The singular problem with the concept of 'God', as developed and revealed in the major branches of Abrahamic monotheism, is that 'He' invariably represents a Death Cult.  From the Garden of Eden, humanity's mortality is rooted in the knowledge of Good and Evil.  Morality as such, this knowledge of the moral spectrum, is a Curse which has damned mankind to never-ending toil.  The first child, Cain, is a murderer.  Isaac, the miracle Son of Sarah, needs to be slaughtered.  (Only...Psych!!!)  'God' is given to 'His' own murderous whims, drowning terrestrial life like so many kittens, like a Tyrant Child who hasn't yet learned how to formulate the rationalization of the Baptismal ritual to excuse these sadistic abuses of power.  The only method of education that 'God' ever was capable of fashioning involved unnecessary and unleashed displays of vulgar death and destruction.  "Oh, are the Israelites maybe starting to stray into materialistic vanity?  Maybe a Genocide will set them straight!"  'God' cannot understand why his children are so confused.  "Smoking is bad, so why is 'Dad' making me smoke a pack as punishment?"  So finally 'God' gets it in his gourd that maybe if I send a 'Son', a pure spiritual Soul, to inspire and remind humanity of their yet-latent mercy and genius.  A hero, a leader, a compass of compassion.  Clearly he needs to die.  And only the most gruesome death, the most cruel, needless, spiteful death.  This, 'God' reasons, is the only path to comprehending universal compassion.  In essence, 'God' is a Psychopath.

Unless 'God' is not what 'He' seems.  So what is 'God' after all?  Is it monotheistic or pantheistic?  Is 'God', as conceived by primitive minds, more of a Demiurge - the Creator, but an operative of and not the Supreme Being.  In the Gnostic formulation, the Demiurge is an emanation of the Monad, the true original source of substance.  The unknown/unknowable Monad emanated the Nous (consciousness) to comprehend itself, and this Nous, as the Demiurge ("artisan"), created the universe as a system of perceptual coherence.  Plato's "Form of the Good"  represents the Monad's "perfect eternal changeless form".  Once consciousness, by necessity of comprehension in order to conceive it, imposes structure onto changeless form, then the fabric of formal variation is created, and viola, the created universe of infinite multiplicity forms.  Discerning the finite from the infinite is, in a vastly misunderstood idiom, the knowledge of good (pure form) and evil (endless incarnation).

The Old Testament tale of the Garden of Eden is shared between the major Western religions, but they are all infected with Freudian corruption.  The Creator ('The Lord" in OT-speak) is not the true Supreme Being, but a fashioned representative, a tangible mechanic.  And in some Gnostic lore, this representative, an archtype of power, is tempted to disguise 'Himself' as the true Supreme Being to His occluded subjects.  This is the fundamental coup d'etat at the root of Abrahamic religion.  It's possible to read Paradise Lost as a subversive establishment of this scenario - Lucifer is the Creator (the Morning Star) who leads a mutiny against the true Almighty Monad, and convinces his created lifeforms to worship Himself as if he were Almighty.

In Gnostic Neo-Platonism, the Demiurge forms a Trinity that is closely corresponded to its Christian heir, where 'Arche' is the source, 'Logos' is the expression and 'Harmonia' holds it all together.  "Henosis" is an obscure but vital term used by Iamblichus to reconcile this Source and Substance.  The ultimate failure of these established Western religions is that they're far more invested in exacerbating this schism than in resolving it, and this pattern plays out throughout not only the Bible and Koran but right through to our various religious disputes today.  The shared OT narrative of the Garden of Eden makes this spiritual, psychic scar clear.  The mere recognition of moral dimension has damned us to death.  But going outside of the Bible to find parallel texts that convey essentially identical concepts shows how all of that is a deep-seated misunderstanding of the story to begin with.  "God's punishment" therefore becomes the foundation on which the entire human spiritual evolution rests.  This is a moral fallacy that is toxic enough without even considering its more sexual context of Original Sin, which we, as a collective society, are still engaged in a Sisyphean struggle today.

The more shiny cults will entice with bright illuminated balls of Xenu and Kolob, but this is all external nonsense.  The core of a truly revelatory scripture must be simplified, not exoticized, into basic components of being - Source and Substance.  Our angels should be servants of perception.  There should be no supernatural curtain drawn over our humble lust for awareness.
 

Between Thought and Expression
Lies a Lifetime
                        -- Lou Reed

There are many primitive sentiments surrounding what is essentially a philosophy of psychology embedded in these mystical schools.  The Gnostic notion of these emanations posit the realm of physical matter as a prison; the Hindus posit it as a lie and illusion, Maya.  Both positions offer the same restriction - to occlude us from knowing our true, pure spiritual essence.  But the error of the primitive perspective is the anthropomorphic projection of moral motive.  It presumes some entity or intelligence imposing this veil, this devolution from infinite, formless immortal soul into crude carnal mortality.  One version of the Gnostic Demiurge, Yaldabaoth, is typically malevolent.  (It is significant to recognize how this "lion-headed serpent" corresponds to the Mithraic "leontocephaline" icon; Mithraism was a then-competing mystical cult within the Near East-Roman Empire, a similarly mystical subset of Zoroastrianism as Gnosticism/Neoplatonism was a subset of early Christianity, and the spillover and influence between these mystical systems has yet to be fully appreciated or understood, mostly due to muddy and incomplete documentation surviving from the era.)  Interestingly, some Gnostics felt that this Demiurge, as Creator not Source, was the 'God' of the Garden of Eden, who had "trapped" Adam and Eve into ignorant bliss, only to be liberated by the Serpent who granted them the gift of Knowledge (Gnosis), and that 'God's resulting curse, to condemn man and woman to toil the earth and suffer the pains of childbirth respectively was less about denying them paradise than doubling down on their corporeal captivity.



At this point, it's worth addressing the incongruency in these various diabolical designations.  Even adhering strictly to only the most authoritative and approved texts of the Abrahamic religions - let's suffice with the common Bible - there are numerous names for what we are supposed to believe are the principal actors, God and Satan.  There is no textual suggestion in Genesis - either in Hebrew, Greek or King James' English - to assign identity of the Serpent of Eden with Satan.  'Satan' (Hebrew, "accuser") was originally more like God's prosecuter.  "Lucifer" ("light-bringer") was closer to the Demiurge as the "brightest angel" who endowed the manifestation of intelligence.  The oft-told tale of the Fallen Angels, the myth of the revolt of Lucifer who refused to bow to man who was supposedly God's greatest creation, is not actually anywhere in the Bible, which comes as a surprise to many illiterate congregants.  It is alluded to in the prophetic book of Isaiah, written well after the establishment of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  One apocryphal volume, the Book of Jubilees written sometime in the first century BC, describes in greater detail this mythical structure of angels and giants (Nephilim) which are carved like forgotten artifacts throughout the Genesis amalgamation but never further explored.  Jubilees, despite being an authentic document of early century Israel and nascent Christianity, is not recognized by either of these respective religions.  The myth of Lucifer and the Fallen Angels certainly existed during this time when the very first physical incarnation of the Bible, the Torah, was composed (the "Second Temple Period"), but it was relegated to the shadows, except for its transmission among more esoteric sects.  Some Gnostic sects, such as the Ophites, took the Serpent of Eden as identical to Jesus Christ, as a liberator, and serpents genrally, as archetypal symbols, as representing the secret, the subtle, the esoteric, wisdom and healing (the Caduceus), and Jesus himself certainly seemed to champion the subversive and submerged,  ("Those with eyes who cannot see...")  And it's simply a textual fact to note that 'Lucifer' is identified as the Morning Star, and Jesus Christ is called the "bright Morning Star" on literally the last page of the Bible in Revelation.

The true incarceration into matter is in the strict literal interpretation of the text, those with eyes who cannot see, those who have blinded themselves to spite their doubts and fears.
 

This thread was not inspired by the recent Netflix series How to Be a Cult Leader.  And even if it was, it wouldn't be.

What I mean is that ... that series is basic as white bread.  It's interesting how its bullet points are based on advertising/marketing templates.  And that's a more subversive point than this series is willing to explore.  I remember watching an ABC special on the cult Heaven's Gate a couple of years ago, and noticing that all of the cult-based programming - appealing to the need to belong - was apparent in all of the commercials and pop culture cues in the network breaks.  Advertising, properly understood, is a form of brainwashing, no different than any religious dogma.  And it's all based on the dogma that people, more or less, are more susceptible to sensual stimulation (the sizzle) than the substantial gratification (the steak).  It's a well known phenomenon, and very few people consider this a symptom of our culture's poor spiritual health.

The reason why I simply cannot be a cult leader, despite all of my charisma and persuasive knowledge, is that I have nothing but the most utter contempt for those people who would be most willing - even eager - to find such a cult to begin with.  And, no doubt, those most successful cult leaders also share such a contempt for their followers.  What I lack, then, is that particular sociopathic chip in my brain that would allow me to accept such a contradiction to not hollow my soul (sense of personal integrity).

Cult members are consumers first and foremost.  They are not interested in self-sufficient spirituality.  They only want to fist over dollars to whomever dares to arouse their perception of superiority.  What a neat trick it is to convince oneself that their submission is a ticket to superiority, but we see it played out time and time again in numerous political systems, from the Inquisition to the Holocaust - the empty authoriatarian pantomime.

In other very basic words, this cult is doomed to failure.
 

As I was strolling along one day last week, I came upon three churches.  (It's the South down here, you know.)  The first "church" I put in quotes because it was really more like one of those office parks - multiple modern buildings that look more like a campus, or hospital complex, with several acres of untreaded lawns that must cost tens of thousands of dollars to annually maintain.  Conspicuous wealth.  Baptists.  As I walked along, unable to not gawk a little at the gall of this compound, this fortification, I noticed a big black utility vehicle pacing me out.  Just checking on me, as they must have thought I was checking on them, slowly rolling alongside myself, the perimeter between sidewalk and parking lot being tacitly enforced.  This black truck had completely tinted windows, it could very well have been a drone driving for all I could tell, taking my picture perhaps, scanning and suspecting.  As I passed by the last corner before carrying on my way, I gave one last stroke across my denim hind as a gesture of lascivious appreciation.

The second church was unremarkable.  Bland facade, probably fits a couple hundred a week.  I admired its humility.

The third church had an electronic marquee out front that, on this particular day, had a curious choice for biblical quote.  Hebrews 10:31 (Halloween): "It is a frightful thing to fall into the hands of a Living God".  You're telling me.  That's also a pretty frightful way of welcoming your congregants, I imagine.

I'm familiar with the book, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and it's an odd choice for inspiration.  It's one of the more mysterious and obscure books of the New Testament.  The authorship is disputed.  It stands out from the rest of the more Christian compassion, kind of like an encore performance for the old school vindictive judgmental Lord of the Old Testament.  "Our God is a consuming Fire".  That's a direct quote.  It's the only book in the New Testament that refers to things like "sprinkled blood", "burnt offerings", "sin offerings" and other arcana from the dusty tabernacle.  Now, one may assume that since this was an Epistle directed toward the Hebrews, that such OT invocations were necessary, as a way of speaking their language...so to speak.  But that's strange considering how it appears to have been written during a time when the vast majority of Christians were Jews, so that doesn't quite register.  Maybe this was a deliberately targeted appeal to some very serious old school Brews.  Other suggestions are that it was written during the time of the Great Jewish Revolt, circa 70 AD, which lended the book its more militant flavor.  In the preceeding 10:30 passage, it says, "For we know Him who said, 'It is mine to avenge, I will repay'".  So much for cheeks.

But this is where the first true crazy rail gets slid under the Jesus Train.  Although Hebrews is not, as once and long believed, one of the many letters from Paul which constitutes much of the back half of the New Testament, it seems to suffer from a similar discharge.  Paul, rather famously, was converted to the light of Christ only after being struck by some kind of divine conniption, and thus duly determined to inflict his own abscessed guilty conscience, for all of the many Jews he viciously persecuted due to being "extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers".  I will wager right now that every single abomination that can be ascribed to religious belief can be sourced directly to those "extremely zealous" souls with a complementary guilt complex and a gift for conniption.  Paul, not Jesus, is the true soul of the fateful Christian Church, and what a seismic disruption would be caused once these poor Christian children realize that truth.  Paul was the Anti-Christ, the severe punisher who desperately tried to replace the prisoner, the wolf who wanted to be the lamb. 

Zealotry doesn't dissipate, it distracts.  It finds new causes, new action.  Zealotry, not religion, is the toxic strain running through these sociopathic institutions of human nature.  Compensation is a bitch, not a muse.

David Hume wrote:

But even though superstition or enthusiasm should not put itself in direct opposition to morality; the very diverting of the attention, the raising up a new and frivolous species of merit, the preposterous distribution, which it makes of praise and blame; must have the most pernicious consequences, and weaken extremely men's attachment to the natural motives of justice and humanity.  Such a principle of action likewise, not being any of the familiar motives of human conduct, acts only by intervals on the temper, and must be rouzed by continual efforts, in order to render the pious zealot satisfied with his own conduct, and make him fulfil his devotional task. Many religious exercises are entered into with seeming fervour, where the heart, at the time, feels cold and languid: A habit of dissimulation is by degrees contracted: and fraud and falsehood become the predominant principle. Hence the reason of that vulgar observation, that the highest zeal in religion and the deepest hypocrisy, so far from being inconsistent, are often or commonly united in the same individual character.  The bad effects of such habits, even in common life, are easily imagined: but where the interests of religion are concerned, no morality can be forcible enough to bind the enthusiastic zealot.  The sacredness of the cause sanctifies every measure, which can be made use of to promote it.  The steady attention alone to so important an interest as that of eternal salvation is apt to extinguish the benevolent affections, and beget a narrow, contracted selfishness.  And when such a temper is encouraged, it easily eludes all the general precepts of charity and benevolence.

There was another interpretation of 'Hell' which owes to a more esoteric reading of Gnostic and Neo-Platonic literature, revisited in the Middle Ages in alchemical formulas, as "alchemy" was essentially disguised Gnosticism, the lead being physical matter (the body) and gold being the spirit encased within.  This interpretation is that Hell is actually the mundane world in which we live.  There is a distinction made between "fire" and "ether" - understanding these terms as poetic, rather than scientific - where the ether represents the spirit, which energy is "pure", potential and invisible.  The "fire", as physical and visible, is material and hence impure, and represents material decay and entropy, as all material things are consumed by the degradation of time.  This degradation was termed the "eternal fire", with eternal meaning the unyielding wheel of time that breaks down all physical things.  Hence, the eternal fire of Hell is the never-ending degradation of carnal mortality.  But, in this scenario, suffering is not necessarily eternal, but only afflicts those with a misplaced obsession with the value of material wealth and carnal lusts.  And Hell is considered to be located in "the center of the Earth", not as being literally in the core of the planetary sphere, but more philosophically as being fundamental of earthly matter.

Pythagoras had placed the Sun at the center of the universe, and this has long been seen as an early attempt of a heliocentric conception, centuries before Copernicus or Galileo.  But as fortunate as this prophetic design, Pythagoras also entertained a symbolic, spiritual explanation for this model, where the Sun provides the "fire" (again in a symbolical representation of earthly fuel) for cyclical life and nature, while also positing a second invisible spiritual Sun, which provides purification and inner illumination, and this second sun is seen as the true God, closer to the Eastern conception of deity-as-spiritual-source, a vital battery, rather than the executive judge of Abrahamic tradition.  In this situation, the Sun isn't exactly Hell either, but it is interesting that Aristotle, in describing Pythagoras' idea, referred to the Sun as "Jupiter's Prison", or emblematic of the divine spark trapped in corporeal matter.

Another version of this conception of material reality = spiritual prison is laid out by Origen of Alexandria, both one of the most fundamental Christian theologians and one of the most obscured and controversial.  Origen would eventually be martyred under the Roman Emperor Decius, but he had also long butted heads with various other Christian authorities of the third century AD and accused of heresies for what were becoming increasingly unpalatable opinions.  One such opinion is that "the Fall" involved eternal souls becoming encased in human "tunics".  Another opinion, relevant to the previous post, is that all created souls are inevitably worthy of salvation.  And yet another opinion is that the scriptures, as then available in the pre-Nicene literature, are full of symbolic allegories that he openly wondered how any sane person could take literally.  His take on Christ's descent into Hell is interesting, referred to as the "ransom theory of atonement", but is really more of a bluff.  The idea is that God offered up Jesus' soul in exchange for all of the imprisoned souls in Hell, and Satan, greedy for God's favorite trophy, didn't realize that Jesus was incapable of being imprisoned, and so Jesus led all of the liberated souls out of Hell with him in his Ascension into Heaven while Satan was left empty-handed.  It's a charming tale, and exactly the kind of storybook fable in which religious doctrine deserves to be appreciated.  And a good example for why the true corruption of religion lies in its tendency to deny such poetic agency, becoming almost ashamed of itself as an essentially artistic enterprise.  True Hell is this frustration of divine sublimity.


(J.M.W. Turner)

 

I don't want to get into semantics, but unfortunately a lot of that is unavoidable when so many of the presumptions (superstitions, if you will) involve a variety of commonly misconstrued terms.  For example "myth" is not really a synonym for "lie" or "falsehood" or even "misperception", even though this use is so common as to be commonly unquestioned.  "Mythos" originally means "speech, thought, word, discourse, conversation; story, saga, tale...anything delivered by word of mouth"  It's closest synonym might be the more recognizable "meme", a microcosmic representation.  It wouldn't be surprising if eventually the term "meme" also becomes a synonym of disnformation, considering the use of memes in social media for that purpose, but it wouldn't erase the foundational meaning.  A myth is simply an expressed idea.

By comparison, a superstition, which means an "over+standing", is literally a synonym for presumption, a belief in something not yet understood.  We all have superstitions, because no one understands everything, and so we navigate many impressions of strange phenomena that lead to various personal theories.  The existence of 'God' is one of these theories that people plug into a number of observable incoherencies in nature and (most especially) human moral graces and failures.  But the problem of theology is that there is no real theology.  There is no basic consensus for what consists of deity.  Many still hold onto the totemic ideal of tribal idols.  Others may interrogate the environmental feedback process of bio-sentience.  If consciousness is a necessary imperative of organized life, can the "universe" be collectively aware of itself, as an organized life-fomenting system?  And maybe, hey, can the universe even have pre-natal, or anteBang, memories?  Who knows?  It probably isn't a question which is worth burning anyone at the stake, but it's also not worth condescendingly shaming the sincere inquisitor either.

There's a layman faith in Science as well which can potentially take on certain zealous attributes.  Just as the fearful pious assert with absolute certainty the uncompromising truth of their creed, the layman zealot (the non-scientist who wears signifying scientific wardrobe) will similarly assert with equal confidence the assured sanctity of their own perceived wisdom.  Actual scientists tend to be far more aware of the sensitivities of their grasp on the science, on the process of discovery and correction, of the unfathomable science yet to be understood.

In our times of retarded binary discourse, these mutual uncertanties become ammunition for eroding each others' foundational dogmas, not realizing that by digging out the sediment under each others' feet they're inevitable to collapse into each other like some pathetic jenga duel.  The alternative is obscured by this discourse but not controversial, which is that there is space for science and spirituality to peacefully coexist.  These things are not mutually exclusive and so I feel it is necessary to dismantle the language which frames them as such.  The infrastructure of religious jargon is designed to quarantine its idealized purity from the comprehension of the common person.  It was in the interests of these institutions to project their brand of "magic" and apparently awesome ineffable potency, and calling bullshit on these preposterous prostrations of organized religious power should liberate the perfectly natural spiritual essence that these institutions have been attempting to hoard, rather than negate the existence of this spiritual essence.

If I were to make a comparison, it's as if someone were to pour poison in the well, and then someone else uses this poison as evidence that water is evil.  Or that thirst doesn't exist.



"When he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, He said all men must be sailors then until the sea shall free them." - Leonard Cohen


 

The distinction between what is supernatural and what is superstition seems to come to the fore in the recent RealClear Opinion Research poll,  RealClear, as a brand, is more of a slightly-right leaning political pollling venue, and that may have some shading on its survees.  But it's a mix of what we assume and what we project and probably there's some truth in there somewhere as well.

This poll in question addresses religious and paranormal beliefs.  I'm going to sideline the term "spiritual", because, frankly, I think that part of the problem is confusing these things with each other.  This is primarily a politically motivated poll.  If one appeciates a theology, incorporating entities and sources of being and nature, that's not quite on the same playing field as the more kindergarten arcana of "ghosts", "witches" and "aliens".  I do recognize the problem that way too many self-professed religious people quite honestly see no metaphysical difference between a 'God' and, say, a goblin.  This simply isn't my mission to suss.  Let's just look at the data, shall we?

85% reporting they believe in a creator, compared to just 15% who don’t believe. The exact amount – 85% – also reported a belief in heaven, with just slightly less – 83% – believing in miracles. Of those surveyed, 80% also reported that they believe “Jesus is God or the son of God.” A smaller majority of those surveyed – 72% – say they believe in hell, while 70% report belief in the devil.

That seems normative, I suppose.  Typical even.  I'm not the ideal person for these kinds of surveys because almost of those categories involve a number of qualifications.  But mostly this looks like reflected scriptural dogma.  The concept of "miracle" is probably the most fertile avenue with which to begin the distinction between subjective awe or physical flaw.  What seems miraculous is due to a lack of comprehending a certain physical account, and venerating this emotional charge of miraculous witness is a spontaneous elation, like laughter.  The "eureka" moments in science could be called miracles as well, on a spiritually similar basis, these keys which give us inspiration, without the cynical demoralizing terms of "cheat", "hack", "trick", language of suspicious fools.  The inspiration of the miracle should be its own reward.  "Illusion" is similarly deceptive.  It's all from the same fabric of perception.

The positive takeawy from this poll is political, which is that overwhelming majorities are not only concerned with defending individual religious freedoms but about also stopping increasing discrimination and fear against other people's faiths.  That's a good sign.  The negative takeaway is not political, but rather the show that most people will still gravitate towards archetypal constructs of spirituality rather than spiritual wisdom itself.  Hence 'God' is still believed as a mostly benign Big Daddy on a cloud, Heaven & Hell are dualities of infinite destiny, that damned Devil keeps a-peeking.  So it's no wonder that other cartoons - "witches, ghosts, aliens" and whatever other proto-Tolkien/Disney fantasies get equal recognition eventually.  I don't see anything necessarily "spiritual" about any such beliefs.  In fact it's gross, the opposite of that.  Reincarnation is thrown in as a spoiler.  How about astrology?  Do I need a black light and crystals for this?  It gets materialistic quickly, calcifies the soul.  And then finally, to ring in the new year in America today, "If there is a God, do you think of God as male or female or neither?"  Even in the crudest testament, God made them both.  The answer should be obvious, but, of course, these are our physical limitations.  These are all our graven images.





 

What amuses me most about these "Simulation" believers is that they're under the impression that this has nothing to do with religion.  They think it's scientific.  But, fun fact, there's exactly as much science to support any random "hidden authority" religious diety as there is to support the Simulation theory.  By definition, the Simulation is something which we cannot apprehend, because it was created by such a technically advanced intelligent race that it's simply beyond our empirical capability to establish sufficient evidence of its existence.  Or, you know, like God.  The same standards of trying to prove a negative, except the Simulation is totally not a superstition.  Because stats.  Kinda like Pascal but less honest, who at least understood the nature of faith.

Mythology is a human need which supplies a narrative of meaning to our lives.  Unfortunately, in our modern times, meaning, and the need for it, is seen as a weakness, a moral frailty.  And it isn't that something like science lacks meaning, but that collectively our modern culture has struggled to construct a sufficiently meaningful narrative around our recent scientific discoveries.  Hence, the Simulation, which is a technocratic surrogate for God, the hidden authority and creator which acts as moral arbiter and karmic conductor.  God is personified Order.  The reason why, traditionally, people desired a God who could perform miracles is the presumption that if we could only get on God's good side, then he'll perform miracles on our behalf, liberating us from the indifferent scientific strictures of natural consequence.  Similarly, the Simulation is capable of miracles, based on the whims of its programmers.  Although some Simulation folks have a "Deist" variation, where the Simulation is simply on autopilot at this point, but overwhelmingly people will blame or credit the Simulation for all of the weird, random and nonsensical events in their lives, suggesting something with a perverse sense of humor at the wheel.

It's also worth pointing out, in comparison with Gnosticism - which is perhaps the closest analogy to the Simulation in classical religion, where the "reality" of our perception is supposed to be an artifical construct built around us by an unseen programmer - that the Simulation ignores the central spiritual tenet of Gnosticism, which is the belief that an enlightened individual is capable of liberating themselves, spiritually, from the artificial program.  The Simulation can do all of the Matrix cosplay they want, but there is no Neo forthcoming.  Because those who prefer the sheen of scientific superstitions are still allergic to the religious suggestion of spirituality.  We're just all destined to exist within this giant video game.

The other major modern pseudoscientific surrogate for the hidden authority of God is Artificial Intelligence.  God served the panopticon role of moral surveillance, and more esoteric vanities, in his "sees you when you're sleeping, knows when you're awake" function.  So how wonderful, in this age when God, as a concept, has fallen out of favor but these primal fears and needs still remain, to have this function replaced with a more literal technocratic surveillance.  Like the panopticon, this authority can also be invisible as well as omnipotent, in essence if not in fact, because the belief (faith) in the omnipotence is enough to effect people's behavior and perception.  We see this enthusiasm with the recent less-than-perfect A.I. where we automatically assume its perfection before discovering its very real limitations.  (A God who hallucinates.)  But that's not the point.  The point is that we still desire an artificial intelligence to administer our lives.  It's this desire itself, not the technology, which reflects our suppressed nostalgia for religious authority.

The classic problem with religion, and its attempted monopolization of meaning, is that the narratives of meaning it tends to convey are passive.  Submit to the Lord, and he'll take care of everything.  The same thing exists within our modern modes of meaning provided by media corporations.  Trust in the A.I.  It's smarter than we are!!!  Trust Disney to provide your moral education.  Trust in your Pajama Gods as your avatars of virtue, valor and vigilance.  Whether or not the moral authoritative institution is a Church, a Crown or a Corporation, they do not want you thinking that you, as an individual human being, have either the capability or the right to self-determine your narrative of meaning.  The world, the universe, is not meaningless.  It is the great work of the individual to discover meaning.  This is why the currency of meaning is so rare and valuable, and why the meaning-hoarders, peddlers and merchants don't want you seeking to find it elsewhere outside of their authority.
 

I've written before about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  I thought I may have mentioned him in this thread due to his objections to the concept of Original Sin, but I guess that must have been elsewhere.  Teilhard was a Jesuit priest who was also an early adaptor of evolutionary science, archeaology and palaentology around the turn of the 20th Century.  In common pop culture, Teilhard is best known as a real-life inspiration for Father Merrin in the original novel of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.  There isn't any indication that Teilhard believed in the possibilities of demonic possession, but some may try to use him as some kind of credible xonnection.  More interestingly, Teilhard represents a kind of conflicted character caught between these various controversies, continuing to this day.  He's been unearthed and impugned in this century by the New Atheists due to his spiritual spin on evolutionary biology, after having been thoroughly dejected by his Church superiors in his own time for daring to entertain any such Darwinist notions in the first place, with several of his publications suppressed by the Vatican during the 1920s-1940s, including restrictions on his teaching positions and university speeches.  He was too secular for the pre-Second Council Vatican, and too spiritual for modern science. 

And on top of all of that unwarranted controversy, Teilhard is also a central point of contention for the vigorously despised Exorcist sequel, The Heretic, which writer William Goodhart chose to double down on the initial inspiration for this Jesuit priest/archaeologist to expand on Teilhard's philosophical ideas of consciousness, as a ripe medium for possession, combining Teilhard's "noosphere" with the collective locust consciousness represented mythically by Pazuzu.  (Again, there's no indication that Teilhard ever accepted such "entities" as part of his philosophy.)  Unfortunately, as we all know, Exorcist II: The Heretic would bare very little resemblence to Goodhart's original script, being rewritten throughout the shoot, and with an obligatory exorcism rerun thrown in for good measure.  So in many ways, Teilhard's legacy today remains tarnished by such circumstantial scuffling.  Adding insult to injury, these Simulation sonsabitches are trying to retrofit Teilhard's concept of the "Omega Point" to their vision of a Singularity.  It's all such a molestation of half-literate misfit fidgets trying to have and eat their demon digital cake.

Such things look attractive in the proximity of media association, which is the weird meme-crush game we seem to be playing.  Teilhard's "noosphere" - from the Greek concept of Nous, "mind" or consciousness, with an etymological suggestion of fabric, "thread", "woven", "spun" - is to stand distinct from the 'geosphere' and 'biosphere' regions.  It's the realm of the energy of life consciousness, and rather than a Gnostic or Manichean dualist, Teilhard saw all three of these spheres as interpermeating.  And obviously frustrating is the fact that he so casually conflated scientific and poetic language.  Consciousness is the cream of biological distillation.    Pure consciousness, from all transcendental disciplines, leads to "godhead".  Teilhard's "Omega Point" might sound epic, but it's no more a historical event than Judgment Day.  This is an idealized projection of enlightenment.  Simulation theory and the Singularity are just swimming around the same materialism pool, further entrenching our dependence on matter (tech) rather than real spiritual liberation.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a fool, I think we can all agree.  He's good enough to be a teacher.  But he said something on Bill Maher's show (maybe the moronic influence overpowered his senses), something about "The Universe doesn't care about us".  Well, why the hell not?  Are we not part of the Universe?  Is the Universe so insane as to not care about itself?  This is the kind of aggressive demoralization that we should throw out with the New Atheist bathwater.  This is an example of the opposite of inspiration.  Maybe we should all care a little more.