[ExI] Religions are not the ultimate cause of war

[Charlie Stross]

On 2 Oct 2012, at 23:00, Tom Nowell <nebathenemi at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> And in response Anders speculated on how common this cognitive malfunction is. Well, it's time for confessions of a paid-up chucklehead here. As a genuine religious believer, I'm definitely experiencing something subjectively, whether it's the agency attributing parts of my brain misfiring or my consciousness responding to the Divine. Discussing spirituality with co-workers in the past, I've discovered a lot of people who are "not religious, but very spiritual" - while one British comedian liked to dismiss this as "this means I don't like going to church but I'm still scared of dieing", I prefer to think of this as "I'm getting similar experiences and emotions, I just can't a find a label to fit". I sometimes wonder how common experience or non-experience of (for lack of a better phrase) "spiritual feelings" are.

Quite common, I think. I've had mystical experiences; I just don't attribute them to anything other than my own neurochemistry giving me an endogenous trip.


-- Charlie