I love that style they write in. The emphasis on certain words in all capitals. That's the literate style of hardcore Christians, as opposed to what you see on facebook and twitter with the predominantly illiterate bible thumpers who don't know how to construct a sentence or use basic grammar or punctuation. I read some less aggressive articles about the segment they did on the first episode about Giordano Bruno. They came off as almost non-apologetic about what the church did to many "heretics" at that time. This is much more entertaining in a "can people possibly be that stupid?" kind of way.
I'll never understand these people. Who at any point in their life decides "I'm just going to read this book and believe everything it tells me. Forget all that other malarkey. This is the only book I'll ever need in my entire life." Mind boggling.
As I was saying before I accidentally signed myself out(wtf is that signout button doing where the 'post' button is on most stuff???
This devout Christian believes that a picture of what kind of looks like a stegasaurus carved on the the temple of Ankor Wat(I know Wat means temple), is proof that dinosaurs were around recently, not millions of years ago. I asked him if he thought that sphinxes are proof that weird human headed lions were real. He said that temples don't count. I guess what he really meant was that Egyptian temples don't count since Ankor Wat is, well, a temple. I think I blew his mind, since he posted that picture of that 'stegasaurus' twice on his nephews FB page. Didn't faze him one tiny tiny little bit though, he's still practically preaching away against Obama(the root of all evil) and everything 'liberal'.
I've signed myself out like twenty times while trying to post. Bad design having the sign out button where the "post" button should be.
The believers are unreachable by "design." they see the world backwards. Been conditioned to see logic as stupidity, truth as a lie, love as hate, and evil as goodness.
Creationists all seem to suffer from what I like to call the "Teacher's Pet Syndrome." They believe that God loves them especially and so they can share in their "teacher's" authority and be good little "hall monitors" of this world.
This is my reply:- At this point, 'anything goes'. "Your honor, my client, a devout Christian, claims that God told him to rob that Satan's Spawn bank and is therefore suing the State for pursuing this Satanic prosecution, and the bank itself for hurting his feelings. God guided those bullets to wound one teller and kill those other two! You going to put God HIMSELF in prison now??? I beg the court's indulgence here!"
You guys watch the last episode of Cosmos? They talk about how silly the idea of the universe as being only 6000 - 7000 years old is. Should spark more Christian rage :)
These "scientists" aren't really happy. No, one need Jesus to be truly happy. (in my bestest fundy impersonation)
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."~ George Bernard Shaw
"If ignorance is bliss, that boy must be a bundle of joy" ~ my Uncle Joe
How happy can they be when they're always pissed off at someone or something? For them to be truly happy, in their mindset, they'd have to have control of the world and decide who lives and dies and so forth, like in the Dark Ages, The last time christians were truly happy. It's all about being addicted to power and ego.
I'd been watching the new Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. It was very good, better than Leno by far, at least in my opinion. Only one thing: Every time he did a joke about Obama it was a negative, a slur even. And no jokes about republican stupidity. This made me uneasy, but hey, no big deal... or so I thought until last night when he had a surprise guest star in a sketch. I saw her and said to meself "Hey, Tina Fey, cool! then realized to my utter fucking horror that it was the real Sarah Palin. At the moment I realized that, I turned him off, and took him off my DVR programming. I won't watch the show again. Seriously. Promoting her, means you're blind to how fucking harmful she is. I no longer can like Jimmy Fallon.
So I watched Cosmos the other night and was much pleased by Tyson addressing both the idea of Saturnalia, that crazy pagan holiday, being co-opted by Christianity and made into Christmas, and how special interests buy their own (unethical) scientists to fight back against real science even when it means potentially the death or sickness of innocent millions, and the next day I go on Twitter and see theists posting a pic of Tyson with a quotation, supposedly his, saying that the Universe is so beautiful that he has come to believe in a Creator. A false quote. A lie. God, I hate fundamentalists. So fucking evil, they prefer a lie even when the truth would do. How infuriating. They're like, "if you can't fight it, pretend it isn't what it is and lie your ass off about it to everybody." Sickening.
No it doesn't. Also, I'm loving how the Cliven Bundy situation has developed. Hannity and Fox News are running away from it now, but it did kind-of tar them. Bundy is precious. What a dipshit. A Posse Comitatus follower, basically a remnant of the old slaveholder mentality. Sick fuck.
They had to stop because it was going to be a bloodbath, and those fuckers were going to put the women up front to catch the bullets for them and their fucking PR points with the media. Part of me wanted to just see the feds open fire anyhow, since those fucks are such a waste of protoplasm, but I suppose in the big picture that would have been bad for us. Frustrating, because those parasites need killing, but I guess I understand.
If you listen to it, you'll notice how much like Christianity Islam is, or vice versa, in that anything that a group of them do that is seen as 'a bad thing' is immediately disowned then somehow reclaimed. "Yes, this group is bad, we'd never condone this kind of thing because 'we're not like that', 'you can't condemn us all for a few bad eggs', and so on, then, 'but their message is good, we'd just be a bit more nuanced than that'. They want zero blow-back from proof-positive that there even ARE extremist groups among them, the media should concentrate on all the good they do.
Switch to Christians/Muslims talking about the odd atheist group putting up a bill-board or complaining about religious decorations on public property paid for by public funds, suddenly it's just dandy to point to this and paint ALL atheists as evil incarnate. Classic tribal ingroup-outgroup dynamics, one being totally oblivious to the other's double standards.
Thought this was good. Helen is a 'local'(to the FB page) Christian. My post:- "It just seems to make it okay if they can say, "It was the Romans that did it! And it was the Jews fault. And it was God's plan, we didn't come up with it!" What is this, Confusion Technique? The Cross still symbolizes a horrible atrocity, and, a whole lot of double-think nonsense about how good this was to 'engineer' this so that an innocent man, the only innocent man EVER(apparently) could take 'the blame' instead of taking the blame ourselves. And according to the story we can't even blame the actual perpetrators of this horrendous crime. The Romans were, we hear, just appeasing the Jews. The Jews were, we hear, just appeasing the Romans. All cunningly maneuvered into it by this diabolical-yet-all-loving GOD. There's no use saying that it's okay since Jesus is really GOD, we're told that Jesus is the son of Mary. Anyways, if Jesus really is GOD then that just means that GOD committed some kind of fake suicide, or what-the-hell you'd call engineering having 1/3 of your triunity killed then bringing it back to life. I have a sneaking hunch that this is definitely not supposed to make 'perfect sense'. Where's Helen Marple-Horvat when you need her to hand-wave away?"
Helen's 'answer':- "Yeah. If evolution is true , why are there still monkeys!
I know a good game. Let s have a rant on an OP and build a big bonfire of straw and make out like christians are stupid and set fire to it."
Me:- " Why wouldn't there be monkeys Helen Marple-Horvat? So, hand-waving it is? Thanks for your input, Helen. How about point by point? The cross isn't a symbol of a horrific atrocity? The Romans didn't commit it to appease the Jews? The Jews didn't ask the Romans to do it to appease the Romans? It wasn't at all engineered by God? Mary isn't Jesus's mother? Oh, and crucifixion isn't horrible torture? This is all TRUE but it's SO oversimplified and monkeys exist so poo-poo you? Oh, and even if evolution isn't true, that doesn't make 'the Gospel truth' any more reasonable or God as described any more 'loving', does it?"
Helen:- "This is a trash OP. Suspending notifications."
Apparently 'the Gospels' is a fucking terrific story of love and NOT a horrific story of ghastly torture and deceit, because 'monkeys'.
That question is very common. The 'why are there still monkeys?" one. I gave up answering it seriously because it's a gotcha talking point from RW blogs, so it's like a baby learned to say "carboniferous." They don't know what the word even means. Same with evolution, they're science illiterate and yet somehow, think they've beaten science.
My answer now is, "Because some of the monkeys were creationists and refused to evolve."
I watched this last night. I was really surprised when it gave one guy the giggles and another guy, who'd done it before, a mystical experience. It was also my understanding that chewing the leaves didn't work, but apparently it does if you don't swallow.
Salvia (for me) enables and powers the mind, but (except in larger doses) it doesn't dictate the content of the vision or experience. I usually take a smaller dose or three, and begin to meditate. Now, I can wait for that meditation, go around the room, turn off lights, tidy up even, then go sit down and begin meditation, and only then do the effects kick in. If I meditate on my third eye (so to speak) I get intense light flowing through that region. If I meditate on a sequnce of events, I might enter a dream state in which I explore those events. And so on. It's like fuel more than anything, to me. I can withstand even a large dose that will cause intense visions for a few minutes while I make myself comfortable, too. Chewing the leaves is like taking smaller doses over time. I've done that, "quidding" and it takes over a half hour of chewing to even get tiny effects. They do last longer that way, but since the leaves taste incredibly bitter, I'll take smoking, thanks.
We can imagine the writer making the point that having a ritual dunk is very important. How do you impress that upon people? Well, having God speak through the clouds, that He is well pleased with his son for having done this, kind of makes the point, doesn't it? Now the characters saying this or that all through a Gospel is telling the story, presumably to a flock of believers, and, if it's written vaguely, if it's written so that no reader can be sure who to blame, then that is how the writer wanted it written. Is it interesting that the motivations of the characters are blurry? That may well be, or not, to a Christian, especially if the betrayal aspect is being blurred in favour of a sacrifice aspect, you see? But not to me it's not interesting at all, since I'd just as soon consider the motivation of the characters in the book 1984, how they sacrificed themselves to the system they hated for blurry reasons, maybe just to keep the plot moving. The similarity between the Gospels and 1984 is that in the Gospels there is this double think this idea that one must believe two opposites at the same time, for example, that the cross is an agonizing torture device, and that the cross is a redeeming symbol. 1984 doesn't have readers do this, Orwell has his characters do this. "The weekly chocolate ration went up to 80 grams per week!"(everyone listening knows that last week the ration was 100 grams per week). But this idea comes from the O.T. itself. The Jews are God's Chosen people, but when it becomes clear that God doesn't seem to be on the Hebrew's side anymore, God, as the stories are being written, is not pleased with His Chosen People and that, and that alone is the cause of the Hebrews defeat in battle.
But if you teach believers that, that's what they're going to believe, assuming that they presuppose God, which is of course presupposing mind over matter, isn't it? It's just a brute fact that atheism is a total rejection of any ideology that presumes the notion that the mind(anyone's mind, as if it were a thing) is superior to matter. Just imagine it being equal, mind being equal to matter then divide the mind by the amount of pain pills being consumed each minute Worldwide. Do you see? Do you see?
IN all my salvia experiments I still have not proven anything as regards the question "is this purely an hallucination?" vs "Is this my mind leaving my one body and experiencing many of my bodies." Because lately every time I take it I experience multiple locations at once, multiple "me's" at once. Even feel my body weight bearing down on my butt in the chair in many places at once. It's exactly 50-50 to me if it's a real effect or not. It certainly feels very real, but I factor in how easily we trick ourselves, and that ties it up again at 50-50. I mean, no way to prove it to myself either way. One thing for sure though: Even if it's all just fake, I've seen stuff, experienced stuff, that I would have NEVER have thought my mind was even capable of faking! I think in a non-human way on salvia now, most of the time. Many thought lines at once, approaching a question from many angles at once, like a group of people all doing it at once, incredible flows of convoluted information that no one mind should be able to do. I stand amazed of that, every time it happens. No way to even describe it to you, it's too different from how we think normally. But I love it. I admit that. I love the amazing feeling of basically accessing many minds at once, kinda. I still disturb the dog or the wife or even my son from time to time, although I consciously try not to. Can't prove that, though. So I remain a skeptical experimenter rather than a convert. Maybe it's my skepticism that prevents me from going further, but I can't totally abandon that, not ever in my life, so I'll still muddle along. It's never boring.
For instance, I have a ceiling fan. On medium, which is fairly fast, I can sit in my chair, and on only a light dose of salvia, I can focus my eyes in front of me on the wall, and not move that focus. Then, with my peripheral vision alone, never moving my eyes, I can focus on one fan blade and easily track it around in circles, my attention never leaving that one fan blade, with my unmoving eyes not focused anywhere near it. Or I can focus on five, six, or even more points on a wall at once, again with no eye movement. No need to move the eyes, I just move my *attention* and that is not like visual focus; it allows more than one foci at once with ease. Just one of many, many phenomena I get to experience. I feel, to be honest, very lucky to have ever found this substance.
And when I say "at once" I literally mean it. My attention does not flicker from one point to the other. It divides, into many foci, all at once. And my peripheral vision is very different, much sharper, at all foci.
On (light doses of) salvia I can experience literally anything that you've ever read about any Yogi experiencing, and more. The so-called "Rising of the Kundalini" for example. It can feel like it practically blows the top of my head off in a rush of white light. I get to experience all that directly rather than just reading about how others have done it after 20-30 years of meditation practice.
(Interestingly, when I do that, the rising of the energy thing, or just normal intense meditation, the crown of my head gets sore, and remains sore all the next day with no salvia in my system)
I also experience something like layers or strata, that my consciousness passes through. Laminations, even. The wild thing about them is, as I pass through one of them, it's like I hear many, many conversations at once, like literally hundreds of people all talking at once, as if the layer was made up of informational content! And I mean, like you're in an auditorium and everyone's having a conversation at once. Again, I have no words to really get the reality of it across to you. I read what I'm typing here, and it's not even close to the experience, but it's as close as I can come. Frustrating.
I basically converted this conversation to a new post on my salvia blog, since I thought it worth adding into my journal. http://salviaspace.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-salvia-divinorum-experience-of-many.html
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteTears. Roflmao.
I read it and it wasn't until I was literally on the last sentence that I finally knew for sure that it wasn't a parody.
ReplyDeleteThey're really that ridiculous. Hard to believe, but there you have it.
Lake of Fire - isn't that a Johnny Cash song?
ReplyDeleteYeahhhh... who didn't see that coming...
ReplyDeleteWhere do they get the idea that Satan is in the Lake of Fire to torture lost souls?
ReplyDeleteIs that in the Bible?
I love that style they write in. The emphasis on certain words in all capitals. That's the literate style of hardcore Christians, as opposed to what you see on facebook and twitter with the predominantly illiterate bible thumpers who don't know how to construct a sentence or use basic grammar or punctuation. I read some less aggressive articles about the segment they did on the first episode about Giordano Bruno. They came off as almost non-apologetic about what the church did to many "heretics" at that time. This is much more entertaining in a "can people possibly be that stupid?" kind of way.
ReplyDeleteI'll never understand these people. Who at any point in their life decides "I'm just going to read this book and believe everything it tells me. Forget all that other malarkey. This is the only book I'll ever need in my entire life." Mind boggling.
As I was saying before I accidentally signed myself out(wtf is that signout button doing where the 'post' button is on most stuff???
ReplyDeleteThis devout Christian believes that a picture of what kind of looks like a stegasaurus carved on the the temple of Ankor Wat(I know Wat means temple), is proof that dinosaurs were around recently, not millions of years ago.
I asked him if he thought that sphinxes are proof that weird human headed lions were real.
He said that temples don't count.
I guess what he really meant was that Egyptian temples don't count since Ankor Wat is, well, a temple.
I think I blew his mind, since he posted that picture of that 'stegasaurus' twice on his nephews FB page.
Didn't faze him one tiny tiny little bit though, he's still practically preaching away against Obama(the root of all evil) and everything 'liberal'.
I've signed myself out like twenty times while trying to post. Bad design having the sign out button where the "post" button should be.
ReplyDeleteThe believers are unreachable by "design." they see the world backwards. Been conditioned to see logic as stupidity, truth as a lie, love as hate, and evil as goodness.
My wife will tell you that one of the worst things that I can say about anything is "bad design."
DeleteAnd then there's this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/creationists-demand-airtime-cosmos-sake-balance
"Creationists Demand Airtime On 'Cosmos' For The Sake Of Balance"
AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!
Creationists all seem to suffer from what I like to call the "Teacher's Pet Syndrome." They believe that God loves them especially and so they can share in their "teacher's" authority and be good little "hall monitors" of this world.
ReplyDeleteBunch of fucking egotists of course.
I demand time on 'Cosmos' for the sake of balance.
ReplyDelete"Ball-bearings! It's all ball-bearings now!"
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/14/man-saved-from-submerged-car-credits-gods-grace-for-the-rescue-and-prepares-to-sue-his-first-responders/
ReplyDeleteThis is my reply:-
At this point, 'anything goes'.
"Your honor, my client, a devout Christian, claims that God told him to rob that Satan's Spawn bank and is therefore suing the State for pursuing this Satanic prosecution, and the bank itself for hurting his feelings.
God guided those bullets to wound one teller and kill those other two! You going to put God HIMSELF in prison now??? I beg the court's indulgence here!"
Wow.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dHVWhrQVbs
ReplyDeleteThis is a good response to those who believe they can only be happy 'with God'.
Cooooool...
ReplyDeletehttp://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/christians-persecutioncomplex.html
ReplyDeleteYou guys watch the last episode of Cosmos? They talk about how silly the idea of the universe as being only 6000 - 7000 years old is. Should spark more Christian rage :)
ReplyDeletehttps://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/t1.0-9/1920020_784177725003266_1142282809_n.jpg
ReplyDeleteI watch every episode, so yes, I saw it. It's fucking great. I'm very happy about this new version, it's just what we need. Neil Tyson is a God.
ReplyDeleteI love Christian rage, it makes me so very happy.
ReplyDeleteIan, I'm on the fly but I skimmed that article. Entitlement is their middle name.
ReplyDeleteOk, now I read it in full. Fake arrests with the cops in on it? Why is that not against the law? How is that free speech?
DeleteThis shit angers me a lot.
These "scientists" aren't really happy. No, one need Jesus to be truly happy.
ReplyDelete(in my bestest fundy impersonation)
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."~ George Bernard Shaw
"If ignorance is bliss, that boy must be a bundle of joy" ~ my Uncle Joe
"Idjets" ~mac
How happy can they be when they're always pissed off at someone or something? For them to be truly happy, in their mindset, they'd have to have control of the world and decide who lives and dies and so forth, like in the Dark Ages, The last time christians were truly happy. It's all about being addicted to power and ego.
ReplyDeleteI'd been watching the new Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. It was very good, better than Leno by far, at least in my opinion. Only one thing: Every time he did a joke about Obama it was a negative, a slur even. And no jokes about republican stupidity. This made me uneasy, but hey, no big deal... or so I thought until last night when he had a surprise guest star in a sketch. I saw her and said to meself "Hey, Tina Fey, cool! then realized to my utter fucking horror that it was the real Sarah Palin. At the moment I realized that, I turned him off, and took him off my DVR programming. I won't watch the show again. Seriously. Promoting her, means you're blind to how fucking harmful she is. I no longer can like Jimmy Fallon.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.forwardprogressives.com/pathetic-democrat-whines-members-congress-cant-afford-live-decently-d-c/
ReplyDeleteThis is terrible. Are the Democrats deliberately trying to lose?? Can't survive on 170 grand a year? What is wrong with these people?
"Pope assumes responsibility for priest sex abuse"
ReplyDeleteSo... are they going to kill him, disgrace him, or both?
One can but hope...
DeleteHey, he's sorry, what'd ya want? Priests and bankers in prison? How 'bout we make put the accursed of Ham in prison instead?
ReplyDeleteThe accursed of Ham? Is that why pork isn't kosher?
Delete:.. make put..'?
ReplyDeleteIan speak good no words.
Hey, when the eloquence escapes you, and logic ties you up and rapes you.. da doo doo doo, da da da da...
DeleteSo I watched Cosmos the other night and was much pleased by Tyson addressing both the idea of Saturnalia, that crazy pagan holiday, being co-opted by Christianity and made into Christmas, and how special interests buy their own (unethical) scientists to fight back against real science even when it means potentially the death or sickness of innocent millions, and the next day I go on Twitter and see theists posting a pic of Tyson with a quotation, supposedly his, saying that the Universe is so beautiful that he has come to believe in a Creator. A false quote. A lie.
ReplyDeleteGod, I hate fundamentalists. So fucking evil, they prefer a lie even when the truth would do. How infuriating. They're like, "if you can't fight it, pretend it isn't what it is and lie your ass off about it to everybody." Sickening.
Rand Paul gets caught on tape dealing in facts!
ReplyDeleteThis does not bode well for him as a Republican Presidential Candidate!
No it doesn't. Also, I'm loving how the Cliven Bundy situation has developed. Hannity and Fox News are running away from it now, but it did kind-of tar them. Bundy is precious. What a dipshit. A Posse Comitatus follower, basically a remnant of the old slaveholder mentality. Sick fuck.
ReplyDeleteThey wouldn't stop coming for you or me if we owed a cool million. Hah.
ReplyDeleteThey had to stop because it was going to be a bloodbath, and those fuckers were going to put the women up front to catch the bullets for them and their fucking PR points with the media. Part of me wanted to just see the feds open fire anyhow, since those fucks are such a waste of protoplasm, but I suppose in the big picture that would have been bad for us. Frustrating, because those parasites need killing, but I guess I understand.
ReplyDeleteSame shit all over Brian.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SukEnAQ_ebE
Not available to watch in Merka peeb.
DeleteWhat's the video about?
If you listen to it, you'll notice how much like Christianity Islam is, or vice versa, in that anything that a group of them do that is seen as 'a bad thing' is immediately disowned then somehow reclaimed. "Yes, this group is bad, we'd never condone this kind of thing because 'we're not like that', 'you can't condemn us all for a few bad eggs', and so on, then, 'but their message is good, we'd just be a bit more nuanced than that'.
ReplyDeleteThey want zero blow-back from proof-positive that there even ARE extremist groups among them, the media should concentrate on all the good they do.
Switch to Christians/Muslims talking about the odd atheist group putting up a bill-board or complaining about religious decorations on public property paid for by public funds, suddenly it's just dandy to point to this and paint ALL atheists as evil incarnate.
Classic tribal ingroup-outgroup dynamics, one being totally oblivious to the other's double standards.
Sorry :.. being totally oblivious to their own double standards.
ReplyDeleteThought this was good. Helen is a 'local'(to the FB page) Christian.
ReplyDeleteMy post:-
"It just seems to make it okay if they can say, "It was the Romans that did it! And it was the Jews fault. And it was God's plan, we didn't come up with it!"
What is this, Confusion Technique? The Cross still symbolizes a horrible atrocity, and, a whole lot of double-think nonsense about how good this was to 'engineer' this so that an innocent man, the only innocent man EVER(apparently) could take 'the blame' instead of taking the blame ourselves.
And according to the story we can't even blame the actual perpetrators of this horrendous crime. The Romans were, we hear, just appeasing the Jews. The Jews were, we hear, just appeasing the Romans. All cunningly maneuvered into it by this diabolical-yet-all-loving GOD.
There's no use saying that it's okay since Jesus is really GOD, we're told that Jesus is the son of Mary. Anyways, if Jesus really is GOD then that just means that GOD committed some kind of fake suicide, or what-the-hell you'd call engineering having 1/3 of your triunity killed then bringing it back to life.
I have a sneaking hunch that this is definitely not supposed to make 'perfect sense'.
Where's Helen Marple-Horvat when you need her to hand-wave away?"
Helen's 'answer':-
"Yeah. If evolution is true , why are there still monkeys!
I know a good game. Let s have a rant on an OP and build a big bonfire of straw and make out like christians are stupid and set fire to it."
Me:-
" Why wouldn't there be monkeys Helen Marple-Horvat?
So, hand-waving it is? Thanks for your input, Helen.
How about point by point?
The cross isn't a symbol of a horrific atrocity?
The Romans didn't commit it to appease the Jews?
The Jews didn't ask the Romans to do it to appease the Romans?
It wasn't at all engineered by God?
Mary isn't Jesus's mother?
Oh, and crucifixion isn't horrible torture?
This is all TRUE but it's SO oversimplified and monkeys exist so poo-poo you? Oh, and even if evolution isn't true, that doesn't make 'the Gospel truth' any more reasonable or God as described any more 'loving', does it?"
Helen:-
"This is a trash OP. Suspending notifications."
Apparently 'the Gospels' is a fucking terrific story of love and NOT a horrific story of ghastly torture and deceit, because 'monkeys'.
That question is very common. The 'why are there still monkeys?" one. I gave up answering it seriously because it's a gotcha talking point from RW blogs, so it's like a baby learned to say "carboniferous." They don't know what the word even means. Same with evolution, they're science illiterate and yet somehow, think they've beaten science.
ReplyDeleteMy answer now is, "Because some of the monkeys were creationists and refused to evolve."
All one need do is ask a monkey, he'll tell you ....
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/9vZeLSwz-Dw
I love that! Thanks! Really good, really funny.
Delete"Yes, man descended, the worthless bum
ReplyDeleteBut, brothers, from us he did not come
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn8G-dDHNf0
ReplyDeleteI watched this last night. I was really surprised when it gave one guy the giggles and another guy, who'd done it before, a mystical experience. It was also my understanding that chewing the leaves didn't work, but apparently it does if you don't swallow.
Salvia (for me) enables and powers the mind, but (except in larger doses) it doesn't dictate the content of the vision or experience. I usually take a smaller dose or three, and begin to meditate. Now, I can wait for that meditation, go around the room, turn off lights, tidy up even, then go sit down and begin meditation, and only then do the effects kick in. If I meditate on my third eye (so to speak) I get intense light flowing through that region. If I meditate on a sequnce of events, I might enter a dream state in which I explore those events. And so on. It's like fuel more than anything, to me. I can withstand even a large dose that will cause intense visions for a few minutes while I make myself comfortable, too. Chewing the leaves is like taking smaller doses over time. I've done that, "quidding" and it takes over a half hour of chewing to even get tiny effects. They do last longer that way, but since the leaves taste incredibly bitter, I'll take smoking, thanks.
DeleteWe can imagine the writer making the point that having a ritual dunk is very important. How do you impress that upon people? Well, having God speak through the clouds, that He is well pleased with his son for having done this, kind of makes the point, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteNow the characters saying this or that all through a Gospel is telling the story, presumably to a flock of believers, and, if it's written vaguely, if it's written so that no reader can be sure who to blame, then that is how the writer wanted it written.
Is it interesting that the motivations of the characters are blurry?
That may well be, or not, to a Christian, especially if the betrayal aspect is being blurred in favour of a sacrifice aspect, you see?
But not to me it's not interesting at all, since I'd just as soon consider the motivation of the characters in the book 1984, how they sacrificed themselves to the system they hated for blurry reasons, maybe just to keep the plot moving.
The similarity between the Gospels and 1984 is that in the Gospels there is this double think this idea that one must believe two opposites at the same time, for example, that the cross is an agonizing torture device, and that the cross is a redeeming symbol.
1984 doesn't have readers do this, Orwell has his characters do this. "The weekly chocolate ration went up to 80 grams per week!"(everyone listening knows that last week the ration was 100 grams per week).
But this idea comes from the O.T. itself. The Jews are God's Chosen people, but when it becomes clear that God doesn't seem to be on the Hebrew's side anymore, God, as the stories are being written, is not pleased with His Chosen People and that, and that alone is the cause of the Hebrews defeat in battle.
But if you teach believers that, that's what they're going to believe, assuming that they presuppose God, which is of course presupposing mind over matter, isn't it?
It's just a brute fact that atheism is a total rejection of any ideology that presumes the notion that the mind(anyone's mind, as if it were a thing) is superior to matter.
Just imagine it being equal, mind being equal to matter then divide the mind by the amount of pain pills being consumed each minute Worldwide.
Do you see?
Do you see?
IN all my salvia experiments I still have not proven anything as regards the question "is this purely an hallucination?" vs "Is this my mind leaving my one body and experiencing many of my bodies."
ReplyDeleteBecause lately every time I take it I experience multiple locations at once, multiple "me's" at once. Even feel my body weight bearing down on my butt in the chair in many places at once. It's exactly 50-50 to me if it's a real effect or not. It certainly feels very real, but I factor in how easily we trick ourselves, and that ties it up again at 50-50. I mean, no way to prove it to myself either way.
One thing for sure though: Even if it's all just fake, I've seen stuff, experienced stuff, that I would have NEVER have thought my mind was even capable of faking! I think in a non-human way on salvia now, most of the time. Many thought lines at once, approaching a question from many angles at once, like a group of people all doing it at once, incredible flows of convoluted information that no one mind should be able to do. I stand amazed of that, every time it happens. No way to even describe it to you, it's too different from how we think normally. But I love it. I admit that. I love the amazing feeling of basically accessing many minds at once, kinda. I still disturb the dog or the wife or even my son from time to time, although I consciously try not to. Can't prove that, though. So I remain a skeptical experimenter rather than a convert. Maybe it's my skepticism that prevents me from going further, but I can't totally abandon that, not ever in my life, so I'll still muddle along. It's never boring.
For instance, I have a ceiling fan. On medium, which is fairly fast, I can sit in my chair, and on only a light dose of salvia, I can focus my eyes in front of me on the wall, and not move that focus. Then, with my peripheral vision alone, never moving my eyes, I can focus on one fan blade and easily track it around in circles, my attention never leaving that one fan blade, with my unmoving eyes not focused anywhere near it. Or I can focus on five, six, or even more points on a wall at once, again with no eye movement. No need to move the eyes, I just move my *attention* and that is not like visual focus; it allows more than one foci at once with ease.
ReplyDeleteJust one of many, many phenomena I get to experience. I feel, to be honest, very lucky to have ever found this substance.
And when I say "at once" I literally mean it. My attention does not flicker from one point to the other. It divides, into many foci, all at once. And my peripheral vision is very different, much sharper, at all foci.
ReplyDeleteOn (light doses of) salvia I can experience literally anything that you've ever read about any Yogi experiencing, and more. The so-called "Rising of the Kundalini" for example. It can feel like it practically blows the top of my head off in a rush of white light. I get to experience all that directly rather than just reading about how others have done it after 20-30 years of meditation practice.
ReplyDelete(Interestingly, when I do that, the rising of the energy thing, or just normal intense meditation, the crown of my head gets sore, and remains sore all the next day with no salvia in my system)
ReplyDeleteI also experience something like layers or strata, that my consciousness passes through. Laminations, even. The wild thing about them is, as I pass through one of them, it's like I hear many, many conversations at once, like literally hundreds of people all talking at once, as if the layer was made up of informational content! And I mean, like you're in an auditorium and everyone's having a conversation at once. Again, I have no words to really get the reality of it across to you. I read what I'm typing here, and it's not even close to the experience, but it's as close as I can come. Frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI basically converted this conversation to a new post on my salvia blog, since I thought it worth adding into my journal.
ReplyDeletehttp://salviaspace.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-salvia-divinorum-experience-of-many.html
Y'all can go to the NEW POST now.
ReplyDeleteMemories..........