On various visits to sistaur I'd see a book or two about Pagan or Wiccan topics and I'd look through them. These were clearly not just so much New Age nonsense (newage, as I've heard it put). I recognized the topic. It was largely visualisation and autosuggestion, a sort of self-hypnosis-light. It was just presented in a manner that might be more acceptable to some than the more, I suppose, clinical manner that I am more familiar with and generally prefer.

Various aspects can be taken as either forms of suggestion ("You don't do a spell to change the world, you do it change yourself.") or as means of extracting information from the un- or sub- conscious mind (divination - "Tea leaves don't know anything." as Terry Pratchett's Discworld witches say.) The one that I had the most trouble with was astrology. The best I can make of that is that, despite the cautions not to rely on the astrologer for too much, is that it seems to be using the astrologer as a therapist and the stars and planets as an excuse to see the therapist.

There is a lot of hokum, of course, but then consider what televangelists and "faith healers" do and it's hardly unusual. Not good, but not at all unusual. One thing I heard this past weekend was that someone had made a list of the things some particular item was good for and it went on and on and on... I joked about adding "...whiter teeth and fresher breath!" at the end. Evidently there were a few folks thinking that or close to it.

The gateway thing? A friend of sistaur had given her a pentacle necklace that she no longer felt any use or need for. She had found a different faith, Christianity. So evidently for her, Wicca was a gateway spirituality.

Current Mood: calm

One of the thing lurking in the mail was a letter addressed only to "Resident - To A Friend." This, of course, screams scummy advertising almost as loudly as the excessively bolded and multiple RED underlined text try to proclaim churchly miracles and the like.

This is the Prayer Rug Scam of the alleged "Saint Matthew's Churches" which exist as little more than a PO Box in Tulsa. The nonsense was sent from someplace in Granite Falls, MN.

Everything inside follows the theme: Text that screams like a bad televangelist (okkay, one that's even worse than the usual run of the lot), a paper "Prayer Rug" that's supposed to have some miraculous ability to change image (I haven't bothered with seeing if it's any particular optical illusion or just a matter of faith and placebo effect) that while mere paper is so important it must be returned to be passed on - never mind postal regulations (They send it to you, unsolicited, it's yours to do with as you see fit.) And a "prophecy" to be opened after other gyrations (ones that mark you as a sucker and get them your name and address) have been done. This is mainly filling out a sort of religious/prayer form letter. Which just happens to have a spot for a contribution. Unfortunately as there is nothing being explicitly sold, it doesn't qualify for the Form 1500 treatment it so richly deserves.

The obvious thing is to do is just recycle it. There's no personal information at all, so there's no point in running it through the shredder. The evil thing to do would be fill in someone else's information. I don't see much point in that sort of trollish crap, and even if I did there's nobody who is both on my fecal roster and whose address I happen to have about. I'm getting the feeling that I'm overlooking something. The "can't leave nothing alone" gene is twitching, as this nonsense just begs for some sort of shenanigan. Alas, nothing comes to mind.

Current Mood: mischievous

I don't know how old this joke is, but the lesson in it holds true.

There was a flood. A man managed to make it to his roof which was above the floodwaters - for now. Someone came by in a small motorboat that had somehow managed not to be swept away and offered the man a ride to a safer place. The man refused, saying "The Lord will save me."

The rising waters were starting to reach the eves of the house when a fellow in a larger motorboat arrived and offered a ride to a safer place. Again the man refused, saying "The Lord will save me."

The water was well up the roofline when a helicopter appeared and a rescue offered. Once again the man refused, saying that "The Lord will save me." It was only minutes later that the raging flood carried the house off its foundation and crumpled it into debris, drowning the man.

At the pearly gates, the man inquired as to what had happened since surely God would have provided. "He sent two motorboats, and a helicopter. What were you waiting for?!"

My take: Divine intervention may seem appealing, but technology is far more reliable.

In this post Wil Wheaton relates some of the strangeness that was Dr. Gene Scott. While I didn't see him on UHF TV in L.A. I did see him on C-band satellite where he was just as strange.

Gene Scott was allegedly a TV preacher, though when thinking it over it's hard to say if he really was a TV preacher or a parody of a TV preacher - or maybe both. He would seem to sit in a chair for hours and ramble on about whatever struck him at the moment. Sometimes he'd have some tune played. This tune might be something you'd expect. But it could just as easily be something you wouldn't expect, such as Kill Some Piss-ants for Jesus (So help me, I am not making that up). He might, when the tune was over, talk about it, or talk about anything else, or just have it played again. And again.

I forget if he ever took callers or if he only dealt with letters, but one response to a critic stands out. The critic stated that Gene was fleecing his followers. His reply was something like, "That's what a shepherd does with a flock."

I haven't settled on anything to take up for Borrowed.

Current Mood: mischievous

temujin9 has mirrored an article that claims gay marriage wasn't always a problem for the Church.

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I've been rereading Hypnosis by George Estabrooks which mentions how some things are done because of belief. One example is the classic demonstration of the hypnotic subject's body going rigid enough to seem like a board when held up only a pair of chairs, one chair at the head and shoulders and the other at the feet. If the hypnotist asides to someone "Of course it's possible, anyone can do it" then it will work since the hypnotic subject has overheard that it's possible and what the hypnotist says is true - or at least close enough. But if the hypnotist tells someone near him "It's all nonsense, nobody can do it. The stage demos are rigged up like a magic act" then the subject won't be able to do it. The only difference in the hypnotic subject is the matter of belief. In one case, "anyone can do it" and so therefore can he. In the other, nobody can do it so neither can he.

Another bit Estabrooks mentions is that to get a desired change, the most effective means is to act as if it has already occurred. It's not a matter of going to change, but a matter of having already changed. Things just are the desired way. This same idea shows up in visualization techniques that don't label themselves hypnosis. They say to picture the end result and focus on that. It doesn't matter what it's called, it's the power of belief being harnessed. It is a quite powerful tool, if you have it. Belief in oneself, self-confidence, is good at least up to a point. Misapplied, it gets overbearing.

That and a recent conversation suggested something to me. I do not intend to belittle anyone or claim that what they believe is wrong. I just have a possible explanation for something that I find interesting:

Imagine it's a long, long time back, prehistoric times. Suppose you've realized how powerful self-confidence is and want to help your friend(s) (family, tribe, whatever). But you hit the problem of self-doubt. "Oh, I could never do that." That's a hard barrier to get past. You probably beat yourself senseless trying to get rid of that barrier. Then it hits you like a feather. Specifically, like Dumbo's "magic feather." You can invent a lucky charm, a talisman. Your friend doesn't have to believe in himself, he can believe in the trinket and will then act as if it worked. It's all placebo effect and you can't explain that bit of "magic" without destroying it unless your friend is really ready to believe in himself. If you have a few like this, then even those who are in on it, if you dare tell them and trust them to stay quiet, have to go with the act. If they don't, the others might get suspicious and soon the whole works is ruined.

There are still problems. The trinket doesn't really work, and your friend will still run into problems. Making more talismans only works for so long, and what if it gets lost or damaged, or maybe stolen?

It's time to invent something that can't be lost and has a built-in explanation for not always working. You invent an imaginary friend. Maybe it's a general "energy" or maybe it's a collection of powerful beings, or maybe just one powerful being. This thing, this Great Omniscient Deity, will help your friend. But not always. "See, it.. well, he - it makes talking about it easier - while he's powerful, he also is all-knowing and will sometimes not help, or maybe not help in the way desired. It's not that there's anything wrong with you or him, it's that he can see the big picture." Now your friend can believe in this Great Omniscient Deity and get by, and even when things aren't going right, well, maybes it's the Grand Plan that it shouldn't work out. That's what you say.

This is a powerful idea. It's a useful idea. People no longer need to believe in themselves, they can believe in the Great Omniscient Deity that will help them. Since he can do anything, they can do anything. Oh crap, they will try to do anything, even if it's not really a good idea. Gotta fix that. To much ability without any responsibility. Let's see...

"Oh, yeah." you might say, "I spoke...er.. I had a vision... from the Great Omniscient Deity. He says 'Don't do anything to anyone unless you'd like them to do the same to you.'" A moral code, or the beginnings of one. Someone asks "And if we don't?" and more has to be invented. You could come up with karma, or reincarnation, or some sort of unverifiable reward program to keep it all going. If it really gets out of hand, you could even add a punishment rather than a reward to the mix. Maybe even invent a story about how there is a Tempter trying to mess things up.

"Why aren't we rewarded now? Why can't he make it all right now and be done with it?" You can't tell them that the reward is their own confidence - it'd ruin the effect, just like explaining the lucky charm. Aha! The big picture thing again. You say, "He works in mysterious ways" and things like that.

Good things get credited to the Great Omniscient Deity. Bad things, well, there's that mysterious plan. It's for the best, somehow, right? This grows. It grows until you can't stop it even if you want to. Anyone who realizes what's going on, well... they'd better watch themselves. People don't want to stop believing in the Great Omniscient Deity. That would mean far too much responsibility. No more "The Tempter tricked me into doing it!" Sometimes things in life would be *horrors* purely random.

Maybe others in other places hit on the same idea you did. Or maybe the people you told go and tell others and the stories change a bit with each telling. After a while it becomes "My Great Omniscient Deity is the real one, not yours! Your story is wrong!" "No, yours is wrong! Great Omniscient Deity is on my side!" and then, well, just look around. By this time you're long gone from the scene. You meant well. You just wanted to help your friends see that, yes, they could venture over that next hill. Yes, they would survive this storm, or this winter. Yes, they would find something to eat if they just kept looking. It wasn't supposed to drift into this mess.

And that's the idea. That religion might have started as a psychological crutch. There's no problem with using a crutch - it's a useful tool and lets you do more if you need it. But it shouldn't be used to beat others over the head. Did all this start because of some prehistoric psychiatrist, or a string of them through history?

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Current Mood: contemplative

You know, you do one funny thing, and it spirals into a religion.

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Current Mood: amused

I pledge allegiance to the Flag
of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation over Satan, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.

Here is one history of the Pledge, and here is another. Interestingly, the one addition to the Pledge that original author would have approved of is one about equality, not a supernatural being.

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Current Mood: mischievous

Maybe some folks wouldn't be complaining of their pain so much if they didn't shoot themselves in the foot so much.

ADDENDUM: The second link was to a story showing yet another example of "Christian" intolerance.

One of the letters in the Star Tribune neatly demolishes any argument for leaving the monument of the ten commandments in a court building. How? Doing so violates one of the commandments:

The 10th Commandment states: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house." Yet Alabama State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore and others insist on doing precisely that by abrogating the people's house of justice as their own and insisting that a monument to the Ten Commandments remain in the state judicial building (Star Tribune, Aug. 16).

If Justice Moore wants everyone to live by God's rules, shouldn't he also follow God's rules?

Jim Herzog, Minneapolis.

Current Mood: relaxed

I was reading Yakko's post about "In God We Trust" and the article he linked to. Besides "E Pluribus Unum" being a much better motto, another thought surfaced while reading.

I don't know how many people know of Dr. Gene Scott, but he has (or had) a satellite/cable channel/show where he went on about.. well, pretty much whatever struck him. He's not exactly the usual TV preacher, to put it mildly. He could be amusing, in a "They give him air time?" sort of way. He asked for money, like others, but he also played some odd tunes. Imagine a guy sitting in a chair and after a song titled "Kill Some Pissants for Jesus" played, told his crew to play it again. Once he had a caller who accused him of fleecing his viewers. Gene replied to the effect that that is what a shepherd does with a flock.

There is also the line about "separating the sheep from the goats" which always did seem a bit strange. What was so bad about goats as compared to sheep? Not as docile? More likely to be independent? Those may be problems if one is a goatherd and envies a shepherd's apparently easier job. And evidently religion - or at least one religion - would prefer unthinking docile creatures as well. If your job is focusing the power of the masses, or holding power over the masses, then it's easy to see why you'd want the masses to think of themselves of sheep. I do wonder about the term kid for a "baby goat." Did this term get applied to children as they also "have minds of their own" and need more supervision? It makes one wonder if the idea of horns implying evil came from something like this as well.

Yet outside of (a) religion, people don't want to be considered sheep. The idea of just being part of the flock (the term "herd mentality" and its derisiveness comes to mind) is insulting. Sure, people like belonging, but not to be thought of as always going along with some group, nevermind if it makes sense or not. People want to believe they think for themselves, whether or not they actually do so.

This is rather striking. In one part of life, being a sheep is fine. It's the ideal. The Sky Parent says so. Yet in the rest of life, it's terribly insulting. Shouldn't it be just the one or just the other?

Current Mood: heretical