Into the Void

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

This would be funny if it weren’t so plausible.

“Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work,” Carson said. “What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that ‘gravity waves’ and ‘gravitons’ are just secular words for ‘God can do whatever He wants.’”
–Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry.

“Vocatus atque non vocatus… deus aderit
Called or not called , GOD will be present.”
– Inscription on Gravestone of Professor Dr. Carl G. Jung, Kusnacht, Switzerland
Quoted from Heaven’s Register

Have you read any Jung? Jung was a medical doctor whose father was a philospher and pastor. Jung believed that God is not “out there” but is inside us all. God is our subconscious mind! You feel deep down what is right, now don’t you?

Jung pointed out that God evolved morally over the course of biblical history. That’s right, God got better and better. He had to, to keep up with his children’s moral evolution.

Being the firstborn is a curse for a lot of reasons, and it didn’t start with that whole “Dad forgot to paint the lintels” thing.

It can be deduced from the concept of a morally evolving God that Jesus Christ was the manifestation of this evolution. the “God made flesh.” God hoped that a physical manifestation would convince the Pharisees, the NT version of the Religious Right, to evolve too. It didn’t work, though. The Pharisees, like any hierarchical structure heavenly or temporal, were notoriously inflexible. Anything the Pharisees disagreed with was a sin, Evil, abomination. As a child Jesus was almost stoned for breaking one of the old rules.

If God is within us, then the fight between good and evil is going on inside us too. In Jung’s words, “from the psychological point of view demons are nothing other than intruders from the unconscious, spontaneous irruptions of unconscious complexes into the continuity of the conscious process.”

Here’s a simplification derived from Alan Watts‘ Tribute to Carl Jung. Satan isn’t in me, it can’t be, because I am Good. The Evil and the hate must be over there in you! (That’s the non-self-aware speaking, the one with Blind Faith and no reason.)

Look in your heart. Both good and evil are right there inside your own subconscious, making you act out their presence. Like a projector you are shining your own ugly thoughts onto the blank screens of the A-theists. This is the psychology of evil.

And until you discover your self-contradictions, you will always hate anyone who disagrees with you.

As for me, I’m not afraid of the guru. I’m afraid of the people who threaten me with eternal torture in his name.

Click for larger picture.

RealMagick Article: The Seven Shaman Principles by Serge Kahill King

Thought for the Day:

Hallucination means “your dream doesn’t match my dream.”

“Cosmic Love is absolutely Ruthless and Highly Indifferent: it teaches its lessons whether you like/dislike them or not.”
– Dr. John C. Lilly, “The Dyadic Cyclone”

quoted on John C. Lilly Homepage

Technorati: John+C+Lilly cosmic+love John+Lilly

Speaking of the screwfly, remember the big push to eradicate the screwfly back in the 60s or 70s? This fly lays its eggs on an open sore, the maggots hatch and go through a series of instars, pupate and become flies. The flesh is further damaged by this activity, making more open sores for more flies. Screwflies can devour an infested animal in a matter of days. They also infest babies eyes, so there was a huge effort to control them. This is a fascinating story about using pheromones to exterminate a species.

Ok, since you asked… The screwfly gets its name by its mating habits. When screwflies mate, they line up head-to-tail. The female emits a pheromone that triggers the male to turn around - hence screwfly - and then they mate. To control screwflies, entomologists came up with a chemical that interfered with the female’s chemical message. Instead of turning around, the male happily mated with her head. Sounds like some guys I’ve known.

This sort of thing was the basis of an interesting sci-fi story in which aliens who wanted to colonize the Earth sprayed something that brought out the aggressive component of male sexual desire and suppressed the sexual component. All of the women were killed, of course. Too bad it didn’t turn the women into human Preying Mantises instead.

Here’s a fun parasite: the Guinea worm. These 3-foot-long parasites have been with us for so long that some Egyptian mummies have them. They feed only upon humans.

You get guinea worms by drinking contaminated water. The worms then chew their way out and orient themselves so that their genitals dangle outside the flesh, usually the flesh of the foot, but they can really show up in any part of the body. The lesion burns like mad, so sufferers douse it with cold water to ease the pain. In the parts of the world where the Guinea worm is found, the sufferers recontaminate the water supply.

So now you have a three-foot long worm embedded in your body. The locals used to burn the exposed parts with cigarettes to try to kill the worm. Unfortunately, this often resulted in infection or even a massive allergic reaction when the three-foot long worm died. The worms are more safely removed by wrapping the exposed parts around a small stick then slowly drawing the worm out over days or weeks. The medical symbol the Rod of Asclepius may represent this procedure.

The caduceus with its two snakes is similar to the Rod of Asclepius, but is probably a symbol of wisdom rather than of medicine in particular.

The snake is a symbol of wisdom in cultures where knowledge is encouraged. In cultures where Blind Faith is enforced, the snake is Evil Incarnate. Serpent knowledge is the source of Original Sin, and it is knowledge that brings about the Fall. In this mythology, our progenitor Adam is infested with guinea worms. They can’t possibly have evolved into human parasites from something else, right?

Damn, there I go spouting heresy again. Burn the witch!

An apple a day keeps the doctor away!

Rivers Source Botanicals Retail/Wholesale

As a psychiatric patient^w^w shaman wannabe^w^w armchair anthropologist, I am very interested in the varieties of religious experience, to steal a title from psychologist William James. More precisely, I’m interested in different paths to epiphany just as much as I am interested in the content of the epiphanies. The content, you see, is determined by your cultural expectations. (Boring.) The fact that we are wired for bliss amazes me.

But I’m totally off-topic here, aren’t I?

I wanted to put in a plug for Rivers Source Botanicals. They have an excellent selection of heritage plants and seeds to help you create that special healing garden.

The flower pictured here is St. John’s Wort, a plant that is still used medicinally in Europe to treat depression. We can get it in health food stores, but your doctor isn’t likely to prescribe it. RSB often has SJW seeds in stock, along with echinacea, several types of cactus, and many beautiful flowers that you aren’t likely to find in the Home Despot. The prices are astonishingly low, too.

I order some heritage seeds from RSB just about every year. I highly recommend them for all your ethnobotanical needs.

Technorati: ethnobotanical shaman cactus St+Johns+Wort religious+experience William+James

Rethinking personal evolution.

Post-modernism is about creating a synthesis encompassing, integrating, and synergizing the existing, mutually exclusive domains of religion and science. A new spiritual paradigm, if you like buzz-words. Most of us have evolved far beyond the pre-industrial, that is, agrarian, monotheistic religions. Blind faith stopped being relevant before WWII, so you practically have to drop out of modern society to avoid moving to the next level. But don’t tell the poor devils unless you want a bloody Crusade right here in the US.

The atheists would claim that we have a god-shaped hole in our heads that we must fill with something, and this may be true. Now all the geeks don’t know what to do with this need for spirituality - or even exactly what it is that they’re needing!

KW has some great ideas, but he expressed an opinion in an interview that evolution is a sudden transformation rather than a process of gradual adaptation to the environment. I don’t agree that intermediate, incomplete forms are necessarily incompatible with survival. The universe doesn’t need miracles, *we* do.

To me, this idea that the Universe will bring you whatever you want if you are spiritual sounds a whole lot like the Protestant Work Ethic. If you work hard enough or if you believe hard enough, God will grant you grace. And all of your basest desires.

Look around you. There are a very few beacons shining above a sea of ignorance. Check out SoundsTrue. There are some excellent materials there - you just have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

In my opinion, we will achieve enlightenment only when humanity physically evolves enough to provide us with appropriate organs for it. I’m just burning karma until then.

Darwin loves you, man.

Technorati: post-modernism protestant+work+ethic blind+faith atheist transformation law+of+attraction burning+karma sea+of+ignorance spiritual monotheism pre-industrial darwin

Thought for the Day:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn
Quoted by Gary Craig in the EFT Insights Newsletter (July 6, 2007)

EFT emo

By way of BeliefNet:

[The] defilements are like a cat. If you feed it, it will keep coming around. Stop feeding it, and eventually it will not bother to come around anymore.

-Ajahn Chah, “Still Forest Pool”
From “365 Buddha: Daily Meditations,” edited by Jeff Schmidt. Reprinted by arrangement with Tarcher/Putnam, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.