Topic: Religion is a compulsive liars syndrome

I once made a study of all the world's scriptures; I've read the whole Bible, all of the Talmud, the Qu'ran, most of the Hindu & Buddhist scriptures, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I've known people from all of these religions who have said of the great and glorious truths in their particular books, but though I read all of them, none of them really touched me very profoundly. I've sometimes envied religious people that; that they can draw such hope and strength from their faith in these life-giving verses.

But then I'll go for a hike in the woods, find a proper clearing where the light falls just so through the leaves, sit down in the dirt, breathe deeply, close my eyes and simply be. It's strange, when you really do that earnestly, you realize just how blunted our day-to-day life is. We have to blunt it, we have to shield ourselves from it, because the true beauty of the world around us is so incredible it would overwhelm us if we tried to walk around in it every moment. So we have most of our brains dedicated to filtering it out; we cannot stare directly into the sun, and we cannot truly experience reality constantly without a similarly blinding effect on our souls.

It's in those moments, when I reflect on the intricate web of relationships that bind everything together, how we all create each other every moment, that I realize that I do have a similar respite to the religious. It's just not as easily accessible as something I can keep on my desk, that's all. Or, is it? It's something you can do anywhere, anytime; you could do it now. In those moments, there is a great miracle that occurs. In those moments, we can touch the very source of meaning and being and feel to our very souls what it means to live.

I know the ecstasy you're talking about, Ayman, and though we reach it by different ways, I'm just glad we can all experience that, however we do. So for that alone, if nothing else, I'll praise the Qu'ran, the Bible, or anything else that allows any person to feel the closeness of divinity and the strength of the bonds that bind us one to another.

Science and faith are like the shoes on your feet--you can get farther with both than you can with just one.

Some people distinguish between christians, buddhists, islamists, new agers and so on. But I have a theory that they all suffer from basically the same pathology

The result I see is that religion is a compulsive liars syndrome

Religion must be stopped before it cripples the whole of mankind!

We don't need a new religion nearly so much as we need a new way of seeing the world.

Culture is nothing more than the ritualised and habitualised behaviour of a given group; language, ceremony, celebrations, etc. You an only become habituated to something that you do repeatedly.

do you absolutely have to give up the bad old salvationist religion in order to have a changed mind?

Anyway, the crux of the matter is, do you absolutely have to give up the bad old salvationist religion in order to have a changed mind?

The mental activity normally associated with Beta waves is the active awareness state that we experience from day to day at work and play. There are many external chemicals that can be induced into the brain to produce this state and they are known generally as stimulants. Some of those stimulants are small amounts of alcohol, the nicotine in cigarettes, caffeine in coffee and tea, diet pills, and amphetamines (which are illegal).

Alpha Brainwaves add images and visuals; you could view this as escape from reality. Too much alpha activity leads to excessive escapes and too many daydreams. Too little makes us human machines:– in motion, but without dreams that direct. "Just right," adds perfect porridge bowls balanced for healthier lives.

Theta Brainwaves engage inner and intuitive subconscious. You’ll find theta in places where you hold memories, sensations and emotions. Sometimes, we also store secrets there, which we block out in times of pain, to survive what we feel unprepared to fix.

Out of all the different types of brain waves there is a very interesting range called the Alpha-Theta border. I've already mentioned that the Alpha was half the story, well the Theta wave is the other half of a state of mind that brings about creativity, intelligence, and a host of other abilities the brain is capable of doing when properly stimulated.

It is a state where the central nervous system reduces input from the peripheral nervous system. The lowering of sensory input serves to normally protect the central nervous system from sensory overload caused by stress or physical damage.

Without these outside functions for the brain to control the brain expands its functioning powers. The normally unused portion of the brain becomes active and performs at maximum capacity. This range is between 7-8 hertz and this is not so surprising when you learn that the resonant frequency of the earth and ionosphere is approximately 7.5 hertz. Our brains evolved within this dynamic field and used it as a standard to function on. The mind experiences the body in a half-in half-out state of sleep or detachment. The feeling is of being conscious of all things around you but the body being in deep relaxation.

Many cultures discovered this and the methods to achieve this state naturally and artificially. Many of the worlds religions were founded on reaching this state and devised strict disciplines to do so. The Alpha-Theta range occurs during reverie, hypnogogic imagery, meditation, and by self-hypnosis.

...Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Seutonius, Thallus and Lucian...

What seems beyond dispute is that there was a Jesus of some kind, and he was crucified.

Everything else is open to question, but if this is rejected, then intellectual honesty requires you also reject the historicity of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and basically anything and everything prior to c. 1500 CE.

Over the next century, several hundred gospels were written, all with their own take on the story.

By comparison, the gospel accounts alone constitute a veritable orgy of evidence by ancient standards.

The earliest of the gospels is Mark; we have a fragment of Mark (Pilate asking Jesus, "What is truth?") that dates to 70 CE. In fact, it's probably even older than that.

...Jesus was a peasant Cynic sage who told people to abandon civilization and live together in small, egalitarian communities... And so, in one of the great ironies of history, a poisoned dagger poised at civilization's heart becomes its staunchest defender.

I would be grateful for more precise references. I'd love to look them up.

Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from the City.

Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

They affirmed, however, that the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verse a hymn to Christ as to a god, and bound themselves to a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft, adultery, never to falsify their word, not to deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up.

The Christians . . . worship a man to this day--the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. . . . [it] was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws.

But these comparisons with Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar are wholly specious. Only one Alexander is alleged to have been Great, only one Julius is alleged to have been Caesar, but Yeshuas and Messiahs we have in abundance. No one has taken the time and effort to develop reasonable theories about why the characters of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great might have been fabricated, as they have with Jesus Christ. If they had, i would listen to them as well.

Julius Caesar's writings tell a clear story in a linear fashion. They are written in no-nonsense Latin prose, the most straightforward we have left. They require us to believe the Romans invaded Gaul. The comparison with the four standard gospels is stark. They are full of contradictions and mystical language, and they ask us to believe in the supernatural.

You are asking me to believe that the four standard gospels came first, and all the Nag Hammadi gospels were spun out later by the overactive imaginations of some renegade Christians. There's no evidence for this, and lots of reasons to suppose the exact reverse is true. Your mind is in the grip of a conspiracy theory.

Dude, what they possess in quantity, they sure lack in quality.

This is a radical stance to defend. Not even the most conservative Christians i know are prepared to say that Matthew and Luke are not heavily dependent on Mark, or that Mark dates earlier than 70 CE. And this is significant, because the letters of Paul, which in many places refer to a mystical, all-encompassing, Gnostic-style "Christ", and barely mention an historical "Jesus", can be dated earlier.