The time I took it, I was struggling along the pages of a massive book for 30 seconds or 10 minutes, depending who you ask, and, in some ways, I have been ever since
What was your most profound trip (plane, drug, or meditation-induced)? I was born an atheist I guess. My last chance to become religious was Santa Claus. When I discovered at the age of 4 he did not exist there was no hope left that I ever would become a classic religious person. I never had a profound trip, only dreams during sleeping or nightmares. But we have a friend who claims to have seen visions of Maria. To me it sounds totally nuts. He also loves Putin so that's an argument more not to become religious. But I must admit that me the the uber rationalist sometimes dowse with one hair and a wedding ring of a pregnant woman (only friends and family) to predict the sex of the future baby. And 9 out o 10 I was right. I don't believe in magic but it's statistically weird. Wait and see for my next prediction in July. I also am interested in so-called Family constellation. If one want to know why some relations between family members are awkward it seems to help.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Constellations). It looks like a universum connection. I still must try that out.
Do you think the benefits of religion outweigh its harm? If people would stick to the simple rules - which are rather universal - I think they could be beneficial. If they start thinking that somebody else is needed to connect then it's harmful. Especially the idea of solidarity and hospitality is common to all religions. It also can make one humble in relation to the universe (or nature). But the it must be limited to personal experiences and certainly not end up in obligations.
I’d listen to your friends’ visions, but my tolerance ends with “loves Putin.”
9/10 correct predictions are definitely statistically weird. I’m not too familiar with family constellations, but I looked into it, and I think there’s a lot of validity in the idea. I don’t know enough yet, but the skeptics who explain that the positive outcomes from the therapy come from suggestion and empathy makes sense. That being said, since the process draws from indigenous spiritual mysticism could mean that the outcomes vary depending on a person’s cultural background. Either way, I’d be open to trying it. Sometimes, I’m too western and analytical, and I think there’s more good in just experiencing these mystical experiences rather than trying to prove they’re something else.
And my experience with Santa Claus and religion isn’t much different from yours. We come from a uniquely long line of atheists. You also got me to read the God Delusion when I was 12 or 14 years old haha.
There’s a lot to unpack here. I’m especially interested in the different versions of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s “Africa Diaries.” I can’t remember if I read the book or just learned about it. It was a long time ago. Either way, I’d be interested to learn how the different versions came across.
As for the “non-religious regimes caused more harm than religious regimes” debate, I’ll just stay out of it. I’m interested in the psychology of religion and why people are drawn to it. That’s when we find the common tools and techniques religious and political leaders use to make people believe in something and to galvanize them. My goal isn’t to dismantle anyone’s belief system but to help people understand it and question it.
Most profound trip? From South Sudan, where one evening with nothing else to do we went to look at a local woman's guinea worm exiting from her ankle, to Frankfurt for a couple of days and on to Haiti with a short layover in Miami. Contrasts that violent and quick cause the mind to shut down, reboot, and continuously replay the last Muzak song heard on an elevator.
Is religion good? Has it caused any good in the world? Depends on the religion. If slavery was a bad thing, Christianity forced its abolition. Christian missionaries in Leopold's Congo spread the truth about what he was doing there and forced him to give it up. And I seem to recall that REVERAND Dr. Martin Luther King was a Christian.
In contrast, the anti-religion regimes during the 20th century left a bloodbath unparalleled in history.
So, despite whatever anecdotal experiences one may have endured in Sunday School as a child, I'd say yes, give religion a chance. And if you are worried about those perverted priests, you better pull you kids out of public schools, because every few days there is another crime story about a hot 22 year old gym teacher ruining some 17 year old kid for life.
Was this experience in Sudan during a similar time as your “Switter: An Undocumented Immigrant, Part 3” article?
And you bring up some other valid points about the benefits of religion, but I think it’s important to highlight it wasn’t just missionaries who exposed the truth, but journalists such as Edmund D. Morel, Roger Casement, and Henry Stanley.
The truth could have come out without religion, but convincing Europeans that people in Africa and the America were savages could not have been without religion.
And when it comes to anti-religion regimes during the 20th century leaving a bloodbath unparalleled in history, I’d highlight that the many of those deaths weren’t because of their lack of religion, but the need for power and control — the same reasons “religion” caused so many bloodbaths.
That particular trip was before South Sudan’s independence from Khartoum and just after Aristide took over power in Haiti.
Missionaries in Congo documented the atrocities and risked their livelihoods to circulate their reports. They were the people on the ground who saw the atrocities taking place during Leopold’s “ownership” of the territory. At the time, Edmund Morel was a clerk in a London shipping company and saw the shipping manifests of inbound and outbound cargo from Congo to Belgian ports. Ivory and rubber in; guns and explosives out. He guessed the connection to the slave-like conditions under which the resources were extracted and helped build the case
I don’t think I’d include Henry Stanley on a list of the good guys. He was a paid agent of Leopold, who hired him under the guise of scientific exploration, but actually spent his efforts getting local chiefs gunned up and drunk before signing over their sovereignty. Some sources say he convinced over 450 traditional leaders to become Leopold’s vassals.
One of the more accessible accounts of Leopold’s crimes in Congo is “King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa.” The author, Adam Hochschild, estimated as many as 10 million deaths related to Leopold’s crimes in Congo. Primary sources are hard to obtain, because when Leopold sold his Congo to the Belgian government, his minions burned most of the records and documentation in his archives.
For years I’ve collected books on Congolese history, but they are mostly adventure genre accounts. One of the most unexpected books I discovered was Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s “Africa Diaries” written during the year he spent trying to stir up an insurgency in the wake of Congo’s disastrous independence. There are several versions of his diary, but the takeaway for me is his straight up racism. He was working with several individuals who went on to become important Congolese political figures, including Laurent Kabila, in his own way as unsavory as Mobutu, who later became president after the removal of Mobutu Sese Seko. Kabila was eventually assassinated, as often happens to his ilk. Btw, I won an office betting pool by best guessing Mobutu’s death date.
The West has a lot to answer for in its Congo adventures, including the current exploitation of Congolese child miners who are securing the minerals and metals we need for our glorious electric car and iPhone future.
I’ll stand by my blood bath comment. The Marxist, Fascist, and Nazi regimes specifically sought to replace religion with their various formulas for The New Man and Worker Paradises. Nietzsche all but prophesied those ideologies and events when he commented that some of the then new theories that would replace religion would become foundational for a “doctrine that there is no cardinal distinction between man and animal” [that] will demoralize humanity throughout the West; it will lead to the rise of “barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods”—” And he was a true believer in those theories, so apparently the rise of barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods was a feature, not a bug in his view. He expected the events would start to take place within a generation, which put the start date around 1904, so he was a few years off in predicting WWI and the 1917 Russian Revolution.
The time I took it, I was struggling along the pages of a massive book for 30 seconds or 10 minutes, depending who you ask, and, in some ways, I have been ever since
What was your most profound trip (plane, drug, or meditation-induced)? I was born an atheist I guess. My last chance to become religious was Santa Claus. When I discovered at the age of 4 he did not exist there was no hope left that I ever would become a classic religious person. I never had a profound trip, only dreams during sleeping or nightmares. But we have a friend who claims to have seen visions of Maria. To me it sounds totally nuts. He also loves Putin so that's an argument more not to become religious. But I must admit that me the the uber rationalist sometimes dowse with one hair and a wedding ring of a pregnant woman (only friends and family) to predict the sex of the future baby. And 9 out o 10 I was right. I don't believe in magic but it's statistically weird. Wait and see for my next prediction in July. I also am interested in so-called Family constellation. If one want to know why some relations between family members are awkward it seems to help.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Constellations). It looks like a universum connection. I still must try that out.
Do you think the benefits of religion outweigh its harm? If people would stick to the simple rules - which are rather universal - I think they could be beneficial. If they start thinking that somebody else is needed to connect then it's harmful. Especially the idea of solidarity and hospitality is common to all religions. It also can make one humble in relation to the universe (or nature). But the it must be limited to personal experiences and certainly not end up in obligations.
I’d listen to your friends’ visions, but my tolerance ends with “loves Putin.”
9/10 correct predictions are definitely statistically weird. I’m not too familiar with family constellations, but I looked into it, and I think there’s a lot of validity in the idea. I don’t know enough yet, but the skeptics who explain that the positive outcomes from the therapy come from suggestion and empathy makes sense. That being said, since the process draws from indigenous spiritual mysticism could mean that the outcomes vary depending on a person’s cultural background. Either way, I’d be open to trying it. Sometimes, I’m too western and analytical, and I think there’s more good in just experiencing these mystical experiences rather than trying to prove they’re something else.
And my experience with Santa Claus and religion isn’t much different from yours. We come from a uniquely long line of atheists. You also got me to read the God Delusion when I was 12 or 14 years old haha.
There’s a lot to unpack here. I’m especially interested in the different versions of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s “Africa Diaries.” I can’t remember if I read the book or just learned about it. It was a long time ago. Either way, I’d be interested to learn how the different versions came across.
As for the “non-religious regimes caused more harm than religious regimes” debate, I’ll just stay out of it. I’m interested in the psychology of religion and why people are drawn to it. That’s when we find the common tools and techniques religious and political leaders use to make people believe in something and to galvanize them. My goal isn’t to dismantle anyone’s belief system but to help people understand it and question it.
Most profound trip? From South Sudan, where one evening with nothing else to do we went to look at a local woman's guinea worm exiting from her ankle, to Frankfurt for a couple of days and on to Haiti with a short layover in Miami. Contrasts that violent and quick cause the mind to shut down, reboot, and continuously replay the last Muzak song heard on an elevator.
Is religion good? Has it caused any good in the world? Depends on the religion. If slavery was a bad thing, Christianity forced its abolition. Christian missionaries in Leopold's Congo spread the truth about what he was doing there and forced him to give it up. And I seem to recall that REVERAND Dr. Martin Luther King was a Christian.
In contrast, the anti-religion regimes during the 20th century left a bloodbath unparalleled in history.
So, despite whatever anecdotal experiences one may have endured in Sunday School as a child, I'd say yes, give religion a chance. And if you are worried about those perverted priests, you better pull you kids out of public schools, because every few days there is another crime story about a hot 22 year old gym teacher ruining some 17 year old kid for life.
Was this experience in Sudan during a similar time as your “Switter: An Undocumented Immigrant, Part 3” article?
And you bring up some other valid points about the benefits of religion, but I think it’s important to highlight it wasn’t just missionaries who exposed the truth, but journalists such as Edmund D. Morel, Roger Casement, and Henry Stanley.
The truth could have come out without religion, but convincing Europeans that people in Africa and the America were savages could not have been without religion.
And when it comes to anti-religion regimes during the 20th century leaving a bloodbath unparalleled in history, I’d highlight that the many of those deaths weren’t because of their lack of religion, but the need for power and control — the same reasons “religion” caused so many bloodbaths.
That particular trip was before South Sudan’s independence from Khartoum and just after Aristide took over power in Haiti.
Missionaries in Congo documented the atrocities and risked their livelihoods to circulate their reports. They were the people on the ground who saw the atrocities taking place during Leopold’s “ownership” of the territory. At the time, Edmund Morel was a clerk in a London shipping company and saw the shipping manifests of inbound and outbound cargo from Congo to Belgian ports. Ivory and rubber in; guns and explosives out. He guessed the connection to the slave-like conditions under which the resources were extracted and helped build the case
I don’t think I’d include Henry Stanley on a list of the good guys. He was a paid agent of Leopold, who hired him under the guise of scientific exploration, but actually spent his efforts getting local chiefs gunned up and drunk before signing over their sovereignty. Some sources say he convinced over 450 traditional leaders to become Leopold’s vassals.
One of the more accessible accounts of Leopold’s crimes in Congo is “King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa.” The author, Adam Hochschild, estimated as many as 10 million deaths related to Leopold’s crimes in Congo. Primary sources are hard to obtain, because when Leopold sold his Congo to the Belgian government, his minions burned most of the records and documentation in his archives.
For years I’ve collected books on Congolese history, but they are mostly adventure genre accounts. One of the most unexpected books I discovered was Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s “Africa Diaries” written during the year he spent trying to stir up an insurgency in the wake of Congo’s disastrous independence. There are several versions of his diary, but the takeaway for me is his straight up racism. He was working with several individuals who went on to become important Congolese political figures, including Laurent Kabila, in his own way as unsavory as Mobutu, who later became president after the removal of Mobutu Sese Seko. Kabila was eventually assassinated, as often happens to his ilk. Btw, I won an office betting pool by best guessing Mobutu’s death date.
The West has a lot to answer for in its Congo adventures, including the current exploitation of Congolese child miners who are securing the minerals and metals we need for our glorious electric car and iPhone future.
I’ll stand by my blood bath comment. The Marxist, Fascist, and Nazi regimes specifically sought to replace religion with their various formulas for The New Man and Worker Paradises. Nietzsche all but prophesied those ideologies and events when he commented that some of the then new theories that would replace religion would become foundational for a “doctrine that there is no cardinal distinction between man and animal” [that] will demoralize humanity throughout the West; it will lead to the rise of “barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods”—” And he was a true believer in those theories, so apparently the rise of barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods was a feature, not a bug in his view. He expected the events would start to take place within a generation, which put the start date around 1904, so he was a few years off in predicting WWI and the 1917 Russian Revolution.