It's heartbreaking to see how many of my skeptic heroes have drunk the Kool-Aid. I followed David Gorski for many years and considered his SBM website my 'go to' for facts, but now I just can't trust a single word he says. All the way through that disastrous Neil deGrasse Tyson interview on men in women's sport I was waiting for him to turn to camera and say 'April Fool'.
I'm not a Shermer fan but he seems to be one of the sane ones, along with the excellent Harriet Hall.
I miss James Randi so much, but I'm almost pleased he died before turning to the dark side. I don't believe he would have, but then I thought that of Gorski too.
Shermer went up in my esteem when he printed Harriet's review of Abigail Shrier's book after Gorski and Novella binned it and wrote their own stupid 'review'. I don't read whyevolutionistrue as often as I should but I remember be did a good piece on the Tavistock when the Cass report came out.
I used to be a skeptic activist but had to drop it to be a carer. I'm free again now but too scared to look up my old activist group in case they've all gone woke. It's astonishing how many have been captured.
The mechanisms of evolution haven’t been explained thoroughly. I don’t believe the chemical paradigm is able to explain it adequately, but would never doubt that life on this planet hasn’t changed over time. The tension between uniformitarianism and catastrophism is real! This planet has experienced climate change many times before that wasn’t anthropogenic, so I figure pollution is what is anthropogenic, and caused by industrial activity, specifically. When I hear someone ask if I “believe in” evolution, I tell them that it is the evolutionists that I lack faith in, not the factual process. They are a materialistic priesthood that has largely abandoned the Scientific Method, unfortunately, and it is nowhere more evident to me than in the medical industry. Shermer’s not the worst orthodox personality I can think of, for sure. James Randi is good now that he’s dead. What a shriveled snarky man that acted like anybody who didn’t agree with his materialistic viewpoint was somehow a childish person who believes in Santa Claus and he could fool with his confidence games. Arrogant prick! The scientific orthodoxy is full of them and continuously spawns more. Male supremacy is a form of group narcissism and infects all institutions, public and private, tax-exempt or not. I have no words for Neal dG. Tyson. I refuse to worship men and their toxic technologies that they demand to be worshipped for.
Can't agree on Randi, but yes, the male dominance of the skeptic movement created a bad environment for women. The misogyny showed itself during Elevatorgate and the #MeToo stories from women that it triggered. The Dawkins 'Dear Muslima' letter was peak misogyny and stopped me liking him.
Odd that Dawkins and Shermer, two of the key misogynists in the past, are now the ones speaking against the woke attitude to women. Go figure.
I’m unfamiliar with ‘Dear Muslima’ and Elevatorgate, but now have something to investigate today, thank you! Even though Dawkins grates on my nerves like Randi, it was totally unacceptable for his award to be taken back by whoever it was that did that. I actually had sympathy for him, and am glad to hear he and Shermer are speaking out against the non-think of the wokerati. Yeah, go figure!
This link has Rebecca Watson's original video and the text of the Dawkins letter. Be wary of the tone though as Watson didn't 'shame' anyone. She didn't name the guy. She merely made a brief comment in a video telling guys not to do what he did. She was calm.
Subsequently Watson went a bit off the rails with Atheism+ but I think she was right to call the behaviour out.
You say Randi wouldn't have turned to the dark side, but I know people who worked with him closely and followed his thinking who definitely did. Blew my fucking mind, I tell you what! He himself may not have, and may have kept his followers on the right track, but that's something we'll never know.
I didn't say he *couldn't* have fallen for woo, I was just relieved that his death meant I didn't get disillusioned by him as I did by so many others. I like to think he wouldn't have, but we can't be 100% sure when many other decent skeptics like Gorski lost their reasoning. As you say, it's mindblowing!
A well articulated position. I can’t say anything remotely as smart in comment.
I am in the U.K. and I do think that part of the reason we push back on gender ideology here ( and I know certain of our nations are more captured than others) is because it is like a religion and we are very secular. We are very secular because of all the turmoil religion caused here which is still visible and evident today. Civil wars, revolution. You can walk down the same streets heretics were marched down before they were burned at stakes. I think those things leave long memories in the psyche.
Have you not seen that 4 teen boys were suspended from school, because an autistic boy dropped the Quran and scuffed it. The autistic boy’s mother, who is not Muslim, was forced to attend what was practically an Islamic trial at a mosque with her head covered and apologise to adult Islamic men for her son’s terrible misdemeanour. Her son has received death threats and is in hiding. This is in the U.K. it’s disgusting and we should all march the streets ripping up their stupid book and refuse blasphemy laws in the U.K. we won’t, because we’re scared of these people and what they do. 🙁
Yes and that was allowed in west Yorkshire by west Yorkshire police who allowed the Rotherham grooming gangs to get away with their crimes because of fear of being called racist. I do think that it is the racism accusations that give it a pass rather than it being about religion per se, but the net outcome is the same I agree. I don’t think the catholics or the Mormons could do that and get away with it for instance. The Home Secretary criticised what happened but I don’t know if she is actually doing anything about it. I think there are some bigger cultural issues in that neck of the woods which may be at play. I think some of it may be very specific to West Yorkshire. I’m not sure you would get the same thing happen in Sheffield or even in London.
I don’t think it had anything to do with fear of being accused of racism. I believe that was an excuse. It went on for decades and 20, 30, 40 years ago, no one was afraid of being accused of racism. It was men and communities thinking poor, uneducated girls from lower and working class families deserved and wanted it and the girls themselves arguing against authorities, because they were groomed and often intoxicated or drugged. Don’t forget Muslim men from the same communities were employed by the police and councils. They too were too afraid to do anything? Nah.
Of course we can’t ban transgenderism, or any other religion. People are free to believe whatever absurd and illogical things they want. We must all have freedom of belief. But that freedom stops where it begins to harm others.
We have a duty to stop lies being taught in schools and/or forced onto non believers and we must prevent harm to all victims of the nonsense. Adults can dress how they want, cut off what they want or call themselves Fifi Trixibelle, but they cannot impact on the freedoms of others.
Freedoms work two ways. My freedom to laugh at flat earthers and biology deniers is just as important as their right to believe nonsense, I have a right to hold religious beliefs in contempt,but that is where the TRAs are becoming dangerous. They want their freedom to be scientifically illiterate respected, but they try to shut down sane people stating facts.
That is the behaviour fascists descend to when they cannot give evidence for their beliefs. TRAs don't think clearly or logically, but they think their feelz must trump those of us who do.
I’m the youngest of seven siblings (born 1971) raised Roman Catholic, and I asked an elder sister when I was six if Santa was real or just a story. She said Santa was just a story (which confirmed my hunch) and so I reasoned Jesus, etc. were the same. I was the only one who didn’t go to Catholic school, though. Public school for me and catechism after school, but still no go. I do recognize it as the true Christian church, though. You can’t reinvent religion from another civilization and claim to know it better than the originators, but Protestants did and do just that. I think it’s narcissistic at the group level. The peculiar strains of Protestant Christianity expressed here in the USA are a reflection of its questionable beginnings, and televangelism is at least as depraved as indulgences. I’m not a fan of ancient Roman anything, but just don’t see any evidence that Protestants have corrected the ills of that religion for slaves Rome created. Maybe you have to get it at home and school for the indoctrination to be most effective? Maybe that’s what you meant by “raised” Catholic? Otherwise, I can say that I refuse to submit to domination, and endured a narcissistic grandparent in addition to the Roman Catholic Church. The mechanical, materialistic priesthood called “Science” that grew out of the as-called Enlightenment rules us all now, and is busy commodifying human bodies and the very biosphere itself. Under patriarchy, politics trumps objectivity, unfortunately.
Great and thoughtful essay. I was struck during the Church pedophilia scandals by the paradox that maintenance of the structure of the Church Authority was more important than serving the member people, and this became the justification for moving transgressors around to different parishes after mild wrist-slapping. The Ideology itself becomes more important than the individuals it is supposed to serve, and since no criticism or critical thinking of the Divine Right of Priests is allowed, it has the seeds of its own destruction, allowing abuses, corruption and other problems to gain a foothold. . Transgenderism has apparently duplicated this format.
Yes, very dangerous when taken literally, figuratively, or unsalted. I’m involved in a civil lawsuit at the moment, and keep noticing how the dead language of the ancient Romans is still in use daily within the legal system. A master-slave way of being with materialism as the new belief system. What else could that bring us but the abolition of sex and the complete commodification of human bodies and the entire living biosphere? Please don’t let anyone convince you that your consciousness is just a byproduct of chemical processes, nor that more “advanced” aliens are in contact with Earth. It is the new religion, and all of it delivered through male-dominated institutions, where politics rules, not the Scientific Method, unfortunately. I refuse all man-made beliefs systems and live in the mystery with reason as my guide. Thankfully, all is not yet lost, but the corruption of the Scientific Method by the politics of the application of technology for profit is evident in academia to anyone who cares to investigate it as I have. Bite mark evidence, arson investigation and other practices that were never properly vetted and have been accepted as “science” are now being called into question by insiders, not just rational autodidactic observers like myself. Psychopathology is rampant and increasing and it would be silly and absurd not to question all of our institutions and what their motives are. Blessed are the whistleblowers! Thank you for all of your efforts combating non-scientific claptrap! ☮️❤️🐾
You know the saying-“ you can take the girl out of the church but you can’t take the church out of the girl”? Well, that’s me! I’m remembering a summer many years ago when my family ( 4 kids and husband) and I were in Rome. I wanted an audience with the Pope. We attended a mass that was given by Pope John Paul and I don’t know why but I began to cry. My husband turned and whispered in my ear”you don’t really believe any of this, do you “? I let out the loudest laugh and it felt like everyone in the church turned around to stare at me in horror! Anyway, growing up in Catholic school, I have too many perv priest stories- horrific abuse of power!
Falling in love is also absurd and dangerous. Ain't gonna stop people. My personal belief is that everyone has a need for some sort of religion, and the Enlightenment position that man can and ought to strive to be fully rational may be the most absurd of the lot. Enlightenment values are just an outgrowth of Christianity anyway. Esoterically, it is the same thing, a cult of the sun. Only taken to such an extreme that one becomes blind to the very fact one is engaged in worship (stare at the sun too long...)
Far better, in my opinion, to try to make some accommodation for the shadowy, the invisible, and yes, the absurd. And this is one of the essential purposes of religion. Not to say it ought to be above criticism, far from it. I agree with you both about the danger intrinsic in the concept, and the specific horrors inflicted by the Catholic church. But trying to argue it out of existence, that's been tried for about 250 years, and look where we are. Drowning in unreason, without any sort of containment strategy.
"Drink this 'blood' and eat my body (bread) in remembrance of me" Um, no thanks. I think the Luciferians may have added this part so they could laugh at Christians. Luciferians are the blood/adrenochrome drinkers.
And I have so many questions about the stories the Bible contains. So much does not make sense.
Why would a creator put tribes in the rainforest who will never encounter a Christian missionary, so they can never choose to convert, and then cast them into hell after they die because they never accepted Christ? They never had a chance, so wtf? Why would I commune with such a diety? Why would anyone?
I know that the Bible was edited at the Council of Nicea, and I think things have been changed, added, and deleted since the beginning. They say that reincarnation was once in the Bible, but it was removed because people kept killing themselves to get to heaven and bypass earthly suffering. So the Catholics took reincarnation out and made suicide a horrible sin.
I was not raised in any religion. I looked into several religions as a teen and during college. I sensed that there was a God/Creator and I wanted to find him (I use "he" for ease in communicating.)
I liked the girl's in my University Bible study class. I liked how kind, welcoming and happy they were. It was a classmate who invited me to Bible study. I liked they way these girls lived, and I wanted what they had, there was a frequency of calm, kindness and surety about them.
I decided not to worry about the things that didn't make sense. I decided to simply embrace the beauty and do my best to live according to the Sermon on the Mount and the 10 Commandments.
And then I died in 1987. I was 25. I had been hit by a bus and I was being treated by several doctors, all prescribed me different medications. This was before pharmacies were linked up.
I ended up stopping my heart by taking a lethal combination of medications.
My husband found me blue, cold and very dead. He called 911.
I had an extensive NDE. It took me quite a while to recognize that the thing that looked so familiar, the object of everyone's attention and efforts, was my body.
"That's me!", I thought as I hovered over the paramedics. "NO! That's not me - this is me! My mind! My consciousness! Ha! I knew I was right!" I started laughing.
All my life I had wondered about the nature of self and reality - what am I?
To find that I had been right was very thrilling, and hilarious.
I laughed more. And then I felt the Creator. Warm, luscious, love energy surged thru me. It felt like I still had a body, though I could see none.
"This is better than any drug I've ever done in my life!", I thought. This thought caused me to laugh even more because I had died from Rxs.
I laughed harder and harder. It was all so funny, so ridiculous, and then God began laughing with me, which made me laugh even more. It was rolling around in the floor, peeing in your pants kind of laughter- you know the kind of laughter where if your friend looks at you or laughs with you, you laugh even harder? It was like that. That is what God feels like.
And then I felt ECSTASY- it surged thru me faster and more and more and it felt like I was going to pop.
God feels like an electrical current made of Love, Ecstacy, Happiness, Laughter, and more Ecstasy. Mostly ecstasy.
And like electricity- there is no gender to the Creator.
I felt Unconditional Love- truly unconditional.
I received a lot of knowledge, and I felt Ecstacy the entire time.
Finally, I decided that I wanted to merge with God. I was going to soar upwards and blend my energy with God's, and I knew that when we merged there would be a gigantic ecstasy explosion.
The anticipation of our merging was sort of like being on the verge of an orgasm x a billion gazillion.
I soared upward a great speed, the ecstasy expanding and expanding. Each time I thought I would pop from all the ecstasy, I expanded more to contain it all. I was laughing the entire time.
And then I looked back. It was like peering thru a hole in time and space. One paramedic was putting things away, wrapping up cords. The other man continued to give my empty shell shock after shock.
"Forget it man, she's gone." one paramedic said to the other.
And I jumped back into my body, startling everyone.
I chose to return. I wasn't forced back.
During my NDE there was a being on my left side, holding my hand. I was experiencing so much Ecstacy and the Creator and I were laughing so hard the entire time I was "dead" that I didn't really focus on him. It was Jesus Christ.
I don't go to a church. I haven't found a group of people who can handle my experience of God and Christ, and that's ok.
I connect with God at home.
I can tap into the Creator's Love and Ecstacy at will, and sometimes, often, it simply overcomes me and I'll start weeping and laughing because it feels so good.
I can often use this energy to self-heal and to heal others. This is one example, this is when I really learned how to apply the Creator's energy practically: https://youtu.be/dRJSx_zD9oo
Oh, Catherine your story is so beautiful and yes, it’s that beautiful love that I feel when I pray or meditate. Your story is very much like mine. Even though I have always been a Roman Catholic,my Italian grandfather would say , Mariuccia, “the Bible is man’s word and confession is man made. You don’t have to tell another sinner your sins, just talk to God”. In 2009, I had a NDE in a house fire. When my son and husband were having coffee at a nearby Starbucks, they saw the paramedics who had brought me to the hospital. My son realized that these guys were trying their hardest not to look over at him. He wondered why and approached them to say hello and thank them for all they did that Christmas night. They said yes, they recognized my family too but they were sure that I hadn’t made it. My son gave them the great news that I was indeed alive and getting better everyday.That night,I experienced the wonder of God! I was spinning in a tunnel with the brightest light at the end of it. My grandparents and aunt were waiting for me but THEY WERE LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY just the way each one of them did! My grandma was giggling and covering her mouth ( she didn’t have teeth!), grandpa’s shoulders were bouncing up and down, and Aunt Marie was giving her “Mary Tyler Moore” smile. It was amazing! I know it was them- each one so unique to them and the ONLY 3 at that point that had died! We’re not alone and someday these “spirit groups “ loved ones will all be reunited. No one can disabuse me of this. Thanks for your comment, it’s made me rethink that beautiful moment!❤️
Oh, Mary! How wonderful to meet you!!! I feel like we NDErs know the truth amongst a world full of people suffering delusion, fear, anger, lonliness and depression.
We just KNOW. We don't need proof or to prove anything. And they think we're crazy! Hahaha 😆 😂
Everything is fine, and the others will understand when they cross over.
It was very hard for me to be back here - it took a good 7 or 8 years to be OK with being embodied in this place. I tried killing myself countless times during those years. It was so awful to be so separate from the Creator and all that Love
I used to cry and cry and beg God to bring me back HOME.
I kicked myself for years for choosing to return. People were cruel and stupid and unworthy of what I had given up in order to come back here and explain the Creator's Love. That's why I returned, to help, to give comfort, and no one was interested.
They have their religion of Scientism and they worship at this altar now 😢
In 1999 I found a website, Near-Death.com, and there was a chat room where all the NDE people and anyone else could talk about things.
This was tremendously helpful in feeling ok about being back in this place.
I was overly psychic/empathetic upon my return. It was like there was no barrier between me and orher peoples thoughts and emotions. I could see and feel their dark deeds, I could feel their sadness and desperation. I worked for years to shut this new ability down. I worked from home as a free-lance writer so I wouldn't have to be around people.
What was it like for you when you came back into your body?
It was the other NDErs who told me I could connect to the Creator's energy while in body, and they shared their practices and methods with me. Things got so much better for me when I learned how to "change the channel" at will.
So you got the white tunnel, huh?
I was in a place of comfortable blackness, not at all scary, but rather like a large, velvet womb filled with Ecstacy and Love, if I were pressed to describe it.
It seems that it's 50/50, half of us get the white tunnel, and the others get the comfortable blackness.
Did you have the Life Review?
What is your understanding of the purpose of life?
My understanding is layered:
We exist in perfection on the other side, in need of nothing.
So we've created this Earthly place together with a set of game rules, like we agree to forget Home and the Creator when we come here. And we've set up life probabilities, chosen our parents/lineage in order to expand/grow/test ourselves.
I could go on and on, but that's the basics, I think.
Edit: I no longer view people as "cruel, stupid and unworthy of my sacrifice", I tried too much in the early years after my return. I should have just left them to their misery. Some people like to wallow in it.
I now recognize that they are playing the life game the way they want to, the way they set it up. I don't understand why anyone would want to feel so separate, alone and unloved, but I do see that there are valuable lessons in this sort of life path.
When I encounter these types of people now I move away quickly, and that is enough.
of all the many, many deities that humans have dreamed up, there's only One that cares what we do or don't believe. I serve Apollo and Hermes, who aren't remotely interested in whether I believe in them or not, and that's just as well. healthy religion is a communal art-form, not a power structure or collection of truths.
It's heartbreaking to see how many of my skeptic heroes have drunk the Kool-Aid. I followed David Gorski for many years and considered his SBM website my 'go to' for facts, but now I just can't trust a single word he says. All the way through that disastrous Neil deGrasse Tyson interview on men in women's sport I was waiting for him to turn to camera and say 'April Fool'.
I'm not a Shermer fan but he seems to be one of the sane ones, along with the excellent Harriet Hall.
I miss James Randi so much, but I'm almost pleased he died before turning to the dark side. I don't believe he would have, but then I thought that of Gorski too.
Shermer went up in my esteem when he printed Harriet's review of Abigail Shrier's book after Gorski and Novella binned it and wrote their own stupid 'review'. I don't read whyevolutionistrue as often as I should but I remember be did a good piece on the Tavistock when the Cass report came out.
I used to be a skeptic activist but had to drop it to be a carer. I'm free again now but too scared to look up my old activist group in case they've all gone woke. It's astonishing how many have been captured.
The mechanisms of evolution haven’t been explained thoroughly. I don’t believe the chemical paradigm is able to explain it adequately, but would never doubt that life on this planet hasn’t changed over time. The tension between uniformitarianism and catastrophism is real! This planet has experienced climate change many times before that wasn’t anthropogenic, so I figure pollution is what is anthropogenic, and caused by industrial activity, specifically. When I hear someone ask if I “believe in” evolution, I tell them that it is the evolutionists that I lack faith in, not the factual process. They are a materialistic priesthood that has largely abandoned the Scientific Method, unfortunately, and it is nowhere more evident to me than in the medical industry. Shermer’s not the worst orthodox personality I can think of, for sure. James Randi is good now that he’s dead. What a shriveled snarky man that acted like anybody who didn’t agree with his materialistic viewpoint was somehow a childish person who believes in Santa Claus and he could fool with his confidence games. Arrogant prick! The scientific orthodoxy is full of them and continuously spawns more. Male supremacy is a form of group narcissism and infects all institutions, public and private, tax-exempt or not. I have no words for Neal dG. Tyson. I refuse to worship men and their toxic technologies that they demand to be worshipped for.
You and me both!
Can't agree on Randi, but yes, the male dominance of the skeptic movement created a bad environment for women. The misogyny showed itself during Elevatorgate and the #MeToo stories from women that it triggered. The Dawkins 'Dear Muslima' letter was peak misogyny and stopped me liking him.
Odd that Dawkins and Shermer, two of the key misogynists in the past, are now the ones speaking against the woke attitude to women. Go figure.
I’m unfamiliar with ‘Dear Muslima’ and Elevatorgate, but now have something to investigate today, thank you! Even though Dawkins grates on my nerves like Randi, it was totally unacceptable for his award to be taken back by whoever it was that did that. I actually had sympathy for him, and am glad to hear he and Shermer are speaking out against the non-think of the wokerati. Yeah, go figure!
This link has Rebecca Watson's original video and the text of the Dawkins letter. Be wary of the tone though as Watson didn't 'shame' anyone. She didn't name the guy. She merely made a brief comment in a video telling guys not to do what he did. She was calm.
Subsequently Watson went a bit off the rails with Atheism+ but I think she was right to call the behaviour out.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/elevatorgate
You say Randi wouldn't have turned to the dark side, but I know people who worked with him closely and followed his thinking who definitely did. Blew my fucking mind, I tell you what! He himself may not have, and may have kept his followers on the right track, but that's something we'll never know.
I didn't say he *couldn't* have fallen for woo, I was just relieved that his death meant I didn't get disillusioned by him as I did by so many others. I like to think he wouldn't have, but we can't be 100% sure when many other decent skeptics like Gorski lost their reasoning. As you say, it's mindblowing!
Wow.....Kinda been lost all these years.
I nominate you my Pope and want to join your religion! You're definitely the unholy trinity I believe in
What colour smoke do we use? Must it match the day's dander ideity?
yup.
A well articulated position. I can’t say anything remotely as smart in comment.
I am in the U.K. and I do think that part of the reason we push back on gender ideology here ( and I know certain of our nations are more captured than others) is because it is like a religion and we are very secular. We are very secular because of all the turmoil religion caused here which is still visible and evident today. Civil wars, revolution. You can walk down the same streets heretics were marched down before they were burned at stakes. I think those things leave long memories in the psyche.
Have you not seen that 4 teen boys were suspended from school, because an autistic boy dropped the Quran and scuffed it. The autistic boy’s mother, who is not Muslim, was forced to attend what was practically an Islamic trial at a mosque with her head covered and apologise to adult Islamic men for her son’s terrible misdemeanour. Her son has received death threats and is in hiding. This is in the U.K. it’s disgusting and we should all march the streets ripping up their stupid book and refuse blasphemy laws in the U.K. we won’t, because we’re scared of these people and what they do. 🙁
Do you have a link?
The daily fail,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11809601/Boy-dropped-copy-Quran-Wakefield-school-left-petrified-death-threats.html
Or maybe, with an unaltered video of the mother
https://talk.tv/news/2214/what-century-are-we-in-police-called-to-school-after-quran-suffers-minor-damage
The bbc have a couple of short articles too.
Yes and that was allowed in west Yorkshire by west Yorkshire police who allowed the Rotherham grooming gangs to get away with their crimes because of fear of being called racist. I do think that it is the racism accusations that give it a pass rather than it being about religion per se, but the net outcome is the same I agree. I don’t think the catholics or the Mormons could do that and get away with it for instance. The Home Secretary criticised what happened but I don’t know if she is actually doing anything about it. I think there are some bigger cultural issues in that neck of the woods which may be at play. I think some of it may be very specific to West Yorkshire. I’m not sure you would get the same thing happen in Sheffield or even in London.
I don’t think it had anything to do with fear of being accused of racism. I believe that was an excuse. It went on for decades and 20, 30, 40 years ago, no one was afraid of being accused of racism. It was men and communities thinking poor, uneducated girls from lower and working class families deserved and wanted it and the girls themselves arguing against authorities, because they were groomed and often intoxicated or drugged. Don’t forget Muslim men from the same communities were employed by the police and councils. They too were too afraid to do anything? Nah.
Of course we can’t ban transgenderism, or any other religion. People are free to believe whatever absurd and illogical things they want. We must all have freedom of belief. But that freedom stops where it begins to harm others.
We have a duty to stop lies being taught in schools and/or forced onto non believers and we must prevent harm to all victims of the nonsense. Adults can dress how they want, cut off what they want or call themselves Fifi Trixibelle, but they cannot impact on the freedoms of others.
Freedoms work two ways. My freedom to laugh at flat earthers and biology deniers is just as important as their right to believe nonsense, I have a right to hold religious beliefs in contempt,but that is where the TRAs are becoming dangerous. They want their freedom to be scientifically illiterate respected, but they try to shut down sane people stating facts.
That is the behaviour fascists descend to when they cannot give evidence for their beliefs. TRAs don't think clearly or logically, but they think their feelz must trump those of us who do.
The last part of this essay seems like evidence for my theory that people raised Catholic can never really become anything else.
I’m the youngest of seven siblings (born 1971) raised Roman Catholic, and I asked an elder sister when I was six if Santa was real or just a story. She said Santa was just a story (which confirmed my hunch) and so I reasoned Jesus, etc. were the same. I was the only one who didn’t go to Catholic school, though. Public school for me and catechism after school, but still no go. I do recognize it as the true Christian church, though. You can’t reinvent religion from another civilization and claim to know it better than the originators, but Protestants did and do just that. I think it’s narcissistic at the group level. The peculiar strains of Protestant Christianity expressed here in the USA are a reflection of its questionable beginnings, and televangelism is at least as depraved as indulgences. I’m not a fan of ancient Roman anything, but just don’t see any evidence that Protestants have corrected the ills of that religion for slaves Rome created. Maybe you have to get it at home and school for the indoctrination to be most effective? Maybe that’s what you meant by “raised” Catholic? Otherwise, I can say that I refuse to submit to domination, and endured a narcissistic grandparent in addition to the Roman Catholic Church. The mechanical, materialistic priesthood called “Science” that grew out of the as-called Enlightenment rules us all now, and is busy commodifying human bodies and the very biosphere itself. Under patriarchy, politics trumps objectivity, unfortunately.
Like that joke during the Time of Troubles in Ireland.
"I'm a Buddhist"
"Protestant Buddhist or Catholic?"
I think you’re right- I’m guilty!
Dogma person or catechism?
Great and thoughtful essay. I was struck during the Church pedophilia scandals by the paradox that maintenance of the structure of the Church Authority was more important than serving the member people, and this became the justification for moving transgressors around to different parishes after mild wrist-slapping. The Ideology itself becomes more important than the individuals it is supposed to serve, and since no criticism or critical thinking of the Divine Right of Priests is allowed, it has the seeds of its own destruction, allowing abuses, corruption and other problems to gain a foothold. . Transgenderism has apparently duplicated this format.
Yes, very dangerous when taken literally, figuratively, or unsalted. I’m involved in a civil lawsuit at the moment, and keep noticing how the dead language of the ancient Romans is still in use daily within the legal system. A master-slave way of being with materialism as the new belief system. What else could that bring us but the abolition of sex and the complete commodification of human bodies and the entire living biosphere? Please don’t let anyone convince you that your consciousness is just a byproduct of chemical processes, nor that more “advanced” aliens are in contact with Earth. It is the new religion, and all of it delivered through male-dominated institutions, where politics rules, not the Scientific Method, unfortunately. I refuse all man-made beliefs systems and live in the mystery with reason as my guide. Thankfully, all is not yet lost, but the corruption of the Scientific Method by the politics of the application of technology for profit is evident in academia to anyone who cares to investigate it as I have. Bite mark evidence, arson investigation and other practices that were never properly vetted and have been accepted as “science” are now being called into question by insiders, not just rational autodidactic observers like myself. Psychopathology is rampant and increasing and it would be silly and absurd not to question all of our institutions and what their motives are. Blessed are the whistleblowers! Thank you for all of your efforts combating non-scientific claptrap! ☮️❤️🐾
“When I pay a debt, it wasn’t forgiven! It was paid! I kept the receipt! I want my Jesus back.”
dead
You know the saying-“ you can take the girl out of the church but you can’t take the church out of the girl”? Well, that’s me! I’m remembering a summer many years ago when my family ( 4 kids and husband) and I were in Rome. I wanted an audience with the Pope. We attended a mass that was given by Pope John Paul and I don’t know why but I began to cry. My husband turned and whispered in my ear”you don’t really believe any of this, do you “? I let out the loudest laugh and it felt like everyone in the church turned around to stare at me in horror! Anyway, growing up in Catholic school, I have too many perv priest stories- horrific abuse of power!
I wonder if you were feeling what I describe in my comment?
I can tune in to the Creator's frequency anytime I want to.
Falling in love is also absurd and dangerous. Ain't gonna stop people. My personal belief is that everyone has a need for some sort of religion, and the Enlightenment position that man can and ought to strive to be fully rational may be the most absurd of the lot. Enlightenment values are just an outgrowth of Christianity anyway. Esoterically, it is the same thing, a cult of the sun. Only taken to such an extreme that one becomes blind to the very fact one is engaged in worship (stare at the sun too long...)
Far better, in my opinion, to try to make some accommodation for the shadowy, the invisible, and yes, the absurd. And this is one of the essential purposes of religion. Not to say it ought to be above criticism, far from it. I agree with you both about the danger intrinsic in the concept, and the specific horrors inflicted by the Catholic church. But trying to argue it out of existence, that's been tried for about 250 years, and look where we are. Drowning in unreason, without any sort of containment strategy.
As an atheist myself I find this essay remarkable and admirable.
I don't understand blood sacrifice. At all.
"Drink this 'blood' and eat my body (bread) in remembrance of me" Um, no thanks. I think the Luciferians may have added this part so they could laugh at Christians. Luciferians are the blood/adrenochrome drinkers.
And I have so many questions about the stories the Bible contains. So much does not make sense.
Why would a creator put tribes in the rainforest who will never encounter a Christian missionary, so they can never choose to convert, and then cast them into hell after they die because they never accepted Christ? They never had a chance, so wtf? Why would I commune with such a diety? Why would anyone?
I know that the Bible was edited at the Council of Nicea, and I think things have been changed, added, and deleted since the beginning. They say that reincarnation was once in the Bible, but it was removed because people kept killing themselves to get to heaven and bypass earthly suffering. So the Catholics took reincarnation out and made suicide a horrible sin.
I was not raised in any religion. I looked into several religions as a teen and during college. I sensed that there was a God/Creator and I wanted to find him (I use "he" for ease in communicating.)
I liked the girl's in my University Bible study class. I liked how kind, welcoming and happy they were. It was a classmate who invited me to Bible study. I liked they way these girls lived, and I wanted what they had, there was a frequency of calm, kindness and surety about them.
I decided not to worry about the things that didn't make sense. I decided to simply embrace the beauty and do my best to live according to the Sermon on the Mount and the 10 Commandments.
And then I died in 1987. I was 25. I had been hit by a bus and I was being treated by several doctors, all prescribed me different medications. This was before pharmacies were linked up.
I ended up stopping my heart by taking a lethal combination of medications.
My husband found me blue, cold and very dead. He called 911.
I had an extensive NDE. It took me quite a while to recognize that the thing that looked so familiar, the object of everyone's attention and efforts, was my body.
"That's me!", I thought as I hovered over the paramedics. "NO! That's not me - this is me! My mind! My consciousness! Ha! I knew I was right!" I started laughing.
All my life I had wondered about the nature of self and reality - what am I?
To find that I had been right was very thrilling, and hilarious.
I laughed more. And then I felt the Creator. Warm, luscious, love energy surged thru me. It felt like I still had a body, though I could see none.
"This is better than any drug I've ever done in my life!", I thought. This thought caused me to laugh even more because I had died from Rxs.
I laughed harder and harder. It was all so funny, so ridiculous, and then God began laughing with me, which made me laugh even more. It was rolling around in the floor, peeing in your pants kind of laughter- you know the kind of laughter where if your friend looks at you or laughs with you, you laugh even harder? It was like that. That is what God feels like.
And then I felt ECSTASY- it surged thru me faster and more and more and it felt like I was going to pop.
God feels like an electrical current made of Love, Ecstacy, Happiness, Laughter, and more Ecstasy. Mostly ecstasy.
And like electricity- there is no gender to the Creator.
I felt Unconditional Love- truly unconditional.
I received a lot of knowledge, and I felt Ecstacy the entire time.
Finally, I decided that I wanted to merge with God. I was going to soar upwards and blend my energy with God's, and I knew that when we merged there would be a gigantic ecstasy explosion.
The anticipation of our merging was sort of like being on the verge of an orgasm x a billion gazillion.
I soared upward a great speed, the ecstasy expanding and expanding. Each time I thought I would pop from all the ecstasy, I expanded more to contain it all. I was laughing the entire time.
And then I looked back. It was like peering thru a hole in time and space. One paramedic was putting things away, wrapping up cords. The other man continued to give my empty shell shock after shock.
"Forget it man, she's gone." one paramedic said to the other.
And I jumped back into my body, startling everyone.
I chose to return. I wasn't forced back.
During my NDE there was a being on my left side, holding my hand. I was experiencing so much Ecstacy and the Creator and I were laughing so hard the entire time I was "dead" that I didn't really focus on him. It was Jesus Christ.
I don't go to a church. I haven't found a group of people who can handle my experience of God and Christ, and that's ok.
I connect with God at home.
I can tap into the Creator's Love and Ecstacy at will, and sometimes, often, it simply overcomes me and I'll start weeping and laughing because it feels so good.
I can often use this energy to self-heal and to heal others. This is one example, this is when I really learned how to apply the Creator's energy practically: https://youtu.be/dRJSx_zD9oo
I wish everyone could experience what I do.
Oh, Catherine your story is so beautiful and yes, it’s that beautiful love that I feel when I pray or meditate. Your story is very much like mine. Even though I have always been a Roman Catholic,my Italian grandfather would say , Mariuccia, “the Bible is man’s word and confession is man made. You don’t have to tell another sinner your sins, just talk to God”. In 2009, I had a NDE in a house fire. When my son and husband were having coffee at a nearby Starbucks, they saw the paramedics who had brought me to the hospital. My son realized that these guys were trying their hardest not to look over at him. He wondered why and approached them to say hello and thank them for all they did that Christmas night. They said yes, they recognized my family too but they were sure that I hadn’t made it. My son gave them the great news that I was indeed alive and getting better everyday.That night,I experienced the wonder of God! I was spinning in a tunnel with the brightest light at the end of it. My grandparents and aunt were waiting for me but THEY WERE LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY just the way each one of them did! My grandma was giggling and covering her mouth ( she didn’t have teeth!), grandpa’s shoulders were bouncing up and down, and Aunt Marie was giving her “Mary Tyler Moore” smile. It was amazing! I know it was them- each one so unique to them and the ONLY 3 at that point that had died! We’re not alone and someday these “spirit groups “ loved ones will all be reunited. No one can disabuse me of this. Thanks for your comment, it’s made me rethink that beautiful moment!❤️
Oh, Mary! How wonderful to meet you!!! I feel like we NDErs know the truth amongst a world full of people suffering delusion, fear, anger, lonliness and depression.
We just KNOW. We don't need proof or to prove anything. And they think we're crazy! Hahaha 😆 😂
Everything is fine, and the others will understand when they cross over.
It was very hard for me to be back here - it took a good 7 or 8 years to be OK with being embodied in this place. I tried killing myself countless times during those years. It was so awful to be so separate from the Creator and all that Love
I used to cry and cry and beg God to bring me back HOME.
I kicked myself for years for choosing to return. People were cruel and stupid and unworthy of what I had given up in order to come back here and explain the Creator's Love. That's why I returned, to help, to give comfort, and no one was interested.
They have their religion of Scientism and they worship at this altar now 😢
In 1999 I found a website, Near-Death.com, and there was a chat room where all the NDE people and anyone else could talk about things.
This was tremendously helpful in feeling ok about being back in this place.
I was overly psychic/empathetic upon my return. It was like there was no barrier between me and orher peoples thoughts and emotions. I could see and feel their dark deeds, I could feel their sadness and desperation. I worked for years to shut this new ability down. I worked from home as a free-lance writer so I wouldn't have to be around people.
What was it like for you when you came back into your body?
It was the other NDErs who told me I could connect to the Creator's energy while in body, and they shared their practices and methods with me. Things got so much better for me when I learned how to "change the channel" at will.
So you got the white tunnel, huh?
I was in a place of comfortable blackness, not at all scary, but rather like a large, velvet womb filled with Ecstacy and Love, if I were pressed to describe it.
It seems that it's 50/50, half of us get the white tunnel, and the others get the comfortable blackness.
Did you have the Life Review?
What is your understanding of the purpose of life?
My understanding is layered:
We exist in perfection on the other side, in need of nothing.
So we've created this Earthly place together with a set of game rules, like we agree to forget Home and the Creator when we come here. And we've set up life probabilities, chosen our parents/lineage in order to expand/grow/test ourselves.
I could go on and on, but that's the basics, I think.
Have a Blessed Day ✨️🙏✨️
Edit: I no longer view people as "cruel, stupid and unworthy of my sacrifice", I tried too much in the early years after my return. I should have just left them to their misery. Some people like to wallow in it.
I now recognize that they are playing the life game the way they want to, the way they set it up. I don't understand why anyone would want to feel so separate, alone and unloved, but I do see that there are valuable lessons in this sort of life path.
When I encounter these types of people now I move away quickly, and that is enough.
We are each playing our own virtual reality game.
Thank you, Exulansic xxx
of all the many, many deities that humans have dreamed up, there's only One that cares what we do or don't believe. I serve Apollo and Hermes, who aren't remotely interested in whether I believe in them or not, and that's just as well. healthy religion is a communal art-form, not a power structure or collection of truths.