Hi Chumley 

Im glad you mentioned the name of Aleister Crowley - the Golden Dawn - the Beast.
This is a character that iam very cautious of and his name needs mentioning - this character hangs around and there is no Glory in his literature or ilk.

This is my opinion of his transgressions.


As to the mindset of a nation .. well i hear what you say .. our Real world, right now does not seem to have real magic in it at least in the outer mudane world unless it is looked for.  Why then should it be revered?

good question! i say we are in the Intellectual age possibly at the start of combining our intellect with our not so distant past Spiritual age.  So there is an earning for the Spirit to come to the front and people are intuitively tuning into the magic as a natural process.  What you think Chumley?

I say superstition must make way for the real thing.

I'm going to speak first here, although I know that Don would.  Brendan, people of faith should not be put down as those who believe in the unreal or imaginary.  I truly pity your interpretation of faith in God, as you take it so literally with literal interpretation of text and miracles - you miss the larger picture.

Atheists may be the least trusted simply because they are thought of believing in nothing.  This of course may or may not be true.  But he who believes in nothing, has no morals, no real reason to do anything.  True faith in God challanges us to aspire to a higher ideal.  To better ourselves and help others.  Forget the "sword and sorcery" aspect for a while. 

Belief in a higher power is not foolish.  How much does your own beliefs give you comfort during times of stress or tragedy?  Think about that.


Matthew

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Hi Chumley 

Im glad you mentioned the name of Aleister Crowley - the Golden Dawn - the Beast.
This is a character that iam very cautious of and his name needs mentioning - this character hangs around and there is no Glory in his literature or ilk.

This is my opinion of his transgressions.
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Other than the fact that he was a self-deluded weirdo (and a self-aggrandizing liar to boot) what harm did the man do (outside of inspiring tens of thousands of people to waste their time reading his "literature"?)
You make him sound like somebody SIGNIFICANT. But if he was in any way important, how so?
What were his "transgressions"?

B-man

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1.) Speaking of which, if you don't even believe in an afterlife, and are unwilling to open your mind to the thought that OH MY GOD, YOU MIGHT BE MISINFORMED, why are you here?
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Good question.
All my life, I've been worried that my death might
NOT bring me unconscious oblivion. In fact, we now
have physicists who claim science will prove the existence of other dimensions within 10 years.
What might these "other dimensions" imply?
Perhaps I'm here, to assess the level of threat that I'm dealing with. If there IS a non-physical reality, and a "God" - then I'm NOT truly in control of my own destiny. SOMEONE ELSE IS. I happen to find that disturbing, I don't trust other people and never have. I prefer to rely on #1, I can always trust MYSELF not to f**k me over. So, you might say I'm here to "arm" myself against the "God and afterlife" possibility as best as I can. (Should "God" and the afterlife be scientifically DISPROVEN - a very unlikely prospect, BTW - I would frankly be happy with the development. But they won't be disproven, at least in my lifetime... so here I am!)

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2.) Are you here just to bring down those who are genuinely attempting to seek their personal truths?
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Not at all. Are you?
BTW, what is a personal "truth" (do you say there
is no objective reality then?) "Hypothesis" might
be more appropriate...

B-man

Hi chum,

Perhaps a belief in "magic" or whatever a person might want to label it simply inspires other people's trust because it implies that the "believer" actually has an ability to trust.  

To know that a person has the ability "to trust" may have an evolutionary advantage in that it creates a possible unconscious assumption by the other that the "believer" is one with whom a person might be able to gain a rapport, a give and take which might be useful or supportive in some way.  

Of course, this is a dry and humorless interpretation, but that is the manner in which the scientific community often feels compelled to reduce our most inspired and most complex experiences of life.

best to you as always, blink

I recall a tale about Crowly and his friends regularly and adequately dosed themselves on heroin and cannabis, thus establishing a sense of the world in which mysticism might occur. They were attempting to perform a spell in which the odor of roses was one of the outcomes. At the crucial moment Crowly waved his hands and there was a huge Crash! The entire toilet assembly from the flat above them had come crashing down through the floor, to spill and distribute an odor, but not quite that of roses.

Why our culture is the way it is is because it feels good. When we are insecure, we tend to look for things that reduce stress.

That which reduces feelings of stress is a Negative Reinforcer.  Negative Reinforcers  reduce some sensation and make you feel better (aspirin removes headache). They differ from  Positive Reinforcers. Positive (it gives or increases something) Reinforcers Increase stimulus and give better feeling. (Win the Lottery, get a prize.)

Don't confuse negative reinforcers with punishers. Negative Punishers (take away pleasure, "You're grounded, can't go out.") and Positive Punishers (Give unpleasant feeling, Slap!)

Negative reinforcers are extremely powerful. Punishers tend to inhibit the last behavior, which is to doubt the religious system, while belief in someone else to save us reduces the stress of confusion and self doubt. As a result, we negatively reinforce the tendency toward creating or adopting some kind of organizational system to handle perplexing beliefs.

If you wear a hat to the races and win occasionally while losing many times, the power of winning will stick with you, while you'll generally forget the losses, because it is unpleasant (punishing) to recall them. Association with winning and the hat typically lead to  "My lucky hat", even though overall you're losing. This is human psychology. Thus, to the degree that an occasional word of Scripture makes you feel better, you'll tend to become a believer, and you'll put aside all the other areas of life in which Scriptures seem to be inadequate, because these are punishing in their nature.

In modern American life, the adrenaline rush available at a revival meeting, where we all receive "Salvation and Strawberry Fields Forever,  Amen"  is a fantastic positive reinforcer, and by removing our fears of the future, even if only for a moment, it is also a negative reinforcer.

To go the next step and be "reborn" adds a level of attainment, generally associated with the positive reinforcement of achievement of a light trance, which is also the positive reinforcere associated with Hindu and Buddhist revivalist experiences.  Major steps into trance are chanting, singing, dancing, meditating, sacramental drugs (wine, annointing oils, ganja, peyote, and such), all of which act mor or less the same way. Trance feels good and is a positive reinforcer, while pushing anxieties and confusion out of the mind is a negative reinforcer, so revivals hook lots of people.

This has nothing to do with the validity of Scripture. However, every major scientist either has a belief in a "Cause" of the universe, like my view of God which happens to be expressed as a statistical tendency, or the Big Bang, or its equivalent  (I'm not a member of the Big Bang Gang, I prefer a distributed mini-Bang model) where their faith begins with belief in an initial creation due to the Principles of Physics, so that the world is nice and orderly.

Beyond this, to actually go into trance and do spiritual work with the dead, or to meditate and attain any of the permanent levels of spiritual advancement such as satchitananda, quieting the mind,  sarvastarka samadhi etc, is also a powerful positive reinforcer, further creating belief in that associated religious system. However, here too we see the same psychological effect. If you started as a Hindu and reached a trance state, then it would tend to fixate your beliefs into Hinduism, ignoring inconsistencies. That's the same effect of reinforcement and psychology, not a product of the Hindu philosophical system. If you did it through drugs, then you might wind up viewing LSD as the Messiah (as many people proclaimed in the 1960 - 1970 era).

Atheists are professional doubters, Boat Rockers, Ripple Makers, and as such, they deny the sources of spiritual joy that reinforce others. Their beliefs tend to make True Believers feel upset and ill at ease, because they take away the comfortable feeling of knowing everything. (Feeling ill at ease is a positive punisher.) To a True Believer, it's rather like a political party that proclaims Tyranny to be the best path, and which would promptly be cast out of our system by dedicated believers in a Republican government.  (Casting them out gets rid of the annoyance and feels good, hence it is a negative reinforcer.)

So - to answer the question directly, we are superstitious because it seems to feel good, and allows us to not have to deal with things we fail to understand, and which bother us. It is a purely psychological phenomenon, based on the manner in which we handle reinforcers and punishers, and it has nothing at all to do with spirits, black flies, God, Satan, or the phases of the moon.

d
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Well, that's as good an analysis as I've heard yet,
Dave. Too bad it IS that way...

B-man