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

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 16 21:31:18 UTC 2016


And most adults don't have hallucinations but some do and they will tell
their children about them and they will believe what they hear, and as
adults they will go on to tell their children about it and they will
believe it too. And so it goes.
John

Now there is a fascinating but unanswerable question:  just what was the
role of hallucinations in religions?  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.

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.

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.

bill w

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 12:27 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 11:24 AM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
> ​> ​
>> More fundamental than the particular local set of myths is why people
>> ​ ​
>> have myths at all.
>
>
> ​Because their mommy and daddy told them those myths were real. Genes
> that make children believe what adults tell them will do better than genes
> that tell them to ignore adults because adults do have a lot of wisdom to
> impart on their children. And most adults don't have hallucinations but
> some do and they will tell their children about them and they will believe
> what they hear, and as adults they will go on to tell their children about
> it and they will believe it too. And so it goes.
>
> Scientology may be a bit different as many became converts as adults, but
> I don't think Scientology will ever become a major religion that way
> because there aren't
> ​a ​
> sufficient number adults that retain enough juvenile characteristics to
> seek a father figure. If a religion wants to get big it has to snag people
> when their young, very young, preferably learning to talk young
> ​ and before their critical thinking skills are developed.  ​
>
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
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