Religion
Related: About this forumI took a lot of acid one night and had a long discussion with a rock demon.
Last edited Tue Sep 29, 2015, 05:53 PM - Edit history (1)
Afterwards I didn't start worshiping rock demons.
Just sayin'.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Yeah that was a hell of a night.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Gregorian
(23,867 posts)beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Ichigo Kurosaki
(167 posts)so watch it. From National Lampoon's Lemmings album.
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)Do you feel old yet? It really hit me when I remembered that Belushi died in 1982. But I digress.
Ichigo Kurosaki
(167 posts)my body is getting old but my mind isn't.
Sure do miss those younger care free days though.
Do you remember the Radio Dinner album? I loved how they decided the winner of the election.
Profiles in Chrome was the track name.
Deteriorata was another good track.
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)To be honest, I'm much younger than I have ever been. I've learned so much, and evolved so much I can't believe what I used to do. I do miss a good drinking session, though. My musical tastes have been refined to the point that my life is surrounded by a multitude of amazing tuneage. That's what getting old should be. I fixed my injured back and knees; I've just recovered from 25 years of a serious illness. I'm almost young again. Knowledge, science, and sharing.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)One acid trip defines what you do or don't believe? And how is that applicable to the rest of us? Immature BS. I've taken acid too, on multiple occasions. sometimes it informed my spiritual beliefs, sometimes it was but a giggle, and sometimes it scared the hell out of me. so what?
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)I'm so sorry.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)I've taken acid too, on multiple occasions. sometimes it informed my spiritual beliefs..."
If you think any experience you have ever had while taking psychedelics "informed your spiritual beliefs" then your judgment regarding the validity of any spiritual belief or experience is self evidently suspect. (And "suspect" is characterizing it extremely kindly).
Nitram
(22,890 posts)I wonder if you wouldn't agree that psychedelic experiences can reveal tantalizing aspects of the complexity of the human brain which call into question some of our assumptions about our sense of self? Or is it just an escape into confusion and absurdity for you?
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)I wonder if you wouldn't agree that psychedelic experiences can reveal tantalizing aspects of the complexity of the human brain which call into question some of our assumptions about our sense of self?
If you mean through the process of a non-drugged objective third party properly and rigorously analyzing neural activity and such as the subject undergoes the experience? Sure, useful information could potentially be acquired that way.
If you mean by listening to whatever the drugged up person spouts off about while their brain function is chemically compromised, or subjectively interprets about the event after the fact, and thinking their perceptions somehow expose some hidden aspect of reality? Umm, no.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)You sound very closed to any experience you cannot immediately scientifically explain. My condolences on the closing of your mind. Try reading some of Oliver Sach's writing if you don't believe authentic scientific insight cannot be gained through the judicious use of psychoactive pharmaceuticals.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)...to blindly and ignorantly poke at it with chemicals just to see what will happen.
If you think that's insufficiently "open minded" I refer you to the old adage about your brain falling out.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)May I remind you of the religious nuts who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because they feared it was the work of the devil.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)...that there is even the most remote of resemblances between being scared to look at something because your superstition says an evil magic superbeing is involved and the recognition that you have exactly one brain and deliberately compromising its function for your own personal entertainment or curiosity is fucking stupid then I really can't help you.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)That's okay. It's not for everyone. Can lead to psychotic breaks in a certain percentage of the population. I respect your sticking with "better safe than sorry."
Playing with your brain for fun or idle curiosity = moronic. That is the sum total of the statement I am making.
I also don't invest all my retirement money in business proposals presented to me by members of the Nigerian royal family on the internet. Feel free to conclude I sound like I am "scared to death of venture capital experiences" if that for some reason makes you feel better while you run out to cut a check.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)But I'd suggest you stop assuming you know as much as you think you know. You clearly have a paucity of imagination, curiosity and gumption.
In your world a functioning brain and the ability to recognize abject stupidity = scared.
Which is why you like the idea of doping yourself with psychedelics perhaps?
Good luck on your Nigerian business ventures, you courageous visionary you...
Nitram
(22,890 posts)And anybody who conflates the word "dope" with psychedelics is obviously clueless about the entire subject.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)It's fucking stupid. Not scary... except I suppose in the sense of it being frightening how fucking stupid it is. Let us take a short journey of explanation through some of the mind-numbingly obvious reasons why it is stupid.
1. We're still figuring out all the ways the brain actually works. Long term impact of any of these substances on neural activity is not fully understood.
2. Experimenting on yourself, even when it's not involving experiments on the brain, is the mark of stunning incompetence. You lack objectivity when you are the test subject..
3. When it IS experimenting on the brain it goes from stunning incompetence to cartoonish levels of idiocy. You have to USE YOUR BRAIN to evaluate the results. If you compromise your brain function you are invalidating your findings before you even begin you genius. You cannot learn ANYTHING from self-experimentation on your own damn brain, Your findings are invalidated the moment they're generated. You have no idea how your tampering with your perceptions interfered with your ability to evaluate those perceptions. It's like deciding to run a test on some microscopic substances using a microscope and deciding to start by mashing at the lens of the microscope with your fingers to leave a nice fingerprint on it, then sprinkling it with glitter, then for good measure heating it up in an oven until the glass in the lens deforms like a fun house mirror.... then looking through it at your test material and going "OOOH... well this is interesting! It looks all bizarre! I wonder what deep and profound conclusions I can draw from this!?!?!?"
I would say that experimenting on your own brain by dosing yourself with psychedelic chemical substances is akin to a caveman poking at an iPad with a pointy stick to see what happens... except the caveman's pointy stick experiment is actually far superior! Because at least the caveman isn't compromising their own brain function and can relatively reliably evaluate the outcome of his experiment. (Poked with stick, glowy thing changed it's picture! Ooh!) whereas you are conducting an activity from which it is IMPOSSIBLE to derive any reliable data.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)And indeed there will be time
To wonder, Do I dare? and, Do I dare?
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
(They will say: How his hair is growing thin!)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin
(They will say: But how his arms and legs are thin!)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)You're laser focused in on your "I'm gonna call him a 'fraidy cat over and over in as many ways as I can think of" strategy and no statement or argument penetrates your skull while you pursue it.
edhopper
(33,616 posts)is an ideology that there are "other planes of existence". And that psychedelics don't merely alter your brain chemistry, but somehow open your perception to a reality you normally could not see.
Of course it is a exclusive ideology, that says only the officially sanctioned drugs do this. Not opiates or anti-depressives, etc...
Turn off you mind, relax and flow down stream.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)I would say i'm stunned anyone could be that credulous... but we are in the Religion forum after all so I would be lying if I did.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)...that you see religion behind anything you don't understand.
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Because if you're not, you didn't write The Waste Land. And if you didn't write it, you might consider throwing a couple of fucking quotation marks around that poem, slick. It would be the honest thing to do.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)Do you actually think I was trying to take credit for an allusion to lines that I thought might help you understand where I'm coming from? Or are you just a dick? Do you always look for irrelevant details to avoid the point? Or is your reading comprehension not up to the task of discerning the point?
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)What you or I know beforehand is irrelevant, because at face value the words appear to be yours. And no, you cannot assume that everyone walking the corners of the internet is familiar enough with early 20th century poetry to know 1) the work, and 2) the author. Whether deliberate or not, posting these words as you did without attributing the original author is dishonest.
Oh, I know perfectly well where you're coming from. The words of a long-dead poet no one really reads outside of a high school English class do little to demonstrate your knowledge of human neurology, but rather serve as a kind of cudgel you can wave around in a useless and vulgar display of intellectual masturbation. "Look at me! I can quote Eliot! I'm smart!"
Yeah, well, I can read poetry, too. So I'll see your Eliot and raise you a fucking Shakespeare:
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day-to-day
Until the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
- William Shakespeare, "Macbeth" Act 5, Scene 5
Or are you just a dick?
A dick? No. If I recall correctly, you are the one who threw the first stone. By rights, I think that makes you the dick.
As for me, I've always liked the word "nemesis". It is derived from the Greek nemein, meaning "given what is due".
Do you always look for irrelevant details to avoid the point?
Nope. But when there's no point being made, one must make due with what one is given. If you are interested in discussing this subject with even the slightest degree of seriousness, then say something worth addressing.
How sadly predictable.
I've long contended that once one rolls out the old "learn to read" trope, one has not only descended into the depths of bare, naked egotism, but effectively lost the argument as well.
Consider, for a moment, the following:
1) I can read.
2) I still think you're fucking wrong.
I know, I know: it is difficult to believe. But, against all odds, one may be perfectly literate, and *gasp* still disagree with you.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)Your inability to discern the point I was making by quoting a few lines of great poetry suggests I over-estimated both your intelligence and the breadth of your knowledge. Being literate means a great deal more than being able to read words in sequence and understand the meqaning of each word separately. It means being able to comprehend their meaning and relevance within the context of a conversation, a skill in which you are sadly lacking. But your arguments from the beginning have demonstrated a remarkably blinkered and rigid intelligence. I still wonder why you are so threatened by the suggestion that there is more in the world, oh, sorry:
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Hamlet, Act 1. Scene V by William Shakespeare
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Nitram
(22,890 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Click and you shall receive.
The source also happens to be watermarked in the upper right hand of the image, but I guess it's hard to see.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)You are dealing with an enormous body of evidence that there are aspects of or brain's sensory experience and cognitive process that are not normally not available to ordinary consciousness. Read some of Dr. Sach's books and you might get a better understanding ft the concept.
edhopper
(33,616 posts)other planes of existence that are invisible without the aid of psychotropics?
Nitram
(22,890 posts)Then you are not talking about other planes of existence that are invisible without the aid of psychotropics?
edhopper
(33,616 posts)could you elaborate on what you do mean?
Nitram
(22,890 posts)Please peruse them at your leisure. I am struck by how the people I've encountered in this thread seem a bit stuck in a habit of stereotypical thinking that makes it difficult to follow a line of reasoning that they are not familiar with. Seem to be stuck on interpreting everything though a lens of religion and New Age mythology.
edhopper
(33,616 posts)There is only one statement that acid helped shape your "spiritual beliefs", without any explanations of those beliefs.
So i ask again, could you elaborate on any insights you received under acid that you could not have gotten elsewhere? What truths did you discover under acid that others don't see without it?
Nitram
(22,890 posts)I wouldn't be able to summarize them in a coherent way. But one aspect of my understanding is that there is no bearded white guy god. There is no heaven and hell. It is all happening right inside each of our own brains. Aldous Huxley wrote that in order to survive, our brain filters out and modifies most of the sensory input we receive every second of our waking life. People who can't filter out the torrent of information cannot function. But psychedelics temporarily open those filters, letting us experience more of what is going on outside of our minds, and more of what is going on behind the scenes within our own brains. And the brain is a marvelously complex and highly developed organ.
that helps.
BTW this thread was a satirical reply to this other thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1218&pid=213469
TexasTowelie
(112,441 posts)you couldn't eat just one?
Warpy
(111,352 posts)Not gods, not demons, not even a lousy little leprechaun.
I did, however, begin to understand the inspiration for a lot of Gothic stone carving.
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)It was religious man.
LuvNewcastle
(16,856 posts)I'm saving up for a South American excursion now. Acid has taught me some things, but I've never even had mescaline or peyote, so I want to have a greater spiritual experience.
bvf
(6,604 posts)on my belly naming all the leaves.
I wouldn't say I worship leaves now, but ever since autumn's been my favorite season.
Oh yeah, and there were a few animated headstones. Friendly ones, fortunately.
rug
(82,333 posts)Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)I laughed my ass off for four hours straight and then ate some pizza.
Profound, isn't it?
Nitram
(22,890 posts)I wouldn't expect a mollusk to enjoy a van Gogh.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)I wouldn't expect an unreasonable person to draw reasonable conclusions, not matter the chemistry involved.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)And I'd class you as an absurdly unreasonable person based on your comments here.
Yorktown
(2,884 posts)Afterwards I didn't start worshiping rock demons.
I blame your rock demon.
Not convincing enough.
Didn't know its stuff.
Any rock demon worth its salt would have made you believe in it.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,361 posts)edhopper
(33,616 posts)I am pretty sure the feeling is not reciprocal.
It's like having a crush on a TV character, not only are the feelings one way, but the object of your attention isn't even real.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)But never was I unaware that I had taken drugs. Even in the throes of temporary, chemically-induced psychosis I was cognizant of the fact my brain chemistry was altered, and therefor never took the experience for anything more than what it was. My skepticism remained firmly intact. I laughed my ass off and generally had a good time.
Nitram
(22,890 posts)You appear to be more cynical than skeptical.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Because I was thinking you appear more self-righteous than insightful. But then, that's a common trait among people who build castles on swamps.
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)They should have added "And built on a swamp, on top of a castle that burned down, fell over and sank into the swamp"
Nitram
(22,890 posts)Why am I not surprised.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Nitram
(22,890 posts)...or gullible or defenseless. But I guess your vocabulary is too limited to follow that train of thought. Hence the childish internet memes instead of actual thoughts.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)A thing could be open, closed, or in myriad states between the two. But, I guess it is easier to deal in absolutes. Hence the childish straw men and ad hominems instead of actual arguments.
Response to Act_of_Reparation (Reply #68)
Post removed
Lordquinton
(7,886 posts)You sure are opposed to hearing differing points of view.
wendylaroux
(2,925 posts)Cleita
(75,480 posts)them because they can't move.
Person 2713
(3,263 posts)I have had cats for my pets all my life.
It took a long time to get off that mountain