Jesus is pleated and other schizotypal thoughts.

[Billy]

He said he was, not for you to do it.

My kind of savior/homicidal maniac. I love a living god who takes blood onto his own hands, sure he was forcing his minions to act like accomplices by them going out a la brownshirts and bringing back the enemies, but still!

 

[Saru Inc]

The argument that it supersedes the Old Testament is somewhat undercut by the fact that the two commandments given are both direct quotations from the Law of Moses.

No, its really not.

My kind of savior/homicidal maniac. I love a living god who takes blood onto his own hands, sure he was forcing his minions to act like accomplices by them going out a la brownshirts and bringing back the enemies, but still!

While your post is obviously facetious, I feel the need to point out that if One "is a Living God," then it really IS his blood to take... Right?


I wonder what Atheists think of when they think of the definition of a God. They always put such silly *human* rules that a *God* -must- follow. Like the whole little making a boulder so big it can't be carried crap.

 

[Billy]

They always put such silly *human* rules that a *God* -must- follow. Like the whole little making a boulder so big it can't be carried crap.

Well yeah lol, it pokes a hole in our conceptions of how existence works. Thats the whole point. If god could do that, then he is obviously not the greatest force in the universe.

 

[Matt3737]

I'd give anything for a religious zealot to kill me now after having read/skimmed through this neuron killing emo whining. Yes, let's blame all the world's problems on religion with the hidden premise of an utopian/progressive cultural ideal that would make life so much better and perfect. Religion is the ill of all humankind.

 

[Billy]

Now this I can relate to. I often have the exact same thoughts. But they make me depressed, so I understand why most other people avoid them. I'm not the type that can ignore what appears to be true just because it's not what I want to believe.

The weird thing is, there have been a select few people I've known who were so loving and enlightened that they practically glowed. You felt at peace just being near them. A couple of them were complete strangers (both old men) who approached me when I happened to be very depressed, and told me exactly what I needed to hear to keep from giving up on life. All of these people were Christians. Even though I'm probably agnostic these days, I can't discredit an entire religion based on how it has been misused by others. Especially when all of the most admirable, stand-out people I've ever known were religious. Yeah, they're outnumbered by the ignorant religious types, but then again ignorant people outnumber the enlightened ones in any arena.

I get frustrated sometimes when I'm in a depressing spiral of existential thoughts, and I know that no one can say anything to make me have faith in something more, but I would feel better if at least someone would understand my thoughts—yet no one is willing to. It's like they have a mental block to keep them from looking at the big picture objectively, and it drives me crazy. But then I think, if seeing it the way I do would make them depressed too, why would I want to do that to them? I can't bring myself to look down on religious people, or anyone, because they're doing what they need to be content. And for all I know, some of them might understand something that I don't. I'm never so certain in my uncertainty that I'm closed to the possibility that I'm the one missing something.

Sometimes I think people aren't meant to be able to psychoanalyze themselves so much. They aren't meant to be able to dissect their beliefs and see that they are (possibly) only coping mechanisms. At some point, self-awareness becomes more detrimental than it is harmful. It's like we've evolved so much that it's counter-evolutionary. And, in our intelligence, I think we miss a lot of things that our "primitive" ancestors would laugh at us for.

It makes me think of this quote from The Once and Future King:

"Dr. John of Gaddesden, court physician to Edward II, claimed to have cured the king's son of small-pox by wrapping the patient up in red cloth, putting red curtains on the windows, and seeing that all the hangings of the room were red. This raised a merry Victorian guffaw at the expense of mediaeval simplicity, until it was discovered by Dr. Niels Finsen of Copenhagen in the twentieth century that red and infra-red light really did affect the pustules of small-pox, even helping in the cure of the disease."

Modern, "educated," forward-looking people miss a lot when they scoff at the wisdom of the past. I don't think we should be so quick to write off the importance of faith based belief systems. It's ironic that we would even do so on a forum about MBTI, which was based on Carl Jung's theories. Jung's theories were based around the idea of a collective unconscious. Religions deal with the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Throughout history, across different cultures, some of which never interacted with each other, the same mythologies pop up. The fact that some people believe they're literal and concrete doesn't make them any less potent, and doesn't make them irrelevant to the enlightened modern world. You could even hypothesize that the anxiety and depression so many people experience today is a result of us losing touch with our mythologies and rituals.



Existentialism may be enough for you, but it wouldn't be comforting to all people. If some people need faith to keep themselves from losing their sanity (not that I think that's necessarily the sole purpose of it), I'm glad it exists for their sake.

Heh, when I get to arguing I go for the throat and get aggressive, yeah I don't actually begrudge people their faith I was coming on strong there. I accept it for what it is, the only time i begin to get annoyed is when they begin to try and enforce their religious beliefs on other people or get their beliefs ratified into law, HELL NO on that stuff. Overall I would have to say I am exceedingly pleased with the way the numbers are rolling, as we evolve techno-socially "non-religious" as a group is growing exponentially. Which for mankind is a good thing IMO as we begin to separate outdated customs which are strangling our potential growth as a civilization and a species. Case in point, holding up Stem Cell research.

I think as religion falls to the back burner and we ascend into a more technological people we begin to bridge our gaps, at some point telepathy will be real, if not through evolution (very slow) then by technology. And with that we begin a new era where things like religion literally will not exist because it will be a laughable concept. And as we go and develop new energy sources like harnessing the earths magnetic field there will be no need for warfare or religion anymore, we will be advanced enough to spread out through the solar system and expand our reach as a species. We simply wont need faith or god anymore.We will have real things to explore again.

 

[Saru Inc]

Thats the whole point. If god could do that, then he is obviously not the greatest force in the universe.

According to our current understanding*

 

[Billy]

According to our current understanding*

well yeah, another point of it.

 

[Apone]

Schizotypals are definitely drawn to religion... in fact, don't the most common schizophrenic delusions revolve around God or the Devil?

The iconography of most religions is designed to overwhelm your capacity for reason, and achieves its potency through both ritualistic repetition as well as a basic performance/reward structure. Richard Dawkins actually identified that one of the key reasons that religion manages to be a potent influence is because exposing children to violent imagery is often permitted/encouraged in religious contexts but not in general contexts, and so when they are at their most sensitive, children come to associate extreme feelings with their religion, which in turn conditions them to adhere to its principals. It's the same basic technique as brainwashing-- on the one hand you have images of extreme suffering and agony and damnation, and in the same breath you have images of permanent love and endless bliss... one of which is associated with adherence and the other of which is associated with disobedience/'straying from the flock'. You are encouraged to express your unconditional devotion at every turn, and at the same time you are both promised and denied salvation... and all of this before they even have the capacity to properly separate dreams from reality.

It's actually a sort of trauma... and there's really not so surprising that later in life these kinds of psychic wounds might manifest themselves in a disturbing fashion.

 

[Saru Inc]

Schizotypals are definitely drawn to religion... in fact, don't the most common schizophrenic delusions revolve around God or the Devil?

The iconography of most religions is designed to overwhelm your capacity for reason, and achieves its potency through both ritualistic repetition as well as a basic performance/reward structure. Richard Dawkins actually identified that one of the key reasons that religion manages to be a potent influence is because exposing children to violent imagery is often permitted/encouraged in religious contexts but not in general contexts, and so when they are at their most sensitive, children come to associate extreme feelings with their religion, which in turn conditions them to adhere to its principals. It's the same basic technique as brainwashing-- on the one hand you have images of extreme suffering and agony and damnation, and in the same breath you have images of permanent love and endless bliss... one of which is associated with adherence and the other of which is associated with disobedience/'straying from the flock'. You are encouraged to express your unconditional devotion at every turn, and at the same time you are both promised and denied salvation... and all of this before they even have the capacity to properly separate dreams from reality.

It's actually a sort of trauma... and there's really not so surprising that later in life these kinds of psychic wounds might manifest themselves in a disturbing fashion.

And reality is waiting for you Apone, whenever you want to step through the door.

 

[muir]

Are you gonna wrap this up yet or what?

I didn't get a chance to last night as it was already really late so i went to bed!

I'll try and wrap it up but what i have found is that when you are trying to share a perspective with someone if they don't have certain background information then what you are saying to them in short form will just sound totally outlandish and they will most likely brush it off as nonsense or dismiss me as 'crazy'

So let me try and summarise a bit....

1. Organised, institutionalised religion has been moulded and made safe by the elite by removing its radical message. It has been hijaked by powerful people seeking to use it as a means to control people. So organised religion has been used as a barrier between the people and their unconscious mind

2. Consumer culture teaches you to look outward and judge your level of success in material terms and therefore discourages you from looking within and dealing with intangible things such as your emotions. So consumerism has been used as a barrier between the people and their unconscious mind

3. Education has been shaped and moulded by the elites to push a left brained way of thinking onto people that focuses on the empirical and does not encourage people to get to grips with intangibles such as emotions. It is focussed on material and logical and categorisation rather than on creativity, connectedness and the abstract. So education has been placed as a barrier between people and their unconscious mind

4. Psychiatry treats any behaviours that are not compatible with a consumer culture as a defect and seeks to mould those behviours using drugs. It does not want peoplelooking within for answers, it simply puts everything down to brain chemistry which must be adjusted through the use of drugs. It does not recognise mental illness as distress and instead claims it is genetic. It does not seek to solve the problems at the core of a persons life it simply seeks to treat the symptoms which is the distress.....this doesn't solve the problems it just hides them from view (for a while until they burst out again). Psychiatry is used to control people and has been placed as a barrier between people and their unconscious mind

The unconscious is our guide. It speaks to us not in words but in symbols and emtoions and impressions. The elite have been trying to deny, repress and ridicule the unconscious mind but they cannot destroy it as it will speak to people each night in their dreams and it will manifest itself in their waking world as well

If someone denies their emotions and just tries to numb them with drugs then they are repressing their unconscious mind. But pain is a teacher and emotional distress is our unconscious mind telling us that something is wrong. It might be saying that our behaviour is wrong or it might be telling us that there is something wrong with the situation we are in.

People are being told by the elite through their various minions that the problem is not with consumer culture it is with us as individuals and if we feel distress then that is not valid and we should eat some of the drugs they produce to deny our emotions from ourselves

In truth we are human beings....emotional beings. We have emotional responses to traumatic things that happen to us and to our environment when something is wrong within it. These emotions are valid and they are a tool that we should work with by listening to them and understanding them so that we can take the appropriate action to resolve the crisis


Theelite have created a consumer culture that makes them rich and keeps them powerful. They have destroyed cultures that had a relationship with their unconscious mind and they have destroyed community in general leaving many people feeling alone, isolated, unsupported and anxious

Further to this the elite have created certain philosophies that also perfom the same function for them as the religions that they have coopted/hijaked. For example they might push a competitive, aggressive dog eat dog philosophy on people to encourage people to compete with each other instead of cooperate with each other, to be merciless in the pursuit of material gain and to trample on others if they get in the way....to dismiss the non aggressive as 'weak' and deserving of being trampled. The slave army would never have risen up against Rome if the slaves were all competing with each other!

'divide and rule' is another trick used by the elite to keep the people divided and unable to stand up for themselves

 

[muir]

So how is this applicable to the individual?

I think that a lot of people are carrying around a burden. Not only have they been isolated by the destruction of community and of cooperative cultures but they have been told that any feelings they have as a result of that are their fault!

Well i don't agree with that

Consumer culture needs people to be imbalanced so that they continue consuming so it is an imbalanced culture that throws people of balance.

An imbalanced culture often creates traumatic experiences for people and when traumatic experiences happen to people the imbalanced culture and the system that maintains it does not help people to deal with those traumatic experiences. It denies the value of looking within, it denies the existence of the unconscious mind and it denies the validity of peoples emotional responses to traumatic experiences and it does not seek to help people to come to terms with those experiences

I think people need to throw off that burden and recognise that the system they are in is sick

I think that people need to acknowledge their emotions, get to the root of them and try to reconcile themselves with what they find there

I think that when we strip away all the cultural baggage that we have picked up on our life journey we are left with ourselves....with human beings having a life experience

If we put aside our nationality because it was a quirk of fate depending on where we were born and if we put aside the religion that we have been raised with and if we put aside our culture that we have grown up within and if we put aside our skin colour because it doesn't define us and if we put aside our name because this was given to us by someone else then we are all simply human beings having an experience here in this reality

We are all trying to make our way through this reality the best we can. The elites have made the reality a hard place to be and have distanced us from our unconscious mind. Because so many people do not have a clear relationship with their unconscious mind they are stumbling through this reality without their guide. They are trying to navigate through this harsh reality with their eyes half open and are advising others of how they should steer themselves.....it is the blind leading the blind

Inevitably a bunch of people stumbling about the place half blind are going to cause a lot of confusion and chaos, hence hence how messy life is. We all hurt ourselves and others as we stumble our way through this reality.

Perhaps it helps to see that other people simply do not have the eyes to see yet and that their actions are the result of their distance from their unconscious mind. Then it becomes easier to forgive them because we know that they do not know what they are doing (consciously). Forgiveness is release....it is letting go of a burden. It is letting go of the blame and the anger and the hate and it ends the cycles of conflict between people so that the wheel of karma may stop. Forgiveness works two ways. It can be forgiveness for another for their lack of understanding but it can also be forgiveness for ourselves fo our own lack of understanding

But a person cannot have this release....this closure, which allows them to learn and then move forward a stronger person if they listen to people like sapolsky because people like him will not tell you that you need to heal from within they will tell you that you have a genetic defect or that you are in some way defective and that you must take some drugs so that you can keep going in this sick, imbalanced system; this approach will not resolve the source of your distress (traumatic experiences or being thrown off balanace by an imbalanced culture) it will only dampen down the symptoms (distress/anxiety).....it is papering over the emotional cracks but those cracks will not go away they will only widen

Once a person becomes consciously aware that there are people who have an agenda of control and that those people have been working in many different ways to distance people from their own unconscious mind then that person is then able to make conscious decisions and make deliberate actions to navigate that reality and to work towards deepening their own relationship with their unconscious and to listen to that inner voice that is always there ready to guide

 

[acd]

He said he was, not for you to do it.

How is that not insane?
--A God who creates and then kills those who don't believe in him...

 

[muir]

There's a lot of arguing going on in this thread about the destructive effects of religion....but i think its important to seperate the truths in religion from the lies and corruptions imposed on it by those seeking justifications for their acts or to manipulate the way that people see reality and each other

The christian religion is not the coherent message of one person.

It has had input from countless people down through the ages. Some of these people may have been genuine mystics (voyagers to the inner realms of the collective unconscious) who have developed an understanding of the archtypes and have gained greater insight into the emotional make-up of the psyche in order to be able to help people overcome emotional blockages, acknowledge and reconcile with their personal demons and find peace within themselves, but others have been charlatans, misguided or downright malevolent!

Like technology or religion itself the knowledge of how peoples inner emotional world works is a double edged sword because well intentioned people can use such things to help others while people seeking greater self power can use such knowledge to control other people

Christianity has seen schism after schism after schism as different people have imposed their interpretations on it in order to bend it to suit their aims

The function of organised orthodox religion today cannot be understood without an understanding of the role that elites have played in shaping orthodox beliefs, culture and society

As a rule orthodox religion is simply an expression of how the elite want the people to see the world. Its much the same as the corporate media.

For example if you want to know what the bankers want you to believe then read their publications such as 'the economist'. If however you want to know what is really happening then don't read the economist!

If you want to know how the elite want you to think about world events then watch fox news. If however you want to know what is really happening then don't watch fox news!

There are truths in religion that have come from underlying truths within us. However to discearn these from the many falsehoods and misundertsandings that have buried the truths then you will have to look within to find what those truths are because the collective unconscious is within you waiting to be engaged with

We are all trying to make sense of our experience here in this reality. We are all trying to build our own personal temples.....but our temples are lying in ruins....we're lost

We are all confused, concerned and divided and we often don't know where to begin....how to begin building our temple. That is what the spiritual path is about....it is about building your own temple within. Within this inner temple lies the truth (your truth)....which is your connection to the collective unconscious and how it will guide you and your actions in the outer world

 

[Apone]

^I guess there's no telling exactly what 'pure' or 'primitive' Christianity was, but I can't imagine that it would be anything that wouldn't completely fall apart when you tried to apply it to modern society.

The 'dilution' of Christianity isn't due to some sort of global conspiracy by our evil overlords, it's part of its quest to remain relevant-- which means adapting to coincide with all of the scientific discoveries that threaten its 'truth'. It's a valid strategy, and probably far less objectionable than the 'let's just not trust anything that the stupid scientists say' strategy…

 

[Cornerstone]

^Take a look at the Gospel of Thomas for a start. It isn't canon but it makes so much more sense (to me at least) than the commonly accepted Jesus myth I was brought up with.

 

[Kmal]

My kind of savior/homicidal maniac. I love a living god who takes blood onto his own hands, sure he was forcing his minions to act like accomplices by them going out a la brownshirts and bringing back the enemies, but still!

when people kill people, its alright, they're just people; but when "God" just says hes gonna kill people it's a fucking travesty! when people do wrong, its ok, we're just people, but when "God" says something in the Bible (which humans wrote), let's blame God! You're doing good Billy, "God" is an easy scapegoat you can keep blaming all the wrong in the world on.

How is that not insane?
--A God who creates and then kills those who don't believe in him...

If you were making clay sculptures and all of a sudden one came alive and started killing your family, would you destroy it? Of course that's in jest, but 1) we arent to assume humans are perfect in making religion, and 2) 'believing' isnt the issue, it's the concrete effect of believing. You can say you 'believe' all day long, but if you dont act like it, what good are your words? You can say you dont believe, yet if you act like it, are you believing or not believing?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. described bigotry in the following quotation: "The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract."

 

[Billy]

when people kill people, its alright, they're just people; but when "God" just says hes gonna kill people it's a fucking travesty! when people do wrong, its ok, we're just people, but when "God" says something in the Bible (which humans wrote), let's blame God! You're doing good Billy, "God" is an easy scapegoat you can keep blaming all the wrong in the world on.

If you were making clay sculptures and all of a sudden one came alive and started killing your family, would you destroy it? Of course that's in jest, but 1) we arent to assume humans are perfect in making religion, and 2) 'believing' isnt the issue, it's the concrete effect of believing. You can say you 'believe' all day long, but if you dont act like it, what good are your words? You can say you dont believe, yet if you act like it, are you believing or not believing?

Well I mean yeah, god is ya know... supposed to be better than his creation. And no one said it was ok for humans to run around and kill anything. You sound kind of childish here, you might want to abandon the thread.

 

[Kmal]

Well I mean yeah, god is ya know... supposed to be better than his creation.

And who said this, humans? Does God exist and not exist for you at the same time?

 

[the]

You sound kind of childish here, you might want to abandon the thread.

Excellent use of rhetoric.

 

[Billy]

And who said this, humans? Does God exist and not exist for you at the same time?

Oh he does not exist for me, thats for certain. I just enjoy poking holes in the fantasy.