• Psychedelic Drugs Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting RulesBluelight Rules
    PD's Best Threads Index
    Social ThreadSupport Bluelight
    Psychedelic Beginner's FAQ
  • PD Moderators: Esperighanto | JackARoe |

The entheogen theory of religion

The whole point is that psychedelics provide an ecstasy and insight that is outside of mundane cultural awareness. Cultural activities like golf and other sports only reinforce the cultural illusion. psychedelics on the other hand dissolve these structures, allowing for truly novel advances like the big bang type of evolutions of culture, and the recent social revolution of the 60s.
 
whataboutheforests said:
are these not one in the same? How can one exist without the other? I think they are both essential to religion.
Click to expand...

No, I think it's more feasible for someone to believe he's having an ecstatic experience when he isn't possesed by an all-consuming fear of the devil. 2000 years ago people didn't just think there might be a devil - it was central to their belief system. That's why the christians burned aztecs they caught taking mushrooms - because they believed the devil was behind it.

Most people these days don't believe in the same way. So when they take mushrooms they won't think the devil is coming for them and they'll be able to consider the experience reasonably.
 
Quantum Perception said:
The whole point is that psychedelics provide an ecstasy and insight that is outside of mundane cultural awareness. Cultural activities like golf and other sports only reinforce the cultural illusion. psychedelics on the other hand dissolve these structures, allowing for truly novel advances like the big bang type of evolutions of culture, and the recent social revolution of the 60s.
Click to expand...

I think you might be looking down on other peoples viewpoints tho - if you asked a man city fan what is was like seeing Man City win the league after 40 years, he would have probably told you it was the most powerful experience in his life. While we might like to think he'd enjoy mushrooms more, I'm not sure he would.

I used to think that mushrooms could change the world but the older I get I don't anymore. People can get all the religious epiphany they need out of playing Golf and they wouldn't get anything out of taking mushrooms - in fact they'd actively see it as worthless and just a druggie thing.
 
I think religion by & large comes from a need for people to interpret the world they exist in in terms which they are familiar with. I see no need for psychedelics to be the seedcorn of established religion - in fact if they were I think I'd feel psychedelics had somehow let themselves down.
 
Why should humans be the only creatures preoccupied with symbolic and abstract phenomenon? Why should our ability to plan a hunt come with the whole unnecessary (biologically speaking) mental baggage of language and culture. The way I see it, human evolution does not follow natural selection but culture is its own selection pressure. So its not hard to see how extrogenous natural neurotransmitters can bring attention to a part of the mind which was up to that point unnoticed or undeveloped- leading to an unnatural obsession with the imaginative dimension of meaning, symbol, and abstraction- a unique human ability.
 
Quantum Perception said:
The whole point is that psychedelics provide an ecstasy and insight that is outside of mundane cultural awareness. .
Click to expand...

Wait, you've lost me, what the does that have to do with visionary/mystic/spiritual experiences? If your goal is purely antisocial, then I'll agree with you the psychs are particularly effective, but why would this effect have anything to do with the founding of religious movements?

And why do you find this effect so desirable? Maybe I just use them for the opposite reason as you, I've always seen their value in their potential to help me get along with people better and reconcile myself with the cultural milieu.

edit: you answered while I was writing this, but I think the proclivity towards abstract thinking is hardwired into the human psyche, and it always has been. Your ancient hunters were makers of tools, and this takes some serious brain power, and abstract thinking. See also: curiosity and attempts at explaining natural phenomena. These factors interacting with the fact homosapiens is a social animal led to ever more complex systems, since we have have a handy dandy thing called language to allow us to express the intangible and abstracted..
 
Last edited:
Never Knows Best said:
edit: you answered while I was writing this, but I think the proclivity towards abstract thinking is hardwired into the human psyche, and it always has been. Your ancient hunters were makers of tools, and this takes some serious brain power, and abstract thinking. See also: curiosity and attempts at explaining natural phenomena. These factors interacting with the fact homosapiens is a social animal led to ever more complex systems, since we have have a handy dandy thing called language to allow us to express the intangible and abstracted..
Click to expand...

again, if its hardwired, meaning it has a deep structure which extends beyond our species (genetically speaking) then why did it come to only manifest in humans and not in any other life form?
Tool use exploded and went on its own evolutionary tract, this needs explaining as well. What drove abstract thought itself? Why would an organism have a need to admire beauty?
Human cultural evolution and brain size both exploded in a way that is unmatched in the domain of life. This i believe cannot be accounted for with slow social/biological evolution. Many animals have highly complex social structures, but they don't develop language and culture, or abstraction. Why do humans have an interiorized dimension they need to express to others? Psychedelics are the only way they I can see the human animals start to become preoccupied with things outside of biological nourishment, and into the mind and symbolism.

Why would the human animal need an explanation for anything? This kind of knowing only hinders behavior by making one second-guess. All beneficial knowledge for physical actives or activities in the world are procedural or knowledge of knowing how not what. that is, the kind of knowledge you use to drive a car or walk. This knowledge works best in the world. humans stumble in and need explanations for things, and on top of that become aware of death and erect institutions which oppress them. Like I said, why so much baggage from just the ability to predict hunts. No other animals has a trait which gives them such baggage.

All this needs an explanation which outside of the purely natural selection paradigm. IMO
 
biffhenderson said:
Rainbow Bridge. Jimi Hendrix is only in about the last 30 minutes of the movie. The other 90 minutes is a bunch of pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo that is embarrassingly painful to watch.
Click to expand...

They do sing the epic song "Silver ships of the cosmos come, sailing on the sea of the sky" tho ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top