Big Think

Musycks on April 2, 2008, 8:08 PM

Like your work raokes!

Thatguy, bit late for you to be supplying evidence to us after the event! Please make good use of your time on earth and supply some evidence before we die!
Just think how many brownie points you’ll earn with your saviour when you ‘save’ all us nasty atheists… it’s all about the numbers after all!!

and what a loving God you have… ‘worship me or rot in hell for eternity’ the equivalent of salvation at the end of a deistic gun barrel.

Stone Riley on April 4, 2008, 7:20 AM

Biblical hell? Where is your description mentioned in the Bible? It’s not.

InGod WeRust on April 27, 2008, 7:38 PM

You appear to be young – i don’t understand how anyone raised with all the benefits that enlightened, reasoned science has to offer can not stop and think for yourself for a moment. Do you really believe that there was a talking snake at the beginning? If you do then you are lost and all you have to offer is ignorance – just think about it for a minute – it may change your life before you waste it on your knees

Regards from Ireland

Admir Olovcic on May 20, 2008, 11:00 AM

I think some of these guys before me missed the bit where you said “hypothetical”. I agree with them completelly however. But were it to happen i guess i would have to have taken something back with me (Like Keanu Reeves in Constantine) to prove later that it wasn’t just some strange activity of an oxygen starved brain.

I have heard a guy talk about his NDE who swears that he was floating sorrounded by demons. His ordeal however lacked any sensory experience apart from sight. We are supposed to suffer in hell right? He felt nothing. Sounds like a dream to me.

Mary Coyote on May 24, 2008, 5:41 PM

InGodWeRust:
It’s NOT about ‘a talking snake at the beginning;’ it’s about a cultural icon in the Human Song. Rejecting human mythology as silly stories cuts you off from the largest part of the Human Song.

The snake is represented as Lilith in Jewish mythology as rejecting god’s plan. Do some research and a whole new world will open up for you. Where, here, Adam and Lilith are seen as the first humans, in Coyote and similar myths, Coyote was god’s first creation. Coyote in turn stole god’s technology and created human beings in direct violation of god’s plan.

In other myths, similar to the Biblical ‘sons of gods found the daughters of man desirable and copulated with them,’ it is Coyote that copulates with god’s creation and thus creates humanity. That is why god attempted to destroy the earth with a flood, and it was Coyote who saved a few humans.

As we examine mythology things begin to make more sense than exclusively sticking with one story, such as vengeful god murdering his own creation for exercising their free will.

Mary Coyote on May 24, 2008, 5:41 PM

I have replied more throughly in RESPONSES section to the right, but have a couple things more to say here.

Being-touched-by-god, as in a NDE, is not necessarily a positive experience from a human cultural POV. These people make sudden irrational turns in their lives often becoming social misfits; they become freaks and Cassandra’s. Who aspires to be a guru? Look what happened to Jesus. The people chanted: kill-the-freak kill-the-freak kill-the-freak.

This quality of god-touch is well acknowledged within Coyote mythology. The village idiot is elevated as Coyote and given awesome and corrupting power exactly when the people need a Saviour to fight the Wendigos. But where the Christian faith makes Jesus out to be perfect, the Coyote myth acknowledges the fragility of the human spirit, and the ease with which power corrupts morality.

Prophets/shamans are not socially well-adjusted people; they dress in sackcloth and heap ashes upon their heads. They consume peyote and dangerous mushrooms. Biblical prophets married prostitutes to demonstrate that the people were a-whoring, and preached hell-fire and destruction that never occurred (Jonah). Being-touched-by-god is a curse.

Looking for a sweeter vision of god? Try heroin.

Pastor Jennifer on May 30, 2008, 3:58 PM

NDE’S (near death experiences) are not experiences of death. The brain experiences oxygen starvation and hallucinates. Read Susan Blackmore on this. She has very interesting explanations, involving the visual cortex, of the tunnel of light phenomena experienced in NDE’S. So whatever I saw wouldn’t change my opinion a bit. Actually, as some of you know, I have God experiences (totally neurological in origin) and they don’t make me run to religion for a second. I enjoy them, then get on with life as before!