The Atheist DMT Experience

[Eliyahu]

Maybe you are all just discussing different gods and hence the main disagreement?

Personally, I see the image of bearded god or some person-like being making favors and punishing, as absurd. Beliefs in general are pretty awkward, because you can believe anything, and then you can believe it's contrary and it will be just as likely to be true. And yet people keep arguing endlessly about how one belief is better than the other (Whether that is a metaphysical or a materialistic belief).

IME everything that exists seems to be a hint of Something. It's like a caldron from where everything emanates, everything we see is a shimmering mirror of the totality, the One, the Endless Endlessness, The Pattern etc... I can understand if someone wants to call it God. I dont project human characteristics to it though.

I also agree that in a way one can perceive some aspects of this One, during alternative states of consciousness, but as oly said, I also think we can be deluded too. Our brain naturally looks for patterns, associations, totality and closure, for meaning... For example it's natural to see faces everywhere even when they are not, our brain is hard-wired for this. But some faces we see are real (as real as anything can be of course), so how do we know what is real and whats not? I guess the trick is not to take anything at face value, to experience what is to be experienced but come back and think critically, putting every experience in light of our tools (feelings, intellect/information, intuition, personal ethics etc) and integrating in daily life.

I understand there may be all sorts of different levels between us and One, with different structures and mechanisms guiding the existence of reality throughout the dimensions which might interact or not with each other. Maybe even there are other kinds of what could resemble beings/intelligences/nodes, who knows?? There may also be a 'twist' to the story we are all completely unaware of. In any case I think often people forget the difference between speculation/ideas/models and existence itself. Also there's so much focus on creating and spreading these beliefs, and the more basic but extremely importnt 'earthly priorities' are forgotten. Spirituality is in daily acts too.

I dont think any version of 'God' is complete if it doesn't go beyond simple beliefs but rather is lived with one's full being and permeates the continous path of trying to appreciate each moment, better oneself and help others, love boundlessly and work for having a clean conscience when our last breath comes.

I think people in this thread are, in a way, closer together in their ideas than they think

^^^clearly the voice of not only reason but also experience speaking here.
Nicely put.

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Crazy horse wrote:

Doesn't it really just come down to how you choose to define "God"? If you're talking about the Abrahamic religions' anthropomorphic concept of a bearded guy in the clouds

DemMenTed Wrote:

Yeah sorry hyperspace fool. When i talk of God i automatically associate it with the abrahamic christian, Jewish and muslim god. The leaders of those religions love starting wars.

HyperspaceFool Wrote:

2) The G*d I talk of is clearly NOT the Abrahamic god represented in 85% of the Bible

OK, I know I've said this before in many different ways, but I feel compelled to say it again.

THE BEARDED GOD IN THE CLOUD THING IS A GREEK IDEA...

Abraham of whom you speak represented YHWH Elohim. The name
YHWH Elohim in no way refers to bearded guys in any way shape or form.
YHWH is pure and absolute unconditional love and mercy to the extreme.

Everything else is just a misinterpretation or misunderstanding and nothing more than that.

I do not understand the desire to perpetuate the false perceptions of God that modern religion has burdoned us with.


It is quite clear to me that religion has been used to control the masses and for rarely any other purpose, hence the many wars you speak of .....yet I do not let this cloud my ability to descern truth..
It does not inhibit my curiosity to know what knowledge the anceint people have accumulated in various anceint texts..


There is messed up things and "flaws" in almost all ancient beliefs....
all of them, every one for what ever reason.



The idea here is to sift through the ancient knowledge to find bits of the truth....THESE BITS OF TRUTH CAN BE LINKED TOGETHER...These are special clues.

When native american belief says the EXACT SAME thing as Christian as Muslim as Eskimo as Mayan as Kabbalah as Confucious as hindu...then that IMO is a possible Jewel of Knowledge.

It is up us to each one of us as individuals to discern what is dogma from what is a jewel of wisdom ....that is what discernment is for.

Without discernment wisdom is can be rather cumbersome.


Just my opinion....

Also everyone please keep in mind this is just a debate....

For anyone that took a debate class...what is the number one rule of debate??????????

That's correct!>>>>>>>>Keep a cool head at all times...

I know it can be a challenge to keep in mind but I do believe strongly
in the principal.

 

[corpus callosum]

Yeah sorry hyperspace fool. When i talk of god i automatically associate it with the abrahamic christian, jewish and muslim god. The leaders of those religions love starting wars.

May I ask, who are the leaders of the Jewish and Islamic faiths who love to start wars?Can you name them?

Its also wildly inaccurate to assume that the Islamic concept of God in any way resembles that which is commonly thought of by Christians ie bearded chap up on high who does this and that.The Islamic perspective of God makes mention only of His names and attributes without anthropomorphism, and the Muslim keeps his 'knowledge' of God within these parameters.

 

[LiquidGlass]

I have a friend who is an extreme atheist and would be glad to debate all day on the existence of god or a higher power. A while back he described to me some really bizarre DMT journeys.

His first one he encountered some feminine like being that filled him with pure bliss.
Then on a different day, expecting to encounter the same presence, he tried it again. This time he encountered malevolent mischievous beings, and one of them latched on to his hand and started moving up his arm. He described it as feeling like his arm being sucked into some alien vagina. He tried to shake it off but couldn't.

So yesterday, due to this thread, I asked him if he thinks the " aliens " were his own conciousness, or from somewhere else. All he could come up with was, he has no idea and that it's worthy of research. I have never seen him have such a lack of words when it comes to talk of the supernatural

 

[joedirt]

Yeah sorry hyperspace fool. When i talk of god i automatically associate it with the abrahamic christian, jewish and muslim god. The leaders of those religions love starting wars.

May I ask, who are the leaders of the Jewish and Islamic faiths who love to start wars?Can you name them?

Its also wildly inaccurate to assume that the Islamic concept of God in any way resembles that which is commonly thought of by Christians ie bearded chap up on high who does this and that.The Islamic perspective of God makes mention only of His names and attributes without anthropomorphism, and the Muslim keeps his 'knowledge' of God within these parameters.

I agree with this, but I'd also like to point out the Christians don't necessarily believe in a bearded sky buddy either. Since Christianity and Islam share the same Jewish roots It's safe to assume they share the same God...

So what can we deduce from all this? The whole can not be described by a few of it's individual parts. Religions are complex entities that often times have a lot of irrational people claiming to be memebers.

Peace

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

IME everything that exists seems to be a hint of Something. It's like a caldron from where everything emanates, everything we see is a shimmering mirror of the totality, the One, the Endless Endlessness, The Pattern etc... I can understand if someone wants to call it God. I dont project human characteristics to it though.

IMHO anything called the totality, the One, the Endless Endlessness, the Pattern or whatever qualifies for the title of G*d. There are theistic doctrines that have much smaller and less cosmic views on deity than that.

I also occasionally default to using terms like that or Universe or Omniverse because they are less loaded and if you say the same sentence with one of these terms in place of the word G*d people tend to just accept it... re-substitute the word G*d and people freak out.

But it is just a slight of hand. Some of the many names of G*d include The One, The Eternal and so on... so we are still clearly talking about a concept of deity.

Most importantly, no one is projecting human characteristics on the idea of G*d. Despite frequent attempts to paint it this way, I have not seen a single person on this thread claim to believe in Beardy Sky Buddy. On the contrary, even the most devout theists on the thread continually assert the opposite of that.

 

[endlessness]

Yeah I'd guess nobody here believes in the stereotypical bearded god, hence why I mentioned I think people in this thread are much closer in their ideas than it might seem

 

[MySmelf]

If there was a God I think there would be solid evidence for that being. It makes nonsense to me that an all powerful omnipotent creator can exist without ever leaving a single trace. Its illogical at best just plain silly IMO.

This reasoning makes no sense to me. How could you possible show evidence for an "all powerful omnipotent creator", a being that could tweak the entire subatomic structure of the universe in an instant? If such a God exists it could have destroyed and recreated the whole universe one minute ago purposefully making it appear in every detail to have exited all this time without a creator.

IMO such an all powerful being eventually negates its own existence. Its best bet would be to turn itself into a pandeistic being completely losing itself in its own creation.

Why wouldn't there be evidence of this being? So this God can and does do anything with nothing being impossible since it makes all the rules and creates all. How can something so limitless not be able to even be detected? That's my question. And let's say God does exist exactly as some say it does, what reason would there even be for it to ensure its lack of detection or knowledge of its existence?

Your own words admit that its impossible to show any evidence of God existence...then why would you believe in it? Why does God always get a pass? If anyone put forth a proposal of the existence of something like a gremlin or a unicorn wouldn't you ask for some hard evidence of them to believe they exist?. This is what I don't understand.

I never actually said I believe in this God or any other. Really, any all powerful being with the exception of maybe a pantheistic/pandeistic one seems ridiculous to me. Even a pantheistic being, one that is consciously active, doesn't really sit well with me and a pandeistic "god" isn't even conscious of it's own existence.

If anything I fought it for a long time because i so wanted to believe in God. In the end I just couldnt because i see no reason for a God to exist and I have never heard an argument here or elsewhere that would change my stance.

I think this is a good stance to have. I also see no reason for a God to exist, I'm sure the universe would work fine without one.

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

Hf and others, let me put to rest another assumption people keep making that is wrong. You all keep saying how naive of me to expect God to come and play by my rules proving itself to me. Ive never said such a thing nor have I demanded proof. Ive asked for EVIDENCE of its existence which is not proof but at least something i can understand taking on a very important belief such as this.

I have never said i need to see it with my own eyes or as HF wrote my "puny senses" in fact I dont think what i see taste or touch can always be trusted especially not when it comes to visions or hyper-space. I understand what many of you dont, that your very own eyes and experiences can easily fool you and thats a main motivator for me to get people to understand. I feel its short sighted to believe everything you experience with psychs and the same applys to God IMO.

Ive made the statement that if this creating power God exists there should be evidence and some keep thinking im asking to see or talk to a God Im so lazily expecting to come to me. Im talking about detection through mathematics or physics and I stand up for this idea that its silly to think a force, a being so impactful and interactive in creating nature would just be impossible to detect through sciences. And if this is the case by some peoples own admission ...why the hell would anyone believe in it!?

HF- you said you went ahead and assumed I did nothing on my part to find these answers because I didn't go ahead and boast my adventures. well thats not my style and because i didn't I dont see what gives you the right to assume i just want to believe in no God by choice. Nothing could be further than the truth.

I spent months in the amazon going deeper into my mind than I ever dreamed possible. My experiences there made all my experiences in the past decade at home alone in silent darkness look like a walk in the park. I was ripped to pieces and re built from the ground up. I bordered on madness for a while and good people like Trav and Swimfriend brought me back to earth to stay grounded for my remaining time.

Many , many of my experiences were about God including a face to face sit down conversation one that triggered a memory that Ive actually had contact with this Entity that calls itself God 5 other times in my life.

I never felt closer to understanding the truth as in that time period but a series of ceremonies following that contact with God plus massive quite integration and writing got me to the point of view I hold now. There is no GOD and its a beautiful thing. I didnt just wake up and decide this is what I wished to believe so stop saying that!

If anything I fought it for a long time because i so wanted to believe in God. In the end I just couldnt because i see no reason for a God to exist and I have never heard an argument here or elsewhere that would change my stance.

Oly, in the end it makes no difference whether you personally have or have not done sufficient work in seeking. Who can judge that?

It makes no difference to my point.

If you want to focus on being defensive to some perceived slight... go right ahead. Fact is, I made a number of valid points that you never bothered to address. Even if you were a disillusioned monk who spent 50 years meditating in a cave, it changes almost nothing.

The majority of people asking for proof have not tried to find it and are not really open to hearing about the proof other people have amassed. Calling it evidence instead of proof is not much different IMO. Obviously for a materialist, proof is a great deal more solid than evidence... but either thing is still a gift you must earn to a theist.

I don't particularly care to fan the flames of what is really a non-argument here. I am not emotionally attached to this and I am not trying to call you out or belittle you... but since you brought it up... I don't find that spending a few months losing your mind in the Amazon is all that intense of a commitment.

Your face to faces with "a being that called itself G*d" are more interesting to me, but sound to me possibly like some lesser deva or demiurge pretending to the throne. I have no idea, but I can say that after a face to face with the most high... you tend not to revert to atheism.

I don't know how old you are, but I am guessing that many of you here are not even old enough to have put in the kind of legwork I am speaking of. Most of the serious mystical traditions I know of don't even consider you a beginner on the path until you have put in 10 or 20 years.

You said: "I understand what many of you dont, that your very own eyes and experiences can easily fool you and thats a main motivator for me to get people to understand."

This is odd coming from someone who is upset that others make assumptions about him. You seem to make a lot of assumptions yourself, perhaps without even recognizing. As for my understanding about the untrustworthiness of the senses... I only said the same exact thing 4 or 5 times on this very thread already.

I find it funny that people are happy to trust their senses when they show them uncontroversial, mundane things that confirm their material worldview... but if their senses show them something other, then the talk of not believing everything you see comes up. I, on the other hand, don't believe anything I see. I am fairly certain that the material world doesn't exist in any true or objective way.

Since it seems unlikely at this point that you will go back and address the points of debate I have already made, I will simplify things here.

Challenge:

Provide me some concrete evidence that you yourself exist independently of me. Give me some proof that you are not a figment of my imagination, a dream character in Vishnu's grand dream, or some split personality I fall into a few times a day & post here under another alias.

If you can not do this, then by what rights do you expect such evidence from a being that has created and is animating 100 billion galaxies (at the very least)? If you, who I am already communicating with, and is ostensibly a member of my own species, milieu, and sex... can not make me believe you exist... then I rest my case.

 

[blackdust]

let's change the word god to finger nails. :surprised
words are f.u.n.


---------------------
we can talk about this on so many levels.
the question is, what does god (finger nails) mean to me?


--------
I see lots of prickles here.....
and thats fun!:thumb_up:

but I like to talk more like goo on subjects like religion.


----------
Okay, prickle A you are now on debate with prickle B.
:want:

 

[URBY]

I was a fingernail once.....

 

[DeMenTed]

Yeah sorry hyperspace fool. When i talk of god i automatically associate it with the abrahamic christian, jewish and muslim god. The leaders of those religions love starting wars. I did say most godly people are nutters, clearly all of them aren't nutters.

Most people have the tendency to look up at authority figures. I think thát´s the real problem. Not the religiousness of these people as such.

Yes polytrip, this is in essence what i'm talking about.

People look up to their leaders who more often than not have have firm foot in religious ideals.

 

[DeMenTed]

Yeah sorry hyperspace fool. When i talk of god i automatically associate it with the abrahamic christian, jewish and muslim god. The leaders of those religions love starting wars.

May I ask, who are the leaders of the Jewish and Islamic faiths who love to start wars?Can you name them?

Its also wildly inaccurate to assume that the Islamic concept of God in any way resembles that which is commonly thought of by Christians ie bearded chap up on high who does this and that.The Islamic perspective of God makes mention only of His names and attributes without anthropomorphism, and the Muslim keeps his 'knowledge' of God within these parameters.

The people i talk of maybe aren't necessarily the leaders of the religion but they are the leaders of their land and have a deep connection to their religion and use their religion as the cornerstone of their ideals.

The ayatollahs of Iran, their favourite words seem to be death to america, infidels etc..

The jewish leaders of Israel who are deeply religious are chomping at the bit to start a war with Iran.

The leaders of America are also chomping at the bit to start a war with Iran.

The christians of old who were led by the pope started many wars in the middle east and handed out many a savage and evil force on people who didn't share their views.

Sorry ive just woke up and my brain isn't fully awake yet so that's why i'm unable to deeply go into this discussion at the moment.

I know people like hitler who maybe weren't religious have committed some of the biggest atrocities on earth but those atrocities did have a foot in religious thinking, wanting to wipe out the jews etc..

In the modern world at the moment most of the evil thngs are carried out in the name of Their god.

Sorry if i haven't fully answered the question but hopefully you get the jist of what i'm saying.

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

Yeah sorry hyperspace fool. When i talk of god i automatically associate it with the abrahamic christian, jewish and muslim god. The leaders of those religions love starting wars.

May I ask, who are the leaders of the Jewish and Islamic faiths who love to start wars?Can you name them?

Its also wildly inaccurate to assume that the Islamic concept of God in any way resembles that which is commonly thought of by Christians ie bearded chap up on high who does this and that.The Islamic perspective of God makes mention only of His names and attributes without anthropomorphism, and the Muslim keeps his 'knowledge' of God within these parameters.

The people i talk of maybe aren't necessarily the leaders of the religion but they are the leaders of their land and have a deep connection to their religion and use their religion as the cornerstone of their ideals.

The ayatollahs of Iran, their favourite words seem to be death to america, infidels etc..

The jewish leaders of Israel who are deeply religious are chomping at the bit to start a war with Iran.

The leaders of America are also chomping at the bit to start a war with Iran.

The christians of old who were led by the pope started many wars in the middle east and handed out many a savage and evil force on people who didn't share their views.

Sorry ive just woke up and my brain isn't fully awake yet so that's why i'm unable to deeply go into this discussion at the moment.

I know people like hitler who maybe weren't religious have committed some of the biggest atrocities on earth but those atrocities did have a foot in religious thinking, wanting to wipe out the jews etc..

In the modern world at the moment most of the evil thngs are carried out in the name of Their god.

Sorry if i haven't fully answered the question but hopefully you get the jist of what i'm saying.

D

As much as the widespread surge of religion and its assorted ills & woes irks me... often to no end... I don't see that "most of the evil things" are carried out in the name of any god.

Fundamentalism is a virulent plague within the already bacteria like colonization of religion as it seems to me. Certainly a lot of terrible things have happened under auspices of one religious group or another... especially historically speaking.

And yet, in my view, the largest destructive force on the planet at this time is clearly the unfettered pursuit of money & power. I would say that this callous greed and rapaciousness displayed by multinational corporations, financial institutions, governments, the ultra-wealthy, and their brainwashed minions causes more problems than the fear of any god or even the corruption of any religious ideals... in terms of real damage in the world... by a long shot.

Aside from the Ayatollahs, none of the leaders you mentioned are especially religious... even if they pay a lot of lip service to their local religion for political reasons. And, even still, if you take all the f*cked up actions and policies and analyze the prime motivations... even those perpetrated by fanatical religionistas tend to be inspired by money, power, control of natural resources, and perceived defense. Personally, I don't think religion has a lot to do with wars for oil, fear of an Iran with a nuke, destroying the environment, giant plastic islands in our seas, poison in our food, Monsanto, families sleeping under bridges, people dying from drinking unclean water, bee colonies dying off, skin cancer due to holes in our ozone, climate change etc. etc.

This stuff is all on secular heads. Even if someone is ostensibly religious in a position of power, the decisions to go on with these things (and even worse stuff I don't want to even touch here) is nearly always about the bottom line or geo-political posturing.

The image of crazed muslim suicide bomber dying for virgins is a graphic and visceral image that stirs up a lot of anti-religion feelings, but rationally speaking, a) the total number of such people is a tiny and insignificant number & b) there would still be people chanting "death to America" and blowing themselves up even if Islam never existed. Islam didn't make the Arab culture hotblooded and proud... it capitalized off of those preexisting traits.

=============

As for Corpus' conjectures about Islam... I think it is not quite that cut and dry. Certainly they don't portray Allah as a bearded cloud dweller, they don't make pictures of him at all. (They were mostly bound by strictures to only make geometric and nature art.) Some sects of Islam have truly cosmic ideas about him... like the Sufis... but, muslims do always call him a him... and a male deity that is "pleased" by worship and actually created humanity solely for his pleasure.

Furthermore, despite their strict tawhīd monotheism, there are still remnants of their polytheistic past all through the Q'uran. In addition to Allāh (a term used by Arabic speaking Christians and Jews by the way) they use the word "ilāh" to denote deities and gods in general... like the difference between G*d and gods in English. In addition, to the "other gods" that exist but are not to be worshipped because big daddy god is jealous and needs all that worship for himself... Islamic culture is filled with appropriated spiritual beings of divine power like the Djinn which predate Islam.

In my opinion, despite a lot of effort to separate the 3 major Abrahamic faiths out from each other, and a number of clearly different beliefs... for the most part, Christians and Muslims are still wannabe Jews who copied 90% of their religion from the Israelites. This includes, but is not limited to, their chief god, the concept of prophets, the exact same angels and archangels, the exact same stories, the exact same patriarchs etc. etc. Fundamentally, the main difference between the 3 religions is that each new kid on the block wants to tack on their new guy prophet or savior onto the existing list and then lock it down so no newer dudes can join the ranks.

As someone who is fascinated by religions, but finds them all ridiculous and incapable of delivering on their basic promises... this idea that prophets and saints existed, but that some arbitrary god shut off the tap, and the bar of prophecy has been closed since the last official prophet... is one of the silliest of the bunch. If there ever was such a thing as a prophet, I think we should still be able to achieve that lofty height in modern times. It may be harder for some reason now... distractions, moral depravity, and general lack of effort... but Islam actually believes that their cosmic buddy (who wants you to have the beards while himself remaining under a cosmic burqah) only chose 124000 messengers starting with Adam and concluding with Mohammad.

This means that, not only have we been on our own for 1400 years or so... but that the rest of time forever will be devoid of any direct messages from the big guy. Personally, as with most religious texts, I find sparse few truly useful gems mixed in with acres of horseshit in the Q'uran. The idea that the great prophet (who is well known to have been illiterate) dictated this stuff to a bunch of Jews he gathered and held hostage is highly symbolic of the fundamental flaws in the religion. Of course, the Vatican kept its Jews as well and the basic Christian Bible is the product of the Masoretic Jews who were "pressured" into making it for them as well.

A not-so-secret joke among qabbalists and other jewish cognoscenti, is that the Jews who wrote the Q'uran created a coded design which they scribed on every page of the original book that meant more or less "Written under duress. This is all bullshit. Don't take any of this seriously." As I understand, this symbol is now considered holy in Islam.

Anyway, while I don't really want to provoke anyone too hard here, I am not averse to some incidental offending of any true-believer religion freaks who might take umbrage to what I say. Be offended. Maybe it might make you think a bit. Feel free to call me out if you think I misstated something, or am purposefully being misleading. I stand by what I have said.

 

[DeMenTed]

Yes i agree with what you are saying HF. Money and power is the main factor in most of the world's woes.

You do have an excellent grasp on what's what with the world, cheers