Devils Advocate:

After ranting against religion for years, this post draws on some of religion's common themes to explain personal observations. If I'd grown up in a different culture, I'd have a different set of themes.

In a previous post I described a friend getting magical information which he couldn't possibly have known. A piece of the story which I didn't tell was that when the impression hit him (that a non-discript paper bag on a distant curb contained some tools that he needed), it was in a verbal form; words. At the time he put it down to his internal dialog, even when the "voice" said "... and remember that I told you?" (Joe said "ok").

My current thinking is that animals including people have an inherent capacity to be part of a communal synthesis or archetype, Cosmic Consciousness. An easy example is when dogs know that a friend is about to arrive, or a pet travels to an unknown location to be with their "owner". Temple Grandin, an autistic woman w/ PHD in Animal Science in Ft Collins CO, believes animals and autistic humans share the same way of thinking

• When Joe was 3, he woke up from an afternoon nap and nobody was home, so he went out looking for his mom. He found her in the basement of a nearby school attending a PTA meeting. There was no map, he followed his heart.
  
• When Joe found the sack of tools, he was homeless.
  
• A sheepdog named Gigi belonging to a previous employer was 13 years old when she jumped out of his truck unnoticed on the Usall road, about 30 miles up the coast, & across 3 rivers wide enough to swim. 2 weeks later she showed up home looking sleek and fit.
  
• Steve Sinclair sold his property on Navarro Ridge, which included a barn w/ a barn cat named Pearl. Steve moved to Greenwood Ridge near Elk, about 15 miles away. 3 weeks later, Joe was standing with him in front of the Oasis Bar & Grill in Elk when Pearl walked out from under a parked car and jumped into his arms.

A quality that seems to be present in most of these is that the person or animal is moving, they're physically unrestrained, unattached, they're goal oriented & they feel free.

Fear, or belief in some kind of strategic repression (like from the cops or mean people), can destroy ones connection to the "cosmic archetype", the "father in heaven" if you will. The solution to fear is: 1) ignore it, become immortal (or act like it for as long as possible). 2) back off and say "ok, thy will be done, for thine is the kingdom, etc…" & kiss up to the oppressor (love your enemy).

When biblical prophets described god as being selfish and vengeful, they were describing themselves, or their most outstanding social fears. I think because the archetype is given the form of the biggest dealer.

The Bible, Koran, and Torah, all represent the same psychological construction and call it a God, but manipulate it into an organizational tool, with members and "non believers", so that there's an artificial distinction which is politically exploitable. That's wrong headed, selfish, and shameful, but historically typical of that god.

sorry, no links or pics.

There’s a correlation between what a person expects and what they get, just because people only deal with stuff they recognize. Before “Science” came along and established that real stuff was (had to be) objective, the subjective world (heaven, hell, majick, fayerie & thrall) had equal potential and was the personal possession of an individual.

A train of thought, following a thread of reason, discards irrelevant data and draws supporting evidence by random association. Any evidence must be unimpeachable (with historical reference, authorship, and footnotes, etc) or it doesn't qualify, like following a single string through a labyrinth. Intent holds a description of the end result, but random association is the fuel.

There's another way to describe it: by everything it isn't.

During WWll there was a secret code breaking unit in Betchley Park England that set out to decipher the German Enigma code. The code was basically a series of transposed letters that stood for another series of transposed letters, that stood for another series of transposed letters, that stood for the alphabet. Messages were transmitted by radio. it also needed a code book to give the key letters of the day to set the receiver's deciphering enigma machine. The code breakers broke it and as a by-product invented the first computer operating system.

But the guy who broke the code, who defined the process, figured there could be every possible configuration of letters involved for every letter in the code ((4 to the 26th power) minus one). "Minus one" being the letter the code was trying to conceal. Betchley Park was successful and made the computer to speed up the process of discovering the key of the day.

Intent was the thread. Evidence must be something communicable, our social awareness is built on a learned verbal description of what's important, which limits what we allow ourselves to know and express, to only things which we can verbally communicate. Those sources (social conventions) require trusting someone else's experience over our own (historical reference, authorship, and footnotes, etc). Betchley Park was looking for evidence of what wasn't there within a limited set of possibilities. To apply that plan to an unlimited set, requires a different algorithm. Apparently it's not uncommon, (miracles do happen) but resides outside social awareness, wherever that is.

A book review: INVENTED KNOWLEDGE False history, fake science and pseudo-religions by Ronald H. Fritze

Strangeness at the Creationist Museum

Creationist Museum goes under

Vagaries of religious experience (Daniel Gilbert's blog)

Flower scents reduce stress

Dowsing

The new Christianity: Has your (lame ass) religion got this?

Evil Futurist's guide to World Domination

By the Rivers of Babalon: Some evidence that Iran & Iraq have Jewish blood (The Jerusalem Post), which also implies (ahem) the reverse.

Sun Myung Moon Crowned Prince of Peace. No, Dang it! I wanted to be the messiah!