A question on Armageddon

But non-extraordinary ones require less than that. Jesus of Nazareth was one of at least five messianic claimants in the first century, the first being Judas of Galilee who led a tax revolt against the Romans in 6 c.e. Then there wwer Theudas, Simon of Peraea and Athronges. The apocalyptic fever of the Book of Daniel was in the air, and it was natural for people to get it into their heads that they were called to duty by God. Atheist Bart Ehrman, whose academic credentials and scholarship are impressive, has written a book Did Jesus Exist? in which he provides extensive arguments for the affirmative. That happens to be the consensus of most scholars who have studied the matter. There is a fringe group of scholars who think otherwise, but their credentials are far less impressive, and their arguments unconvincing. I'd say having a strong research and publication record qualifies them as reasonable. The main evidence that convinces me is that Jesus, according to His followers, was crucified as a common criminal. That wasn't supposed to happen to the Jewish Messiah, and in fact Deuteronomy 21:23 says such a person would be cursed. Saint Paul tells us that was something that prevented him from accepting Jesus as the Christ until he came up with the sacrifice explanation. So I ask myself, if people were making up a Messiah, especially one copied from some pagan model, why would they make it such a hard sell, when they could have come up with an uncrucified one? The best answer I can come up with is they had been following a man who actually was crucified, and they then had to figure out how to explain it away. And they did a good job!

I don't expect evidence for the existence of an itinerant peasant preacher in a backwater of the Roman Empire to be comparable to that for Julius Caesar--a deified Roman military hero and statesman immortalized on coins and monuments. On Roman monuments, the figure referred to as "Son of God" was Caesar Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar. The evidence provided by most scholars in the field is good enough for me, especially the fact that He is said to have been crucified.

 

Catholics growing up in a modern secular country face a challenge when dealing with church dogma that seems to defy empirical reality. As I said, and I'm sure you've had the same experience: it looks like a wafer and wine before and after the miraculous event. Yet many educated Catholics have a deep emotional attachment to the Church and /or are afraid that if they question such a thing they'll go to hell. Most of them probably don't give it a second thought, since it's not the sort of thing that affects their daily lives in a practical way. It's like chicken soup for the soul. It can't hurt, they think.

 

Some where in my library is a book with the liturgy of a ceremony for communion that is centuries before Christianity. I just have to remember which book it is and I will let you know when, where, and what religion.

 

Thanks for jogging my memory. Of course, a lot would hang on the definition of "communion". If you define it as eating the body and drinking the blood blood of a god, literally or symbolically, that narrows it down considerably.

We can go back to ancient Egypt, 3,000 years ago where cakes consecrated to Osiris were prepared by the priests for use during a secret phase of the Khoiak festival, described in detail on the temple walls at Denderah, and by Plutarch, 1st century C.E.. The festival commemorated the death and return of Osiris, coinciding with the seasonal agricultural cycle. According to Egyptian mythology, Osiris was murdered by his brother Set, who chopped his body into 14-16 pieces (depending on the version). His sister/wife, Isis, reassembled these and resuscitated him, after which he went to rule the underworld and judge the dead. During the festival, priests would prepare cakes shaped like the god, and at the end of the festival, priests and initiates to the Osiris cult would presumably consume them. (I say "presumably" because this phase of the rites was secret. Since recipes I've seen for the cakes include sand, along with wheat, as an ingredient, I wonder if they were actually eaten.)

The parallels to the Christian ritual and myth seem striking. Christian scholars argue that Osiris wasn't really resurrected because he went directly to the underworld without returning to this one. It seems evident from the festival, though, that for the Egyptians the metaphor seems to coincide with the rebirth of wheat. It is also true that "dying, rising gods" of antiquity followed the crop cycle instead of staying resurrected. And brute empiricists would demand a showing that first century Jews were exposed to the pagan myth. Of course, Palestine wasn't exactly isolated from the rest of the Roman world, where the cult of Isis was flourishing. Osiris, by then, had become Serapis, neither a dying nor a rising god. I don't know whether or not the cake ritual was still in use.

There were also the Aztecs, who were unlikely to have had any influence at all on the Jews. After human sacrifices intended to sustain the gods by the tonali (life energy) of the victims, the bodies would be consumed in a cannibalistic feast. The victims weren't thought to be gods, so that part of it isn't the same. Everywhere sacrifice was practiced, though, the remains of the animals were typically sold to the meat markets or otherwise shared with the worshipers, providing an important protein supplement for their diets. And table fellowship was important in reinforcing community among the believers. It's not hard to imagine that something so basic as a common meal with bread and wine was independently invented by Christians seeking rituals to reinforce their bonds.

I find the adoption of such a practice by a community that was originally Jewish to be amazing. Drinking human blood is definitely not kosher! But it was said to be mystical, so that might have made it alright. It did give Christians a bad reputation for as being cannibals. The earliest reference to the Christian practice seems to be Paul's 1 Corinthians 10:16 , dating to the mid-50s C.E. In it, Paul asks: "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?" Later in the same letter (1 Cor. 17: 27-29) he says: "whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord." That would seem to indicate a belief in transubstantiation.

Getting back to Mithras, Mithraic rites apparently involved a feast at which bread and drink were served. Professor Cumont thought this was a continuation of Persian Avesticic rites, involving cakes and haoma (a mildly intoxicating stimulus made from a plant and considered to have aphrodisiac and strengthening properties related to the Indo-Iranian soma. But they apparently ate and drank lots of other things, as well. Floors of the Mithraeum were covered with layers of animal and plant remains left over from the sacred banquet commemorating the meal shared by Mithras and his buddy the sun god, Helios.The Mithraic Ritual
There is no evidence that participants in the mysteries thought they were eating their god or commemorating such an event. Mithras (and the Persian Mithra) seem unlikely prototypes for Jesus, since the former were exceptionally warlike, and according to the myth, never died, let alone being resurrected. I suspect, however, that he may have been a model for the Archangel Saint Michael, acquired during two hundred years in which Palestine was a Persian protectorate.

I'm not one who thinks Jesus was a made up figure based on pagan gods. But after his crucifixion, his followers obviously faced a crisis, and needed to come up with an explanation as to how that could happen to the Messiah. They raided the OT for prophecies, but to come up with the miracles they may also have turned to pagan models. Osiris wasn't the only dying-rising god in town. There were also Tammuz and Attis, who were, like Osiris and Jesus, victim deities. However, like Osiris, their deaths weren't a sacrifice for anything. And their "resurrection" was recurring rather than permanent. Both were subordinate to dominatrix castrating goddesses: Inanna (aka, Ishtar, Astarte) and Cybelle, respectively, who did them in and then regretted it. In no sense do they appear to be "savior" deities. Attis, in particular, wasn't really brought back from the dead. In one version, he was turned into a tree. In another, he was able to move a finger, but nothing else. By the time of Jesus, most Jews already believed in resurrection (the idea caught hold after the Maccabean revolt in the first century BCE, and the Son of Man predicted in the Book of Daniel was expected to bring it about), so there was no need to turn to pagan gods to sell the concept.

 

Point of interest @ charles inauguration. Dark angels were acknowledged along w rest of the crowd. While some mayve found that apalling there are good reasons for it. It shows that some aint in a blind panic abt dark.

 

If I might sum up what I hear you saying, you were disenchanted with the religion you were brought up in, which sounds like mainstream Protestantism, and are generally uncomfortable with trends in the larger society you found yourself in. So you turned to primal religions where you found what you were looking for: magic (quite literally). You say these had "spirituality but not religion" because the wičháša wakȟáŋ said so. And you explored this in yuwipi and inipi ceremonies, the latter of which showed you the flying rattles. The clincher was your marriage to your wife, a healer in the old Philippine tradition who showed you miraculous healings.
Did I get it right?

My reactions:. Modern society has certainly been disenchanted since the good old days. Modernization and secularization are the social science terms for it. Instead of a place where everybody knows your name we have urban anonymity. In place of hunting and subsistence farming, we depend on global markets which are one crisis away from major disruption. In place of personal relations with the tribal chief, we have impersonal, bureaucuratic government (and religion,too). And for meaning and morals, we have existentialism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism. In place of sentiment and emotion, we have cold reason and what Weber called "routinization of charisma". I don't mind it Like the Borg. I think resistance is futile. But I realize some may strongly disagree. In fact there have been people around since Rousseau and Thoreau who rebel against it. What do we call such people? I call them romantics. The dictionary backs me up. romanticism: a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. You say you aren't one, maybe cuz you use a different definition, which is your privilege. (You agreed that words aren't right or wrong, just more or less useful.) But I'm using a standard definition, and that's my prerogative, as well.
TBC

Your description of the inipi ceremony is interesting. Ordinarily, for a non-member of the tribe to participate, you'd have to be approved by the wičháša wakȟáŋ or a previous initiate. You participation in the yuwipi ceremony probably got you in, and I gather your vision quest happened before that. All of these experiences involve ordeals. Prolonged fasting in the wilderness ordinarily has its impact on the human mind, although you claim to be a rare exception. I don't know how far you got into the yuwipi, but that ordinarily involves lots of pain. And the sweat lodge, itself, is usually kept at 100 degrees or more, and can go on for several hours--as opposed to the recommended 20-30 minutes recommended for a sauna. Psychologists tell us that all of these physical things can have impacts on human brain physiology and chemistry. Rhythmic chanting promotes feelings of ecstasy, and the "shared predictable, repetitive rhythms allow interpersonal synchrony between people and may contribute to the release of neurohormones involved in social connection." Likewise, the so-called shammanic state of trance can be triggered by repetitive drumming. (Hamer.1980) The Way of the Shaman.

Did others see the same thing you saw? Those who have visions during the inipi often report orbs, feeling bird wings, or lights. And auto-hypnosis rests on the power of suggestion. You went there seeking a spiritual experience, and you found one. Forgive me for suggesting possible influences of a physical brain on a "non-physical" experience that I didn't even witness, but there is an experimental literature documenting these on other people under similar circumstances.
Andrew B. Newberg (2010) Principles of Neurotheology
https://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132078267/neurotheology-where-religion-and-science-collide
W. Sargant (1957) Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Brainwashing

Getting back to spirituality and religion, you and your wičháša wakȟáŋ may think that the inipi isn't about religion because you "don't care if you come or not, you are always a part of the circle". But anthropologists and sociologists disagree. Of course, the wičháša wakȟáŋ is entitled to use his own definition, but the anthropologists and sociologists are also entitled to use theirs. More than 99.5% of human existence was spent at the hunter-gatherer stage: early humans had to "transcend adversity or die."Humans depended on forming social bonds to survive, and (s)ocial systems depend on transcending the rational." (Hayden, Shamans, Sorcers and Saints. Wiessner (1998) suggested that the willingness of humans to accept indoctrination was origininally adaptive in counteracting tendencies toward self or near kin. Communal rituals and sharing of food, dance, chanting and other rituals are key to this. You participated in three such experiences, not of your own invention but following a long tradition of how to do it and what is means. To say, "No, this isn't religion cuz it's more "spiritual" intimate and emotional than what I experienced my mainline Protestant church" may be a meaningful distinction to you, but it's useful analytically by scholars to recognize the common patterns.

 

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What an objective way of minimalizing my whole life experience. This is an example of what I refer to as the arrogance of Cartesian objectivism. And by objective, I don't mean that you are using objective facts, what I mean is that you have objectified my experience fitting it to what you think it should be.

Yes, you could say I was disenchanted with Christianity. From about the time of my baptismal class at 8 years old, I started seeing contradictions in the teachings. But for many years I tried to keep the enchantment alive, at least until my early teens. The church I went to was fairly progressive, and as a teenager, theologians within the church encouraged me to explore my questions and interest in other religions. I don't know what mainstream is, but I would guess it is more fundamentalist or evangelical than not. Perhaps if I had rebelled against that level of conservatism, I would be a staunch atheist today.

As a teenager I explored many religions and tried to experience them as they would be experienced by a believer. I was on a quest for truth and proof. Before I left for Japan, I had pretty much given up and decided that there was no proof. I became very agnostic. Then along came the 80's and like many hippies, I was a yuppy and didn't know it. I did follow Jerry Rubin's advice but never put the words yuppie and yippie together. My focus became all about money and wealth. And power or influence came with that. Then I met my second wife. I fell head over heals over her. She had some traditional ways and beliefs that I condescendingly---in a masked condescending manner---wrote off as quaint as we civilized people like to say.

Some years later, after the corruption of money and power had ended in my hubris, and my first wife had stolen pretty much all the wealth I had accumulated in Japan, we were living in the Philippines when my second wife's husband passed away. Technically ex-husband, but there is no divorce in the Philippines. There is a long story of all the supernatural weirdness that happened around that event, I may have even told that story somewhere here in HF. There were a lot of things I struggled to explain, but I rationalized them the best I could. The whole event started with a death knock on our window, but no one was there. I knew this as an old European tradition, and thought it really strange that it would happen here. The next day, or the day after we found out he had passed away from rabies. My wife had no idea what a death knock was, and it took me another 10 or 15 years to even find that there is indeed an old Philippine tradition of a death knock. I tried to rationalize everything until the climax of the experience for us---the miraculous healing of my stepdaughter by an indigenous peasant farmer. This happened after numerous doctors (two of whom were close friends) said she could not be healed and would probably need institutionalization. Until then she was a normal 8 year old girl, but at the funeral, she fell into a state that I could only describe as, like a scared animal, or like a zombie with no appetite. She didn't eat, talk, play, or do anything. Western science explained it as the trauma of losing her father, but, their father was never really in their lives. He was a playboy and that was about it. The doctors all agreed that it was very unusual for someone so young to fall into this near catatonic state.

I think I already told you the story about her healing, and how I tried to hide because we did not have much money, but that he didn't want money, only some tobacco and that he said that I am supposed to be a part of this healing. The healing was very simple. We walked into a shallow creek at the end of his property, and my wife and I poured water on her, while this farmer bent down to her head and whispered or blew on her, it was so insignificant I don't even remember. But suddenly she looked up and said, "Mama! Where am I?" That blew my mind.

On the way home, I asked my wife if he explained what was wrong with her when they went in to talk with him. She said that he had two spirit helpers, a snake and some other animal which I forget, and he said that these spirit helpers told her that her father knew she had this gift (the gift of healing that runs through my wife's family), and he needed help to find the other side. She is too young and doesn't know that she has this gift or how to use it, so her soul was stuck wandering around. I had no cultural context to even place this into something meaningful at the time. I had no understanding of a psychopomp. And this was certainly not a post-spanish invasion Philippine custom. The Spanish did not want a repeat of the mistake they did in Mexico, which gave power to the old Mayan priests through Catholicism, so they simply stamped out all those old ways. My wife had never heard anything about that (though since then her ancestors with my help of interpreting what she was being told with my own study of myth, and shamanism etc) now uses spirit journeying in her practice of healing).

But that experience put me back onto my path of searching and trying to find proof. I did spend some time with the Bontoc and the Aeta people--mountain tribes in the Philippines, but I still had the mindset of a Western observer. I still wasn't convinced that there really was something behind their ways. Over the years I found ways to rationalize that and to write off what happened to my stepdaughter, but there were still doubts to my assumptions. In my search, I had already gone through the world religions, and I had no interest in starting over. So I realized that I had to go back in time, and began studying the goddess cults and the old traditions. I had to sift out all the New Age crap, as I wanted my quest to be authentic. Eventually I ran across Eliades' classic, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy. In the first chapter, various things that were happening in my wife's family and the event with our stepdaughter, for the first time, made sense. The more I read, the more I knew I had to try this out, just as I did with meditation as a teenager. So I bought Michael Harner's book and started to experiment. The very first time I tried spirit journeying was a pretty intense experience. MY wife, by the way, had no interest in doing this. She refuses to do anything from a book, or that I tell her to try. But that is another story.

As I continued to experiment, a lot of strange synchronicities would occur. I rationalized what I was experiencing with Jungian psychology. I believed that the drumming and the motiffs I would use would allow me to consciously access my subconscious creating a semi-lucid dreaming like state. I was conscious but I was exploring my subconscious, which ancient people would have interpreted as spirit world.And these methods, being Tungusic methods, allowed me to manipulate archetypal imagery and symbolism as a Tungusic person would. In my case, it was a wolf, for example.

What I couldn't explain as easily is how the information I would gain had real world implications. In this state, I would be told a story and then told to 'look it up,' for example. It might take days or even months, but eventually I would find that the story or name was not something I made up in my own head, but was something that was real. Of course I would write such things off as, maybe I heard that when I was a kid and it was just tucked away in my subconscious, etc etc. But these were always obscure things that it is very unlikely I ever heard, nor did I have any memory of such.

About this time, I had already started working on an early version of my books on philosophy. At this time, I was unsure where it was going to take me. But I felt I needed to begin by going through an exercise of skepticism much like that of Descartes. I was very familiar by this time of the importance of the death-rebirth in religion and shamanism. And I felt I needed to destroy all the preconceived ideas, the beliefs, teachings, social and cultural programming as much as I could possibly do. I called this process a Baptism of Nihilism. To do it sincerely, I knew that I had no idea how I would come out the other end, maybe an atheist or something else, I didn't know. But I was sure that whatever I was left with would be my own true beliefs. I spent a year or two breaking down and destroying every belief I could.

Then things got even stranger. Things would happen, as they do in life, and there would be problems, and we would need help. So I experimented with this new tool I had, and would ask for help. The results were the same as when a Christian prays and claims that god worked a miracle. I tried to treat as coincidences and the universe presenting a synchronicity. However it was often a stretch to do so. For example, my oldest stepson one time cost us a fortune. We fell behind several months on our first and second mortgage. I was very afraid of losing our house. I did a spirit journey and I was told to work hard and do what you have to, and we'll take care of the rest. Somehow we managed to catch up with the first mortgage, but we were still behind on the second. I knew how far behind we were. I needed to call the mortgage company, but I was worried, and decided to spirit journey first. I was told, to call them and ask how much I owe as if I didn't know. I called and they told me, which was the amount I had in the bank, with enough money left over to buy groceries and make it to the end of the month. I was convinced that they made a mistake, and even asked her to check it again. I made the payment and was all caught up, but I was convinced somewhere down the line, they are going to discover their mistake and tell me I owe that much more. But it never happened. I eventually paid off the second mortgage and that was that. That was the only way I could rationalize what happened---they made a mistake.

It was sometime after this that I got what I consider my proof that the nonphysical does in fact exist. It is a whole story in its own. I actually told it in a post here on HF years ago. In a quick nutshell: I had just bought a drum which I decided I would use for spirit journeying. One night I had my son with me, and we were coming from my brother's across town, when a very active thunderstorm hit. There was lightning all over. I asked my son who was still in elementary school if he wanted to go to the top of the hill behind my house and watch the storm. He liked the idea, but quickly fell asleep when we arrived. There was lightning all over. The one thing about this hill is that it was chosen by a Native American to die on. We know this because there was a hackberry tree on the top of the hill. They believe that he had a hackberry seed, possibly in a pouch,because the next nearest hackberry tree was hundreds of miles away. His bones were encased in the tree. Unfortunately the tree was in the way of a major road being built in the 1950's, and the road crew wanted to cut it down. The city said no, and the road work stopped for several days until the road crew chopped it down themselves in the middle of the night. Anyway, I was on this hill, when suddenly I got this thought of making a medicine wheel up there. I did not actually want to do this, but I could not get the idea out of my head. For one thing I didn't want someone to see me doing this, I could already hear the comments---'What's that stupid hippie doing?!' All week long I kept wrestling with the idea. I did not want to do it, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head. By the weekend I decided that, for whatever reason, I was supposed to do this. So I gathered up some stones at my house, and about 2:30 in the morning, when hopefully no one would see me, I went up to the hill. I had no idea what to do, but I walked around until I found some more suitable stones, found a place that I thought felt right, and proceeded to make a medicine wheel aligned with the North star.

When I was done, another idea popped into my head, that I had to come up here to drum. That was the last thing I wanted to do. It would call attention to me---'What the hell is that stupid hippie doing?!' That was much worse than quietly making a medicine wheel. There was no way I was going to do that. I didn't even know how to drum or what to do. All I knew was to drum for a spirit journey. But all week I could not get the idea out of my head. Finally, by Saturday, I decided I had to do it. So again, around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning I grabbed my new drum and went up to the hill. What I didn't realize till I got there was that it was a full moon---harvest moon, so I could see real well. I thought, 'I will have to walk around a bit to find it,' but I then discovered that there was a game trail through the weeds, and I followed it and surprisingly it took me right to the medicine wheel. I was also very careful, because I had just bought this hand drum and it was fairly expensive so I didn't want to drop it, therefore I kept a close eye on where I stepped so as not to trip over anything and drop the drum. I knew I was being overly cautious, but that's how I walked. Besides, I was embarrassed to be there anyway, in case anyone could see me, so it kept my mind occupied. Once at the wheel I sat down, unsure what to do. I decided I would just drum and go with the flow. I then decided to dedicate the medicine wheel to the Native American who had chosen that hill to die on. His grave had been desecrated, the road cut cut the hill in two and placed a major street with a lot of traffic 10 to 15 feet below where his grave had been, that side of the hill was owned by a farmer who sold his land to a housing developer. An apartment complex was built were the barn and other parts of the farm were. A church had taken up the hill further to the east, and they were planning to put in a bigger parking lot. So I dedicated it to him and did my part of reclaiming the hill for him, and then started drumming. After a short time, I felt like I did what I was supposed to do, and decided to leave. But as soon as I got up, another thought entered my mind---if I was Native there would be a sign to let me know that it was good. I turned my head, and there was something on the north side, right at the North spoke, of the medicine wheel. Its right where I stepped, so I knew it wasn't there before. I picked it up---it was a tail. One part of my mind was telling me, 'What are you doing---you are holding part of a dead animal!' But another part of my mind was saying--'There's your proof!' I was dumbfounded. I took the tail to the car---it looked like it had been cut with something very sharp. Even the hair at the end that would have been attached to the body was there. It was fresh--the end was still wet with fresh blood. I immediately started rehashing what had happened to figure out how this tail could have gotten there, or if there was anyway it was there before I arrived. And what the heck was I supposed to do with it? I had very bad allergies at that time, and sinus polyps, so I didn't even know if the tail smelled.

I took it home and examined it in the house. I decided I would hang it outside on my back porch, which I did. The next morning I took it down and asked my son if it smelled, since I couldn't tell. He said it smelled like sage. So I brought it in the house. I then drove back up to the medicine wheel, and sure enough, right where I picked it up, there was my foot print going to the medicine wheel. I knew I had looked at that same spot when I was walking with the drum, and never saw the tail. Especially considering how prominent the tail was in the moonlight when I did see it. I spent days, maybe weeks, trying to figure out how that tail got there, I made several trips back up to the medicine wheel during the day, but that was something I could never rationalize away.

There are quite a few crazy things that happened with that medicine wheel. My son took his friend up there one afternoon, a week or so after that happened, and he found a silver dollar from the late 1800's in the wheel. He brought it home and said, 'Here pa, you are supposed to have this.' Some years later I took some Native friends up there at night and they sang a medicine song. We all turned around and looked behind us at the same time, as we all heard someone walking towards us. No one was there. A bunch of things happened there. Did I tell you about the elk in my neighborhood 7 days before my yuwipi? The father of my stepson's friend saw the elk coming from where the medicine wheel was, he didn't know about the medicine wheel. That was a big deal as this area is now well into the city. The elk ended up in a school yard that was surrounded by police, dog catchers, game wardens and atleast one TV crew, but the elk disappeared.

There is a lot more to the story, but that is the nutshell of it. I did accept that as my proof. Granted, there were many things that led up to that which other people would have probably accepted, but I could always come up with an explanation of some sort. But now that I had my proof, I knew I had to approach philosophy differently. My question was no longer the question that philosophy has tried to answer for much of the recorded history of mankind--is there a mind-body duality? Now it became, how is there a mind-body duality? How does it work? I would work long into the night on writing, and trying to figure out this problem. One night, probably about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, I was sitting at my computer working on this problem. I had a 3' San Pedro cactus (which you may know, contains mescaline) next to me, and I was getting tired, and decided to lay down on my laptop for a few minutes. Now, back in the 70's I tried acid and a number of different things,enjoyed Quaaludes and some occaisional weed, but I had never done peyote or mescaline. (I had actually planned on harvesting the San Pedro and maybe taking it down to Chaco Canyon where I would try it. That never worked out.) Anyway, I fell asleep, and almost immediately had this lucid dream. I was climbing up the San Pedro, and as I was climbing it, it began turning into this very instense, very colorful, organic geometric structure of some sort. When I reached the top, I was suddenly on this flying thing of sorts, and it was twisting and turning, but it was revealing to me, how the mind interacted with the physical----it was in this dream where I first understood what was to become my philosophy of Archephenomenalism. Years later, I experienced peyote in the first of several peyote ceremonies I participated in, and it was interesting to see how similar that dream was to the actual mescaline trip.

It was probably a year or two later after the tail before I got invited to my first sundance. I think I told you about that, and how I became a part of the ceremony after offering flesh to the tree. The sundance chief had a sweat lodge and would do it every saturday, about 5 minutes from my house. So I went to my first sweat lodge. It was a good 5 years after later before I attended my first yuwipi.

My wife did not participate in these ceremonies until the first yuwipi that we had opagi'd for. (That was probably my 4th or 5th yuwipi.) She did not want anything to do with it. I think because she was trying to fight becoming a healer. She could see ghosts and this scared her. She probably had an unconscious awareness of the sacrifice it represented. There were numerous reasons why she did not want to be a healer. It was only in the past year and a half that she actually accepted this.

Was I looking for magic? What I was really looking for was proof that there is another side to the universe. I spent years trying to rationalize and deny the things that I saw. The tail finally represented for me, my proof, and there was a lot of denial and many things that led up to that which I won't cover. Also my definition did not come about because of anything the wičháša wakȟáŋ. I had already worked that out years ago, but he just happened to say something that I agreed with.

Technically you are not completely wrong. But your summary minimalizes the struggles and process I went through to get to even the stage where I accepted that there was more than a material universe. For much of those decades of searching, I had no idea of the literal level of disenchantment we face in the modern age.

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough for that paragraph. I am cooking borshch and it had to simmer for about 3 hours. It is done now, so I am ready to eat.

But let me add one more thing before I close----yes, we have the same definition of Romanticism, and yes, I have a lot of things in common with the romanticists. But if you read deeper beyond the simple definition you will find that the romanticists tended to hold a disdain for modernism, and technology. The art, the literature and so forth all represented a search and desire for a simpler time---pastoral scenes, a return to nature, and so forth. Granted, the hippie side of me related to that. But my whole philosophy is geared to a future with far more advancement. Yes, we need to deal with the issues that romanticists speak out for---the alienation of man, love, peace, all that good stuff. But my focus is aimed at trying to prevent a future where we use sharpened sticks rather than quantum computers. Also my philosophy is not anti-science. Furthermore, the Romanticists see emotions above reason, and that is not the subjectivism that I write about.

Anyway, I will respond to the rest later.

 

Yes, it has. In fact I have Cox's book on secularization. In my own life, I would say that the biggest shift in recent times was the shift from the Father Knows Best society that lasted into the early 1960's. In fact, this is literally the world that the MAGA crowd wants to return to. I explained why I was not a Romaticist, let me take it further to state that these changes of modernization were inescapable, necessary and played a role in man's development. Yes, I embraced the romanticism of the hippies and the idea of getting back to the garden, and I am reminded of it every spring when I get my own garden planted. More than once I have played CCR while planting, remembering a commune I once visited where there was a table at the edge of the fields, with a record player and two large amplifiers. They played CCR records all day while they worked the fields. But nonetheless, we are here with the good things we have today---cell phones, wifi, etc, because of the advances that this disenchantment was part of.

I do not argue that we need to go back to the simpler days when everyone went to church, or even when everyone got their advice from a shaman. But I do argue that there are very old values and understandings of the world that need to return for us to survive and continue into a future with all the new advancements, and even what will surely be new forms of alienation. With or without me, I think we are seeing this anyway.----take sexual politics for example. One of my books, argues that language roots hint to a primal time when there was an equality of sexes. Gender was seen as two halves of a whole (ignoring current gender politics---there have always been two-spirits etc, I'm not minimalizing other gender perceptions, but speaking in general terms). Then women became dominant in many cultures as man went through a period where the Goddess ruled. Then it was a shift to the masculine, which has lasted into modern times. I believe that we are heading back to a period of gender equality---the current noise on the Right is a reaction to this. But overall, we are coming full circle. I see this in other aspects of human culture as well---the very things I talk about.

You do understand that existentialism was a push for the individual, correct? My whole argument for the individual and subjectivism came from existentialism. I don't think you understand yet what I mean by subjectivism over objectivism, but it is very existentialist. In fact, existentialism validated sentiment and emotion and spoke out against the cold, lifeless, overly pragmatic, implications of objectivism.

I suggest you read, Irrational Man by William Barrett. It is an excellent book on existentialism which actually begins with early Judaic thought and then Greek philosophy and a rough history of philosophy before getting into existentialism. It was a book we used in one of my philosophy classes in college. I would also suggest, Introducing Existentialism by Richard Appignanesi. It is one of those comic book like books for beginners. I bought it about 15 years ago, thinking it would help put some ideas into a simpler format for some people that would come to my firepit for philosophy, beer, and steaks. I didn't expect much from the book, but I was very happily surprised at how deep into the subject it got. I have since bought a number of these types of books. This book begins with Camus, and the problem of absurdity and the question of suicide.

No, this is not at all how the Lakota run their inipis. If it was a Dine' ceremony, then yes, it would be hard for me to participate. There was a time when that was not the case, but after anthropologists turned Dine' ceremonies into a circus for tourists then they became very exclusive to Native people, and I can't blame them. But a Lakota sweat lodge is open to anyone who will participate with respect. I have brought many people to sweat lodges, and when I am banking and taking care of business for the nonprofit I am treasurer and on the board for, White Horse Creek Council, and when our spiritual advisor is with me, he is always inviting the bankers and the people we meet to his sweat lodge and even his Sun Dance.

As the great grandson of Black Elk has said to me, "These ways are for all the people, as long as they come with respect and reverence. And especially as they do not try to do it themselves without all the preparation and sacrifice and training that is needed to be able to do this."

I was invited to a Sun Dance, and the Sun Dance Chief ran a sweat lodge not far from my house. That was the first time I went to an Inipi. I did that for a good year or two before I did my first hanblechiya (Vision Quest). It was years later before I went to my first yuwipi. You hear of a vetting process before a yuwipi, though I have never seen it. The yuwipi men, in my experience, usually just give a speech beforehand, that, '...this is not a show. It is a serious ceremony and if you are not here to pray and support those who the yuwipi is for then you should leave now. There is nothing to see and it is not meant for their enjoyment or to see something supernatural or for them to come and try to prove something. It is a spiritual ceremony to help those who need help."

Though yuwipis draw a fairly good sized crowd of Natives, and it is possible that in the background, there may have been a person or two kicked out that I didn't know about.

I know of one person that was not welcome as some yuwipis, but that is because she would huddle up to guys during the ceremony as their wives or girlfriends sat next to them. She was single, and women got jealous and that was not the place for such a thing.

Maybe you are confusing the Lakota---yuwipi is a house ceremony---it is the spirit calling ceremony done inside a house or building. Haŋblechiya is a vision quest, I have done several haŋblechiya, and I did each one to completion. I am well aware of the sacrifice involved. I wouldn't exactly describe the sacrifice as pain. I don't see hunger as a serious pain. Your throat becomes so dry that it can be hard to swallow, but I don't rate that as high on the pain scale. You are exposed to the elements and I have been lucky in this regard. On the second night of my second haŋblechiya there was a heavy rainstorm that changed to a light snow storm by about 4:00 am. It was surprisingly easy to ride that out, and I had a tarp and a sleeping bag to do so. All the snow had melted by 8:00 am.

The yuwipi does not involve any pain, other than you are typically sitting on a floor in a dark room. I, like many others, bring a pillow to sit on. There is sacrifice on the part of the yuwipi man as he is tied up in a star quilt and laid on the floor face down in the center of his altar before the ceremony, representing his ritual death. There is nothing eaten or taken before the ceremony so there is no drugs used. And actually, if you showed up intoxicated, smelling of liquor, or high, I'm pretty sure you would be kicked out.

You haven't actually read Harner's book have you. (It's Harner, not Hamer) Yes, drumming, rattling, and other techniques are used to induce that shamanic state. But this requires a fast steady beat, which I can't recall offhand, and right now I am too lazy to go downstairs to my library and look for his book. But there are shamanic drumming videos on YouTube to induce that same state, that you can listen to for yourself. I have done extensive reading on the issue of sound to induce such states ,and have numerous books on the subject, and have written a fair amount about it----dolmens and other similar prehistoric and ancient structures, for example, seem to be structured to induce such a state from drumming or chanting. I even have a book written by the drummer of the Grateful Dead who talks quite a bit about the dynamics of drumming and the psychological states induced by drumming, including ones that he experiences even while performing concerts. I did grab one book from my library that I mentioned to you before: Where the Spirits Ride the Wind, Trance journeys and other ecstatic experiences, by Dr. Felicitas Goodman who was a professor of Anthropology at Denison University. This book describes how she started researching the dynamic of speaking in tongues and the psychology of that ecstatic experience, but that this led her to research on drumming and other forms of inducing this. It is a very fascinating book.

I had been doing shamanic spirit journeys for quite a while before my first inipi, as I explained in my last post, and until the experience with the tail, I rationalized it with Jungian psychology, and so forth. I actually expected there to be a similar type of drumming in the inipi to induce such a state. But this is not the case with the Olowaŋ, or medicine songs.

And, come on, I'm an old hippie----I am very well aware of different states of consciousness. I have even experimented with hypnosis to see how effective it is at recalling past experiences.

I understand that whatever I say about this is purely anecdotal. It really is something you have to experience for yourself. When people see things in a sweat lodge, many of these things are things that they witness themselves. But everyone who has attended the sweat lodge of that particular yuwipi man knows about the rattles. My first sweat lodge with him, I was unaware that this happens so I was surprised when it did. I can't recall if this was before or after I went to one of his yuwipi ceremonies, but I certainly did not expect it when it happened. Nor was it my first sweat lodge, I had been going to sweat lodges for years before I attended one of his. The whole reason I went to his lodge is because a Native friend wanted to go and needed a ride. But yes, everyone witnesses this in his sweat lodges. You can't miss it.

More significant is the yuwipi ceremony. This is where the rattles always move, and you see things and feel things. And yes, everyone there experiences much of the same phenomena. But there are things that people experience individually. The yuwipi man who has rattles move in his sweat lodge is the same yuwipi man I opagi'd to heal my dad's cancer. My brother's sister, a scientist (chemist), attended and it was her first time to experience it. She too saw the rattles flying and the lights and so forth, but she was having lower back problems and she experienced the spirits doctor her back. My parents saw the same stuff, but they and I experienced quite a bit more as the ceremony was for them and the spirits doctored them, and me. We can talk about all kinds of psychological possibilities, but this all requires some sort of dynamic of suggestion. In a yuwipi, you go into a room, sit down in a circle as the yuwipi man sets up his altar in the center, and then it starts. It is almost right after the drumming and singing starts that the rattles start flying around.

But when I talk about magic, that isn't what I am really talking about. You would never hear me have this conversation:


Man! I went to a ceremony to have my dad healed, and it was so magic! It was amazing. There was knocking on the table and it lifted in the air while we all sat there! It was unbelievable.

Wow! That was magic you say. So what happened, was your dad healed?

No. He died a few weeks later, but it was amazing---so magical!


Yeah----that wouldn't happen. If there is no real world change, then it is obviously not magic. I have said many times that it is what happens outside of the ceremony that is more significant. For example, My dad was healed in that yuwipi, and not just that he was healed, but he was healed the way the yuwipi man said he would be healed when we did the opagi.

How the opagi works is you go to the wičháša wakȟáŋ with some tobacco or a chanuŋpa (sacred pipe) if you have one. And after smoking the chanuŋpa and passing it around then when the chanuŋpa gets back to him, he tells you whether your request can be fulfilled and what they will do, e.g. a sweat lodge or a yuwipi, and what you need to do to prepare for it, and then what will happen to your request. In the case of the yuwipi for my father, he said that 'The spirits will heal him, but being that he is not familiar with these ways, it is also important to him (my father) that the doctors heal him too. So there will be some doctors that will come and heal him too.

After the ceremony my dad said he felt much better. They also worked on his legs which had arthritis and this helped him quite a bit. Right after the ceremony he was scheduled to go up and stay with my sister for a week or two (and they had a family intervention about all of this being about the devil and wrong). When they returned there were boxes that had been delivered to them. They opened them up, and discovered they had come from some medical research institute to try out a new medical treatment. My parents had no idea where they came from or how my dad got on the study.

A few years before that, my wife and I needed some help and we did opagi and had a yuwipi done for us. It was my wife and son's first yuwipi. We were also told what would happen in the opagi, and things turned out exactly as we were told.

This is the magic of these ways that I referred to. And the elk that I wrote about, and so forth. Not the light shows and moving rattles and stuff. Those are important to the experience, and it is something you have to see to believe and understand---even to understand how it is unlikely to be a trick or a result of mass hypnotism or drumming. But the thing is, if that is all the ceremony is, then what good is it----nothing but a light show... I have many stories of what has happened out of the ceremonies.

And what is the response to such things? For healing, then it is often a case of psychosomatic healing as if that is the materialist answer. But here is the thing----even if it is the power of mind that heals us, and there is certainly a part to that in all healing, it is still the mind having a nonlocal impact on reality. How can the mind, for example, just make a tumor disappear, or kidney stones (I participated in a healing sweat for a young Native man who had numerous kidney stones that spirit removed), or do the other things that I have seen happen in these ways. It is still a testament to the power of the mind as something greater than a force that arises from physical matter and biochemical reactions.

I will respond to your last paragraph later.

 

Sorry, I have already informed the Royal Authority for Definitions and Meanings and they have removed this definition and replaced it with mine. You can no longer use this one anymore. (LMAO!)


I am reminded of Gulliver's Travels when he arrives at the land where everything is too pragmatic and objective, creating a circus of bureaucracy. I am not saying that the 4 C's is no good, or that my definition should replace it. In true functionalist tradition, my definition accounts for an existential experience that the other definition does not. I think it sufficiently accounts for a difference between spirituality and religion that many people relate to, including many of those on the list you provided of people that disagree with the term religion. My definition reflects the literal meaning of 'spiritual' and acknowledges the nonphysical aspect ignored by science. My definition does not separate religion and spirituality into a duality, as it argues that every religion has a spiritual core. It also does not fall into the Colonialist trap of putting everything in a context or mindset of civilized man.

Analytically, my definition is very useful in examining the evolution and psychology of spiritual traditions, which is what I used it for in one of my books. (A book that argues that language and spirituality had a common point of origin for mankind--I may have mentioned it as the book about the oldest word in the human language. I may also use it in the book on the survival of Christianity.) To label it all as religion covers up the differences in social function, politics, and the dynamic of social cohesion that belief systems provide between religion as an institution, and spirituality as the door to a transcendence above the physical world humans found themselves in.

Your academic definition of religion leads to assumptions such as that of Wiessner, which I disagree with. His argument, like most academic explanations of the spiritual experience leaves no room for the possibility that there is a nonphysical side to the universe. Consider, for a moment, that you grew up in a world where rattles moved through the air in ceremony, and other strange things happened that you could not explain, and once you were old enough, you went up on the hill and experienced a powerful connection with nature that defies rational explanation, and a life where synchronicities are not an unusual event but a common occurrence, and that in order for your people to survive, whether food sources were falling short, or there was an illness, or there were weather issues, or whatever, that you turned to magic to make things right (magic that had a good track record by the way)---would you need indoctrination in order to believe these things? The granddaughter of Black Elk told me, 'Natives who have grown up walking the Red Road, think that it is silly how white people argue whether or not god exists, or that spirit exists or not.'

Maybe I did not see the rattles move, that it was a case of mass hypnotism or a mass hallucination that is repeated in every yuwipi ceremony. But the fact is, the prayers in that ceremony, and other ceremonies like it are answered. There are Christians that argue that miraculous things have happened from prayer because their faith is strong. There are some people today that have been healed from serious afflictions because of my wife. In fact there is a young child that is alive today, because my wife held it as a baby, and then told the parents that there was something seriously wrong and they need to get it to the hospital. They didn't want to believe her, and I insisted that they listen to her. After thinking about it all night, they took the baby the next morning, and it saved its life. There are many strange occurrences that we dismiss as intuition, or coincidence. If the only way to explain such things is to flatly deny them or write them off, or rationalize it as a strange coincidence, then there is something lacking in the definition we are using. The fact also is that my existential experience of the spirituality in that ceremony, or that of a monk in meditation, or a sufi in his/her ecstatic state, or that of a Christian mystic are all different from the mundane experience of listening to a sermon in a church, or a synagogue, or a temple, or participating in a typical prayer service or other similar activities.

And my definition, I believe, is academically acceptable. It does not make any outrageous claims that there is a god or spirits, but it does not deny them in a masked or blatant way either, instead it acknowledges the existential experience of spiritual things, and divides them based on my concept of logosummonism.

I am not sure of the problem you have with my definition. Perhaps the fact that it allows for a nonphysical side to spiritual experience, or that I dare threaten the unquestionable authority of academia by adding a new definition. My definition was created in the true spirit of Functionalism. And functionally, it could be used alongside of the 4 C's. For example, if writing about the history of religious thought, in one context the latter definition would serve the best purpose, while in another context the former definition would serve better.

 

The "non-physical aspect' provides the core of every religion. But all the ones know, including your Lakota, also have cultus or ritual (yuipi and inipi ceremonies or the equivalent, smoking the sacred pipe, making offerings, vision quest, etc. ); common beliefs (creed) about the spirit world (wakan, wakampi, the role of White Buffalo Woman in instituting the rituals, etc.); code, including wolakota (balance in living), affirming relations with wak'a forces, kinship with all things in nature, wakhuza (just payback, similar to karma), etc.; and of course community, as members of the tribe participate in the bonding experiences of their sacred rituals, as you did. The fact that comparativist scholars call your medicine man a shaman instead of a wicasa wakan might seem to be an unpardonable slight, but your wicasa wakan shares many characteristics in common with his Siberian counterpart and similar figures around the planet, going back to the Upper Paleolithic--and possibly including a Jewish healer of the 1st century c.e. See Peter Craffert's The Life of a Galilean Shaman, i.e., Jesus.. I think it's useful that scholars have come to recognize that and to write about it--knowledge that would be lost if your ethnocentric medicine man's views prevailed. I feel equally strongly about the opposition to the study of prehistoric skeleton's in North America on grounds that they are defiling Native American ancestors, when the whole point is to determine whether or not they're Native American. Similar attitudes in pre-Enlightenment Europe prevented the dissection of humans, thereby impeding medical knowledge. To label it all as religion may call attention away from the unique aspects of each society, although any anthropologist or sociologist worth his or her salt will point those out.

I think there can be that danger, if positivists assume that commonalities are all there is. Science tends to be a search for commonalities, and suffers from a tendency toward reductionism, the "nothing but" fallacy. You and I can be accurately described in terms of our common attributes: we're anatomically male, married, Americans, etc. Obviously, if they got to know us better and were interested, they'd notice the differences we've spent many posts elaborating on. Science, as I've said so often, is the gold standard of human knowledge, but it still has limitations, the tendency toward reductionism being a biggie. But it does have its advantages: when I go to the doctor, he recognizes enough commonalities in my maladies with those of other folks that he can give me a diagnosis and hopefully a cure. I think the best way to deal with this is to recognize them, to realize that science doesn't have all the answers, and to realize the difference between doing science and doing life. Every friend I've met, every pet I've know, and certainly my wife and kids are unforgettable characters. They can be categorized by commonalities, and that's useful. But they are also individuals, whose uniqueness science can't begin to capture. As for the possibility of a non-physical side to the universe, modern physics, thanks to QM, relativity, and multiple universes, black holes, dark matter and energy, etc., seems to have outdone the mystics in that regard.

Yes, they "know" they're in touch with the spirit world, just as believing Catholics know that Christ's real presence is there on the altar of their church, and Evanekicals 'know" their Redeemer livieth. Could they be wrong? No? Only scientists are wrong? Reliance on faith, intuition and armchair reasoning was all your hunter-gatherers had to go on, and that's the way it mostly was thru the Middle Ages until science and the Elightenment caught on, I think you're right that science tends to look for naturalistic explanations first, and in making a choice tends to prefer them to the supernatural or "transcendent". We made a lot of headway in human knowledge that way. Still, agree with you that there does seem to be a transcendent dimension that science is missing. Science is good at eliminating Type One errors (false positives or accepting something that is false) but not so good in eliminating Type Two errors(false negatives, or rejecting things that are true.

I seem to be a veritable concatenation of those synchronicities you mention: how I met and married my wife, took my job, carried out my work and family responsibilities, etc., seem uncannily meant to be instead of just coincidences. You're talking to a guy who has mystical experiences, has often acted on them, and found them major turning points in his life. But I think it's important also to recognize the subjective bias that makes me perceive my own life as special and predestined. I keep both in mind and store the transcendental stuff in the X-file for further study.

Yes, there's scientific evidence that religious faith can aid healing. The Effect of Spirituality on Health and Healing: A Critical Review for Athletic Trainers Two years ago, my best friend developed bladder cancer and went down hill quickly. After risky surgery, the cancer was removed, but he was told it had metastasized into bone cancer and there was nothing that could be done. He was completely bed-ridden for over a year and looked like he was already dead. His doctor admitted he'd thought during surgery there wasn't a chance he could survive even that! Then things turned around, he got himself walking, then living in his own apartment, then driving again, then resuming his role as cantor in his local Catholic church--and the doctors can't find any trace of bone cancer. A miracle? Maybe. He is a devout Christian churchgoer, and had several different church congregations praying for him. I joked that God had brought him back cuz He has Lazarus singing in church every week. Good advertising! But there were also other factors at work. He was "lucky" to have found two excellent physical therapists who worked with him like drill sargeants. And he has a strong will, fortified by his strong faith. It's arguable that God gave that to Him, but skeptics still have room for doubt. It's also possible that the bone cancer was misdiagnosed.

Yes, for most of us, complex bureaucratic secular societies lack the enchantment of hunting or agrarian ones--Weber's "routinization of charisma". That has its pros and cons.

My problem is your problem with my definition. You said that hunter-gatherers had no religion, only spirituality, when they had definite beliefs about nature and the cosmos, rituals in which you participated, a shaman or wicasa wakan, and an ethical code based on honoring nature--all apparently because you and your shaman dislike the modern forms of worshiping the Great Mystery. Everything has its unique aspects: my friends, my dogs, my wife, my kids, myself. But if we confine ourselves to that, science becomes impossible.

 

Don't get me wrong. I am not against comparative studies. And I agree that it is good to study prehistoric skeletons to learn about the migration patterns of the Americas and so forth.

Many Natives who walk the Red Road take issue with the term shaman---not just the wicasa wakan that I sweat with. I think it is more of an issue with appropriation of Native Ways and what they refer to as the New Age Plastic shamans than it is an issue of comparative studies. New Age ways in particular are good at stripping ceremonies and traditions from their cultural context and combining it with other traditions and ideas, which are also stripped of their cultural context. I think just about any Native would recognize the amazing similarities between their traditions and not only the traditions of the Tungusic peoples but of Australian aborigines, the ancient traditions of the African bush, and even the shamanic traditions of the ancient Indo-europeans. I have written extensively about how indigenous people the world over have different cultural traditions, motifs and words, but that they all understand the universe in an amazingly similar manner. And Natives recognize this. However, the people that are likely to call them shamans, are often the same ones that are likely to try to make their own sweat lodge or do other ceremonies without the proper training, sacrifice, and so forth.

To get back to comparative analysis, in my book that discusses the oldest word in the human language I have several chapters that tie together everything from what we know of the oldest European shamanic traditions, with global indigenous traditions, all the way to modern day religions----all via the tradition of the axis mundi/world tree/world mountain/world cave. In fact, I started reading Joseph Campbell because people kept comparing that book to his books (I was living out of the country when that popular docuseries came on TV that was based on his work.) I knew of him but never read any of his stuff growing up. (I'm embarrassed to say, but at 13, I was buying all the Churchward stuff----all his books on the Lost continent of Mu. I think I bought my first one at 9 or 10. Then as I was a bit older, Chariots of the Gods came out, and I read all that stuff. At least I did read some more academic pieces, like Thor Hyerdahl's books when I was young).

I would argue that my definition is again better suited to this comparative type of study. It treats religion as something that grew around spirituality later in mankind's development---as he developed civilization. We talked about religious wars, for example, I think it would be very difficult to find a case of indigenous groups fighting over spiritual beliefs. The spiritual beliefs of indigenous people the world over had a respect and appreciation of all life. The spiritual side of Chrisitianity also teaches to love one another. But the religious side had Irish protestants killing catholics in the name of Christ and Irish catholics killing protestants in the name of Christ. In fact one of the major focuses of that book was how we are all one people. One of the reasons I started the book was that it provided evidence through language that we all had a common point of origin. But as I was working on this, the human genome project started. But it shows how we are all interconnected, which is one reason I continued with it.

Yes, but the value of science in this context isn't in recognizing commonalities as much as it is in recognizing differences and categorization. Therefore we know that an antibiotic will help with a bacterial infection, but a vaccine is needed to fight a virus.

Which is what archephenomenalism is about. It is not a philosophy of 15th century metaphysics. It is a philosophy that explains the science of today.

Fair enough. But when will you study it further? I imagine there are house ceremonies somewhere near you.

We can always rationalize excuses and write such things off. Perhaps the main difference between us, is that I had to have proof. It was too important of a question to me to leave it as a maybe. I think if you head down that path, at some point there gets to be too many synchronicities and too much rationalization that pretty soon the rational explanations become ridiculous.

One example is with my wife. She always knew when a baby was going to be born, and what gender it would be just by looking at a pregnant woman. She was always right. She worked for a little over a month at a nursing home about 18 years ago on a shift that ended at 12:00 am. Sometimes at night she would wake me up yelling at someone I couldn't see to get out of our room. They would always be standing at our doorway---one of the elderly from the home. When she got to work that afternoon she always heard that the person she saw had died the night before. She never liked that kind of thing. She brought me with her when she quit the job as a witness to why she wanted to quit. She always knew when a family member was going to die. She would see ghosts. When she toured my brother's new house, about 10 years ago, she told him that there was a boy by the fireplace in the basement. This was after I had gotten my 'proof' so when my mom and other family members thought she was making it up, I defended her. A month later a neighbor told my brother that a 12 year old boy committed suicide by the fireplace in the basement. After she accepted her gift of healing a year and a half or two years ago, she can take someone's hand, and tell them exactly where their sickness is. Today I laugh at some of the ways I tried to explain or rationalize away her abilities over the years, that is until I got my proof.

It is not easy for her to do what she does, sometimes she gets sick or feels what the person felt before she healed them---actually after accepting the gift I guess it is not so bad, but there were several years where she would only heal family members, and that was always the case. She doesn't charge money for it, saying that if she did the gift would be taken away.

Anyway, I guess its a matter of choice. I needed to know and so I pursued it, rather than file it away as an X File.

But didn't I say something like, "By my definition..."? You are the one that said I dislike modern forms of worship. I never said that. And I just happened to mention how my wicasa wakan agreed with me in passing. That was never a key reason for why I had that definition or even how I came up with the definition. I had this definition a few years before I even went to my first sweat lodge. Let me repeat again that every religion has spirituality at its core. Modern forms of worshipping the Great Mystery can be spiritual, I have no problem with that. I would hope that church's have some kind of spiritual experience within them.

I brought up communion, and both you and MeAgain pointed out examples of communion as a spiritual experience. In my experience, I have seen it used as a fairly mundane ritual, but as far as it is authentic to the true meaning, and the worshippers experience it as such (and you agreed that they don't all do) then I would consider that a spiritual experience, though more logosummonistic than say a sweat lodge, for example. And that is by definition.

Yes, I am fairly critical of what I would refer to as religious aspects of religion---the politics, the dogma, the idolatry (and I have no problem with idolatry---only people who preach against idolatry while idolizing their Bibles) the manipulation and use of fear. I know that these things are not represented in all religions, but they are an aspect of religion, as opposed to spirituality. But I can be critical of these things without literally disliking modern ways of worshipping the Great Mystery. That was what you put into my words, not me.

And to be exact, you are the one who brought up Functionalism. So here is a definition that was created exactly along the ideas of Functionalism.

I would say that you have a different idea of science than I do. Science, for example, does not include bats with birds even though they both have wings and fly, and bats eat the same thing that many birds eat. If we don't understand what makes different things unique, like viruses and bacteria or different species of moths and butterflies, then we wouldn't have any scientific progress.

 

Good. We seem to be on the same page here. And I agree New Agers tend to take liberties when it comes to Indians with the feather and those with the dot.

Here we disagree. You seem talking about what I'd call institutionalized religion that seemed to begin with the great hydraulic civilizations of the Middle East about 3,000 years ago. You're entitled to your own definition, but it's at variance with how scholars in the field use the term.

It seems to have been difficult for ancient people,even the civilized ones, to have fought religious wars. Can you think of any? The Bible tells of those wars against Caananites, but archeologists think those may have been exaggerated or made up. The Akaddians under Sargon invoked Inanna in battle, but his wars weren't really or mainly about religion. Like those of the Israelites, they were mainly about territorial aggrandizement. "The wars of the ancient world were rarely, if ever, based on religion. These wars were for territorial conquest, to control borders, secure trade routes, or respond to an internal challenge to political authority. In fact, the ancient conquerors, whether Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, or Roman, openly welcomed the religious beliefs of those they conquered, and often added the new gods to their own pantheon." Luxury For Rent As for prehistoric peoples, one of the problems there is lack of written records about why they fought. They do seem, for the most part, to have been pretty warlike. Pinker, The Better Angels.

Those Lakota you admire had a rep of being among the more warlike tribes. Lakotas: Feared Fighters of the Plains They fought the Pawnees, Arikaras, Cheyennes, Kiowas, Arapahos and Crows. We Chickasaws, variously called the “Unconquered” or the “Spartans of the Lower Mississippi Valley,” "were the most formidable warriors of the American Southeast". I don't think religion had anything to do with it. Now the Aztecs, with one of the most "advanced" civilizations, were ostensibly motivated by religion to feed their gods with the hearts of sacrificial victims. Even there, there's some question of which came first, the wars or the religion. The priests and warrior clans had a strong vested interest in the practice for their status.

As I see it, the first wars caused primarily by religion were the Islamic conquests in seventh and eighth centuries c.e. Then came the Crusades in 11th thru 13th centuries, and after that the religious wars of the Reformation in the 16th-early 18th centuries. The Inquisition, Northern Ireland, the Middle East, 9/11should certainly be added to the list. But historically, the claim that religion caused most wars is unfounded. Of the 122 wars identified in the Encyclopedia of Wars (2004, Phillips and Axelrod, eds.), only 6.9% were religious, accounting for less than 2% of fatalities. What were the religious issues in the War of the Rose, the War of 1812, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, etc.?

But were they killing each other because of, or despite, their religion? And was religion the main issue, or was it a communal and class struggle, as well as a struggle for national liberation? Socioeconomic and cultural divisions were superimposed on the religious ones, making them difficult to separate.

On that, we agree.

We wouldn't know that if we proceeded on the premise that each human is so unique and so different from other species that we can't meaningfully compare them.

It may explain the metaphysics of today's physics. The Copenhagen interpretation, while still the leading one, is only one interpretation of quantum phenomena. The Bohm 1952 interpretation offered a more deterministic account that particles are always particles regardless of how they are observed. Spontaneous collapse theories avoid the measurement problem since the wave function collapses spontaneously. And Soviet QM physicist, V.A. Fock, developed an interpretation consistent with dialectical materialism.

Been there, done that.: stomp dance, snake dance, gar fish dance, etc. And even witnessing an "alikchi',"(our term for shaman or traditional healer) in action. But I'm a Christian, and a somewhat mystical one at that. I think I'm in spiritual contact with the One, the felt presence of a Higher Power "in whom we live, and move, and have our being". Have you been to a Catholic high mass--preferably of the older Tridentine variety, with incense and Latin? Smoke and Mirrors? Or, better yet, a Pentecostal service, where people are speaking in tongues--"direct proof" of the presence of the Holy Spirit! Spiritualty in that sense is an emotional link with the transcendent. But emotionalism can be dangerous, and suggestion is a powerful force. Reason helps to keep us grounded, lest we join the MAGA movement!

Rationalization cuts both ways. If a person tries hard enough, he can convince himself of just about anything.

Here you get at the essence of my own criticism of contemporary religions. The mythological and doctrinal baggage that comes to be attached to them as they evolve gets in the way of what should be the central focus: love of God and fellow humans. That is the greatest danger: idolatry, the worship of false gods, or what Muslims call shirk, including wealth, status, power, sensual gratification, baubles, bangles and beads--and yes, biblidolatry--looking for meaning in all the wrong places! Where I think I may differ from you is that you seem to conceptualize it in terms of temporal phases: first there was spirituality (good) then came religion (bad). I think they co-existed from the git go. If you think the traditional shamans were immune from sham, I suggest you might continue your anthropological studies with a more critical outlook.

You misunderstand me. Objective scientific study looks at both similarities and differences (although there is admittedly a tendency toward reductionism). A scientific taxonomy is quick to note that while both birds and bats have wings an fly, the latter is a mammal while the former is not. Comparative religion is very much concerned with the differences in how different cultures perform common functions. The definition and framework I've been arguing for (the 4 Cs) isn't strictly speaking pure "functionalism", but is in fact an attempt to supplement functionalism by a focus on basic structures by which different societies perform basic functions. e.g., shared beliefs, rituals, moral codes, and communal bonding.