Now reading Figes’ The Crimean War and I did not expect it to start with accounts of a bunch of priests and good Christians murdering each other in their “holiest” churches in Jerusalem in the 1840s. That’s interesting
@GrittyLipids@histodons@bookstodon Exclusivist religion has a history there. Christians and Muslims have been murdering their own and each other for a long time.
That sort of mindset lets you do evil and feel virtuous. So do utopian political movements. If you are working to perfect the world, anything is justified, right?
The interesting bit is how priests and pilgrims were so caught up in arguing about their imaginary friends that they killed each other in the most sacred places in their religion. I’m sure they all thought they were right.
@GrittyLipids@bookstodon@histodons Where is that church that is divided between sects with a line down the middle? Every now and then someone steps on the line and there's a rumble.
Why is it so hard for people to accept that WE DO NOT KNOW the answer to the sort of questions religion asked?
The NT records people asking Jesus to cut through the riddles and tell them straight. They got more riddles. Same thing happened with the Buddha.
@GrittyLipids@bookstodon@histodons For that matter, I have book called Hungry Ghosts about a new ager who went to mediums and tried to get straight answers. Guess what he got? Names and dates that did not check out, and more riddles and confusion.
He eventually concluded the spirits involved were parasitic, and are messing with us in order to feed off our energy. And that they've been doing it throughout recorded history, thus the mess of mutually hostile scriptures in the world.
Sure, that’s about the level of ridiculous nonsense I’d expect from a crystal waver.
Also, what a surprise that people in a profession known mainly for bullshit, con artists and scamming people are mostly out to hook customers with cryptic gibberish rather than actually answering anything.
There are only a few people making a sincere ego-free effort to understand spiritual reality. Some of those investigating NDEs, kids' pre-birth memories, and encounters with the dead seem to be sincere.
This author was one, but got pulled in emotionally. The spirits provided him with a past-life girlfriend and messed with his head.
Past life bullshit is an extremely common cult leader and other manipulator tactic. The “medium” found the right words to fuck with him and avoid serious inquiry into “why the fuck are YOU really talking to the dead when nobody else has ever been proven to be doing it, and a whole lot of them were proven to be liars and frauds?”
If they are the energetic equivalent of parasites, leeches, and tapeworms, they DO NOT want to be understood by us. If we understood them we might go through the world's spiritual lore and figure out which protection methods actually work, and deploy them widely.
@alice@GrittyLipids@bookstodon@histodons@SusanHR One interesting thing about the case in this book: the author asked for names and dates, then traveled to investigate them. Some of the history was valid but the names did not exist.
If the entities can get facts, why did they lie, and then make excuses when he came back and confronted them?
Maybe they are forbidden from knowing certain things.
Or maybe they deliberately lie to drive off the skeptical, while recruiting the credulous.
@mike805@GrittyLipids@bookstodon@histodons@SusanHR It's a tactic used by 419 ("Nigerian") scammers and other fraudsters. Sure, the scam might sound flagrantly obvious to many but for the target victims, it's perfect. An intelligence test.
If they don't reject the scam out of hand, they're the most likely to fall for it. This optimizes the effort and attention of the scammer by not wasting time on bad marks.
She was not getting paid, had no personal stake, and no apparent memory once out of trance.
The entities knew about stuff the author was doing while alone. The author also had perceived sounds and sensations that the entities mentioned at the next sitting.
QT @mike805
"Where is that church that is divided between sects with a line down the middle? Every now and then someone steps on the line and there's a rumble."
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