a long list of mutually exclusive strains stretching back through human history is probably not correct, nor any of the others, probably. There's a 1 in n chance that any of them is correct, where n is the number of mutually exclusive faith systems that have ever existed. From the point of view of someone with no specific belief about any particular faith system, deciding on one seems a fool's errand. Especially when you consider the other possible answer.

Another answer to the good question about why so many people believe in gods, etc. -and my best guess- is that it is part of human nature to fear and mistrust the unknown, and be endlessly curious about it too. Anything we don't know presents a threat, so we have to go and examine it. If we can't examine it, then our imaginations are left to wander unconstrained. This is quite taxing, and we yearn for answers. It can also lead to dissent among communities. One very simple way to solve both problems is to assert a god or a pantheon of gods who control all things. For example, storm clouds are dark and scary and change shape of their own will and look heavy, yet are way high up in the sky, and they can send rain and lightning down and make some of the loudest noises you've ever heard. Someone without any climatology knowledge might be very scared by these things, and unable to investigate or explain them. But if they were told they're controlled by a god named Zeus who can be appeased by building a white marble temple and killing goats there (or whatever they did), then it's much more comforting, so much so, that people feel an incredible sense of relief from the burden of having to know and understand everything. From that point on, no matter what mysterious natural phenomenon presents itself, they have merely to ascribe it to some god, and the matter is solved. So the short answer is that mental and social peace is the reason I believe so many people believe in gods. And again, numbers of people believing similar things is no evidence that some kind of god is real, just that believing in supernatural beings makes humans feel good. Whether you believe in anything or not, that last part is an objective fact that we both agree on, I think.

Another part of the attraction to faith, I believe, is that many people also have a hard time taking responsibility for their own actions, and would prefer some parental guidance, but from perfect parents, not their own. Belief that there is a father-like god watching everything you do and communicating with you and telling you what to do if you'll only listen is also a great relief from the burden of being responsible yourself for all the important decisions you make. Most people, I believe, know what the right thing to do is, but don't always want to do it because it doesn't always meet what they consider their best interests or motivations. So instead, they invoke God (which I think is an impartial metaphysical moral version of yourself), and know what God would think is the right thing to do, and they do that, believing that it wasn't their conscious choice, but God directing them.

As someone who did believe in God as a child, I can do it any time, and often do when I have to really think about the right path in a difficult situation. The difference is I don't believe I'm receiving wisdom from another being anymore; I believe I'm putting my ego out of the way and accessing my true "moral" self. This theory accounts for the different interpretations of faith systems, since different people even within the exact same strain of faith seem to have different ideas of moral actions.

Your arguments, in general
As to your inconsistencies, at least once on the Sift you claimed that other people have the wrong faith. You appealed to reason and logic to conclude that Muslims have it wrong by pointing out inconsistencies in their faith. I can't remember the details, but you probably know what I'm talking about. You can imagine how a devout Muslim might react to your logical arguments. Well, you react the same way when presented with equivalent logical arguments about your own faith. Again, I haven't searched up any examples, but I will, if you like, or I can point out some logical contradictions that I come up with. I'd also appreciate it, as a gesture of good faith (ha ha), if you'd agree to renounce the theology of your strain of Christianity if I can come up with even one thing we both agree is a clear, undeniable logical contradiction from it.

My ego
So you raised the issue of my ego. I can see why you did, and hopefully you see from the above why I consider that a misinterpretation of my position. But while we're here, I openly claim to know nothing for absolute truth. I hold that the nature of the universe is probably not knowable, that all I can do is look at what evidence is before me and decide how it all fits best together, reject claims that don't make sense, follow ones that seem to bear out, and plod on as well as my time- and capacity-limited mind and body allow. I make no absolute metaphysical claims, nor do I think my knowledge is that much superior or inferior to anybody's. I think you and I are equal human beings, neither of us more special as humans in any way. In contrast, if I'm not mistaken, you claim to have direct personal communication with the single creator and director of the entire universe; to know his nature, his will, and the "truth"; that he specially chose you unsolicited to receive this intimate contact rather than me; and that you will live forever by His side in heaven in the afterlife. You also believe that if I humble myself to your god, of whom you are a chosen favourite, he will tell me the "truth", and if I don't, your god will send me to suffer eternally. Between the two of us, in terms of faith, it's not me who's puffing himself up. Seriously, go back and read this paragraph if you don't know what I'm saying.

Religious people claim to "know" that they're right, that their God exists, that their experiences prove it, that believers in any other faith are wrong, and believers in no faith are also wrong. Believers in no faith, however, are ready to believe whatever presents itself as likely to be true, including the existence of gods, or whatever. Just because claims from your particular faith don't stand up to critical thinking doesn't make non-believers arrogant or deluded.

Jesus
I'm sure if I sincerely and humbly gave myself up and prayed to my conception of Jesus, I would feel God moving in me. Sure. But the same holds for every single religion on Earth. If it didn't, the religions wouldn't succeed. They all have roughly the same effect. I could worship Allah, or the Roman Pantheon, or Kim Jong Il, and as long as it was done sincerely and humbly, it would work. I know this, so I wouldn't trust the feeling was anything but me deluding myself, no matter how strong it was.

This video
I wrote down your comments on a piece of paper so I could refer to them as I watch the video carefully through. I intend to do so, and I'm game to talk about all the issues you brought up point by point. Just not now. This is possibly the longest comment ever written on the sift, and I'm tired of typing for now. And I'm definitely busy tomorrow. Tuesday looks good. Hope you're not pissed.

I won't be offended if you don't answer all of this in one sitting.

WLC says; "On the basis of the ressurection of jesus, we have grounds for the hope of immortality. If god raised jesus from the dead, then there is hope of immortality." What grounds, what evidence? What nonsense. Keep fighting your cancer Hitch, there is no one who debunks the rhetorical white noise of bronze age mystics like you.

@enoch & @IAmTheBlurr: Spiral dynamics is not for everyone... and there is very little empiricism to back it up because the bases upon which the different levels are concerned have not been qualitatively elucidated sufficiently enough to study them, to say nothing of the scientific method, itself, as being contingent upon certain assumptions within a given level of consciousness and not others.

However, if you were to adopt the philosopher, Hans Vaihinger's postulate of "As If," you may find a utility of the theoretical orientation which extends beyond its empirical accuracy. That is to say, "So what if it's bullshit, so long as it's useful?" This goes for many of the theories that are widely used in the social sciences, including Abe Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" among others.

That said, we should note that none of this "spiral dynamics" theory is very original. The concept of the "evolution of consciousness" is itself the basis of much of early Vedas in Hinduism which are nearly 5 thousand of years old.. However, the theory has become more codified in the 20th century by mystics and scholars such as Sri Aurobindo Ghose, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Clare Graves, Edward Haskell, Arthur Young, Erich Jantsch, Jean Gebser, and, most recently, by Ken Wilber.

Of these, I'd have to say the following books are worth reading:

Aurobindo's The Life Divine & Synthesis of Yoga
de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man
Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin
Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

(partly because I haven't read the others' works)

>> ^quantumushroom:

5:07 Obama?


Haha. He's more of the mystical evil type than the showy cape wearing one.

This interpertation stems from jewish mysticism, but it doesn't at all follow from the passage:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves

Sex is pleasing to the eye and good for food? She took sex and then gave it to her husband? It's a nonsense interpertation. This was about knowledge. Adam and Eve were in a state of innocence, kind of like babes, and relied on God for everything. Eve decided that she didn't want to be babied anymore and make her own decisions. She lusted after Gods wisdom; she wanted to make judgements for herself. God warned them against going it alone, and that it would lead to death..this is because the Lords ways are perfect, and perfection leads to eternal life. Imperfection leads to death. When Adam and Eve decided to try to take the place of God in their life, they became mortal, and corrupted. That's how sin and death entered the world, and is still the problem today..that people want to trust in their own wisdom above that of their Creator.



>> ^Lawdeedaw:
>> ^bareboards2:
@packo, what is sad is that folks will watch this and not understand the illogical sand upon which the whole video sits. It is effective -- look at the votes it is garnering.
What bothers me so much is the whole idea of punishing Adam and Eve for gaining knowledge. For punishing them for "disobeying" God. It is the spine that runs through so much of the Christian religion -- shut up and do what the person in charge says.
Having said that, I recognize that many people crave the discipline and structure of an outside agency to help shape their lives.
Nothing is perfect. Religion does much good and helps folks. Religion is also responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity. Both can be true, the statements are not mutually exclusive.
And therein lies true Freedom -- the choice to walk away from an authoritarian presence and create your own inner moral compass through free will, not because you are threatened with burning in hell for eternity.

Most say that Adam/Eve was about a threesome and that the fruit was a metaphor... Adam sleeping with a man (Devil) and sharing his wife with that man...

>> ^shinyblurry:

Well firstly, the pope is a type of antichrist. The catholic religion is not Christian, which may suprise you. It suprised me too because before I became a Christian I didn't know the difference. It is a pagan religion which derives from Christianity but is in every way is antithetical to biblical teaching.
Second, I am saying the magic bracelet isn't completely fake. I am saying it will appear to grant the properties and characteristics expected by the wearer. This is due to spiritual deception by Satan. It isn't that it is wrong for people to have strength and balance, it is the source they are trying to get it from..ie, not God.
If you take a piece of wood and worship it, a demon will assigned to it to receive that worship. Whenever you're calling upon something other than God, Satan can and does use it to mislead and corrupt. These things always have spiritual connotations. Even the flying spaghetti monster has become a false idol, and receives worship. http://www.venganza.org/
I did in fact say this isn't a new deception, just an old one in new packaging. Pagans have been using this kind of spiritual systems for thousands of years, impuing objects with special powers and using them to manipulate reality. This is sorcery for the masses.

>> ^albrite30:
>> ^shinyblurry:
It's a satanic deception. This is simply new age mysticism, and people enmasse are being trained to embrace and accept it. The principles of it stem from occult practices which have been practiced for a milennia. It is quite simply magic, or the attempt to gain power over reality by human willpower and directed intention. Since you are blind you don't see the spiritual consequences of these things, but they are plainly obvious . People are being taught to rely on mysticism and esoteric knowledge rather than God, to believe that they themselves can be gods, just as the serpent promised in the garden. There is nothing new under the sun; this is a very old deception. Satan doesn't have any new tricks, and he doesn't need any, because the old ones keep paying off.
>> ^KnivesOut:
Lol you're just as deluded as the idiots who buy this crap thinking it will change their life for the better.
Pro-tip: its an inert piece of plastic, not a fucking magic talisman.>> ^shinyblurry:
This is a spiritual issue. Anyone wearing this bracelet is engaging in sorcery, because this is basically magic. This leaves them open to deception from the enemy. The wearers of these bracelet may well be perceiving a tangible benefit because of this spiritual deception. It is just one of the tacts the enemy uses in spiritual warfare, getting people to rely on themselves or magic devices, or things like "the secret".



I don't see the difference between "new age mysticism" and old age mysticism. What the message seems to be in this video is that some object can bring about strength, endurance, and balance. Why is that so wrong to you shinny? What do you think the holy trinity is other than a mass propagated symbol of strength, endurance, and balance. The value of the message is a universal desire for that kind of thing in a person's life. People are NOT being trained these days to accept new deception, rather they have been trained for thousands of years to accept the same deception from various faiths in existence today. Seems to me that if you are losing members of your flock to gadgets such as these, it may be time to get a more charismatic preacher. Maybe if the pope signed off on the iRenew you would be singing a different tune.



Who should I speak to about getting my piece of wood assigned a demon? I pity your insanity.

Well firstly, the pope is a type of antichrist. The catholic religion is not Christian, which may suprise you. It suprised me too because before I became a Christian I didn't know the difference. It is a pagan religion which derives from Christianity but is in every way is antithetical to biblical teaching.

Second, I am saying the magic bracelet isn't completely fake. I am saying it will appear to grant the properties and characteristics expected by the wearer. This is due to spiritual deception by Satan. It isn't that it is wrong for people to have strength and balance, it is the source they are trying to get it from..ie, not God.

If you take a piece of wood and worship it, a demon will assigned to it to receive that worship. Whenever you're calling upon something other than God, Satan can and does use it to mislead and corrupt. These things always have spiritual connotations. Even the flying spaghetti monster has become a false idol, and receives worship. http://www.venganza.org/

I did in fact say this isn't a new deception, just an old one in new packaging. Pagans have been using this kind of spiritual systems for thousands of years, impuing objects with special powers and using them to manipulate reality. This is sorcery for the masses.



>> ^albrite30:
>> ^shinyblurry:
It's a satanic deception. This is simply new age mysticism, and people enmasse are being trained to embrace and accept it. The principles of it stem from occult practices which have been practiced for a milennia. It is quite simply magic, or the attempt to gain power over reality by human willpower and directed intention. Since you are blind you don't see the spiritual consequences of these things, but they are plainly obvious . People are being taught to rely on mysticism and esoteric knowledge rather than God, to believe that they themselves can be gods, just as the serpent promised in the garden. There is nothing new under the sun; this is a very old deception. Satan doesn't have any new tricks, and he doesn't need any, because the old ones keep paying off.
>> ^KnivesOut:
Lol you're just as deluded as the idiots who buy this crap thinking it will change their life for the better.
Pro-tip: its an inert piece of plastic, not a fucking magic talisman.>> ^shinyblurry:
This is a spiritual issue. Anyone wearing this bracelet is engaging in sorcery, because this is basically magic. This leaves them open to deception from the enemy. The wearers of these bracelet may well be perceiving a tangible benefit because of this spiritual deception. It is just one of the tacts the enemy uses in spiritual warfare, getting people to rely on themselves or magic devices, or things like "the secret".



I don't see the difference between "new age mysticism" and old age mysticism. What the message seems to be in this video is that some object can bring about strength, endurance, and balance. Why is that so wrong to you shinny? What do you think the holy trinity is other than a mass propagated symbol of strength, endurance, and balance. The value of the message is a universal desire for that kind of thing in a person's life. People are NOT being trained these days to accept new deception, rather they have been trained for thousands of years to accept the same deception from various faiths in existence today. Seems to me that if you are losing members of your flock to gadgets such as these, it may be time to get a more charismatic preacher. Maybe if the pope signed off on the iRenew you would be singing a different tune.

>> ^shinyblurry:

It's a satanic deception. This is simply new age mysticism, and people enmasse are being trained to embrace and accept it. The principles of it stem from occult practices which have been practiced for a milennia. It is quite simply magic, or the attempt to gain power over reality by human willpower and directed intention. Since you are blind you don't see the spiritual consequences of these things, but they are plainly obvious . People are being taught to rely on mysticism and esoteric knowledge rather than God, to believe that they themselves can be gods, just as the serpent promised in the garden. There is nothing new under the sun; this is a very old deception. Satan doesn't have any new tricks, and he doesn't need any, because the old ones keep paying off.

>> ^KnivesOut:
Lol you're just as deluded as the idiots who buy this crap thinking it will change their life for the better.
Pro-tip: its an inert piece of plastic, not a fucking magic talisman.>> ^shinyblurry:
This is a spiritual issue. Anyone wearing this bracelet is engaging in sorcery, because this is basically magic. This leaves them open to deception from the enemy. The wearers of these bracelet may well be perceiving a tangible benefit because of this spiritual deception. It is just one of the tacts the enemy uses in spiritual warfare, getting people to rely on themselves or magic devices, or things like "the secret".




I don't see the difference between "new age mysticism" and old age mysticism. What the message seems to be in this video is that some object can bring about strength, endurance, and balance. Why is that so wrong to you shinny? What do you think the holy trinity is other than a mass propagated symbol of strength, endurance, and balance. The value of the message is a universal desire for that kind of thing in a person's life. People are NOT being trained these days to accept new deception, rather they have been trained for thousands of years to accept the same deception from various faiths in existence today. Seems to me that if you are losing members of your flock to gadgets such as these, it may be time to get a more charismatic preacher. Maybe if the pope signed off on the iRenew you would be singing a different tune.