h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Anyway...I'd sooner have Hitchens than Dawkins for my eulogy:
http://www.slate.com/id/2165033/entry/2165039/

I once ran into an ex-Mormon too. Apparently the dogma is that 'pure' Mormons pray for the souls of 'impure' heathens (that's the rest of us) to prevent us from burning hell (where God sends us because he loves us).

Of course, Mormons aren't allowed to smoke, drink, have 'the sex' or do most of the other things that ordinary teenagers do. That means that if the person who prayed for you has had a sly fag (cigarette, for American readers) behind the bike sheds and not confessed it, your prayer is invalid.

I actually found myself hoping that whoever prayed for me, if anyone has, might have had a quick drink beforehand. Pascal must be turning in his grave.

Gif

I used to live next door to a Mormon mission house when I was young. Young Mormons are expected to do a couple of years mission work before they become Elders (No wait - the adolescents are all Elders, the grown-ups are all Bishops). They were nice, clean-cut, corn-fed American boys. The only trouble we had was when they first moved in and had the habit of flinging open the window at 6.30am and shouting "I feel Great! I feel fine! Praise the Lord for this beautiful day!" Give them their due - they stopped as soon as my dad had a polite word.

The other thing I remember is that they weren't meant to eat 'candy bars'. My dad ran a shop, and every so often one of them would come in. look around furtively, buy a Mars bar and stuff it right down in one.

Oh...and Kirk Anderson, the famous 'Manacled Mormon' taught me yoyo tricks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_McKinney

Down the road we had Korean Moonies and a few streets down we had the 'Sex for Jesus' bunch.

"the 'Sex for Jesus' bunch"

Why wasn't I informed? Hallelujah, I'm saved!

Gif

>> Religion has no reasoned arguments. <<

And there-in rests much of its attraction. One of the problems I have with 'fundamentalist atheists' - especially science based ones like Dawkins - is their apparent inability to appreciate anything that doesn't add up.
"Quantification is not a pre-requisite of Qualification." I said that. But nobody understood me.


~jwf~

Et tu Taliesin?
God, why is everybody getting picky-picky on me.

>> ...'religious feelings' are, like any other feelings, entirely subjective, personal matters...<<

Yes they are. And yes you are correct, I should have been more explicit and said that organised religions "arise and thrive" because they deviously exploit those 'needed' personal feelings on an industrial scale.

peace
~jwf~

>> Some believers of other faiths *do* mind. In fairness to them, they now restrict the practice to the ancestors of church members...<<

That's a relief. Seriously.
I may not have a religion but I am aware of the very real powers of a 'natural force' (perhaps only human in source and scope) which for lack of a better name is called sympathetic magic. I do not someone sticking pins in my voodoo doll likeness or praying for me. I consider both actions so well beyond a violation of privacy as to be verging on psychic rape.

~jwf~

>> Anyway...I'd sooner have Hitchens than Dawkins for my eulogy:
http://www.slate.com/id/2165033/entry/2165039/ <<

OK OK Already. I promise to read it when I get thru Dawkins. Trouble is I'm finding it necessary to antidote it all with a simultaneous re-reading of Douglas Adams, Hunter Thompson's 'Generation of Swine' and a delightfully naive 1970s 'History of the Mayan Peoples'. I honestly find myself caught up between genuflecting and cutting someone's heart out.

~jwf~

>> ...Kirk Anderson, the famous 'Manacled Mormon' taught me yoyo tricks. <<

I'm afraid I can't tell if that is a wonderfully true celebrity coincidence story or some oblique metaphor for the obviously well-rounded religious environment in which you were obviously happily and profitably raised.

~jwf~

Perhaps those 'needed' religious feelings are neither religious nor needed.

If we are talking about the feeling of 'transcendence', I suggest this is not actually a requirement, but more of an innate human characteristic, which spontanteously arises when need, and thought of need, are set aside. I further suggest even atheists have this kind of feeling, although they don't feel compelled to clothe it in religious garb

Some forms of experience deemed religous feeling are, as I suggested previously, related to neural states. Some epileptics, for example, report profoundly ecstatic religious feelings, and apparently similar feelings can be induced in non-epileptics by means of magnetic fields. I could possibly find a link or two to some online articles, if you're interested.

Religious feelings are one thing, but the demonstrated actions of most religious people are quite another. Religious thinking is, argueably, deluded at best, lethal at worst. I think Dawkins and many others have made this point quite clear, and I fully agree.

I agree with your point about organized religions' exploitation of reported religious feelings. Especially miracles. They just love miracles. Also consider the various group rituals designed to foster and reinforce cultish modes of thought and behaviour. These often invoke emotional behaviours deemed 'religious feelings' by the gullible flock.

Oh, 'A Generation of Swine' is marvellous.

I've come to the bit in Dawkins about original sin - the part that all the learned theologians are complaining about. The criticism by McGrath and others - insofar as I understand it - is that Dawkins has misrepresented teaching on original sin. Firstly - I'm not convinced of that. He may not have covered all the possible variants of teaching...but then theologians disagree. Secondly...it's a tiny. tiny part of the book (a page and a half?). Are they really basing their entire rebuttal on such a trivial detail? Thirdly, I'm no expert - but I doubt that Christianity (or religion in general) stands or falls on this arcane point.

I'm not especially concerned whether it's 1000 or 1001 angels who can dance on the had of a pin.

There are certainly some people who simply do not be able to have mystical experiences (union with the divine, oneness, interconnectedness of all things etc.). I've certainly never had one, but more pertinently, various Catholic holy orders have a long tradition of striving for such a state of mind, with actually very well codified menas of achieving it. Sleep and food deprivation, (for a few) self-flagellation, monotonous simple hard labour and repetition of ritual tasks, while all officially aimed at rejection of the material world, can all work towards this state of mind. And yet there are writings from mournful monks who dedicated a lifetime towards throwing themselves into such things and never saw results.

A significant number of anecdotes regarding so-called mystical experience seems to more closely describe symptoms of neuro-physiological abberation. As I said, such symptoms are expressed in certain forms of epilepsy, and can apparently be induced by select magnetic fields carefully 'applied' to the head of an otherwise normal individual.

Regarding the mournful monks: Almost all organized religions teach and practise some form of mind/body 'method', intended to provoke or induce what the individual is conditioned to regard as 'religious feelings'.

I'm reminded of the hapless monks in Monty Python's 'Holy Grail'

Religious practises have frequently been associated with altered brain states. Social conditioning and ritual is perhaps the most insidious, but methods also include the use of psychotropic drugs as well as physical deprivation, stress, and sensory entrainment.

But since the feeling is entirely subjective, and reports are necessarily anecdotal, the question remains: By what criteria do we determine which of these kinds of experience actually is a 'union with the divine'?

Perhaps each experience has a degree of legitimacy. Perhaps none have any.

It may be actual mystical experience, like enlightenment, or quantum theory, is not amenable to our mental grasp, and is therefore difficult to consider as experience at all

I´ve read recently an experiment about the magnetic waves of the brain (alfa, beta...)when someone is on meditation. Some religious and non-religious people were in the test. The activity of meditation is connected in ANY brain to the same waves. Waves that induce the person to a very relaxed state. The one just before falling into Morpheo arms.
It is a problem of labels. To name religious what for others is just emotional, brain activity.
This is interesting:
A Spanish monk from the XVI century, wrote three poems about his mistical experiences. The poems are very famous because they can be read eroticaly. (He even had troubles with the Inquisición)
the thing: he describe the union with God in terms of two lovers. God is the man and the woman is the soul.

The marriage/lovers analogy has a much longer history than that: its the Catholic interpretation of the Song of Songs/Song of Solomon.

You are right. The poet referred to it to defend himself before the Inquisition Court.

Its a very strange thing though, to read a Catholic monk's erotic poetry written from the point of view of a woman.

The funny thing is that he did not intend to write poetry but to prepare some texts to be sung and meditated upon by the other monks. His mates.
He is San Juan de la Cruz, and those poems are: Dark night of the soul, Spiritual song and Alive flame of love.
He was in jail.
I wonder why sex is so troublesome for most religions.

>>There are certainly some people who simply do not be able to have mystical experiences (union with the divine, oneness, interconnectedness of all things etc.). I've certainly never had one,

You should try smoking more of The Blessed Lamb's 'Erb Beloved of Rastafar-I.

I'm (semi)serious here. Mystical experiences are ten-a-penny, and I'm surprised you've never had one. Myself, I'm quite capable of what others might call 'spiritual' experiences, eg in art galleries or when listening to music. It's just that I don't need to invent 'spirits' to explain them. I know I've got soul .

St Theresa of Avila also had erotic visions, didn't she? And it shouldn't be a surprise that Sr Thérèse de Lisieux first experienced visions when puberty broke. Hildegaard of Bingen, on the other hand, saw god whenever she had a migraine. William Blake too had migraines and regarded them as mystical visions. (When I hace one, I just get the pain and vomiting without the free lightshow ).

And see this:
http://www.slate.com/id/2165033/entry/2165038/
The last ten or so lines are key.

"Mystical experiences are ten-a-penny,"

Not for everyone. I've not had one. And I know you are talking of non-spiritual such things but I really can't say I've had anything like that. There's been a few odd experiences but with hindsight I can see why and how they came about.

But then that plugs back in to what mariangus said :
"To name religious what for others is just emotional, brain activity"
Maybe I experienced the same input or feedback loop as you did but I just didn;t process it in the same way.

After all, there is no reason I can see why mystical experiences should be the one common unchanging attribute of what it means to be human.