[ExI] What is religion? What is god was The Meaning of the Universe

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Fri Jun 17 00:54:33 UTC 2016


On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 2:31 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Now there is a fascinating but unanswerable question:  just what was
> the role of hallucinations in religions?

Why do you believe that question unanswerable?

> I do know of certain African tribes
> where the shaman's qualifications must include hallucinations.  The
> assumption is that he is in touch with the spirit world and perhaps can
> communicate with it and pray for sick people or crops or whatever.

Seems you're making an attempt to answer it, no? :)

> How may paranoid schizos have been raised to the top in society as
> a result of their disease?  In this case 'disease' is not the operable
> word.  "Gift" would be.

My guess would be very few if any. I imagine, though, they might be used as
dupes by those at the top.

> Back to God.  He is just not a very interesting character.  But Jesus'
> older brother is:  Satan.  Satan appears everywhere but my favorite
> is Loki, the mischievous Scandanavian god and trickster - and Coyote
> in the Navajo religion.

This reminds me of Justin Barrett's book _Why Would Anyone Believe in
God?_. I believe Barrett, who is making a case from cognitive science on
why belief in god(s) and spirits are so prevalent, is trying to make
religious belief okay, but we can still learn a lot from him. For instance,
that certain types of fictional entities are more appealing than others --
a talking tree vs. a merely invisible one. Why? They have agency and can
communicate with us. (In the invisible tree example, it can't really do
much save get in the way. That's actually Barrett's example too.:)

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my latest Kindle book, "The Late Mr. Gurlitt," at:
http://mybook.to/Gurlitt
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