[ExI] The sky is falling!

[Chad Robb]

Rafal:

>  AFAIK (I may be wrong, since this is alien thought-space for me) they want
> a
> "spiritual experience", in addition to the social context. Also, the
> payoff is a matter of faith, as any real Christian would tell you,


I've attended many churches as an atheist hoping to better understand this
spiritual experience.
In some they give themselves over to a violent spasmodic trance.
Pentecostals and Episcopalians particularly. Thrashing on the floor, jerking
arms and spine, howling and shrieking like evil were escaping like steam.
Babbling gibberish enthusiastically.
That has a very probable endorphin high. People would get addicted to that
kind of abandon.

Some like the singing. They might attend church because they want to belong
musically but feel otherwise blocked. Some go to remind themselves of a low
and sinful state so that they might grieve their very existence and be seen
weeping. This is not as uncommon as you might think.
They want forgiveness for being human.

Some are of the Fire and Brimstone school of thought. Who to shun and be
against.
Many baptists are like this. Down on gays and drunkards, slatterns and
shirkers, Mormons and Catholics. May they burn in hell, be glad you're not
like them. Amen.

Mormons and Catholics tend to have pretty dry services. There is no applause
after a performance because it was not intended for approval of the audience
but as tribute to God.
Its sort of an ordeal of attendance. They go because afterward, they can
talk and be like a huge family. Drinking tea or coffee or fruit juice or
whatever, eating cookies and donuts, especially things made by members for
members. Its a low key party. A Temporary Autonomous Zone of heavily
tempered conviviality.

Apostolics do clap. They even clap in sync calling it Hand Praise.

Lutheran is like Catholic Lite. All the pomp and costume, incense and
candles. but Martin Luther decided long ago that worship of Mother Mary was
blasphemy. She is a fertility goddess after all, mother of Jesus, king of
death and rebirth.

When I was a christian, in my days of youth and folly, my pastor told me
The world is filled with Darkness. Fear Sadness Despair. People walk in the
darkness and tumble off the cliffs of insanity. If you have the Truth, if
you have the Light, you are walking in Authority. You have real power to
change lives. Walk in the light that others might follow.

I believed him and still do. But I no longer think the dead rabbi is coming
back to whisk away his chosen people to another dimension and bowls of wrath
and many headed beasts and stuff is the truth. Transhumanism is the closest
to luminary excellence I have found.

-Chad
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20090327/45898ad5/attachment.html>